An Ecuadorian judge ordered the immediate release of nearly 30 fishermen whose two boats were destroyed by the US military in the Pacific Ocean. The Ecuadorian prosecutor’s office had charged them with alleged illegal activities.

The sequence of events is telling.

In two separate instances between late August and early September, the fishing boats Conquista II and María Candelaria were boarded by US military forces while on the high seas. The US forces, after transferring the fishermen to other vessels, destroyed and sank their boats.

The fishermen’s families quickly reported that they had lost communication with their loved ones. Only after prolonged uncertainty were the crew members handed over at Ecuadorian ports and placed under the control of Ecuadorian authorities.

In other words, the crew members were not charged with any crime before their vessels were destroyed, but rather afterward. This move has drawn heavy criticism from criminal defense attorneys (who argue that these actions violate due process) and caused anxiety among Ecuadorian fishermen, who have expressed their fear of fishing on the high seas and suffering the same fate as their compatriots. Several other boats have been intercepted and sunk in the Pacific by US forces in recent months, only increasing fears about transiting there at all.

The US military, for its part, claims that the destroyed vessels serve as fuel refueling points for other boats involved in drug trafficking. Under this strategy, US Southern Command intercepted at least eight Ecuadorian vessels between August and September 2026.

Foreign military actions on Ecuadorian soil have been defended by the government of right-wing President Daniel Noboa, who has aligned himself with Donald Trump’s hemispheric security policy embodied in the Shield of the Americas. During a recent visit to the South American country, Marco Rubio defended the military operations as necessary to dismantle drug trafficking routes.

But why destroy a vessel that has already been evacuated of its crew? 

Defense Minister Giancarlo Loffredo, who defends US military operations against Ecuadorian fishermen based on alleged “prior intelligence,” said that destroying a vessel that has already been evacuated of its crew is justified because it is too risky to tow the vessels to shore. He also said that seizing the fuel on board is dangerous.

However, the minister’s justifications have not convinced everyone. Human Rights Watch stated that both the United States and Ecuador must present evidence justifying the destruction of the vessels: “Of the detained crew members, 90 are facing criminal investigations in Ecuador, 56 were released because Ecuadorian judges ruled that their detention was illegal, and another 14 were not brought before a judge.”

In addition, Juanita Goebertus, director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch, said: “Intercepting fuel trafficking at sea can be an important step in stopping criminal groups, but that does not give security forces the right to detain people without evidence, destroy their boats, and commit abuses.”

The fact is that the Ecuadorian fishermen deny any involvement in the crimes of which they are accused. For now, the Ecuadorian courts have ruled in favor of nearly 30 fishermen from the Montecristi and the Don Rufo, stating that the prosecution failed to present evidence to support its accusations. With them, the total number of acquitted crew members stands at 56. Another 32 fishermen are on probation while investigations into alleged criminal association continue.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) reacted strongly to the US announcement to suspend the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program used by major IT companies for getting green cards for their foreign employees.

Reacting to the announcement made by the US Labor Secretary in the presence of Vice President J D Vance, India’s MEA, on Friday, October 9, called it a move harmful for the “shared ambitions of both countries.”

US Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said on Thursday that his department will not accept any fresh application for PERM or process the pending applications from eight major IT companies.

The companies named were Microsoft, HCL, Cognizant, Adobe, Capgemini, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosysis, and Wipro.

Among these firms are some of India’s biggest IT companies with the majority of them employing a large number of IT professionals from outside the US. The move is seen as a part of the Donald Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.  

Almost 70% of H-1B visa holders are Indians which means the halt in PERM will affect the Indian IT professionals the most.

PERM is the first step for an employer in the US to sponsor a green card for its foreign employee. According to the US laws, the employer must prove it tried and failed to get a local for the job before it can sponsor a foreign person.

According to Sonderling, these eight companies have sought almost three million foreign workers and received over 230,000 H-1B visas and over 100,000 PERMs since 2009, claiming all these were “jobs that were taken from American workers.”

Vance said the Donald Trump administration wants the companies to prioritize local recruitment instead of getting “foreign indentured labor.”

He accused companies of abusing the H-1B visa program, claiming there have been multiple cases pending in the federal investigation about fraud in recruitment and the violation of its “best of the best” clause.

Unwarranted and deeply offensive 

In a brief statement, India’s MEA on Friday called Vance’s comments about “foreign indentured labor” “unwarranted” and deeply offensive, claiming it “ignores the fact that Indian professionals in the US are highly educated and skilled contributors to its economy and innovative ecosystem.”

“The history of the US itself has been shaped by generations of immigrants whose labor, enterprise and innovation have contributed to its growth and prosperity” it underlined, further noting that “resorting to terminology that carries painful historical and colonial legacy connotations is deeply offensive.” 

Millions of Indians were taken out of the country to different parts of the world for indentured labor during the British colonial period in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  

The US decision has already led to widespread reactions from the opposition groups asking the Indian government to take measures to protect the interest of the country’s IT professionals. 

In a post on X, Jairam Ramesh, leader of the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC), asked the government to retaliate to the US move, claiming failure to do so would be tantamount to surrendering the country’s interests to a bully.

Ramesh accused the Narendra Modi-led ultra-right-wing government in the country of adopting a policy of “appeasement” toward the US, citing its recent decision to impose user charges on payments through mobile phones in the country as one crucial example of how it is going out of the way to do so.

Ramesh claimed Washington’s decision to suspend the visas yet again proves that such a policy never pays off.

On September 20, 2026, Die Linke achieved a historic result. With 25.7% of the vote, the party became the largest in the Berlin parliament for the first time. The traditional parties of power (the CDU, the SPD, and the Greens) are left standing. A left-wing government with Elif Eralp as governing mayor is, in theory, within reach.

The reason for this success is no mystery. It is substance. During the campaign, thousands of Die Linke volunteers went out into the neighborhoods. Door to door. Building to building. Up one stairwell, down the next. They came not with shiny brochures, but with one fundamental question: what keeps people awake at night?

For hundreds of thousands of Berliners, the answer is painfully clear: rent. The envelope that lands on the doormat every month. The knowledge that an ever-larger share of their wages flows straight into the bank account of some anonymous slumlord.

Die Linke wants to make rents affordable, break the power of listed real estate giants, and finally implement the outcome of the referendum. In that 2021 referendum, more than one million Berliners voted for the socialization of large housing stock.

Berliners consider no other party as competent on housing. The figures speak for themselves: after the election, 37% of all Berliners say Die Linke has the best solutions for affordable housing.

The establishment strikes back: the great reversal of the debate

Die Linke won on material issues: housing, rent, ownership. But within no time, the press and the talk shows have all but stopped talking about any of it. Suddenly the political debate is dominated by accusations of antisemitism. By stories about the Rote Hilfe, a left-wing solidarity organization that provides legal support to activists and prisoners. By alleged connections to criminal “clans.” By the suggestion that parts of the party lie outside the acceptable democratic framework. Suddenly, the burning question in the media is no longer how to lower rents, but whether Die Linke is “even fit to govern at all.”

It is the great reversal of the debate. Center stage no longer belongs to the unaffordable rents, the power of real estate corporations, and the housing crisis, but to the legitimacy of the party that won precisely on those issues. Meanwhile, the federal establishment works hard behind the scenes to make any possible socialization of real estate giants, the so-called Vergesellschaftung, legally impossible. Yet Article 15 of the German Constitution makes such socialization possible in principle.

What we see here is an organized counterattack from established economic and political power blocs. They open multiple fronts simultaneously – economic, legal, political, and ideological. Let us take a closer look at the nine forces that have now mobilized against Die Linke in Berlin.

1. Real estate capital

The most direct clash is with real estate capital. Die Linke wants to expropriate profit-driven housing companies that own more than three thousand units each. That concerns a total of over 200,000 housing units in the city. Among them is Europe’s largest real estate company Vonovia, which alone owns 138,000 units in Berlin.

On September 21, the morning after the election, BFW Berlin-Brandenburg, the lobby club of private project developers, pulls the emergency brake. The real estate group warns of “a step backward in housing policy.” Expropriation would slow new construction. Private capital would flee. The BBU, the association of housing companies in Berlin-Brandenburg, also springs into action. In Handelsblatt, Welt, Die Zeit, and Tagesspiegel it warns of “massive investment risks.” In short, as soon as its property and profit model is even slightly threatened, the real estate lobby pulls out all the stops and lets the organ roar.

Here you see class struggle in its most material form. Die Linke wants to shift power from large real estate owners to tenants and public ownership. The real estate sector wants to preserve the existing regime of private property, rental income, and investment returns.

What is at stake is concrete: who owns the apartments, who controls rental income, where does public money go, and who may decide politically about it?

2. Financial capital

Where there is real estate, there are banks. On that same September 21, Die Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft, the powerful umbrella organization of the German banking sector, issues an official warning. Socialization of housing would deter private capital. It would make real estate financing more difficult. It would drive risk premiums sky-high. It would – for hypocrisy knows no bounds – “reduce funds for education and social policy,” as if the German banking sector had ever been guided by such concerns in past decades.

Financial markets also react immediately. Vonovia’s stock price takes a hit and falls 1.7% against the trend, to its lowest level since June 2023. Deutsche Wohnen takes a beating too. Why? Because for these guys, housing in Berlin are not places where people live, love, and raise children. For big capital, housing units are investment vehicles and collateral for gigantic mountains of debt. If you remove those homes from the private market, you hit not only the slumlord but also the wealth manager, the banker, and the speculator behind the entire parasitic ecosystem of Frankfurt. That too is class struggle.

3. The Berlin business establishment

Traditional Berlin capital had already dug in before the election. The four major employer organizations – the Chamber of Commerce (IHK Berlin), the Handwerkskammer, the VBKI, and the UVB – closed ranks in their so-called Wahlarena der Berliner Wirtschaft, a joint election forum where the main parties had to defend their economic programs before organized Berlin business.

Their lobbying does not stop on election day. After Die Linke’s victory, VBKI chairman Harald Christ mounts his warhorse. His message? “Anyone who wants to expropriate private property in this city puts our future at stake.” The VBKI is one of the most elite clubs of Berlin businessmen, of the sort that lives more on returns from property and the labour of others than on their own labour. According to Harald Christ, who himself holds no elected public mandate, a party “that does not clearly distance itself from antisemitism” should not govern either.

Here you see how the two lines of attack of the establishment merge perfectly. On one hand, defence of sacred private property. On the other, moral blackmail. Die Linke must be treated as a pariah as long as it does not jump through all the hoops of the establishment.

4. The arms industry

A second economic front is the arms industry. For the militarists, Berlin must become a hub in the arms industry. Die Linke sees it differently. The party wants no expansion of military industry in the city, no military propaganda on the streets, and no army recruiters in schools.

That is blasphemy in the church of German militarism. In its hunger for new billion-dollar contracts, the German military-industrial complex of Berlin-Brandenburg wants to create a cluster for defence and aviation. Martina Klement, Minister of Economic Affairs in Brandenburg, already threatened that her state would “continue alone if necessary” if the Berlin government blocked its plans. She points an accusing finger at Die Linke’s critical attitude towards the Rüstungsindustrie, the arms industry. That too is class struggle: will Berlin become a cog in the booming war economy, or will the city build a dam against it?

5. The federal state and the institutional veto

Pressure on Die Linke comes not only from banks, real estate groups, and lobbies. Parts of the state apparatus are also intervening directly into the conflict.

The decision that Die Linke must under no circumstances lead the formation of a Berlin government seems to have been decided even before the polling stations closed on September 20. A few minutes after 6 pm, with the polls barely closed, Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz gave a speech with one clear message: he continues his course, whatever the election result.

A day later, Merz announced he wants to fast-track with a federal law against the socialization of large real estate companies. His coalition had previously made agreements about this, but after Die Linke’s victory it suddenly became urgent. Germany, according to Merz, had to make it clear to international investors that private property remains safe and is not simply expropriated. That it is Merz, of all people, who brings this message is not without meaning. Before his return to politics, he chaired the supervisory board of the German branch of asset manager BlackRock from 2016 to 2020, one of the largest financial players in the world.

What is at stake is Article 15 of the German Constitution.Since 1949, it has explicitly stated that land, natural resources, and means of production can be transferred to common ownership or other forms of communal economy by law, provided compensation is regulated by law. That provision has never been applied. The struggle in Berlin is precisely about whether it can be used for the first time against large real estate companies.

Other statesmen also do not hold back. For example, Bavarian Minister-President Markus Söder (CSU) threatens to question financial transfers to Berlin if the city pursues too leftward a course. Bavaria is one of the richest states and a major net contributor to Germany’s system of redistribution. Bavaria is rich, Bavaria pays. And so Söder wants to dictate what Berlin votes. A dangerous Lega-Nord-ization of German federalism: the rich region buying off democracy in the poorer region.

Individual ministers also intervene via their official function. Federal Minister of Economic Affairs Katherina Reiche used her ministry’s Instagram account to attack Die Linke over expropriations, antisemitism, and alleged ties to organized crime. Die Linke has taken legal action against this, invoking the duty of neutrality that binds state institutions.

Even the judiciary has been drawn into the debate. Berlin Attorney General Margarete Koppers warned, amidst the controversy over alleged ‘clan’ contacts around Die Linke, that criminal networks deliberately seek out politicians. She did not accuse Die Linke directly, but her intervention gave additional institutional weight to the image built around the election winner.

Merz and his Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) know well what is at stake: if socialization of large real estate companies succeeds in Berlin, it could also raise expectations elsewhere – in the automotive industry, energy sector, or other strategic sectors.

It is precisely this precedent that must be stopped. An electoral victory for Die Linke must under no circumstances grow into an infringement of the existing order of property, let alone into an example that sparks other social struggles.

6. The police and security apparatus

A sixth pressure line comes from the police apparatus. After the election, certain police unions in Berlin warned that a government led by Die Linke could weaken the police by restricting its powers, its surveillance, and its capacity for repression. The Gewerkschaft der Polizei (GdP) went further and warned SPD and Greens that “the security of this city is at stake.” It also suggested officers might leave Berlin to work in other German states.

That threat quickly gained a practical dimension. CDU-led governments in Baden-Württemberg and Brandenburg openly invited Berlin police officers to transfer and explicitly linked that recruitment campaign to the prospect of a government led by Die Linke.

That is organized pressure and blackmail from certain police unions and conservative state governments: accept our vision of police and security, or we will drain your force dry.

7. The Israeli Embassy

And then there is the elephant in the room: the campaign around antisemitism. On September 26, ARD, the major German public broadcasting corporation, found that the controversy over antisemitism had by then “overshadowed all other topics since the election victory.”

Ambassadors are normally not supposed to interfere directly in the host country’s domestic political decision-making. That did not prevent Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor from warning after Die Linke’s victory of an “immediate existential threat” to Jewish life in Berlin. Prosor, a Netanyahu loyalist and critic of the International Criminal Court, accuses parts of Die Linke of “unrestrained antisemitism” and hostility toward Israel.

Virtually simultaneously, Josef Schuster, Chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, addressed the SPD and the Greens directly: anyone who helps Die Linke into the Rote Rathaus, the Berlin City Hall, is, in his view, putting social cohesion and Jewish life at risk.

Within the SPD and the Greens, that Israeli pressure finds a willing ear. SPD politician Martin Hikel calls cooperation impossible with a party that, in his words, “tolerates antisemitic statements.” Antisemitism and the defence of Israel have now become central topics in initial talks between Die Linke, the SPD, and the Greens. In this way, the Israeli intervention weighs directly on the political climate in which a new Berlin government is being negotiated.

Behind that lies a broader strategic entanglement. Despite the genocide in Gaza, Germany and Israel continue expanding their military-industrial cooperation. Israeli arms producer Elbit Systems signed new strategic cooperation agreements this year with companies including TKMS and Diehl Defence, among other things for naval weapons systems and drones for the Bundeswehr. Elbit wants to build up to eight new facilities in Germany over the coming years.

That makes the struggle over Israel material as well. It’s not just about Gaza, apartheid, and Israeli settler colonialism, but also about increasingly close military and industrial interconnection. In such a context, the label “antisemitism” takes on particularly political charge when used against forces opposing the Israeli government, German rearmament, or that growing military-industrial cooperation.

8. ELNET: the international lobby network

Beyond the Israeli embassy lies a much broader lobby infrastructure. What stands out is how the theme of antisemitism repeatedly comes to centre stage whenever a consistent left force achieves electoral breakthroughs.

In Great Britain, three major newspapers declared jointly in 2018 that a government under Jeremy Corbyn would constitute an “existential threat” to Jewish life. Corbyn had to be politically delegitimized because he broke with the consensus on Israel, openly supported the Palestinian cause, and simultaneously defended a socio-economic program that collided head-on with British establishment. The accusation of antisemitism thus became a weapon in a broader struggle to declare him unfit for governmental power.

The same pattern surfaced in France. In 2024, Yonathan Arfi, chairman of the umbrella organization of Jewish institutions in France (CRIF), declared that “La France Insoumise (LFI) has no place in government.” Again the accusation was: “antisemitism.” In reality, it was about left criticism of the genocide in Gaza. For recent French municipal elections, French security service Viginum exposed a massive Israeli disinformation campaign run by the shadowy Blackcore. With fake sites, false profiles, fake news, and AI bots, LFI candidates were systematically smeared.

In Berlin, attention focuses mainly on ELNET Deutschland, a lobby organization that seeks to strengthen Israeli-European ties. The money for this little party comes mainly from the US. The German office received over one million euros from ELNET US in a single year.

ELNET financed trips to Israel for at least 51 Bundestag members and brought six IDF officers to the capital for talks with politicians, the Bundeswehr, and media shortly before the Berlin election. Thus ELNET forms an important link between Israeli security circles and the German political establishment, and possesses considerable financial resources and direct access to decision-makers. In the current Berlin debate, that infrastructure strengthens a political climate in which attitude toward Israel increasingly serves as a touchstone for the question who may and may not govern.

9. The United States

Finally, there is American interference. The United States has made no secret in its official National Security Strategy that it actively supports far-right and nationalist forces in Europe – such as the Rassemblement National in France or the AfD in Germany. For Trump, such Europe offers a double advantage: allies who stand closer to Washington, but simultaneously an EU that remains internally divided and less able to act as an independent international power.

American heavyweights like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and former ambassador Richard Grenell have intervened openly in German politics in recent years, typically in ways giving AfD more legitimacy and political space. When AfD scored in Saxony-Anhalt, Trump, Musk, and Grenell were in the front row to cheer. Trump publicly celebrated the result, Musk wrote “Gut gemacht!” (Well done!), and Grenell spoke of “a great victory and a new day in Germany.” That was barely two weeks before the Berlin election.

Meanwhile, the American embassy in Germany set aside approximately $400,000 this summer for German civil society organizations, among other things for projects around “countering antisemitism.” They use diplomatic funds to determine domestic political agendas. On Washington’s instructions, American embassies in Europe feed the witch hunt against the left, while helping the far right into the saddle.

A desperate move

Add all these forces together (banks, real estate companies, employers, arms industry, judiciary, federal government, embassies, and international capital) and you see what really happens in Berlin: different factions of the ruling class defend their own interests but find each other as soon as existing property and power relations are touched.

The first front is material. Real estate capital defends its rents and land ownership, banks their credits and collateral, investors their returns, the arms industry its billion-dollar contracts and state orders. Their interests differ, but on one point they converge: Die Linke must not undermine the grip of private capital on housing, investments, and public funds.

The second front is political and ideological. As soon as those material interests come under pressure, the debate shifts to antisemitism, extremism, Rote Hilfe, and alleged clan connections. The goal then is no longer only to block concrete reforms. Die Linke itself must be pushed outside the boundaries of the politically acceptable.

But let’s be honest: that smear campaign is nothing but a desperate move. The elites play dirty because they lack arguments. No one can look Berliners in the face and claim €1,500 per month for a shack is a good thing. The housing crisis is not an extreme position, but daily reality for the absolute majority of the population, including many voters of the SPD, the Greens, or the right.

Because the establishment cannot win that debate, it tries to impose another one. The smoke bombs go off one after another: “antisemitism!” “clans!” “Islamists!” “Rote Hilfe!” The less of an answer there is to the social question, the louder the noise about Die Linke’s supposed unfitness to govern at all.

The real extremism in this world is not a party that organizes tenants. The real extremism is a society in which millions of people are driven out of their city because a handful of vultures demand their returns. The real extremism is a system that reduces housing to speculation and war to a profit model.

Die Linke won on the fundamental question: whose city is Berlin? Who sets the rules, who controls the bricks, and whom should the city serve? The answer from Berliners was clear. The intensity of the counterattack shows how well the other side understands what is at stake.

Nobody should fear that polarization. It is simply the noise of class struggle: economic powers defending their property and capital, state powers trying to guard the boundaries within which an election result may change something. The scent of panic hangs in the corridors of power. There is no reason to turn defensive or to retreat. There is all the more reason to rely on the people and to mobilize. Because in the end, that is where the decisive question lies: who truly forms the majority in Berlin, and who holds the power to stand in its way?

Peter Mertens is a writer and the Secretary General of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB/PDVA).

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Brazil’s general election on October 4 delivered a severe warning to the left. Flávio Bolsonaro, the presidential candidate of the Liberal Party (PL), finished ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with approximately 47% against 45%. Neither secured a majority, sending them into a runoff on October 25. More troubling than this narrow presidential gap was the advance of bolsonarismo through Congress. The election has strengthened a political movement whose ambitions extend beyond defeating Lula to reshaping the institutions that obstruct its exercise of power.

The imprisonment (house arrest) and electoral exclusion of Jair Bolsonaro have not dissolved his movement. His son Flávio carries its presidential banner, while other members of the family have won seats in Congress. Michelle Bolsonaro, Jair’s wife, and Carlos Bolsonaro, his son, enter the Senate; Jair Renan, another son, and Renato, Jair’s brother, enter the Chamber of Deputies. Nepobolsonarismo is an appropriate name for this family’s expansion through the state. Yet the family is only the most visible expression of a broader project, rooted in powerful economic interests and a deeply organized reactionary politics.

A presidential contest with continental stakes

Lula remains the principal obstacle to the return of this project to the presidency. His defeat would affect workers and peasants throughout Brazil, but also the possibilities for regional cooperation and an independent Latin American foreign policy. Brazil’s size, industrial capacity, raw minerals (such as critical minerals), agricultural resources, and diplomatic reach give its political direction continental significance. A government that subordinates these assets to Washington’s priorities would weaken the space available to neighboring countries seeking their own paths of development.

The first-round geography demonstrates both Lula’s strength and his difficulties. He retained a commanding position in the Northeast, while Flávio led across the other four regions. São Paulo’s enormous electorate provided a particularly important advantage to the right. These divisions cannot be explained by an opposition between an enlightened population and an ignorant one. They require an examination of the different conditions of work, the organization of political life, and the capacity of competing movements to interpret people’s frustrations.

Lula approaches the runoff with a substantial social record. Unemployment fell to 5.3% in the quarter ending in August, the lowest rate for that period in the statistical series beginning in 2012. Such improvements matter enormously to families for whom a regular wage brings relief from daily uncertainty. But an improved national indicator does not settle the political argument. Employment can coexist with exhausting journeys, expensive housing, inadequate public services, and the insecurity of debt. The distance between statistical improvement and lived experience remains terrain on which the right operates.

Bolsonarismo, or Brazil’s far right of a special type, translates these frustrations into resentment against the left, all public institutions, and vulnerable sections of society. Its promise of order offers an immediate language for fear, while concealing the economic arrangements that produce insecurity. The left cannot answer this merely by advertising government achievements. It must connect those achievements to a credible program for changing everyday life, and explain which interests prevent further advances. A worker struggling with debt needs more than reassurance that the economy is performing well. This has been the problem for Lula, whose program for the future does not seem to promise more than what has been delivered till now.

The senate: a struggle over institutional power

The Senate election is particularly consequential because 54 of its 81 seats were contested. Senators serve eight-year terms, so the results will shape national politics well beyond the next presidential administration. The PL won 19 seats and will hold 28 in the new Senate, making it the largest party. The PT will have nine. The bolsonaristas have therefore established a formidable position, although the PL itself remains short of a majority and must bargain with other parties.

Michelle Bolsonaro and Bia Kicis took both seats in the Federal District, while Carlos Bolsonaro and Carol de Toni won the two seats in Santa Catarina. These victories show the movement’s ability to organize coordinated campaigns and concentrate support behind its candidates. There were important successes for the left: Rui Costa and Jaques Wagner won in Bahia, Humberto Costa retained representation in Pernambuco, and Marília Campos won in Minas Gerais. These results preserve points of resistance within an increasingly hostile chamber. The Senate’s significance extends beyond ordinary legislation. The bolsonaristas have made their confrontation with the Supreme Federal Court a central political objective, including demands to impeach its ministers. Their strengthened representation increases their capacity to pursue that confrontation and to influence the election of the Senate president. Predictions of an automatic majority for impeachment should be treated cautiously: party affiliation, campaign declarations, and votes in a specific proceeding are different things. Nevertheless, the danger of using legislative power to intimidate the judiciary has plainly grown.

This is part of a struggle over the conditions under which the far right can govern. The judicial proceedings against Jair Bolsonaro did not remove the social forces supporting him. Those forces now seek greater leverage over institutions capable of restraining them. For the left, defending democratic space must therefore accompany the struggle to expand social rights. Workers’ organizations cannot afford to lose the freedoms through which they organize, educate, and confront capital.

Federal deputies: the right advances, the left finds openings

All 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies were up for election this year. The PL secured 121, consolidating its position as the largest party in this chamber as well as in the Senate. The federation of the Workers’ Party, Communist Party of Brazil, and Green Party won 88 seats, with the PT itself taking 70. The federation’s growth is significant, but it leaves Lula’s allies far from a majority. Parties of the right hold 303 seats, while the broader parliamentary left holds 124.

The outcome strengthens the far right of a special type within a legislature already dominated by conservative interests. It also weakens some established brokers of parliamentary power, such as the centrão, the collection of parties that trades legislative support for influence over appointments and public resources, although it remains indispensable for majority building. What bargaining will take place within the centrão will now take place alongside a larger and more assertive PL. If Lula wins in the second round, he will confront substantial congressional resistance, but if Flávio wins, the same Congress could facilitate a reactionary program.

Yet the election also brought important representatives of a fighting Left into the Chamber. Jones Manoel, the communist historian elected through PSOL in Pernambuco, received 249,077 votes and finished first in Recife. Elias Jabbour, the communist geographer, was elected for the PCdoB in Rio de Janeiro. Their victories suggest an audience for political education and socialist arguments, even amid the right’s advance. They offer resources for rebuilding confidence among people who have grown impatient with the narrowing ambitions of parliamentary politics. Jones Manoel has already offered to assist Lula’s runoff campaign, including its digital communication, while proposing stronger attention to demands such as free public transport. This is a useful example of political clarity: criticism of the government’s limitations can coexist with active mobilization against the far right of a special type. Such unity does not require workers to abandon their demands. It becomes stronger when those demands supply the campaign’s energy and direction.

The task before October 25

The runoff cannot be won through negotiations among party leaders alone. It requires organized activity in workplaces, neighborhoods, universities, and rural communities, with a program people can recognize in their own lives. Transport, wages, housing, debt, public healthcare, and the time consumed by work must become the substance of a democratic campaign. Defense of sovereignty becomes tangible when it is connected to the ability to use Brazil’s wealth for the needs of its people.

The angry tide has advanced, but it has not carried away the millions who still seek another Brazil. The new communist deputies, the surviving mass organizations (especially the landless workers of the MST), and Lula’s enormous electoral base provide foundations for resistance. The immediate task is to defeat Flávio Bolsonaro. The longer task is to build a popular power strong enough to prevent the oligarchy from deciding, election after election, how little change the majority will be allowed.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa, written with Grieve Chelwa. He is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and the chief editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi). He also appeared in the films Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

A new war of words has broken out between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). It comes as renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia pulls the country’s long-running disputes with its neighbors back into the open.

Ethiopia’s government has blamed neighboring states for the escalating conflict in the north. The government has accused Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt of backing armed opposition groups, raising fears that the conflict could expand regionally. Birhanu Jula, Ethiopia’s army chief, stated that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front has clearly needed outside support and supplies from Egypt, Sudan, and other foreign powers to sustain its campaign. 

Cairo rejected the claim. Foreign Ministry spokesman Nader Zaki said Egypt’s foreign policy rests on respect for the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of other states and on staying out of their internal affairs, adding that claims to the contrary had no basis in fact. 

Tension over Ethiopia minister’s remarks

The dispute quickly returned to the Nile. On Saturday, Ethiopia’s minister of Water and Energy, Habtamu Itefa, published a social media post, later deleted, comparing the GERD to Egypt’s Aswan High Dam. “Before criticizing Ethiopia, Egypt should explain why it built the Aswan High Dam without Ethiopian consent.”

Cairo responded the same day. A source at the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation called the post “shameful” and said it reflected political confusion.

“Responding to such nonsense and the political confusion reflected in the post would be nothing more than a waste of time,” the source said. The source called the post “a desperate attempt to divert attention from the core dispute: Ethiopia’s continued unilateral actions over its illegal dam, which violate international law.”

Habtamu made the same argument. He said it was shameful to hear Egyptian politicians demand that Ethiopia obtain their consent for dams that do no significant harm, and argued that Egypt had not consulted Ethiopia when it built Aswan. He described Cairo’s insistence on prior consent as an outdated approach rooted in colonial-era arrangements. 

The $5 billion GERD sits on the Blue Nile, about 14 kilometers from the Sudanese border. It is 1.8 kilometers wide and 145 meters tall, with a design capacity of 5,150 megawatts. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed inaugurated it on September 9, 2025. Egypt and Sudan, the downstream states, have long demanded a legally binding agreement on how it is filled and operated. The United States has also stepped back, in a January 2026 letter to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, US President Donald Trump offered to restart US-led mediation between Egypt and Ethiopia on Nile water-sharing. 

The El Alamein declaration

The leaders of Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia met in El Alamein and issued a joint declaration covering both the Red Sea and the Nile, and among other things. On the question of the Red Sea, the four states affirmed “the principle of freedom of navigation and that the governance of the Red Sea is the exclusive responsibility of the littoral states.” 

Regarding the Nile, the declaration emphasized “the importance of respecting international law regarding transboundary rivers including the Nile River particularly the principle of ‘no harm’ and the obligation to cooperate through prior notification, consultation, and consensus.” It also categorically rejected “any unilateral measures that harm the existing water uses of the two downstream Nile states.” The four countries pledged to keep strengthening “consultation and coordination among the four countries and other sisterly African nations.”

“Realities cannot be altered by political rhetoric”

Ethiopia issued its own statement in response to the El Alamein declaration, arguing, “Ethiopia is the source of the Abay River, commonly known as the Blue Nile. Virtually all of the Blue Nile originates in the Ethiopian highlands, and the Abay contributes about 85% of the Nile River’s total flow. Any discussion concerning the utilization and management of the Abay River should be informed by these fundamental realities.”

Insisting that, “Despite changes in political boundaries over time, Ethiopia remains closely connected to the Red Sea, with its nearest border lying barely 30 miles from the coast. Accordingly, any serious discussion of regional maritime affairs and security architecture must account for Ethiopia’s legitimate interests and its enduring connection to the Red Sea.”

It added, “These geographic and historical realities cannot be altered by political rhetoric, coercive measures, or acts of destabilization. Actions taken through proxies or acts of aggression will not change the facts on the ground, nor will they diminish Ethiopia’s legitimate interests, role, and responsibilities in the region.”

Reaffirming that it “stands ready to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and core national interests,” Ethiopia urged regional actors to pursue “constructive dialogue, partnership, and adherence to the principles of good neighborliness rather than confrontation and zero-sum approaches.”

With fighting is spreading in Ethiopia’s north and rival blocs are forming along the Red Sea, the Nile dispute could be tied into a wider regional confrontation.

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Wars, neocolonial destabilization, the “aid” ideology, and the influence of Western financial institutions have sabotaged the African continent from the inside and kept it in a state of economic dependency. Yet its peoples have consistently expressed a desire for sovereignty and a rejection of external interference. 

What current manifestations of the struggle for African unity can we observe nowadays, and what continuity can be drawn with the Pan-Africanist movement of the 20th century? In the context of Trump’s administration US policies, which are targeting migrant workers, and the promotion of far-right ideology in the capitalist countries, can we say that African diasporas still play an important role in these challenges and in the emergence of a new Black power? 

Professor Hakim Adi, the author of “Panafricanism: a History” was interviewed by Alex Anfruns, a journalist and researcher, on the African struggles for emancipation.

“History has shown us that an attack on anyone

 is an attack on everybody”

Alex Anfruns: Let’s start from a chronological perspective. In the 1950s there were different strands within the Pan-Africanist movement that, despite sharing common goals such as anti-racism and anti-colonialism, diverged in their views on the liberation struggle. Which key figures and moments of that Pan-Africanism debate would you highlight?  

Hakim Adi: A key moment was the 1958 All African People’s Conference, which was held in Accra, Ghana, organized by two of the leading Pan-Africanists at the time: Kwame Nkrumah who was prime minister of Ghana, and George Padmore who was a Trinidadian Pan-Africanist and had been the main organizer of the famous 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress. That Conference held in1958 was a very important moment because at that time there were very few independent African countries. Ghana had just become independent, it had achieved its formal political independence from Britain.

Some countries were still fighting for their independence like Algeria … one or two countries were already independent but most of the African continent was not yet independent … So it was very important to have this conference to bring together people from across the African continent, as well as some from the diaspora, and to discuss the necessary unity between Africans and also the politics of Pan-African liberation. It was a very successful conference in the sense that it brought together many different people, leaders from across the continent, like Felix Moumié from Cameroon, Joshua Nkomo from Zimbabwe, Patrice Lumumba from Congo and many others, including many organizations…

One of the key participants was Frantz Fanon. He was a Caribbean and Martinican Pan-Africanist, who personified Pan-Africanism, as even though he came from the Caribbean, he gave much of his life to the liberation struggle in Africa, and he was a representative of the FLN in Algeria at that time. He came to that famous conference and put forward a perspective of the liberation struggle in Africa which was different to the perspective of the main organizers of the conference, Nkrumah and Padmore. They had argued that Pan-African liberation could be non-violent, if people were organized properly and so on…

Fanon came along and based on his experience, and indeed the experience of other countries in Africa, he put forward a different perspective and said that force and violence might be necessary to truly liberate Africa. So this was a very important moment: the recordings and personal memoirs of that conference highlight Fanon’s intervention, that he created a great debate, so that the organizers even tried to find ways to combat Fanon’s ideas … It demonstrated a major difference within the Pan- African movement at that time: how to actually achieve liberation?

It’s interesting that in 1945 in Manchester the conference congress decided that force would be necessary to achieve anti-colonial liberation. By 1958 two of the key participants in the Manchester Conference had changed their minds. Fanon had the experience of the Algerian revolution and therefore said: “hold on a minute, it may well be the case that force and violence is necessary.” So I think this is a very important moment and a significant difference between these key Pan-Africanist figures of the 1950s. Of course there are many others but I think that’s a good example of the differences which emerged in the movement at that time.

AA: In your other seminal work, you have exhaustively analyzed the relationship between Pan-Africanism and communism. How did communism influence the Pan-African movement during the fight for independence?

HA: When we talk about communism as it developed historically, we can define it as the condition for the liberation of the wealth producers, the workers. This is what communism is about. The communist movement of the 1920s, the 1930s, of the Third International took a very great interest in the liberation struggle in Africa as well and in other parts of the world. Just as Pan-Africanists in the US and Africa and the Caribbean and everywhere else took a very great interest in communism and the impact of the Russian Revolution, the ideas of Lenin and the Bolsheviks and so on.

People in Africa and in the diaspora were used to the impact of capitalism, to what the capitalist-centered system meant. It meant enslavement, it meant colonial rule and the division of the African continent. While the Russian revolution showed that this entire political system could be brought to an end, there was an alternative to it. That alternative opened many possibilities, for a different kind of society, where the majority of the people made the decisions, a society in which people who spoke different languages and different nations could live together.

The other thing that the communist movement brought to the colonies was a perspective of how you could struggle. If we look at the 1930’s, 1940’s, at that time generally speaking the approach of the Pan-African movement was to petition the big powers, the colonial powers, to say to the big powers: “hang on, colonial rule should be reformed, it should be made better and nicer…”

The communists said “that’s not going to change things”. What is going to change things is the organization of the masses of the people: organizing amongst the farmers, workers and so on. Secondly, the communists argued that force may need to be used and probably will need to be used to remove this system. And thirdly, this anti-colonial struggle of masses of people should be in unity with the struggles of people all over the world, whether in Europe, America, Asia, etc., who were struggling for common aims.

The communist movement brought this perspective to Pan-Africanism and was very influential during that period but also influential in the latter period: the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s. If we think about some of the key liberation struggles that took place in Africa in the period from the 1960s onwards, especially after Nkrumah was overthrown, but even before were influenced by Marxism. The liberation struggles in Angola, in South Africa, in Mozambique, in Zimbabwe, etc.

On September 12, we celebrated the anniversary of the birth of Amilcar Cabral, one of the greatest Pan-Africanists and leader of the liberation in Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde, who was also influenced by Marxism. If we think of the big figures in the South African struggles, they were all communists: Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, etc. So, the influence of communism in general and Marxism were a very big influence on the Pan African movement in general.

AA: Would you say that events like Lumumba’s assassination and the long Algerian War pushed new African countries toward a more radical Pan-Africanism?

HA: I don’t think so. It was a very difficult period: first of all, the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s, was in the midst of the cold war. The influence of anticommunism was immense and had a massive impact on Africa as well as on other parts of the world. This put pressure on African countries to do the impossible, to trying to find a way of achieving some kind of independence within the boundaries established by the big powers,

You might say that the fact that Algeria had to fight a war of ten years towards its liberation, that people in Kenya had to fight a war in order to achieve its liberation and other countries … this would have made clear to people in Africa the kind of struggle that was necessary…

Also the fact that in a country that had just achieved the independence like Congo, the big powers like Belgium, US and others could organize a mutiny within the army, could divide a country, arrest its leader and murder him … those facts would galvanize the whole continent and would have created a very different kind of Pan-Africanism. In fact, these events and particularly the arrest and murder of Lumumba did galvanize the continent amongst the masses of the people. It was a major event, but as far as the states were concerned, the governments were concerned, it was a different matter.

This is one of the things that we have to remember about this period: that the sixties were entering into the era of Pan-Africanism of states, and these states, even the most radical ones, we can call them, like Ghana, Algeria, Guinee perhaps, they operated within the conditions of that time. They tried to find a way of organizing that perhaps didn’t completely involve struggle, they tried to seek some kind of accommodation with the big powers. The majority of countries, especially the francophone countries, for example, maybe with one or two exceptions, nearly all of them stayed within the orbit of French imperialism.

It was a very difficult period and I don’t think those events in themselves pushed African states into different positions. It showed the limitations of this new independence, because African countries apparently had an independent state but then with a leader like Lumumba emerged, who showed a tendency to charter an independent cause, he was just removed like that by the big powers.

We saw the same thing a few years later when Nkrumah was removed, and that happened to many other leaders: Felix Moumié was assassinated in Cameroon. It showed more the strength and ruthlessness of the big powers, particularly the assassination of Lumumba. The struggle in Algeria did show what could be achieved by organizing among the majority of people and through armed struggle, but in most cases that wasn’t the course that was taken by African states.

AA: What do you think about the way Nkrumah and other liberation fighters analyzed neocolonialism in that period?

HA: There were analyses of neocolonialism by Nkrumah, Fanon and others but by then it was almost too late, Africa and Africans were not in the position to do very much about it, other than embark on new forms of struggle. These were lessons for the future. Neocolonialism meaning a new form of colonialism, where there appears to be an independent state, and an independent government and country but there is in fact a government which is tied to one of the old colonial powers, or perhaps a new power by economic ties, by military or political ties … and therefore it’s not operating in an independent way. Many people would argue that most of the states in Africa since the 1960s have been this kind of state. They have anthems and flags but they do not pursue independent paths that favor the majority of their citizens.

Nkrumah’s solution, or one of the things that Nkrumah argued for, was a United States of Africa, that if African countries could get together, they could be stronger economically, politically and perhaps also militarily, and that unity which would be able and strong enough to deal with neocolonialism.

The problem was that the nature, the characteristics of neocolonialism already existed in the 1960’s. And so the states that he was appealing to, for the United States of Africa were already essentially neocolonialist states, under the influence of the French, the British, the Belgians, and others, and so it became very difficult to unite in a way that Nkrumah envisioned.

Fanon wrote an incisive analysis of what neocolonialism was, how it worked, the reasons why it came about, the fact that it was a particular class of people that came to power, that economically they were dependent on foreign interests, and so on. That’s useful for everybody else, but for those governments existing in Africa, as well as in other countries, it hasn’t and could not have had a major effect.

What is important in the African context was that at least with all its limitations, these governments were able to come together in 1963 to form the Organization of African Unity. And with all its limitations, to struggle to unite for the liberation of the rest of the continent, from settler colonialism, so in other words against the colonial states: South Africa, Namibia, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe … So they united to achieve those victories, but to go beyond that, we haven’t really seen too much other evidence. Indeed, even the African states recognized the limitations of the OAU and replaced it with the AU.

AA: In your book, you address the ongoing debates that shaped Pan-Africanism across different geographic regions, highlighting its vitality and the diversity of expressions within the movement. What shared goals did diaspora activists have, how did they connect with Africa, and what challenges did they face fighting from inside Western countries?

HA: Yes, I suppose the most well-known activist who many people like is Malcolm X in the US, and the Black Panthers in the US and so on. And there were other activists like Walter Rodney in Guyana and so on. I think that for all of them and many others Africa was a great inspiration, Malcolm X is the best example. He traveled to Africa in the 1960’s he was impressed with the fact that these countries were becoming independent, that Africans were beginning to determine their own affairs and make their own decisions.

In his speeches he constantly talked about the importance of Africa and African liberation. To such an extent that when he formed an organization he called it the Organization of African-American Unity, the OAAU. And to such an extent that he called the African leaders to take responsibility for those in the diaspora, saying that “we are the lost sheep and you are the shepherds and you should be concerned with us as Africans, as people with African heritage, and fight for us in the United Nations” and so on …The Black Panthers similarly even had at one time a headquarters in Algiers, and they were influenced by struggles that were going on in Congo and many other places.

But as Malcolm X and the Panthers found out the struggles were different, although one could influence the other. We have to remember that the kind of politics which emerged in the US in the 1960’s, we tend to talk about it as Black Power, also had its influence in Africa, particularly amongst people like Steve Biko and the Black Consciouness movement in South Africa. But the struggles were different, they were struggles that were made in the US, although they were struggles by African people, there were  struggles within the confines of the US and that meant that African Americans had to struggle alongside others in the US. The most far-sighted recognized that, people like the Black Panthers, they recognized they had to organize alongside other population groups within the US, and so they realized that liberation meant an alternative to the existing political and economic system.

Again, Malcolm X recognized that those who were oppressing African American in the US were also oppressing people in Africa. So removing that oppression, fighting to remove that oppression in the US would also help those in Africa. But, of course, they had many difficulties and many problems based on the way they organized, and also the fact that the US attempted to wipe them out, assassinated many of the leaders, including Malcolm X and many leaders of the Black Panthers, and imprisoned them …That was one of the main issues.

And then for someone like Walter Rodney, who was best known as an intellectual, a writer, an historian, and perhaps made the greatest impact in that way, but also in his analysis of what was going on in Africa, because he was involved in the work leading out to the 6th Pan-African Congress in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in 1974. If we look at what he wrote, he was very critical of neocolonialism, critical of many African leaders including Nkrumah, and many Pan-Africanists like Georges Padmore, he said that they had lost their way, they lost sight of class struggle, that there were different classes involved and you had to struggle against them, as well as against the imperialist system of states, that you couldn’t just do things peacefully, without changing fundamentally the political system and the economic system.

He was also a victim of state’s terrorism, because he was assassinated in Guyana at a very young age. Those were some of the problems they faced, but there were many others…

AA: How are people fighting for African unity today, and how does it connect to the 20th-century Pan-African movement?

HA: Again, it’s very, very, difficult conditions today, it’s very complicated. I think the best example of modern Pan-Africanism would be something like the reparations movement. It is a movement for repair, to be carried out for the crimes of enslavement, of human trafficking, of colonialism and so on … and if we look at this struggle for reparations, that existed since the 20th century … even the 17th century! It has been one of the key elements of Pan-African struggles throughout the centuries, that restitution needs to be made, that repair that needs to be made for these crimes that have been carried out against Africans.

But if we look at that movement today, we see that it is headed by states. There has recently been a big conference in Barbados in the Caribbean about the reparation struggles, but it is led by the Organization of Caribbean States (CARICOM), the Organization of African Union (AU). Although these two organizations work together, there are differences within them and between them. Individuals and countries also have their own particular concerns, for example Algeria had a very big conference last year on the question of colonialism as a crime against humanity. It’s not a new perspective, but this is something that should be highlighted.

So we have these slightly different perspectives. Those in the Caribbean are most concerned with slavery, human trafficking, those in Africa are slightly more concerned with colonialism. These movements and organizations come together, but they are organizations of states. Then there are non-state actors in Europe, in the US, in the diaspora in general who say “hang on a minute, we are not being represented by any states, or more importantly we’re not represented in these deliberations.” It could be argued that the states don’t really have much of a mandate to represent the peoples of Africa and the Caribbean either, because they are not consulted any more than those in the diaspora outside these states.

So we have a movement which is very powerful, it is being discussed in the news all the time, there are conferences, it’s gathering momentum, but there are all kinds of tensions and contradictions within that make it quite difficult, yet it’s a very long lived movement that goes back to the 17th century … So it’s a very important movement and how it develops remains to be seen.

AA: How is the anti racist movement in the US and English-speaking world dealing with Trump’s anti-migrant policies?

HA: Well, the anti-racist movement is not only in the US, because it’s also important in Europe and elsewhere. In the US it’s a broad movement, it has different facets to it, because the Trump government in particular is launching an assault on everything: so we find first of all that it’s an attack on books, even the books that could be held in public libraries, school or university libraries are under attack, and are being banned or being burnt, that’s one struggle. And the next struggle is to defend books by black writers, about anti-racism, and books about all kind of other things too, because other people are also being attacked. Then there is an attack on the general principle of equality, what in the US they call the DEI (Diversity, Equality and Inclusion), in terms of employment, particularly in universities but also in government departments, public institutions … they’re also under attack.

Then there are other attacks, various forms of state racism, attacks by the police, and so on, then there are attacks by immigration officials, by ICE, then there are just general attacks that come from the government about people who they deem to be immigrant, or from immigrant backgrounds, since Trump makes racist speeches against Somalis, Haitians and others … So these are very serious escalations of attacks and they have influence also outside of the US, including in Britain and other countries as well, it then became seen as almost acceptable that somebody can be attacked.

We’ve recently had a case in Britain a Black professor in the University, we don’t have many Black professors, who was accused by some self-confessed racist of plagiarism, and this accusation was taken up and repeated by the whole of the British press, it was on the TV … and the consequence is that this young professor took his life … This was an openly racist attack, and there are many other manifestations.

Of course, those in the US are organizing, and I think the key again of this organizing is that it cannot be only African-Americans, or those from the Caribbean organizing, but people in general have to be organized against this attack on their rights, because history has shown us that an attack on anyone is an attack on everybody. So everybody has to organize against these attacks. So yes, these are very important struggles and of course they are linked to other attacks which the US are launching internationally against Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Canada … against everybody else, against whoever. So it’s a very dangerous situation in the US and everyone needs to get together, but the Pan-Africanists have to be part of this broad struggle to change the situation in the US, Britain, and elsewhere.

Hakim Adi is an internationally renowned historian based in London, and the author of the book “Pan-Africanism: A History,” already published in Spanish, French, Portuguese and many other languages.

Nationwide protests have broken out in India this week seeking the removal of the country’s Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) over allegations of irregularities in the electoral process during various state elections and the deliberate mass disenfranchisement in favor of the ultra-right-wing ruling dispensation.

On Wednesday, September 30, thousands came out on the streets in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad in a joint demonstration called by the Left parties, the regional Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), and others, to defend voting rights.

On Tuesday, a protest was held in New Delhi led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary M A Baby . The protesters, who were marching to the Election Commission of India (ECI) headquarters, were detained by the security forces for hours in an attempt to disrupt the march.

Similar protests have been held in different parts of the country by various other groups and political formations, including the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC), the civil society groups, student and youth organizations, and the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP).

The CJP, which successfully led a protest by students and youth in the country earlier this year against the union government’s education policies, has called for another national mobilization over the issue beginning on October 2.

The protesters have listed three major demands: 

• halting the so-called Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls
• the re-inclusion of all the voters removed so far from the electoral rolls
• the removal of the CEC Mr. Gyanesh Kumar

Protestors say these demands are essential to protect the fundamental right to vote, currently at risk by the Chief Election Commissioner.

Read more: India’s Cockroach Rebellion and what comes next

Over 130 million removed from the electoral rolls   

India does not have a centralized electoral roll. They are prepared at the local constituency levels. The CEC in the country has been accused of changing this by arbitrarily changing rules and initiating processes. The opposition alleges these actions were taken in order to have control over the electoral outcome. 

According to the data compiled by various reports, over 130 million voters have been deleted from the electoral rolls of different states in India, citing various reasons since the so-called Special Intensive Revision (SIR) began last year. 

Reports indicate that in several state legislative constituencies, the number of voters deleted from the electoral rolls were more than the victory margins during the elections.

Despite its large electoral base, in India’s First Past the Poll system, margins of victory in state legislative constituencies are often very small, ranging from a few to a few thousand votes.

It has also been reported that because of the SIR, in some smaller states between one third to half of all voters have been deleted or put into doubtful lists by the ECI. In bigger states such as Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, millions of people have been excluded. 

In most of these cases, those removed from the electoral list have either already missed their opportunity to vote or expected to miss it given the slow process of appeals for re-inclusion.

For example, in West Bengal, elections were held earlier this year with millions of citizens failing to exercise their right to vote while waiting for the re-inclusion of their names in the electoral list.  

The majority of those who failed to reapply and get their names back into the electoral rolls in time are from economically marginalized sections or from the Muslim-minority communities.

The ECI has also been accused of deliberately suppressing crucial information from the public and delaying the proceedings. 

A deliberate move to benefit the ruling party

The opposition has been accusing that these deletions and the slow process of appeals are deliberate moves adopted by the ECI in complete violation of the country’s legal and constitutional provisions. The process disregards citizens’ fundamental right to vote, the opposition claims.

Opposition parties, civil society groups, and others have been protesting against the process since the beginning while claiming that the process was invented to manipulate the elections in favor of the ruling ultra-right-wing and Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Civil society groups and some political parties also filed a petition in the country’s Supreme Court last year challenging the SIR. However, the process has continued as the court has repeatedly refused to stay it.

The top court’s refusal to stay the SIR despite acknowledging irregularities and violations in its execution from time to time has enraged the opposition parties and civil society activists.  

The current upsurge was a result of a report published in the Indian Express, one of India’s leading English daily papers on September 23. The report, citing official documents, exposed that the CEC Mr. Kumar bypassed the majority objections and made unilateral decisions related to the SIR on at least 14 occasions.

There are two more commissioners apart from the CEC in the ECI all appointed by the union government. The laws clearly state that all decisions in the ECI must be taken either by a consensus or by a majority.

Mr. Kumar’s unilateral decisions related to the SIR process, including the rules regarding voter enrollment, the deletion or inclusion of names in the electoral rolls, among others, have unfairly benefited the ruling party, including in West Bengal, which amounts to stealing the elections, the opposition alleges.

The BJP came to power in West Bengal, one of India’s largest provinces, for the first time earlier this year amidst allegations of the deliberate exclusion of millions of voters from the electoral rolls.

On Tuesday, the INC issued a statement calling for more protests across the nation and reiterating the demands for Mr. Kumar’s removal, apart from the immediate halt of the SIR and the re-inclusion of all the voters wrongfully deleted from the electoral rolls.

Second freedom struggle

The INC has alleged that the irregularities in the electoral process are nothing less than “a theft of votes and democracy” done by the ECI under the leadership of Mr. Kumar on behalf of the ruling BJP and the movement will not stop until he is removed from his post and tried for his criminal actions.

It also claimed that the movement for the restoration of the right of all adult citizens to vote is no less than a second “freedom struggle,” invoking India’s anti-colonial movement against the British in the early twentieth century.

All the left parties, led by the CPI (M), also issued a joint statement last week seeking the removal of Mr. Kumar, and the withdrawal of the SIR process, claiming the allegations against him raise serious questions regarding the constitutional protection of the right to vote and elect representatives.

The SIR, under Mr. Kumar’s leadership in the ECI, has created doubts about the fairness and integrity of the electoral process in India, the Left parties said, claiming it needs to be urgently corrected.

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The Ugandan army, which had offered to capture Iran’s capital within 72 hours for Israel earlier this year, is now readying a troop deployment to Gaza under US command.

Discussing the deployment, senior Ugandan military officers were at the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat on August 17. The town on the edge of the Negev desert – barely 25 km from the northern Gaza Strip – was established in 1955 after depopulating the Palestinian villages of al-Faluja and Iraq al-Manshiya during the Nakba.​

Burundi’s military officials were also reportedly present at the meeting here, after which the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) gave them both a tour of the city of Rafa in southern Gaza as part of the “pre-deployment site survey.”

Burundi is yet to confirm the deployment of its troops. However, Uganda’s parliament, practically a rubber stamp with over 70% of the seats held by the ruling party, approved the deployment of its troops on August 6.​

This made it the sixth country to join the International Stabilization Force (ISF) proposed by US President Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace, envisioned as the 20,000-strong force led by US Major General Jasper Jeffers.

The remaining five contributors of troops hold relatively diverse positions on the Israel-Palestine question. Indonesia has been a vocal critic of Israel, backing South Africa’s genocide case against it at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It maintains no diplomatic ties with Israel. The largest contributor has reportedly put its 8,000 troop deployment on hold, although it hasn’t formally withdrawn from the ISF.

Kazakhstan, on the other hand, has maintained deep diplomatic ties with Israel since 1992. Morocco joined the Abraham Accords in 2020. Both have done so while mouthing the two-state solution for an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital as official state policy.

The remaining two European countries are staunchly pro-Israel. Albania has announced plans to open a commercial liaison office in Jerusalem. Kosovo has outdone Albania, following Trump’s lead by moving its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.​

The sixth country to come on board, Uganda, professes a commitment to Israel that dwarfs that of the European troop-contributors.

Offering to join US-Israeli war on Iran​

“Any talk of … defeating Israel will bring us into the war” against Iran on “the side of Israel,” Uganda’s military chief, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, posted on X in late March. He is the son and heir apparent of Uganda’s 81-year-old president, Yoweri Museveni, ruling the country since 1986.

After 40 years of rule, Museveni was handed a seventh term by the Electoral Commission in January, following an election marred by “widespread repression and intimidation against the political opposition, human rights defenders, [and] journalists,” according to the UN.

Soon after the results, Kainerugaba began hunting down Museveni’s political opponents, forcing his main challenger in the election, Bobi Wine, into exile, bragging about killing 30 of his party’s members, and swearing to “get them all.”

Israeli military technology, from weapons to surveillance equipment, has long enabled Museveni’s domestic crackdown. Recalling that Israel has supported his regime for decades, “Why wouldn’t we defend her now?” asked Kainerugaba. He added in a subsequently deleted post that the Ugandan military had offered to join the US and Israel in their war efforts against Iran, claiming, “We could have captured Tehran in 72 hours.”

Read more: Ugandan military chief announces willingness to join the US-Israeli war on Iran

This bold claim of being able to defeat the world’s 16th largest military power, with a military ranked 107 out of 145 countries, was gently mocked, even in the Israeli media at the time.  

“Gaza, here we come”: Ugandan soldiers post on social media

Nevertheless, barely five months later, Ugandan soldiers began uploading posts on social media, captioned, “Gaza, here we come,” filming themselves loading equipment onto planes – taking off and landing in undisclosed locations.​

These posts by Ugandan soldiers began circulating on social media after the Ugandan parliament approved the troop deployment on August 6.​

Military deployment as a diplomatic strategy

Addressing the parliament ahead of the vote, Maj Gen David Gonyi, parliamentary representative of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), explained the rationale of the deployment to the legislators: “Uganda submitted the name of a Ugandan [veteran diplomat, Olara Otunnu] to become Secretary-General of the United Nations. It would be like shooting ourselves in the foot to say that Uganda should not participate in [the] deployment in Gaza.”

Military deployment has long been a central plank of Ugandan diplomacy, currying favor of the Western countries by sending its soldiers to missions in Somalia, South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Its Somalia deployment has been especially crucial for the Ugandan army to receive training and support from the US Marine Corps and US Africa Command (AFRICOM).

Last November, Johan Borgstam, the European Union (EU) Special Representative for the Great Lakes Region, met Kainerugaba to propose expanding Ugandan troop deployment in DRC, on behalf of Brussels. Borgstam brought this proposal, despite the UN confirming the validity of the DRC’s accusation that Uganda is supporting the M23 armed group, a proxy of Rwanda which, along with its army, has occupied large swathes of the region in a war for DRC’s minerals.

Presenting this Western demand for Ugandan troops as a diplomatic success, Major General Henry Masiko, another parliamentary representative of the UPDF and the Joint Staff Political Commissar, told the legislators: “The UPDF is viewed as the anchor of stability in a sea of turbulence, regionally and now globally.”

He went on to add in his remarks to the parliament that the “doctrine of the force is that we go out not to dance but to confront threats against society and humanity,” in a thinly veiled reference to Palestinian resistance.

“Some troops will return in coffins,” warns opposition MP

Opposition politicians have raised concerns that deploying troops when the Ugandan government has done little to conceal its neutrality may have consequences. 

“Some [troops will] return in coffins,” warned Jamal Ayagalaki. “We need answers on who will pay the UPDF, what the terms and conditions of service will be, and what support will be available to soldiers and their families.” He further warned that Uganda’s involvement in a conflict “that is not ours” could expose the country itself to new security threats.

A more thorough criticism of the deployment came not from an opposition leader but from retired General David Sejusa, who had served Museveni as a senior presidential adviser and intelligence coordinator from 2005 to 2013.​

The “parliament passed a resolution for peacekeeping, [but] what peace is [there] is Gaza?” he questioned, pointing to the lack of agreement between Israel and Hamas.

Uganda risks complicity in war crimes: former intelligence chief

“The permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups” – i.e. the Palestinian resistance – is one of the tasks the International Stabilization Force must carry out in coordination with Israel, according to the resolution adopted by the UN Security Council in November 2025, with abstentions from Russia and China.

Hamas has refused to hand over weapons to Israel or any foreign force. It has called for the creation of a Palestinian national committee, which will hold the weapons collected from Hamas and other resistance groups within Gaza.

This transfer of weapons, however, can only happen after Israel withdraws from Gaza, Hamas insists. Israel, on the other hand, has refused to withdraw from Gaza until the resistance is completely disarmed.​

Therefore, in the absence of any “clear implementable political framework,” Uganda will be deploying troops in an “un-militarized active conflict area … where a belligerent state continues strikes on the occupied population,” Sejusa said. This, he warned, places Ugandan troops at the “risk of complicity in war crimes.”

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Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the country’s main opposition party, announced a long march to the capital, Islamabad, on Sunday, October 4, as part of its ongoing nationwide movement to demand the release of its leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The march, which was originally scheduled to be held on Sunday, September 27, starting from Peshawar, was postponed on Friday after the party’s top leadership decided it needed more time to mobilize to face the state’s preparations to block it.

Thousands of people have been taking to the streets in different parts of the country demanding the immediate release of Khan, his wife Bushra Bibi, and other party leaders.

Khan’s party and supporters have also accused the Shehbaz Sharif-led coalition government in the country of deliberately ignoring Khan’s bad health condition and trying to “slowly kill him in prison” by keeping him in solitary confinement.

They have also alleged that Khan has been denied access to his family members and party colleagues in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail for almost six months now and demanded that he be transferred out of the jail to a private hospital.

State repression

Meanwhile, the security forces have fortified the capital, blocking all the ways leading to the capital with shipping containers and large deployments after the government called the protests illegal and threatened consequences for the PTI leadership.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi had earlier called the march a failure and “a drama” and warned that if the PTI does not abandon its plan to go to Islamabad the state will find a “permanent solution” to stop them.

The security forces had arrested a large number of PTI leaders and workers in order to derail the protests. The PTI last week said that even its elected members of the National Assembly were arrested.

Three of Khan’s sisters Aleema, Uzma, and Noreen Khan were also arrested by the Pakistani authorities last week and jailed for 30 days on charges of being an alleged “threat to public order.”

The PTI released a statement on Monday, September 28, claiming Khan’s sisters have not been allowed to meet their family members or lawyers at Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore. Calling the situation of their incarceration “alarming” and a violation of their fundamental rights.

The previous mobilization to Islamabad in November 2024 had also witnessed large-scale state repression leading to clashes between the security forces and the PTI workers. Over a dozen people, including four security officials, were killed in those clashes.

Three years of incarceration 

Khan, largely considered the most popular political leader in Pakistan’s politics today, was first arrested almost a year after he was ousted from his Prime Minister’s post in May 2023. He led the Pakistan government from August 2018 to April 2022.

The interim government that assumed power after his removal filed over a hundred cases against Khan, accusing him of the misuse of power, corruption, and violence against the security forces during the May 9, 2023 protests.

However, he was released after a court ruled his arrest was illegal only to be arrested again on August 5, this time after a district court sentenced him to three years in prison in the Toshakhana case, related to the state department that stores valuable gifts given to Pakistani officials by foreign dignitaries. Later his wife Bushra Bibi was also arrested.

Though a higher court later overturned his conviction, he and his wife have remained in Adiala Jail facing charges and even convictions in several other cases. 

Many leaders in Khan’s party, PTI, were either arrested or forced to denounce the party and politics in public altogether. 

Despite the fact that the PTI was blocked from contesting national elections in February 2024, it emerged as the largest opposition group in the country’s National Assembly after it decided to field its candidates as independents. 

PTI and Khan’s supporters maintain that the cases against Khan and his wife were politically motivated and fake.  

Ammar Ali Jan, leader of the Left wing Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (HKP) and a member of the Tehreek-i-Tahaffuz Ayeen-i-Pakistan (Movement to Save Pakistan’s Constitution or TTAP) formed as a broader alliance to fight for Khan’s release has condemned the continued incarceration of Khan and the repression of movements for his release. 

He also questioned the state’s narrative about the failure of the movement, pointing out how it has made every effort to oppress it, including the arrests and fortification of the capital.

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China’s President Xi Jinping concluded his three-day state visit to the US on Friday, September 25, with hopes of enhanced cooperation and partnership between the world’s two largest economies.

Xi arrived in the US on Wednesday and received a large-scale welcome from President Donald Trump. Though this was their third in-person meeting it was Xi’s first state visit to the US in over a decade.

On Thursday, the leaders had a long in-person conversation in the White House and finished the day with a state dinner with 130 guests, including tech executives. Though the US is yet to release its version of the official proceedings, reports indicate they discussed a range of outstanding issues such as the dispute over trade and tariffs, cooperation in Artificial Intelligence, the issue of Taiwan, and the US-Israeli war on Iran. 

During the meeting with Trump, Xi called for strategic stability in the China-US relationship which will benefit both countries and the people around the world, Xinhua reported.  

“China and the US should be partners, not rivals,” Xi said. 

Xi’s statement comes at a time when the two countries are negotiating a longer trade deal after briefly facing each other in a tariff war last year. Both countries agreed to extend their temporary trade truce which halted the tariff war till January to give their negotiators more time.

The so-called Busan Trade Truce was set to expire in November this year.  

Xi hoped that “both sides would stay committed to the principles of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation and promote the sustained, stable and sound development of China-US economic and trade relations.” 

Technology and AI

Successive administrations in the US have characterized China’s advancements in technology and other economic sectors as a threat to American interests and have tried to curb them by restricting its access to technology.

In his attempt to address such apprehensions, Xi proposed that “both sides work towards a relationship featuring cooperation as the mainstay, moderate competition, manageable differences, and the promise of peace.” 

Talking about the competition in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Xi offered increased coordination and cooperation between the countries as a way of mutual benefit. 

While emphasizing that “two sides should maintain human control over AI technologies, uphold people-centered approach and the principle of using AI for good” he proposed greater exchange of information to “prevent any misuse and abuse of AI.”

Read more: The AI frontier asks to be paced: anatomy of a panic

Xi also expressed hope that Chinese companies “are treated fairly in the US” while inviting more US companies to invest in China. “Working together, we can lengthen the list of cooperation and shorten the list of issues” he underlined.

The US has sanctioned or put a large number of Chinese companies, including its AI firms on various watch lists in recent years, after accusing them of working with the Chinese armed forces or being involved in the so-called technology theft.

Notably, however, major US tech and finance executives such as Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Eric Yuan of Zoom, Kelly Ortberg of Boeing, Larry Fink of Blackrock, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai of Google, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla, were present at the state dinner for Xi’s visit hosted at the White House on Thursday, September 24, though no details of cooperation between US and Chinese tech firms have emerged.

Taiwan

Reiterating China’s resolve to “safeguard national reunification and territorial integrity,” Xi expressed hope that the US will “adhere to the correct position on opposing ‘Taiwan independence’ and handle the Taiwan question with caution.”

China has repeatedly accused the US of promoting the separatist cause in Taiwan, despite officially adhering to “one China policy.” The US under Trump has sold or agreed to sell billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Taiwan in complete disregard of China’s objections.

China has also accused the US and its allies in the region of promoting an arms race by deploying advanced weapon systems close to its borders.

Xi said if the US follows the correct position on Taiwan it “will enable both the countries to lay a solid foundation for their strategic cooperation and the development of their bilateral relationship.”

US-Israeli war on Iran 

China has refused to intervene or get involved in the US-Israeli war on Iran, despite Trump’s repeated calls for them to do so. China has maintained the war was unnecessary and repeatedly warned against its prolongation. It has supported the interim peace deal signed in June under international mediation.

Xi reiterated this position during his visit to the US, expressing hope that both Iran and the US would soon return to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and end the war.

Xi claimed that “China-US cooperation may not solve every problem in the world, but without it, it would be hard to solve many of the world’s problems” and proposed more dialogue and “mechanisms of crisis communication and prevention” between their armed forces.

Read more: No new talks with the US until the previous conditions are met, says Iran

Trump said his meeting with Xi on Thursday was “great” also claiming they have maintained close communication.

Trump also agreed that “continued dialogue” with China is necessary to reach agreement on significant issues.

In his address to the UN General Assembly, US President Donald Trump said that the Cuban government is a failed state currently under enormous pressure: “My administration seeks a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba… It is an absolute failed state… and it will fall. Marco Rubio is leading the negotiations.”

In response, the Cuban delegation stood up and walked out of the plenary session in protest. Trump continued: “Cuba is a haven for foreign adversaries who threaten America right on our doorstep… The Cuban regime has also spent decades coordinating with left-wing radicals and communist networks here in the United States… They have cultivated ties with subversive and radical groups.”

The remarks did not go over well in Havana, where the government has categorically rejected the US right-wing leader’s statements. Leading the response is the country’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, who asserted that freedom in Cuba is non-negotiable.

“Freedom came to Cuba on January 1, 1959, [the date the Cuban Revolution began], and we are not going to lose it; we are going to defend it. Once again, we are seeing the true face of that empire and its contempt for the peoples of Latin America – and in particular for Cuba and the Cuban Revolution – because of what it represents.”

Díaz-Canel made the remarks on a program called Criterio Compartido on Radio Rebelde. In them, Díaz-Canel described Trump’s statements as “arrogant,” “high-handed,” and “interventionist.”

He also asserted that behind Trump’s thinking lies a justification for a certain view of US imperialism: “what most underpins that genocidal, criminal, and contemptuous mindset toward Cuba and the Cuban people.”

Regarding the label of “failed state,” the leader of the Communist Party of Cuba said: “They are always trying to label us a failed state to shift the blame for the genocide they are committing with that intensified and prolonged blockade.”

Díaz-Canel is referring not only to the long and sustained economic and commercial blockade that the United States unilaterally imposed on Cuba in an effort to defeat the revolution that began in 1959. In US President Donald Trump’s first term, he imposed an additional 243 sanctions on the Caribbean island and added Cuba to the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSoT) list, which devastated the Cuban economy. In January 2026, Trump further tightened the grip by imposing an energy blockade on Cuba.

Since early 2026, following the US attack on Venezuela that resulted in the capture of President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and the deaths of more than 100 people – including several dozen Cubans – Cuba lost one of its main energy partners, which used to supply crude oil to the Cuban power grid.

Since then, only one Russian ship has managed to circumvent the US blockade; the United States is currently threatening to impose additional tariffs on any country that sells fuel to Cuba. This has triggered Cuba’s worst energy crisis, which is hindering the normal operation of hospitals, schools, and food production, among other essential activities.

Cuba has denounced the blockade as a form of “silent genocide,” specifically because of the direct humanitarian consequences it is having on the civilian population, which has seen a reduction not only in its electricity supply but also in access to surgeries, water, food, and so on.

In this regard, Díaz-Canel has once again emphasized on X that Cuba does not pose a threat to the United States; rather, it is the United States that is endangering Cuba’s civilian population: “Unable to justify the punishment against the people of Cuba and its genocidal economic war, the US president repeats at the UN that Cuba poses a threat. Lies are the weapon of those who refuse to accept the Cuban people’s right to self-determination.”

He concluded: “We will continue to fight for peace, defend our sovereignty, and work together to overcome the ruthless aggression imposed on us by the US government. Cuba is not a threat, the blockade is.”

Far-right Argentine President Javier Milei addressed the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, giving a speech which provoked strong reactions. The South American head of state also participated in a series of high-level meetings.

One of his most quoted lines from his New York City trip has been: “Argentina is the new promised land.”

This is not the first time Milei has used religious concepts and ideas from the Judeo-Christian tradition to explain his political stance, but it is the first time the Argentine president has equated his country, in economic and political terms, with the land of Abraham and his descendants.

This is even more telling when one considers Milei’s extremely close relationship with Israel and ardent defense of its policies of war and genocide across West Asia, as well as the admiration he professes for the Jewish religion.

Milei also emphatically underscored this during his address to the UN General Assembly: “We also made a geopolitical choice: we have unambiguously aligned ourselves with the West … We condemn the Iranian regime’s attacks on the State of Israel.”

And this is an indisputable fact. Since the beginning of his term, Milei has not only aligned himself with the geopolitical interests that the Trump administration has vigorously pursued, but has also become one of Israel’s staunchest allies in the region.

This is quite impressive, considering that President Noboa in Ecuador, De la Espriella in Colombia, and others have also expressed a kind of unwavering alliance with Tel Aviv.

That is why Milei has not limited himself to diplomatic rhetoric, but has pulled the strings of power to designate Iran’s main military force (currently in conflict with Israel and the United States) as a terrorist organization.

“We declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, just as we continue to seek justice for the two attacks we suffered on Argentine soil in 1992 and 1994,” Milei said at the UN, referring to two attacks in Argentina against the Israeli Embassy and the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA). The Argentine justice system, advised by Israel and the United States, identified Hezbollah and Iranian citizens as the perpetrators.

Free-market capitalism and Artificial Intelligence

Another topic Milei addressed during his appearance was his staunch defense of free-market capitalism in which the state plays a minimal role: “We do not want to lose again; that is why we embrace free-market capitalism.”

In this regard, Milei once again highlighted his government’s strong support for artificial intelligence companies and the tycoons behind them. It should not be forgotten that the Argentine government signed a working and information-sharing agreement with Palantir, whose co-founder, Peter Thiel, purchased a property on Argentine soil.

This is clearly part of Milei’s neoliberal agenda to attract investment from major foreign capitalists, among whom the owners of technology companies (who are so interested in resources such as lithium, copper, and others that abound in South America) currently stand out.

However, recent statements by former employees of these companies regarding the danger that the development of AI poses to humanity have created some unease around the world. But Milei says that this is precisely the time to move forward: “Prudence does not mean fear, and what’s more, fear should under no circumstances automatically lead to obedience … where many see a threat, we see a frontier.”

Criticism of the UN

Probably one of the most important aspects highlighted in Milei’s speech was his harsh criticism of the UN and its role in current geopolitics: “Today, unfortunately, it is time to acknowledge that this sacred pact has, in fact, been broken.”

But not content with merely pointing out the shortcomings, Milei asserted (very much in line with Trump) that the UN has become a venue for certain people to amass wealth: “It has become a useless organization that serves only to feed a caste of fatally arrogant parasites disguised as well-meaning bureaucrats.”

Hence, he asserted that resolutions ultimately have no real effect on policy. He cited the example of the Malvinas Islands, a territory disputed with the United Kingdom: “What good is a resolution if, for decades, the other party can act contrary to it, and that resolution remains intact in the archives but is powerless in the face of reality?”

Criticism of Milei’s speech

Milei’s statements, while applauded by his supporters, have drawn widespread criticism in Argentina. Much of the criticism has focused on the fact that Milei now seems to staunchly defend Argentina’s right to control the Malvinas Islands, whereas in the past he was cautious and even reluctant to adopt a patriotic stance against the United Kingdom – something both the Argentine left and right have done. “We’re surprised that Milei now remembers when he used to talk about self-determination,” said Axel Kicillof, governor of the province of Buenos Aires.

Likewise, critics pointed out the apparent contradiction in Milei’s rhetoric between extolling the right to self-determination and aligning himself with the interests of Washington and Tel Aviv: “Milei’s stance doesn’t surprise me. The truth is that this line of subservience—and I say this very clearly—is directed at Trump and Netanyahu. Even the terminology is consistent with what Trump proposed and his ideas on the deregulation of artificial intelligence, as well as his view that Argentina’s natural resources are available to anyone who wants to take them,” said Kicillof.

Regarding Milei’s economic rhetoric, Patria Grande leader Juan Grabois said: “Besides being an ignorant imbecile, besides being a lobotomized parrot who parrots Trump, besides plagiarizing Gramsci without knowing he’s “a filthy communist,” what Milei is saying is that we’re basically going to hand over our territory, critical minerals, energy, and national sovereignty to the technocracy.”

“Nothing in life is free,” goes an old Latin American saying, and Bolivia’s right-wing President Rodrigo Paz has proven this once again. The International Monetary Fund confirmed that it will disburse $1.9 billion to Bolivia, which will naturally have to repay the loan.

A few hours later, as part of the agreement with the neoliberal-leaning international financial institution, Paz announced that he would eliminate the subsidy on diesel, the fuel typically used by transporters and farmers for production. According to reports from La Paz, the price will increase by 100% (for now), as it will be adjusted to international market rates.

Several experts assert that the government’s decision will lead to an imminent increase in the price of food, mining, and transportation, thereby negatively impacting the country’s working population, which constitutes the vast majority.

While the government claims that these types of neoliberal measures will help control inflation, economist Fernando Romero argues that eliminating the diesel subsidy could cause inflation – which was projected to reach 14% by the end of the year – to rise to 20% by December 2026.

But this seems to matter little to a government whose primary goal – whether its own or one set by international financial institutions for the Third World – is to reduce the fiscal deficit at all costs.

“You [Bolivians] elected me to solve problems … If [the IMF] is lending us funds to revive the country, I cannot buy diesel at a high price and sell it cheaply … That is why we have decided that diesel will cost the same as it costs us to buy it abroad, and that price will be the same for everyone,” Paz said in an address to the entire country.

Just a few months in office, many protests

The truth is that this is not the first time Paz has sought to meet the IMF’s demands. In December of last year, just a few weeks after being sworn in as president, Paz raised the price of diesel and gasoline, sparking protests across the country.

A few months later, between May and June, thousands and thousands of Bolivians took to the streets to protest the government’s plan to allow land to be seized to settle debts, which was followed by demands from the Bolivian Workers’ Confederation (COB) and various peasant groups for higher wages and improved fuel supplies, among other things. Following harsh repression, the protests quickly escalated into demands for the president’s resignation, which led to increased tensions and clashes between law enforcement and thousands of workers who blocked major highways across the country. These protests left 14 dead and nearly 400 people detained.

It now appears that Paz will not back down from his policy, despite the fact that in less than a year he has faced significant protests against him that have gradually eroded his public image. According to some polls, Paz’s approval rating barely reaches 32%.

But Paz has also prepared for possible demonstrations. The Bolivian Congress, which supports Paz, has just extended the state of emergency – which had been declared last June – by 90 days. According to Interior Minister Marco Oviedo, there are: “threats of renewed and coordinated blockades, marches, and strikes, as well as early warnings regarding calls to action, escalations, ultimatums, and the mobilization of social groups [in the coming days].”

Announcement of protests

Indeed, several agricultural workers and truck drivers have announced that they will mobilize all their members unless the government reverses its plan to eliminate the diesel subsidy. “The increase in the price of diesel spells the end for all our productive sectors; that is why we have united to defend our livelihoods and our daily work, because right now, not only is there no diesel, but we are being forced to buy it at double the price,” the main leaders of these workers said at a press conference.

And while the bulk of those likely to protest against Paz will be the poorest workers, it should not be overlooked that a significant portion of industries, mining companies, and various other businesses rely on diesel to power their machinery. This suggests that discontent will arise not only among the poorest but also among the middle class and various business owners who foresee rising production costs without any real affordable alternatives.

Similarly, transportation unions have stated that if the price of fuel doubles, they will be forced to double the cost of fares. In fact, transport operators traveling between departments have already raised fares by between 50% and 100%.

Consequently, the rising costs of food, supplies, diesel, production, transportation, and so on lead several experts to predict that Paz’s decision (while it may please the IMF) will spark demonstrations and a new cycle of protests against the administration.

However, given the extension of the state of emergency, it does not appear that Paz is very interested in curbing the protests, but rather in resisting them and cementing the elimination of the subsidy in the long term, thereby bolstering the neoliberal program, which he calls “Bolivia’s new path.”

Read more: Bolivian president consolidates power as protests continue to grow

Whether Bolivian workers (who have a long tradition of resistance and popular mobilization) will succeed in thwarting the intentions of Paz and his international allies remains to be seen.

But, as seen in other countries such as Ecuador, neoliberal governments have opted for a strategy of wearing down popular protests. For example, Lenin Moreno’s government raised fuel prices only to back down in the face of massive social protests. Years later, Guillermo Lasso and Daniel Noboa did the same, until the protesters grew weary and they finally succeeded in eliminating the subsidy on certain fuels.

For now, it seems that Bolivian workers are not willing to back down, although all signs indicate that neither will the Paz administration nor future neoliberal politicians. Whoever emerges victorious will do so by sheer resistance and the ability to remain united.

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The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has continued its downward spiral after suffering significant losses in state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday, September 20. In addition to coming second to the progressive Die Linke in the German capital, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party failed to achieve the 5% needed to enter Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s parliament, marking a new low – or, in Merz’s own words – a “disaster.”

The results of the two elections were radically different: in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won the largest percentage of votes, echoing, in many ways, the recent outcome in Saxony-Anhalt. In Berlin, Die Linke emerged as the winner, claiming a quarter of the vote after a campaign focusing on housing, the cost of living crisis, and public transport.

Read more: Far-right victory in German state elections shocks the center

Part of the local reports note that while the AfD and Die Linke lie on opposite ends of the political spectrum, both gained ground thanks to the perception that they bring the best chance of breaking with the policies implemented by the government coalition between CDU and the Social Democrats (SPD).

These policies – pursuing extensive cuts to the social and welfare system and attacks on labor rights in order to fund a massive rearmament drive – have completely eroded the support for Merz’s conservatives. Despite this administration’s unprecedented unpopularity, the German Chancellor is showing no sign of changing course, stating after Sunday’s election that “reforms must come.”

Die Linke’s Berlin result: reforms must be implemented – but which reforms?

Reforms must be implemented, voters in several German states apparently agree with Merz – just not those envisioned by the CDU. Die Linke’s campaign, led by Elif Eralp, offered an alternative list of policy reforms addressing Berlin’s inhabitants’ most pressing concerns. This meant a focus on accessible housing – including a follow-up on the 2021 referendum where voters backed expropriating the property of private real-estate companies with 3,000 or more units in the city.

Five years ago, over one million people supported the referendum’s idea of socializing the housing pool, yet no action was taken by the local administration. Since then, the housing situation has grown worse, leading to widespread frustration. Die Linke’s campaign recognized the general discontent and promised it would not give up on socialization.

“Die Linke’s successful campaign in Berlin was driven by its strong focus on affordable housing and rent control, which resonated deeply with voters facing massively rising living costs,” Kirsten Schubert, a general practitioner active in the party’s local chapter, told BreakThrough News. “The party integrated large-scale door-to-door campaigning strategy, allowing volunteers to connect personally with hundreds of thousands of residents directly at their doorsteps. By those means, strong social media presence and a huge range of community activities, they successfully mobilized a diverse coalition of non-voters, progressive urban youth, and traditional working-class voters.”

Read more: Berliners win vote to expropriate housing from corporate landlords. What’s next?

Krunoslav Stojaković, a political advisor at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, says that the election result commits not only Die Linke, but also “the social left and all those who care about a more just society” to work towards achieving socialization of housing. “At this point, there can be no going back […] The people of Berlin have given us this mandate.”

“There will be resistance,” he emphasizes. “Potential coalition partners are only tentatively supportive of Die Linke, and some are already making demands against the socialization of those profiting from the housing crisis as a condition for political cooperation.”

Progressive measures to face opposition from center

The approach adopted in Berlin marked a welcome break from Die Linke’s campaigning in other states. Stojaković pointed out to the portal H-alter that the party’s earlier choices – such as joining coalitions that implemented austerity measures – contributed to a fall in popularity. The recent success offers an opportunity to reclaim lost ground and reshape the party’s approach to fieldwork. But it should not be taken for granted that this will happen.

For now, the party faces talks with potential coalition partners SPD and the Greens. Figures from both parties signaled there are significant misalignments between them and Die Linke. While the SPD does not share the commitment to socialization of housing, the Greens’ Franziska Brantner said the party would not cooperate with “anti-semites from Neukölln.” With this, Brantner indicated that the political mainstream in Germany will persist in pressuring those criticizing Israel – even if this criticism remains timid at best.

Read more: Thousands join Berlin’s Peace Days to support antimilitarism and solidarity

On the other hand, left and progressive parties across Europe recognized in Die Linke’s result an important rupture within the predominating context of the far right gaining electoral ground. From Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France to Slovenia’s Levica, reactions emphasized the significance of shaping grounded and unequivocally left programs. “Politics begins with the daily problems of millions of people,” wrote Peter Mertens, General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA). “It is not just about talking about tenants and workers, but about organizing them so they can impose change themselves.”

This article was updated on Wednesday, September 23, to incorporate comments from Kirsten Schubert.

President Xi Jinping is set to visit to the United States from September 23-25. His visit must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures.

In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

In the other future, the two countries accept that neither can destroy the other without destroying much of humanity. They recognize that coexistence is not an act of charity and collaboration is not a concession. Both are necessities.

That is the significance of President Xi’s decision to travel to the United States. China’s foreign ministry has described head-of-state diplomacy as having an “irreplaceable” role in guiding relations between the two countries. The visit follows President Donald Trump’s trip to China in May and continuing negotiations over tariffs, trade, and investment. There are indications that President Xi will travel with a substantial delegation of Chinese business leaders. These facts suggest that Beijing wants to move the relationship away from the permanent crisis and towards practical engagement.

But diplomacy between China and the United States cannot merely be a photo opportunity. Nor should it be understood as a negotiation in which one side must surrender to the other. It must be based on a sober recognition of reality. Or to be precise, four realities.

The first reality is that China cannot be contained. China is not a minor country whose development can be suffocated by sanctions. It has a population of more than 1.4 billion people, a vast industrial system, an increasingly sophisticated scientific community, and deep commercial relationships across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Whatever one thinks of China, it is absurd to imagine that it can simply be excluded from the world economy. The attempt to contain China has already produced an extraordinary catalogue of restrictions: tariffs, semiconductor controls, investment prohibitions, sanctions on Chinese companies, naval patrols along China’s coastline, and the construction of new military arrangements from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. Each of these measures is presented as defensive. Taken together, however, they form an architecture of confrontation. There is a dangerous illusion in Washington that pressure will force China to abandon its development. No Chinese government could accept such a demand. After the century of humiliation (from the Opium Wars to the Japanese invasion) the restoration of national sovereignty and the improvement of living standards are not negotiable matters for the Chinese people. The United States may slow certain aspects of China’s development, but it cannot persuade China to return to poverty.

The second reality is that economic separation is neither simple nor painless. The United States and China remain deeply connected through trade, investment, supply chains, scientific knowledge, and consumer markets. US farmers depend upon Chinese buyers. US companies depend upon Chinese manufacturing and upon Chinese consumers. China, meanwhile, benefits from access to US technology, agricultural products, and capital. Negotiators are now discussing reciprocal tariff reductions and new mechanisms for trade and investment. These are modest measures, but they acknowledge an important truth: economic warfare injures both countries. Tariffs are announced with nationalist speeches, but their costs appear quietly in grocery bills, factory closures, disrupted supply chains, and lost employment. Working people in the United States do not benefit when China is weakened. Their difficulties are rooted principally in decisions made by their own ruling class: decades of deindustrialization, the power of finance, attacks on trade unions, the privatization of public services, and the refusal to undertake serious social investment. China did not close the factories of the US Midwest. US corporations closed them in search of higher profits. The answer to inequality in either country is not economic nationalism by the United States.

The third reality is that humanity faces problems that cannot be solved by either country acting alone. The climate catastrophe does not carry a passport. Carbon emitted in one country heats the atmosphere everywhere. The United States possesses immense scientific and financial resources, while China has developed enormous productive capacity in solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, public transport, and renewable-energy infrastructure. Collaboration between them could accelerate a worldwide energy transition. Confrontation will delay it precisely when delay has become intolerable. The same is true of public health. The COVID-19 pandemic showed us the human cost of secrecy, competition, and vaccine nationalism. Artificial intelligence creates another urgent area for cooperation. These technologies cannot be governed adequately by rival military doctrines or private corporations seeking maximum profit. The two countries must develop common safeguards against autonomous weapons, destabilizing cyberattacks, mass surveillance, and the use of artificial intelligence to intensify social inequality.

Finally, the fourth reality is the question of war. China and the United States are nuclear-armed powers. Any direct military conflict between them would have consequences beyond calculation. This is why Taiwan must not be transformed into the trigger for a catastrophic confrontation. The one-China framework and the existing diplomatic understandings must not be hollowed out by provocations, arms sales, or gestures designed for domestic political theater.

Peace requires restraint from both sides, but restraint cannot mean that the United States surrounds China with military bases and warships and then demands that China alone remain calm. Security cannot be achieved through the permanent insecurity of another country. There will, of course, be disagreements. Collaboration does not require agreement on every political question. Nor does coexistence require silence about differences. But disagreement must be conducted through diplomacy, international law, and the institutions of the United Nations, not through sanctions, threats, and military exercises.

The countries of the Global South have a particular interest in the success of this visit. They do not want to be instructed to choose between China and the United States. They do not want their ports, minerals, telecommunications systems, and political institutions turned into battlefields in a new cold war. They want access to finance, technology, medicine, and markets without political subordination. They want development, not recruitment into rival military camps. Xi Jinping’s visit therefore carries a responsibility that extends far beyond Washington and Beijing. The world does not need an agreement merely to divide markets between Chinese and US corporations. It needs a commitment to reduce the danger of war, dismantle unilateral coercive measures, restore normal economic relations, cooperate on climate and public health, and strengthen the principles of the United Nations Charter.

The importance of the visit lies not in ceremony but in possibility. It offers both countries an opportunity to step back from the cliff. The United States must abandon the fantasy that it can preserve its primacy by preventing China’s development. China, for its part, has repeatedly said that it does not seek to replace the United States as a hegemonic power. That principle must become the basis of a durable relationship: no containment, no domination, no war.

There is an old habit among powerful states of treating compromise as weakness. In the nuclear age, the opposite is true. It takes no courage to order another warship into contested waters. It takes political courage to recognize that one’s adversary also has legitimate interests, that coexistence requires reciprocity, and that the survival of humanity is more important than the vanity of supremacy.

This visit should therefore carry a simple message from Washington to the world: collaboration is not surrender, diplomacy is not weakness, and peace is not an abstraction.

Confrontation offers neither country a future.

Collaboration offers the world a chance.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa, written with Grieve Chelwa. He is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and the chief editor of LeftWord Books(New Delhi). He also appeared in the films Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).

This article was produced by Globetrotter.