In Episode 161 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg provides an overview of the under-reported conflicts in West Africa, where government forces and allied paramilitary groups battle multiple jihadist insurgencies affiliated either with ISIS or al-Qaeda on a franchise model. Horrific massacres have been committed by both sides, but the Western media have only recently started to take note because of the geopolitical angle that has emerged: both Mali and Burkina Faso have cut long-standing security ties with France, the former colonial power, and brought in mercenaries from Russia's Wagner Group. In both countries, the pastoralist Fulani people have been stigmatized as "terrorists" and targeted for extra-judicial execution and even massacre—a potentially pre-genocidal situation. But government air-strikes on Fulani communities in Nigeria have received no coverage in the Western media, because of the lack of any geopolitical rivalry there; Nigeria remains firmly in the Anglo-American camp. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

A group of environmental organizations filed a petition in the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Jan. 19 for review of the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) decision to license the Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT), to be built off the coast of Texas. The deepwater terminal is projected to expand production in the oil-rich Permian Basin. The activist groups said that expansion facilitated by the installation–to be largest offshore terminal in the US–threatens "disastrous levels of greenhouse gas pollution."

A US special forces raid in Somalia ordered by President Joe Biden killed a key regional ISIS leader, Bilal al-Sudani, the Pentagon said in a statement Jan. 26. Sudani apparently died in a gun-battle after US troops descended on a cave complex in a mountainous area of northern Somalia. No civilians were injured or killed in the operation, officials said. The statement did not specify the location of the raid, but the announcement followed reports in Somali media describing a US drone strike on a stronghold of the self-declared Islamic State-Somalia (ISS) in the Iskushuban area of the Cal Miskaad mountains, in the northern autonomous region of Puntland. (Defense Post, Military.com, LWJ)

Militants from the ISIS-aligned Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) killed at least 15 people, more than haf of them women, in attacks on the villages of Manyala and Ofay in Ituri province of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local authorities reported Jan. 30. On Jan. 23, presumed ADF fighters massacred at least 20 people at a bar where local residents were drinking beer in Makugwe village, in the Beni region of neighboring North Kivu province. On Jan. 16, presumed ADF fighters killed some 20 Christian worshippers in a bomb attack on a church in Kasindi village, North Kivu. (MTT, VOA, Defense Post, BBC News)

Brazil's government declared a public health emergency on Jan. 20 for the Yanomami indigenous people, now plagued by rising death rates from malnutrition and curable diseases such as malaria, flu and diarrhoea. President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva flew to the remote Yanomami territory in Roraima state after horrifying photographs emerged of emaciated Yanomami children and adults. The trip coincided with an an emergency airlift of 16 starving Yanomami to receive urgent treatment. After his visit, Lula tweeted: "More than a humanitarian crisis, what I saw in Roraima was genocide: a premeditated crime against the Yanomami, committed by a government insensitive to suffering."

The first death was reported Jan. 28 in the national protest mobilization on Peru's capital, dubbed the "Taking of Lima."  Victor Santisteban Yacsavilca, 55, was struck in the head with a tear-gas cannister, bringing the death toll since the national uprising began last month to 58. Earlier that day, Peru's Congress voted down a proposal by embattled President Dina Boluarte to bring forward elections to December 2023. On Dec. 20, Congress did approve a compromise measure calling for moving the elections forward from April 2026 to April 2024, but this is subject to a second plenary vote before becoming law. Protesters continue to demand immediate new elections, and the calling of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. (Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, InfoBae, El Pais, Gestión)

The Science & Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Jan. 24 moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, citing the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been. The press release announcing the move spared no criticism for Russia, excoriating Moscow for breaking its commitment to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and borders in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, and violating international protocols by bringing its war to the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear plants.

In Episode 160 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes hideous ironies in the current horrific headlines. Russia was excluded from the official commemorations of Holocaust Day at Auschwitz-Birkenau as it pursues its war of aggression and extermination in Ukraine in the perverse name of "de-nazification." But Israeli flags were of course displayed at the commemoration—even as Israel escalates toward a genocidal solution to the Palestinian question. The fundamental contradiction driving the conflict is the expropriation of the Palestinian people of their lands, and the denial of their self-determination by Israel. The emergence of an explicitly anti-Zionist bloc in the protests against the new far-right government in Israel is a sign of hope. The US, however, is undertaking its biggest joint military exercises ever with the new Israeli regime, despite Biden's supposed rejection of its extremist policies of settlement expansion and annexation—viewing the Jewish State as a strategic ally against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Meanwhile, the oppressive regime in Iran treats minority peoples such as the Kurds, Baluch, Ahwazi and Baha'i much as Israel treats the Palestinians. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.