Hungary

Europe

Ecological devastation in Great Game for Russian oil

A $106 billion EU emergency loan is now on its way to Ukraine, following the fall of Hungary’s strongman Viktor Orban, who was holding it up. However, as a condition of the loan, Kyiv is obliged to re-open the war-damaged Druzhba pipeline, which sends Russian oil through Ukrainian territory to Hungary, Poland and Germany. Kyiv is cooperating in getting the pipeline operational again—but is meanwhile drone-bombing Russian oil facilities on the Baltic and Black seas, in hopes of diminishing how much petrol Moscow will have to export through that pipeline. The strikes have caused “apocalyptic scenes” in the Black Sea port of Tuapse—air thick with toxic fumes, a huge column of smoke blotting out the sun, black rain falling from the sky. Russia, unwilling to sacrifice its own oil revenues but seeking to punish Europe for backing Ukraine, has announced that it will cut off the flow of oil from Kazakhstan through the Druzhba pipeline. (Image: Soviet postage stamp celebrating oil pipeline. Via Wikipedia)

Planet Watch

Podcast: Hungary, Peru & the electoral struggle

In Episode 323 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg offers a comparison of the simultaneous elections in Hungary and Peru—in which questions of democratic norms versus authoritarian rule both stood in the balance. The defeat of long-ruling quasi-dictator Viktor Orbán is being hailed as a blow to the emerging authoritarian bloc in Europe. But the incoming center-right prime minister Péter Magyar may not mean a complete de-Orbánification. In Peru, the outcome is still pending, as the perennial candidate of the hard right, Keiko Fujimori, faces a run-off with a contender from the populist left, Roberto Sánchez. Keiko is the unapologetic daughter of the late ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori; her victory could mean a re-Fujimorification of the country, and a fatal blow to Peru’s deeply troubled democracy. A Sánchez victory, meanwhile, would heighten the social contradictions in Peru—with both opportunities for a more meaningful democracy, and dangers of a backlash from the conservative establishment. (Photo: Anali Marquez Huanca via Facebook)

Planet Watch

Reversal for hard right in Hungary; Peru in the balance

The defeat of Hungary’s quasi-dictator Viktor Orbán in the recent elections has heartened progressive forces around the world—despite the fact that the victorious Péter Magyar is a creature of the center-right. A more stark contest is emerging in Peru, where the right-wing authoritarian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori faces a run-off with a contender from the populist left, Roberto Sánchez, who has broad support from the traditionally excluded campesinos of the country’s Andean interior. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Palestine

Israel anti-Semitism confab embraces fascism —yes, really

The Zionist-fascist convergence under Bibi’s regime is getting too blatant even for the habitually pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League, whose leader stayed away from a supposed “International Conference on Combating Antisemitism” held in Jerusalem under the auspices of the Israeli government, headlining Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu—and also featuring several figures from the European and American xenophobic (and even anti-Semitic!) far right. (Image via frgdr Blog. Hebrew lettering in background spells names of places in Europe where Jews were exterminated.)

Europe

Podcast: MAGA-fascism and the future of Europe

The revised deal for US access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth (with no security guarantees for Kyiv) collapsed in the unseemly Oval Office donnybrook, and European leaders now convene their own summit—faced with the prospect of supporting Ukraine without the US. But Hungary and Slovakia represent an authoritarian bloc that supports Ukraine’s betrayal—and Romania could be next to defect to this Russia-aligned bloc. In Europe and America alike, elements of the “tankie” pseudo-left no longer even bother to hide their convergence with MAGA. In Episode 267 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg calls for a clean break at both the international and grassroots levels. Europe must realize that the Atlantic alliance is effectively dead, and there are no prospects of reviving it while Trump is in the White House; whether or not the rumors are true that he was recruited as a KGB agent in the ’80s, he is now on Putin’s side. And progressives must repudiate pseudo-left misleaders who shill for Trump and and spread lies for Putin, and seek a new leadership that mobilizes to oppose them. (Image: Chris Rywalt/CounterVortex, after “Rendezvous” by British cartoonist David Low, 1939)

North America

Podcast: nullify the election!

As Trump assembles his cabinet of dangerous cranks and far-right extremists, his election is being openly celebrated by reigning fascists and arch-reactionaries from Russia to Hungaryto Bosnia. The fascist world order that began to consolidate under his first term is poised to be cemented under a global triumvirate of tyranny—Trump, Putin and Xi. Biden’s cooperationin the transfer of power is a betrayal not only of the nation but of humanity—and Trump has still failed to sign the ethics pledge mandated by the protocol of presidential transition, making clear his ill intent. Evidence that the Kremlin directly hacked the vote on behalf of Trump (rather than merely using disinformation propaganda, as in 2016) warrants investigation. Furthermore, the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment, under which Trump was impeached, should be invoked to bar him from office. There is still time to stop the fascist takeover of the United States through the Electoral College or in the certification process. Despite the Supreme Court decision upholding state laws against “faithless electors” who refuse to vote for the candidate they pledged for, this is by no means equivalent to the “fake electors” contrived by Trump’s team to try to throw the 2020 election. On the contrary, it is a constitutional mechanism, as outlined by Hamilton in the Federalist Papers. In Episode 252 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg makes the case for mass pressure to demand nullification of the election. The protests against Trump since Election Day are a good start. But a mass movement on the scale of the post-electoral protests now seen in the Republic of Georgia and Ecuador is urgently mandated. (Image: APhilosophicalEnquiry)

Europe

Pipeline goad of Ukraine’s Kursk incursion?

One day into their unprecedented cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk oblast, Ukrainian forces captured the Sudzha gas metering station—a key node of the last remaining Russian pipeline still sending gas to Europe through Ukraine. The Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline, built by the Soviets in the 1980s, sends natural gas from Siberian fields through Ukraine to Slovakia, the Czech Repubic, Hungary and Austria. Despite the capture of the Sudzha station, Gazprom hasn’t halted the flow of gas through the station—nor has Ukraine shut the pipeline over the past two and a half years of war, apparently due to pressure from Europe. EU sanctions have only gradually started to affect Russia’s massive hydrocarbons sector. (Image: Soviet postage stamp celebrating the Urengoy-Uzhgorod pipeline. Via Wikipedia)

Europe

Propaganda game in fight over Ukraine military aid

With Republicans holding up new military aid for Ukraine on Capitol Hill, Russia launched one of the most massive aerial assaults of the war, killing 40 in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Lviv. Ukraine retaliated the next day with a missile strike on the Russian city of Belgorod, killing at least 22. Russia counter-retaliated with a wave of drone strikes, damaging schools, hospitals and homes across Ukraine, killing at least 24. Russia accused Ukraine of using internationally prohibited cluster munitions in the strike on Belgorod, and called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. Of course, Russia has itself used cluster munitions since the start of the war in February 2022, despite international criticism from bodies including the UN Human Rights Council. (Photo from Little Ukraine, NYC: CounterVortex)

Europe

Kurds betrayed in Sweden NATO deal

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dropped his opposition to Sweden’s entry into NATO, it was announced ahead of the alliance summit in Vilnius. In an apparent quid pro quo, the Biden administration is dropping its objections to Turkey purchasing F-16 fighter jets from the US. Sweden has also offered concessions to Erdogan. In blocking Sweden’s NATO bid, Turkey had accused Stockholm of harboring Kurdish “terrorists”—meaning supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara labels a “terrorist” group. Last November, Sweden amended its constitution to strengthen its “anti-terrorism” laws, weakening free-speech protections—clearly in deference to Turkey. The Swedish Supreme Court in June also ruled to allow extradition of the accused PKK figures to Turkey. And the rallies held in Stockholm against the extraditions by Kurdish immigrants and exiles may now be criminalized. (Photo of F-16: USAF via Wikimedia Commons)

Europe

Hungary dictatorship consolidates; Putin pleased

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Órban declared a state of emergency, citing threats originating from the war in Ukraine. The declaration, allowing him to rule by decree, came days after his Fidesz party used its supermajority to pass a constitutional amendment allowing the government to impose a state of emergency in the event of war in a neighboring country. Órban declared a similar emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and those assumed special powers, having been extended by the National Assembly multiple times, were set to expire just days before the new declaration. The declaration also came days after Tucker Carlson and friends from the American far right attended the Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest. It also comes as Hungarian officials are blocking a European Union plan for an embargo of Russian oil, and calling for removal of the question from the agenda of an imminent EU summit. (Photo: Pixabay)

Europe

Podcast: is ‘Neither East Nor West’ still possible?

In Episode 117 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg recalls the history of the Neither East Nor West position taken by anarchists and anti-authoritarians in the Cold War—seeking to build solidarity between anti-war and left-libertarian forces on either side of the East-West divide. With the world now arguably closer to military confrontation between nuclear-armed powers than it ever was in the (first) Cold War, is such a position still possible? The recent controversy surrounding a planned art show in New York City featuring the work of Russian anti-war artists crystalizes the dilemma. Weinberg also explores the paradoxically parallel thoughts of democratic socialist George Orwell and conservative moralist CS Lewis, both writing in the era of fascism, on the dangers of a “pacifist” position that abets aggressive war and totalitarianism. It is critical that progressives in the West avoid this trap by supporting the courageous Russian anti-war protesters—not (as some have) the war criminal Vladimir Putin. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Budapest 1990, Reddit)

Planet Watch

Ukraine war portends new oil shock

Long-depressed oil prices are suddenly soaring in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with impacts already being felt globally. Exports from Kazakhstan and the Caspian Basin are virtually paralyzed, as the Black Sea pipeline terminal delivering the crude to Western markets is incurring a prohibitive “war risk insurance premium.” Berlin has suspended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is to carry Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany—and Russia has retaliated by threatening to cut gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 line. In his executive order barring Russian oil and gas imports to the US, President Biden issued a warning to the oil companies, urging that the war should not serve as an excuse for price-gouging. But it is actually the oil futures market that plays a determinant role in fixing the international price. There’s a big psychological element involved, which is why every escalation in the Middle East (without fail) jacks up oil prices. A war in Europe will almost certainly mean another oil shock, with grim implications for the world economy and Biden’s political chances. (Photo of Kazakh oil-field via Wikimedia Commons)