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The first mission of the new security force created by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will be blocking migrants on the Guatemalan border, evidently part of a deal struck with the Trump administration. Mexico has pledged to deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops to its southern border in an effort to avoid Trump's threatened tariff on all exports to the United States, the Washington Post reports. The deal was announced as Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard is leading a Mexican delegation in talks with White House officials in Washington. Mexican officials said that 10 National Guard contingents of 450 to 600 troops each will be assigned to the border with Guatemala by September. The deployment would represent a fourfold increase on the 1,500 federal troops currently patrolling the border. A further three units will be deployed to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico, to set up roadblocks and checkpoints to stop the movement of migrants.

Mexico's new populist president announced that he is dropping out of the regional US-led drug enforcement pact, and will be turning down the aid package offered through the program. Instead, he is proposing a dialogue with Washington on across-the-board drug decriminalization in both nations. And Mexican lawmakers say they will pass a cannabis legalization bill by the end of the year.

A sudden feeding-frenzy of revisionism about the April 2018 Douma chemical attack in Syria has broken out, with celebrities glomming on in unseemly manner. This time Susan Sarandon joins already proved Assad regime shill Roger Waters, their spewing avidly lapped up by Kremlin propaganda organ RT (of course). But also getting on this bandwagon—most disgracefully, because he purports to be a "journalist"—is Robert Fisk. Not just a mere aging rock star, Fisk is able to loan more potent propaganda service to the Assad regime—for which he has been called out by Syrian left-opposition figure (and survivor of Assad's prisons) Yassin al-Haj as "indoctrinated" by the regime. Fisk's May 23 revisionist write-up in The Independent was entitled "The evidence we were never meant to see about the Douma 'gas' attack." Note that he even disingenuously puts "gas" in scare quotes, while even he doesn't go so far (in the actual text of the story) as to question whether poisonous gas was used at Douma. 

Russia, joined by China, blocked a bid at the UN Security Council on June 4 to condemn the killing of civilians in Sudan and to issue a pressing call for an immediate halt to the violence, diplomats told AFP. Russian deputy ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said the proposed statement was "unbalanced" and stressed the need to be "very cautious in this situation." According to the latest update by the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors, over 100 people were killed by militiamen of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) who stormed the sit-in site in Khartoum the previous day and opened fire on the protesters. (Sudan Tribune)

Russia on June 3 blocked a UN Security Council statement of alarm about the killing of civilians in northwest Syria and the possibility of a humanitarian disaster. The bombing and shelling have accompanied a Russia-backed offensive by the Assad regime to recapture parts of Idlib and neighboring Hama province. This last major opposition-held area is home to over 4 million people—about 20% of Syria's surviving population. Over the past month, some 300 civilians have been killed in the bombardment, with hundreds more wounded. The number displaced in Idlib and Hama now totals more than 300,000. Almost 30 medical facilities have been destroyed or damaged in the bombing. Throughout the eight-year Syrian conflict, Russia has vetoed 12 Security Council resolutions to criticize or censure its ally, the Assad regime.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and other troops under the command of Sudan's Transitional Military Council unleashed the deadliest attack yet against protestors at the sit-in site in the capital Khartoum on June 3, leaving at least 35 dead and hundreds injured. The sit-in had been called to demand a swift transition to civilian rule, and followed a two-day general strike to press this demand. In the wake of the massacre, TMC leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan cancelled the recent power-sharing agreement with the opposition coalition and called for elections within nine months. Opposition leaders reject any elections that take place under military rule. The Sudan Professionals Association is calling for protests to continue, despite the state of siege. (Sudan Tribune, Al Jazeera, 3ayin, Amnesty International)

The Chinese authorities must end a wave of persecution targeting those seeking to commemorate the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Amnesty International said ahead of the 30th anniversary of the bloodshed. Over recent weeks, police have detained, placed under house arrest or threatened dozens of activists who are seeking to mark the June 4 anniversary, as well as relatives of those killed. "Thirty years on from the Tiananmen bloodshed the very least the victims and their families deserve is justice. However, President Xi continues to read from the same tired political playbook, cruelly persecuting those seeking the truth about the tragedy in a concerted effort to wipe the June 4 crackdown from memory," said Roseann Rife, East Asia research director at Amnesty.