CounterVortex

Planet Watch

CounterVortex launches weekly vlog

The CounterVortex now has a weekly vlog, with our roundup of under-reported news and views from around the world, from an unapologetically radical dissident-left perspective—brought to you by your chief reporter, ranter and blogger Bill Weinberg. Subscribe to our new YouTube channel, and please share on socia media. If you wish to receive our weekly headlines and digest by email, you can subscribe to that via Substack.

The Caribbean

Podcast: geopolitics of the Essequibo dispute

In Episode 205 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg looks at the recent re-escalation and (hopefully) denouement of the dispute over Esequibo—an oil-rich territory controlled by Guyana and claimed by Venezuela. Ironically, this claim was first asserted by the conservative, anti-communist Venezuela of the 1960s to help destabilize the anti-imperialist Guyana of Cheddi Jagan. Today, the left-populist but increasingly nationalistic regime of Nicolás Maduro even entertains hubristic claims to sovereignty over Venezuela’s other much larger neighbor, Colombia. But this revanchism appears to mask the fact that “revolutionary” Venezuela largely remains a petro-state with a rentier economy, vulnerable to drops in the global oil price, even if Chinese corporate exploiters have been replacing gringo ones. With the recent easing of sanctions, US giants like Chevron have even returned to Venezuela—while the extractivist model results in indigenous resistance. Contrary to the dogmas of left and right alike, the real root of the Venezuelan crisis is that the country is insufficiently socialist. Listen on SoundCloudor via Patreon. (Map: SurinameCentral via Wikimedia Commons)

Greater Middle East

Yemen: Houthis ‘weaponize water’ in siege of Taizz

In a new report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) charges that both the Houthis and government forces have violated residents’ right to water in the ongoing siege of Taizz, Yemen. For the past eight years, the besieging Houthi forces have cut off the flow from watersheds under their control to the Taizz Local Water & Sanitation Corporation, which manages the city’s water supply and sewage treatment system. These watersheds previously provided 77% of the city’s supply. The government troops that control the city have meanwhile sold the public water from wells within the urban area for their own profit. HRW called upon both parties to “allow Taizz’s local water agency to access, repair, and operate water infrastructure on the front lines and in Houthi-controlled territory.” (Map via PCL)

Planet Watch

Support CounterVortex with a year-end donation!

The global crisis was already at a horrific level due to Russia’s war and campaign of genocidein Ukraine when 2023 began. Since this October, even Ukraine has been pushed from the headlines by Israel’s unrelenting and massive bombardment of Gaza, now also approaching the level of genocide. And then there are the numerous conflicts around the word that get virtually no coverage. At the CounterVortex, we strive every day to bring an unorthodox dissident-left perspective to the conflicts that are in the headlines—demonstrating, for example, why progressives should support Ukraine and Palestine, in repudiation of the Great Power game that divides the world into rival camps—while also providing consistent coverage of under-reported conflicts outside the media spotlight. We can only continue this mission with your continued support. Please give what you can.

Palestine

Podcast: whither ‘From the River to the Sea’? II

In Episode 204 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg returns to the persisting controversy around the slogan “From the River to the Sea“—portrayed as either a call to genocide or a cry for liberation. Much mainstream media coverage has dishonestly accepted the prior interpretation as a fait accompli. On the other hand, displays of unseemly enthusiasm for the Hamas attacks by certain sectors of the Palestine solidarity movement have provided propaganda fodder for Israel and its stateside pressure groups. This is (at least) a tactical error that abets moves toward campus censorship of pro-Palestinian voices. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Daniel Arauz via WikimediaCommons)

East Asia

Arrests at Hong Kong’s ‘patriots-only’ election

Hong Kong Chief Executive Ka-chiu Lee applauded the “good turnout” in the city’s “patriots-only” District Council elections—despite a turnout of only 27.5%, the lowest in any race since the return to Chinese rule in 1997. He also charged that protesters had attempted to “sabotage” the vote. Four of the city’s leading democracy advocates were pre-emptively arrested for supposedly planning protests before the polls opened. This was the first district-level vote since Hong Kong’s government overhauled the electoral system, instating changes that effectively made it impossible for pro-democracy candidates to run. Most of the city’s pro-democracy activists are now behind bars, in exile, or silenced by fear of repression. (Photo of League of Social Democrats chair Chan Po-ying: HKFP)

Europe

Russia prolongs detention of Tatar-language journalist

A district court in Kazan, capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, extended the detention of Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist holding joint Russian and United States citizenship. Kurmasheva, who reports for the Tatar-language service of US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was first detained in October. She faces charges of failure to register as a “foreign agent,” an offense that carries a potential five-year prison term. The decision extending her pre-trial detention through early February was made without actually setting a trial date. (Photo: The Moscow Times)

Africa

Drone massacre in northwest Nigeria

The Nigerian military says it is investigating an army drone attack at a religious gathering on a village in northwest Kaduna state that killed 85 civilians and wounded more than 60 others. Residents of Tudun Biri village were holding festivities for the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, Eid-e-Milad an-Nabi, when the drone struck. Since 2017, hundreds of civilians have been killed in air-strikes carried out by the Nigerian military, ostensibly targeting armed rebel and bandit groups, according to monitors. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)

Southern Cone

Argentina gets an anarchist president? Not!

English-language media accounts are calling Argentina’s far-right president-elect Javier Milei a “self-described anarcho-capitalist,” but this appears to be a translation error. In Episode 202 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg sets the record straight, exposing “anarcho-capitalism” as an oxymoron and the fascistic Milei as antithetical to everything that Argentina’s proud anarchist tradition ever stood for. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Anarcho-capitalist flag via Wikimedia Commons, defaced by CounterVortex)

The Amazon

Ecuador: court orders return of Siekopai homeland

In what is being hailed as an historic decision, an appeals court in Ecuador ordered the return of a 42,360-hectare expanse of the Amazon rainforest to the Siekopai indigenous people, generations after they were driven from the territory by the military. The Provincial Court of Sucumbios ruled that the Siekopai retain indigenous title to their ancestral homeland, known as Pë’këya, which lies along the border with Peru in remote country. The lands were seized by Ecuador’s army during the war with Peru in 1941, and remained a military-controlled zone until being incorporated into Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in 1979. Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment has been given 45 days to deliver a property title to the Siekopai Nation, and make public apologies for the usurpation of their homeland. (Photo: Amazon Frontlines)

Palestine

Egypt fears Israel pushing Palestinians to Sinai

Since the “humanitarian pause” ended, Israel has focused its air-strikes on Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis—now swelled with hundreds of thousands displaced from the north of the Strip. Along with the strikes, Israeli planes are dropping leaflets on the city, warning the populace to flee further south to Rafah on the Egyptian border—despite having earlier declared the southern Strip a “safe zone.” Most of the Strip’s 2.3 million population has already fled to the south, and Egyptian officials believe that Israel is preparing to next drive them across the border into the Sinai desert. The aim of the Khan Younis strikes is to “disrupt the mass of the population from the south and push it towards Egypt,” one Cairo official told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has categorically rejected a forced resettlement, and the idea is generating anger among Egyptians. (Photo via The New Arab)

Watching the Shadows

Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism: parsing the difference II

In a disturbing coincidence in Missoula, Mont., a Palestine solidarity march to protest the bombardment of Gaza ran into a separate but simultaneous anti-Israel march by neo-Nazis. Since the Gaza bombardment began, open neo-Nazi marches have also been reported from Madison, Wisc., Dallas, Tex., and elsewhere around the country. Yet, in addition to displaying enthusiasm for Hamas, their banners also read “REFUGEES NOT WELCOME”—and we may assume it was a similar ultra-right xenophobe who shot three Palestinian youths in Burlington, Vt. This makes it all the more maddening that elements of the “left” share with the Nazis an unseemly enthusiasm for Hamas—providing much fodder for the pro-Israel and “anti-woke” right. In Episode 201 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to explore the dilemma. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Hayden Blackford/Daily Montanan)