In Episode 204 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg returns to the persisting controversy around the slogan "From the River to the Sea"—portrayed as either a call to genocide or a cry for liberation. Much mainstream media coverage has dishonestly accepted the prior interpretation as a fait accompli. On the other hand, displays of unseemly enthusiasm for the Hamas attacks by certain sectors of the Palestine solidarity movement have provided propaganda fodder for Israel and its stateside pressure groups. This is (at least) a tactical error that abets moves toward campus censorship of pro-Palestinian voices. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Ka-chiu Lee applauded the "good turnout" in the city's Dec. 10 "patriots-only" District Council elections—despite a tunrout of only 27.5%, the lowest in any race since the return to Chinese rule in 1997. He also charged that protesters had attempted to "sabotage" the vote. These were the first district-level polls since Hong Kong's government overhauled the electoral system, introducing changes that effectively made it impossible for pro-democratic candidates to run. Several pro-democracy hopefuls failed to obtain the required nominations from government-appointed committees. Most of the city's leading democracy advocates are behind bars, in exile, or have dropped out of politics.

A district court in Kazan, capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, on Dec. 1 extended the detention of Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist holding joint Russian and United States citizenship. Kurmasheva faces allegations of failing to comply with Russia's stringent "foreign agent" registration law. The decision, extending her pre-trial detention through early February, was made without actually setting a trial date.  

The Nigerian military says it is investigating an army drone attack on a religious gathering at a village in northwest Kaduna state that killed 85 civilians and wounded more than 60 others on Dec. 4. Residents of Tudun Biri village were holding festivities for the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (Mawlid, or Eid-e-Milad an-Nabi) when the drone struck. Since 2017, hundreds of civilians have been killed in air-strikes carried out by the Nigerian military, ostensibly targeting armed rebel and bandit groups, according to monitors. (TNH, AP)

English-language media accounts are calling Argentina's far-right president-elect Javier Milei a "self-described anarcho-capitalist," but this appears to be a translation error. In Episode 203 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg sets the record straight, exposing "anarcho-capitalism" as an oxymoron and the fascistic Milei as antithetical to everything that Argentina's proud anarchist tradition ever stood for. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

In what is being hailed as an historic decision, on Nov. 24, an appeals court in Ecuador ordered the return of a 42,360-hectare expanse of the Amazon rainforest to the Siekopai indigenous people, generations after they were driven from the territory by the military. The Provincial Court of Sucumbios ruled that the Siekopai (also known as Secoya) retain indigenous title to their ancestral homeland, known as Pë’këya, which lies along the border with Peru in remote country.

Since the "humanitarian pause" ended, Israel has focused its air-strikes on Gaza's southern city of Khan Younis—now swelled with hundreds of thousands displaced from the north of the Strip. Along with the strikes, Israeli planes are dropping leaflets on the city, warning the populace to flee further south to Rafah on the Egyptian border—despite having earlier declared the southern Strip a "safe zone." Most of the Strip's 2.3 million population has already fled to the south, and Egyptian officials believe that Israel is preparing to next drive them across the border into the Sinai desert. The aim of the Khan Younis strikes is to "disrupt the mass of the population from the south and push it towards Egypt," one Cairo official told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has categorically rejected a forced resettlement, and the idea is generating anger among Egyptians. (The New Arab, BBC News)

In a disturbing coincidence in Missoula, Mont., a Palestine solidarity march to protest the bombardment of Gaza ran into a separate but simultaneous anti-Israel march by neo-Nazis. Since the Gaza bombardment began, open neo-Nazi marches have also been reported from Madison, Wisc., Dallas, Tex., and elsewhere around the country. Yet, in addition to displaying enthusiasm for Hamas, their banners also read "REFUGEES NOT WELCOME"—and we may assume it was a similar ultra-right xenophobe who shot three Palestinian youths in Burlington, Vt. This makes it all the more maddening that elements of the "left" share with the Nazis an unseemly enthusiasm for Hamas—providing much fodder for the pro-Israel and "anti-woke" right. In Episode 201 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to explore the dilemma. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.