CounterVortex Podcast Bill Weinberg

In Episode 166 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses how a little-noted US-Mexico dispute on trade and agricultural policy has serious implications for the survival of the human race. Washington is preparing to file a complaint under terms of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement over Mexico's decree banning imports of GMO corn, slated to take effect in January 2024. Concerns about the (unproven) health effects of consuming GMO foods miss the real critique—which is ecological, social and political. GMO seeds are explicitly designed as part of an "input package" intended to get farmers hooked on pesticides and petrochemical fertilizers, and protect the "intellectual property" of private corporations. Agribusiness, which can afford the "input package," comes to dominate the market. Eased by so-called "free trade" polcities, agbiz forces the peasantry off the market and ultimately off the land—a process very well advanced in Mexico since NAFTA took effect in 1994, and which is intimately related to the explosion of the narco economy and mass migration. The pending decree in Mexico holds the promise of regenerating sustainable agrculture based on native seed stock. It is also a critical test case, as countries such as Kenya have recently repealed similar policies in light of the global food crisis.

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Production by Chris Rywalt

Books discussed: Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction by Helen Anne Curry, University of California Press, 2022; War On the Land: Ecology and Politics in Central America, by Bill Weinberg, Zed Books, 1991

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In Episode 165 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes the simultaneous 12th aniversary of the start of both the NATO intervention in Libya and the Syrian revolution. The NATO intervention was at root a bid to control the political trajectory of the Arab Revolution, and bring about a Thermidor in which Western-backed technocrats would be ascendant. The Syrian people seized back the initiative with their popular uprising against the Bashar Assad dictatorship. But, following the precedent set in Libya, the Great Powers have intervened, seeking to impose their own order—over the heads of the Syrian people. This time, however, the principal interventionist power has not been the West seeking to coopt the revolution, but Russia seeking to prop up the genocidal ancien régime.

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Production by Chris Rywalt

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In Episode 164 of the CounterVortex podcast Bill Weinberg again calls out The Nation magazine for essentially advocating Ukraine's military defeat and loss of territory to Russian aggression in the Orwellian name of "peace" and even "saving Ukraine."

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Production by Chris Rywalt

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In Episode 163 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg deconstructs the
propaganda campaign that would exploit the devastating earthquake to get the
sanctions lifted on the genocidal Bashar Assad regime in Syria. The
earthquake was actually a windfall for the drive to "normalize" the regime.
Listen and find out why the superficially plausible arguments of the "no
sanctions" line are cynical and intentionally misleading.

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

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In Episode 162 of the CounterVortex podcast Bill Weinberg reviews Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández.

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Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly podcast via Patreon -- or $2 for our new special offer! We now have 52 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 53!

In Episode 161 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg provides an overview of the under-reported conflicts in West Africa, where government forces and allied paramilitary groups battle multiple jihadist insurgencies affiliated either with ISIS or al-Qaeda on a franchise model. Horrific massacres have been committed by both sides, but the Western media have only recently started to take note because of the geopolitical angle that has emerged: both Mali and Burkina Faso have cut long-standing security ties with France, the former colonial power, and brought in mercenaries from Russia's Wagner Group. In both countries, the pastoralist Fulani people have been stigmatized as "terrorists" and targeted for extra-judicial execution and even massacre—a potentially pre-genocidal situation. But government air-strikes on Fulani communities in Nigeria have received no coverage in the Western media, because of the lack of any geopolitical rivalry there; Nigeria remains firmly in the Anglo-American camp.

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

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Production by Chris Rywalt

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