Counter Vortex Podcast

In Episode 36 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg reads the full text of his presentation at the Left Forum, on the panel "Confronting the Resurgence of Authoritarianism, Right and 'Left'," held by the Marxist-Humanist Initiative. Weinberg argues the intentionally provocative but nonetheless entirely accurate thesis that the consensus position of the contemporary "left" is now pro-fascist. Sounds illogical? That's because you haven't thought it through. Listen before you judge. Some choice words for Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky, Sy Hersh, Stephen Cohen, Jill Stein, Tulsi Gabbard, ANSWER, etc. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon. Production by Chris Rywalt We are asking listeners to donate just $1 per episode via Patreon. A total of $30 per episode would cover our costs for engineering and producing. We are currently up to $20. https://www.patreon.com/countervortex New episodes will be produced every two weeks. We need your support.

In Episode 35 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Emily Ramos, Pilar DeJesus and Kara Bhatti, members of the worker-owned marijuana consumer cooperative High Mi Madre, on their lobbying and activist efforts in support of the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, still pending in the final countdown to the close of the current New York State legislative session. They especially emphasize the demand for "Day One Equity" with cannabis legalization in the Empire State -- measures for reparative justice and reinvestment in the communities that had for generations been criminalized and oppressed by cannabis prohibition. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon. Music: "Another Banger" by Werdz Music produced by Beat Hogan Production by Chris Rywalt We are asking listeners to donate just $1 per episode via Patreon. A total of $30 per episode would cover our costs for engineering and producing. We are currently up to $20. https://www.patreon.com/countervortex New episodes wil

In Episode 34 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Rose Tang, veteran journalist, activist, artist, musician, and survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre. In an in-depth oral history, Tang recounts her experiences as a student leader in Beijing in the spring of 1989, her witness to the June 4 repression, and her work as a public voice for Tiananmen Square survivors. Books and works discussed include: Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang (Simon & Schuster 2009); The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited by Louisa Lim (Oxford 2014); "Tiananmen Massacre," Tang's contribution to The Princeton Reader: Contemporary Essays by Writers and Journalists at Princeton University (2010); and Jack London's "Credo." Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon. Music: Locust Flowers Blooming, Sichuanese folk song performed by Rose Tang https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWP2P-VVmQI Production by Chris Rywalt We are asking listeners to donate just $1 per

In Episode 33 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg compares coverage of the Idlib offensive from CNN and its Turkish counterpart TRT World, illustrating how the US corporate media uncritically echo the propaganda of the Assad regime. While TRT emphasizes civilian casualties, the CNN headline says "terrorists" are being killed—the propaganda technique of dehumanization and objectification of victims. Shamefully, "progressives" in the West are far more complicit with Assad's genocide. The deplorable Amy Goodman has now repeatedly allowed voices such as Phyllis Bennis and the inevitable Noam Chomsky to spew genocide-abetting propaganda on Democracy Now. Weinberg also discusses the contradictions facing the Rojava Kurds in the areas of Syria they control. He closes with a call for Syria Solidarity NYC and Rojava Solidarity NYC to hold a joint workshop at the NYC Anarchist Book Fair, to try to arrive at a unified pro-revolutionary position on Syria. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon.

In Episode 32 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg reads from George Orwell's 1945 essay "Notes on Nationalism," and explains why despite his anarchist politics he is willing to march under the Mexican flag but not "Old Glory," under the Palestinian flag but not the Israeli, under the Tibetan flag but not that of the People's Republic of China -- and under the Free Syrian flag but not that of the Assad dictatorship. The Free Syrian flag flown by the rebels and opposition is the original flag of an independent Syria, and now represents the struggle to free the country from a one-family dynastic dictatorship massively propped up by foreign powers. Weinberg especially calls out the depraved Max Blumenthal for purveying a version of events in Syria starkly at odds with reality. Weinberg invites listeners to join the Syria Solidarity NYC contingent at New York's May Day march, gathering 5 PM at the Sixth Ave. entrance to Central Park. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon. "The Foggy D

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 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 e

In Episode 30 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg decries the unseemly gloating from the (totally predictable) Glen Greenwald, Matt Taibbi and their ilk over the Mueller Report's supposed (not actual) exoneration of Donald Trump. The report actually backs up the 2016 findings of the intelligence community that there was Russian meddling in the election. There have been over 100 indictments issued by Mueller's team, including for lying to Congress about meetings between Trump representatives and Russians. Meanwhile, the results of several other investigations and legal cases against Trump and his team remain pending. Yet paradoxical pro-Trump "leftists" ignore all this and echo the interpretation of the Mueller Report put forth by Attorney General William Barr—who was appointed by Trump precisely to protect his ass. Repudiating this Red-Brown pseudo-left jive that abets Trump's lies, Weinberg joins with the ACLU and Robert Reich in calling for the complete and unredacted release of the Mueller Report.

In Episode 28 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg advances a progressive and anti-Zionist critique of Rep Ilhan Omar's controversial comments, which have posed the problem of US support for Israel in terms of "allegiance to a foreign country" -- the nationalist and xenophobic language of our enemies. As a Somali-American woman in a hijab, Omar is ultimately legitimizing reactionary forces that threaten her with the use of such nationalist rhetoric. As the massacres of Christchurch and Pittsburgh all too clearly demonstrate, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are fundamentally unified concerns -- and the way Jews and Muslims have been pitted against each other by the propaganda system is part of the pathology. Contrary to the canard of "dual loyalty," Weinberg declares himself a "zero-loyalist," repudiating both Zionism and America-first nationalism, calling for an anti-Zionism based on solidarity with the Palestinians, not "allegiance" to the imperial state. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast v

In Episode 28 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes with trepidation Google’s plans to develop a censored search engine for China, and thereby be allowed back through the Great Firewall to access the world's largest market. But the next and more sinister step is imposing China's draconian standards for control of information on all Internet users, worldwide. Harbingers of this are already seen in Facebook's censorship of the Tibetan struggle, and of the Kurdish struggle in Turkey, as well as initiatives to suppress footage of Israeli war crimes. While protesting these moves is imperative, the potential for such abuses in inherent to the technology—and this, ultimately, is a deeper and more complex problem that also urgently demands a critique. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon. Music: "Tonkha" by Tenzin Choegyal https://tenzinchoegyal.bandcamp.com/album/heart-strings Production by Chris Rywalt We are asking listeners to donate just $1 per episode via Patreon. A total of

In Episode 27 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Eben Egbe and Amy Dalton of the Global Initiative to end the Cameroons Colonial Conflict (Gi3C), who discuss the independence struggle in Ambazonia—a territory that was illegally annexed by Cameroon following the end of colonial rule in 1960. The past year has seen a terrible increase in state terror in Ambazonia from the French-backed neo-colonial Cameroon authorities, with protesters fired upon by helicopter gunships, and finally villages burned by military forces, sending the residents fleeing into the bush. Some 246,000 people have been internally displaced, with a further 20,000 having crossed the border into Nigeria as refugees. Cameroon also receives military aid from the US, ostensibly for the fight against Boko Haram in the north of the country—but this same military is now being unleashed against the civilian populace in the unrelated conflict in Ambazonia in the south. The Gi3C has issued an urgent call for the UN Human Rights Cou

In Episode 26 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes contradictions and complexities in two world crises depicted in polarized terms by left, right and center alike. The indigenous Tatar people of Crimea, their autonomy and rights abrogated by the illegal Russian occupation, have been drawn into an alliance with Ukraine's ultra-nationalist Right Sector based on their mutual opposition to Putin's annexation of the peninsula. Ukrainian anarchists are meanwhile facing repression for their opposition to Right Sector. Putin, who is cracking down on Russian anarchists who oppose his own ultra-nationalist imperial agenda, has just sent a detachment of Cossack mercenaries to Venezuela to serve as a Praetorian Guard for the embattled Nicolás Maduro. In addition to being opposed by the right-wing pretender Juan Guaidó, Maduro also faces a challenge from an independent left that rejects his undemocratic rule as well as US imperial designs on Venezuela. Indigenous peoples such as the Pemón of the Orinoco Basin

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. Not only has lack of other net access at this critical moment forced Weinberg to use a cell phone in order to have any effectiveness as a writer and activist, but 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 illusions of consumer "choice," and few even

In Episode 24 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes the historic strides toward liberation of the cannabis plant in 2018, from the fabled four corners of the Earth. Yet under the capitalist system, every advance also opens new contradictions. With the rise of "corporate cannabis," traditional small growers in places like California's Emerald Triangle stand to be pushed off the market as Central Valley agribusiness gets in on the act. Burdensome regulations and heavy taxation have kept some growers on the black market—and big police raids in the Emerald Triangle have continued even after "legalization." High taxes on cannabis have also actually closed the legal space for California's "compassionate care" providers—those who make free or discounted medical marijuana available to the ailing. There are concerns about the corporate privatization of ancient cannabis landraces long grown by small cultivators around the world. Meanwhile, even as overall cannabis arrests have dropped under more tolerant la

In Episode 23 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes the assassination of Raed Fares, a courageous voice of the civil resistance in besieged Idlib province, last remaining stronghold of the Syrian Revolution. The resistance in Idlib, which liberated the territory from the Bashar Assad regime in popular uprisings seven years ago, is now also resisting the jihadist forces in the province, expelling them from their self-governing towns and villages. Their hard-won zones of popular democracy face extermination if this last stronghold is invaded by Assad and his Russian backers. As Assad and Putin threaten Idlib, Trump's announced withdrawal of the 2,000 US troops embedded with Kurdish forces in Syria's northeast is a "green light" to Turkey to attack Rojava, the anarchist-inspired Kurdish autonomous zone. The two last pockets of democratic self-rule in Syria are each now gravely threatened. Yet with Turkey posing as protector of Idlib, the Arab revolutionary forces there have been pitted against the Ku

In Episode 22 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rants in anguish about how he has been deprived of phone and Internet access by Verizon's cynical design to let its copper network deteriorate and impose the transition to cellular, fiber and wireless on consumers against their will. There is no reason to believe this outage will be temporary. The illusions of freedom of choice and communications convenience has left the CounterVortex editor and main ranter with no choice and no ability to communicate -- or to produce the journalism he needs to daily produce to make a living. Weinberg contends that his right to work -- guaranteed by Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- is being violated with impunity. Verizon is in violation of international law, as well as New York state law. Weinberg calls upon the New York Public Service Commission to enforce the law on Verizon. He also calls upon the New York Public Utility Law Project to reach out to metro-area consumers similarly left withou

In Episode 21 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rants in anguish about how he has been forced by market and technological forces beyond his control into the same matrix of digital media that is fast eroding the very concept of truth and lubricating the consolidation of a fascist order in the United States and the world. In the aftermath of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, Weinberg documents Trump's complicity and virtual green-lighting of the attack, and calls out his rote condemnation as rank hypocrisy. From the wave of hate unleashed immediately upon his inauguration through the "false flag" theory he floated about the MAGA-bomber, Trump has played to anti-Semitism in barely veiled terms. The doublethink that now lets him get away with this blatantly disingenuous disavowal of the massacre is related to the post-truth environment fundamentally inherent to digital media. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon. Production by Chris Rywalt We are asking listeners to donate just $

In Episode 20 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the forgotten legacy of libertarian socialism -- considered by many today a contradiction in terms. While the word "socialism" is suddenly viewed as legitimate in American political discourse again for the first time in generations, the word "libertarian" continues to be associated with the free-market right -- despite its origins on the anarchist left. Weinberg discusses his own involvement in New York's Libertarian Book Club -- founded by anarchist exiles from Europe in the 1940s, to keep alive their ideals and pass the torch to a new generation. Libertarian socialists seek inspiration in such historical episodes as the Zapatistas in Mexico (1910-19), Makhnovists in Ukraine (1917-21), Spanish anarchists in Catalonia (1936-7), and Zapatistas in Mexico again (1994-date) -- peasants and workers who took back the land and the factories, building socialism from below, without commissars or politburos. Other movements inspired by this vision on t

In Episode 19 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the urgent need for solidarity with Idlib, the last remaining stronghold of the Syrian Revolution, and looks at heroic examples of the civil resustance there, which is standing up the Assad regime and jihadists alike -- such as Rania Kisar, who has been running schools and other civil institutions; and Radio Fresh, which is continuing to broadcast in defiance of threats and censorship from the jihadists. The weekly Friday demonstrations in Idlib continue to keep alive the spirit of the 2011 Arab Revolution, demanding a democratic future for Syria. In a victory for the forces organizing in solidarity with Idlib around the world, the long-planned Assad regime invasion of the opposition-held province has been postponed (at least) in a deal negotiated by Russia and Turkey, buying time for the survival of the revolution. But those who stand in solidarity with Idlib in New York City have themselves been threatened and physically attacked by follow

In Episode 18 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg looks back at the Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement of the closing years of the Cold War, when the Western Shoshone people, whose traditional lands were being contaminated by the nuclear blasts at the US government's Nevada Test Site, made common cause with the Kazakh people of Central Asia who opposed Soviet nuclear testing at the Semipalatinsk site. Kazakh activists travelled to Nevada to join protests at the Test Site, while Western Shoshone leaders travelled to Kazakhstan to join protests at Semipalatinsk. This initiative eventually evolved into the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, which as recently as 2016 held an International Conference on Building a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World in Astana, Kazakhstan, again attended by Western Shoshone leaders. The story of indigenous peoples impacted by nuclear testing on their usurped lands has come to us from several places around the world, including the French test site at Gerboise Bleue

In Episode 17 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the growing repression against the Tatar people of the Crimea, and the abrogation of their autonomous government by the Russian authorities since Moscow's illegal annexation of the peninsula. This is a clear parallel to violation of the territorial rights of the Lakota people in the United States through construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the legal persecution of indigenous leaders who stood against it. The parallel is even clearer in the cases of the Evenks and Telengit, indigenous peoples of Siberia, resisting Russian construction of pipelines through their traditional lands. Yet the US State Department's Radio Free Europe aggressively covers the Tatar struggle, while Kremlin propaganda organ Russia Today (RT) aggressively covered the Dakota Access protests. Indigenous struggles are exploited in the propaganda game played by the rival superpowers. With the struggles of the Tsleil-Waututh people of British Columbia against the T