In Episode 181 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the strange reality that the Barbie move has been banned in Vietnam over a brief image of a world map appearing to show the "nine-dash line" demarcating China's unilaterally claimed territory in the South China Sea. While US-China brinkmanship over Taiwan has won headlines recently, Beijing's maritime dispute with Hanoi holds unsettling potential for escalation. In a nearly surreal paradox (for those who remember their history) Vietnam has actually been tilting to the US in the new cold war with China. It has also been increasingly resorting to internal police-state measures to protect the interests of foreign capital in the country. All of this constitutes a rebuke both to the neoliberals, who cling to the discredited dogma that "free markets" inevitably lead to peace and democracy, and to the tankies, who rally around both the regimes in Beijing and Hanoi, in defiance of political reality. 

In Episode 180 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg compares two demonstrations outside the UN on the same day—one in support of Puerto Rican independence, timed for the meeting of the Special Committee on Decolonization, and one in support of Russian anti-war dissidents, LGBTQ people and indigenous peoples, now all facing harsh repression. The police state tactics seen in Putin's consolidating dictatorship mirror many of those US colonialism has used in Puerto Rico. And Russia's indigenous peoples have been denied self-determination as surely as the Puerto Ricans. Yet the presence of "tankies"—pseudo-leftists in the camp of Russian imperialism—at the independentista rally illustrates how those who support freedom in Puerto Rico and in Russia have been pitted against each other. Yet another example of how a global divide-and-rule racket is the essence of the state system.

In Episode 179 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg compares the military and settler attacks on Palestinian towns in the West Bank with the eruption of ethnic violence in Northeast India's state of Manipur—and uncovers the unlikely connection between the two. The Kuki indigenous people now targeted in Manipur includes a sub-group called the Bnei Menashe, who claim descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, and practice an ancient form of Judaism. Israeli NGOs are raising the alarm about the violence in Manipur, but also exploiting it, luring Bnei Menashe to emigrate to Israel—with some of them settled on the West Bank, serving as demographic cannon fodder for the Zionist project. The Kuki and Palestinians, both land-rooted peoples usurped of their traditional territory, are pitted against each other—despite the convergence of their enemies in a Hindutva-Zionist alliance.

In Episode 178 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes the new eruption of ethnic violence in Northeast India's state of Manipur, which was the scene of far deadlier inter-communal clashes last month. The spark was the current bid by the Meitei people to become a "scheduled tribe," granting them access to resource-rich forestlands. This is opposed by the Kuki and Naga peoples, whose tribes are already "scheduled"—but are nonetheless being targeted for eviction from Manipur's forestlands under the guise of a crackdown on opium cultivation. The Kuki and Naga leadership perceive a land-grab for their ancestral forest territory by the Meitei—the dominant group in Manipur, who already control the best agricultural land in the state's central Imphal Valley. The Kuki (including their Jewish sub-group, the Bnei Menashe) and Naga have long waged insurgencies seeking territorial autonomy, or even independence from India. And both their traditional territories extend across the border into Burma (where the Kuki are known as the Chin), pointing to potential convergence of the armed conflicts either side of the international line. 

In Episode 177 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the unfolding Kakhovka dam disaster in Ukraine, an evident design by Russia to forestall a Ukrainian counter-offensive into the occupied southeast of the country. Massive flooding has been unleashed downstream, imperiling some of the world's most important farmland. Upstream, coolant water to the Zaporizhzhia power plant is threatened, escalating Russia's "reckless nuclear gamble" at the facility. It is true that the disaster gravely impacts much Russian-held territory, including the Crimea Peninsula. However, despite the Kremlin's official denials of responsibility, Russia's online internal propaganda organs are bragging about it. The Wagner Group mercenary outfit calls the disaster "beautiful" and boasts that the destruction of dams on the Dnipro River is a "trump card" against Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned last October that Russia was planning to destroy the Kakhovka dam as a "false flag" attack to blame on Kyiv. The breaching of the dam also comes days after Moscow conveniently instated a four-year moratorium on investigation of industrial disasters in Russian-held territory in Ukraine. And critics note that Russia has never committed a war crime it didn't deny. In any case, the cataclysm on the Dnipro provides a grim test case as the International Criminal Court moves to adopt "ecocide" as a recognized international crime. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

A tankie agent carried out "false flag" vandalism of a synagogue and other Jewish targets in Detroit, attempting to blame it on the Azov Battalion and tar Ukrainians. She turns out to have been a member of the retro-Stalinist Workers World Party and a staff writer for openly dictator-shilling MintPress News—which has itself engaged in "false flag" disinformation, blaming the Syrian rebels for chemical attacks against their own strongholds by the Bashar Assad regime. MintPress has also received funding directly from the Assad Lobby. In Episode 176 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines this ultra-cynical propaganda nexus, and asks whether such agents are mere "useful idiots" for the Kremlin, or actual conscious assets operating in the "gray zone"—the sphere of "hybrid warfare" in which the line between state and non-state actors is blurred. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

As Russian propaganda portrays Ukraine as a "Nazi state," exemplifying fascist pseudo-anti-fascism, actual far-right links among forces backed by Kyiv constitute "bad facts" for the Ukrainian cause. In Episode 175 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the self-declared Freedom of Russia Legion and other forces involved in the armed incursion into  Belgorod oblast. The incursion force seems to have constituted a strange liberal-fascist alliance, joining fighters seeking a democratic revolution and those seeking an even more totalitarian state. Meanwhile, anti-fascist forces, including Russian anarchist defectors, are also fighting for Ukraine. And an armed resistance has emerged in Belarus—with no indication that its politics are anything other than pro-democratic. Is there hope for a new Russian revolution? Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

In Episode 174 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg deconstructs the toxic meme that once again recycles the Nazi calumny against Ukraine—this time zeroing in on a trident insignia worn by President Volodymyr Zelensky. While the Ukrainian trident has deep roots in the country's history, the meme alleges that the version worn by Zelensky is that used by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), of World War II-era right-wing militant Stepan Bandera—whose role as a Nazi collaborator is in any case dramatically overstated in Kremlin propaganda. Zelensky lost family members to the Nazis (as he reminded the Russian people in his final appeal for peace in February 2022) and is something of a dissident from the personality cult around Bandera. So is he likely to be wearing an OUN symbol?