On World Humanitarian Day in August, World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus released a statement calling attention to intensifying attacks on healthcare workers and facilities, which constitute war crimes under international humanitarian law. "We must stop this becoming the norm," he wrote. The events of the past two weeks suggest such attacks are now already the norm.

UN-appointed investigators reported on Dec. 11 that Venezuela's Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) has over the past decade carried out a pattern of killings, arbitrary detentions, torture, and sexual violence against protesters and political opponents of President Nicolás Maduro.

The Ecuadoran government's financial crimes agency froze the bank accounts of several indigenous and environmental groups, using secret intelligence information in an apparent effort to silence protests, Human Rights Watch said on Dec. 9. Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, commented that the measures in question constitute a misuse of anti-money laundering mechanisms, which "should be used to fight crime and not environmental groups."

Donald Trump's new National Security Strategy instates a "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine. Like the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, which was used to justify the "gunboat diplomacy" of that era, this new corollary openly calls for dividing the world into spheres of influence—with the Western Hemisphere assigned to the US. Russia is obviously pleased as punch over this, as it implicitly gives Moscow a free hand in Ukraine—and Putin will likely consider this an acceptable pay-off for his betrayal of Venezuela. However, China is less likely to surrender its massive investments and mega-projects in Latin America in exchange for a free hand to take over Taiwan. The document's text on Europe is even more sinister, revealing a white supremacist agenda that looks not to Washington's traditional allies to counter Russia, but to the continent's Russian-backed far-right movements to counter Washington's traditional allies. In Episode 308 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg exposes the NSS as a further step toward consolidation of a Fascist World Order.

A rare convergence of three tropical cyclones with the northeast monsoon has triggered what officials say is the worst flooding to hit South and Southeast Asia in decades. More than 1,600 people have been killed, thousands remain unaccounted for, and whole villages have disappeared under mud and rising water. Roads, bridges, and other vital infrastructure have been torn apart, hampering rescue efforts as communities wait for help. Damage across Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and other affected countries is expected to top $20 billion, with homes, transport links, factories, farmland, and tourism hubs all severely affected. Farmers lost entire harvests, coastal traders saw their shops washed away, and thousands of families already living on the margins now find themselves with nothing left to rebuild from.

A coalition of civil and human rights organizations is calling for the closure of a massive immigration detention facility at Fort Bliss, alleging guards have beaten detainees and threatened violence, criminal charges and imprisonment in attempts to coerce even non-Mexican migrants into crossing the border into Mexico.

It has been a tumultuous few days in Honduras. Since voting in elections on Nov. 30, former president Juan Orlando Hernández—convicted in the US last year of drug trafficking and bribery—was pardoned by President Donald Trump and subsequently released. The country has remained on tenterhooks as the results of the presidential election have still not yet been finalized, and Trump has threatened reprisals if his favored candidate fails to win. Adding to the unease is the country's deeply flawed vote-transmission system, which has crashed twice.

President Donald Trump's new National Security Strategy, unveiled Dec. 4, puts the Western Hemisphere at the center of US foreign policy and revives the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, appending it with a "Trump Corollary." The document presents the Americas as the main line of defense for the US homeland and links that doctrine directly to ongoing military operations against suspected drug traffickers in Caribbean and Pacific waters.