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.

Nationwide protests against data centers and even demands to stop the AI race constitute a significant glimmer of hope as Artificial Intelligence colonizes every sphere of human existence with terrifying rapidity. The movement, however, faces potential pitfalls that could be fatal. The emergence of stochastic attacks on the AI bosses represents counter-productive adventurism seemingly informed by an ugly primitivism. An equal but opposite threat is exploitation of the movement by elements that really have no critique of the technology at all, but only seek to see it advance under Chinese rather than American techno-oligarchs—specifically the cultish and reactionary "Party for Socialism & Liberation" (sic). PSL is indeed an instrument through which the rulers of China (and Russia) are attempting to groom oppositional forces in the US. This provides convenient fodder for propaganda that would portray any opposition to the AI economy as a tool of Beijing's ambitions to global dominance of the industry. As struggles against data centers now emerge in places like the Philippines, it is critical that we take a Neither East Nor West position and repudiate the global divide-and-rule racket that is the essence of the state system. In Episode 338 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case for an uncompromising abolitionist position on Artificial Intelligence.

Operatives from Israel's spy agency Mossad, including its chief, met several times with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since 2023 in an effort to install the former Iranian president as a new leader for the country, according to a New York Times investigation. Staunchly anti-Zionist during his 2005-2013 presidency, Ahmadinejad distanced himself from Iran's Islamist government in recent years after being blocked from running for additional terms, and came to see the economic sanctions punishing Iran over its nuclear program as an unacceptable burden, according to Haaretz. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quashed disagreements within his administration in order for the recruitment of Ahmadinejad to proceed. However, after being brought to a Mossad safehouse in Tehran amid US and Israeli strikes in February, Ahmadinejad balked at the regime-change plan and absconded, and is now being held by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. His public appearance in early July at the funeral of slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was his first in several months.

Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian rights activist, filed a lawsuit July 14 in US federal court in Manhattan alleging a "coordinated" conspiracy between senior Trump administration officials and three private organizations to target him for deportation over his advocacy work. Khalil is a former Columbia University graduate student who became the public face of the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's executive order imposing a one-year moratorium or "pause" on new "hyperscale" data centers seems to be a ploy to undercut a more stringent measure passed by the state legislature. But it still represents an important victory—of course being met with outrage by the Trump regime. Monterey Park, Calif., has meanwhile become the first US city to impose an outright ban on data centers via ballot initiative. There is a growing municipal revolt against data centers in the Golden State—although Gov. Gavin Newsom is still wedded to the AI agenda, placing him in line with the Trump White House. The turn of public opinion is slowing expansion of the industry, which is a real sign of hope. The challenge is to translate this into a popular repudiation of artificial intelligence altogether, and build a movement for abolition. In Episode 337 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case.

Representatives from over 30 countries gathered in the Peruvian city of Cuzco last week for the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, where top Pentagon official Elbridge Colby used the occasion to defend the "Donroe Doctrine." As they have done at other regional security summits, including the "Shield of the Americas" conference held in Florida in March, Trump officials cast drug trafficking and irregular migration as threats to US security, urged regional governments to increase military spending, and called for deeper security collaboration with Washington. In line with earlier declarations from "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth, Colby rejected perceptions that the Monroe Doctrine has served as cover for US imperialist designs, dismissing such criticisms as a "distorted view" of history. An increasing number of the right-wing governments in attendance have embraced closer military ties with the United States through joint strikes and new military bases—even as militarized policies fail to curb organized crime and violence in countries like Ecuador, a key testing ground for the administration's renewed war on "narcoterrorism." (NACLA Update)