Bill Weinberg

Europe

Podcast: Alaska 2025 = Munich 1938?

Russia’s irredentist claims on its former holding Alaska have provided fodder for comedians, but the stakes at the Trump-Putin meeting in the Last Frontier are no laughing matter. Despite the escalating mutual nuclear threats between Washington and Moscow, Trump’s call for a Russia-Ukraine “land-swap” obviously means Kyiv being forced to accept Moscow’s annexation of much of its territory in exchange for the return of other pieces its own territory illegally occupied by Russia. Meanwhile, Moscow sends drones to threaten NATO member Lithuania, which sits on the critical corridor to the Russian exclave (and tactical missile outpost) of Kaliningrad. Germany has responded by sending troops to the Baltic country—its first post-war foreign deployment. Appeasement of aggression failed to win peace at Munich in 1938, and there’s no reason to hope it will in Alaska today. But the difference is that the contending powers today have nuclear weapons. In Episode 291 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes an unflinching look. (Map via Wikipedia)

Southeast Asia

Orwell and the Thai-Cambodia conflict

Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Manet, nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize on Aug. 7, citing his “crucial role” in restoring peace after bloody border fighting with Thailand. The gushy statement praised Trump’s “extraordinary statesmanship” and “innovative diplomacy.” (NYT) Cambodia now… Read moreOrwell and the Thai-Cambodia conflict

Planet Watch

Podcast: Meanwhile, the planet is dying….

Two landmark rulings on the urgent responsibility of states to address the climate crisis are issued—by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in a proceeding brought by Chile and Colombia, and by the World Court in a proceeding brought by the threatened Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu. Meanwhile in the USA, the Trump regime withdraws from the Paris Agreement, removes greenhouse gases from EPA oversight, drops subsidies for solar energy—and even destroys NASA’s climate-monitoring satellites! This as receding Arctic ice sheets and sea ice begin to destabilize the climate-regulating Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), melting glaciers unleash deluges from the Swiss Alps to the Himalayas of Nepal, wildfires rage from Canada to California to the Mediterranean, and ocean acidification crosses a “‘planetary boundary” that portends global biosphere collapse. In Episode 290 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes an unflinching look at the long odds for humanity’s future—even if we manage to avoid nuclear war. (Image: blende12/Pixabay)

North America

MAGA-fascism and anti-Semitic pseudo-anti-anti-Semitism II

The ideological enforcer of MAGA-fascism in American higher education (just met with craven capitulation by Columbia and Brown University) is the Trump regime’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. Purporting to act on behalf of Jewish students, the Trump regime simultaneously attacks policies to promote campus diversity. This replicates the historical function of anti-Semitism—setting up Jews to take the hit for for the oppressive policies of (overwhelmingly) non-Jewish rulers. The perverse fascist pseudo-anti-fascism of the Trump regime has now become anti-Semitic pseudo-anti-anti-Semitism. This cynical feigned opposition to anti-Semitism is especially dangerous when actual anti-Semitism is very much in evidence—not least by the Trump regime itself, over and over! Yet the ever-more egregious manifestations of Jew-hatred are increasingly weaponized by the political right—and ignored or even normalized by the ostensible “left.” In Episode 289 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes some encouragement from the growing ranks of Jewish voices breaking with the pro-Israel consensus to protest the Gaza genocide—while being clear in drawing the line against anti-Semitism. (Image: APE)

Syria

Syria: revolution on the razor’s edge

The investigation by the Syrian transition government into the March violence against the Alawites in Latakia province has been submitted—but the full findings have not been made public, and it apparently exonerates the government of involvement. Meanwhile southern Suwayda province has seen a perhaps even deadlier eruption of violence—this time pitting Druze against Bedouin, with the role of the government similarly the source of much contestation (and fodder for Internet partisans). And a Damascus protest against the violence and for co-existence was attacked by goons. Amid all this, Israel is militarily intervening, the government looks to Turkey for military aid, and both the US and Russia still have forces on the ground—treating the country as a Greet Power chessboard. In Episode 288 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg warns that the Syrian Revolution is poised on a razor’s edge, ready to descend into ethno-sectarian war and authoritarianism unless political space can be kept open for the secular-democratic civil resistance that began the revolution 14 years ago. (Image: Banners read “Syrians must not shed Syrian blood” and “We reject Israeli aggression against Syria.” Credit: The Syria Campaign via Facebook)

New York City

Zohran Mamdani and municipal resistance II

As a dictatorship consolidates in Turkey, aspiring strongman Recep Tayip Erdogan is launching a special attack on municipalities, arresting the mayor of Istanbul and removing elected governments in hundreds of cities and towns across the country—mostly in the restive Kurdish east. In the United States, aspiring strongman Donald Trump is now threatening to similarly remove Zohran Mamdani if he becomes mayor of New York, and order a federal take-over of the city government. Border czar Tom Homan says he will “flood the zone” with ICE agents in “sanctuary cities” such as New York and Los Angeles. In Episode 287 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg argues that Trump forcing the issue could accelerate the breaking point in which localities coast-to-coast assert their autonomous powers in repudiation of the fascist-coopted federal leviathan—vindicating Murray Bookchin’s theories of radical municipalism. (Photo: Wyatt Souers/Peoples Dispatch)

Palestine

Podcast: Orwell in Gaza

Amid starvation and horrifically escalating atrocities in Gaza, Israel announces plans to build a giant concentration camp on the ruins of Rafah, an evident preparation for forced “transfer” of the Palestinian population from the Strip entirely—an idea Trump enthusiastically embraces. On the West Bank, amid growing settler attacks, more Palestinian land is enclosed behind separation walls built to protect Israeli settlements. Amid all this, Benjamin Netanyahu (wanted for war crimes by the ICC) meets with Trump in Washington to openly discuss the “transfer” plan—and announces that he has nominated the American president for the Nobel Peace Prize. In Episode 286 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg argues that Trump could in fact get get the Nobel prize while facilitating genocide in Gaza and instating a mass detention state in the US—a fitting inauguration of the fascist world order. (Photo: Jaber Jehad Badwan via Wikimedia Commons)

New York City

Zohran Mamdani and municipal resistance

Amid an amusingly paranoid reaction from the MAGA right, Donald Trump is threatening to have Zohran Mamdani denaturalized and deported under the archaic Cold War-era Communist Control Act if he continues with New York’s “sanctuary city” policy as mayor. A Justice Department memo has already set the machinery for “denaturalization” of citizens in motion. But the Islamophobic, xenophobic and old-school Red Scare backlash to Mamdani’s political rise could provide the breaking point in which localities coast-to-coast refuse to cooperate with Trump’s fascist agenda—vindicating Murray Bookchin’s theories of radical municipalism. In Episode 285 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg argues that Mamdani’s ascendance, whatever the limitations of his personal politics, heightens the contradictions in American society in a salubrious way, and may even open revolutionary possibilities. (Photo: Jim Naureckas/Flickr via The Jewish Angle)

Iran

Podcast interview: Iranian-American activist Frieda Afary

In Episode 284 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Frieda Afary of the blog Iranian Progressives in Translation, author (most recently) of Socialist Feminism: A New Approach, and a longtime voice for democratic-secular opposition movements in Iran. How is the situation of Iran’s civil resistance complicated by the US-Israeli air-strikes on the country, and how should progressives in the West respond? Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

Iran

Iran’s retaliation: choreographed charade?

Two days after the US carried out air-strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites in what is being dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran launched missiles at al-Udeid air base in Qatar, headquarters for US Central Command’s regional operations and host to some 8,000 US troops. The US said nearly all the missiles were intercepted and there were no casualties. In a post on TruthSocial, President Trump shortly later claimed a ceasefire between Israel and Iran has been reached, with Israeli media reporting that the truce was brokered by Qatar. Sources also told Reuters that Iran had tipped off Qatar authorities before the attack, who then warned the US—accounting for the light damage and raising the possibility that, as in US-Iran brinkmanship of early 2020, the supposed Iranian retaliation was choreographed to allow Tehran to save face. The US, Israel and Iran alike are now all claiming victory, and it remains unclear how seriously Tehran’s nuclear capabilities have in fact been degraded. (Image of al-Udeid air base: Wikimedia Commons)

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.)

Syria

External, internal challenges for Syrian Revolution

Apparent Assad loyalists have taken up arms against Syria’s transitional government in the Alawite heartland of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast. Fighting meanwhile continues between the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeast, while Israel grabs a “security zone” in the south and continues intermittent air-strikes. Elsewhere in the south, the Druze of Suweida protest their perceived exclusion from the transition process. All this as Russia opens talks with the new authorities in a bid to keep its military bases in Syrian territory. (Map: PCL)