In Episode 300 of the CounterVortex podcast (which coincidentally marks 24 years since the launch of his news blog in the immediate aftermath of 9-11), Bill Weinberg takes stock of the CounterVortex mission in light of the now urgently dire world situation—and makes an appeal for support from the listeners. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

Widespread protests in Ecuador, sparked by cuts to fuel subsidies, reached a boiling point Sept. 28, as an indigenous land defender was killed by the armed forces, a government aid convoy was reportedly attacked by protesters, and 12 soldiers went missing. Meanwhile, the government continued to advance its plan to rewrite the constitution—an initiative that has further intensified public anger. Undeterred, the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE), which initiated the nationwide strike, announced the following day that it would extend the action.

A late May ceasefire between Yemen's Houthi rebels and the US appears to be holding, although Israel and the Houthis are still in conflict, with the latter saying this week that they have joined Iran's war effort. A new report from casualty monitor AirWars looks at the civilian death toll during the 53 days of "Operation Rough Rider," when Trump escalated a long-running US bombing campaign in Yemen. The monitor says at least 224 civilians were killed between the operation's start in mid-March until the May truce, marking a massive escalation from previous US campaigns. If you also include the 258 civilians counted as killed in the previous 23 years of US operations against the Houthis, al-Qaeda, and other groups, it takes the overall civilian toll from US bombing in Yemen to almost 500.

Presumed ISIS militants attacked a police station of the Kurdish autonomous administration at al-Sabha in Syria's eastern Deir ez-Zor province June 8. The attack with grenades and small arms was repulsed by the local Asayish police force without loss of life. But this was only the latest in a spate of new ISIS attacks in Syria. In a first attack on central government forces since the ouster the Assad dictatorship last December, ISIS boasted in a communique May 31 that its fighters had killed several soldiers of the "the apostate Syrian regime" at a road checkpoint in Talul al-Safa, in southern Suwayda province. That same day, one member of the Free Syrian Army was killed in an ambush by ISIS militants on an FSA patrol in al-Tanf Deconfliction Zone, a US military outpost near the Jordan border. (Rudaw, Kurdistan4, CNN)

Nearly 60 people, including children, have been killed as the United States expands its two-week bombing campaign in Yemen to include (according to a review by the Associated Press) "firing at ranking personnel as well as dropping bombs in cities." This comes as recently exposed Signal messages between senior US officials discussing the air-strikes demonstrated a flippant attitude towards the lives of Yemeni civilians. In one disturbing exchange concerning an apparent strike on a civilian apartment building, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz writes: "The first target—their top missile guy—we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend's building and it's now collapsed." "Excellent," comes the reply from Vice President JD Vance. The messages, which were brought to light after a journalist from The Atlantic was mistakenly added to the officials' group chat in a staggering breach of normal security protocols, show a callous indifference to the ethical implications of bombing civilian areas. This is perhaps unsurprising for a country that provided many of the planes and trained many of the pilots involved in the Saudi-led bombing campaign that killed over 9,000 Yemenis between 2015 and 2022.

President Donald Trump on March 15 ordered a series of air-strikes on Yemen's capital, Sanaa, promising to use "overwhelming lethal force" until the Houthi rebels cease their attacks on shipping along a vital maritime corridor. Houthi authorities said 13 civilians were killed in the strikes. Yemen's Houthi rebels, who control the capital, have said they will resume attacks on ships in the Red Sea in response to Israel's renewed blockade on aid to Gaza. Following the January Hamas-Israel ceasefire, the Houthis had paused their campaign of attacks on shipping, which they depict as a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinians (although many targets are not linked to Israel). (AP, TNH)

Up to 70 have been killed in fighting between forces of Syria's transitional government and apparent loyalists of ousted dictator Bashar Assad. The clashes began March 6 when 15 members of the new government's security forces were killed in ambushes near the town of Jableh in the coastal province of Latakia, heartland of the Alawite minority and stronghold of support for the old regime. (Al Jazeera, BBC News) The transition government had been mobilizing troops to the region since two members of the security forcres were killed in a similar ambush in Latakia's Daatur district two days earlier. (AFP)

US fighter jets launched from the USS Harry Truman in the Red Sea on Feb. 2 struck a hidden base of the local ISIS franchise in the interior mountains of Somalia's northern autonomous enclave of Puntland. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the "initial assessment is that multiple operatives were killed" in these first US air-strikes under the new Trump presidency. The strikes were carried out with the cooperation of the governments of both Puntland and Somalia, whose President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud expressed his "deepest gratitude." The Puntland Dervish Forces have for some five years been fighting the self-declared "Islamic State Somalia" in the enclave's Cal Miskaad mountains. (AFP, Garowe Online, Garowe Online, Hiiraan Online, LWG)