According to Oct. 12 reports in Pakistan's media, the Afghan Taliban and affiliated militants launched an attack from the Afghan side of the border, killing at least 23 Pakistani troops and injuring some 30 others. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar stated that troops responded to cross-border raids by "Fitna-e-Khawarij and Fitna-e-Hindustan terrorist elements."* This appears to be a reference to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which Islamabad accuses the Afghan Taliban of providing sanctuary to. In contrast, a statement from Hamdullah Fitrat, spokesman for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, said that conditions on the "imaginary line" with Pakistan are under control.

Eleven individuals deported from the US to Ghana last month filed a lawsuit against the Ghana government, charging that they were illegally held in a military detention camp. The legal action reflects the chaotic fallout following the deportations, which have resulted in deportees being scattered and "dumped" into neighboring African countries. The deportees are of multiple West African nationalities, none of which is Ghanaian.

Trump's call at Quantico for the armed forces to use American cities as "training grounds" and fight the "enemy within" was quickly followed by militarized ICE raids in Chicago and mobilization of the National Guard. His National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), issued four days before the Quantico meeting with Pentagon brass, explicitly identifies "anti-fascism" as a threat that must be targeted with the full power of the state. In Episode 298 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to deconstruct the propaganda and examine the apparatus being employed to impose a fascist order in the United States—and explore the prospects for resistance, and even non-cooperation within the rank-and-file of the federal forces.

Trump's executive order designating Antifa a "domestic terrorist organization" was quickly followed by a mobilization of federal troops to anarchist hotbed Portland and a highly unusual call for a gathering of military brass from around the world in Quantico—to take place the day before the government will be shut down if a Congressional deal is not reached. These evident preparations for mass repression, or even an auto-golpe and establishment of a Trump dictatorship, were conveniently followed by a sniper attack on an ICE facility in Dallas. In Episode 297 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg argues that Trump's attempted criminalization of anti-fascism portends an imminent consolidation of fascist rule in the United States—and asks what we're going to do about it.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Sept. 22 designating Antifa a "domestic terrorist organization." The order calls Antifa a "militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government." Asserting a pattern of political violence, the order instructs executive agencies to "investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations" of Antifa and related persons. A fact sheet from the Trump administration describes examples of political violence which it attributes to Antifa, including assaults against Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

The case of Kilmar Abrego García, shunted from detention in one country to another, with no end in sight, recalls the World War II-era classic of dystopian fiction The Twenty-Fifth Hour by Romanian writer C. Virgil Gheorghiu. The wartime transnational detention system, harrowingly depicted in the novel, was seen by Gheorghiu as an inevitable manifestation of our technocratic civilization that exalts the machine above humanity, ultimately resulting in the treatment of human beings as mere cogs in the state-industrial apparatus. This process is more advanced today with the current hypertrophy of the technosphere, which is related to the re-emergence of abuses approaching those of the fascist era, and ultimately bodes poorly for humanity's future. In Episode 294 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes an unsparing look at this grim juncture for the human race.

Kilmar Abrego García, released from extrajudicial detention in El Salvador, now fights deportation to Uganda. Hundreds of the Venezuelans sent by the US to the Salvadoran prison gulag have now been returned to Venezuela in a prisoner swap. But El Salvador remains on the growing list of human rights offendors cultivated by the Trump regime as surrogate detention states. The Trump State Department's farcical "Human Rights Report" seeks to sanitize dictator Nayib Bukele's anti-crime police state. And adding to the Orwellian nature of the Trump-Bukele axis, the US Justice Department has dropped charges against MS-13 leaders who collaborated in the consolidation of the new Salvadoran dictatorship. In Episode 293 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg exposes the perverse charade.

Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen on Aug. 19 announced the opening of a new immigration detention center in the southwest corner of the state. National Guard Maj-Gen. Craig Strong called the move a step in supporting "the president's initiatives for homeland security." The present McCook "Work Ethic Camp," run by the state Corrections Department, will be transformed from a minimum-security facility, and its holding capacity will be expanded from about 185 to approximately 300.