In a landmark 300-page report released Dec. 5, Amnesty International has accused Israeli authorities of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The report outlines three specific violations of the Genocide Convention: the killing of Palestinians, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions intended to bring about their physical destruction.

President Joe Biden is reported to have authorized Ukraine to use US-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) for strikes deep inside Russia. In interviews with both the UK's Times Radio and the BBC news program The World At One on Nov. 18, former Putin advisor and semi-official mouthpiece Sergei Markov responded to the move by warning of an imminent Russian nuclear strike—not just on Ukraine but on the United States and Britain. "In the worst scenario, the nuclear war happens before Christmas of this year," he told the BBC. "Probably you will not be able to say 'Merry Christmas' because you will stay in the hole trying to hide away [your] family from the nuclear catastrophe. It can develop very, very quickly."

As Trump assembles his cabinet of dangerous cranks and far-right extremists—Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Tom Homan, RFK Jr., Mike Huckabee, Chris Wright—his election is being openly celebrated by reigning fascists and arch-reactionaries from Russia to Hungary to Bosnia. The fascist world order that began to consolidate under his first term is poised to be cemented under a global triumvirate of tyranny—Trump, Putin and Xi. In this light, Biden's cooperation in the transfer of power is a shameful betrayal not only of the nation but of humanity—and Trump has still failed to sign the ethics pledge mandated by the protocol of presidential transition, making clear his ill intent. He has clearly stated his intention to set himself up as president for life. And evidence that the Kremlin directly hacked the vote on behalf of Trump (rather than merely using disinformation propaganda, as in 2016) warrants investigation.

In Episode 248 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the New York Times coverage of the ugly turn in the pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University, and warns against the targeting of Jews in the guise of a misguided supposed "anti-Zionism." The ongoing genocide in Gaza urgently demands protest, but just as urgently demands tactically and analytically astute protest that does not play into the cynical weaponization of the accusation of anti-Semitism by Zionist propaganda. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

With Lebanon under bombardment and the world awaiting Israel's response to the Iranian missile attacks on its territory, fears mount that Iran's nuclear facilities could be targeted—which, in addition to being an environmental disaster in its own right, could represent the crossing of a moral threshold toward the use of nuclear weapons. So two theaters of the world conflict—the Middle East and Ukraine—now constitute a looming nuclear threat. Meanwhile, the other horsemen of the apocalypse continue their relentless advance—climate change, cyber-based disinformation and the ultimate replacement of humanity by artificial intelligence. In Episode 246 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg looks for glimmers of hope in emerging signs of human resistance—such as the East Coast dockworkers' strike, which is demanding a ban on all automation at the ports.

Chile filed a declaration of intervention Sept. 13 in South Africa's genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The South American country submitted its declaration under Article 63 of the Statute of the ICJ, which gives states a right to intervene in the interpretation of a multilateral convention. Chile's intervention focuses on the duty to prevent and punish genocide under the Genocide Convention.

Four Black nationalists affiliated with the Uhuru Movement, an arm of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP), are on trial for acting as agents of a Russian propaganda network, in what they are calling "the free speech trial of the century." Regardless of whether their activities were protected by the First Amendment, the case reveals the very strangest of political bedfellows. Tucker Carlson, who similarly serves as a conduit for Russian propaganda, is also mentioned (although not charged) in a new federal indictment. Carlson is scheduled to appear onstage with JD Vance later this month, and recently hosted an uncloseted Nazi-nostalgist on his Twitter program. The absurd irony of the APSP platforming Kremlin demonization of Ukraine as a "Nazi" state is heightened by Russia's serial massacres of Black Africans in its new military adventures on the continent. The Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), which seemingly cultivated Uhuru/APSP, is similarly cultivating white supremacists, who are overtly Trump-aligned and marched at the Charlottesville hate-fest in 2017. The ultimate stateside beneficiary of this Kremlin-orchestrated propaganda effort is of course Donald Trump—who as president in 2020 sought to unleash the military against that year's Black Lives Matter uprising. Yet while too many "radicals" take the Kremlin bait, once-reviled "liberals" like the National Urban League actually take a more progressive position on Russia and Ukraine. In Episode 243 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg explores how the American radical left went through the proverbial looking glass, including with analogies from the (last) Cold War.

Amid global protests over the genocide in Gaza, the hypertrophy of digital technology and its colonization of every sphere of human existence continue to advance, portending the ultimate eclipse of human culture and real life, the death of literacy, and the hegemony of saturation propaganda. While the Arab Revolution of 2011 was facilitated through social media, those same platforms are today being used as conduits for propaganda and disinformation lubricating the reconsolidation of dictatorships. This is all about to get much worse—with propaganda especially getting exponentially more sophisticated—through the advent of artificial intelligence. What is urgently mandated—ultimately, even to be able to effectively oppose genocides and dictatorships—is a revolution of everyday life, reclaiming human reality from digital totalitarianism. The uprising in El Salvador against the mandatory imposition of Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 still stands as a glimmer of hope, pointing the potentiality of this kind of revolution—even if the aspiring autocrat Nayib Bukele, who made Bitcoin a national currency, put down the uprising and is now consolidating an authoritarian regime. Bill Weinberg rants against the digital Borg in Episode 242 of the CounterVortex podcast.