PODCAST · news
CounterVortex Podcast
by Bill Weinberg
Support my work on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/countervortex
Episodes
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West Bank at genocidal threshold
The three-year commemoration of the October 7 attacks saw ugly manifestations around the world of the growing atmosphere of polarization and dogmatism on the Israel-Palestine dilemma. There is, alas, the grave potential for everything to get much worse. Benjamin Netanyahu, under siege politically...
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#ResistRobotRule
CounterVortex editor and ranter Bill Weinberg faces imminent cancelation of his landline and DSL service by corporate oppressor Verizon. As fiber-optic is not available in his building, this makes cable the only alternative—which means drilling through exterior walls, threatening the structural...
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Whither the Butlerian Jihad?
Protests happily continue to mount against the rapid encroachment of Artificial Intelligence over all spheres of society—and have met with some victories. Other responses, however, appear to have succumbed to desperation and counter-productive adventurism. But even the United Nations human rights...
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#Chinamaxxing & the betrayal of Tibet
As Trump prepares to meet with Xi Jinping at the White House, Students for a Free Tibet prepares a protest in Washington against the Chinese dictator. Protests and civil disobedience actions by New York City's Tibetan community have been mounting since the July self-immolation of longtime…
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9-11, fascism & the #PostTruth pathology
Amid the politicized ugliness and street skirmishes around the 25th anniversary of 9-11 in New York City, a conspiracy-theory confab convenes, glorifying MAGA martyr Charlie Kirk and headlining such high-profile dictator-propagandists and reactionary charlatans as Roger Waters, Jimmy Dore and Ben...
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Hindutva, Zionism and the Brad Lander incident
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), pillar of India's ruling fascistic ideology of Hindutva, held a rally in New York City—which was happily met with a large protest outside Madison Square Garden. Some protesters drew a parallel between Kashmir and Palestine, an obvious connection given the...
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In defense of real life
Summer of Ludd With the CounterVortex website debilitated by Chinese state-sponsored hackers, chief blogger and ranter Bill Weinberg takes heart in the vibrant scene unfolding this summer in the Lower East Side's Tompkins Square Park—which was kicked off with the anti-tech fest Summer of Ludd. In...
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Politics of the NYC synagogue attack
Following the attack on Manhattan's historic Central Synagogue, Jewish establishment voices are calling for stepped up surveillance and policing. But the threat, alas, is real. The assailant spewing the "fake Jews" epithet indicates either that he has been indoctrinated by the Neturei Karta cult,...
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Geopolitics of The Odyssey
The righties are apoplectic that Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey famously portrays a Black Helen—displaying their ignorance of the actual intercourse between Africa and the ancient Greek world. But apart from the cultural politics of the movie, the geopolitics of the Trojan War have all too much…
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Resist digital hegemony! V
Eighty-one years after Nagasaki, there is growing awareness of the heightening threat of nuclear war. There must be similar awareness of the existential threat to humanity posed by AI, and the hegemony of digital technology generally. The past week has seen cyber-attacks on critical water...
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AI: the case for abolition II
The popular case against the data centers now proliferating vertiginously across the United States emphasizes the ecological imperative. As water resources shrink, forcing emergency restrictions on use across the western states, voracious water consumption by the industry is just one of the ways...
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AI: geopolitics or abolition?
Nationwide protests against data centers and even demands to stop the AI race constitute a significant glimmer of hope as Artificial Intelligence colonizes every sphere of human existence with terrifying rapidity. The movement, however, faces potential pitfalls that could be fatal. The emergence…
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Resist digital hegemony! IV
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's executive order imposing a one-year moratorium or "pause" on new "hyperscale" data centers seems to be a ploy to undercut a more stringent measure passed by the state legislature. But it still represents an important victory—of course being met with outrage by the…
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Resist digital hegemony! III
At the UN's Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa warned that artificial intelligence poses the threat of an "information Armageddon." Scholars of critical theory perceive that online culture reproduces a "cycle of epistemic injustice" by fostering...
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Resist digital hegemony! II
Digital technology continues to colonize every sphere of human activity with terrifying rapidity, and Artificial Intelligence portends the actual abolition of humanity. Even the United Nations' belated and insufficient efforts to put a regulatory regime in place for AI acknowledge that humans…
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The Iran MoU in the Great Game
The "Memorandum of Understanding" signed by Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is contingent on the cooperation of two entities not a party to it: Hezbollah and Israel—which continues to commit war crimes in Lebanon. The provisions on Iran's nuclear program do not even recoup the...
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Resist digital hegemony!
Voices from within the academy are now raising the alarm about the decline of literacy under the relentless assault of totalized digital immersion—finally catching up to what CounterVortex blogger and ranter Bill Weinberg has been saying for years (although sneering denialism about the problem...
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The Space Trilogy revisited
CS Lewis is mainly seen as either a purveyor of goopy children's literature or a Christian moralist fuddy-duddy. But Lewis' Space Trilogy—fantastic literature for adults, or "philosophical science fiction"—also reveals him as a dystopian prophet in the tradition of Orwell. The first two books in...
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AI: the case for abolition
Trump's executive order purporting to establish a regulation regime for artificial intelligence actually serves the aim of a government partnership with the AI industry to advance the police state. Ironically, it is AI company Anthropic that calls for a moratorium on development of the technology...
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Hasan Piker & the pro-fascist pseudo-left
The administrative subpoenas issued for Hasan Piker and Medea Benjamin over their participation in the Cuba caravan are to be opposed—in part because the subpoenas will only give their sinister politics greater cachet among neophyte activists! Piker's shameless shilling for the dictatorships of…
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MAGA-fascism and anti-Semitic pseudo-anti-anti-Semitism III
The Justice Department "Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism" has announced a national propaganda tour—as the DoJ is explicitly targeting anti-fascists for prosecution. The tour also comes as the question of Israel has emerged as the critical issue in the split within MAGA—with elements of the...
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Is the Jewish homeland in outer space?
The escalating global crisis and the very real crimes of the "Jewish state" make the world a more precarious place for Jews—as recent events demonstrate all too clearly. The contradictions underlying Zionism make its promise of dignity and security for Jews illusory. Earlier efforts also proved…
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West Africa escalates toward genocide
The alarming reports that Nigeria has established "concentration camps" for the Fulani ethnic minority cast an ironic light on Nigeria's tension with the Sahel states of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso to the north. These three regimes have broken from the Western imperial camp (to embrace the…
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Can we at least 86 the bullshit?
The surreal spectacle of ex-FBI director James Comey surrendering to federal authorities to face charges of threatening Donald Trump over an innocent Instagram post illustrates the line between a mere conservative and an actual fascist. CounterVortex chief ranter Bill Weinberg had a personal…
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Trump to The Hague! III
In Episode 325 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case—political, legal and practical—for sending Trump to a jail cell at The Hague to face war crimes charges before the International Criminal Court (ICC). Actual precedent refutes the conventional wisdom that this...
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Trump to The Hague! II
International law scholars are warning that Trump may have committed war crimes in Iran, and that his ongoing threats to bomb civilian targets may constitute self-incrimination—by the same standards that US prosecutors used to gather evidence against Russia in Ukraine (before Trump suspended...
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Hungary, Peru and the electoral struggle
In Episode 323 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg offers a comparison of the simultaneous elections in Hungary and Peru—in which questions of democratic norms versus authoritarian rule both stood in the balance. The defeat of long-ruling quasi-dictator Viktor Orbán is being hailed as a...
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Trump to The Hague!
The exterminationist rhetoric that has accompanied Trump's massive bombardment of civilian infrastructure in Iran has been condemned by Amnesty International as possible incitement to genocide—a crime under international law. Can Trump join Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin as the next world...
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World revolution and the digital contradiction
Protests break out in Russia over the new internet restrictions imposed by the Putin regime, while social media and instant messaging have become the "new public square" for the Gen Z protests that have swept the planet over the past months. Exemplifying the identification with online culture, a...
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Tolstoy, Komyagin and the Other Russia
Eclipsed from the headlines by the war in the Middle East, Russia launches a new offensive in Ukraine with an unprecedented wave of drone and missile strikes across the country—even hitting an historic monastery in Lviv. Meanwhile, two young Russian poets, Artyom Kamardin and Yegor Shtovba…
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Resist cellular hegemony! II
In Episode 319 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg resumes his rant against the hegemony of digital and cellular technology—and takes heart from the local New York chapter of the Luddite Club: smart, free-thinking youth who are eschewing cellphones and social media in favor of "real…
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Neither MAGA-fascism nor Islamic Republic
As Trump and Netanyahu rain death down on Iran, the ayatollah regime paints any would-be protesters as pawns of the "enemy" and promises deadly repression. This positions the civil opposition poorly for any resumption of the uprising that the regime drowned in blood mere weeks ago—and points to…
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Resist cellular hegemony!
As the architecture of total surveillance falls inexorably into place, cellular technology comes to colonize more and more of daily human existence. Accepted in the banal interest of “convenience,” this trajectory ultimately ends in not only the extinction of human freedom, but the abolition of...
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Lunar hubris and the end of the Earth
Plans by Trump's fascist tech bros as well as Putin and Xi to build AI-run nuclear reactors on the Moon open jurisdictional dilemmas that far outpace the modest UN efforts to put a regulation regime in place for artificial intelligence. These plans are unveiled just as the Bulletin of the Atomic...
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Twilight of Rojava?
A last-minute "permanent ceasefire" may mean that northeast Syria is back from the brink of Arab-Kurdish ethnic war. But ceasefires have repeatedly broken down since fighting resumed earlier this year, with Damascus demanding disbandment of the Rojava autonomous zone, and the integration of its...
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Today Greenland, tomorrow the world
Trump's Greenland annexation drive is only secondarily about the strategic minerals, but fundamentally driven by a geostrategic design to divide the planet with Putin. Even if his belated and equivocal disavowal of military force at the Davos summit is to be taken as real, the threat has likely...
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Iran & Minneapolis: fearful symmetry
As ICE agents open fire on protesters in Minneapolis, Portland and Los Angeles, Trump frames his military threats against Iran in terms of human rights and democracy—an atypical nod back to the neocons. Following mass deadly repression, the protests in Iran appear to have abated—for now. In...
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Venezuela and Ukraine: forbidden symmetry
A close reading of the facts indicates that Putin and Trump worked out a global carve-up in which Russia gets Ukraine and the US gets Venezuela. This was implicitly acknowledged in the "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine enshrined in the National Security Strategy released by the White House...
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Somaliland and Western Sahara: forbidden symmetry
Israel has become the first country on Earth to recognize the de facto independent Republic of Somaliland, in exchange for a committment from Somaliland to join the Abraham Accords and recognize Israel. However, not three years ago, Israel joined the US as the only two countries on Earth to...
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MAGA-fascism and the struggle in Nigeria
With his Christmas air-strikes on Nigeria, Trump is blundering into a conflict fundamentally driven by desertification related to the very climate change that he denies, and which now threatens democratic rule throughout the West African region. And while the Muslim-Christian sectarian strife…
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NYC: did socialism really beat fascism?
Zohran Mamdani's Oval Office lovefest with Donald Trump was a dangerous legitimization of fascism, and has won New York no respite—as the city was targeted for ICE raids mere days later. These were happily met with a strong street response by progressive New Yorkers, and Zohran has reiterated his...
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Trump Corollary: spheres of influence, white supremacy
Donald Trump's new National Security Strategy instates a "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine. Like the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, which was used to justify the "gunboat diplomacy" of that era, this new corollary openly calls for dividing the world into spheres of influence—with the Western...
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Trump for War-is-Peace Prize III
Trump's perverse ambition to win the Nobel Peace Prize was given a boost by his "winning" of the first "FIFA Peace Prize"—just as he is carrying out illegal deadly air-strikes in the Caribbean, and threatening Venezuela with war. "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth is denying claims that he gave…
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Trump for War-is-Peace Prize II
Trump continues to pursue his perverse ambition to win the Nobel Peace Prize—now proffering "peace" plans for Ukraine and Gaza that would actually reward war crimes, and therefore portend wider war. In both cases these new "peace" plans are merely sanitized recapitulations of earlier…
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The new Syria in the Great Game
Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa's White House meeting with Donald Trump followed the removal of his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from the list of designated "terrorist organizations" both at the State Department and at the UN. It also coincided with raids against ISIS by his security…
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NYC turns up the volume! II
Zohran Mamdani hasn't even taken office, and already there has been a physical skirmish between ICE agents and NYPD cops in Washington Heights. This portends a full-on confrontation between federal and municipal power in the months to come—with the potential (yes, really) for civil war. In…
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NYC turns up the volume!
The anarchist critique of Zohran Mamdani's election in the New York City mayoral race reminds us that "socialist faces in high places" do not bring fundamental change, and Gotham has seen mayors before elected on populist platforms only to capitulate to the permanent government dominated by the...
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Darfur again —a genocide foretold
Throughout the 18-month siege of El Fasher, capital of Sudan's North Darfur state, international human rights observers had been warning that the city's residents faced a general massacre when it eventually fell to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Yet nothing was done, apart from ineffectual Great...
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Fascism, socialism and the NYC mayoral race
In Episode 301 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg offers his anarchist annotation of the New York City mayoral candidates' debate. He makes the case that the promise of "socialism" represented by Zohran Mamdani is (alas) not as real as the threat of fascism represented by Curtis Sliwa—or...
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Episode 300: the CounterVortex meta-rant
In Episode 300 of the CounterVortex podcast (which coincidentally marks 24 years since the launch of his news blog in the immediate aftermath of 9-11), Bill Weinberg takes stock of the CounterVortex mission in light of the now urgently dire world situation—and makes an appeal for support from the...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Support my work on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/countervortex
HOSTED BY
Bill Weinberg
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How many episodes does CounterVortex Podcast have?
CounterVortex Podcast currently has 348 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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Support my work on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/countervortex
How often does CounterVortex Podcast release new episodes?
CounterVortex Podcast publishes regularly with 348 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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Who hosts CounterVortex Podcast?
CounterVortex Podcast is created and hosted by Bill Weinberg.
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