Russia

Syria

Russia joins US in betraying Syrian Kurds

The Kurdish-held border town of Kobani in northern Syria is under siege again, as it was by ISIS in 2014—but this time by forces of the Syrian central government, which has cut off water and power to the town in the dead of winter, with snow on the ground. Since the start of the year, the Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria have lost almost all of the territory they controlled to a new offensive by the central government. Kobani with Hasakah and Qamishliare the last besieged strongholds of the reduced Rojava autonomous zone. And both the US and Russia, which have backed the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against ISIS, now appear to be cutting them loose—effectively green-lighting the government offensive against them. US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack has already warned that US support for the SDF is coming to an end. And in the midst of the offensive, Russia has withdrawn its forces from Qamishli, its principal military outpost in Rojava. This came just as Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa was on his second trip to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin—pointing to a quid-pro-quo in which Russia will be allowed to maintain its two major military bases in Syria, on the Mediterranean coast at Khmeimim and Tartous. (Photo: SOHR)

Planet Watch

Today Greenland, tomorrow the world

Trump’s Greenland annexation drive is only secondarily about the strategic minerals, but fundamentally driven by a geostrategic design to divide the planet with Putin. Even if his belated and equivocal disavowal of military force at the Davos summit is to be taken as real, the threat has likely achieved its intended effect—dividing and paralyzing NATO, so as to facilitate Putin’s military ambitions in Europe, even beyond Ukraine Also at Davos, Trump officially inaugurated his “Board of Peace,” seen as parallel body to the United Nations that can eventually displace it—dominated by Trump and Putin, in league with the world’s other authoritarians. In the Greenland gambit, the territory itself is a mere pawn in the drive to establish a Fascist World Order. In Episode 314 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinbergcalls for centering indigenous Inuit voices on the future of Greenland, and universal repudiation of annexationist designs. (Image: TruthSocial)

Planet Watch

Trump’s global imperial court

When US President Donald Trump first proposed establishing a so-called “Board of Peace” to oversee governance of the Gaza Strip for a transitional period back in September, the idea was quickly likened to a form of colonial takeover. The UN nonetheless adopted a Security Council resolution in November giving its blessing to the board’s creation—a vote some member states may now regret. The board was just officially inaugurated in a ceremony in Davos, Switzerland, where Trump was attending the World Economic Forum. But Gaza seems almost incidental to its true mission, which appears to be creating a global strongmen’s club—led by Trump, potentially for life—to rival, if not replace, the UN itself. (Image via Wikipedia)

Planet Watch

Greenland party leaders reject US annexation

Greenland party leaders issued a joint statement asserting that the autonomous territory rejects US calls for acquisition. Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and four other party leaders stated: “We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders.” But President Trump commented that same day that the US is “going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.” Reacting to the dispute, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that the US is exempting itself from the international rules it had long promoted until just recently. Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said that the “fate of Greenland will be decided by Greenlanders and the Kingdom of Denmark.” NATO official Gunther Fehlinger went further, warning that if the US annexed Greenland, all its bases in Europe would be “confiscated.” (Photo: Peter Prokosch)

Europe

UN condemns Russian missile attacks on Ukraine

UN Secretary General António Guterres issued a statement strongly condemning Russian missile and drone attacks in Ukraine following Moscow’s firing of its medium-range nuclear-capable “Oreshnik” ballistic missile. The Oreshnik strike near the western city of Lviv was part of a wave of overnight Russian missile and drone attacks against Ukrainian targets that left millions without power. This was the second time Russia used the experimental hypersonic Oreshnik missile over the course of the Ukraine war, following a strike on Dnipro in November 2024. But this time the strike came far from the frontline, and near the border with NATO member Poland. (Map: PCL)

Planet Watch

Venezuela and Ukraine: forbidden symmetry

A close reading of the facts indicates that Putin and Trump worked out a global carve-up in which Russia gets Ukraine and the US gets Venezuela. This was implicitly acknowledged in the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine enshrined in the National Security Strategy released by the White House weeks before the illegal Venezuela attack was launched. In this light, Russian protests of the US aggression at the UN Security Council seem strictly pro forma. Both dissident left voices in Venezuela and democratic socialists in Ukraine have made the point that to betray one country is to betray the other. In Episode 312 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg demonstrates how the global divide-and-rule racket that is campism has never made less sense. (Image mash-up by Chris Rywalt, with material from Tamara Wyndham and CBC)

Europe

Finland seizes ‘shadow’ vessel in cable caper

Finnish authorities announced that they are investigating damage to an undersea telecommunications cable in the Gulf of Finland after seizing a vessel suspected of sabotage in the incident. After telecommunications authorities detected a fault in the undersea cable linking Helsinki and Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, Finland’s Border Guard was mobilized, and located a suspicious vessel within the country’s exclusive economic zone. After taking control of the vessel, Border Guard officials told reporters that the cargo ship had been sailing from the Russian port of St. Petersburg to Israel. Officials linked it to Russia’s “shadow fleet” allegedly used to circumvent Western sanctions, describing the incident as part of a broader pattern of “hybrid threats” targeting critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. (Map: Google)

Africa

Sahel states launch new joint counter-insurgency force

At an air base in Bamako, Mali’s military ruler Gen. Assimi Goita presided over a ceremony marking the launch of a unified force for three Sahel states to fight the rising tide of jihadist insurgency across their borders. The move comes after the three countries—Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, all now ruled by military juntas—collectively withdrew from the West African regional bloc ECOWAS to form their own Alliance of Sahel States (AES). This new body has deepening ties to Russia, which has maintained paramilitary forces in the AES countries under the rubric of the Wagner Group or Africa Corps. These forces are increasingly accused of atrocities, with Malian refugees in Mauritania reporting rapes, beheadings and mutilation of civilians at the hands of Russian mercenaries. (Photo: Présidence de la République du Mali)

Planet Watch

Deadly strikes on hospitals: the new norm?

On World Humanitarian Day in August, World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus released a statement calling attention to intensifying attacks on healthcare workers and facilities, which constitute war crimes under international humanitarian law. “We must stop this becoming the norm,” he wrote. The events of the past weeks suggest such attacks are now already the norm. In Sudan, the WHO reported that over 100 people, including 63 children, were killed when drone strikes attributed to the Rapid Support Forces hit a kindergarten and nearby hospital in South Kordofan. In Burma’s Rakhine state, a military airstrike destroyed the Mrauk-U general hospital, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens more. It was the 67th attack on a healthcare facility in Burma this year, according to the WHO. Attacks on healthcare facilities killed a record 3,600 people in 2024, mainly in Gaza, Ukraine, Lebanon, Burma and Sudan. This year is on course to surpass that toll. In Gaza alone, at least 917 people were killed by Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities between Oct. 7. 2023 and June of this year. (Photo: Myanmar Now)

Watching the Shadows

Trump Corollary: spheres of influence, white supremacy

Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy instates a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. Like the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, which was used to justify the “gunboat diplomacy” of that era, this new corollary openly calls for dividing the world into spheres of influence—with the Western Hemisphere assigned to the US. Russia is obviously pleased as punch over this, as it implicitly gives Moscow a free hand in Ukraine—and Putin will likely consider this an acceptable pay-off for his betrayal of Venezuela. However, China is less likely to surrender its massive investments and mega-projects in Latin America in exchange for a free hand to take over Taiwan. The document’s text on Europe is even more sinister, revealing a white supremacist agenda that looks not to Washington’s traditional allies to counter Russia, but to the continent’s Russian-backed far-right movements to counter Washington’s traditional allies. In Episode 308 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg exposes the NSS as a further step toward consolidation of a Fascist World Order. (Image: White House)

Watching the Shadows

US instates ‘Trump Corollary’ to Monroe Doctrine

President Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy puts the Western Hemisphere at the center of US foreign policy and revives the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, appending it with a “Trump Corollary.” The document presents the Americas as the main line of defense for the US homeland and links that doctrine directly to ongoing military operations against suspected drug traffickers in Caribbean and Pacific waters. It places the Hemisphere as the top regional priority, above Europe, the Middle East and Indo-Pacific, with an imperative of controlling migration, drug flows, and foreign influence before they can reach US territory. It also states that the US will block “non-Hemispheric competitors” from owning or controlling “strategically vital assets” in the Americas, including ports, energy facilities, and telecommunications networks. (Photo: USS Gerald R. Ford. Credit: US Navy via Wikimedia Commons)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Trump for War-is-Peace Prize II

Trump continues to pursue his perverse ambition to win the Nobel Peace Prize—now proffering “peace” plans for Ukraine and Gaza that would actually reward war crimes, and therefore portend wider war. In both cases these new “peace” plans are merely sanitized recapitulations of earlier proposals—for the surrender of the Donbas and Crimea to Russia, and for Israeli annexation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and “transfer” of their indigenous inhabitants. Meanwhile, the actual winner of this year’s Peace Prize, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, is obsequiously pandering to Trump, and playing along with his bellicose designs on her country. In Episode 306 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg cuts through the Orwellian war-is-peace propaganda. (Image via Twitter)