CounterVortex Podcast

In Episode 79 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg marks the 26th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, and reads selections from Surviving the Peace: The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina by Peter Lippman. In his final chapter, "Atrocity Revisionism," Lippman deftly deconstructs the rank genocide denial we have seen from paradoxical icons of the "left" such as Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. Presaging the similar denialism now seen concerning Syria, these "left" pundits created an impression among their gullible admirers that there was no genocide at Srebrenica—despite the fact that the remains of over 7,000 of the presumed 8,000 victims of the massacre have now been exhumed from mass graves and identified by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).

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Production by Chris Rywalt

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In Episode 78 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg offers a report and analysis of the "100 Years of Chinese Communist Party Oppression" rally outside the Chinese consultate in New York City, jointly organized by groups including Project Black Mask Hong Kong, Students for a Free Tibet, the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress NY-NJ, and the Southern Mongolia Human Rights Information Center. But amid all the cries to free Hong Kong, free Tibet, free East Turkestan and free Southern Mongolia, it was only Tiananmen Square massacre survivor Fengsou Zhou of the group Humanitarian China who raised the demand "Free China!" Will liberation of the Hongkongers, Tibetans, Uyghurs and Southern Mongolians be possible without buildng solidariy against the dictatorship with Han Chinese?

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https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly episode via Patreon. We now have 24 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 25!

In Episode 77 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg applauds The Young Turks for challenging the increasingly hegemonic pro-Assad consensus on the American "left," with incisive programming on the 2018 Douma chemical attack and this year's sham elections that confirmed the dictator's rule. For calling out the relentless disinformation, they are of course coming under withering attack from Aaron Maté, Jimmy Dore, Katie Halper, Roger Waters and other stateside exponents of the Kremlin propaganda machine. Disgracefully, similar exponents, e.g., Ben Norton, are now predictably lining up behind the Burmese junta. Forthright repudiation of this toxic tendency is long overdue. But does the TYT critique go far enough?

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Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly episode via Patreon. We now have 24 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 25!

In Episode 76 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses and critiques The Duty to Stand Aside: Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Wartime Quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort by Eric Laursen. Orwell and Comfort were divided on the question of Allied bombardment of Germany in World War II—although they both united to support the free-speech rights of anarchist anti-war dissidents. With fascism and genocide again emerging on the world stage, their quarrell sheds light on the contemporary wars in Syria, Libya and elsewhere—and how progressives and especially anarchists in the West should respond.

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https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly episode via Patreon. We now have 23 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 24!

In Episode 75 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines distorted reportage on the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline by Russian hackers. The disaster illustrates the urgent need for a crash conversion from fossil fuels—but also from digital technology. Signs of hope are seen in the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, the recent indigenous-led protests against the Line 3 Pipeline in Minnesota, and the gas bill strike launched by Brooklyn residents to oppose the North Brooklyn Pipeline that would cut through their neighborhoods.

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly episode via Patreon. We now have 23 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 24!

In Episode 74 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rises to the odious duty of deflating an idol of his youth—former Pink Floyd frontman and creative genius Roger Waters. While he grandstands against the bombardment of Gaza, Waters spreads propaganda that seeks to deny and whitewash the equal and even greater crimes of Syira's genocidal dictator Bashar Assad. Pink Floyd's 1979 album The Wall satirized rock stars who flirted with fascism, but Waters has now perversely turned into just what he was satirizing back then.

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly episode via Patreon. We now have 23 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 24!

In Episode 73 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Thomas Moore, anthropologist, advocate for indigenous cultural survival, and author of the newly released book, Madre de Dios: Refugio de Pueblos Originarios. The remote rainforest region of Madre de Dios in Peru's southern Amazon is a last refuge for isolated indigenous peoples, but is now massively threatened by mining, timber and other resource interests that operate in a semi-legal gray zone in a nexus with criminal networks. Peru has made some progress in complying with international norms on protection of isolated peoples, but these advances stand to be dramatically reversed if far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori comes to power in the pending run-off election.

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly episode via Patreon. We now have 23 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 24!

In Episode 72 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg repudiates the propaganda line that "Israel has a right to defend itself," exposes this as justification of war crimes, and obfuscation of the reality of apartheid both sides of the Green Line. He also examines the United Nations definition of "genocide" to ask whether Israel's war on Gaza may now be crossing the "genocidal threshold" that Israeli society has long been approaching, in both rhetoric and action that dehumanize the Palestinians.

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per episode via Patreon. We have made it to our initial goal of $30 per episode! Thank you for your support, and please keep it coming!

In Episode 71 of the CounterVortex podcast, host Bill Weinberg is himself interviewed by Kimberly Springer, curator of the Oral History Archives at Columbia University. Weinberg traces his life trajectory, from his early radicalization as a teenage anarchist, through the Tompkins Square uprising on the Lower East Side in the 1980s, his 20 years as co-producer of the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade on WBAI, his purge from the airwaves for his political dissent, and finally his contemporary work as an organic historian with the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per episode via Patreon. We have made it to our initial goal of $30 per episode! Thank you for your support, and please keep it coming!

In Episode 70 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Daniel Woldu, US representative of Omna Tigray, an international network calling for action to halt the genocide in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Woldu discusses the abrogation of Tigray's self-rule under the Ethiopian regime of Abiy Ahmed, atrocities that have taken place under cover of an information blockade in the region, the ongoing plunder and weaponization of humanitarian aid, why Eritrea has intervened on the side of the Ethiopian central government, and the urgent need for accountability and an independent investigation into war crimes and genocide.

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per episode via Patreon. We have made it to our initial goal of $30 per episode! Thank you for your support, and please keep it coming!