Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Charlie Kirk = Calvo Sotelo?

Calvo SoteloSome are drawing an ominous analogy between Charlie Kirk and Horst Wessel, the early martyr of the Nazi cause. In Episode 296 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg offers a more ominous analogy still: to José Calvo Sotelo, the Spanish fascist leader whose assassination in 1936 provided the expedience for Generalissimo Franco's coup d'etat that initiated the Spanish Civil War—and ultimately brought a decades-long dictatorship to Spain. Trump's declaration of antifa as a "terrorist organization" since Kirk's assassination is an open acknowledgement of his fascist intent. Fortunately, anti-fascist protesters are repudiating Kirk, and the wave of racist terror and anti-left reaction now being unleashed coast to coast. (Image mash-up: CounterVortex)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: The Twenty-Fifth Hour revisited

Virgil GheorghiuThe case of Kilmar Abrego García, shunted from detention in one country to another, with no end in sight, recalls the World War II-era classic of dystopian fiction The Twenty-Fifth Hour by Romanian writer C. Virgil Gheorghiu. The wartime transnational detention system, harrowingly depicted in the novel, was seen by Gheorghiu as an inevitable manifestation of our technocratic civilization that exalts the machine above humanity, ultimately resulting in the treatment of human beings as mere cogs in the state-industrial apparatus. This process is more advanced today with the current hypertrophy of the technosphere, which is related to the re-emergence of abuses approaching those of the fascist era, and ultimately bodes poorly for humanity's future. In Episode 294 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes an unsparing look at this grim juncture for the human race. (Image via Cocosse)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Trump for War-is-Peace Prize

OrwellIn Donald Trump's perverse ambition to win the Nobel Peace Prize, he is citing his supposed diplomatic victories in ending six conflicts: Armenia-Azerbaijan, Congo-Rwanda, Israel-Iran, India-Pakistan, Thailand-Cambodia and Egypt-Ethiopia. In Episode 292 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines each of these examples, and breaks down how claims to have won "peace" are either extremely overstated or (more often) total Orwellian jive. The implication that Russia-Ukraine will be next, as Putin escalates his aggression, puts a hideous crown on the irony. (Image via Twitter)

Watching the Shadows

Trump plans transfer of thousands of migrants to Gitmo

GitmoPresident Donald Trump's administration plans to increase the number of undocumented migrants being transferred to the US Naval facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to government documents obtained by the Washington Post. The documents state that 9,000 undocumented immigrants are currently being vetted for transfer to Guantánamo, with the first transfers to begin this week. (Photo: Spc. Cody Black/WikiMedia via Jurist)

Watching the Shadows

State Department imposes sanctions on ICC judges

ICCThe US Department of State imposed sanctions on on four individuals serving as judges on the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their involvement with the ICC’s investigations into the US and Israel. The sanctions were imposed pursuant to Executive Order No. 14,203, "Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court," which President Donald Trump signed in February in response to the ICC's warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant. The stated purpose of the order was to underline the position that the US and Israel are not within the jurisdiction of the ICC under the Rome Statute, and therefore any investigation into the actions of the two countries is invalid. (Photo: OSeveno/WikiMedia)

Watching the Shadows

Trump orders expansion of Gitmo migrant facility

GitmoPresident Trump has ordered the construction of a 30,000-bed facility to hold migrants at the notorious US naval facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as part of his mass deportation campaign. The US base has been used to house terrorism suspects since 2002, becoming synonymous with torture and unlawful imprisonment. The US has secretively detained refugees and migrants intercepted at sea at Guantánamo Bay for decades, but the facility has not previously been used for people apprehended on US soil or at this scale. (Photo: Spc. Cody Black/WikiMedia via Jurist)

Watching the Shadows

Appeals court overturns net neutrality rules

internetThe US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) did not have legal authority when it reinstated net neutrality rules last May, striking a blow to President Joe Biden's telecommunications policy. Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) must provide access to all content without favoring or blocking particular websites or services. In May, the FCC voted to classify ISPs as "telecommunications services" as opposed to "information services," thereby subjecting them to net neutrality rules. Several telecommunications companies challenged the decision. The Sixth Circuit found that ISPs are information services and thus net neutrality rules do not apply. In doing so, it cited the US Supreme Court's decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, which abolished the deference afforded to administrative bodies in interpreting their enabling statutes. (Photo:  via Flickr)

Watching the Shadows

US transfers 11 Guantánamo detainees to Oman

GitmoThe US Department of Defense (DoD) announced the transfer of 11 Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo Bay prison to Oman, marking a significant step in reducing the population of the detention facility. The DoD stated that the Periodic Review Board "determined by consensus" that the detention of the Yemeni prisoners under the law of war was no longer necessary, as they did not continue to pose a significant national security threat. With this transfer, the DoD reduced the number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay by more than half, leaving only 15 in the detention center. (Photo: Gino Reyes/Wikimedia Commons)

Watching the Shadows

US transfers Guantánamo detainee to Tunisia

GitmoThe Pentagon announced that the US has repatriated Guantánamo prisoner Ridah bin Saleh al-Yazidi to Tunisia after more than two decades in detention. His transfer was delayed by years due to political instability in Tunisia, where he has been convicted in absentia by a military anti-terrorism tribunal. Of the 12 Tunisians who have been detained at Guantánamo, al-Yazidi, 59, was the only one still held there, with the others having been transferred to Tunisia or to third countries. There now remain 26 prisoners at the Guantánamo facility. (Photo: Spc. Cody Black/WikiMedia via Jurist)

Watching the Shadows

DoD to transfer two Guantánamo Bay prisoners

GitmoThe US Department of Defense announced the transfer of Mohammed Farik bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir bin Lep from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Bin Amin and bin Lep arrived at Guantanamo in September 2006. The US accused the men of planning attacks in California and facilitating terrorist operations in Indonesia. Both men pled guilty to several offenses, and are to serve the remainder of their terms in Malaysia. Days earlier, Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, accused in a 2007 attack in Mombasa, was turned over to Kenya. With the transfer of the three men, 27 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay—down from a maximum of 780. However, President Biden has failed to live up to his pledge to close the facility by the end of his term. (Photo: Pixabay via Jurist)

Watching the Shadows

Russian fascism: enemy of Black liberation

WagnerFour Black nationalists affiliated with the Uhuru Movement, an arm of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP), are on trial for acting as agents of a Russian propaganda network, in what they are calling "the free speech trial of the century." Regardless of whether their activities were protected by the First Amendment, the case reveals the very strangest of political bedfellows. Tucker Carlson, who similarly serves as a conduit for Russian propaganda, is also mentioned (although not charged) in a new federal indictment. Carlson is scheduled to appear onstage with JD Vance later this month, and recently hosted an uncloseted Nazi-nostalgist on his Twitter program. The absurd irony of the APSP platforming Kremlin demonization of Ukraine as a "Nazi" state is heightened by Russia's serial massacres of Black Africans in its new military adventures on the continent. The Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, which seemingly cultivated Uhuru/APSP, is similarly cultivating white supremacists, who are overtly Trump-aligned and marched at the Charlottesville hate-fest in 2017. The ultimate stateside beneficiary of this Kremlin-orchestrated propaganda effort is of course Donald Trump—who as president in 2020 sought to unleash the military against that year's Black Lives Matter uprising. Yet while too many "radicals" take the Kremlin bait, once-reviled "liberals" like the National Urban League actually take a more progressive position on Russia and Ukraine. In Episode 243 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg explores how the American radical left went through the proverbial looking glass, including with analogies from the (last) Cold War. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon (Photo: Russian mercenaries in the Central African Republic. Credit: Corbeau News Centrafrique via Wikimedia Commons)

Watching the Shadows

Is Elon Musk unstoppable?

XIf elected president in November, Donald Trump says he will create a government efficiency commission led by tech billionaire Elon Musk as part of his economic plan. Musk suggested the idea to Trump in a conversation on X, which he bought in 2022 when it was called Twitter. The announcement is the latest display of Musk's growing influence in politics. The self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" is accused of censoring progressive opinions while amplifying the voices of far-right networks. So far, no one seems to be able to check his growing power, as his recent legal battles with Australia and Brazil have demonstrated. Both countries tried to curtail content deemed harmful, but Musk ignored their requests. After Musk disregarded a judicial order to suspend dozens of X accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation in Brazil, the country's Supreme Court ruled to ban it nationwide. Journalists, who have relied heavily on it, have expressed a mixture of relief and regret at the ban. (Photo: Filip Troníček via Wikipedia)