Europe

Bill Weinberg slams ‘tankie’ pseudo-left on YouTube

In a series of brief interviews with vlogger and activist songster Geof Bard, CounterVortexproducer Bill Weinberg dissects the sinister “tankie” phenomenon on the contemporary Western “left,” which paradoxically supports Russian imperialism in the name of a misguided “anti-imperialism.” This absurd double standard is enabled by the so-called “Chomsky Rule,” which holds that we are only permitted to protest the crimes of US imperialism—and thereby renders the crimes of rival imperialisms invisible to the activist-left milieu. The pseudo-left betrayal of Ukraine to imperialist aggression actually undermines our moral authority to oppose the crimes of the US and its client states in places like Gaza and Yemen.

Europe

Podcast: Ukraine between East and West II

In Episode 129 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the book Ukraine & the Empire of Capital: From Marketisation to Armed Conflict by Yuliya Yurchenko of the Ukrainian left-opposition group Sotsialniy Rukh (Social Movement). In the book, written in 2018, Yurchenko takes a rigorous neither/nor position between Russia and the West, tracing the roots of the current crisis to the rise of regional oligarchs and a “criminal-political nexus” in the post-communist transition a generation ago. The West, in its rush to effect a crash capitalist conversion in the East, was deeply complicit in this. But these regional fiefdoms would be exploited by Vladimir Putin to effect a division of Ukraine as East-West rivalry re-emerged. This January, as Putin amassed forces on Ukraine’s borders, Sotsialniy Rukh issued a statement appealing for “anti-war solidarity.” In interviews since the invasion was launched, Yurchenko has been unequivocal in supporting Ukraine’s “popular resistance.” Similar statements from socialists and anarchists in Ukraine, Belarus and elsewhere in Eastern Europe have called, first and foremost, for the defeat of Putin’s neo-imperial project. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Map via Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

Europe

ICC prosecutor visits war-torn Kharkiv

Chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Khan visited Kharkiv with Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova to document evidence of war crimes. During his visit Khan called the city a “crime scene,” and toured areas hardest hit by Russian bombing. “We must make sure that the whole world sees that the law works,” Khan said, promising to prosecute war criminals. Venediktova praised Khan for his visit, saying, “Prosecutors are working even under fire gathering evidence for [Ukrainian and international] courts.” Venediktova reports that 760 civilians have been killed, over 1,000 injured, and 4,000 buildings destroyed in Kharkiv oblast due to Russian shelling. (Photo via Wiadomosci)

Europe

Belarus: anarchist statement on Ukraine war

Anarchist Black Cross Belarus issues a statement calling for international solidarity with the struggle to defeat Vladimir Putin’s project of rebuilding the Russian Empire, and urging support for the armed anarchist units in Ukraine, and the anti-war protesters in Russia. The statement rejects Putin’s exploitation of NATO expansion as a justification for the war, and the “postmodern irony” of pointing to Western crimes to justify those of Russia. It sees the necessity of a “temporary alliance” between anarchists and the Ukrainian state until Russia is defeated. “A Russian victory in this war would be a complete disaster not only for Ukraine, but for all of Eastern Europe” and beyond. Whereas, the defeat of the Russian army could lead to the fall of Putin, and the “liberation of Belarus,” as well as Kazakhstan and other countries under dictatorships within Moscow’s political orbit.

Europe

Russia using cluster bombs in Kharkiv: Amnesty

Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv by indiscriminate Russian shelling using widely banned cluster munitions and inherently inaccurate rockets, Amnesty International finds. A new report, entitled ‘Anyone Can Die at Any Time’, documents how Russian forces have shelled residential neighborhoods almost daily since the start of the invasion, causing “wholesale destruction.” Amnesty found evidence of repeated Russian use of 9N210 and 9N235 cluster munitions as well as scatterable mines, both of which are subject to international treaty bans because of their indiscriminate effects. “The repeated use of widely banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty’s senior crisis response adviser. “The Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable for their actions, and victims and their families must receive full reparations.” (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Europe

Rights experts accuse Russia of incitement to genocide

A group of 33 legal scholars and genocide experts released a report accusing Russia of incitement to genocide in Ukraine, and calling on the international community to prevent a genocide from occurring. The report, released by the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, used open-source evidence to assert that Russia has breached the UN Genocide Convention, a treaty to which Russia and Ukraine are both parties. (Photo via Twitter)

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)

Watching the Shadows

Chomsky and Kissinger: paradoxical unity

In Episode 125 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues his deconstruction of the increasingly sinister, aggression-abetting politics of Noam Chomsky. In his recent interview with Current Affairs, Chomsky echoes Henry Kissinger‘s lecturing to the Ukrainians that they must capitulate to Russian aggression in the interests of global stability—a directive promptly repudiated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Chomsky has long been peddling historical revisionism on Ukraine, but his current convergence with Kissinger is a case study in imperial narcissism—an internalization of the imperialist perspective he has ostensibly dedicated his life to opposing. Fortunately, there is growing dissent on the left to Chomsky’s paradoxical Kissingerian line, including from Ukrainian-American scholars—and from Chomsky’s own Ukrainian translator, Artem Chapeye. Listen on SoundCloud or Patreon. (Altered photo from Kissinger’s 1973 meeting with Mao Zedong. Fair use rights asserted.)

Watching the Shadows

Chomsky & the Orwellian manipulation of Orwell

In Episode 124 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues his deconstruction of the increasingly sinister, fascist-abetting politics of Noam Chomsky. In the latest in the endless litany of sycophantic interviews with Chomsky, this supposed icon of the left actually praises Donald Trump for advocating appeasement of Putin in Ukraine—for which he was favorably tweeted by the inevitable Glenn Greenwald. Most perversely, the interview is entitled “Noam Chomsky on the Russia-Ukraine war, The Media, Propaganda, Orwell, Newspeak and Language.” Yet Chomsky is advocating positions that are utterly inimical to everything Orwell ever stood for. This constitutes an Orwellian exploitation of Orwell, mirroring Putin’s fascist pseudo-anti-fascism, and the pseudo-pacifist war propaganda of his Western enablers. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo collage with image from the 1984 movie 1984. Big Brother’s face is replaced by Chomsky’s, mimicking his sycophantic treatment in the 1992 move Manufacturing Consent. Fair use rights asserted.)

Europe

Russia imprisons still more Crimean Tatars

A court in Russia sentenced another group of Crimean Tatars to lengthy prison terms on charges of belonging to a banned political organization. A military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Bilyal Adilov to 14 years, while Izzet Abdullaev, Tofik Abdulgaziev, Vladlen Abdulkadyrov and Mejit Abdurakhmanov each received 12-year sentences. The men are accused of being members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an organization that advocates for the peaceful restoration of an Islamic Caliphate. It operates freely in Ukraine but is banned in Russia as an “extremist” organization. The men, arrested in March 2019 in a sweep along with more than a dozen other Tatars, were also members of the group Crimean Solidarity, formed to oppose the illegal Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Since the annexation, over 30 Crimean Tatars have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms, more than half this year alone. (Shirts read: “Truth cannot be imprisoned, killed, or hidden!” Photo via RFE/RL)

Europe

Ukraine preparing multiple war crime cases

Ukrainian prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova announced that her office is preparing war crimes cases against 41 suspects, on charges including “the bombing of civilian infrastructure, the killing of civilians, rape and looting.” Venediktova said her office is investigating more than 10,700 potential war crimes involving more than 600 suspects. The first war crime trial since the start of the invasion has opened in Kyiv. The suspect is a Russian soldier accused of killing an elderly Ukrainian civilian riding his bicycle in the northeastern village of Chupakhivka. He has been charged with both international war crimes and with premeditated murder under Ukraine’s penal code. The Ministry of Defense has identified 10 other Russian soldiers who may be charged for mass killings in the city of Bucha. (Photo: Vigilant News via Twitter)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: whither Khazaria?

In Episode 123 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the history of Khazaria, the medieval Turko-Jewish empire in what is now southern Russia and eastern Ukraine. While the fate of the mysterious Khazars has won much attention from scholars—and controversy—because of what it may reveal about the origin of the Jews of Eastern Europe, this question also touches on the origins of the Ukrainian people and state. Whatever the validity of the “Khazar Thesis” about the ethnogenesis of the Ashkenazim, it is the Ukrainian Jews—such as President Volodymyr Zelensky—who are the most likely to trace a lineage of the Khazars. In 2021, Zelenksy and the Ukrainian parliament passed a law recognizing the cultural and autonomous rights of three indigenous peoples of the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula: the Muslim Tatars and the Jewish Krymchaks and Karaites. Of any Jews on Earth, it is these last two groups that have the best claim to the Khazar inheritance—and are now a part of the struggle for a free and multicultural Ukraine, in repudiation of the Russian neo-imperialist project. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Fanciful rendering of Khazaria flag via AlternateHistory.com)