Human Rights Watch on July 31 called on authorities in Thailand to take urgent measures to address a wave of online death threats and harassment against members of parliament Angkhana Neelaphaijit and Romadon Panjor, as well as human rights activist Anchana Heemmina, after they voiced their disapproval of actions of the Thai military and expressed their support for the Muslim community in the country's Deep South.

UN human rights experts on July 29 raised alarm over reports of torture, enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention of members of Iran's Bahá'í religious minority amid the ongoing US-Iran war.

The UN experts say that approximately 57 Bahá'ís are currently detained or imprisoned in Iran. They report claims of arbitrary and incommunicado detention, physical and psychological abuse, and coerced confessions. Some detainees were reportedly subjected to mock executions to pressure them into making confessions that were subsequently broadcast throughout Iranian state media.

The United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela called on the Venezuelan government July 27 to reverse its decision to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC), warning that leaving the ICC would weaken accountability for serious human rights violations and limit victims' access to justice.

The popular case against the data centers now proliferating vertiginously across the United States emphasizes the ecological imperative. As water resources shrink, forcing emergency restrictions on use across the western states, voracious water consumption by the industry is just one of the ways its advance portends imminent human extinction. Meanwhile, the industry slaps back in the courts against communities that would stand up against this advance. But Artificial Intelligence itself poses an existential threat, apart from the direct impacts of the computing power. Even respected voices in the industry warn of a high probability that AI will turn upon and destroy its creators. The bots themselves seem to be warning us of this through ominous messaging. Seeming instances of AI going unilateral have prompted a bipartisan AI Kill Switch bill in Congress. Finally, there is the systematic cultural destruction being wrought by AI—literally shredding humankind's legacy of literacy, to impose a reign of sheer error and idiocy. In Episode 339 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case for an abolitionist position on Artificial Intelligence.

As the US-Iran war escalates, more countries in the Middle East have—officially or unofficially—entered the fray over the past week. Saudi Arabia said July 30 that 14 countries (including Egypt, Türkiye and Bahrain) have so far joined an alliance it set up to protect shipping and energy supplies through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The alliance, which the kingdom calls defensive, formed in reaction to the blockade by Yemen's Houthi rebels against Saudi ships in the strait. Among those that has signed on is the internationally recognized (but largely exiled) government of Yemen, which would presumably be onside with reported plans by Saudi Arabia to launch a ground offensive against the Houthis.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres on July 27 condemned Israel's announcement of plans to accelerate the authorization of settlement outposts under Israeli domestic law in the occupied West Bank, warning that the move constitutes a "flagrant violation" of international law.

Amnesty International condemned the July 15 decision of Delhi's lieutenant governor to invoke Section 3(2) of India's National Security Act (NSA), which effectively grants police the power to hold individuals in administrative detention without procedural guarantees.

New research from Meta's Oversight Board found commercial large language models (LLMs) from Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, Meta, OpenAI and xAI are far less likely to criticize repressive leaders and governments. The research calls it "free speech infringements by proxy." Apps and material produced by these generative AI tools could actively reproduce restrictions, including on political criticism. It's unclear why these AI models are doing this—underscoring the need for companies to be transparent and build "human rights due diligence" into the process, before it’s too late. China, Thailand, Cambodia and Saudi Arabia topped the list of countries with the highest refusal rates when LLMs were prompted to create materials criticizing governments.