CounterVortex

Central America

Panama feels pain of Trump migration crackdown

An eight-year-old Venezuelan girl died and 20 survivors were rescued by Panamanian authorities from a shipwreck during a journey from Panama’s northern port of Llano Carti to the Colombian border. Trump’s crackdown on migrants has triggered a “reverse flow” that is leading a growing number of asylum seekers to take a sea route back to South America to avoid crossing the Darién Gap—the perilous jungle trek connecting Panama to Colombia. (Photo: Note left on Darién Gap trail reads: “They’re robbing further up, form big groups!!” Credit: Peter Yeung/TNH)

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: Andrew Jackson and MAGA-fascism

Trump’s mounting threats to defy the growing court decisions against his dictatorial program recall Andrew Jackson’s famous words of defiance following the Supreme Court’s 1832 decision in Worcester v Georgia, which upheld the sovereign rights of the Cherokee Nation. Jackson’s subsequent forced relocation of the Cherokee in the Trail of Tears is now echoed in Trump’s hubristic and criminal plan to clear Gaza of Palestinians. On the 222nd anniversary of Marbury v Madison, in which it was established that the Supreme Court has the last word on what is and isn’t constitutional, Bill Weinberg explores the historical parallel. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image: CounterVortex)

Planet Watch

Ukraine, Greenland and the global struggle for lithium

In Episode 265 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines Trump’s ultimatum to Ukraine to hand over a large share of its wealth in strategic minerals such as lithium in exchange for continued US military aid—and whether a race with China for control of the lithium and rare earth elements needed for Elon Musk‘s industrial interests might also be the agenda behind the Trump regime’s annexationist designs on Greenland. Trump is meanwhile opening Native American lands in Nevada to lithium exploitation, while Musk’s Tesla has sought to grab a share of Bolivia‘s lithium reserves—now also coveted by China. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: rare earth mine at Mountain Pass, Calif. Credit: Tmy350 via Wikimedia Commons)

Southeast Asia

Burma: deadly junta air-strikes escalate

Junta air-strikes killed over 170 people across Burma in January, a fourfold increase over the previous month, according to an analysis by The Irrawaddy, an independent exile-based newspaper that maintains a network of reporters on the ground. The strikes hit villages, health facilities, a prison and a gold mine in various areas held by the resistance, although most of those killed were civilians. More than 1,800 people have been killed in air-strikes since the February 2021 coup. (Image: The Irrawaddy)

New York City

Podcast: Cantonese & Toisan language promotion with Kim

In Episode 264 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Kim of New York City’s Chinatown Cantonese Toisan group about her efforts to promote Cantonese and Toisan language and culture. Indigenous to China’s Guangdong province, these tongues are spoken by millions in a global diaspora. Thanks to the efforts of State Sen. Iwen Chu, Feb. 12 is now Taishan (Toisan) Day in New York state, commemorating the day in 1499, during the Ming Dynasty, that Toisan County was officially created—and honoring the contributions of Toisan immigrants, most notably in the dangerous work of building the Transcontinental Railroad. It was a Toisan man born in San Francisco, Wong Kim Ark, who won the 1898 Supreme Court case that established birthright citizenship as a constitutional right. Yet in China, Cantonese and Toisan are relegated to the status of fangyan (regional dialects) and officially discouragedin favor of Mandarin—leading to protests in provincial capital Guangzhou in 2010. Even in the US, the children’s book Coolies, about the Cantonese railroad workers, has been banned from public libraries by local forces of intolerance. Through exhibits, social gatherings and a weekly language class, Kim works to keep Cantonese and Toisan heritage and pride alive in the New York metropolitan area. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

Mexico

Mexico launches ‘Operativo Frontera Norte’

Mexico has launched a massive deployment of 10,000 troops to cities and towns on the border with the United States. Videos and photos posted on social media by Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) showed military and National Guard troops lined up boarding transport planes and rows of army trucks rolling out from bases in Mexico City, Tlaxcala and other cities. The response—dubbed “Operativo Frontera Norte”—is part of an agreement reached between US President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum postponing trade tariff threats for a month. (Photo: SEDENA via Peninsula360)

Africa

Trump’s first air-strikes hit ISIS base in Puntland

US fighter jets launched from the USS Harry Truman in the Red Sea struck a hidden base of the local ISIS franchise in the interior mountains of Somalia’s northern autonomous enclave of Puntland. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the “initial assessment is that multiple operatives were killed” in these first US air-strikes under the new Trump presidency. The strikes were carried out with the cooperation of the governments of both Puntland and Somalia, whose President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud expressed his “deepest gratitude.” The Puntland Dervish Forces have for some five years been fighting the self-declared “Islamic State Somalia” in the enclave’s Cal Miskaad mountains. (Photo via Garowe Online)

North America

Podcast: Is it fascism yet?

In Episode 263 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg deconstructs the moves by the unconstitutional Trump regime to consolidate a dictatorship over the United States—attempting to seize autocratic control over the bureaucracy, and (in a case of fascist pseudo-anti-fascism) weaponizing concern with anti-Semitism to suppress free speech while institutionalizing indifference to (and consciously enflaming) all other forms of racism. And this as Elon Musk (a private-sector oligarch given extra-legal power over government functions) tells a rally of the Nazi-adjacent Alternative für Deutschland that Germany has “too much of a focus on past guilt.” It took Hitler mere weeks to establish a dictatorship after coming to power, whereas with Mussolini it took some three years. We shall soon find out how long it will take in the United States—unless the country can find the wherewithal to resist. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo via CEPR)

Africa

Chaos in Congo as M23 seize Goma

In a dramatic escalation of the ongoing conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the M23 rebels seized Goma, the capital of North Kivu province on the Rwandan border. The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss the situation, with the DRC accusing Rwanda of sending hundreds of troops across the border to support the M23. The DRC is calling for an arms embargo on Rwanda, and sanctions on its mineral exports. The fall of Goma has sparked protests in the DRC capital, Kinshasa, with foreign embassies vandalized and set on fire, including those of Rwanda, South Africa, the US, Belgium and France. Amid the turmoil, President Felix Tshisekedi has promised a counter-offensive to retake Goma. The DRC’s reliance on foreign mercenaries in the war in the east has drawn sharp criticism. Reports indicate that around 2,000 mercenaries, mostly from Eastern European countries such as Romania, have been hired to fight the M23. (Map: PCL)

East Asia

Podcast: South Korea and MAGA-fascism

In Episode 262 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg contrasts the intransigent resistance to the attempted power-grab by would-be right-wing strongman Yoon Suk Yeol in South Korea (and Robert Fico in Slovakia) with the craven capitulation to the consolidating Trump regime in the US—despite the unconstitutionality of his very presidency, the fascist stench from his team of oligarchs, and despite the emergence of evidence that points to actual hacking of the vote to effect his victory. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo of Seoul protests via Twitter)

The Caribbean

Will US-Cuba deal survive Trump?

Outgoing President Joe Biden informed Congress in his final days in office that he would lift the US designation of Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT), as part of a deal facilitated by the Catholic Church to free political prisoners on the island. The Cuban government announced it would release 553 prisoners who had been jailed in connection with the 2021 protests on the island. However, the durability of the deal was immediately cast into doubt. Just one day after the policy change, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, said during his Senate Confirmation hearing that Cuba belongs on the SSOT list. (Photo: Falkenpost/Pixabay)