Amnesty International on Dec. 19 accused armed group Tariq Ben Zeyad (TBZ) of committing "rampant" war crimes and human rights abuses to enforce the rule of the so-called Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) and its leader Khalifa Haftar. The report details incidences of forced disappearances, unlawful killings, torture, and mistreatment of detained migrants and refugees. The LAAF, previously known as the Libyan National Army, controls the eastern portion of Libya and several cities, including Benghazi, Derna, Sirte, Tobruk, and areas outside Tripoli. The TBZ is headed by Haftar's son Saddam, and Amnesty states that it exists primarily to enforce his rule through a campaign of terror. (Amnesty International, Jurist)

The UN Biodiversity Conference, or COP15, concluded Dec. 19 in Montreal, with what is being hailed as a landmark agreement to address the current unprecedented loss of species, now termed the planet's sixth mass extinction. The centerpiece of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, conceived as a match to the Paris Agreement on climate change, is the so-called "30x30" pledge—with countries committing to protect 30% of their territory for habitat preservation by 2030.

Burkina Faso's ruling military authorities on Dec. 16 summoned Ghana's ambassador over accusations that they have hired Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group to help fight jihadists. Speaking alongside US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo said: "Today, Russian mercenaries are on our northern border. Burkina Faso has now entered into an arrangement to go along with Mali in employing the Wagner forces there." Calling the mercenaries' presence "distressing," Akufo-Addo also alleged that Burkina Faso had offered Wagner control of a gold mine as payment.

In Episode 154 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg conducts an in-depth interview with Gina Anne Tam, author of Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860–1960 (Cambridge University Press) on how Mandarin (Putonghua) became the official language of China, and what has been the role in China's national identity of the regional "dialects," or fangyan. In a dilemma that has vexed China's bureaucracy for 2,000 years, the persistence of fangyan raises questions about conventional notions of nationalism and state formation. What can the tenacious survival of Shanghaihua (Wu), Fujianese (Min), Cantonese (Yue), Toisan and Hakka tell us about the emergence of an "alternative Chinese-ness" in the 21st century? 

At least 30 people were killed and dozens injured in armed clashes between members of the Hamar and Misseriya pastoralist groups in Sudan's West Kordofan state, local leaders reported Dec. 12. ​​​​A Hamar militia that had been organized to protect against cattle rustlers was apparently ambushed by Misseriya gunmen in the locality of Abu Zabad, setting off the violence. Hamar leaders charge that state authorities and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are protecting Misseriya bands that raid their lands with impunity. (Sudan Tribune, Dabanga) Six were also killed in a clash in September between the two groups in a dispute over the demarcation line between their territories. (Dabanga)

Following angry street protests in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian government has agreed to open an investigation into the so-called "coal mafia," a group of state officials and executives accused pilfering the country's subsurface wealth for personal profit to the tune of some $12 billion. Demonstrators attempted to storm the Government Palace on Dec. 4, and blocked the capital's main boulevard, Peace Avenue. At issue are the vast Tavan Tolgoi coalfields in the Gobi Desert, under exploitation by the Mongolian Mining Corporation, a pillar of the national economy. (BNE Intellinews, BNE Intellinews, EuroWeekly News)

With Turkey preparing a new offensive against the reduced Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Syria's Rojava region, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have announced a halt to military cooperation with the United States. In a Dec. 2 statement, the SDF said that "all coordination and joint counterterrorism operations" with the US-led coalition battling ISIS remnants in Syria have been suspended. The move is evidently intended to place pressure on the US to do more to constrain Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who reportedly now has his sights on the remaining significant strongholds of the autonomous administration, Tal Rifaat, Manbij and Kobane. The US has some 600 troops embedded with the SDF in Syria. (MEE, PBS, PRI, Al Jazeera)

The world faces multiple, urgent converging crises at this moment: the war in Ukraine and relentless Russian disinformation campaign in its defense; the attendant threat of imminent nuclear war; democracy under attack from the fascist right in Europe, Asia, South America and here in North America; regimes of mass detention and genocide proliferating worldwide; country after country collapsing into chaotic warfare; an unprecedented global crisis of displacement; the rapid fraying of the planet's life-support systems, and the endemic incapacity of the capitalist system to do anything about it. We are an admittedly small voice amid the online cacophony of bloggery, but we think it is a voice needed more than ever—ongoing coverage of under-reported conflicts, a critical dissident-left perspective with 0% unvetted provocation or state propaganda, a CounterVortex to the general downward spiral. We need your support to do it. Please give what you can.