Workers Are Bearing the Brunt of Myanmar’s Civil War

By Stefan Bakumenko

August 9, 2024

Source: Jacobin

Image by Maung Sun, Creative Commons 4.0



Since February 1, 2021, when the Burmese military seized power in a coup, ending a decade-long period in which they had allowed multiparty democracy limited by the army’s claim of 25 percent of the seats in parliament, a violent civil war has raged throughout the country. It has killed over eight thousand civilians and displaced 4.6 million, a quarter of whom have left Myanmar entirely.

In the three years of fighting since the outbreak of the civil war, anti-coup forces have largely succeeded in confining the junta to cities. Only 14 percent of Myanmar’s territory, and 33 percent of its population, are under military control. In response to the military coup in 2021, a cross section of Burmese society, including unions, youth, women, civil servants, and health workers organized thousands of protests against the junta in the Spring Revolution. But as the junta responded with live bullets, assassinations, sexual violence, communications blackouts, and mass detentions, much of the pro-democracy movement took up arms.

Three years later, guerrillas routinely ambush junta forces in the central lowlands, which are effectively surrounded by dozens of armed groups in provinces that have since independence never truly been controlled by the central government. Military rule in Myanmar was always predicated on a suppression of ethnic minorities, most notably the Rohingya, who faced persecution and denial of citizenship under the rule of Aung San Suu Kyi. Consequently, opposition to the junta has largely taken the form of ethnic armed organizations.

The military’s attacks on rural areas have forced anti-coup forces to construct their own organizational structures, not all of which ally themselves with the ousted 2021 government. Outnumbered and isolated, the military has largely retreated to cities and garrisons from which it launches indiscriminate air strikes, dodges sanctions, and tries to maintain Russia and China’s economic and military support, although the latter has of late been putting pressure on the junta to accept another ceasefire. The People’s Republic helped to broker cease-fires between the junta and its opponents in January and June of this year.

Over the last few weeks, ethnic armed organizations have made significant gains. The Three Brotherhood Alliance, made up of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, and the Arakan Army, control an area larger than Belgium in the north of the country with close trade ties to China. Last week, the alliance successfully captured Lashio, the headquarters of the military junta’s Northeast Regional Command, and it is also in control of Mogok, the center of Myanmar’s world-leading ruby industry. The city of Lashio, the first of the junta’s fourteen military command centers to fall, is essential to controlling the expansive Shan State. With these victories, anti-coup forces hope to take control not just of territory, but vital economic and political centers and weaken the military’s decade-long grip on power within the country.

The Generals Protect Themselves

Myanmar’s military refers to itself as the Tatmadaw (Royal Armed Forces), but the average Burmese knows it less glamorously as the Sit-Tat (military). Myanmar’s military has dominated the country’s politics for eighty years, fighting British and Japanese occupiers and then communist insurgents and ethnic militias throughout the turbulent 1940s and ’50s. In its half-century (1962–2011) of one-party rule, the Sit-Tat subjected Myanmar to a torpor of stage-managed politics, economic catastrophe, and international isolation. Dictator Ne Win (1962–1988) initially attempted a Buddhist-socialist hybrid that glorified the military without handing real power to peasants and workers. Shock nationalization largely transferred Indian, Chinese, and Western assets into the generals’ hands, while mismanaged agricultural and financial policies condemned most Burmese to abject poverty.

After the economy collapsed, Ne Win and the Sit-Tat’s ideology and structure became more malleable, contorting into whatever preserved military dominance. The boiling point came with the 8888 Uprising (August 8, 1988), a broad-based, pro-democracy protest movement that still inspires today’s opposition. The Sit-Tat shot and killed thousands of protesters, and though Ne Win was ultimately ousted, the military maintained its grip with mass detentions, torture, arson, and executions. Afterward, the Sit-Tat largely shed its ideological posturing and redoubled efforts at self-preservation and self-enrichment. It created an artificial capital (Naypyidaw) to escape urban protesters, built up a domestic weapons industry to fend off its citizens, and captured significant portions of the Burmese economy to exchange for its officers’ loyalty.

By the time the Sit-Tat finally conceded to democratic elections in 2015, a wealthy caste of officers and their families inhabited a vast patronage network whose lavish lifestyles were funded by confiscated land, factories in which abuse took place, and sweltering mines. Even pro-democracy officers and some within the democratic opposition shared with the military a commitment to the suppression of minorities and kleptocratic rule. But the 2021 coup proved that even this concession was too much for the military, which, under General Min Aung Hlaing, once again turned to brute force to preserve its dominance.

The Political Economy of Military Rule

Today’s military oligarchy does not rely on any one export or industry. Resources, consumer items, manufacturing, and land are all plundered by the military and its associates. Jade, gold, rubies, lumber, oil, gas, and clothing are either owned by officers, gifted to associates, sold to the highest bidder, or protected for foreign corporations. Any opportunity for extraction, extortion, and profit is ruthlessly exploited through systematic, decades-old practices of forced labor, union busting, land expropriation, public embezzlement, and corruption in licensing and procurement.

The Sit-Tat surrounds Chinese mines and oil facilities with deadly landmines and sends soldiers to break up strikes at garment factories. Corporations owned by current and former generals or their family members, like the massive Myanma Economic Holdings Public Company Ltd (MEHL), make billions of dollars for the Sit-Tat’s upper echelon through complex webs of investments and money laundering. All the while, the average government soldier scrounges for food and goes into battle without adequate training or equipment.

The inequality and plunder that are the basis of Myanmar’s economy have been well-integrated into international supply chains and financial networks, both before and after the coup. As Myanmar reopened to international investment in 2011–12, states and multinational corporations became heavily involved in all of the industries central to the country’s economy, despite continued human-rights abuses, widespread corruption, and the clear role of the Sit-Tat in many of these industries. A host of international corporations and state actors have remained essential partners for the Sit-Tat ever since, even as it carried out a vicious military campaign in Kachin State in 2012, invaded Shan State in 2015, and committed genocide against the Rohingya in 2017. After the protests were repressed and Myanmar descended into war, workers were left under the watchful and repressive eye of the junta, which clung to its urban strongholds.

Today, the Sit-Tat bombs civilians with Russian airplanes serviced with Indian parts and running on jet fuel shipped by Chinese and Vietnamese companies while Singaporean and Thai banks facilitate weapons procurement for the Sit-Tat’s state banks. The coup has not deterred Australian mining companies, put off state-owned Israeli and Indonesian arms manufacturers, or halted a European Union trade agreement that allegedly promotes workers’ rights from coming into effect. Ultimately, though states maintain complex relationships with the junta, sometimes sanctioning, regulating, or divesting from these dealings, the Sit-Tat’s economic architecture remains diverse and extensive. Divestment and sanctions have been slow and incomplete, all while Myanmar’s ordeal continues.

Working Against the Junta

Every day, Myanmar’s workers experience this military oligarchy firsthand. Even if the junta were to follow the law, Myanmar’s worker protections have long been inadequate. Workers face frequent, arbitrary wage cuts and wage theft, long hours and appalling working conditions, forced and unpaid overtime, restrictions on speech and assembly, dismissal and arrest, and sexual harassment and violence in the workplace. Employers frequently call in the Sit-Tat, its police force, or pro-junta militias to break strikes or intimidate workers. Employers even maintain agreements with the military that allow soldiers to enter factories at will to arrest organizers.

In the mines supplying the world with jade and rubies, miners have little protection from arbitrary violence meted out by gangsters, militias, and soldiers, to say nothing of the dangers of oxygen shortages and cave-ins. Women (though not exclusively) across Myanmar face serious risks from sex traffickers, sexual extortion and abuse by employers and soldiers, or sexual violence and torture in the junta’s many overcrowded detention centers. School closures and poverty have created widespread child labor, while LGBTQ populations have lost much of their socioeconomic autonomy in a targeted campaign by the junta and its supporters.

Despite all the hurdles, Myanmar’s diverse workers are prolific organizers. There were three thousand unions registered by 2021, and they routinely went on strike, including widespread walkouts in the garment industry in 2019. Unions like the Federation of Garment Workers would then be at the forefront of the protests and civil disobedience campaign after the coup. The junta was quick in banning sixteen large unions for supposedly failing to register, but general strikes still shut down the country as railroad operators, civil servants, and doctors and nurses took to the streets for months. In Myanmar’s largest industrial district, Hlaingthaya, workers spent six weeks shutting down production before the Sit-Tat violently stormed the township and killed multiple people. Despite great personal risk, workers and protesters mobilized over Facebook and called for domestic and international boycotts of businesses with ties to the military.

After the protests were repressed and Myanmar descended into war, workers were left under the watchful and repressive eye of the junta, which clung to its urban strongholds. Their very proximity to the junta’s vital sources of income ensure workers and organizers are constant targets for surveillance, harassment, arrest, and prosecution. While they constitute an essential pro-democracy base for the opposition, Myanmar’s laborers have had to endure three years of war and economic crisis. Yet they remain resilient. On February 1, 2024, even within the junta’s grip, workers and supporters managed to shut down Myanmar’s towns and cities in a “silent strike” commemorating the third anniversary of the coup. It remains to be seen how much longer they will have to wait for a semblance of stability.

J.D. Vance Is Silicon Valley’s Trojan Horse in Its War on What’s Left of American Democracy

By Todd Fine

August 9, 2024

Source: The Indypendent


Image in public domain



For scholars of political ideology who have closely followed tech billionaire and Palantir founder Peter Thiel over the years, Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate is utterly terrifying.

Anyone paying any attention knows that Vance is a creation of Thiel — first in business and then in his political career. Aside from affirming the obscene power of wealth in American politics, with candidates having NASCAR-style sponsors, Vance’s elevation represents an urgent threat to the decaying threads of American democracy.

Thiel, amateur political philosopher, openly states his hatred of democratic and liberal politics while funding a stable of racist, fascist and authoritarian intellectuals, activists and artists (a number of them specifically associated with the Lower East Side/Chinatown haunt “Dimes Square”). He promotes several lines of fascist political thought — like Julius Evola’s traditionalism (cast through his latest interest, “Bronze Age Pervert”), Curtis Yarvin’s monarchism and the decisionism of Carl Schmitt — that have never before had significant currency in American politics.

Thiel’s early dreams of establishing libertarian seasteading to avoid taxes are now morphing into a more vicious plan of action with his acolyte Balaji Srinivasan’s “Network State,” an ideological vision of a global archipelago of authoritarian colonies that exploit or invade poor countries, modeled on Zionism and run on cryptocurrency.

From observing cryptocurrency communities (which have their own forms of fascist propaganda in NFTs and memecoins), we can discern that Thiel’s ideologies are now widespread, and no longer obscure. A good many of the kids are al(t)-right; the “Network State” is becoming a reality.

Vance, a highly-online millennial, repeatedly echoes many of the tropes and ideas common in “Silicon Valley Fascism.” Vance’s Twitter/X account reveals a deep interest in the extremist rightwing politics that his mentor worked for decades to fund and cultivate. He participates regularly in the series of “National Conservatism” conferences supported by Thiel, which attempt to foster an American nationalism that is fully divorced from the liberal ideology of this country’s founding.

If Trump had any restraint in constructing a more traditional authoritarian state in his first term (when he rejected most of Thiel’s suggested cabinet nominations), such hesitations or incompetencies could evaporate after disciplined maneuvering from Thiel and Vance. The event of Trump’s impairment, resignation or death could immediately result in the transition of the American political system into something very different.

The alarming question increasingly is why Vance’s selection has not triggered greater alarm among the institutions and “responsible people” that anchor the American establishment. Public reporting indicates that Trump listened to last-minute appeals from tech billionaires to select Vance. When his selection was announced, immediate praise came from right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen.

The Democratic Party may be near complete in its adoption of Wall Street corporatism, but one would hope that this extreme threat awakens any progressive or New-Deal spirit that remains. Or, conversely, Vance’s attacks on Wall Street may remind the existing corporate class that not all business leaders will be protected under the fascism of a triumphant Silicon-Valley oligarchy.

Vigorous attacks on Silicon-Valley fascism might help mobilize votes for Harris. Will the campaign offer the American people a serious crash course into the “Dark Enlightenment” politics, funded by Thiel and friendly to Putin, that cultivated a Vance?

As a former prosecutor, Harris would be in position to detail patiently the origins and ideas of the rising fascism, but this tactic would deviate from the American elite’s general disposition to avoid broaching the specifics of the increasingly radical and anti-American politics of the billionaire class. Prior Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton acted as though the dangers came only from Russia, without interrogating the wealthy domestic sympathizers.

Now, in this emergency, the appropriate reaction is not just to cherry pick a few sexist or authoritarian comments or soundbites from Vance with the hope that making fun of him (or his looks) will help Harris with swing voters. Democrats should move beyond talking vaguely about “deplorables” or “Project 2025.”

Opponents of this new fascism must educate the public. A real anti-fascist front must be built. It is time to be clear and precise, to return to the New-Deal style of politics that respects the voter and is brutally honest about the dangers of the Republican opponent.

Democrats have already said plainly that this election is about the survival of democracy. With the truth of this statement becoming clear with the section of Vance, it is time to act accordingly.

Through the New Popular Front, the French found a working strategy to defeat populist fascism. It required calling out the threat accurately and precisely, building an all-hands-on-deck coalition with leftists and radicals, and conceding some of the flaws of the status-quo centrist politics that had enabled massive inequality.

In the United States, a winning strategy requires its own brutal honesty about where we stand as a nation and what must be done to mobilize disengaged voters. The current memetic euphoria of “brat summer” must shift toward a more disciplined and organized anti-fascist fall.

Facing this imminent danger, leftists and radicals must behave responsibly and cooperate with liberals and Democrats in the construction of an anti-fascist front. Leftists and anarchists may be alienated and discouraged by the fruits of neoliberalism, but they won’t have any freedom of action at all under right-wing authoritarianism. They could even be rounded up and imprisoned.

The dangers of J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel are extreme. As an intellectual historian of fascism and twentieth-century ideology, I warn that exaggeration is hardly even possible.

Todd Fine is a PhD candidate in history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the President of the Washington Street Advocacy Group in New York City.

A Note on Noam Chomsky and Climate Collapse

By CJ Polychroniou

August 11, 2024

Source: Common Dreams


Credit: Chris Yakimov / Flickr

In many of his recent writings, Noam Chomsky has warned that humanity has reached a very dangerous point because we are now living in a world of cascading crises. Indeed, when we look around us, we see a global web of crises. Economic inequality is destabilizing democracies and making a mockery of the vision of a decent society; armed conflicts continue to mark human existence; and nuclear weapons and global warming threaten humanity’s survival. Meanwhile, we must feel aghast over the fact that cynicism and irrationality continue to define the mindset of the powers that be. This is precisely the reason why Chomsky has always seen activism as our only hope.

What’s happening in Gaza is an abomination, one that the leaders of this world are watching coldly from a distance. The same can be said about climate collapse, which is as real as the daily slaughtering of scores of innocent women and children in Gaza by Israel’s military. Our global institutions are incapable of doing anything meaningful about these crises. Real power is in the hands of the most powerful nation-states and their leaders have opted to turn a blind eye to both disasters so as not to disrupt business as usual. Profits and geostrategic interests take priority over human lives and the environment. This is as clear as day, and it has always been so since at least the emergence of capitalism and the rise of the nation-state.

The current conflict in Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, and peace remains as elusive as ever. The U.S. wants peace in Ukraine as much as Netanyahu wants to see a ceasefire deal in Gaza. The continuation of the war in Gaza is vital to the continuation of Netanyahu’s political career. In fact, Netanyahu will most likely celebrate by uncorking a bottle of champagne if an all-out war exploded in the Middle East. He knows he can’t possibly lose with the U.S. backing Israel. The cost of an all-out war in terms of human lives, either Israeli or Iranian or Arab lives, is simply irrelevant to him–or to Washington. Or what another war might do to the environment. The war in Gaza is also a war on the environment; in fact, it is “a widespread and deliberate act of ecocide,” according to a study by Forensic Architecture.


Profits and geostrategic interests take priority over human lives and the environment. This is as clear as day, and it has always been so since at least the emergence of capitalism and the rise of the nation-state.

As Chomsky has pointed out, “history is all too rich in records of horrendous wars, indescribable torture, massacres and every imaginable abuse of fundamental rights.” But the great man has gone to great lengths to stress that the climate crisis is “unique in human history” and, like nuclear weapons, can destroy organized human life as we know it. Yet, humanity spends annually trillions of dollars on weapons and the military but finds it economically unrealistic to devote the necessary funds to protect the earth.

So much for rationality.

Indeed, consider the global implications of the melting of the Antarctica sea ice. It may be winter in the Southern Hemisphere, but the Antarctica is experiencing a major heat wave that has made temperatures rise 50 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. This is the second major heat wave in Antarctica in the last two years. The entire planet has experienced more than 1.5 Celsius of warming in the 12-month period between July 2023 and June 2024, but Antarctica warms twice faster than the rest of the world, according to latest observations. If all the ice vanished, sea levels might rise by more than 150 feet.

It is no longer an issue of if but when major coastal cities will go under.

We already know that the super-rich and powerful don’t care about the rest of us, but it seems they also don’t care about the future of their own children and grandchildren. As Chomsky has underscored in some of the email exchanges that we’ve had, their self-gratification is even greater now that they know that the climate crisis is speeding toward catastrophe.

Indeed, as Copernicus Climate Change Service Director Carlo Buontempo recently said in connection with the new record set for the daily global mean temperature “we are now in truly uncharted territory…”


We already know that the super-rich and powerful don’t care about the rest of us, but it seems they also don’t care about the future of their own children and grandchildren.

And this brings us to the question of activism, which, as already pointed out, Chomsky sees as our only hope to save the planet. It’s our only way to stop carnages; our only way to stop the criminal negligence of climate collapse. We need the greatest possible degree of public mobilization for the purpose of exerting influence on policymakers. But without thoughtless methods like destroying works of art that turn the public against climate activism.

Moreover, Chomsky believes that we have the knowledge, money, and technology to transition from fossil fuels to alternative sources of energy that are clean, affordable and sustainable. This is why he feels that the Green New Deal is exactly the right idea and finds the Global Green New Deal initiative laid out by the progressive economist Robert Pollin particularly attractive.

As far as the link between capitalism and the climate crisis goes, suffice to say that Chomsky understands better than most the forces behind environmental degradation and climate collapse. The economic system of capitalism, especially during its neoliberal phase, drives climate breakdown. Global temperatures started increasing at an alarming rate after neoliberalism became the dominant economic force. Nonetheless, Chomsky is also fully aware of the fact that time is running out and we cannot wait for the end of capitalism before the planet can be saved. This is why he finds it so vital that we find ways to get the world off fossil fuels quickly and fairly. We must reach carbon neutrality no later than 2050. And do so in a just manner. For Chomsky, a just transition is imperative to building the political power that would bring about a shift from the fossil-fuel economy to a regenerative economy. Because, again, social activism is our only hope, according to what many have described as the “world’s conscience keeper for nearly half a century.”

And, no, hope is not an option. As Noam once said, “if you assume there is no hope, you guarantee there will be no hope.”

Lessons for Democracy From the Brazilian Amazon

“The environment and its natural resources are at the heart of the discussion on the maintenance of democracy,” said Hugo Loss, an official in Brazil’s environmental protection agency and a target of surveillance by the Bolsonaro administration.

By Marcos Colón

August 10, 2024

Source: Inside Climate News


Hugo Loss is an analyst with Brazil’s elite environmental enforcement agency IBAMA. Credit: Richard Ladkani/Amazônia Latitude

There was a time when the most dangerous part of Hugo Loss’ job was the grueling rainforest terrain and armed men blasting riverbeds and razing trees for profit.

But Loss, an analyst with Brazil’s elite environmental enforcement agency, learned recently that being effective at his job has made him a target, whether he’s helicoptering into the Amazon rainforest or walking on the streets of São Paulo.

Loss is one of more than a dozen governmental employees, journalists, judges and politicians named in a new federal police report as the targets of a sprawling spying campaign waged by the administration of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

The list of targets includes federal lawmakers, the former São Paulo governor and four members of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, the highest judicial body in the nation.

According to a court document made public in July, federal police are probing a “criminal organization” alleged to have illegally monitored the computers and telephones of Loss and the other named targets.

The organization allegedly used resources from Brazil’s federal intelligence agency, known by its Brazilian acronym ABIN. The document doesn’t contain direct allegations against Bolsonaro, but the court document says that the “parallel ABIN” investigation targeted people involved with investigating Bolsonaro’s family members and “causing trouble” for his administration.

Bolsonaro, whose populist far-right personality has drawn comparisons to former U.S. President Donald Trump, won Brazil’s 2018 presidential election on promises to develop the Amazon rainforest and a platform known as the BBB—Bibles, bullets and the main driver of Brazil’s deforestation, beef. Those policies put Bolsonaro at odds with some of his own governmental agencies. That includes IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental protection agency, where Loss has worked since 2013.

At IBAMA, Loss helped plan and execute military-style operations aimed at monitoring and dismantling the vast networks of illegal loggers, wildcat miners, poachers, land grabbers—and increasingly drug traffickers—driving deforestation and assaults and other crimes carried out against Indigenous people.

But just over a year into Bolsonaro’s presidency, key career IBAMA officials were either summarily dismissed or moved from the field to desk jobs. Loss was transferred to the state of Minas Gerais and banned from going into the rainforest.

The personnel changes and firings were largely seen as retribution. Loss had led investigations implicating top officials in the Bolsonaro government, including then-environment minister Ricardo Salles, who was linked to a timber trafficking network exporting Amazonian hardwoods to the United States and Europe. Salles resigned in 2021 and denied wrongdoing. He remains under investigation.

Loss has since been reinstated in an operational role at IBAMA. His work has ramped up under Bolsonaro’s successor, leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula), who took office in 2023.

But while Lula has promised to protect Indigenous territories and bring deforestation rates down, Loss says IBAMA and other agencies are now stretched too thin to achieve those goals.

The governmental gutting under Bolsonaro—similar to the conservative Project 2025 policy proposals made for a future Trump administration—have left a lasting mark. Loss said that over a year and a half into Lula’s term, those agencies have not been rebuilt.

At the same time, criminal networks that flourished under Bolsonaro have organized and become more sophisticated: Last year, Brazil declared a humanitarian crisis in the Yanomami Indigenous territory due to severe hunger and diseases exacerbated by illegal gold mining.

Loss talked with Amazônia Latitude and Inside Climate News about the roller-coaster of the past few years and the lessons for defenders of democratic institutions worldwide. The conversation, conducted in Portuguese, has been translated into English and lightly edited for length and clarity.

You’ve worked at IBAMA under both Bolsonaro and Lula. What were the big differences you noticed between those two administrations?

Under Bolsonaro’s government, we had great difficulty working because there were persecutions. In the end, we didn’t have the freedom to carry out the operations that had to be done.

Now, under Lula, that is totally different. There are no more persecutions of personnel. There are no outright restrictions on executing surveillance operations, and we can work unimpeded in that sense.

However, today there are other problems. The Bolsonaro government gutted and reshaped the structure of IBAMA, reducing the number of personnel and funding, and those changes haven’t been fully reversed under Lula.

We also still lack the resources to increase or intensify surveillance operations. Today, an IBAMA inspector and environmental analyst earns a salary of around R$5,000 ($885 USD) per month. Those agents put themselves in dangerous situations but don’t get paid a fair salary compared to the salaries of federal police. We also have not had any public recruitment for new employees since 2022.

The Lula government demands big operations from us, especially for the protection of Indigenous territories like the Yanomami, Kayapó, Munduruku and Apyterewa, and in bringing down the rate of deforestation. Those demands didn’t exist under Bolsonaro. But now that they do, the structure of IBAMA hasn’t changed and we can’t meet those increased demands.

We don’t have enough staff or resources to maintain two simultaneous large-scale operations to remove intruders from Indigenous lands. If a team pulls out, the criminals come back. So in each Indigenous territory where an operation is done, teams have to be kept there to maintain the situation, containing any new invasion attempts.

How have the operations of illegal loggers, miners, drug traffickers and other criminal groups in the Amazon changed over the past decade?

The Amazon changed a lot after Bolsonaro came to power. Criminal groups have strengthened and organized themselves, and that legacy remains today. We have a greater presence of guns.

During Bolsonaro’s government, the loggers and the prospectors organized themselves into cooperatives, into associations, and then they managed to elect councilors and mayors in small cities. They even managed to elect senators and deputies, people who defend their interests in the central spheres of power.

Even without Bolsonaro in the presidency, there is now a powerful group of politicians that defend the logic that there is not a need for IBAMA or Brazil’s Indigenous protection agency.

The biggest challenge we have is to overcome this logic. Today, we are not being directly persecuted or facing reprisals like we did under Bolsonaro. But it is far from an ideal situation. And I don’t know how this is going to be resolved.

The criminality in the Amazon is getting more sophisticated, it’s branching out, it’s growing in structure. Our governmental agencies aren’t keeping up with that growth because they have not been rebuilt since Bolsonaro gutted them.

Earlier this month, Brazil’s federal police released a report alleging that, under Bolsonaro, the federal intelligence services carried out operations to spy on and harass journalists, judges and other officials, including you. Have you read the report?

I’ve only had access to the parts that were made public. I haven’t had access to the full report. It is part of a police inquiry and is being kept confidential.

Your name is mentioned several times in the public version of the report as a person surveilled in 2020 and 2021 by the Bolsonaro administration. How did you react when you saw that?

I had suspected that I was under surveillance. My cell phone, for example, broke down because it overheated. I saw strange movements in front of my house, with suspicious people and vehicles. I just never imagined that it was part of such a big operation.

I am really worried about what will happen if Bolsonaro or his allies win the next election. I don’t know what I will do. I should make some kind of protection plan, because I’m sure they will target me again. And I keep thinking about it, about my family, what I will do.

The federal police report implies that you were under surveillance because of your environmental and Indigenous protection work at IBAMA. Others named in the report were judges, politicians and journalists—why do you think those groups of people were targeted?

I believe that there is a connection among the people who were targeted. We all play a role in upholding democracy.

Journalists have the job of providing society real, neutral information, and this brings society more autonomy in decision-making, thinking and forming opinions.

In the case of IBAMA career staff, as we combat environmental crime; we prevent private entities from stealing natural resources that should belong to the collective. This private appropriation of a collective resource is anti-democratic.

The environment and its natural resources are at the heart of the discussion on the maintenance of democracy, because anti-democratic governments use the gold and the timber illegally extracted from the Amazon to perpetuate their power.

At the time you were dismissed from your position in IBAMA in 2020, it was widely reported that you were dismissed as retaliation for dismantling illegal extractive operations connected to government officials. What was that experience like for you?

In 2020, I was part of an operation in the Apyterewa Indigenous territory to destroy all the mining there. And later, I was in Yanomami Indigenous territory, where we apprehended several planes and helicopters belonging to illegal miners.

In the Akuanduba Operation that implicated Ricardo Salles, hundreds of loads of timber were exported to various countries without IBAMA’s authorization. My team at IBAMA was planning an operation looking into that, and then I was dismissed. Our operation was never implemented. But federal police found evidence of conversations between Salles and illegal loggers.

I was “in the cooler” for 414 days after my dismissal on April 30, 2020. They banned me from going to the Amazon. They also removed me from other positions I held in Brazil’s human rights Protection Board and Environmental Licensing Board. I asked that instead of being dismissed, that they move me to Mato Grosso; my request was denied. I asked to be moved to Pará; my request was denied. I tried other parts of the Amazon as well and it didn’t work out.

I only managed a move to Minas Gerais. When I got there, the superintendent helped me get out of the cooler. He said to me: “What we know here is that you cannot go to the Amazon. You can carry out operations here, but you can’t go to the Amazon.”

I went back to the Amazon when Brazil’s Supreme Court removed the then-president of IBAMA, Eduardo Bim; the director of environmental protection, Olímpio Magalhães; and the coordinator of surveillance operations, Leslie Tavares. That was in May 2021. And that’s when I started being monitored again.

Have you considered leaving your job at IBAMA out of fear that you will face further reprisals?

No, not out of fear. Leaving this work would be like a climber stopping mountain climbing.

My work is creating and executing surveillance operations in the Amazon. So, I invest everything: I really study the land, the territory, I talk to the people. To work in the Amazon, it’s no use reading books about the Amazon. You need to know the land.

And you must have contact with the people. You must have situational awareness about where you are. This knowledge only comes from years of working at IBAMA.

So, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.

I would like, in the future, to train Indigenous peoples, to try and transfer this knowledge to them so they can protect their territories themselves.

Where do things stand now with regard to illegal activity in the Amazon?

I think that the criminals are much more organized and networked within official channels of power, including federal, state and local governments.

To combat that, Brazil needs to strengthen its public institutions and their independence. Democracy as a whole needs to be strengthened.

This entails not only more resources, like buying more helicopters, but increasing staff and developing defenses against criminal groups trying to penetrate the government. Public institutions must be able to carry out work that is strictly technical and focused on enforcing the law.

Given the revelations in the July federal police report, are you taking any steps to protect yourself from surveillance?

We are always alert. Before I knew I was being surveilled, I always watched for suspicious people. I keep my social media private and don’t post anything on social networks to protect myself.

What are you seeing now with regard to illegal mining and deforestation in the Amazon?

Criminal organizations have become strongly associated with mining activity in Brazil. This is relatively new.

Economic Hardship Sparks Nationwide Protest in Nigeria

By Baba Aye

August 10, 2024

Source: LINKS


Tens of thousands of people have trooped out on the streets across Nigeria in nationwide #EndBadGovernance protests against hardship and hunger, since 1 August. This phase of the protest movement is expected to last till 10 August. Demonstrations have been held in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja as well as in 29 of the 26 states of the federation. In all the eight states where there were no protests on the streets, residents joined the nationwide protest by sitting at home, as was the case in Enugu.

According to the organised private sector, the Nigerian economy lost N500bn (US$305m) to the massquake on the first day alone.

At least 13 people were killed that day by security forces who confronted protesters in some states with live bullets, according to Amnesty International. And by 3 August, the death toll, according to the Nigeria Labour Congress, might have risen to over 40. There have equally been massive arrests. More than 1,200 people have been arrested. But all these have failed to douse the mass anger driving the protests.

There were calls for the president to speak to the people, although the organisers stressed that they were more concerned with their demands being met, than a mere presidential speech. Eventually, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu addressed the nationon Sunday. Not surprisingly, his speech was high on self-praise, but low in any serious content regarding how the hardship of people would be ameliorated, beyond empty promises that these hard times would lead to greater prosperity in an undefined future.

In the course of his speech he alluded to the protests being the design of “a few with a clear political agenda to tear this nation apart” with a barely veiled threat to “ensure public order”. At the same time, he urged those protesters “who desired a better and more progressive country” to call off the protests and embrace dialogue.

Some reformists in the ranks of protesters, as well as some that are clearly fifth columnists, have echoed the calling off of the protests, in the wake of the president’s speech. Indeed some, including a few ex-leftists, had asked the protesters to leave the streets after the first two days, saying their point had been made, and with violence that had been recorded in a number of states, there was no need to continue at the barricades.

But such positions do not represent the mood at the trenches of this movement. In Lagos, Abuja and across the country, the spirit of resistance has remained unbowed, despite increased attacks by the police and thugs aligned with the ruling party.

The Road to #DaysOfRage

The main driver of this national protest is excruciating hardship and pangs of hunger driving millions of Nigerians to the edge of sanity and life itself, as a result of the economic policies of the current government. It has been the most thorough-going in implementing neoliberal policies. In fact, whilst speaking to business czars in Germany last November, President Tinubu declared that he deserved Guinness World Records recognition for economic reforms.

During his inauguration on 29 May 2023 he simply announced that the “petrol subsidy is gone” resulting in an immediate 240% increase in fuel pump price. The currency also lost 70% of its value against the dollar, having been devalued in June 2023, and as well at the beginning of 2024.An electricity tariff hike of upwards of 300% has also thrown homes, businesses, schools and hospitals into the throes of worries. Consumer price inflation which had averaged 13.0% between 2002 and 2022 now stands at 34.%. What this means in concrete terms to working people in the country is that scores of millions of people can barely feed themselves, pay their rents, or afford healthcare in a country where over 76% of health expenditure is out-of-pocket. People now die from easily treatable ailments.

Meanwhile, the working class demands for a living wage as the new national minimum wage was threatened with contempt. After much ado about nothing, organised labour settled for an increase of the national minimum wage from N30,000 to N70,000, which was signed into law in July. But real wages have actually declined and sharply so, once again. N30,000 when agreed upon in 2019 was US$83.50 (the 2011 minimum wage of N18,000 was US$115.68). But the new minimum wage of N70,000 is just US$46.35.Working people in the informal economy are in an even more terrible state. There is hardly anywhere to turn to for credit. And other working people can hardly find money to pay for things purchased from them.

The generalised state of hardship and hunger of working people in the country was a recipe for rebellion. The first wave burst out spontaneously at the beginning of February, in the North Central state of Niger, and Kano in the North West. Within two weeks it had spread to several states, including in other geopolitical zones in both the Northern and the Southern parts of the country. The entry of the Nigeria Labour Congress when it declared 27-28 February as nationwide workers protest days, further generalised the momentum, even though the unions mellowed after only the first day..The wave continued into March, under the atmosphere of an impending general strike which the trade unions had created, but failed to live up to. This contributed significantly to the petering out of that first act of an unfolding moment, of which the August #DaysOfRage is the second Act. But even at that time, it was clear to any discerning eye that the first round of protests was an herald to what could be a period of intense mass resistance to the state and its policies which is making life unbearable for the working masses.

Propositions for #DaysOfRage to protest hunger in the land, and #EndBadGovernance started circulating on several social media platforms, in the wake of the Kenyan youths revolt. It was initially inchoate. The Take It Back movement, which was part of this discursive emergence online, stepped in with Omoyele Sowore, its National Convener conducting an online poll to distil out a shared set of demands. As calls for the action became sharpened, and the set date of 1-10 August drew closer, liberal reformists like the Labour Party’s Peter Obi, as well as the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress made it clear that they were not going to be part of the protests, but urged the government to respect the protesters freedom of association and expression. Meanwhile, groups on the left with little if any traction in the emergent movement laid claim to being its “leaders”.

The Nigerian state, on its own part, brought out its whole bag of tricks to prevent the mass action from taking place. Several state officials issued threats that the government would smash any attempt to organise the #DaysOfRage protests. Blackmail and scaremongering were also thrown in for good measure. Pastors, bishops, imams, traditional rulers, academics and a host of such like well-respected people were brought in to echo the ruling class positions: the protests would lead to chaos, protests have never achieved anything, fifth columnists would hijack the protests even if it started as peaceful demonstrations, etc. The nefarious ethnic card was also shamelessly played, particularly in Lagos state, the metropolitan heart of Nigeria, A few days to the kickoff date of the #DaysOfRage, Lagospedia, an X account with over 41,000 followers which claims to proclaim the virtues of Lagos launched an #IgboMustGo campaign.

All these did not work. The mood of a huge movement on the horizons was palpable. The state and its minions changed tactics.They started trending fake news that the protest had been postponed to 1 October, the Flag Independence Day. There were swift rebuttals from several quarters of people organising towards the protest movement. The final card of reaction before the movement was unfurled was an attempt to tame it. Several tactics were brought to bear in this regard. The most strategic was with a series of court orders on the eve of the protest, which limited demonstrations to designated venues where the state envisaged would curtail disruption of public activities. Security forces show of strength were made in several major cities. And by the dawn of 1 August, they were strategically positioned in every Abuja and every state capital, to nip the protests in the bud or at least kettle them into insignificance.

Dynamics, trajectories and prospects

There are peculiar dynamics to the demonstrations in different regions as well as different states in the same regions. These partly reflect the nature of the social forces and the elements of differences in the histories of their repertoires of resistance. A lot has been said about the protests degenerating into violence, including by President Tinubu. Even Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa who had stepped in as solicitor for the organisers of the protest a few days earlier issued an appeal to the protesters on 2 August to “withdraw themselves from the protest grounds” and “suspend the protests immediately and indefinitely” because “the protests were said to have been hijacked with sponsored agents”.

What these sorts of appeals failed to appreciate is not only the diverse nature of violence, but that the only consistent form, across virtually all states, was that unleashed by the state and its sponsored agents. In some instances, the police worked hand in hand with thugs to attack rallies. In most cases where the thugs acted alone, in the first few days, they were repulsed by the large numbers of demonstrators. Where the police acted solely in its name, it was bolder in firing tear gas, and even live bullets, resulting in fatal casualties. Violence was also unleashed by protesters in several Northern states, especially in response to police violence. A tragicomic case was that of a policeman who was killed by his colleague while firing at protesters in the North Western state of Katsina.

With the genie of violence let out of the bottle came burning and looting. The state governments stepped in to protect property, and reinstate order. Katsina state government declared 24-hour curfew in Dutsinma local government and 12-hour curfew in all other local government areas in the state. Five other states spread across the three geopolitical zones in the North have also put curfews in place. Organisers of the protests were arrested in their homes over the weekend, and police launched house-to-house searches to recover “looted properties”.

In the North East and North Central states affected, protesters defied the curfews after a few days of compliance. On 3 August protesters took to the streets again in Kano, the second largest city after Lagos. One of the protesters is reported to have said “we rather die of bullets than to die of hunger, we cannot stay at home and die of hunger”. Interestingly, several protesters in Kano marched with the Russian flag raised high. A similar situation played itself out in Katsina two days later, even though Russia has dissociated itself from this. Protesters were not only waving the Russian flag in these states, they were also calling for military takeover to save the poor masses, like what they assumed is the situation in the Sahelian states, particularly Niger which they share history, culture and even kith and kin with.

Violence in the southern states was largely one-sided; from the police and thugs. But this was not wholly so. In Delta state, a policeman shot and injured a protester on 2 August. The hitherto peaceful protest became violent. Youths and market women sought to lynch the local government chair, who luckily escaped unhurt.

In Lagos, the epicentre was around the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park at Ojóta, a major entry-point into the state, with thousands of protesters coming from different parts of the state each day. It had also been the Lagos epicentre of the January 2012 #OccupyNigeria uprising. The state designated it as the place for the #EndBadGovernance protest in Lagos with a catch; protesters were to go into the gated park. Their resistance led to the police conceding that they take over the area around the park without trapping themselves inside its premises. There were other rallying points in defiance of the state’s directive, such as in front of the Lagos State House of Assembly at Alausa. But none drew the kind of crowd that was at Ojota.

The enthusiasm of protesters there was palpable. On Friday, the barricade coordinators suggested a weekend break, there was a loud shout of no, in response. The following day, there were up to five thousand people at the rally ground. It was, however agreed to have it low-keyed on Sunday. In the wake of President Tinubu’s speech on Sunday, fifth columnists tried to use the opportunity of a low turnout as planned and the absence of most of the comrades who had provided leadership there to demobilise, claiming the protest had been called off. This deception, coupled with much more massive anti-riot presence resulted in declining numbers of protesters there on Monday. There were less than a thousand people, the least since the protest started.

Interestingly, Monday was when a protest could be held in Ondo state, where thugs had attacked activists rallying for a protest on Day 1 of the #DaysOfRage. This could inspire action in some of the remaining seven states.
Conclusion

The ongoing nationwide protest would be the third massive protest movement in 21st century Nigeria, after the 2012 #OccupyNigeria uprising and the 2020 #EndSARS Rebellion. But, while 2012 and 2020 started as largely spontaneous popular responses with no set time, these #DaysOfRage started with clearly defined commencement and end dates. Within the “structurelessness” and “leaderful” “leaderlessness” that defined #EndSARS and most of the unfolding (consciously or unconsciously) autonomist-inspired social movements since #OccupyWallStreet, a sense of organisation is emergent. This is largely possible because of the role of a nationwide radical, non-sectarian left platform; the Take It Back movement, which was equally central in cohering the demands and mobilisation of the #EndSARS movement.

Organised labour might also be losing its relevance as the social force wholly representative of the working class. What happened on Day 1 and Day 2 was effectively a general strike. But it would be crucial for the emergent movement to be able to go beyond passive involvement of rank-and-file workers to active engagement, in building working people’s power.

It is also significant that this protest’s demands started where the #EndSARS demands ended before it was drowned in blood; #EndBadGovernance. Fostering understanding of the necessity of system change and revolutionary democracy from below, rooted in working people’s power, to “end bad governance” is of utmost importance for the left’s political work in the unfolding period. This would, amongst other things, help dispel the illusions in Putin, Russia and military vanguardism of any sort.

It is now past halfway through the #DaysOfRage. In light of the repression and chicanery thrown at it, the protest movement has, to a great extent, been a success. Much more important than the coming few days is the soil it has ploughed for the seeds of a coming gale wave, and which is likely to be quite soon.

As the protest organisers pointed out when the state was finding people to hold responsible as mobilisers for the protest; the key mobilisers are hunger and generalised hardship in the land. And there is no sign that any of these are going away soon.

 

2024 Paris Olympics Highlights and Lowlights: From Hijab Bans to Social Cleansing to Boxing Gold

By Amy Goodman

August 12, 2024Z

Source: Democracy Now!

With the 2024 Summer Olympics just concluded in Paris, we look at the highlights and lowlights of the past few weeks, both on and off the field. Journalist Shireen Ahmed discusses the victories for women in sport, including Dutch runner Sifan Hassan’s gold medal in the women’s marathon, which she accepted at the closing ceremony wearing a hijab while France’s ban on its women athletes competing in hijabs was in effect. “It was a very beautiful and quiet message to women all around the world, and particularly those in France,” says Ahmed, senior contributor to CBC Sports and a lecturer in the journalism program at Toronto Metropolitan University. The Nation’s Dave Zirin notes that while the Olympic Games had many powerful moments, they happened against a backdrop of mass social cleansing in Paris, with thousands of migrants and unhoused people “unceremoniously loaded on buses” and dumped outside the city. “We have to start organizing now to make sure that the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles are not a carnival of injustice,” he warns.

In Lisbon, Residents Seek a Vote on Banning Airbnb

In Lisbon, soaring tourism has turned tens of thousands of apartments into Airbnbs, pushing out ordinary renters. A referendum on banning short-term rentals in residential buildings could change that.

By Richard Matousek

August 10, 2024

Source: Jacobin





António Melo has lived all his seventy-one years in Lisbon’s Alfama neighborhood. But after the owner sold the building to a tourist accommodation company, they refused to renew his contract. “I fear eviction at any moment,” Melo explains “[but] I have nowhere else to go.”

His story has become common among the Portuguese capital’s 546,000 residents, who receive thirty to forty thousand tourists a day. Elderly residents have been forced out of neighborhoods they’ve spent their entire lives in. This exodus “prevents us from having a community life in the local area,” according to Ana Gago, a University of Lisbon geographer who has done on-the-ground research in the Alfama district. “And that is violent.”

Alfama has seen its resident population crash from a 1980s high of twenty thousand to just one thousand today. Unusually, while prices have “skyrocketed” — in the words of academic Luís Mendes, a housing consultant for city legislators — Lisbon’s overall population is also declining. “The effort rates for rent are now really high — well above the one-third of income everyone speaks of to keep rent at sustainable levels,” explains Mendes.

Compared to other major European cities, the rise in living costs has been relatively recent and rapid. Portuguese wages, however, are the lowest in Western Europe — and have lost all relation to these costs.

The predicament for homeseekers in Lisbon is nightmarish. But some residents are pushing back — and are mobilizing to force authorities into a referendum that could halt the displacement of housing by Airbnb and its ilk.
Opportunity

The current crisis began with the Great Recession, when the troika of creditors bailed out Portugal’s debt on condition that it implement austerity measures and deregulate its economy to encourage foreign investment. The Portuguese government — labeled “the good student” compared to Greece — ran with this. Simone Tulumello of the University of Lisbon explains that this meant a focus on quick-fix “development activities with low added value, of which tourism is the golden egg.” It also developed the “Golden Visa,” which granted EU-resident status to investors who paid in, such as by buying property worth €500,000, and a nonpermanent resident program incentivizing European property investors.

City hall also promoted Brand Lisbon until it topped several rankings — and became the European hotspot to visit if you were a right-thinking tourist, digital nomad, or start-upper. A boatload of celebrities, most famously Madonna, also moved in.

Local property owners and foreign investors took notice. “With the boom of Lisbon and the change in its self-perception,” says Tulumello, “people clicked that: ‘Alright, now rent is about making lots of money.’”

Several landlords used a new national rental law that facilitated evictions and converted their properties into lucrative holiday rentals. From 2014, they could automatically get a tourist-let registration number by filling out an online form. By 2020, twenty thousand of the city’s residences were registered as tourist lets: 60 percent of all properties in some neighborhoods.

Despite a massive building and renovation program, Lisbon lost a net six thousand homes in a decade, with tourist accommodation centrally responsible. “[The council] is both renovating and losing people,” argues Tulumello. “It is totally failing.”

Over time, while Portugal’s labor and wage market stagnated, the housing market began to reflect global consumption power. Long-standing local businesses across the city transformed to cater to tourists and expats.

Maria — who has lived in the Chiado neighborhood for seventy-eight years — feels that her options using local businesses have dwindled. “I’m ashamed to go into those places because I don’t even know what to order,” she says of the brunch cafés that have replaced old neighborhood shops.

“Life is disappearing,” Agustín Cocola-Gant, a geographer at the University of Lisbon, explains. “When I was interviewing short-term real estate investors, their message to locals was: ‘Move from the city center. This is a future opportunity for us, not a residential place anymore. Leave us alone and assume that you can’t live here.’”
Inertia

Instead of doing something about all this, national and city governments vacillated between denying there was a problem and further promoting property investment. Whereas Berlin, Paris, and London limited the number of days owners could let out short-term, and Barcelona and New York curbed new tourist lets, until last year Lisbon authorities took no such action.

But there was another kind of political response. After the pandemic receded and tourist numbers rapidly shot to record levels, frustration led to the growth of a social movement. This included new campaign organizations founded in 2022–23 such as Vida Justa, Porta a Porta, and Casas Para Viver, an umbrella platform for over a hundred organizations. Massive protests led to some promising words but little action from government. In fact, in the 2021 Lisbon and 2024 national elections, power shifted toward the Social Democrats: despite the name, a center-right party. Unlike the previous Socialist administration, one academic told me, the Social Democrats “don’t even acknowledge there is a problem.”

“I think we’re still very far from over-tourism,” says current mayor Carlos Moedas, a Social Democrat. “We should continue to bet on tourism, betting on quality tourism.” But how can this be a rational electoral choice for the main parties, when everyone can see the crisis, and Portugal is an apparent democracy?

One reason is simply that the number of voters who do have their money in housing is now significant enough that the council is quite desperate to keep prices rising, as unsustainable as that may be. And even when policymakers’ constituencies might want policy change, recent scandals have shown how the incestuous link between capital and the parties often trumps voter interest.

Additionally, the political culture of treating Lisbon as a breeding ground for national office prevents the more autonomous city hall politics visible in recent years in Barcelona, New York, Paris, London, and Berlin.
Movement and Friction

Agroup of activists and academics frustrated with the political consensus of inertia came together to form another of these new organizations, the Housing Referendum Movement (MRH). Inspired by Berlin’s 2021 referendum to force city hall to nationalize the big landlords’ property portfolios through a compulsory purchase order, it became a broad and everchanging movement to get the city to hold a popular referendum on housing.

“We have professionals, unemployed people, tenants, homeowners, people who vote for right-wing, centrist and left-wing parties,” explains Cocola-Gant. “The housing crisis and touristification in the city cut across several themes. They affect the most vulnerable but also the middle class and even the more well-off who moved to the center twenty years ago [and struggle to sustain a pleasant life among the mass of tourists and tat shops].”

MRH’s aim has been to make the first ever use of a Portuguese law meant to help voters to have their say. It says that if enough registered residents sign a petition for a public decision on the question, the municipality must vote on holding a binding referendum. Last month, the movement announced that, over a couple years of petitioning, it had achieved the required five thousand signatures and would present them to the council in October.

The council will debate it after that, though isn’t bound by law to green-light a ballot. But MRH hopes that public and media pressure is such that it would be difficult to deny people’s voice on this tense issue.

“We will have more than the double signatures necessary in the end,” explains Gago, who also works with MRH. “So, there’s clearly will among the population to have this referendum. If [the council] denies that, we would question our democracy.” This, in a moment when Portugal celebrates fifty years since the overthrow of the dictatorship.

All going MRH’s way, there will be a referendum in spring 2025, which — unlike Berlin’s — would be legally binding. So, if over 50 percent of eligible voters vote yes, the council would have six months to ban all existing and new Airbnbs and similar tourist lets in residential buildings.

Even beyond that, it’s not impossible, as Cocola-Gant explains, that the council could pass a new law to counter the effects of the referendum so that “nothing changes.” But that wouldn’t kill the symbolic value of Lisbon residents voting to rid the city of such lets. “If a lot of people vote saying ‘We don’t want this,’ the political pressure remains.”

Another possible challenge might come through the courts. When cities like Edinburgh and Berlin tried to curb Airbnb & co., the platforms began legal battles that watered down or tied up their plans.
Definition

If, despite all of this, the ban does come into force, the impact would be seismic.

During the pandemic, four thousand short-term lets reentered the long-term market. This had a noticeable impact on Lisbon rents and house prices. “Now,” says Gago, “imagine if we could take back all twenty thousand units, I’m guessing . . . hoping that would significantly impact not only Lisbon, but the entire metropolitan area.

“That would lead to the de-touristification of neighborhoods, which means that homes could be reinhabited by residents — new and old,” she explains. “Then the store that only caters to tourists today might rethink their business model to cater for [the people living nearby]. And neighborhood associations would stop closing [as populations stabilize].”

In this sense, this fight is about who gets to define the city and its core. “The city is far more than a place for investors to make money and it must remain a [diverse] mix of people,’” Cocola-Gant says, recalling the investors he interviewed. “The center is built out of a collective endeavor and heritage. Investors want to use that collective heritage to make deals [for their benefit] and in doing so we need to move out. We are saying no to that.”

Half a century ago, Lisbon revolted against one of Europe’s longest right-wing autocracies and chose people power in its Carnation Revolution. But while Portugal is marking fifty years of democracy, the rise of the far right in this year’s elections added a bitter taste to the anniversary for many. However, developments like the Housing Referendum Movement give a sense of hope that people can use the democratic mechanisms they built to effect change that helps the masses.

Lisbon isn’t the only part of Portugal facing strain on housing, intensified by tourist lets. The Algarve, Porto, Coimbra, Madeira, and Lisbon’s satellite towns suffer similarly and the whole country has access to this petition-to-referendum mechanism thanks to its post-revolution constitution. Housing activists nationwide will be watching closely how things progress in the capital.

If everything goes to plan, says Gago, it will be a “breath of hope that we can change our lives if we mobilize, plan, and organize. It would give hope for the system in force, this democracy.”

As Portuguese democracy marks its fiftieth anniversary, there is a sense that this movement is about more than soaring rents.

Tenants’ Unions Across the US Now Have a National Federation

Five tenants’ unions from across the US have announced the launch of a new national organization to take on the power of multistate real-estate capital. The Tenant Union Federation is the first major national effort at tenant organizing in 40 years.

By Rebecca Burns

August 11, 2024

Source: Jacobin


Screenshot of the Tenant Union Federation's homepage.

Five tenants’ unions from around the country convened on Tuesday to announce the launch of a new national organization to take on the power of multistate real-estate capital. The Tenant Union Federation marks the first major national effort at tenant organizing in forty years.

“Every tenant deserves a union — everyone deserves to move with the kind of power I found here,” said Donna Goldsmith, an organizer with the Louisville Tenants Union (one of the federation’s founding members) to a virtual audience of renters from around the country.

Goldsmith moved to a senior-living community in Louisville looking for a fresh start after the murder of her daughter and two grandchildren more than a decade ago. When her apartment began flooding regularly, she connected with the Louisville Tenants Union. At first, she was skeptical, but through building an ongoing campaign for better conditions, ​“I found other people like me,” she said. ​“Now all I think about is the tenant union.”

Billing itself as a ​“union of unions,” the federation is seeding a movement that hopes to turn tenants into a political force that can’t be ignored.

At the local level, the group’s five founding unions have already racked up an impressive streak of wins spanning a wide range of organizing tactics.

In the last year, the Louisville Tenants Union passed far-reaching restrictions on public funding contributing to gentrification in Louisville; KC Tenants defeated a billionaire-backed stadium tax in Kansas City; Bozeman Tenants United banned new short-term rentals and elected one of their own as mayor in the Montana tourism hot spot; the Connecticut Tenants Union negotiated a collective bargaining agreement with one of New Haven’s largest landlords and Chicago’s Not Me We won ballot referenda backing a landmark antidisplacement ordinance covering the area surrounding the new Obama Presidential Center.

But in an era of growing housing consolidation, those groups say that organizing within city limits can only take them so far when their landlords’ power and portfolios span much further.

The new federation plans to provide training and support to other fledgling renter organizations, test out dues-based membership models, build connections with organized labor, and assess members’ readiness to take coordinated actions like rent strikes.

Fresh off a major messaging victory, when President Joe Biden announced a plan to curb rent increases, the tenants’ movement is also pressing on with a campaign to attach robust tenant protections to federal housing financing. Last week, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris echoed Biden’s endorsement of rent caps at her first major campaign rally in Atlanta. A new poll of battleground state likely voters, commissioned by Bernie Sanders, finds that 63 percent of voters would be more likely to back a candidate who supports such a policy.

It’s not the first time that tenants have tried to build a national movement — but it’s the first big swing at such an effort in nearly four decades.

In 1979, as an earlier era of runaway inflation roiled the housing market, fifty tenant organizations convened in Newark, New Jersey, to chart a campaign for renters’ rights. An In These Times article that year noted that the groups shared common municipal policy goals like capping rents and enforcing building codes — and a common enemy in the form of a newly launched national landlord lobbying group.

What would soon become the National Tenants Union successfully fended off real-estate industry attempts to pass legislation cutting off federal housing subsidies to cities that enacted rent control. But tenants struggled to find a counterweight to the landlord lobby in the form of their own national campaign, recalls Woody Widrow, an organizer for the group in the 1980s.

“We couldn’t get a national focus,” says Widrow, who went on to direct the nonprofit Raise Texas. While the national tenants’ union acted as a clearinghouse for local efforts, most of the successes came in the form of new state and local rent-control legislation. Real-estate forces regrouped and, in the 1980s, began to pass a wave of state preemption laws that blunted the movement’s momentum. The National Tenants Union fizzled out within a few years — but Widrow says he’s heartened to see a new generation taking up the mantle and setting its sights on shared targets.

It’s ​“not a given” that tenants will prevail, says Tara Raghuveer, the tenant federation’s director and the founder and director of KC Tenants. ​“But tenants are transforming rent hikes, moldy bathrooms, and eviction nightmares into power, and tenants are starting to win.”

Understanding the Rise of the Global Far Right

By Clifton D'Rozario

August 11, 2024

Source: Links





There is no denying the far right has emerged as a formidable political force around the world. Take the June European parliamentary elections, where France’s National Rally, the Brothers of Italy and Alternative for Germany all performed well. The far right ended up as the second-largest bloc in the European parliament, leading Dutch politician Geert Wilders to declare after the surprise victory of his hard right anti-immigrant party in the Netherlands: “The genie is out of the bottle”.

But the rise of the far right is hardly a phenomenon exclusive to Europe. It has emerged as a strong and resurgent political force in several democracies around the world. See for example the victory of Javier Milei in Argentina and the inroads made by right-wing populists in Chile, Paraguay and El Salvador. Meanwhile, Donald Trump looks likely to return to power in the United States and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is back — although his mandate has been diminished, it does not change the fact that Modi’ right-wing political party is enjoying power for a third straight term.

This worldwide rightward shift is occurring in the context of global neoliberalism, where capital — in the face of recurrent crises — is on the offensive. Neoliberalism has seen economic policies decimate the welfare state and workers’ rights, the wholesome transfer of people’s money to corporations in the name of tax breaks and bail-outs, the privatisation of natural resources and other assets, etc.

It has spurred an unconscionable rise in social and economic inequality and unprecedented poverty, presided over the decimation of the working class and peasantry, fueled the exploitation of natural resources and climate change, and, importantly, curtailed democracy. This global environment — fertile ground for the emergence of fascist regimes — makes international opposition at the level of states to Modi and his ilk unlikely. Rather, there is mutual collaboration and legitimation. Economic liberalism paved the way for the far right.

This far right preys on people’s insecurities and disillusionment while whipping up mass frenzy against perceived internal enemies who are portrayed as threats to the state, nation, civilisation, culture and even notions of public order and public health. This leads to war, xenophobia, Islamophobia, right-wing consolidation and the thorough undermining of bourgeois democracy.
Common features and attributes

What one refers to as the far right spans from anti-democratic regimes to fascism and extreme right nativist parties. Each state has its own peculiar material conditions that have bred particular forms of far right politics. That means each regime has its own specificity and intensity.

That said, there are some common features that appear to varying degrees in far right regimes, such as populism, nationalism, authoritarianism, majoritarianism and nativism. By populism we mean the mobilisation of disgruntled people against elites by providing a commonality based on holding “those above” responsible for people’s grievances. Modi does this, Trump too.

Nationalism is the bedrock of most populists: a nationalism born out of nativism, with the belief that the interests of the “native-born” must have absolute priority over others on the grounds that the former are natives. Of course, the category of “native” comes with the erasure of past and present indigenous populations: Native Americans in the US, Adivasis in India, First Nations in Australia, etc. This is normally combined with anti-multiculturalism and the belief that the nation’s “people” and culture can only be singular, requiring a relentless pursuit against pluralism and diversity. Alongside these aspects are other characteristics: climate change denial, anti-genderism, historical revisionism and intense Islamophobia.

But there are three common and unmistakable characteristics:Brazen defence and shoring up of capitalism and private property by wedding religious/ethnic fascism with economic liberalism. What we are seeing is, in effect, a corporate takeover of the state and consolidation of the ruling classes that will not tolerate any dissent. This is a class project predominantly supported by the upper class but which recruits sections of the lower classes as foot soldiers in its counterrevolution.
Categorical rejection of democracy and the general principles on which democracy is premised: freedom to dissent, free and fair elections, rights for minorities, free media, etc.
Built on the strength of consistent mobilisation of public consensus for its ideology and through street mobilisations.
Understanding fascism in India

Modi’s BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party or Indian People’s Party) retained power in the 2024 general elections, despite a worse result than in 2019. This was the most unequal elections in India to date, conducted by an election commission that could not care less for its constitutional responsibilities and accountability, and behaved as an extension of the executive.

Under attack, the opposition belatedly came together as the INDIA alliance. It lacked the kind of cohesion, clarity and dynamism demanded by the situation, yet the people made it work, using INDIA as a vehicle to channel their energy against the rampaging fascist bulldozer. Beyond the INDIA coalition, the elections became a grassroots people’s movement supported by committed civil society activists and a highly effective and dedicated community of digital warriors.

The 2024 elections will be remembered as producing a truly historic verdict at a very critical juncture of modern India. India heaved a huge sigh of relief when the BJP lost its outright majority. The battle to deliver a more crushing defeat must now be carried on with greater unity, courage and determination to rein in the executive, restore the constitutional rule of law and undo the damage done to India’s social fabric and federal framework.

To understand the present fascist regime in India, one must understand the role of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Association), a Hindu supremacist organisation founded in 1925. Its primary objective is making India a religious (Hindu) majoritarian state. It has affiliate organisations working among all sections of society — students, women, workers, Adivasis, Dalits, farmers, advocates, etc — to build acceptance and propagate its ideology. It has been accumulating power over its nearly century-long existence through relentless campaigns of hate, lies and rumours, and by penetrating an entire range of key institutions.

The decisive victory by the Sangha Parivar [referring to the collection of Hindu nationalist front organisations affiliated to the RSS, including the BJP] in the 2014 election was the result of mobilising more and more sections of society and filling a political vacuum. It retained power with an even bigger victory in 2019, which saw Modi 2.0 hurtle at break-neck speed to implement his core economic and communal agenda. Without doubt, the international climate of neoliberalism and Islamophobia has facilitated Modi’s growth.

The end product is a Hindu majoritarian state marked by unabashed crony capitalism, subservience to imperialism, aggressive majoritarianism, the dismantling of the Constitution and democracy, relentless persecution of any ideological dissent, concerted attacks on the working class, and the privatisation of violence — especially against Muslims, Christians and Dalits — to Hindu supremacist organisations alongside increased caste and patriarchal aggression. What was once a fringe philosophy for decades is now the mainstream.
Ideological parallels

In some cases, far right forces inspire and shape each other’s politics. Parallels can be drawn, for example, between the ideologies and policies of Hindutva [Hindu supremacism] and Zionism.

The ideas Theodar Herzl put forward in his 1896 book The Jewish State became popular by the 1920s. With the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the British government made public its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. Around the same time, key ideologue Vinayak Savarkar coined the term Hindutva in 1922. Savarkar did not hide the fact that he saw Zionism as an ethno-nationalist parallel whose ideology was built on similar foundations: racial supremacy, politicisation of religion, and the idea that a nation can be built on a singular identity.

Savarkar claimed:


If the Zionists’ dreams are ever realised — if Palestine becomes a Jewish state — it will gladden us almost as much as our Jewish friends.

He also argued:


If tomorrow there breaks out a war between Pakistan and Bharat, almost all Muslims will be arrayed on the side of Pakistan in opposition to us, and their enemy Israel will be our only friend. Therefore, I say that Bharat should give unequivocal recognition to Israel.

Many thinkers have pointed to the irony inherent in comparing Savarkar and Herzl, considering that Savarkar and other Hindutva ideologues were known admirers of European fascism and openly expressed admiration for Nazi ideology and methods.

Another RSS ideologue, Dr. B.S. Moonje, made explicit its connection with rising fascism in Europe when he visited Italy in March 1931 to meet Benito Mussolini and tour various fascist institutions in Rome, including the Balilla (Mussolini’s youth organisation), about which he wrote:


The Balilla institutions and the conception of the whole organization have appealed to me most, though there is still not discipline and organization of high order. The whole idea is conceived by Mussolini for the military regeneration of Italy. Italians, by nature, appear ease–loving and non–martial, like the Indians generally. They have cultivated, like Indians, the work of peace and neglected the cultivation of the art of war. Mussolini saw the essential weakness of his country and conceived the idea of the Balilla organization. … Nothing better could have been conceived for the military organization of Italy.

In 1940, RSS supremo Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar advocated the notion of Hindu national resurgence and argued Hindus must unite to combat the threats posed to Indian culture by foreigners, especially Muslims and Christians. Golwalkar openly admired Nazi Germany’s efforts to “cleanse” itself of unwanted ethnic minorities:


To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.

Today, when we say fascism in India has found a role model in Israel, it comes from this deeper ideological similarities between Hindutva and Zionism.
Fighting back

Even as far right politics proliferate, people are waging a historic battle around the world. In India, fascism is not just being fought in the electoral arena; it is also being confronted on the streets.

Since 2014, we have witnessed a huge people’s upsurge. Modi’s pro-corporate farm laws were met with determined struggle and the unity of farmer groups. A year-long encampment on the outskirts of Delhi compelled the government to withdraw the laws. The communal Citizenship Amendment Act saw the mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy people. Students and workers fought pitched battles against Modi’s anti-people policies. These struggles created the atmosphere for a united front on the electoral front.

Now we need to go further. The battle for democracy against fascist forces in India encapsulates the struggle against feudal remnants, the battle for annihilation of caste and gender equality, and the struggle for ending religious fundamentalism and communalism, all of which remain a stumbling block to a thorough democratisation of society. The political and economic struggle for democracy against capitalism forms the other plank for democratisation that can forge a unity of the masses.

[Former CPI(ML) Liberation general secretary] Vinod Mishra rightly declared that the basic challenge facing Marxists today is to explore the broadest form of proletarian democracy — beyond the limits of parliamentary democracy — so that the inevitable defeat of world capitalism is the victory of both socialism and democracy. For this the proletariat cannot, as Lenin said, “pin its faith in general democratic slogans but must contrapose to them its own proletarian-democratic slogans in their full scope”.

This article is based on Clifton D’Rozario’s presentation to Ecosocialism 2024. D’Rozario is a leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation and is involved in the campaign to unionise and fight for the conditions of Dalit sanitation workers in Karnataka state.