Sudan is Now Confronting Its Most Severe Food Security Crisis on Record

By Khalid Siddig, Rob Vos 

July 8, 2024

Source: The Conversation



After 14 months of escalating internal conflict, Sudan is now confronting its most severe food security crisis on record. The latest situation report, released on 27 June, reveals a grim picture: more than half the population of 47.2 million is facing acute food insecurity. This signifies severe lack of food, high malnutrition and starvation leading to death.

There is also a high risk of famine in multiple regions if immediate action is not taken. Famine is a severe and widespread lack of food that leads to extreme hunger, malnutrition and increased mortality in a population.

Food insecurity is measured on the widely accepted five-stage Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). The five phases range from “minimal” (people have enough food) through “stressed”, “crisis” and “emergency” to “famine” (extreme lack of food, starvation, very high death rates). This scale is intended to help governments and other humanitarian actors quickly understand a situation and take action.

Sudan’s deteriorating situation stems from an escalation in conflict and organised violence among Sudanese armed factions in the civil war that started in April 2023. This has also made the work of monitoring the food crisis particularly hard. The IPC’s technical working group for Sudan has faced huge challenges in updating its assessment analysis. These include security threats, lack of physical access, and data gaps in hotspot areas.

Nonetheless, in March, it published an alert about the situation and the urgent need for action to prevent famine. The new analysis, conducted between late April and early June, confirms the worst fears.

We are agricultural economists with more than 50 years of research between us. Our recent work includes Famine in Gaza, questions for research and preventive action and Food security and social assistance in Sudan during armed conflict. It is our view that with no end to the conflict in sight and difficulties to provide humanitarian assistance, the prospects are dire for tens of millions in Sudan.
Rapidly rising acute food insecurity

In its December 2023 analysis of the situation, the IPC projected that 17.7 million people (37% of the population) could face crisis-level conditions or worse between October 2023 and February 2024. Of these, 4.9 million were in food “emergency” conditions. The situation has since worsened dramatically.

During April and May nearly 21.3 million people across Sudan were estimated to face high levels of acute food insecurity. These included 153,000 people in famine-like conditions, the most severe phase of food insecurity classification. It’s plausible that between June and September 2024, the number of people facing crisis-level acute food insecurity will rise to 25.6 million. This is a 45% increase from the previous projection period (October 2023 to February 2024).

This scenario anticipates:

Ongoing conflict, particularly in North Darfur, West and South Kordofan, Khartoum, and Al Jazirah states, leading to increased displacement, with heavily populated south-eastern states also being affected.


Economic shocks, due to conflict-related disruptions, resulting in a contracting economy, rising inflation and below-average food production.


Market disruptions, particularly in key trade hubs, worsening food shortages and price hikes.


Restricted humanitarian access, especially in conflict-affected areas, and above-average rainfall which may cause flooding, further complicating food security but offering some agricultural opportunities in accessible regions.


An elevated risk of famine during the same period for 14 areas in nine states. Greater Darfur, Greater Kordofan, Al Jazirah states, and parts of Khartoum are the most affected areas.


The IPC projects that there could be some improvement in food security conditions during the harvest season from October 2024 to February 2025. As a result, the total of those facing crisis-level or worse food insecurity could fall to about 21 million people. But this will still leave 109,000 people under famine-like conditions.
Key drivers

The main driver of this rapidly worsening situation is the intensification of Sudan’s conflict and insecurity situation. The conflict has restricted movements of goods and services, disrupted markets, and hindered agricultural production and humanitarian access, thus severely reducing the availability and access to food for millions of Sudanese.

The food crisis is not a new phenomenon. It is part of a recurring syndrome of triple crises comprising protracted civil conflicts, climate shocks and economic instability. Beside the ongoing war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, the country has a recent history of severe civil conflicts. These include Africa’s longest civil war (1983-2005) and the Darfur crisis (2003) among others.

These have triggered economic woes, including skyrocketing prices of basic commodities, severely eroding food access for much of the population.

Additionally, climate shocks such as prolonged droughts and severe flooding have devastated crop yields and livestock. The national cereal production in 2023 was estimated to be 46% below levels of the previous year.

The conflict has forced the displacement of more than 10 million people. Sudan now counts 10.1 million internally displaced persons and 2.2 million refugees. This makes it the country with the highest number of forcibly displaced people in the world. The internally displaced persons and refugees have lost their livelihoods and are largely dependent on humanitarian assistance. As the conflict is hampering access to such assistance, these are among the people most at risk of famine.

Economic conditions have recently worsened further. Disrupted supply chains and production capacity have pushed up already very high prices of food and all other basic necessities. In some areas of the country prices of staple commodities have tripled since May compared with the most recent five-year period average.
Can widespread famine be averted?

To avert a famine, a de-escalation of the conflict is needed to create better security conditions and put an end to the current disruptions in markets, supply chains and distribution channels. The IPC working group on Sudan also makes these recommendations for immediate action:

Restore humanitarian access so that humanitarian agencies can get safe and sustained access to areas with populations most in need.

Substantially increase the amount of food assistance and other essential supplies to prevent loss of life and support livelihoods.

Scale up nutrition interventions, particularly for vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant women.

Support livelihoods, including distribution of agricultural inputs and creating safe zones for farming.

It is crucial for the international community to respond swiftly to avert a humanitarian disaster in Sudan.

VENEZUELA

María Corina Machado: What the Mainstream Media Isn’t Saying About Her

By Steve Ellner

July 8, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Maria Corina Machado at the WEF | Photo by Bel Pedrosa via wikimedia commons

For every decision Venezuela’s opposition has made in recent months, the far-rightist María Corina Machado has had the last word. Center-right leaders, meanwhile, have ended up capitulating to her demands. Her success has much to do with the backing she has received from two faithful allies: Washington and the mainstream media.

With all the hype over María Corina Machado being the only real hope for Venezuela to overcome 25 years of autocratic rule, the mainstream media loses sight of several key factors surrounding the nation’s presidential elections slated for July 28. First, the U.S. has played a central role in favor of Machado’s candidacy and, once it was clear that the government of Nicolas Maduro would not allow her to run, Washington backed the notion that she had the right to choose who would represent the so-called united democratic opposition at the polls.

Second, it was never clear on what basis Machado claimed to have that right, especially in light of the fact that there were contenders who were as anti-Maduro as her pick and were infinitely more qualified.

And third, Machado’s rise as the supreme leader of the Venezuelan opposition is part of a world-wide trend in which far-right leaders and movements have achieved major inroads.

Machado is not the godsend for the opposition portrayed by the media and her close supporters. But opposition leaders have more cause for hope than in the past. Unlike the 2018 presidential elections and subsequent electoral contests, all opposition parties, large and small, have opted for electoral participation. Even those most stridently opposed to the Chavistas (the followers of Hugo Chávez)
now recognize that electoral abstentionism had been a losing game. Furthermore,
the four main opposition parties known as the G4, and its broader alliance, the Plataforma Unitaria Democrática (PUD), are united behind Machado. Last October, she was pronounced the winner in the opposition primaries with a whopping 92 percent of the vote.

The Venezuelan government has disqualified Machado from holding public office for a number of reasons. The initial one was her acceptance in 2014 of a diplomatic position from the government of Panama enabling her to address the Organization of American States, where she called for foreign intervention in Venezuela. In June 2023 the National Controller reimposed the ban.

After that, Machado insisted that popular support at home coupled with international pressure would force the Maduro government to back down. Shortly before the deadline for registering candidates this March, Machado switched gears by choosing a surrogate to run in her place. In a surprise move, she convinced Edmundo González Urrutia, a little-known former diplomat with no charisma and admittedly no desire to run for office, to be PUD’s presidential candidate. Upon accepting the candidacy, González revealed that he had no intention of barnstorming around the country, adding “Maria Corina is doing it very well.”

González has participated in only one of Machado’s 10 large presidential campaign rallies held to date. “Machado dominates the stage,” wrote Resumen Latinoamericano, adding “she converted herself into the queen of the [rally] platforms” and in the process has eclipsed all other PUD leaders.

In spite of the opposition’s unity, or at least the appearance of it, two major political currents supporting the candidacy of González Urrutia are in some ways at cross purposes. For the center-right (led by the G4 parties Acción Democrática [AD], Un Nuevo Tiempo and some of the leaders of Primero Justicia), unseating president Nicolás Maduro is the one and only priority and to do so the unity of the opposition is essential. In fact, it almost doesn’t matter who the united candidate is because the opposition’s principal message is that the removal of Maduro from office will put an abrupt end to the country’s economic hardships.

The center-right’s strategy for reaching power differs from that of Machado and the far-right in two aspects. First by focusing its message on unseating Maduro, as opposed to specific policies, the center-right hopes to guarantee unity of the opposition by avoiding divisive positions. And second, a less aggressive discourse would stand a better chance of convincing the Chavistas to accept unfavorable electoral results.

Eduardo Fernández, a presidential candidate in 1988 who aspired to be PUD’s candidate in 2024, called for national unity and “reconciliation” as a way to guarantee unity of the opposition and to convince the Chavistas to relinquish power without fear of retribution. Another presidential runner, Antonio Ecarri, who is outside the PUD’s fold, has pledged to retain Vladimir Padrino López as Defense Minister. The proposal is designed to convince the Chavistas that repression against them will not be forthcoming, much as Violeta Chamorro attempted to do in 1990 when she named the Sandinista Humberto Ortega to head the Army.

In another sign that he is a stand-in, González Urrutia stated that his government program is the same as that put forward by Machado in her bid for the presidency. His candidacy’s program embraces laissez faire economics with a vengeance. Indeed, its position on privatization says it all: “The attraction of private capital is the solution and privatization is the strategy to achieve it.”

The prospect of the privatization of oil can’t sit well with AD and its offshoot Un Nuevo Tiempo, which take credit for the industry’s nationalization in 1976 by an AD government. Un Nuevo Tiempo’s Manuel Rosales, who Bloomberg stated “tends to be more leftist in his ideology” than Machado, launched his presidential candidacy supported by the Fuerza Vecinal party, which explicitly opposes oil privatization. Machado supporters criticized another presidential aspirant, Henrique Capriles, for saying “the oil is the people’s.”

In spite of differences, Machado has gotten her way at each instance. For example, Primero Justicia’s Henrique Capriles, who was also prohibited from running, dropped out of the primaries in order to avoid giving the government an excuse to keep the PUD completely on the sidelines. But Machado refused to do the same. Then she insisted on her right to choose the opposition’s main candidate. The PUD heavily debated the issue but again ended up giving in to her demand. Some PUD leaders supported Machado out of fear that she would opt for electoral abstentionism, a possibility that Capriles alluded to during the primaries campaign.

Since Machado chose González Urrutia, she has given orders to her allies not to refer to the total privatization of health, education and the state oil company PDVSA. Furthermore, González raises the possibility of implementing “transitional justice,” which implies leniency toward leading Chavistas. However Machado is too closely identified with radical positions on the right to think that the new line is anything more than a pragmatic campaign tactic. Furthermore, González lacks the political capital to be able to buck the will of Machado, even if he has the intention to do so.

Carlos Ron, Venezuela’s Deputy Minister for North America, told me “Machado isn’t fooling anyone by not talking about mass privatization. Throughout her political career, this has been her most cherished banner.”

Washington: Machado’s Faithful Ally

Among the leaders of the Venezuelan opposition, Machado is Washington’s unmistakable favorite. The Biden administration backs her even though she expressed sympathy for Trump on the eve of the 2020 U.S. presidential elections. Certainly, from an ideological viewpoint, the centrist Biden has more in common with PUD leaders like Rosales and Capriles than with Machado.

Washington’s singular preference for Machado became particularly evident between January 26, when the Supreme Tribunal of Justice definitively ruled that she could not run for president, and April 19 when González Urrutia became the opposition’s candidate. During that period, a journalist asked Francisco Palmieri, head of the U.S. mission for Venezuela located in Bogotá, if “any opposition candidate would satisfy the Biden administration.” Palmieri went straight to the point: “We have and will continue to support María Corina Machado as the candidate of the democratic opposition.”

In assuming this stance, the U.S. discarded other options to unseat Maduro. Manuel Rosales, for instance, had much going for him. In addition to having been elected mayor of Maracaibo and then three times as governor of the populous state of Zulia, his presidential candidacy was endorsed by Fuerza Vecinal, a new party with a good electoral track record. Palmieri justified U.S. support for Machado on grounds that she won the opposition primaries, but Rosales had not participated in them.

Furthermore, there are 9 candidates who are running against Maduro in the July 28 elections. The hardline opposition accuses some of them of “collaborating” with Maduro and calls them “alacranes” (scorpions). But not all of them, such as in the case of Ecarri, can even remotely be called collaborators.

The failure of the Biden administration to maintain a neutral position with regard to the internal divisions of the opposition raises a number of questions and issues.

First and foremost, given the attractiveness of other presidential candidates, Washington’s unconditional support for Machado is not only an intrusion in the internal affairs of Venezuela, but in the internal affairs of the Venezuelan opposition. Claudio Fermín, who had run for president on AD’s ticket in 1993 and is one of the 10 presidential candidates for 2024, said “I have never seen this degree of external intervention in a Venezuelan electoral campaign,” adding that it has received “exuberant approval” from some.

Washington’s unswerving support for Machado may be related to her extreme version of neoliberalism which includes the privatization of the oil industry.

Machado’s hard line on the Chavistas may also be to Washington’s liking. During the Trump administration, Machado even called on Washington to call off efforts to establish a dialogue with Maduro, calling such an endeavor a “fraud.” Echoing allegations coming from Washington, she rejected “impunity” for Chavistas who she called “criminals and mafiosos who have utilized money coming from drug trafficking and the food of Venezuelans.”

This hardline runs counter to the thesis put forward by opposition pollster Luis Vicente León that negotiations between the opposition and the Maduro government are necessary and even inevitable, regardless of who wins on July 28. León’s position is especially compelling given that the new presidential term does not begin until 6 months after the July 28 elections.

Machado’s decision to choose a surrogate and center the campaign on herself appears designed to mock the government and its decision to ban her from running. Her conflictive and confrontational approach is more likely to facilitate a radical break with the Chavista past and facilitate the implementation of the radical brand of neoliberalismo that she stands for.

The Mainstream Media: Machado’s Other Faithful Ally

The mainstream media has meticulously reported each one of Machado’s accusations against the Maduro government for violating democratic norms regarding the electoral process. However the most far-reaching violation of the principle of democracy is not reported at all, namely the devastating U.S-imposed sanctions on Venezuela which will influence many Venezuelans to vote for the opposition as the only way to normalize relations with Washington.

A case in point is the declarations of Colombia’s ex-president Ernesto Samper, unreported in the mainstream media, that the sanctions represent a form of “monetary colonialism” and an intrusion in the internal affairs of Venezuela and elsewhere.

The mainstream media has served as an echo chamber for Machado’s claims, even those that some consider to be dubious.

Machado’s claim that she enjoys overwhelming and unconditional domestic and international support buttresses two central arguments of hers. First, that she had the right to choose the opposition’s candidate. And second, that this time around, unlike in previous years, electoral abstentionism was unnecessary. But are her assertions credible? Plain facts place them in doubt.

The corporate media, for instance, takes for granted the accuracy of the announced results of the opposition’s primaries last October that gave Machado 92 percent of the vote. Machado had vetoed the participation of the National Electoral Council (CNE) in the process which Henrique Capriles and other center-right leaders favored on grounds that it promised greater logistical support including 5000 voting centers. Instead, the primaries were supervised by the NGO Súmate which Machado herself had founded and had been a vice president of and which opened just slightly over half the number of voting centers, some of them in people’s homes.

In the past, Súmate had been denounced for being funded by the notorious National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Indeed, the late opposition leader Teodoro Petkoff had called Súmate authoritarian and refused to participate in the opposition’s presidential primaries in 2006, which Súmate was to supervise, on grounds that the organization was not reliable.

The runner-up candidate for the primaries held in October 2023, Carlos Prosperi of AD, questioned the accuracy of the official tally, an accusation reinforced by the fact that Súmate failed to undertake an audit of the primaries and immediately burned the ballots.

Luis Vicente León also questions her claim of enjoying 80 percent support of the electorate and adds that the rallies of Capriles for the 2012 presidential elections were “absolutely and clearly superior to all of Machado’s mobilizations.”

León also argued that there were too many variables to predict that Machado would win on July 28. León has forcefully argued that without committing fraud, but through what he calls “electoral engineering,” Maduro could win the elections. In way of example, León refers to the possibility of extremely long lines outside voting centers in middle-class areas that are opposition strongholds.

Machado and the Rise of the International Far Right

Back in 2012, Machado received less than 4 percent of the vote in the opposition’s presidential primaries. Her rise as the “principal leader of the opposition” is a sign of the times and boosts the efforts to create what has been called an “emerging reactionary international,” or what Steven Forti called in this Spring’s issue of NACLA “a big global family” of the extreme right.

Most of the salient features of Machado’s discourse and positions coincide with those of reactionary leaders and movements that have emerged in twenty-first century Latin America. Machado’s embrace of laissez faire capitalism including deregulation to “stimulate private initiative” points in the direction of neoliberalism, “shock-treatment” style. This pattern manifests itself in Milei’s commitment to “destroy the state from within” and his concomitant shock treatment policies, as well as the defense by Chile’s far-right leader José Antonio Kast of Pinochet’s “economic legacy.”

Machado’s positions on international relations also dovetail with those of the far-right elsewhere in the region. Machado makes no secret of being pro-U.S. and hostile to its adversaries including Russia, China and Iran. Along the same lines, she predicts that “once we achieve what we are going to in Venezuela, this will be the final sword thrust into regimes like Nicaragua and Cuba.”

One of the salient features of the far-right is its expression of hate for the left which Machado’s rhetoric reproduces. Thus she attacks the São Paulo Forum and implicitly accuses it of assenting to “criminal dynamics that go from obscene and ferocious corruption to financing drug trafficking…[and] terrorist groups.”

To her credit, though, and in contrast to the far-right elsewhere, she adheres to moderate positions on social issues such as gay marriage, which she accepts, and abortion.

Machado is an internationalist. She not only assumes reactionary positions but has openly supported and forged relationships with rightists in Europe, Israel and Latin America.

As the far-right does elsewhere, Machado takes sides in elections in favor of her ideological counterparts in other countries. Machado hoped for the “definitive defeat of Kirchnerism” in the 2023 elections in Argentina, at the same time that she called Milei “super-clear, bold, full of energy.” She maintains ties with the rightist Popular Party of Spain, but also stresses her special relationship with the far-right Vox, which according to Jacobin played a ”central role in an emerging reactionary international,” and called its head Santiago Abascal her “friend.”

The support Machado receives from her right-wing allies throughout the world is more emphatic and strongly worded than that from centrists. Thus, for instance, in a video interview with Machado, the right-wing ex-president of Colombia Iván Duque asserted that the Venezuelan opposition should be called “the resistance” and claimed, as Machado forcefully did at the time, that Chávez really lost the 2004 recall election, even though he was declared victor with 59 percent of the vote.

Machado, like Milei and Brazil’s Bolsonaro, embodies features of populism: she is a charismatic, polarizing figure with a Manichean discourse who lacks the backing of a strong political party.

In many countries, the center-right (the Partido Popular in Spain and Republican Party leaders in the U.S.) have made deals with, or have accepted the terms imposed by, the far right. In other countries traditional centrist parties have been reduced to a shadow of their former selves and have been displaced by the far right (Colombia, Argentina).

The political polarization behind these tendencies is exactly what is taking place in Venezuela. There on July 28 voters will be choosing between a far-right candidate and Nicolás Maduro, situated on the left side of the political spectrum. Regardless of the electoral outcome, the center-right leaders of the PUD will not easily recover from the bruises received from far-rightist María Corina Machado.


An abridged version of this article was posted by NACLA: Report on the Americas

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Steve Ellner is an Associate Managing Editor of Latin American Perspectives and a retired professor of the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela. His latest books include his edited Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism and Resistance in Broad Perspective (2021) and his coedited Latin American Social Movements and Progressive Governments: Creative Tensions Between Resistance and Convergence (2022).

Swedish Unions in Crisis – What Solutions Do Syndicalists Offer?

Swedish unions are governed from the top down and are therefore bad at serving workers' interests. So writes Rasmus Hästbacka of the syndicalist union SAC. Based on his new book, he suggests how worker-led unions can be rebuilt.

By Rasmus Hästbacka

July 8, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.




It’s a truism that capitalism is not a democracy; capitalism means economic dictatorship, which is most evident in our workplaces. But truisms have the merit of being true and as long as workers live under the employers’ dictatorship, there is every reason to repeat this truth and fight for democracy. Another truism is that the fight needs to take place primarily on the job through labor unions. But not just any union will do.

Many people outside of Sweden look at our country and believe they see an exemplary union movement. I’m sorry to break the news, but nowadays Swedish unions suck. Three pieces of evidence should suffice. First, the leaders of Sweden’s biggest unions supported the introduction of an anti-strike law in 2019. To my knowledge, the only union that has developed a strategy to tackle this law is the syndicalist union SAC.

Second, the same leaders who supported the anti-strike law also supported the weakening of Sweden’s employment protection act in 2022. Third, a labor market slum is growing where migrants are brutally exploited, which might dump working conditions across the board. The syndicalist SAC is the only union that provides effective counterfire.

Now, someone might ask: What did Swedish union leaders demand in exchange for supporting the 2019 anti-strike law? Brace yourselves: nothing. Literally nothing.

To be honest, I can think of only one well-functioning Swedish union: The Dock Workers Union. Our syndicalist union SAC has shrunk from almost 40 thousand members, in the 1930s, to just over 3 thousand today. Our union harbors great potential and can demonstrate some progress here and there, but the work of rebuilding a powerful movement remains

.

Make Demands | Illustration by Fanny Hökby

So, which recipes for building a movement do Swedish syndicalists propose? The first step is to recognize reality. We need to understand the situation in order to change it in a reasonable direction. So let me expand a bit on the truisms.

The current dictatorship in our workplaces divides the population into roughly two classes: on the one hand the majority who sell their labor power, on the other hand company owners, private and public bosses who rule over everyone. Workers don’t have the right to participate in the important decisions at work, not even the right to vote for suitable bosses or remove unsuitable bosses.

If this dictatorship is likened to a disease, the symptoms are clear. The employer side gains from ordering a minimal workforce to toil to the max for minimum pay. The consequences for workers are understaffing, stress and low wages. The result for business owners and managers is fat profits and bonuses.

Under the unfettered rule of employers, health and safety is not a priority. Last year, 65 Swedes died in workplace accidents. Over 770 workers die each year from work-related stress. Around 3000 Swedes die prematurely each year due to problems at work (and remember that Sweden is a small country with less than 6 million wage earners). These are symptoms of a fundamentally sick working life.

The economic dictatorship also sets strict boundaries for political democracy. As the American liberal John Dewey put it: “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business”.

The primary way to combat the symptoms of economic dictatorship is through union organizing. Even if this struggle is necessary, it’s insufficient as long as the disease itself remains.

Action Plan | Illustration by Fanny Hökby

Imagine for a moment if we instead had democracy at work, i.e. worker-run workplaces. Then we could put human needs at the center, instead of employers’ greed and lust for power. Then work could be a place where we develop and thrive instead of being pushed around and robbed of the wealth we produce. Every worker should be able to feel joy on Monday morning instead of anxiety on Sunday night.

How can democracy be introduced at work? There is a strategy almost as old as class society itself. The strategy is about workers stepping up the union work to seize power over their workplaces. Thus, the purpose is to conquer not only a bigger piece of the bread but the whole bakery. Syndicalism means precisely this, step up the work to take power. For the readers of ZNetwork, it might be of interest to note that European syndicalism is to a large extent identical to the industrial unionism of IWW in North America.

If a union is to be run for the workers, it must be run by the workers. Therefore, syndicalists believe that unions should be controlled by workers on the shop floor, not by union tycoons at the top. Sweden is a backward country in this respect. Unlike our neighboring countries, there are almost no member-led unions here. Therefore, we need to build unions where the member base decide which demands to pursue, what kind of pressure to put on employers and which deals to approve.

Everyone knows unity is strength. Therefore, workers need to unite across occupational boundaries and not be divided into different craft unions such as the Swedish Saco unions. Furthermore, workers need to carve out maximum space for collective action. Thus, unions should be independent of political parties, not be the support bodies of, for example, the Social Democrats as many Swedish LO and TCO unions are. Likewise, unions should be independent of all religions but respect the religious freedom of every worker.

In short, the syndicalist view is that unions should be based on democracy, solidarity and independence. Syndicalists form local job branches which are called operating sections since the long-term vision is for workers to take over and operate the production of goods and services.

But is it really that simple? A summary of syndicalist recipes may sound simple, but building member-run unions requires hard and patient work. As soon as we relate the recipes to union practice, it’s easy to fill a book with comments. And oh, that’s just what I have done. The title of the book is Swedish syndicalism – An outline of its ideology and practice. The book is released by SAC in cooperation with Federativ Publishing House. It can also be downloaded as a free PDF file.

By building member-run unions, workers can develop the collective strength and competence to implement worker-run workplaces in the entire economy. Thus, to organize on the job is to sow the seeds of the future: a society of free and equal people.

Such a future would be a socialism worthy of the name – or, if you like, a liberalism worthy of the name. The liberal John Dewey famously rejected capitalism as a kind of “industrial feudalism”. He wanted “industrial democracy” to take its place. Even conservatives in Abraham Lincoln’s Grand Old Party understood that “wage slavery” (as it was called back then) is an abomination.


Rasmus Hästbacka is a lawyer and has been a member of the Umeå Local of SAC since 1997. He finished a licentiate thesis in legal science in 2017 with the title Europeiska företagsråd i svenska koncerner (European works councils in Swedish corporations).

We’re in a Class War. Jane McAlevey Actually Acted Like It.

By Alex N. Press

July 9, 2024

Source: Jacobin


Image by Alice Attie, Creative Commons 4.0

Before I ever met Jane McAlevey, I received a package from her in the mail. In addition to a copy of Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement, her first book (written with Bob Ostertag), it contained instant coffee and a few other items that one could imagine packing into a rucksack while on the move.

I’d just reviewed A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, the Fight for Democracy, her then latest book. My piece opened with an anecdote about Hosea Hudson, a legendary labor organizer and black Alabama communist in the 1930s, a time when being either of those things put one’s life at risk. Of his rap to new recruits, Hudson said, “We had [to] tell people — when you join, it’s just like the army, but it’s not the army of the bosses, it’s the army of the working class.” I likened Jane to a drill instructor, the book an army manual. If there were any doubt as to whether the comparison was apt, Jane’s care package confirmed it.

We are always in a class war, but sometimes it felt like Jane was one of the few people who acted like it. Urgent, direct, no bullshit: that was Jane, the master organizer and negotiator and communicator and strategist. And she was like this with everyone in her orbit: once you were in, you were to be cared for, looked after, and, fundamentally, organized by her — toward the end of keeping up your strength to not only wage class struggles, but to win (one of her favorite words). Her father was a World War II fighter pilot and progressive politician; the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Jane devoted her life to union organizing, and then to writing about it. But the writing was organizing too, a means of multiplying herself, allowing the lessons to reach into countless nooks and crannies across the economy and globe. Bay Area factory workers, striking teachers from West Virginia to Los Angeles, Starbucks baristas, and Amazon warehouse workers have all mentioned her work to me as an inspiration. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that many workers treat Jane’s writing like a kind of Bible, but that would imply a reverence that the substance itself refutes. As Jane argued again and again, workers already have the power to change the world, and the organizer’s role is to show them that: to listen, to identify what they cannot stand, and to teach them the skills to channel their power effectively in order to wrest control from the bosses — to fight and win.
Win, Win, Win, Win, Win

No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the Gilded Age, her 2016 book, has played a role in a dizzying number of organizing drives and strikes across the country. It began as her late-in-life sociology PhD dissertation at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center (advised by social movements scholar Frances Fox Piven, whose own career-long emphasis on the importance of “ordinary people” plays a major role in McAlevey’s book). Each chapter is a case study: “The Power to Win Is in the Community, Not the Boardroom,” “Nursing Home Unions: Class Snuggle vs. Class Struggle,” “Chicago Teachers: Building a Resilient Union,” “Smithfield Foods: A Huge Success You’ve Hardly Heard About,” and “Make the Road New York.” The conclusion’s title is classic Jane: “Pretend Power vs. Actual Power.“

Assessing the reasons for the wins and losses in each case, Jane hammers on the distinction between mobilizing (getting people out for a one-off rally or action) and advocacy (which dispenses with ordinary people entirely) versus the deep organizing that was her everything, the process by which power is transferred “from the elite to the majority.”

In her view, the Left and progressives’ decades-long decline is partially explained by a shift away from deep organizing in favor of shallow mobilizing and advocacy. The book also takes the reader through power-structure analysis, a tool Jane used time and again in building campaigns that homed in on the enemy’s weak points in order to win.

No Shortcuts also lays out a clear emphasis on organic leaders rather than activists — a distinction of critical importance for budding organizers, many of whom fall into the latter category. In a workplace, you shouldn’t focus on the people who already agree with you, but rather those who are trusted and respected by their coworkers. It’s the organizer’s job to bring them (and their networks) into a campaign, to teach them the skills they need to win, then to test the strength of the majority being assembled again and again (what Jane termed “structure tests”). This is how one builds a supermajority at an employer, a battle-ready army that can withstand the boss’s inevitable attacks.

As she writes,


Which key individual worker can sway exactly whom else — by name — and why? How strong is the support he or she has among exactly how many coworkers, and how do the organizers know this to be true? The ability to correctly answer these and many other related questions — Who does each worker know outside work? Why? How? How well? How can the worker reach and influence them? — will be the lifeblood of successful strikes in the new millennium.

The same criterion applies beyond the workplace. It’s the leaders in your community, your neighborhood, your religious or social organization, the ones who have earned the respect of those around them, who are your target if you hope to build a mass base for your cause that has staying power.

McAlevey didn’t invent these principles, but she popularized them among broad swathes of the labor movement and the Left, in large part through No Shortcuts. Ever since its publication, characterizing a strategy as a “shortcut” is about as damning a condemnation within the labor movement as you can make.

Raising Expectations, Jane’s first book, is a memoir, but no less instructive for it. The title is Jane’s phrase for what she believed organizing is about at its core. To organize is to make a worker demand more


about what people should expect from their jobs; the quality of life they should aspire to; how they ought to be treated when they are old; and what they should be able to offer their children. About what they have a right to expect from their employer, their government, their community, and their unions. Expectations about what they themselves are capable of, about the power they could exercise if they worked together, and what they might use that collective power to accomplish. Ultimately, expectations about where they will find meaning in their lives, and the kinds of relationships they can build with those around them.

Jane called this expansive vision “whole-worker organizing,” an approach that draws on a worker’s entire self, rather than bracketing their lives outside and beyond the workplace. A worker’s relationships inside the workplace are the foundation for organizing: the means by which they can move others to action, the trust needed for workers to take on the risks that come with acting collectively, the faith and confidence such action requires.

But Jane saw their ties off the job as both another resource and a place they could organize in turn upon gaining workplace-organizing skills. Not only could a worker enlist their religious institution, their community organization, or their social clubs to strengthen a campaign, but a good organizer could expand the expectations a worker brings to the other areas of their lives. When unions failed to engage workers in their entirety, she was unrelenting in her criticism.

She rejected the dichotomy of workplace and union versus community and community organization, arguing instead for “bringing community organizing techniques right into the shop floor while moving labor organizing out into the community.” Everything was a feedback loop with Jane: power begets power, wins beget wins, community begets community; multiplication not division, a sense of self-interest that continually broadens. You start with your on-the-job interest and, if the organizer does her job right, you end with the entire community.
Always War Footing

Raising Expectations is about how workers can organize and win, but it’s also a record of the sexism that pervades the labor movement. (Jane: “If I discussed every instance when [sexism] had a negative impact on the work I was trying to do, there would be no room to talk about anything else.”) In this respect, too, Jane was a pioneer: there are lots of female union leaders today, but the culture remains hostile to women, and especially ones like Jane who don’t put up with such disrespect. As she told me when we first met, gin and tonic in hand: “Don’t worry about all the bullshit you’ll get from men in the movement. Fuck ’em.” It felt like I was being inducted into a secret sisterhood.

Indeed, the labor movement’s shortcomings almost led Jane to give up on it. A lifelong environmentalist (her later decades were split between a rent-controlled apartment in New York and a leafy, spartan outpost in the Bay Area, and she was prone to going off the grid to ride horses), college-aged Jane saw the labor movement opposing “every environmental principle I believed in.”

At SUNY-Buffalo, she joined the student association, becoming its president. It was there that she first gained organizing skills. After a foray around Central America, including work on a construction brigade in Nicaragua at the height of the Contra War, she devoted herself to environmental work — though her time in Central America added further marks against unions. It was the 1980s, and the AFL-CIO was implicated in backing death squads in Latin America via the American Institute for Free Labor Development, its international arm.

As she wrote of that period, “The unionists I was working with, who were already deeply engaged in a battle with a capitalist class of the most brutal and violent nature, now also had to deal with killer thugs funded by the unions of my country.” It made an impression on Jane, planting the seeds of a lifelong devotion to making the labor movement, that pain in the ass that is our only hope, better.

Jane’s time in the environmental justice movement connected her with the storied Highlander Research and Education Center, which played a central role in the civil rights movement, hosting and training everyone from Rosa Parks to Martin Luther King Jr to John Lewis and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) throughout the 1950s. By the time Jane was in her twenties, she was working at the center to develop its globalization program, traveling the globe to fight toxins that don’t respect borders. She referred to Highlander as a “creative hothouse,” with her subsequent work in unions traceable to the hours she spent browsing the center’s archives of educational materials from its era as the training and education arm of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

As she told my colleague Micah Uetricht in a long interview last year,


I was set up in the library [of Highlander], because there was no office space for me. I was in my mid-twenties. I started to go into the archives, and that was the first time I saw organizing manuals from the CIO and realized, “Oh my God, it’s always been the labor movement in the civil rights movement. These have always been inseparable movements.

She was recruited into the AFL-CIO in the late ’90s, heading up the experimental Stamford Organizing Project, which focused on cab drivers, city clerks, janitors, and nursing home aides, exerting influence through Stamford’s churches — “Note to labor: workers relate more to their faith than to their job, and fear God more than they fear the boss,” Jane wrote of the campaign — and organizing workers around a range of issues beyond the workplace, including affordable housing.

After Stamford, Jane became the national deputy director for strategic campaigns in the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) health care division. In 2004, she was appointed SEIU Nevada’s executive director and chief negotiator, where she began leading open-bargaining sessions in which hundreds of workers would attend negotiations, seeing the boss’s tactics for themselves and getting a hands-on training in negotiations in the process. Her unwillingness to abide by what she characterized as undemocratic orders from higher up in the union hierarchy put her at odds with SEIU leadership, but it took a 2008 ovarian cancer diagnosis to put a pause on her organizing activities. She used the time off to write Raising Expectations.

As the pandemic created one crisis after another for the working class, Jane designed an international organizing training program in conjunction with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, an almost industrial-scale workshop to train groups of workers around the globe. At the time of her death, she had trained some twenty-five thousand people through the program, a remarkable legacy.

No matter what her schedule, Jane somehow always found time for workers. When the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) sought help following their unlikely victory at JFK8 in Staten Island, Jane squeezed in intensive trainings with founding members. When the New Yorker, a shop in my union local, was organizing toward a strike, I received an email informing me that Jane McAlevey would be leading a training.

Her PhD from CUNY led to a postdoc from Harvard Law School, then a position as a senior policy fellow in her beloved Bay Area, at the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. There she continued to teach unions and community organizations the fundamentals of organizing and winning (and seemed to never miss a Golden State Warriors game; if Jane had ever held a time-management training, I’d have been the first to register).

She kept writing through all of it, offering a real-time first draft of the history of working-class struggle in the United States. She had a column with Jacobin and was the Nation’s “strikes correspondent” (an enviable title). Rules to Win By: Power and Participation in Union Negotiations, a book on democratizing union negotiations, written with Abby Lawlor, was published last year.

Her final piece before announcing that she would be pausing her work as she entered hospice care is titled “Enjoy Labor’s Tailwinds — but Don’t Forget to Keep Rowing!” It concludes: “Given the odds against workers, all victories are worth celebrating, but we can’t afford to rest until we’ve seen those wins codified in a union contract — enforced by an organization that keeps going toe-to-toe with the bosses, the union busters, and the political elites. Nothing else will do it.” War footing, always.
“They Thought I Would Be Dead a Few Weeks Ago”

I loved this about Jane, as did countless other people, as evidenced by the flood of testimonies on social media from workers around the world as to how her work changed their lives. To be committed, a soldier in struggle, is worth honoring, yet it was her singular personality — a loud, polarizing, unmistakable individuality and pride — that really set her apart. Jane devoted her life to collective action, but she never forgot that collectives are composed of people, and every person is a world unto themselves. She modeled that: living off the grid in the Bay Area, disappearing to ride horses in Mexico, taking pride in her accomplishments, extending herself beyond all conceivable measures to mentor so many of us. Leave the world better than it was when you arrived and leave many more organizers in your place when you go.

“They thought I would be dead a few weeks ago,” Jane said on Democracy Now! in late April, shortly after announcing that she had entered home hospice care, having exhausted treatment and clinical trial drugs for the multiple myeloma cancer she had been battling since 2021. Ever with her eye on the prize, she was on the show to talk about the United Auto Workers’ earth-shattering win at Volkswagen’s auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. “I’m out again. I’m riding my bike. I’m on your show. And I’m going to fight until the last dying minute, because that’s what American workers deserve.”

It’s an ethos in the labor movement to never say “thank you,” as it implies one did something for you, rather than the truth, that we speak up and take risks and act for ourselves. So I won’t say that. Instead, I’ll leave it with what Jane herself wrote in finally, reluctantly, announcing that she had found one fight that she could not win: “I have loved being in this world with you.” We loved it, too, Jane, and we’ll fight like hell to make it every bit as good as you knew it could be.

Kashmiri Woman Leads the Way in Overturning Patriarchy in India

By Umar Manzoor ShahJ

uly 9, 2024

Source: Pressenza

Image by Umar Manzoor Shah

Smelling the toxic smoke of burning gunpowder and staring helplessly at fields covered in smoke and ash has always been traumatic. Running to shelters, abandoning homes, belongings and livestock every time Indian and Pakistani forces open fire on each other is inexplicable. Then came the unpredictable weather brought on by climate change.

But the people of this border village called Bala Chak, in the R.S. Pora sector of Jammu and Kashmir, have stoically faced these challenges for decades. In 1947, when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned and Pakistan was created as an independent country, the dividing line was also drawn in this village. Sialkote, a Pakistani town, was just a few metres away from the village.

Amidst the shabby dwellings scattered across the lush rice fields of Bala Chak, Surjeet Kumari tends to her mushroom crop in a dimly lit room next to her one-storey house.

Nearly 50, she has lived in this village for 25 years. Married to farmer Pardeep Kumar, Surjeet has a son and two daughters.

Farming in the open, says Surjeet, has always been dangerous in her village.


“You never know when a shell from the other side of the fence will hit your fields, and years of hard work will be destroyed in an instant. You will feel that everything you encounter afterwards will be a disaster. This happened to us in 2014 when hostilities peaked and Pakistan bombed our fields,” he says.

Surjeet’s priority was to ensure the education of her two daughters. A victim of patriarchy, she believes that education alone can end centuries of patriarchy and the misery it brings.


“I am the only female child and I have three older brothers. They were sent to school. They even got government jobs, but I was always told that I had to learn domestic chores; that is why I was born. When my daughters were born, I decided to give them a good life, a respectable life, free from the prejudiced eyes of the patriarchy,” Surjeet told IPS.

But making ends meet and paying for her children’s education has been costly.

As if the clouds of political uncertainty over the Pardeep camps were not enough, the drastic change in the weather pattern in 2017 wreaked havoc on the camps. The late arrival of the monsoon, coupled with unseasonal rains, created hardship for the village’s farming community.

The first thing she did to start her new life as a mushroom farmer, Surjeet says, was to set up a small room to grow mushrooms.


“Reluctantly, I told my husband about my plans. I told him that he need not worry about the income and that if all went well, we could have a decent income for a month. Thank God, he trusted me and allowed me to build a shed in the backyard of our house. He even built it himself,” she says.

In the first three months of growing mushrooms, he was able to sell about 150 packets to wholesalers. He earned the equivalent of $200 in the first season.

In the next two and a half months, Surjeet was able to produce more than 170 packets, making a profit of about $250.


“I have become so familiar with the crop that I buy the seeds myself and know the business inside out. Sometimes I even tease my husband by telling him that I am earning more and he teases me by telling me that it is all thanks to the shed he built in the beginning,” says Surjeet with a smile.

Even when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, his income did not collapse.

“While the villagers were suffering from congestion, I was sure that I could earn an income from mushrooms. I even made mushroom pickles, which are in great demand in the market. I used to get direct enquiries from wholesalers even during the lockdown,” says Surjeet.

She believes that “the fact that this period did not affect my income is a blessing from Maa Durga (Hindu goddess)”.

She claims that by the time the ban was imposed, she was able to make compost from poultry manure, wheat straw, and horse dung. She adds that her husband helped her prepare the beds and harvest the crops.

For the past two years, the borders of Surjeet Kumari’s village have been quiet, with no major incidents of crossfire. The ceasefire agreement between the two countries earlier this year has brought about a positive change, and farmers in the border villages are seeing the results.

Pardeep, the husband, says that farming in the village has continued without incident for some time now and the family’s income is gradually returning to normal.


“It is all because of my wife’s hard work; the children are studying and we have cattle now. I did not know before that my wife was such a resilient woman, that when crises hit the family, she would be at the forefront to steer the ship into port. I am proud of her,” says Pardeep.

The other women in the village have started to come forward and sign up for various agricultural practices after seeing the good results of Surjeet’s efforts. And she is proving to be an effective leader for these ambitious women in her small village.

“In the past, like in other rural households, women were considered a commodity. They were expected to do all the household chores and were considered a burden,” says Surjeet.

But now things have changed. “Self-reliance is helping them break the chains and emerge triumphant. I teach them the skills and encourage them to work hard so that they can see the respect in the eyes of their families and husbands. I am doing my bit,” she says.

Madhulika Sharma, a senior official in the border area who helped with the training, says Surjeet has become a beacon of hope for other women who want to get out of financial crises and become more self-reliant.

According to Madhulika, “there was not much enthusiasm in her village when she enrolled in the program. Many women thought she was wasting her time, but she changed the situation”.


“Now she is a new hope for the women in her village. She guides them, mentors them, and even trains them in mushroom growing. It is all very inspiring,” she said.

INDIA

Rahul Gandhi and Manipur: The Politics Not of Transaction But of Love

By Badri Raina

July 9, 2024

Source: The Wire


Image by X/@INCIndia

As I write, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, is on his way again to the orphaned state of Manipur.

Minutes ago, I heard an otherwise intelligent anchor on an electronic channel ask belligerently of the Congress spokesperson on her talk show: “Is Rahul Gandhi going to Manipur just to do politics or to find a solution?”

And I wondered to myself whether Bapu Gandhi had ever been asked why he went to Noakhali – to do politics or to find a solution.

Incidentally, the anchor seemed not to remember that Manipur has not a Congress government, and that Rahul Gandhi is not the prime minister, not yet.

But, to the larger inference:

So cynically transactional has our politics now become that it seems inconceivable that any politician would want to go to a beleaguered region of the republic, not to wade in troubled waters, but just to be one with those who suffer the consequences of hate.

The incomprehension of the aforesaid anchor thus underscores a larger and deeply tragic point.

“Development” having become wholly a matter of brick and mortar, digital gimmickry, the accumulation of wealth, lust for power at every juncture and success at all costs, with number- crunching economists in league with head honchos of the biggest corporations, ever at hand of powers-that-be, the very idea that anyone in modern-day political life would want to recall the life and times of a Bapu and the many selfless social workers who followed him seems atavistic.

Ask the cheeky anchor, and you would get the mocking view that Rahul Gandhi’s often repeated project of wanting to bring love where hate flourishes is but a childish ideal, unworthy of an evolved late-capitalist ethos wherein only a Darwinian goal-post now validates the worth or worthlessness of individuals and nations.

Thus, in the matter of the strife between the Meitei and Kuki peoples in Manipur, the question to ask is not who or what brought them to this animosity, or who is fuelling it, or how to come together in a common recognition of everybody’s suffering, but to declare one or the other guilty, pass over the horrendous excesses, and let those who are on the “wrong” side of official favour suffer the consequences of their “gumption”.

Notice that we no longer, almost never, nowadays make movies about empathy, but resoundingly about war on some enemy or the other, leading to a hate-filled, polarised triumphalism.

And there are those who deride even Mother Theresa as someone whose humanism was at bottom a transactional one merely.

As to such set-ups as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International etc., these are seen as merely the software tools of “Western” hegemony, given that no cruelties ever happen in Vishwaguru Bharat.

If Rahul Gandhi, therefore, is going yet again to a shattered Manipur, he cannot but have some devious object in mind.

As to human beings who go out on a limb to bring succour to the suffering, these now are thought to exist only in legends and children’s tales.

Balak buddhi

Speaking of children, one is reminded of the jibe that the honourable prime minister was pleased to make at Rahul Gandhi, that, namely, the latter had a child’s intelligence.

Recall the saint who, after aeons of tapasya, found favour with the gods.

When God asked him what was closest to his desire, the saint replied, lord, give me back a five-year old avastha for that is when the heart is the purest.

Think also of the umpteen songs that extol the pristine purity of the child, for example, “bacche mann ke sacche/saari jug ki aankh ke taare; Yeh woh nanhe phool hein jo Bhagwan ko lagte pyare.”

And did not Jesus admonish: “unless ye be like little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

And the poet Wordsworth was to say “Child is father of man/And I would wish my days to be/bound each to each by natural piety.”

If Rahul Gandhi is indeed returning the beauty of childhood to Indian politics, how lovely and how needed.

Better be a child any day than a man, especially a small man.


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Badri Raina is a well-known commentator on politics, culture and society. His columns on the Znet have a global following. Raina taught English literature at the University of Delhi for over four decades and is the author of the much acclaimed Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. He has several collections of poems and translations. His writings have appeared in nearly all major English dailies and journals in India.

The Impact of India’s 2024 Election on Workers, Farmers, and Minorities

The significance of India’s 2024 elections goes far beyond mere political outcomes, especially for the country’s workers, farmers, historically oppressed communities such as Dalits and Adivasis, and minority groups. It is a testament to the resilience of democratic forces in preventing the rise of a potentially authoritarian regime under Narendra Modi’s leadership.

By Chandan Kumar

July 9, 2024

Source: Transform! Europe

Image by urbzoo, Creative Commons 2.0

The recently concluded election in India highlighted the country’s remarkable capacity to conduct a fair and inclusive democratic process despite its immense diversity. Initially, there were challenges, such as attempts by federal government agencies to take undemocratic actions like freezing the bank accounts of the Congress party (the largest opposition party) and arresting key opposition figures just before the election, including chief ministers from Delhi and Jharkhand. However, intervention by the apex court, supported by widespread public outcry, thwarted these moves by the Modi government. Despite early indications that the ruling regime might hinder a fair electoral process, India’s robust democratic principles ultimately prevailed.

With an impressive turnout of over 640 million out of 968 million eligible voters, the election stands as a remarkable example of democratic participation, involving people from all segments of society – including workers, farmers, women, Dalits, Adivasis, minorities, and affluent individuals. Despite significant social, economic, and political disparities, the act of voting transcended divisions based on caste, class, religion, and ethnicity, showcasing the essence of democracy.

However, amidst this democratic fervour lies a nation grappling with deep-rooted inequalities and pressing socio-economic challenges. Despite India’s emergence as a so-called “major global economy”, the benefits of this growth have often failed to trickle down to the masses. The biggest criticism and reality have been that we are moving towards an economy that is growing but not producing enough employment for millions of educated young people. This becomes much more important as India has the world’s highest population of employable age. Modi’s government policies in the last 10 years have miserably failed in generating jobs in the private sector and also filling up vacant jobs in the public sector. As India’s economy is largely informal, which means in reality unregulated, it is difficult to give concrete numbers of how many million jobs are missing. Besides this, persistent issues such as malnutrition, dismantling educational institutions, hunger, unemployment, and wage disparities continue to afflict vast segments of the population. Moreover, the erosion of press freedom and the stifling of dissent have raised concerns about the health of India’s democratic institutions. It is frightening to see some leading journalists like Prabir Purkayastha and others were sent to jail under colonial draconian laws such as the ‘Unlawful Activities Prevention Act’. This process clearly states that the Modi government is not at all interested in dealing with any forms of dissent, whether it is press or civil society movements.

During Modi’s ten-year leadership, India experienced notable democratic movements, including the farmers’ protests and opposition to the anti-citizenship law. These movements became symbols of resistance against various issues such as attacks on minority rights, corporatisation of agriculture, privatisation of public services, erosion of civil liberties, and dismantling of public education institutions.

However, this period was also marked by serious human rights violations and disregard for constitutional principles. Members of minorities faced public lynching and violence from right-wing extremists, with little accountability for perpetrators of crimes against Dalit women.

Workers advocating for better labour conditions faced repression from state authorities, while civic spaces were often handed over to real estate interests, leading to mass evictions and loss of livelihoods. Over the past five years, there has been a rise in inflation and job insecurity, particularly among the youth who are often forced into precarious employment. The dismantling of public sector institutions and the normalisation of exploitative contract systems worsened the situation for workers and farmers. The government’s preferential treatment of crony capitalists and undermining of the federal structure further exacerbated income inequality, making India one of the most unequal countries globally.

As Mr. Modi gears up to assume the role of prime minister for the third time within the coalition framework of the ‘National Democratic Alliance,’ initially established by his predecessors during the formation of the BJP-led government in 1999, he faces a changed political landscape. While he has been known for his authoritarianism and disregard for constitutional norms in the past, the current scenario necessitates his reliance on two regional parties, namely the JDU governing Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, and the TDP, which has recently returned to power. Both these parties prioritise secular principles and view safeguarding minority rights as integral to their ‘social justice agenda.’ This sets the stage for potential turbulence within the BJP, as both regional allies hold positions contrary to the BJP’s stance. However, the electoral mandate has tied Mr. Modi’s continuation as prime minister to their support.

Additionally, the oppositional ‘India block’, a robust opposition force after a decade (consisting of liberal and centre-left parties), is poised to assert itself and ensure the restoration of parliamentary democracy’s vitality. Left parties only marginally improved their results in the elections. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) won four seats, up from three in 2019, while the Communist Party of India has won two seats, the same as last time. The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation won two seats in Bihar.

Mr Modi, who has utilised Parliament as a propaganda platform for the past decade, must now face scrutiny and be accountable to India’s highest democratic institution. Ultimately, India’s 2024 election not only signifies a political shift, but also underscores the commitment of large parts of the nation to democratic principles and a rejection of increasing inequality and authoritarian tendencies. It reinforces the notion that genuine democracy thrives on the empowerment and inclusion of all citizens, regardless of their social or economic status.

The road ahead may become more turbulent due to the rise of regional parties, which have shown their (often progressive) potential. Recent election results, both at the federal and state levels, clearly indicate that Modi’s style of governance, advocating for centralised power akin to the American presidential format (hence a one-man rule focused on Modi), is no longer viable. The Indian constitution firmly upholds a quasi-federal system where parliament holds supreme authority. Even during Modi’s decade-long tenure, certain states challenged the aggressive neo-liberal agenda imposed by the BJP government. For instance, the left-led state of Kerala ensured minimum support prices for farmers and living wages for workers, while also confronting digital capitalism through the establishment of workers’ cooperatives. In Congress-ruled Rajasthan, landmark laws were passed to guarantee urban employment and pension rights for informal workers, alongside dedicated legislation for platform and gig economy workers. The regional Aam Aadmi Party-led state of Delhi prioritised quality education, healthcare, and energy initiatives. Despite significant financial challenges, numerous non-BJP-governed states implemented progressive policies aimed at benefiting the ordinary citizen. Conflicts over federal principles escalated into contentious disputes between federal and state governments, with many labelling it as an assault on the fundamental structure of the Indian constitution. In essence, while the BJP government aggressively pursued an agenda favouring their cronies, many states emerged as champions of people-centric policies. Non-BJP-governed states are now poised to rebuild the fractured institution of federalism, marking a positive outcome of this election.

The outcome of the 2024 election can be succinctly summarised as a reaffirmation of democracy, rather than a rejection of the BJP or Modi personally. It marks a significant shift towards a more robust and united opposition, which had been largely absent during Modi’s decade-long rule. The BJP’s consolidation of power over the past decade, coupled with its attempts to marginalise dissent and suppress progressive voices, had created an atmosphere of intolerance and authoritarianism. However, the electoral outcome signals a revival of democratic principles and a rejection of fascist tendencies, thereby restoring the faith of over a billion people in the democratic process.

This article is part of transform!’s Economics Working Group Blog Series.

LIKE STALIN'S HOLODOMOR IN UKRAINE

UN Experts Say ‘Targeted Starvation Campaign’ by Israel Has Led to Famine Across Gaza

The starvation of Palestinians in Gaza "is a form of genocidal violence," said 10 rights experts.

By Julia Conley

July 10, 2024

Source: Common Dreams


While the United Nations still has not formally declared a famine in Gaza after nine months of Israel’s near-total blockade on humanitarian aid, 10 top U.N. experts on Tuesday said they have seen enough.

“We declare that Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” said the experts.

Michael Fakhri, special rapporteur on the right to food, was joined in the statement by other experts including Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, and Paula Gaviria Betancur, special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons.

They said the recent deaths of three children in various parts of the enclave led the experts, who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations as a whole, to declare a famine has taken hold.

“Fayez Ataya, who was barely six months old, died on May 30, 2024 and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi died on June 1, 2024 at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah,” said the experts. “Nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida died on June 3, 2024 in the tent sheltering his displaced family in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis. All three children died from malnutrition and lack of access to adequate healthcare.”

“With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza,” they continued.

We are now seeing famine across the whole of Gaza. All houses destroyed, food systems destroyed and healthcare destroyed. And kids are dying. Is there any humanity left? https://t.co/jjI5ZHAvbA— UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing (@adequatehousing) July 9, 2024

At least 34 Palestinians in Gaza—the majority being children—have now died from malnutrition since October, when Israel began its bombardment of the enclave in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced there would “be no electricity, no food, no fuel” allowed in to Gaza.

Israeli officials said in response to Tuesday’s statement that it has increased the aid allowed into Gaza recently, but hundreds of delivery trucks remain stranded in Egypt and a floating pier built by the U.S. has not significantly improved the humanitarian crisis.

The U.N. experts said that with the first death of a child from malnutrition and dehydration, it should have been considered “irrefutable that famine has taken hold.”

“When a two-month-old baby and 10-year-old Yazan Al Kafarneh died of hunger on February 24 and March 4, respectively, this confirmed that famine had struck northern Gaza,” they said. “The whole world should have intervened earlier to stop Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign and prevented these deaths… Inaction is complicity.”

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which is backed by the U.N., said last month that Gaza is at high risk for famine and that nearly half a million people were facing “catastrophic” food insecurity, with an extreme lack of food.

In May, Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier, who had previously hesitated to say Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, said Israel’s “sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory” ultimately convinced him that Israeli officials are “engaged in genocide.”

In March, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to ensure its military refrain from violating the Genocide Convention by preventing humanitarian aid from reaching people in Gaza, saying that “the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have deteriorated further” and that “famine is setting in.”

A woman named Ghaneyma Joma told Reuters on Monday at a hospital in Khan Younis that she feared her son would soon die of starvation.

“It’s distressing to see my child… lying there dying from malnutrition because I cannot provide him with anything due to the war, the closing of crossings, and the contaminated water,” she told the outlet.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on the U.S. government, the biggest international funder of Israel’s military and a persistent defender of its actions in Gaza, to ensure that a cease-fire agreement is reached and that Palestinians receive necessary humanitarian aid.

“The intentional starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza can only occur with the active complicity of the Biden administration in Israel’s campaign of genocide,” said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the group. “This complicity must end, and the Palestinian people must be offered a future in which they are free of occupation and can live in dignity.”

Israel’s Starvation Policy in Gaza is Forcing People to Eat Tree Leaves

By Tareq S. HajjajJ

uly 9, 2024

Source: Mondoweiss

Image by OMAR ASHTAWY/APA IMAGES

Ahmad Abdulrahim, 38, strolled the remains of the markets in Gaza City with 150 Shekels in his pocket, the amount of money he used to feed his family of five for a week before the genocide. Today, that amount can hardly buy a single meal.

The markets, now little more than bombed-out remains, are empty of all basic needs, including vegetables, meat, and fruits. For the majority of people, such luxuries are unavailable except at unimaginable prices. Most vegetables, rare though they are, come from people’s gardens.

All Ahmad could find were cleaning supplies and canned foods. Ahmad told Mondoweiss that due to his children’s long-term dependence on these foods, they’ve started to develop health problems. After a protracted search, Ahmad found some zucchini; he walked faster when he noticed the seller, who had placed them in a small pile on the ground on top of a plastic bag. When he asked about the price, he was surprised to know that one kilogram of zucchini cost 80 Shekels ($20). Before the war, it used to be 3 shekels per kilo (less than a dollar).

Such was the price for most other vegetables that could be found. One kilo of green peppers cost 250 shekels ($66), where it used to be 5 ($1.4). One kilo of cucumber and tomato cost 90-100 shekels ($23-$26), which used to be 2-3 shekels (53-80 cents).

Ahmad said that as he walked back home, disappointed, he was dreading his family’s reaction when they found out that he spent almost half of their money on two cans of beans.

“I’m starting to deal with my kids as adults,” he said. “I’m telling them this is war, and our enemy wants us to starve. I’m telling them that we should be thankful that we have been able to survive so far. I promise them that when this war ends, I will bring them whatever they want.”

The state of starvation in Gaza has not ended. In northern Gaza, it has dramatically increased, but in ways that are different from how it was at the war’s outset. Protracted periods of malnutrition and deprivation from vital nutrients are having a cumulative impact on Gaza’s population, especially for those who most need it, such as children and pregnant women.

“Before this crisis, there was enough food in Gaza to feed the population,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said back in March. “Malnutrition was a rare occurrence. Now, people are dying, and many more are sick. Over a million people are expected to face catastrophic hunger unless significantly more food is allowed to enter Gaza.”

Only 0.8% of children under the age of five were suffering from acute malnutrition before the war, the WHO also said. By February, that figure had jumped to 12.4% – 16.5%.

Ever since those numbers were reported, Israel’s genocidal war has only worsened the systematic deprivation of food to the population. But Israeli propaganda would have us believe that there is no famine, and there is no Israeli policy of deliberate starvation. Many Israeli media outlets misleadingly focus on technical definitions of what constitutes a famine and dishonestly misquote passages from the UN’s ICP reports on conditions in Gaza.

The reality on the ground tells an opposite story, one in which the systematic deprivation of Gaza’s population from sources of nutrition is leading to long-term consequences. Gaza health officials and medical workers have already observed it for weeks.

Hussam Abu Safia, Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, told Aljazeera that the specter of famine was once again sweeping northern Gaza, stressing that the lack of availability of foods with diverse nutritional values will have a long-term impact on the population. Since the start of the Israeli army’s second invasion of the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in Gaza City last week, access of residents in northern Gaza to food has only worsened.

Abu Safia said that no basic materials have entered the northern Gaza Strip for weeks, leaving flour as the only available staple. This is far from sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of children, the elderly, and pregnant women, all of whom require fats and proteins, Abu Safia asserted.

“Within 14 days, 214 children have arrived at the hospital showing signs of malnutrition,” Abu Safiya told Al Jazeera well before the second invasion of Shuja’iyya began. “Including over 50 cases of advanced malnutrition and 6 cases in critical condition in the intensive care unit.”

“These children are living solely on fluid replacements, and we do not have any milk or special food for them, which puts their lives at risk,” he said.
Eating tree leaves

People in the north of Gaza can tell that this wave of hunger is the worst to visit the strip so far, leaving many wondering about their prospects for survival if these conditions do not change.

Some residents of Gaza City have resorted to using tree leaves, such as mulberry leaves, to prepare dawali, a dish typically comprised of fragrant rice wrapped in grape leaves.

“People are cooking weeds,” Mahmoud Issa, a local journalist and resident of Gaza City, told Mondowiess shortly before the Shuja’iyya invasion. “They cook leaves in water and spices. Even using the water is risky, because there’s no power to run the desalination plants.”

“Solar power is no longer available in Gaza either. Israeli drones have systematically targeted every solar panel on every roof across Gaza. They want people to lose hope and starve,” he continued.

Issa explained that people believe expired canned foods, when made available in Gaza, are making their children sick. This has led some to try to avoid such foods for fear that they would not be able to get treatment for their kids should they fall ill, given that northern Gaza no longer has any health system to speak of.

“Families know there is no way to treat their children if they get poisoned, so they are abandoning canned foods,” he said.

But even though cases of food poisoning due to the consumption of expired food products have been reported in Gaza, reports are also emerging of additional cases of food poisoning from forage eating.

Fruits, vegetables, chicken, meat, and fish are all unavailable in Gaza, Mahmoud explained.

“Three months ago, the Israeli checkpoint in the Kuwaiti Square was closed, and the checkpoint in al-Rasheed Street was closed, too,” he said. “The Israeli army allows the entrance of food trucks from the Erez crossing, but that is not enough for the population in northern Gaza.”

“When the Rafah crossing was working, over 60 trucks used to arrive, including frozen vegetables, meat, chicken, and other necessary food,” he explained. “We could survive then. It was tolerable. But now every crossing is closed, and people have started to starve.”