Several civilians have been killed and more than 10,000 forced to flee their homes in heavy clashes between Burma's military and resistance fighters of the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF) for control of Loikaw, capital of Kayah state. "Members of humanitarian organizations for IDPs [internally displaced persons] and civil society groups are carrying out rescue operations to save the trapped civilians," said a KNDF officer. "KNDF soldiers are also helping them." Speaking of the military's new offensive to retake the city, he added: "We can see they are preparing to annihilate us in every possible way."

The US administration on Jan. 5 imposed sanctions on several Bosnian officials and a TV station for alleged corruption and for trying to destabilize Bosnia & Herzegovina. Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik, his adviser and former president of Bosnia's High Judicial & Prosecutorial Council, Milan Tegeltija, as well as their affiliated station Alternativna Televizija, topped the list of latest US sanctions. The sanctions mean that they are all banned from travelling to the US, and any assets they have in the US are frozen. Dodik and Tegeltija have publicly rejected the US allegations. A Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) political leader, Mirsad Kukić, was also targeted in the new sanctions. He is accused of using his role as manager of the publicly owned Banovici mine and his seat in the B&H parliament to use "political influence and official power for his personal benefit."

In Episode 105 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rants against the ubiquitous propaganda that normalizes the oppressive and dystopian pre-pandemic normality. Amid the relentless COVID-19 denialism, even mainstream voices are calling for a return to "normalcy" (sic)—which is not even a word. The opportunity for a crash conversion from fossil fuels that was posed by 2020's pandemic-induced economic paralysis, when already depressed oil prices actually went negative, is now being squandered. President Biden just released oil from the Strategic Reserves to control soaring prices. Simultaneously, the administration is moving ahead with the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in US history. While during the 2020 lockdown. the usually smog-obscured Himalayas became visible from northern India for first time in decades, Delhi is now choked with emergency levels of toxic smog. While during the 2020 lockdown, the total US death rate actually dropped because people were staying off the roads, US traffic deaths are now soaring. New York's new Mayor Eric Adams wants to stake the city's economic future to the cryptocurrency industry, even as China is cracking down on Bitcoin "mining" (sic) because of its "extremely harmful" carbon footprint. And even amid all the empty hand-wringing about climate change, airlines are flying thousands of empty "ghost flights" in order to keep their slots at congested airports. The much-vaunted "return to normalcy" must be urgently resisted. As Bruce Cockburn observed long ago, the trouble with normal is it always gets worse. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

A new assassination of a campesino leader is reported from the self-declared "peace community" of San José de Apartadó, in Colombia's conflicted northern Urabá region. On Dec. 17, Uber Velásquez was slain by unknown assailants in the vereda (hamlet) of La Balsa, one of those adhering to the "peace community" which for more than 20 years has refused all cooperation with armed actors in Colombia's conflict—and whose leaders have been repeatedly targeted for death. Velásquez had recently been involved in a citizen oversight committee monitoring a road improvement project in the area, and had reported delays that could point to corruption.

Rural communities in Colombia's northeastern Arauca department held anti-war protests amid inter-factional guerilla violence that has been terrorizing the region. Demanding attention from the government and international human rights organizations, some 1,200 marched in the hamlet of Puerto Jordan on Jan. 4, and another 500 in nearby Botalón, both in Tame municipality. Mayerly Briceño, an organizer of the protests in Tame, told El Espectador: "The state has no presence here, absolutely none; they only come here to protect the oil companies, to safeguard the petroleum. This is not about them coming to militarize... More zones are leaving behind fear and taking to the streets to demand peace. It is the only thing we can do as a people, to demand that peace comes to our territory." 

Kazakhstan's President Kasym-Jomart Tokayev on Jan. 5 called participants in the protests that have swept the Central Asian nation this week "terrorists," accusing them of attempting to undermine his government at the behest of foreign powers. He also issued a call for Russia and the other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to come to his country's defense.

Russian warplanes are reported to have carried out an air-raid on the main water pumping station for the city Idlib, capital of the besieged province of that name in Syria's north. Witnesses on the ground said Russian Sukhoi jets dropped bombs on the water plant as well as several towns outside the provincial capital on Jan. 2. UN humanitarian official Mark Cutts acknowledged the air-raid without naming the perpetrators, tweeting: "The country is already facing a water crisis & continued destruction of civilian infrastructure will only cause more suffering of civilians." Abu Hazem Idlibi, an official in the opposition administration of the city, said the plant is now out of operation, charging: "The Russians are focusing on infrastructure and economic assets. This is to add to the suffering of people."

Iraq's Ministry of Oil on Dec. 30 signed an $8 billion agreement with China's state-owned Hualu Engineering & Technology to oversee expansion of al-Faw Petrochemical Complex, allowing its refinery to process 300,000 barrels per day of crude. The expansion of al-Faw complex, along the strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway in Basra governorate, is the largest yet undertaken in the Iraqi energy sector, and is seen as facilitating a new thrust of output by the country's oil industry. The deal is a "build-own-operate transfer" (BOOT), which means Hualu could gain effective control of the facility. Hualu is majority-controlled by the giant China National Chemical Engineering Company (CNCEC). (IraqiNews.com, MENAFN, Argus)