The Supreme Court on June 10 denied certiorari in the case of Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, a Yemeni who has been held as an "enemy combatant" at Guantánamo since 2002. Al-Alwi was captured in Pakistan in late 2001, and the government concluded that he had fought in Afghanistan as part of a Qaeda-commanded unit. Al-Alwi denied this unsuccessfully during his original round of habeas corpus proceedings, and in 2015 initiated a new habeas case arguing that the nature of US involvement in Afghanistan had changed such that the use of military detention is no longer justified under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The district court and the US  Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit disagreed, and the Supreme Court has now declined to review the appellate court's conclusion.

At least 38 people were killed and many more wounded in attacks on two ethnic Dogon villages in the Mopti region of central Mali on June 17—seemingly the latest in escalating reprisals pitting the Dogon and Fulani peoples against each other. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Mali has this year seen a spate of inter-ethnic violence between the Dogon and Fulani communities. The attacks targeted the villages of Gangafani and Yoro near the border with Burkina Faso. (Defense Post) The following day, presumed jihadist fighters killed 17 civilians in a night-time raid on a village in the north of Burkina Faso. Authorities say a "massive" military operation is underway to hunt down the perpetrators of the attack on the village of Belehede. Although there was again no claim of responsibility, both the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara are active in the area. (AFP)

Despite limited victories, leaders of the declaredly "leaderless" protest movement that has brought hundreds of thousands to the streets in Hong Kong over the past weeks pledge to keep up the pressure. The unpopular bill that sparked the protests and would have allowed extradition to mainland China has now been suspended. But six student unions issued a call to escalate protest actions if the government does not respond to their outstanding demands in the coming days. These include that the extradition bill be formally withdrawn, that all charges be dropped against arrested protesters, and investigations be opened into cases of police brutality. Protesters are also demanding that Chief Executive Carrie Lam step down.

CounterVortex editor and chief blogger Bill Weinberg will speak at the Left Forum in Brooklyn, New York, on Sunday, June 30, at the panel "Confronting the Resurgence of Authoritarianism, Right and 'Left.'" Weinberg's talk will be entitled "The Consensus Position of the American 'Left' is Now Pro-Fascist: What Do We Do About It?" Other panelists include Anne Jaclard and Andrew Kliman of the Marxist-Humanist Initiative, and Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.

In Episode 35 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Emily Ramos, Pilar DeJesus and Kara Bhatti, members of the worker-owned marijuana consumer cooperative High Mi Madre, on their lobbying and activist efforts in support of the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, still pending in the final countdown to the close of the current New York State legislative session. They especially emphasize the demand for "Day One Equity" with cannabis legalization in the Empire State—measures for reparative justice and reinvestment in the communities that had for generations been criminalized and oppressed by cannabis prohibition. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon.

CounterVortex will be on one-week hiatus June 10-17, while producer and main blogger Bill Weinberg is traveling. Both our Daily Report and weekly headlines mailing (subscribe here) will resume upon his return. As always, we need your support. If you appreciate our rigorous coverage and dissident views, please show it with a small donation. This is an especially critical time for us, as we are preparing a new, upgraded, mobile-friendly and more visually exciting website—and the transition is a rather arduous process. We hope to unveil the upgraded site within the coming weeks. Please stay tuned.

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.

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)