Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum threatened Feb. 17 to take Google to court if its map feature continues to show US-based users the label "Gulf of America" instead of "Gulf of Mexico." President Donald Trump's first day in office concluded with an executive order renaming the "Gulf of Mexico" as the "Gulf of America." Trump decreed of Jan. 20 stated that the name change is being made "in recognition of this flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our Nation's economy and its people."

At least 94 people have been arbitrarily arrested in Cambodia since late July for expressing public criticism of the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Development Triangle Area (CLV-DTA), Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a joint statement Aug. 28. The human rights organizations believe at least 59 of those arrested have been unlawfully detained by Cambodian authorities, and called for all charges in these cases to be immediately dropped.

Japan scrambled fighter jets after a Chinese Y-9 surveillance plane "violated the territorial airspace" of the Danjo Islands in the East China Sea, Tokyo's Ministry of Defense said Aug. 26. Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi called the breach "utterly unacceptable" and summoned a Chinese embassy official in Tokyo in protest. The incident constituted the first intrusion of Japanese airspace by a People's Liberation Army aircraft "since we began anti-airspace incursion measures," Hayashi said. A Chinese foreign ministry representative responded that the PLA had "no intention of invading the airspace of any country," and that the incident is under review.

Manila has accused Chinese military vessels of engaging in "dangerous manoeuvres, including ramming and towing" a Philippine ship in an effort to disrupt a "routine" resupply mission to an outpost on Second Thomas Shoal (known to the Philippines as Ayungin Shoal) in the the disputed Spratly Islands (known to the Philippines as the Kalayaan Islands) June 17. By Philippine media accounts, the craft was fired upon with water cannon and boarded by Chinese troops, with several Filipino soldiers injured in the ensuing confrontation. (SCMP, Nikkei Asia, Inquirer, GMA)

The Israel Defense Forces on May 30 took "operational control" of the Philadelphi Corridor, the strip of territory running along the border between Egypt and Gaza, claiming it was being used by Hamas to traffic weapons into the Strip. In the operation, the IDF's 162nd Division said it uncovered dozens of rocket launchers in a network of tunnels under the Corridor. The Corridor, known to the Egyptians as Salah al-Din, had been established as a demilitarized zone under the 1978 Camp David Accords, and its re-occupation by Israel as led to fears that Egypt will "tear up the peace treaty" between the two countries.

The California-based Center for Truth & Justice (CFTJ) published a report April 18 purporting that acts of genocide have been committed in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region and Armenian border provinces, and calling upon the International Court of Justice to open an investigation. The CFTJ claims that Azerbaijani security forces have evicted ethnic Armenians from their native lands in these areas since the war of 2020, documenting instances of torture, arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings. 

In Episode 205 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg looks at the recent re-escalation and (hopefully) denouement of the dispute over Esequibo—an oil-rich territory controlled by Guyana and claimed by Venezuela. Ironically, this claim was first asserted by the conservative, anti-communist Venezuela of the 1960s to help destabilize the anti-imperialist Guyana of Cheddi Jagan. Today, the left-populist but increasingly nationalistic regime of Nicolás Maduro even entertains hubristic claims to sovereignty over Venezuela's other much larger neighbor, Colombia. But this revanchism appears to mask the fact that "revolutionary" Venezuela largely remains a petro-state with a rentier economy, vulnerable to drops in the global oil price, even if Chinese corporate exploiters have been replacing gringo ones. With the recent easing of sanctions, US giants like Chevron have even returned to Venezuela—while the extractivist model results in indigenous resistance. Contrary to the dogmas of left and right alike, the real root of the Venezuelan crisis is that the country is insufficiently socialist.

In Episode 189 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes that despite all the tankie pseudo-left enthusiasm for the BRICS summit in South Africa, the notion of a unified bloc against Western hegemony is illusory. The Johannesburg confab was immediately followed by a diplomatic spat between China and India, sparked by Beijing's release of an official map of the territory of the People's Republic—showing two Himalayan enclaves claimed by India as Chinese territory: Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh, which have both been the scene of border skirmishes in recent years. The map also shows an island in the Amur River, by mutual agreement half controlled by Russia, as entirely Chinese. Moscow, depending on China's acquiescence in the Ukraine war, has lodged no protest over this. But the border disputes between nuclear-armed India and China have the potential to escalate to the unthinkable. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.