VIJAY PRASHAD looks at the web of militias and drug-trafficking gangs that emerged in the Sweida region through the Syrian civil war, and how they relate to recent clashes and Israel’s intervention

ON JUNE 8, Ian Zabarte posted a Native Lives Matter sign on his Facebook page. There were no words beside it. Just the simple hashtag, #BLM.
For Zabarte, principal man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians, the message is self-evident.
But a backlash is under way, in the US, Britain and elsewhere. It is orchestrated by those who, as Burnley FC captain Ben Mee pointed out, “completely missed the point,” after a plane trailing a White Lives Matter banner flew over the pitch before his team’s June 22 home loss.

The crew of the Freedom Flotilla boat, Handala, warned Israel to obey international law but are now in captivity, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Waves of protesters are refusing to comply with the latest crackdowns on dissent, but the penalties are higher in Starmer’s Labour Britain than in Trump’s autocratic United States, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Funds are being raised to bring the bombed al-Shifa hospital back from the ashes, reports Linda Pentz Gunter

From Labour’s panic over the Corbyn-Sultana formation to Democratic Party grandees distancing themselves from Zohran Mamdani, centrist cliques on both sides of the Atlantic are quick to throw the same old insult, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER