A group of 40 rights organizations issued a joint statement Sept. 6 calling on authorities in Saudi Arabia to release all those unfairly jailed for their online activities before Riyadh hosts the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in December. The organizations stated that the detentions contradict the IGF's stated values of advancing human rights and inclusion in the digital age. They charged that Saudi authorities are subjecting citizens to unprecedented repression, including decades-long prison sentences for expressing critical views online.

If elected president in November, Donald Trump says he will create a government efficiency commission led by tech billionaire Elon Musk as part of his economic plan. Musk suggested the idea to Trump in a conversation on X, which he bought in 2022 when it was called Twitter. The announcement is the latest display of Musk's growing influence in politics. The self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" is accused of censoring progressive opinions while amplifying the voices of far-right networks. So far, no one seems to be able to check his growing power, as his recent legal battles with Australia and Brazil have demonstrated. Both countries tried to curtail content deemed harmful, but Musk ignored their requests. After Musk disregarded a judicial order to suspend dozens of X accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation in Brazil, the country's Supreme Court ruled to ban it nationwide. Journalists, who have relied heavily on it, have expressed a mixture of relief and regret at the ban.

At least 81 people were killed in an attack by militants on the village of Mafa, in Nigeria's northeastern Yobe state. A statement listing grievances against the village was left at the scene in the name of Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a Boko Haram splinter group. The Sept. 1 attack appears to have been in revenge for villagers alerting the military to the insurgents' presence in the area—which lies on a smuggling route to ISWAP bases in the Lake Chad region. (Al Jazeera, TNH, NYT) 

Tensions are ratcheting up in the Horn of Africa over the deployment of Egyptian troops to Somalia. Ethiopia, Somalia's neighbor, isn’t happy. It has soldiers in Somalia acting as a buffer against al-Shabab insurgents, but now Mogadishu has asked them to withdraw. High-stakes strategic interests are at play. Ethiopia and Egypt have been locked in a long-standing dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Egypt regards as an existential threat. Meanwhile, landlocked Ethiopia has also enraged Somalia over its determination to find a port to lease. It has turned to the breakaway region of Somaliland, dangling the prospect of recognizing its independence—an absolute red line for Mogadishu. The new defense agreement between Egypt and Somalia has underlined just how serious the tensions are. Egypt is planning to send 5,000 soldiers to Somalia to join a new-look African Union force, with a separate 5,000 stationed on the Ethiopian border.

Amid global protests over the genocide in Gaza, the hypertrophy of digital technology and its colonization of every sphere of human existence continue to advance, portending the ultimate eclipse of human culture and real life, the death of literacy, and the hegemony of saturation propaganda. While the Arab Revolution of 2011 was facilitated through social media, those same platforms are today being used as conduits for propaganda and disinformation lubricating the reconsolidation of dictatorships. This is all about to get much worse—with propaganda especially getting exponentially more sophisticated—through the advent of artificial intelligence. What is urgently mandated—ultimately, even to be able to effectively oppose genocides and dictatorships—is a revolution of everyday life, reclaiming human reality from digital totalitarianism. The uprising in El Salvador against the mandatory imposition of Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 still stands as a glimmer of hope, pointing the potentiality of this kind of revolution—even if the aspiring autocrat Nayib Bukele, who made Bitcoin a national currency, put down the uprising and is now consolidating an authoritarian regime. Bill Weinberg rants against the digital Borg in Episode 242 of the CounterVortex podcast.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Lebanon and Cyprus of violating the human rights of Syrian refugees with indirect financial support from the European Union (EU). In a report released Sept. 4, HRW detailed how both countries have intercepted and forcibly returned refugees to Syria in a coordinated effort to prevent them from seeking asylum in Europe.

The US Department of Justice on Sept. 4 announced the seizure of 32 internet domains linked to an alleged Russian government-backed disinformation campaign aimed at influencing US and global audiences. According to the DoJ, the operation, known as "Doppelganger," sought to sway public opinion in favor of Russian interests and interfere in the 2024 US presidential election. The campaign was allegedly orchestrated by several Russian organizations under the supervision of Sergei Kiriyenko, a senior official in the Russian Presidential Administration. These organizations utilized the domains to distribute pro-Russian propaganda and undermine support for Ukraine. The operation used deceptive methods that violated US "money laundering and criminal trademark law."

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.