Watching the Shadows

SCOTUS lets stand Guantánamo detention

The Supreme Court denied certiorari in the case of Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, a Yemeni who has been held as an “enemy combatant” at Guantánamo since 2002. Al-Alwi was captured in Pakistan in late 2001, and the government concluded that he had fought in Afghanistan as part of a Qaeda-commanded unit. Al-Alwi denied this unsuccessfully during his original round of habeas corpus proceedings, and in 2015 initiated a new habeas case arguing that the nature of US involvement in Afghanistan had changed such that the use of military detention is no longer justified under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit disagreed, and the Supreme Court has now declined to review the appellate court’s conclusion. (Photo via Jurist)

Bill Weinberg to speak on left-fascist convergence

CounterVortex editor and chief blogger Bill Weinberg will speak at the Left Forum in Brooklyn, New York, on Sunday, June 30, at the panel “Confronting the Resurgence of Authoritarianism, Right and ‘Left.'” Weinberg’s talk will be entitled “The Consensus Position of the American ‘Left’ is Now Pro-Fascist: What Do We Do About It?” Other panelists include Anne Jaclard and Andrew Kliman of the Marxist-Humanist Initiative, and Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Attendees must register with the Left Forum.

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Julian Assange, agent of fascism

In Episode 31 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg documents the ugly far-right politics of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, and how the 2010 document dump risked the lives of dissidents under authoritarian regimes in places like Zimbabwe—and may have constituted outright collaboration with the repressive dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. An objective reading of the circumstances around the 2016 Wikileaks dump of Democratic Party e-mails reveals Assange as a Kremlin asset and Trump collaborator, an active agent in a Russian-lubricated effort to throw the US elections—part of Putin’s grander design to impose a fascist world order. Weinberg also notes that the ACLU and Committee to Protect Journalists have issued statements warning that the charges against Assange may pose a threat to press freedom. But he argues that even if we must protest his prosecution, we should do so while refraining from glorifying Assange—and, indeed, while forthrightly repudiating him as a dangerous political enemy of all progressive values. Listen on SoundCloud , and support our podcast via Patreon. (Photo Libcom.org)

Watching the Shadows

Amy Goodman plugs neo-Nazi symp as ‘expert’

In an egregious and all too revealing faux pas, Amy Goodman appears to have put a mouthpiece of the German far right on Democracy Now as a “former UN expert” to discuss Venezuela. This is one Alfred de Zayas, who is given Goodman’s typical sycophantic treatment—all softballs, no adversarial questions. We are treated to the accurate enough if not at all surprising line about how the US is attempting a coup with the complicity of the corporate media. Far more interesting than what he says is de Zayas himself. Not noted by Goodman is that he is on the board of the Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftung, a Berlin-based foundation established last year as the intellectual and policy arm of Alternative für Deutschland, the far-right party that has tapped anti-immigrant sentiment to win an alarming 94 seats in Germany’s Bundestag. He has won a neo-Nazi following with his unseemly theories of Aliied “genocide” against Germans in World War II. (Image via Democracy Now)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: fascism and the digital dystopia II

In Episode 25 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg protests that he has now been deprived of phone and Internet access by Verizon for more than two months, and discusses the greater social implications of this dilemma. Donald Trump, who is a fascist by any reasonable definition, has now shut down the federal government and is threatening to declare a national emergency in order to build his border wall. Lack of other net access at this critical moment has forced Weinberg to use a cell phone in order to have any voice as a writer and activist—while cellular technology is itself inherently abetting the descent into fascism. Not only does it create a totalizing propaganda environment, but it is degrading our attention spans, literacy and critical thinking skills. It also creates a totalizing surveillance environment that can ultimately be exploited by government as well as private interests. But we accept it in the name of "convenience" and the illusion of consumer "choice," and few even recognize technological "progress" (note: propaganda word) as something that needs to be resisted. This emerging dystopia combines the worst aspects of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World: we are complicit in the extinguishing of our own freedom because we have been conditioned. Weinberg calls for practical action to slow (at least) the totalizing aspect of this dystopia: keeping alive space for the print world and the meat world, and demanding that Verizon and other service providers maintain landline infrastructure. Listen on SoundCloud , and support our podcast via Patreon. (Photo: IBEW)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Against Red-Brown politics

In Episode Nine of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rants against "Red-Brown Politics," the dangerous notion of an alliance between the left and fascist right against liberalism and the West—now evidenced in the growing support for the genocidal dictatorship of Bashar Assad on both the "anti-war" (sic) "left" (sic) and the "alt-right." Leading lights of the American "left" have joined pro-Assad delegations to Syria, as have figures on the fascist right. Emerging as the global representative for this sinister trend is Russo-nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, who is bringing together supposed peaceniks and neo-fascists around supporting despots like Putin and Assad in the name of a "multi-polar" world. Weinberg urges that leftists utterly reject overtures from the radical right, and adopt a single-standard anti-fascism—which must inlcude solidarity with the Syrian Revolution. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon.

Watching the Shadows

SPLC capitulates to Red-Brown axis

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) last week issued a pressingly important report, “The multipolar spin: how fascists operationalize left-wing resentment.” It refreshingly called out “red-brown populist collaboration”—documenting the growing convergence between figures on the supposed “left” and the radical, even fascist right, both in the US and in Europe. Playing a critical role is Russo-nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, who is bringing together supposed peaceniks and neo-fascists around supporting despots like Putin and Assad in the name of a “multi-polar” world. But, depressingly, at the first howls of protest from this very Red-Brown alliance, SPLC folded like punks, removing the report from their website and issuing a pusillanimous apology.

Watching the Shadows

Counterpunch justifies Kremlin propaganda

After the Washington Post cited FBI sources to the effect that at least one recent contributor to Counterpunch was a "probable Russian troll," editor Jeffrey St. Clair responds by defending "pro-Russian" bias, pointing to instances of "bias" in favor of horrible things like torture and nuclear strikes by mainstream wonks. So much for the notion of the "alternative media" actually taking a higher standard than the dreaded "MSM," and actually providing an alternative. Instead the idea seems to be that if they can run sinister propaganda, so can we. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Watching the Shadows

UN expert: torture continues at Gitmo

UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer issued a statement calling on the US to end impunity for "perpetrators and policymakers responsible for years of gruesome abuse" at Guantánamo Bay and other detention facilities. He added that that he has information that Guantánamo detainee Ammar al-Baluchi, awaiting trial in the 9-11 case before a military tribunal, is still being tortured despite the banning of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Watching the Shadows

Plame tweet prompts conserva-purge of Giraldi

American Conservative finally gave far-right ex-spook Philip Giraldi the sack over rank anti-Semitism after one of his evil screeds was tweeted by Valerie Plame. Would that some of our supposed allies in the Palestine struggle were as principled as our conservative enemies. Counterpunch, ANSWER, Al-Awda and MondoWeiss continue to promote Giraldi and/or his equally vile sidekick Alison Weir. Image: frgdr.com

Watching the Shadows

Trump restores CIA authority for drone strikes

Trump has restored the CIA's authority to conduct secret drone strikes, reversing the Obama policy of transfering responsibility to the Pentagon in the interest of greater transparency.

Watching the Shadows

Obama’s final year: a CounterVortex scorecard

With a Trump despotism looming, CounterVortex offers its final assessment of Barack Obama's record in addressing the oppressive legacy of the Global War on Terrorism.