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.

ICE is funded through 2029, the Pentagon budget is at record highs – and plenty of Democrats voted for both. So what does winning Congress actually change?

With an ad spend set to hit $11.6 billion and record dark money pouring into the 2026 midterms, BreakThrough News editor-in-chief Ben Becker joins Zoe Alexandra and Rania Khalek to break down what’s really at stake on November 3. He lays out how billionaires and untraceable super PACs are buying the election, the threat of Trump deploying ICE at the polls, and why a likely Democratic majority is unlikely to claw back DHS funding or end Trump’s war on Iran – recalling how Democrats failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform or universal childcare the last time they held power.

And with self-proclaimed socialists like Zohran Mamdani saying Gaza’s a genocide while capitulating to pro-Israel pressure, Becker warns of the Democratic Party’s history of co-opting mass movements – while arguing the pattern reveals real radicalization across US society. And he makes the case for what comes next, pointing to mobilizations now in the streets of France and Spain, and January’s general strike in Minneapolis.

Watch full episodes of BT Live, join breakthroughnews.org as a member today!

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Rough transcript follows:
[Speaker 1:] With record amounts of dark money pouring into the midterms, and ICE sitting on tens of millions of voter records—records that documents show it tried to share with Peter Thiel’s Palantir—Washington is bracing for an ugly fight over who controls Congress. But for the millions of Americans living in fear of ICE raids, struggling to make rent, or trying to afford fruits and vegetables, how much are their daily lives impacted by the outcome of these midterms? Now that I’m back in the States, I see just how much the price of everything has gone up.

Democrats are running on stopping Trump, but this is also a party that helped push the military budget toward record highs. ICE is already funded through 2029, thanks to a $75 billion windfall Congress handed it last year. So what could—or would—a Democratic majority actually change?

To break it all down, we’re joined by our very own Ben Becker, editor-in-chief of Breakthrough News. Ben, it’s great to have you back on the show.

[Speaker 2:] Thanks for having me. Happy to be back.

[Speaker 1:] These midterms, as I mentioned, are set to break election-spending records. It’s actually insane how much money is pouring in. You’ve got super PACs, the tech and finance industries, and dark-money donors funneling so much cash into ads and races to basically control the outcome like never before.

At the same time, as I mentioned, ICE has been combing through tens of millions of voter records in the name of hunting noncitizen voters, as they call them. With all that in mind, what kind of election is this shaping up to be? Do you think the bigger threat is that money is buying the outcome, or that the state apparatus is being set up to police the vote? Perhaps those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Either way, none of this sounds very democratic.

[Speaker 2:] It’s sort of like asking, “Would you prefer to die by being hit by a bus, or through long-term cancer?” I think there really are two different things there: the long-term erosion of an already fairly restricted democracy. We shouldn’t pretend that the United States had a shining democratic tradition, given the history of Jim Crow and slavery, the disenfranchisement of millions of undocumented workers, and the largest prison population in the world. All these things were already existing.

Then, after Citizens United, came the infusion of billions of dollars in dark money. The crypto industry, the AI industry, AIPAC, or whoever can give money to nonprofits, which then give money to a super PAC with some shady name that was just started. Literally billions of dollars are going into campaign ads, and nobody knows who’s behind the money. The organizations are basically untraceable.

According to some estimates, around $10 billion will be spent just on these midterm elections, with about 20 billionaires—just 20 individuals—making up one-eighth of all that spending. That’s over a billion dollars. Eighteen of the 20 are Republicans, and two are Democrats. They’re pouring enormous sums of money into going after candidates they don’t like. We’ve seen huge amounts of money spent in some of these key races. That’s obviously a huge threat to any kind of equality or democracy. Some have called it “the best democracy money can buy.” We might want to revise that to “the worst democracy money can buy.”

Then you have Trump’s very particular, immediate threats—which would be like being hit by the bus, so to speak: seizing the ballots, potentially taking control of the count, and deploying ICE agents at ballot stations to scare off people from immigrant communities. There are people in his corner calling for him to declare a state of emergency or invoke the Insurrection Act, or who knows what. I think there’s a whole variety of new threats on top of this long-term erosion, or takeover of the whole electoral system by the billionaire class.

[Speaker 1:] Another element of this month leading up to the midterm elections is that a lot of people have spoken about the very real possibility that Democrats might take back either the House and the Senate, or just one of the two. Let’s say Democrats do manage to win one of these two bodies, or win the majority. ICE’s $75 billion budget is locked in through 2029. The House just passed a record defense bill, and Trump is asking for $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon next year. Suffice it to say, plenty of Democrats voted for these budgets.

If Democrats take the House, does any of that change? Are they able to claw back ICE funding, cut the military budget and the war in Iran, or end the genocide in Gaza? Can they stop health care prices from skyrocketing, and address all these issues that everyday voters in the United States are raising? How do you see it playing out, given the way the Democratic Party has behaved in the past when it has taken back power?

[Speaker 2:] Can they do those things? They could do a lot of them, actually, or at least make life very difficult for the Trump administration and its agencies. They could wage a very persistent struggle to defund ICE. They could create a major obstacle to that enormous war budget, the largest in human history. They could do a lot of things.

The better question is: What will they do? I think both questions are important. We shouldn’t rule out the possibility that they can do these things, because that’s part of holding politicians accountable. If you’ve already internalized that they’ll do nothing in support of the people, that kind of lets them off the hook when they do nothing for the people. I think it’s important to point out concretely how they can do certain things, pass certain bills, and use certain authorities.

But will they? I don’t think any of those things are fundamentally going to be stopped or reversed by the Democratic Party. The party is built on a coalition that includes progressive politicians, people who come from the labor movement, and people who are more tied to working-class demands. But it’s also a coalition with huge sections of corporate America. It’s deeply integrated into the same national security state and military-industrial complex. It takes huge amounts of money from those same industries that give to the Trump administration.

This coalition doesn’t have a cohesive program in defense of the working class, the immigrant community, or anyone in particular that it can hold politicians accountable to. Even having a majority doesn’t really mean that much when you think about it.

If we were having this conversation six years ago, right before Joe Biden came into office, remember, he came in with the House, a very narrow majority in the Senate, and the White House. What was the Build Back Better plan? A lot of the reforms Biden promised, if they had actually gone through, would mean we wouldn’t be dealing with many of the issues we’re dealing with today. For instance, there was universal child care, free community college, paid maternity leave, and comprehensive immigration reform—one of the things the Biden administration promised. There was also voting-rights legislation that would have made it harder for Trump to carry out many of the attacks he’s currently making on voting rights by strengthening federal protections for voting rights.

None of those things came to pass. You can say, “Oh, it was the Republicans,” but it was also Joe Manchin, the Democrat from West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrat from Arizona, along with a whole assortment of other Democrats who realized they had strategic leverage they could use to block the bills. It’s not like the progressive section of the Democratic Party went to war with those more conservative sections. They blocked all the bills, then cashed out. They all got jobs in the private sector and made tens of millions of dollars, including Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

They’re gone now, but we have John Fetterman and other Democrats. I think it’s an illusion to think that having a numerical majority is somehow going to deliver a lot of those things.

And if we’re just being honest, a lot of the political climate against immigration and immigrants was contributed to by the Democrats. The Democrats have also taken huge amounts of money from big tech, so I don’t think we can expect them to stand up to the AI and crypto industries. They’re obviously tied into the military, as we’ve said before. In a way, their biggest frustration with Trump’s Xi meeting was that Trump was too friendly to China.

I think people are going to go to the polls because they hate the Trump administration, for good reason, and the Democrats are going to be the main beneficiaries of that mass opposition to Trump, whose poll numbers are so low right now. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything will fundamentally change with an incoming majority in the House or Senate.

Back when Joe Biden was running for president in 2020, what was it? He said, “Nothing will fundamentally change.” That’s what he was saying to a group of corporate donors.

[Speaker 1:] Promise. He delivered on that promise.

[Speaker 2:] He did. Yes, he did.

[Speaker 1:] There are some major differences this time around. Suddenly, you’ve got winning Democratic candidates calling themselves socialists, talking about affordability and billionaires, and even saying the word “genocide” about Gaza. The issue of Palestine has come to define so many races across the country. These are things that would have gotten you run out of the party a few years ago. It still stands to be seen, because the party is trying to run some of those people out. But the base of the party clearly wants a lot of this, right?

How do you interpret this shift? Do you see it as a very real shift when people in this party use this language, or is the Democratic Party doing what it’s always done—absorbing energy from the left, in this case from the Palestine movement, to get out the vote, with the real risk that they’ll shelve it once they’re in power?

[Speaker 2:] I think both things are true, and you’re right to note the historical precedent. Dr. King was actually the most hated man in America for a lot of his life, career, and activism. You wouldn’t know it because, once he was dead and the civil-rights reforms were passed, the Democrats in particular—but ultimately both parties—would quote him and co-opt him and the civil-rights movement they had totally opposed.

The same was true with the labor movement and with movements throughout U.S. history. One element of successfully shifting mass consciousness is that elements of the elite then co-opt your message, soften it, dilute it, water it down, and try to gut it of its radical content. In a way, it’s definitely a measure of success. Something is really taking place at the level of the base of society.

I also think you’re right to say that the Democrats don’t intend to deliver on that mass sentiment, nor are they structurally able to. Support for Israel is infused at every level of the U.S. ruling class, from the national security state to big tech companies, financial institutions, and higher education institutions. It’s not just a matter of what someone says on the House or Senate floor, or even this or that bill that’s passed. The same is true of the wars abroad. There’s a tendency toward war that grows regardless of what Congress is doing. For many decades, Congress has done nothing to stop the war machine, and the president has seemingly limitless authority to wage undeclared wars.

I think you’re right to say there’s a level of co-optation, but I think there’s a positive spin on it, too. Being pro-Palestine, as you said, made you somehow unelectable 10 years ago. That was the mainstream wisdom. But if you look at the polls now, there’s been a total reversal. Only 10 or 15 years ago, a majority of the country was absolutely in support of the state of Israel. Now, among Democratic voters, support for Israel is under 20%. Two out of every three Democrats say they have a more favorable opinion of the Palestinian cause.

The same goes for socialism. What’s interesting about the polling around socialism is that, I think, 32 million or so young people have a favorable opinion of it. But you’re also starting to see changes among independents and people who are a little bit older. The favorable rating of capitalism is going down dramatically, including among independents, who are considered the swing voters. A lot of this traditional political thinking—that words like “Palestine” and “socialism” made you toxic—is no longer true. People are losing confidence and trust in the U.S. capitalist system, and they’re no longer going to be turned off by these scare words and scare tactics from the past.

I think the danger of co-optation is real, and obviously socialism also can’t be achieved at the ballot box under a system totally dominated by big business, Wall Street, and the big banks. On the other hand, we should emphasize that there’s a growing radicalization, or politicization, of people across society, of all ages, who are starting to think about new ideas. There’s a positive reading of that.

[Speaker 1:] No, definitely. I think that’s reflected in the interview we did earlier with Danielle Wono about what we’re seeing take place across France as well.

Ben, for people who are watching who are angry, broke, or scared, what’s really at stake on November 3 in these primaries? What should they be doing beyond voting, whichever party comes out on top after November 3? As you said, socialism isn’t voted in at the ballot box, and both of these parties receive significant funds from the capitalist ruling class. What really comes next, and what’s at stake on November 3?

[Speaker 2:] To underscore the point, whether or not you have this or that person in Congress, all the main decisions in your life—who sets the rent, the cost of groceries, the job opportunities that are available, who’s going to introduce artificial intelligence—are basically in the hands of a few corporations. That’s what I meant when I said it can’t be introduced at the ballot box: all these fundamental economic decisions are made privately. There are people taking votes on them, but it ain’t you. It’s boards of directors making those decisions. In that sense, if you really want to change the economic reality, you have to change the economic system. You can’t just change it by voting on November 3.

I think what’s happening in France and Spain is extremely important right now. You’re seeing young people who are upset about the erosion of social services and public schools and the rising cost of rent taking to the streets. They’ve inspired people from all walks of life to take to the streets. It’s really become a kind of rebellion against the political status quo.

We’ve seen that here in Minnesota. In January, we had a general strike for the first time in decades. It was that mass movement in the streets that really pushed back against ICE and the Trump administration. It led to the firing of Bovino and Kristi Noem. It didn’t make ICE disappear, but it did lead ICE to change its tactics.

There’s obviously this latent power of the people in the streets that’s starting to become manifest in Western Europe, and that has been seen in the United States. I think the question is whether these elections open the door for more people to exercise their free-speech and assembly rights, organize, and exercise their rights in the workplace, including withholding their labor. How are these elections won? People might say, “Look, Trump has taken a devastating blow because he probably will lose, and the Republicans will lose.” Does this make people feel more emboldened to organize? It wasn’t the Democrats who really did anything these last two years to restrain the Trump administration.

If you’re looking for them to do something they’ve never done before, that’s a form of insanity: expecting the same result from the Democratic Party. But there is a tradition of mass action pushing back against the far right. Ultimately, what happens in the election isn’t the main thing. Even in France, what if the far right wins the elections? That’s a distinct possibility while young people are in the streets.

Both things can be true at once: there’s growing polarization, and we just have to accept that reality and try to learn from it. I don’t think it’s going to stop, regardless of the outcome on November 3.

[Speaker 1:] Ben Becker, editor-in-chief of Breakthrough News, I really appreciate your analysis. Of course, we’ll be coming back to you as we get closer to the midterms, because this will continue to develop. The horse race always—I really appreciate what you’re saying—becomes the central story. The drama and the various personalities distract from the broader systemic problems we have. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your analysis.

[Speaker 2:] Thanks.

Three years after Israel launched its genocidal aggression on the Gaza strip, massacres and mass destruction continue to take place on a daily basis, despite the US-brokered ceasefire deal that was reached in October 2025.

The nominal truce was preceded by two other short ceasefire agreements. The first was reached in November 2023 and lasted for only one week, while the second was sealed in mid-January 2025 and collapsed two months later.

For three entire years, the world has borne witness to one of the most heinous genocides in modern history, which has resulted in the killing of at least 75,000 Palestinians, according to the latest official health reports, with women, children, and the elderly comprising 56.2% of the death toll. Meanwhile, 82% of Gaza’s structures have been destroyed.

Starvation and the total blockade of aid have also been used as weapons of war against the Palestinian population in the war-ravaged territory.

Read more: Being bombed, starved to death, or killed while seeking food: Israel’s options for Palestinians in Gaza

As soon as it was launched, the US-backed fierce Israeli military campaign expanded beyond Gaza to include other parts of West Asia, including the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria.

About 9,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, more than 1,136 in the West Bank, dozens in Yemen and scores of others in Syria.

The systematic targeting of journalists

The genocide in Gaza has been characterized by the systematic targeting of journalists and media workers, with the death toll reaching more than 260, according to Naser Abu Baker, President of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS).

Abu Baker told BreakThrough News that over the same period, 550 journalists were wounded, and over 200 were arrested.

“All of this underscores a systematic policy implemented by the Israeli occupation, which primarily aims to prevent the truth about the crimes committed in the Palestinian territories by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people from being documented and transmitted, especially in the Gaza Strip,” he emphasized.

The chief of PJS noted that the targeting of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli forces began over one decade before the October 7 attacks. 

“PJS documented more than 9000 assaults on journalists in the occupied Palestinian territories between 2012 and 2023. More than 56 journalists were killed during that period, including three foreign journalists,” Abu Baker clarified.

Another silent genocide has been committed against Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons

Simultaneously with the events in Gaza, the Israel Prison Service escalated a brutal crackdown against the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement, intensifying a campaign that began in early 2023.

Read more: The Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement: the struggle behind bars

While around 5,200 Palestinian political prisoners were held in Israeli detention prior to October 7, 2023, the number jumped to 9,600 after the outbreak of the Israeli genocidal aggression on Gaza. Many of those prisoners have been placed under administrative detention without charge.

These latest figures only represent the prisoners whose whereabouts inside Israeli detention centers were documented by Palestinian prisoners groups. Thousands of additional Palestinians remain unaccounted for and are believed to have faced enforced disappearance amid the ongoing Israeli military operations in Gaza.

During the past three years, Palestinian prisoners have endured miserable detention conditions, including medical neglect, deprivation of adequate food and hygiene supplies, as well as physical and psychological torture.

Read more: “We are here to kill you”: Released Palestinian prisoner exposes torture and medical neglect in Israeli prisons

This horrific situation culminated with the endorsement of an Israeli law mandating the execution of Palestinian prisoners by hanging. 

On the third anniversary of October 7, Raed Abu al-Hummus, head of the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, delivered a message to international human rights organizations via BreakThrough News.

“I call on international human rights organizations to practice their stated objectives, to truthfully convey our message, and to form a parallel front to our heroic prisoners’ front inside the prisons, in an attempt to protect them from these violations, from this far-right monster seeking to slowly kill them,” Abu al-Hummus stated, referring to Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir.

It’s not about the Israeli far-right; it’s about the entire Zionist movement, says Omar Assaf

While some media outlets and political analysts suggest that Israel’s intensified atrocities in recent years represent the policy of the far-right wing solely, the Palestinian grassroots believe that they constitute the very core of the Zionist movement. 

Palestinian political activist, freedom fighter and former prisoner in Israeli jails Omar Assaf argued that “the genocide does not reflect a policy of an individual or a current within the Israeli government. It rather reflects a general policy, because the Zionist movement as a whole was founded on the exclusion of the Palestinian people, expelling them, and looting their land.”

“Therefore, if this far-right government is practicing genocide, this does not mean that the next government will be a government of peace,” Assaf asserted. 

Despite three years of unspeakable atrocities and over 78 years of military occupation amid the total silence and inaction of the international community, the Palestinian people remain steadfast and resilient in their homeland, refusing to leave or surrender.

Read in English here

Las elecciones generales de Brasil del 4 de octubre representaron una severa advertencia para la izquierda. Flávio Bolsonaro, el candidato presidencial del Partido Liberal (PL), superó al presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, con aproximadamente un 47% frente a un 45%. Ninguno de los dos obtuvo la mayoría, lo que los llevará a una segunda vuelta el 25 de octubre. Más preocupante que este estrecho margen presidencial fue el avance del bolsonarismo en el Congreso. Las elecciones han fortalecido un movimiento político cuyas ambiciones van más allá de derrotar a Lula para llegar a remodelar las instituciones que obstaculizan su ejercicio del poder.

El encarcelamiento (arresto domiciliario) y la exclusión electoral de Jair Bolsonaro no han disuelto su movimiento. Su hijo Flávio lleva su estandarte presidencial, mientras que otros miembros de la familia han obtenido escaños en el Congreso. Michelle Bolsonaro, esposa de Jair, y Carlos Bolsonaro, su hijo, ingresan al Senado; Jair Renan, otro de sus hijos, y Renato, hermano de Jair, ingresan a la Cámara de Diputados. Nepobolsonarismo es un nombre apropiado para la expansión de esta familia a través del Estado. Sin embargo, la familia es solo la expresión más visible de un proyecto más amplio, arraigado en poderosos intereses económicos y en una política reaccionaria profundamente organizada.

Una contienda presidencial con implicaciones continentales

Lula sigue siendo el principal obstáculo para el regreso de este proyecto a la presidencia. Su derrota afectaría a los trabajadores y campesinos de todo Brasil, pero también a las posibilidades de cooperación regional y de una política exterior latinoamericana independiente. El tamaño de Brasil, su capacidad industrial, sus minerales en bruto (como los minerales críticos), sus recursos agrícolas y su alcance diplomático otorgan a su orientación política una importancia continental. Un gobierno que subordine estos activos a las prioridades de Washington debilitaría el espacio disponible para los países vecinos que buscan sus propios caminos de desarrollo.

La distribución geográfica de la primera vuelta pone de manifiesto tanto la fortaleza de Lula como sus dificultades. Mantuvo una posición dominante en el Noreste, mientras que Flávio lideró en las otras cuatro regiones. El enorme electorado de São Paulo proporcionó una ventaja particularmente importante a la derecha. Estas divisiones no pueden explicarse mediante una oposición entre una población ilustrada y otra ignorante. Requieren un análisis de las diferentes condiciones laborales, la organización de la vida política y la capacidad de los movimientos rivales para interpretar las frustraciones de la gente.

Lula llega a la segunda vuelta con un historial social sustancial. El desempleo cayó al 5,3% en el trimestre que finalizó en agosto, la tasa más baja para ese período en la serie estadística que comienza en 2012. Estas mejoras son de enorme importancia para las familias para quienes un salario regular supone un alivio frente a la incertidumbre cotidiana. Sin embargo, un indicador nacional mejorado no zanja la discusión política. El empleo puede coexistir con desplazamientos agotadores, viviendas costosas, servicios públicos inadecuados y la inseguridad que genera la deuda. La brecha entre la mejora estadística y la experiencia vivida sigue siendo un terreno en el que opera la derecha.

El bolsonarismo, o la extrema derecha brasileña de un tipo especial, traduce estas frustraciones en resentimiento contra la izquierda, todas las instituciones públicas y los sectores vulnerables de la sociedad. Su promesa de orden ofrece un lenguaje inmediato para el miedo, al tiempo que oculta los mecanismos económicos que generan inseguridad.

La izquierda no puede responder a esto simplemente promocionando los logros del gobierno. Debe vincular esos logros a un programa creíble para cambiar la vida cotidiana y explicar qué intereses impiden nuevos avances. Un trabajador que lucha contra las deudas necesita algo más que la seguridad de que la economía va bien. Este ha sido el problema de Lula, cuyo programa para el futuro no parece prometer más de lo que se ha logrado hasta ahora.

El Senado: una lucha por el poder institucional

Las elecciones al Senado son particularmente trascendentales porque se disputaron 54 de sus 81 escaños. Los senadores tienen mandatos de ocho años, por lo que los resultados marcarán la política nacional mucho más allá de la próxima administración presidencial. El PL obtuvo 19 escaños y contará con 28 en el nuevo Senado, lo que lo convierte en el partido más grande. El PT tendrá nueve. Los bolsonaristas han establecido, por lo tanto, una posición formidable, aunque el propio PL sigue sin alcanzar la mayoría y deberá negociar con otros partidos.

Michelle Bolsonaro y Bia Kicis obtuvieron los dos escaños del Distrito Federal, mientras que Carlos Bolsonaro y Carol de Toni ganaron los dos escaños de Santa Catarina. Estas victorias demuestran la capacidad del movimiento para organizar campañas coordinadas y concentrar el apoyo en torno a sus candidatos. Hubo éxitos importantes para la izquierda: Rui Costa y Jaques Wagner ganaron en Bahía, Humberto Costa conservó su representación en Pernambuco y Marília Campos ganó en Minas Gerais. Estos resultados preservan puntos de resistencia dentro de una cámara cada vez más hostil. La importancia del Senado va más allá de la legislación ordinaria. Los bolsonaristas han convertido su enfrentamiento con la Corte Suprema Federal en un objetivo político central, lo que incluye demandas para destituir a sus magistrados. Su representación reforzada aumenta su capacidad para llevar adelante ese enfrentamiento e influir en la elección del presidente del Senado. Las predicciones de una mayoría automática a favor del juicio político deben tomarse con cautela: la afiliación partidaria, las declaraciones de campaña y los votos en un procedimiento específico son cosas distintas. No obstante, el peligro de utilizar el poder legislativo para intimidar al poder judicial ha aumentado claramente.

Esto forma parte de una lucha por las condiciones bajo las cuales la extrema derecha puede gobernar. Los procesos judiciales contra Jair Bolsonaro no han eliminado a las fuerzas sociales que lo respaldan. Esas fuerzas buscan ahora una mayor influencia sobre las instituciones capaces de frenarlas. Para la izquierda, la defensa del espacio democrático debe, por lo tanto, ir de la mano de la lucha por ampliar los derechos sociales. Las organizaciones de trabajadores no pueden permitirse perder las libertades a través de las cuales se organizan, educan y se enfrentan al capital.

Diputados federales: la derecha avanza, la izquierda encuentra oportunidades

Este año se renovaron los 513 escaños de la Cámara de Diputados. El PL obtuvo 121, consolidando su posición como el partido más grande tanto en esta cámara como en el Senado. La federación del Partido de los Trabajadores, el Partido Comunista de Brasil y el Partido Verde ganó 88 escaños, de los cuales el propio PT obtuvo 70. El crecimiento de la federación es significativo, pero deja a los aliados de Lula lejos de alcanzar la mayoría. Los partidos de la derecha cuentan con 303 escaños, mientras que la izquierda parlamentaria en sentido amplio tiene 124.

El resultado fortalece a una extrema derecha de carácter particular dentro de una legislatura ya dominada por intereses conservadores. También debilita a algunos intermediarios tradicionales del poder parlamentario, como el centrão, la coalición de partidos que intercambia apoyo legislativo por influencia en los nombramientos y los recursos públicos, aunque sigue siendo indispensable para la formación de mayorías. Las negociaciones que se lleven a cabo dentro del centrão ahora se desarrollarán junto a un PL más grande y más asertivo. Si Lula gana en la segunda vuelta, se enfrentará a una resistencia sustancial en el Congreso; pero si gana Flávio, ese mismo Congreso podría facilitar un programa reaccionario.

Sin embargo, la elección también llevó a la Cámara a importantes representantes de una izquierda combativa. Jones Manoel, el historiador comunista elegido por el PSOL en Pernambuco, obtuvo 249.077 votos y quedó en primer lugar en Recife. Elias Jabbour, el geógrafo comunista, fue elegido por el PCdoB en Río de Janeiro. Sus victorias sugieren que existe un público receptivo a la educación política y a los argumentos socialistas, incluso en medio del avance de la derecha. Ofrecen recursos para reconstruir la confianza entre las personas que se han impacientado ante las ambiciones cada vez más limitadas de la política parlamentaria.

Jones Manoel ya se ha ofrecido a colaborar en la campaña de la segunda vuelta de Lula, incluida su comunicación digital, al tiempo que propone prestar mayor atención a demandas como el transporte público gratuito. Este es un ejemplo útil de claridad política: la crítica a las limitaciones del gobierno puede coexistir con una movilización activa contra una extrema derecha de un tipo especial. Dicha unidad no requiere que los trabajadores renuncien a sus demandas. Se fortalece cuando esas demandas aportan energía y dirección a la campaña.

La tarea antes del 25 de octubre

La segunda vuelta no se puede ganar únicamente mediante negociaciones entre los líderes de los partidos. Requiere una actividad organizada en los lugares de trabajo, los barrios, las universidades y las comunidades rurales, con un programa que la gente pueda reconocer en sus propias vidas. El transporte, los salarios, la vivienda, la deuda, la salud pública y el tiempo dedicado al trabajo deben convertirse en la esencia de una campaña democrática. La defensa de la soberanía se vuelve tangible cuando se vincula con la capacidad de utilizar la riqueza de Brasil para satisfacer las necesidades de su pueblo.

La marea furiosa ha avanzado, pero no ha arrastrado a los millones de personas que aún buscan otro Brasil. Los nuevos diputados comunistas, las organizaciones de masas que han sobrevivido (especialmente los trabajadores sin tierra del MST) y la enorme base electoral de Lula constituyen los cimientos de la resistencia. La tarea inmediata es derrotar a Flávio Bolsonaro. La tarea a más largo plazo es construir un poder popular lo suficientemente fuerte como para impedir que la oligarquía decida, elección tras elección, qué tan poco cambio se le permitirá a la mayoría.

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).

Lee en español aquí

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.

As Apple gears up for one of the biggest launches in its history — its first foldable iPhone Duo, hitting stores October 23rd— former employees are asking you to say no to blood tech.

Apple is deeply embedded in Israel, says Tariq Ra’ouf, a Palestinian writer who worked for more than a decade in Apple retail before he was fired in 2024 for speaking out against the company’s silence on Gaza. He joins Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra to break down Apple’s ties to Tel Aviv, including its extensive R&D centers in Israel and its $2 billion purchase of an AI startup founded by Unit 8200 veterans. He also explains the systemic discipline faced by pro-Palestine Apple workers — fired for wearing keffiyehs while the company matched employee donations to Friends of the IDF — and warns that having Israeli military intelligence veterans integrated into the supply chain of the world’s most popular devices should terrify every consumer.

Ra’ouf also lays out how the minerals in your iPhone connect the company to genocide in Congo, why organizers are calling for pickets at Apple stores on launch day – and how customers and workers can and should get involved.

Watch full episodes of BT Live, join breakthroughnews.org as a member today!

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Rough transcript follows:
[Host:] Apple is gearing up for one of the biggest launches in its history, as I’m sure many have heard, with the iPhone Duo. It’s the company’s first foldable phone, which is hitting stores later this month with a starting price of $2,000, which is just wild. But a group of former Apple employees is asking you to skip the line. Their message is: “Say no to blood tech.” Behind that sleek branding about privacy, human rights, and inclusion, Apple is deeply embedded in Israel. It employs around 2,000 people there across R&D centers in Haifa, Herzliya, and Jerusalem, where Israeli engineers help build the chips inside your MacBook. Israel actually hosts Apple’s second-largest R&D facilities outside the U.S., so that’s no joke. And in January, in the middle of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Apple bought the Israeli AI startup Q.ai for close to $2 billion. I think that’s the second-biggest acquisition in Apple’s history. It’s a company whose founders include veterans of Israeli military intelligence—basically, a bunch of spies. For years, Apple’s employee donation program matched gifts to groups like Friends of the IDF and organizations funding illegal settlements in the West Bank. Activists say the minerals inside your iPhone are tied to the war in Congo. We’ll get into that, too.

Meanwhile, Apple workers who spoke out for Palestine say they were the ones who got punished. They were disciplined for wearing keffiyehs or Palestine pins on the shop floor, and in some cases they were fired. Our next guest is one of them. Zaid Rauf is a Palestinian writer who spent more than a decade at Apple Retail before he was fired in 2024 for speaking out against the company’s silence on Gaza. He’s lost 49 members of his family in the Gaza genocide, and he’s now a leading organizer with Apple’s Against Apartheid, which is calling for pickets at Apple stores on iPhone Duo launch day, among other things. Zaid, welcome to BT Live. It’s really a pleasure to have you on.

[Guest:] Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been screaming about Apple Zionism for years, so it’s nice to have people listen.

[Host:] Well, scream as loud as you want over here. We have so many questions for you. As I mentioned in the introduction, you spent over a decade at Apple. After October 7, as we’re about to reach the three-year anniversary, you spent months pushing the company internally on Gaza before you were fired in July 2024. Walk us through what you were raising internally that got you fired. And, if you can, please expand a bit on Apple’s complicity in the Israeli death machine.

[Guest:] On October 9, Tim Cook sent an email to the entire company with a headline saying “Israel,” refusing to acknowledge Palestinians or even pretend that we existed in any capacity. His heart went out to all the victims in Israel, but not to any of the victims in Palestine. That made me really upset. I sent him an email begging him to say something about the Palestinians within the company. I was really naive, thinking, “Man, this guy just doesn’t know. He has to treat us equitably,” right?

I got a message from my manager saying he’d read my email. I was like, “Great. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Is he going to make a statement? Is there anything?” Nothing happened. He remained completely silent. After that experience, a few comrades and I decided to write an open letter demanding that Apple at least treat its Palestinian employees as equitably as it treats its Israeli employees, which I don’t think is a hard ask. We had over 400 current and former Apple employees sign that letter. Again, still no response, still nothing.

So we decided to create Apple’s Against Apartheid, which is dedicated to creating campaigns to educate people. We understand that if they’re not going to do anything internally, what’s required is external pressure and education, because people don’t understand just how deep Apple’s ties to Israel are.

To answer your question about its complicity: your introduction was spot on. Apple’s second-largest R&D center is in Israel. It was the first R&D center the company opened outside California. Apple has massive ties to the Israeli military unit 8200. A bunch of former Israeli spies who worked in Unit 8200 are involved. For people who don’t know what Unit 8200 is, it’s Israel’s IDF tech unit. They’re responsible for planning things like the pager attack in Lebanon. Apple has employees who served in Unit 8200 currently working at its R&D centers in Israel. Apple silicon chips—the M1 chips, the newly designed C1 modem, and the N1 chip for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth—are all currently designed by Israel. It’s a little outrageous to believe Apple thinks it can get away with staying so silent on Israel and Palestine, knowing how deeply complicit it is in all the violence Israel has perpetrated against the Palestinian people.

[Host:] As part of the advocacy you were doing within and outside Apple, hundreds of employees signed a letter in 2024 saying coworkers were being disciplined or fired for things like wearing keffiyehs, Palestine pins, or bracelets, while other causes were openly celebrated in stores. How systematic is this discipline faced by employees who speak up for Palestine? Is it individual managers who overreact and over-enforce, or is there a companywide line on what Palestinian identity is allowed to look like at Apple?

[Guest:] It’s so systemic. It goes all the way down to the attire rules—what you can wear at work. In 2024, they banned scarves because they didn’t want people wearing keffiyehs. They say you can’t wear a Palestine pin, a Palestinian flag pin, or even a bracelet, even though nothing in the handbook says you can’t wear a pin. They’ll say that to you because it’s a Palestine pin.

There was a comrade who had a Palestinian flag in his Slack icon, and a manager reached out to him: “Hey, you have to change your flag. It’s breaking policy.” The employee asked, “Okay, well, what policy am I breaking?” The manager said, “I’ll let you know when I find it.”

In November 2023, there was a Muslim Apple Slack channel, because the company has multiple diversity-group Slack channels. Zionists were coming into the Muslim Apple Slack channel and mass-reporting anything that mentioned Gaza or the genocide. Those messages were removed without Muslim employees being told why. They would come in and harass the Muslim employees. The Muslim employees weren’t going into the Jewish Apple Slack channel and doing the same thing. They were minding their own business and asking these people to leave them alone.

Instead of moderating and punishing the people who were harassing others, Apple closed down the Muslim Apple Slack channel, along with the Jewish Apple Slack channel, for over a year. The company refused to listen to Muslim employees begging for empathy, asking to be heard, and asking it to say something about the incredible losses the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities were facing.

[Host:] That’s wild. In contrast, let’s talk about how Apple treats its Israeli employees and those who support Israel. I mentioned Apple’s matching program, which lets employees route company money to groups like Friends of the IDF and settlement-funding organizations. This year, Apple also spent close to $2 billion on the Israeli AI company Q.ai, whose founders come out of Unit 8200, as you mentioned. What does that tell us about where Apple stands when it comes to Israelis, and about the feelings people who support them are allowed to express and the material support they’re allowed to give to the Israeli military?

[Guest:] It’s so racist and dehumanizing that Israeli employees at the company are allowed to express any sort of genocidal view or racist rhetoric they want on their Slack channels or within company offices, and they don’t get reprimanded nearly as much as Palestinians or pro-Palestinian employees who talk about the empathy and grief they experience.

There are so many cases of Zionist employees harassing Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian employees, but so few cases of those Zionists actually getting reprimanded, fired, or facing any sort of repercussions for their racism. The viewpoint within the company is so inherently Zionist that anytime you send an email advocating for our people and educating people about Zionism and the harm it has done to Palestinians, managers and others will call you antisemitic because you’re being anti-Israel. That’s the company’s line: if you are anti-Israel, you are antisemitic. They’re really good at marketing themselves as a company that claims to care about the world, so few people are seeing the racism at hand.

[Host:] Really shocking stuff. October 23 is when the iPhone Duo is set to drop, and you and other activists are calling on people to picket Apple stores that day instead of lining up for these bizarre smart flip phones. You’re also tying Palestine to Congo, the minerals in every iPhone, and the violence perpetuated in Congo to physically make the iPhone. Why link those two genocides? What are you demanding from Apple? And what can Apple customers or workers watching right now do to support this campaign?

[Guest:] We started working with Congolese activists because we recognized that we’re going through the same struggle: imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. People are taking over our lands to take over the resources. Specifically, we’re working with Team Congo and Friends of the Congo to educate people about what’s going on and the depth of the ways Apple’s business practices—and the tech industry’s business practices generally—are negatively affecting the Congolese people.

We’ve reached a point where you can’t expect Apple to pass off the responsibility of ensuring that minerals are ethically sourced to third parties, because everyone who has studied these things can tell you they are not ethically sourced and that the communities mining these minerals are suffering. Apple is one of the tech companies with the ability to change its business and sourcing practices and teach the tech industry what it looks like to mine ethically. It has the power, money, and resources to do so.

Our demands when we ask people to picket Apple stores on the 23rd are that the company research, report, and remediate all the harms its business practices have on marginalized communities, publicly report its findings, and create a meaningful plan to remediate the harm. We want Apple to listen to the community. We have people ready to speak with Apple executives and tell them exactly how harmful its business practices are and how it can help the communities that are literally pleading for its empathy.

We want Apple to get out of the occupation. It has offices in occupied Jerusalem, and on its job website it lists those offices as being in Israel, which is against international law. We want the company to close its offices in occupied territory. Most importantly, we want it to clean up its supply chain and not abandon Congo. It needs to do better because it has the power to do so.

[Host:] I want to pull out a thread of something you mentioned earlier, when we were talking about the ways Apple is complicit in the Israeli death machine. You talked about the Unit 8200 Israeli military intelligence people staffing these R&D facilities in Israel for Apple. Obviously, we should all be very upset about the complicity of Apple and other tech companies in the genocide in Gaza. But having Israeli employees tied to the Israeli military and spy apparatus so integrated into the supply chain of a widely used device by people all over the world is quite frightening.

When you think about what you mentioned—the pager attacks—nothing like that has ever happened in history. It was like a terrorist attack, where a country infiltrated the supply chain to booby-trap electronic devices. I wanted to ask you to expand on why it’s so devastating and scary to have a country whose government is full of genocidal lunatics, willing to do things no other government in history has done to get its way, so integrated into a massive global tech company that builds our phones and computers.

[Guest:] It’s terrifying. The public should be worried, and there should be mass concern over the fact that Apple is filled with Israeli spies—spies who worked in Unit 8200 and worked on… I mean, the fact that Unit 8200 was behind Pegasus—sorry, that it was behind the Lebanon bombings—is so concerning. Then you have employees from the same unit at tech companies.

One thing I need to make clear: Netanyahu was on 60 Minutes, right? He brought out his little iPhone. He was like, “You see this device? We can penetrate any one of these devices.” People like to think that Apple is so secure and so ironclad compared to Android or Google. Pegasus was Israeli-made. The same people who made the Pegasus software made the software and hardware that you’re holding in your hand. Who’s to say? Then you have Netanyahu saying that they can penetrate any one of these devices. Are you joking? They’re basically telling you to your face that they have the ability to hack you whenever they want.

The whole thing in Lebanon is truly terrifying. If Apple wants to control any of this narrative, it has to distance itself from the apartheid ethnostate of Israel—the state that is committing a genocide and blew up a bunch of pagers. That took years; it wasn’t something they just did. Who’s to say these new phones, with an M1, C1, or N1 chip, won’t blow up in your face? There should be mass concern over the safety of these products because of their links to Israel.

[Host:] Well, Zaid, I really appreciate you coming on. I guess the last thing I could ask is: Can you remind people how they can get involved in learning more about this campaign or being a part of it?

[Guest:] Of course. If you’re interested in picketing your local Apple store, we’ve made it really easy. We’ve created flyers, chat lists, and posters. We’ve made it simple for you to print what you want, go to your local Apple store, and make some noise. Just go to applesagainstapartheid.com. You’ll find the resources and fact sheets. Follow us on Instagram if you want to stay updated whenever we add more resources. Stay up to date, because for as long as Apple has links to Israel, we’ll always be here to protest them.

[Host:] Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you.

[Guest:] Thank you very much. Have a good one.

Today marks three years since October 7th, Al-Aqsa Flood and the escalation of Israel’s campaign to eliminate Gaza into a full-blown genocide. The world watched the livestream – and while that turned public opinion on its head, US policy hasn’t budged. Layan Sima Fuleihan, education director at The People’s Forum and an editor at 1804 Books, joins Zoe Alexandra and Rania Khalek to reflect on how Israel lost the hearts and minds of American voters – and how to turn that shift in consciousness into real power.

From Occupy Wall Street to the 2020 uprising for George Floyd, Fuleihan traces the Palestine movement through more than a decade of the mass rebellions that empowered it. She lays out key lessons from the past three years: radical change happens fast, repression can’t intimidate people out of solidarity, and Americans do care what their government does abroad. And she explains how, as Washington stays shielded from public opinion, both parties are equally culpable – and warns of the stakes of letting Democrats court pro-Palestine voters ahead of the midterms while the bombs keep falling.

Watch full episodes of BT Live, join breakthroughnews.org as a member today!

October 9 will be the last day that the well-known newspaper Expreso, one of Ecuador’s most important newspapers, is distributed in print. The newspaper, which has historically maintained a center-right editorial line, according to its statement, will limit its operations to its website, which will result in the layoff of dozens of employees.

The company that owns the newspaper, Gráficos Nacionales (Granasa), states that it is not bankrupt but will have to sell several assets to pay debts owed to its employees: “At stake is not only the rights of the shareholders but, above all, those of each and every employee who gave their all to this publishing house.”

And while the company has been reluctant to mention the reasons behind this decision in its most recent publications, several civil society actors have stated it plainly: pressure from the current right-wing government of Daniel Noboa.

One of them was the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), which called on the government to cease “state harassment against critical media outlets and journalists.” The demand is based on complaints, dismissals, and investigations reported by the newspaper in recent months. “We regret that a newspaper with more than five decades of history is ceasing print publication. Beyond business decisions that are the sole responsibility of its owners, it is impossible to ignore the context of sustained pressure that has surrounded Granasa.”

Likewise, the Observatory for Rights and Justice (ODJ) stated: “We express our deep concern over the announcement of the discontinuation of the print edition of Diario Expreso. After several months of enduring administrative and judicial harassment, and facing government attempts at corporate takeover and censorship against its columnists and representatives, the publication has decided to stop printing copies.”

For its part, the Noboa administration has categorically denied that it took any steps to provoke the crisis at Diario Expreso, and has instead defended the actions of the relevant institutions in investigating alleged crimes “regardless of where they come from” by independent bodies such as the prosecutor’s office and the SRI.

A right-wing newspaper critical of Noboa in crisis: pressure or mismanagement?

One of the most surprising aspects of the case is that Expreso has historically maintained an editorial stance closer to the right. It was one of the newspapers most opposed to the progressive government of Rafael Correa (2007–2017), and many of its editorial writers even went so far as to endorse the recently inaugurated Noboa administration.

However, as the months went by, criticism of Noboa’s administration began to appear in the newspaper’s pages, which, according to some allegations, did not sit well with the central government.

According to these allegations, the Internal Revenue Service – the agency responsible for collecting taxes – as well as the Attorney General’s Office, began to “pressure” Expreso’s major financial backers through investigations, which reportedly led those backers to withdraw their contributions to the newspaper, which has been in circulation in Ecuador for more than half a century.

Added to this is a warning issued by the newspaper’s parent company itself, stating that the Ecuadorian Superintendency of Companies intervened in the company with the alleged aim of “monitoring its financial performance and facilitating the correction of the irregularities identified.”

Likewise, Granasa President Galo Martínez told the SIP that the government was “harassing” the newspaper’s clients who advertised their products and services in its pages, a move seen as a tactic to drive the company into bankruptcy, as it relies on sponsors to operate.

According to an investigation by Ecuavisa, the newspaper Expreso lost nearly 70% of its advertising revenue over the months of government pressure. “The cowardice of a large segment of the business community that prefers to pull its ads – whether due to calls from those in power, which have indeed occurred, or simply out of a desire to look good,” said Martín Pallares, editor-in-chief of Expreso.

The truth is that this pressure is nothing new. Several months ago, one of the country’s leading editorial writers, Roberto Andrade, who worked at the newspaper, resigned from the publication, alleging that members of the Noboa administration had requested his departure.

Pallares also spoke about this alleged government pressure in a recent interview with Ecuavisa: “The newspaper had received a message stating that the government would stop its harassment if three people were handed over: Roberto Aguilar, Eduardo Carmigniani, and myself. The newspaper placed its trust in us; it chose to stand by us rather than give in to the pressure.”

Pallares stated about this alleged government pressure in a recent interview with Ecuavisa: “The newspaper had received a message stating that the government would stop its harassment if three people were handed over: Roberto Aguilar, Eduardo Carmigniani, and myself. The newspaper placed its trust in us; it chose to stand by us rather than give in to the pressure.”

In addition, Pallares, one of the country’s most well-known right-wing journalists, said: “Critical voices bother those in power – this kind of narcissistic power where the official truth cannot be questioned. Take the Progen case [the failed sale of power generators]; it’s crystal clear. If it weren’t for the troublesome media outlets that dig up information, data, and publish chats they manage to obtain, that issue would have already been buried.”

This is not the first instance of conflict between the Noboa administration and the press. Early in his term, journalist Alondra Santiago was deported; later, the program Irreverentes was canceled following harsh criticism of the government; journalists Fausto Yépez, Hernán Higuera, and María Sol Borja reported government pressure due to their investigations; attacks against journalists were reported during the 2025 National Strike; the high-profile case of Gisella Bayona, who alleged that the government was investigating her husband because she had reported a shortage of supplies in the public health system – a situation that has triggered one of the most significant crises in the country’s healthcare history; among other incidents.

Criticism from the right: a dispute among the ruling classes?

Other right-wing journalists have also criticized the government for allegedly having a low tolerance for criticism and taking actions that, they claim, are leading to a loss of freedom of expression.

One of them is journalist and political scientist Carlos Rojas, who stated in an op-ed: “What is happening with the newspaper Expreso is a very serious sign that Ecuador’s democratic health is in poor shape. It’s getting worse … a dangerous clash is reigniting between the current government – which is intolerant of criticism and oversight – and the independent press, a pillar of any liberal democracy.”

For his part, Ugo Stornaiolo wrote about new forms of censorship in Ecuador: “Journalistic oversight is undergoing a transformation that places press freedom at a crossroads. There are no shutdowns of radio stations, no buyouts of opposition media outlets, and no physical attacks. Investigative journalism faces sophisticated mechanisms of coercion: fiscal harassment, the manipulation of state entities, and reprisals against family members and coworkers to silence critical voices regarding President Noboa’s administration.”

According to several analysts, there is clear tension not only between centrist and left-wing movements and parties and the Noboa administration (which is clearly aligned with the right and follows the dictates of the Washington Consensus) but also between the Noboa administration (which belongs to the country’s most powerful family) and the critical positions coming from sectors of the right and a segment of the business community. This would demonstrate clear contradictions within the country’s most powerful economic classes.

The most recent case involved the leader of the business association, María Paz Jervis, who stated at a public event (in reference to the Diario Expreso case) that “Rarely in my life have I seen a business sector so afraid. I had never felt such hopelessness and resignation. I am convinced that there is much that needs to change in our country, and saying that there are things that need to change does not make us anyone’s enemies.” 

Following these statements, Jervis resigned from her position without specifying the reasons for her decision.

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A federal judge just dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit against pro-Palestine protesters in New Jersey, in a major First Amendment win after the DOJ claimed a 2024 social media post calling to protest an illegal land sale at a West Orange synagogue amounted to a threat against Jewish worship. The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund called it a vindictive prosecution and viewpoint discrimination, citing the DOJ’s stated aim to “dismantle” the movement. Carl Messineo, co-founder and legal director of the PCJF and its Center for Protest Law and Litigation, joins Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra to break down the historic First Amendment victory for PSL New Jersey. They dig into the 1994 FACE Act meant to protect abortion clinic access and the East Jerusalem land sale at the center of the case. Messineo explains what this win means for the Trump administration’s lawfare against pro-Palestinian dissent – and why he says the tide is turning:

“[This] offers protection, safe harbor, and reassurance to all the groups being threatened … that fighting back, legally and politically, is effective.”

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Rough transcript follows:
[Host:]
Last Wednesday, a federal judge in New Jersey dismissed a civil lawsuit the Trump administration’s Department of Justice had brought against pro-Palestine protesters under the FACE Act, a law passed in 1994 actually to protect access to reproductive health clinics. The suit, which was led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division, named the Party for Socialism and Liberation New Jersey and American Muslims for Palestine New Jersey, among others.

The accusations against PSL New Jersey in this case were that there was a social media post calling for a protest at a public intersection. The protest in question in this lawsuit was against a land sale where stolen Palestinian land in East Jerusalem was being sold to people living in the United States to encourage further settlement, occupation, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their lands. Such events have been strategically held at synagogues in order to create a spectacle where pro-Palestine protesters are outside synagogues, so the accusations of antisemitism just flourish with those photos.

But in this ruling, the DOJ argued that the post amounted to a threat against and interference with Jewish worship. The court disagreed, finding that the post in question was protected speech—a call to assemble and engage in political advocacy in a public forum. The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which represented PSL New Jersey in the case, argued that the lawsuit was vindictive prosecution and viewpoint discrimination, pointing to Dhillon’s public statement that the DOJ aims to dismantle groups behind such protests.

To talk about what the ruling means and what comes next, we’re joined by Carl Messineo, co-founder and legal director of the PCJF and its project, the Center for Protest Law and Litigation. Carl, thank you so much for joining us here at BT Live.

[Carl Messineo:]
It’s my pleasure to be here, and you guys do terrific work reporting on critical issues.

[Host:]
Oh, thank you so much for saying that. Well, crucially, in this ruling, which many are calling a victory for free speech, the court found that the social media post in question was protected political speech and not a threat, as the DOJ sought to argue. Can you walk us through the significance of this ruling, and on the other hand, what a ruling against the protest groups would have meant for free speech?

[Carl Messineo:]
Well, we can talk about what the ruling, had it gone the other way, would have meant for protest groups. First, Judge Hayden described in her opinion that allowing this civil prosecution to continue on the terms that it was advanced would effectively demonize protesters who were simply engaged in their First Amendment rights to have free speech on an issue of public importance. It would dramatically undermine the ability of people to organize and peacefully assemble on issues that are critical.

And there are few issues more critical than the subject matter of this protest. The subject matter of this protest was a land sale that was really strategically placed at a synagogue, and the land sale itself was selling Palestinian land in the occupied territories in East Jerusalem in clear violation of international law. Every major human rights or international law organization that has looked at this issue concludes that this plainly constitutes a form of war crime—having an occupying force, the state of Israel, transferring its civilians onto stolen land.

And here that’s very strategic, because the establishment of these settlements would create a barrier for the free movement of Palestinians going from East Jerusalem over to Bethlehem. It’s an absolutely horrible division of land that is not theirs to sell. And indeed, the racism of this practice is inherent. The real estate developer in their advertising materials boasts that they will be bringing a new Anglo community to East Jerusalem to take over this Palestinian land. That’s the language that they themselves use, so no one has to resort to inference as to whether this is racism. It is on its face.

[Host:]
You spoke, Carl, about the illegal land sales, right? And these land sales you said are held in religious institutions. They’re held sometimes in synagogues, which has an impact, of course, in terms of optics, but also legally, like we saw in this case. So can you talk about the legality of shielding these illegal land sales in religious institutions? Because these settlements are actually illegal under international law. So why aren’t these land sales being prosecuted?

[Carl Messineo:]
Well, absolutely, you’re correct. I mean, the Trump administration is using every means to engage in a form of lawfare, which I would say is ideological warfare, using abuse of legal process in order to shut down dissent and to promote what is clearly unlawful, illegal, and a war crime: the sale of Palestinian lands to Anglo investors here in the United States.

[Host:]
Well, in its argument, the PCJF said that this was vindictive prosecution, and it cited Harmeet Dhillon’s statement about dismantling groups like the PSL and others who are part of the movement for Palestine. We just had a really great segment speaking about this movement that’s made tremendous gains and challenged not only Donald Trump, but really has transformed the political scene in the United States. But as the PCJF mentioned, the court did not rule on the claim about this being a vindictive prosecution. So how does the PCJF intend to bring this claim forward in the future? Is there a worry that Dhillon will make good on this threat and continue challenging in such cases? What is the future of that element?

[Carl Messineo:]
Well, the ideological motivations of the Trump administration and Dhillon are clear. It’s overt. When Dhillon says that the Trump administration is going to use a law that was intended to protect medical facilities and also Black churches from the use of force and violence to target and dismantle—and that’s the language that Dhillon uses—to dismantle groups like the PSL New Jersey as well as other groups that engage in protest on a range of important issues. Now, that is plainly unconstitutional and clearly falls under the legal framework of a vindictive prosecution. That is the abuse of legal process in order to shut down a particular disfavored viewpoint.

Look at what has transformed in terms of political and cultural understanding over the past number of years. It’s groups that are engaged in this type of protest that have actually been at the forefront of a tremendous change in understanding across all segments of society about how intolerable this genocidal warfare and also the ethnic cleansing that this land transfer and land theft constitutes. So naturally, what does the Trump administration intend to do? Well, it intends to go and abusively use legal process to try and shut down groups that are having a significant political impact across consciousness.

And what does it mean for the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund? What does it mean for those who are protesting peacefully? Well, we’re all going to continue. The PCJF will continue to be a legal bulwark against this. But most importantly, it’s folks like them, folks from a multitude of organizations that are really changing the tide here. It’s not going to stop that.

[Host:]
And you know, Carl, this case came after a DOJ memo saying FACE Act cases against anti-abortion activists would be brought only in extraordinary circumstances. So what does this ruling signal to other organizations facing similar suits? And do you think it’ll deter the government from using the law this way?

[Carl Messineo:]
Deter this government? Well, I can’t say it’s going to deter them, but what I can say is that it offers protection, safe harbor, and reassurance to all the groups that are being threatened verbally and through abusive legal process that actually fighting back legally and fighting back politically are effective. And there are organizations such as ours and other great civil rights practitioners across the country who come forward and are willing to dedicate their time to help clear the way so that people can engage in peaceful protest and assembly on these critical issues. So I think that this is actually very heartening, and it sends a message of strength and support for those who are engaging in this.

[Host:]
It’s crucially important, and I think that’s why so many people have called this ruling a victory for free speech for the Palestine movement, which did face so much repression of different forms. So Carl, we thank you so much for joining us, and I’m sure that all of the protesters and movements thank the work of the PCJF for defending everyone’s right to free speech, because actually it’s not just the activists who will benefit from this ruling—it’s really everyone who values their right to free speech.

[Carl Messineo:]
That’s right. Thank you so very much for your kind words and for dedicating the time to have this issue here.

Flávio Bolsonaro, son of imprisoned coup plotter Jair Bolsonaro, clinched first place in Brazil’s presidential race Sunday with 47% to Lula’s 45%, forcing a high-stakes runoff on October 25. As Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) suffered major losses and Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) allies took governorships and more seats in congress, Stephanie Weatherbee Brito of the International Peoples’ Assembly asks, was this really a surprise? She joins Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra from São Paulo to break down Brazil’s election “shock” — from the hard right’s “silent campaign” and the “shy votes” that caught polling institutes off guard, to why 33 million Brazilians skipped the polls, to the PT’s failure to offer a vision of real change.

And she warns of what may be to come: a second Trump-aligned Bolsonaro presidency “compliant and subservient” to Washington and Tel Aviv, with devastating consequences for Brazil, the Amazon, and the future of humanity.

Watch full episodes of BT Live, join breakthroughnews.org as a member today!

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Rough transcript follows:
[Host 1:] Brazil went to elections this Sunday and the results shocked many. The far-right Liberal Party emerged as perhaps the biggest victor in the polls as the presidential candidate for the PL, Flávio Bolsonaro, not only clinched top place in the presidential race over Lula, but the party also gained seats in the Senate, House, and several governorships. The Workers’ Party meanwhile suffered significant losses, and incumbent progressive president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva finished in second place with 45% to Flávio’s 47%. Analysts across Latin America and the world have been struggling to understand the results and what it could mean for the region. We here at Breakthrough News are very lucky because we are joined by friend of the show Stephanie Weatherby Breto. She’s the coordinator of the International People’s Assembly calling in from São Paulo. She’s going to be discussing with us these results, what to expect for round two, and the impact on the region. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us today.

[Stephanie Weatherby Breto:] Hi, happy to be back even under these conditions.

[Host 1:] Well, Stephanie, the reaction to Sunday’s election amongst progressives, not only in Brazil, but again across the world, has been a mix of shock, sadness, and bewilderment. I want to ask you first, how should we understand the results? Was October 4th a victory for the far right?

[Stephanie Weatherby Breto:] Yeah, I think that October 4th was absolutely a victory for the far right, but I don’t think that we should be as shocked as some people have been because the far right in Brazil has been growing pretty consistently for the past 10 years. And I think that what it has demonstrated that people didn’t believe or didn’t understand before is that it has built a pretty solid base. It is not just a reaction movement. It’s not a spontaneous movement built over social media. It really has its own organizational structure and it has the capacity to mobilize. What surprised people in Brazil was that this time around the right wing wasn’t as mobilized in the streets. Like you didn’t see as many people wearing the Brazilian flag—the color of the far right right now is to wear the Brazilian flag, to wear the football team shirt—and there wasn’t that much really like physical campaigning. Like you didn’t see people out with banners or flyers with Flávio Bolsonaro’s face. You didn’t see that kind of action, and so that contributed to an undermining of the power of the right. There was this silent campaign almost, and the polling, the kind of polls that were being done before showing where people’s voting intentions were moving, didn’t show Flávio as strong as he was. But that has happened in the past. Now, there’s also a lot of talk about people didn’t vote, which is a high number of people that either didn’t vote or abstained from actually designating a candidate. They didn’t choose a candidate on their ballot. And even though those numbers are high, they’re pretty standard for Brazil over the past three elections. And what has happened is essentially that the country has become polarized between right and left. Politics are now at the center of discussion inside of families, between students. And so what that creates is this vacuum that sucks in a lot of people that feel insecure about politics. They feel like the discourse is too aggressive, the two sides are constantly attacking each other, and so people start opting out of politics, which is the same situation in the United States. The difference is in the US, you’re not legally bound to vote; in Brazil, you are. So what you see is a lot of people canceling out their ballot. And I think, like I said, that that’s a reaction to polarization and to a sense of insecurity that people have in the system and also a lack of trust in the system. People don’t think that it makes any difference.

[Host 2:] We want to try to—we’re having a little bit of an audio kerfuffle. Okay, we’re going to try to power through, but we may try to stop and fix it. Let’s see how it goes. I know you can’t tell, Stephanie, because you can’t hear it, but we can. But no, I appreciate what you’re saying here. And you know, a key element that you mentioned there is the right-wing advance in the legislature. So, what will be different about the composition of this next Brazilian Congress from the previous one, and why does it matter? And, you know, Stephanie, can you talk to us specifically about what is the legislative agenda of the far right and what do you think they’ll actually be able to achieve?

[Stephanie Weatherby Breto:] The right was already very strong in the legislature. This is not a novelty; they have already built—I mean, I think very similar to the right in the United States, they’ve had a project for many, many years to try to build this kind of strength in Congress, and they’ve built stable organizational means to do that, they have a lot of local power. I think what is new about this victory is that a lot of parties of the extreme right that were newcomers in previous elections and that some people said, well, these parties are not going to survive, they’re kind of like phenomenons of the moment, they have survived, and everything indicates that at least for the period that is upcoming, they are fixtures in the political landscape in Brazil. Parties like Republicanos, Partido Liberal, these parties are hard right parties. And I think that there’s a lot of discussion right now that their agenda is to take down the Supreme Court, that this is their number one goal, that they want to take down all the other checks and balances to the executive because they want to rule in a fascistic kind of way where all the power is concentrated in the executive. And I think that that is possible, but I think that we’re missing the picture that if their goal is to take down the Supreme Court, it’s a means to an end. It’s not an end in and of itself. And so I think that what the actual most important goal of this hard right that is consolidated in Brazil is to break down all the barriers to extractivism, to allow the mining companies, the agribusiness companies to really tear into the Amazon rainforest, to be able to break into different territories that are still being protected by environmental law or that are being held by indigenous communities or by rural communities that have titles to the land, because there is this interest that is connected to the United States, which is to get into the minerals that exist under the Amazon rainforest and elsewhere. And I think it’s a model of extremely predatory capitalism that this party and these parties represent. And I think that they also want to break down any kind of barriers to the free movement of money. They want to liberalize finance even more than it already is. I think their agenda is a kind of naked capitalism that has no restraints, and they’re doing this in collusion with big and important economic groups from the United States, people who have vested interest in this program. Of course, they also intend to scale back social programs. Brazil has built over decades a form of welfare state. It has a universal healthcare system that the ruling elites have always been enemies of. They want to privatize healthcare, they want to privatize education. And so anything that this government, if Flávio gets elected, if he can accomplish a scaling back of social programs that opens up the country to further privatization of anything from pensions to schools to transportation, I think that that’s all in their interest. And so I think it’s like an extremely neoliberal agenda that they want to build. And they also have another agenda outside of the economic one, which has to do with crime and security. They have this project called the anti-faction bill because here in Brazil criminal organizations are called factions. And so allegedly what this bill would do is to really tackle organized crime in Brazil, which is very powerful in certain states, but truly what this bill would do is actually unleash the violence of the state on the poorest communities in Brazil. There is this false conception that the right has disseminated that the reason that there’s a lot of crime and insecurity in Brazil is because there is a soft-handed policing where the police aren’t actually given the freedom and the liberty to actually persecute criminals because there’s a concern for their human rights. This is absolutely false. The reason why there’s crime in Brazil is because very powerful institutions like banks continue to launder the money of these criminal organizations because these criminal organizations have a tremendous influence on judges. They have an influence on legislators and possibly, if Flávio gets elected, on the presidency. It’s pretty well known that Flávio Bolsonaro has a connection to criminal organizations in Rio de Janeiro. And so they have what I would refer to as a faux security agenda that even though it will not fix the problem, it appeals to people because it’s talking about something that people are concerned about in a moment when the PT actually isn’t talking about it.

[Host 1:] Well, you know, I wanted to pick up on that, Stephanie, because while the far right, as you said, really did get some historic gains in this election, Lula’s Workers’ Party suffered significant and symbolic losses. Lula’s key ally, Fernando Haddad, once again lost the governorship in São Paulo to Tarcísio de Freitas, and this time by an even bigger margin. Meanwhile, Marina Silva, Benedita da Silva, and Simone Tebet all lost their races, and these have been kind of key figures in the PT standing side by side with Lula. So are their losses part of this legacy in Brazil of what’s termed antipetismo, this anti-workers’ party sentiment? Is it something else? Is it purely the popularity of the far right? What is behind this losing ground of the PT in Brazilian politics?

[Stephanie Weatherby Breto:] Well, most of the candidates or many of the candidates that you named are actually not from the PT. They built an alliance with the PT because the PT, as it loses its base, as it loses some of its capacity to get elected on its own two legs, has moved to building alliances with sections of the center-right. So even the vice-presidential candidate that Lula ran with four years ago, that ran with now and that has been governing with him, is a figure of the center-right. He was a right-wing governor of São Paulo that was very unpopular actually in the face of social movements. And so I think that I wouldn’t see this as a recourse of antipetismo. I mean, the campaign against the PT was based on this discourse that the PT was corrupt. But I think that the population has moved on from that. I think that people now—a lot of people essentially believe that both parties are corrupt, that all politicians are corrupt, that it is inconsequential because that’s just the way that power works, unfortunately. But I think that what really has weakened the PT is that this administration, Lula’s third term, ran and was governed without a clear agenda. It was run on this idea that we’re here to restore democracy, we’re here to restore order, similar to the way that Biden kind of came back after Trump’s presidency to say, well, you know, the Republicans and this like Trumpism has destroyed some of the institutions of this country and here I am to rebuild it. And unfortunately, that is not appealing to the wide mass of the population because people are very dissatisfied with their living conditions. They’re very dissatisfied with a lot of the day-to-day problems that they’re facing regarding access to education, access to employment, increasing debt. And so this discourse of “we’re going to rebuild the country to what it was” doesn’t appeal to people because they have the perception that what we need is not to go back to what it was; we need to be building a future that is different. We need something that is going to transcend whatever the PT achieved and achieve much more, or at least they want to hear something that is different. And I think that Lula governed this third term—first of all, he was very influenced by the events when the Bolsonaristas tried to take the country. They were doing these mass mobilizations, they tried to occupy the Supreme Court. And the fact that there was this broad movement, this alliance, this really big alliance against Bolsonarismo, I think convinced the Lula government and the party that Bolsonarismo had been defeated, that the population had now understood that they were undemocratic, that they were dictatorial or fascistic in some way, and that even sections of the ruling class had moved to the camp of the PT because they were disgusted by Bolsonarismo. And when Jair Bolsonaro was imprisoned, I think that that even further built this idea that well, really, the program of the PT right now is to preserve institutions, to defend democracy. And that is the last thing that I think people are thinking about. People don’t want a defense of the status quo. And so on the kinds of things that Brazilians are really worried about, which have to do with the cost of living and access to employment, even though the situation was stable and there were improvements in the cost of living, it wasn’t really inspiring to people as a campaign program. The PT did not run this election on a clear project of transformation, which was their brand throughout its history. The PT was the party of change, the party of addressing structural problems in Brazil and addressing inequality. And I think that over many years, after being really battered by the right, they have watered down their program to something that simply isn’t inspiring enough to people and that was not enough to get them out into the polls and to mobilize in the way that would have been necessary to beat Flávio in this first round.

[Host 1:] I mean, there are so many numbers that stand out from Sunday. Zoe had mentioned some of them earlier. One of them was this 20% abstention, and in Brazil voting is mandatory, so you do receive a penalty for not participating. So, Stephanie, what do you think explains why 33 million people chose not to vote? Are they expected to do so, do you think, in the second round? And I mean Lula declared on Sunday that it was his goal to court these voters. Do you think this is actually possible?

[Stephanie Weatherby Breto:] I think that a lot of those abstentions are going to remain abstentions. I think that what has created them is the climate of polarization. People have been repelled from politics. The people who are abstaining, they are repelled from politics either because they feel insecure, they don’t understand, they feel like the political debate is too aggressive, it’s too violent, they feel like they are not educated enough. But also, I think that people don’t see the difference. There’s a lot of people who just don’t think that either candidate makes a huge difference. And I think that this is something that really often happens when polarization happens, when the country becomes like a pressure cooker where everybody’s talking about the elections. Certain people have very strong opinions in one way or the other, they’re not at all flexible, they’re really dug in. It’s a situation that we know in the United States as well. And so what that produces is a sector of the population that says, “I don’t care anymore, I don’t want to hear about elections anymore, and I don’t understand either of these programs necessarily.” Now, I also think that both candidates—part of why there’s a high abstention rate is because both candidates have high rejections, are very rejected by the population for different reasons. Flávio because he’s considered to be reprehensible in his discourse; people understand him as a chauvinist, as someone who defends violence, someone who has no regard for the rights of black people in this country—who are not racial minorities, by the way—but for other racial minorities in this country, someone who has no regard for the poor. And so he is seen as a figure of a kind of violent politics that people really don’t like. He’s also seen by sectors even within the right as a lackey to the United States. Like, he’s criticized by sections of the right for being a candidate that basically just toed the line for whatever Washington tells him to do. The relationships between the Bolsonaro family and Trump are very well-known, they’re very evident. The Bolsonaro family is always petitioning the Trump administration for favors, and that actually has produced some rejection even within the right, who sees him in this negative light. Now, Lula has high rejection ratings for other reasons. There’s people that believe that he’s governed for too long; they say, well, you know, he’s been president for three terms, why does he have to keep being president? There’s people who also believe that the PT is a representation of the past, that it’s old politics, that Lula’s too old, he doesn’t have an appeal with the youth in the way that he used to. Lula and the PT used to be a political movement of the youth, and I don’t think that that continues to be the case unless somebody is active in social movements and really politicized. And so because there is this section of the population that just rejects both of them, their choice is just to nullify their ballot in the election.

[Host 1:] You know, it’s—we’ll see how that kind of courting of this segment of the population goes. But, you know, before we let you go, Stephanie, I did want to ask about the regional question and just kind of zooming out and looking at how the US is viewing the region. Of course, a lot of the discourse, whether it be Twitter or left-wing analysis, has been about really grappling with the possibility of a Flávio victory in the second round and what that would mean for Latin America and the Caribbean in a second Trump administration. So, on one hand, how would this impact regional ties? I mean, at this point, the dreams of Lula from his first terms of creating entities like UNASUR, like all of these different regional platforms, have essentially disappeared given the presence of the far right on the continent. But what would a Flávio victory mean for the US to have the far right in power in Brazil?

[Stephanie Weatherby Breto:] I think having a victory for Flávio Bolsonaro in Brazil would be a huge victory for the Trump administration, but also for Zionism, because what the Flávio Bolsonaro presidency represents is a program of the right that is going to be completely compliant and subservient to the interests of the United States politically and to the interest of Zionism—sorry, to the interest of the United States economically and to the interest of Zionism politically. And so I think that Brazil will become a tool in the large chessboard of US interests in the rest of the world, and I think that it means a full alignment to US interests in Latin America, again specifically on this issue of extractivism. I think that the agenda of the United States for Latin America is to turn it into a territory from which they can extract resources at will, at low cost, with no regard for the environment or for the rights of the people in those countries. And the Bolsonaro family definitely represents that kind of interest. You know, they’re very happy to play that role. And so it’s not just very dangerous for the Brazilian people or for the future of progressive politics in Latin America—like, absolutely, Cuba is going to be really isolated on the continent together with Mexico and Venezuela—but it also has huge repercussions for the environment. I think that one of the most serious consequences of a second Bolsonaro presidency is the further destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and the implications of that for the rest of the world are tremendous. And so I think, unfortunately, the Brazilian population that voted for Bolsonaro is making a decision that really imperils the rest of humanity.

[Host 1:] No, really important perspective there. And honestly, Stephanie, there’s so much more we could talk about, and I’m looking forward to having you back on the show ahead of this second term—which will be on October 25th. Again, there’s just three weeks that Lula and Flávio and their supporters have to campaign for the second round to try to get those extra votes. It will be a very interesting period. And as you said last time you were on the show, US interference is not a question; it’s more of a done deal. We just have to see how it is going to manifest. So I think that’s something else we’ll be definitely looking out for. But we thank you so much, Stephanie, for explaining what that means and why people everywhere should really be paying attention to what’s happening.

The Pakistan government’s decision on Monday, October 5, to deploy its armed forces to Saudi Arabia and provide other military assistance in its fight against Yemen is facing widespread criticism from the left and other progressive sections within the country.

Critics have questioned the rationale behind the decision, expressing concerns that it will further erode the credibility of Pakistan among the people in the region and unnecessarily drag it into endless wars.

According to the joint statement, the constituents decided “to move immediately to the practical implementation of the collective defense commitments” under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement and provide military force and other capabilities to Saudi Arabia to protect its security and territorial integrity.

The statement was issued after a meeting of the Strategic-Political and Defence Committee of the Mecca Alliance countries in Riyadh on Monday. 

The Mecca Alliance is a three party group (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye) created earlier this year as a regional collective security alliance. 

Though Pakistan has one of the largest armed forces in the world along with being the sole Muslim majority country with a nuclear weapon, the decision has invited strong criticism from the scholars and activists in the country.  

Critics have pointed out how its armed forces have already been engaged in numerous domestic conflicts, such as prolonged operations against the terrorist groups such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and other separatist forces in Balochistan 

These groups have been allegedly involved in carrying out large-scale violent attacks against civilian and military targets.

Terrorism and the failure of the country’s armed forces to curb it has emerged as one of the central issues in the ongoing long march to the capital, Islamabad, by thousands of supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and the country’s main opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).  

Pakistan, which is also facing a grave financial and economic crisis is also involved in cross border fights with the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan for months now and has an active decades-long conflict on its eastern borders with India.

Given the multifrontal engagement of the Pakistan army at the moment it would be dangerous to get involved in yet another conflict in West Asia, experts have pointed out.

Pakistan is being drawn into an endless quagmire 

Saudi Arabia has been involved in an over-a-decade-long war against Yemen since 2015. It has imposed a complete air, sea, and land blockade on the country, which has caused an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the Arab world’s poorest nation.

Though the joint statement issued after the meeting on Monday did not name Ansar Allah or Yemen explicitly, it condemned the alleged attacks on Mecca and Medina, two of the holiest places of Islam, last month.

Ansar Allah has denied Saudi Arabia’s accusations about its involvement in those attacks.  

“Pakistan is getting sucked into the Saudi-Yemen war. We can all thank Trump for igniting a new war in the Middle East. But shouldn’t we also have more sense to stay out of such a quagmire?” asked Taimur Rahman, leader of the left-wing Mazdoor Kisan Party (MKP), in a post on X on Tuesday.

Ammar Ali Jan, leader of another major left formation in the country, the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (HKP) claimed that the “deployment of troops in Saudi Arabia is a dangerous escalation that can push Pakistan into an endless quagmire.”

He questioned the government for moving against “the people of Yemen” who “have shown exemplary solidarity to Gaza despite suffering endless aggression and siege,” claiming “attacking them would be a political and moral catastrophe.”

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Around 5,000 American and NATO troops dead, countless thousands more injured, the bodies of at least 180,000 Iraqis with them in the sand, and this number could be over a million by some accounts, and anywhere up to 3 trillion dollars have gone into the abyss of national debt; this was the cost of the occupation of Iraq. Finally, the naïve and impetuous words of George Bush Jr. have become true, “Mission Accomplished” is now a fact as an ordered retreat continues to remove (almost) everything the American military had keeping Iraq under its heel. It’s over, and the question is why now, and is the American voter kind of getting what he wanted out of Trump?

Words and a quote from a Press TV article sum things up accurately and concisely regarding the nature of the end of the occupation:

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who presided over the handover ceremony, described the withdrawal as the beginning of “a new phase” defined by Iraq’s sovereignty, stronger state institutions and “balanced partnerships with its friends.”

By ‘balanced partnerships’ he means to say the BRICS countries and the Multipolar World Order. There is often a mistake in public perception that vassal states are always obedient like employees in an office or fry cooks at McDonald’s, but this is not the case. You can’t keep a gun to someone’s head 24 hours a day and freewill will always start to creep its way into the actions of any vassal. Even during what one could call the heights of the occupation the local government was already gazing at the night sky hoping to one day get back some level of sovereignty all the while making deals with the Russians and Chinese.

Iraq had zero loyalty to Washington, why should we be surprised?

In 2025 the Iraqis made completely non-secret and public deals with the mega-sanctioned Russians in the areas of energy development. Working on energy deals with the Russians is the hot trend of the 21^st century and shouldn’t be too surprising. What is unusual though is that they requested “to expand cooperation with Russia in a number of areas, including partnership and expertise in the field of artificial intelligence” according to the Prime Minister. Why they were making AI deals with Russia, who is in a proxy war against America and the West according to Marco Rubio, while still occupied by America makes one curious to say the least. The fact that the Russian Foreign Ministry declared that Iraq will “be able to respond (successfully) to any challenges” after U.S. occupation ends is also food for thought. Will “Operation Iraqi Freedom” be ultimately achieved in a much more literal sense by the Kremlin?

Even while Biden was still shaking hands with invisible men at the White House the Chinese made a deal with the Iraqis to build 1,000 schools, and potentially other structures, across their country. We have to remember that in the minds of Neocon sociopaths China is the ultimate final boss enemy, and yet even during occupation those red communists were making deals with occupied Iraq. It is also important to note that after the attacks on Iran, China and Russia can send ships not only to Iran but Iraq with zero consequences and the U.S. cannot. This makes the failed occupation of Mesopotamia even more ironic; trillions down the toilet just to lose access the Middle-East while Moscow and Beijing make whatever business deals they like in the region.

But the main point I am trying to make is that even during the middle of the occupation no robots in Baghdad truly did what they were told 100% of the time. God gave man free will and the Iraqi occupation showed that, vassals cane smile to Washington officials one day, then make calls to Beijing and Moscow with zero shame the next day.

The delicate dance of withdrawal

Just as the Iraqis did the dance of pseudo submission, so too can the occupier do the dance of incomplete withdrawal. This bit from the previously stated Press TV article shows how a cracking American empire is using the same playbook as the floundering British one of yesteryear.

A Pentagon official said that while the U.S. is ending official military operations, it will maintain regional capabilities such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance that can be utilized in the Arab country.

That is to say, no one has yet put a wrecking ball to all of the structures in the Baghdad Green Zone, which is essentially the largest U.S. embassy in the world. The big base is staying. Just as the French still do their best to suck out money from their ‘former’ African colonies, the British keep their spies and influence in ‘the Commonwealth’ in India and beyond, Washington will surely keep some sort of abstract ‘reentry point’ and ‘local influence’ in Iraq just in case. This is something few want in America, but those Three-letter Organizations tend not to listen to us at the bottom, so perhaps this final beachhead or foothold is a fair enough compromise to end this massive waste of treasure and human life, as they say “so be it”.

One thing to also keep in mind is that right after the sloppy withdrawal from Afghanistan we did not see a global de-escalation, but instead a shift to and massive escalation in death on the upcoming Ukrainian front. It is important to note that Russian intelligence leaked twice to the media in 2021 that the big one was coming and that Ukraine would launch an offensive to slaughter everyone in the Donbass to the last. That is to say, the Russians saw themselves as having no option but to go in, all on the wake of the U.S. downsizing in the Middle-East, under Biden.

So if Washington has given up on Iraq, does that mean they may really try to take some of the islands around Iran? Will they keep the petrodollar on life support by saving the Saudis from the Houthis? Or shall they go full ‘monkey-with-a-hand-grenade’ mode and try to spice things up in Taiwan? Or is Trump really going to obey his personal version of the Monroe Doctrine and actually pull those forces back towards Fortress America? We all know which option sounds the best to the ears of U.S. taxpayers.

Donald Trump; an enigma wrapped in a mystery blown by a tornado of narratives

As mentioned above, the pullout from Afghanistan happened under Democrat Biden and the focus shifted to Russia the ultimate enemy of all Democrats for they hold the key to undoing their ideology. But the escape from Iraq has occurred under Trump, who is supposedly on a messianic quest to save America and not bring the world into one globalist ideology. It is important to note two narratives expressed by him multiple times way before his now bizarre second term.

1) Donald Trump was absolutely appalled at the chaotic Biden pullout of Afghanistan that left countless billions of military resources in the country and looked like a national humiliation ritual.

2) He expressed over-and-over a desire to get out of the Middle-East, be it Iraq, Syria or elsewhere as he saw American forces there as sitting ducks.

Well the war in Iran, that Trump either, enacted on his own, tolerated as a compromise position, or simply had no real power to stop, did indeed prove that U.S. forces are sitting ducks for the slaughter in the Middle-East. Military installations all over the region have been whacked by Iran and the casualties could be much higher than Fox News would admit to. About Iraq specifically, Trump stated in during his very first presidential campaign:

“Obviously the war in Iraq was a big fat mistake.”
“We should have never been in Iraq.”
“We have destabilized the middle east.”
“We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about.”

Of course if there is any president who ‘says a lot of things’ it would be Donald Trump, but in a weird way he is actually keeping his campaign promises. The withdrawal from the Middle-East has started and in a surprisingly orderly manner; after countless bases and weapons systems were blown up by Iran. The removal of U.S. military might which probably never should have been there will quickly ‘restabilize’ the region for nations with high sovereignty tend to, more often than not, behave in non-suicidal ways. Some of the sitting ducks, sadly being violently taken off the game board by Iran, have been cause to basically remove all of them, which is what the masses ultimately wanted from his presidency.

Trump is egotistical and a media manipulator but he is not stupid, and at the very least on this issue he seems to be delivering what the public wanted; an end to Middle-East nation building adventures. There has been lots of speculation that Trump did try to get American troops out of Syria long ago but that his ordered were ignored or manipulated. Perhaps it took the seeming debacle in Iran to actually change things. The failed attempt to break Iran, proved that the Middle-East adventure is a failure, Israel is the deciding factor in U.S. foreign policy, and that the Navy has rusted out. Perhaps acquiescing to the Zionists got Trump the political will to finally change things overseas?

Furthermore, there has been a demand for U.S. energy independence for quite some time, and well now it looks like all of it is going to be coming from the Western hemisphere, how convenient. We all know that the oil in Venezuela is troublesome and will require a lot of effort just to really use, but if the Monroe Doctrine 2.0 is going to be the name of the game, then the next president can figure that out, or maybe his successor.

In closing, the legacy of the Iraqi occupation should be for all geopolitical wonks that land empires are indeed the better option, especially in the 21^st century, as games of colonization no longer work. Vassals do not always behave and in many ways they are subtly pushed to resist. Now, by the grace of God, the USA can focus on the ‘Chiraq’ back home, just like the American voter asked of Donald Trump.

The withdrawal of the remaining US troops from Iraq is a victory for the Iraqi nation and the resistance force in the region, Iran claimed on Thursday, October 1, also calling for greater cooperation between both the countries to achieve complete sovereignty for Iraq.

“The US, despite possessing vast resources and equipment, has been expelled from Iraq, and the Iraqi people are celebrating this victory,” head of Iran’s Quds’ forces Esmail Qaani said during a program held in Tehran to mark the second anniversary of the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah.

He thanked the “resistance of the Iraqi nation and the heroes of the Resistance Front” for making the end of the US occupation a reality.

The US withdrew all its remaining forces from Iraq on September 30, as per the 2024 understanding between both the countries marking the conclusion of over a decade-long military presence in the country.

The news of the withdrawal led to widespread celebrations in Baghdad and other parts of the country on Wednesday.

The US occupied Iraq during the 2003 war which lasted until 2011 when it publicly stated that it withdrew all its forces. They were then re-deployed in 2014 as part of the international coalition fighting against the Islamic State or ISIS.

Iraqi people, as well as the resistance groups in the country, have been demanding the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the country for years now. Their presence is seen as undermining the country’s sovereignty.

Due to popular resistance, most of the foreign troops left the country by 2019 after a victory was declared over ISIS. Remaining US troops were redeployed to some bases in Baghdad and Erbil.

In 2020, the Iraqi parliament adopted a resolution demanding the withdrawal of all remaining foreign troops from the country following popular protests over the US assassination of Qassem Solemani during a visit to Baghdad. Soleimani was the head of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and key military strategist.

Also an Iranian victory

Qaani claimed that the US withdrawal from Iraq is also a victory for Iran which has been in support of the call on the ground that the presence of foreign troops in the region undermines regional security and stability.

Qaani also linked the withdrawal to the setbacks the US faced in its war with Iran in the last seven months. Contrary to its expressed wish to force Iranians to surrender within days of the war launched on February 28, “they encountered a reality vastly different from their calculations,” he said.

The US had used its military presence and the bases in Iraq to launch attacks across the border in Iran in the past and also during the ongoing war. This has prompted Iranian retaliations causing destruction and death of some of its servicemen.

Iran has also accused that the US military’s presence in Iraq has been used by Israel for its clandestine operations inside the country.

Reacting to US withdrawal from Iraq, IRGC said on Thursday that it is the beginning of its withdrawal from the entire region.

Qaani expressed hope that in the aftermath of US troop withdrawal there will be increased coordination between the governments in Iraq and Iran for purging the remaining US influences on the country and creating a secure and sovereign Iraq.

Though the US has withdrawn militarily, the legacy of its occupation still remains in Iraq. It continues to control Iraq’s economy by controlling the payments to its oil exports which are routed through the American Central Bank.

Oil revenues made up 90% of the Iraqi government’s total budget and over 40% of its national GDP.

Qaani accused that banning the Iranian airlines to Iraq and other countries in the region is a distraction used by the US to undermine the significance of its military defeat.

Iraq and several other countries in the region complied with the US sanctions on Iranian airlines last month following Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s threats of secondary sanctions.

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.

Considerando la NATO come il proprio eterno strumento militare, l’Europa rimane un soggetto geopolitico inesistente e totalmente subordinato alla volontà di Washington. Ciò spiega anche i risultati del recente referendum in Islanda: la scarsa attrattività dell’Unione Europea è stata certificata dai cittadini dell’isola vicina.

Segue nostro Telegram.

“Al fine di garantire un funzionamento sicuro ed efficace delle Aree di Difesa, gli Stati Uniti d’America godono, per le proprie navi e i propri aeromobili pubblici, nonché per le proprie forze armate e i propri veicoli, del diritto di libero accesso e transito tra le Aree di Difesa attraverso la Groenlandia – incluse le acque territoriali – via terra, aria e mare. Tale diritto può applicarsi anche a installazioni militari prive di personale, previo accordo tra le Parti sulle relative modalità al momento della loro istituzione;

gli aeromobili degli Stati Uniti possono sorvolare e atterrare in qualsiasi parte del territorio della Groenlandia, incluse le acque territoriali, e le navi pubbliche degli Stati Uniti possono accedere e navigare in immersione all’interno delle acque territoriali senza restrizioni, salvo quanto reciprocamente concordato dalle Parti;

alle navi pubbliche degli Stati Uniti sarà concesso ulteriore accesso e libertà di movimento all’interno delle acque territoriali, secondo quanto concordato dalle Parti di volta in volta in base alle esigenze della situazione militare per la difesa dell’area del Trattato del Nord Atlantico, della Groenlandia e del continente americano, o per altre finalità concordate dalle Parti”.

Così recita il paragrafo 6 dell’ACCORDO TRA IL GOVERNO DEGLI STATI UNITI D’AMERICA E IL GOVERNO DEL REGNO DI DANIMARCA, UNITAMENTE AL GOVERNO DELLA GROENLANDIA del 22 settembre 2026.

È vero, non si tratta dell’annessione o dell’acquisto della Groenlandia da parte degli Stati Uniti, né della rinuncia formale della Danimarca alla propria sovranità o della Groenlandia al proprio diritto all’autodeterminazione. Tuttavia, si tratta di qualcosa che, nei fatti, sarà altrettanto fondamentale e probabilmente peggiore: la cessione del potere decisionale danese e groenlandese, accompagnata da una significativa riduzione della libertà d’azione di entrambe le parti in materia di sicurezza e politica estera.

È evidente che nulla potrà essere fatto in questi ambiti senza il consenso degli Stati Uniti, in caso di una relazione asimmetrica, o di una situazione di conflitto. Proprio in un simile rapporto, gli Stati Uniti acquisiscono di fatto un diritto di veto. Se la Danimarca e/o la Groenlandia dovessero desiderare, ora o in futuro, di collaborare con un altro Paese su risorse, basi o altre questioni di sicurezza non gradite agli Stati Uniti nella regione, ciò risulterebbe semplicemente impossibile.

Di contro, è difficile immaginare come le due parti potrebbero impedire agli Stati Uniti di agire a proprio piacimento: stabilire più delle due nuove basi menzionate nell’accordo, controllare e utilizzare le acque circostanti come ritengono opportuno e — come accennato in precedenza — non fare alcuna menzione delle armi nucleari. Non vi è inoltre alcuna tutela per le peculiari condizioni ambientali della Groenlandia; in passato, gli Stati Uniti hanno abbandonato aree adibite a basi lasciandole ingombre di rifiuti.

E non sono solo gli Stati Uniti; c’è anche la NATO. Naturalmente, la NATO ha già operato di fatto nella regione, ma in futuro l’Alleanza Atlantica potrà svolgere tale ruolo in modo ben più incisivo. Ecco perché tutte le parti adottano lo stesso linguaggio di propaganda. Questo solo fatto dovrebbe bastare a destare il sospetto che qualcosa venga celato al di fuori del testo dell’accordo. Un perfetto allineamento di interessi all’interno di relazioni asimmetriche è frutto di inganno o di autoinganno.

Peraltro, l’accordo è perenne. Ciò significa che non sono previste clausole di rinnovo, proroga o recesso. È vincolante a tempo indeterminato e, in pratica, tale vincolo grava sulle due parti più deboli. Gli Stati Uniti potranno imporre qualsiasi decisione a loro piacimento, mentre le altre due parti non potranno nemmeno minacciare – qualora le circostanze lo richiedessero – di ritirarsi dall’accordo. Si tratta di una condizione estremamente insolita per gli accordi internazionali.

Altrettanto incomprensibile è il fatto che la Danimarca e la Groenlandia abbiano accettato non solo la natura permanente dell’accordo, ma anche l’adesione definitiva della Groenlandia alla NATO. Tale disposizione resterebbe valida anche nell’eventualità in cui la Groenlandia dovesse un giorno diventare uno Stato indipendente. In tal caso, i futuri leader e cittadini di una Groenlandia indipendente sarebbero costretti ad accettare e attuare l’adesione all’Alleanza Atlantica. Difficilmente una Groenlandia indipendente potrebbe essere definita uno Stato sovrano in un simile assetto, pur mantenendo il proprio territorio. Già solo questo aspetto solleva interrogativi sulla reale sostanza del concetto di autodeterminazione.

La scelta di svendersi, compiuta da Danimarca e Groenlandia, viene legittimata sostenendo che esse ottengono una maggiore protezione – e forse persino una certa influenza sulla politica statunitense – e che, dopo le dichiarazioni estremamente aggressive di Trump sulla necessità assoluta di acquisire la Groenlandia (anche con mezzi militari, se ‘necessario’), tale accordo rappresenti un brillante esempio di diplomazia da parte di piccoli Stati.

È quindi sorprendente, oltre che pericolosamente imprudente, che in questo accordo a tempo indeterminato non sia previsto alcun meccanismo di risoluzione delle controversie. Chi, se non gli Stati Uniti, riuscirebbe a imporre la propria volontà in caso di disaccordo tra le parti?

Trump ha scritto che gli Stati Uniti hanno ottenuto questo “accordo fantastico” a costo zero. Potrebbe anche essere vero, dato che l’intesa non specifica chi pagherà per tutte le nuove attività e per l’accesso che gli Stati Uniti acquisiscono in Groenlandia.

Il giornalista e storico Eric Zuesse ha chiesto a ChatGPT se, sulla base di accordi analoghi, fosse possibile stimare approssimativamente il valore dei diritti acquisiti dagli Stati Uniti con questo accordo. La risposta è stata: circa 45 miliardi di dollari. Drew Horn, un ex funzionario dell’Amministrazione Trump, ha affermato di stare sviluppando in Groenlandia un progetto sulle terre rare e un data center per l’intelligenza artificiale alimentato dall’energia idroelettrica. Si tratta di un territorio ricco di elementi fondamentali per transizione ecologica, transizione digitale-tecnologica e settore della difesa. Critical Metals, società statunitense quotata, ha ottenuto dal Governo di Nuuk il controllo sul giacimento di Tanbreez, che comprende 4,7 miliardi di tonnellate di terre rare, un quarto delle quali (27%) ‘pesanti’, vale a dire essenziali per il settore della difesa.

Aspetto ancora più significativo, e problematico, è che l’accordo pubblicato non dice nulla su come debbano essere ripartite l’estrazione delle risorse e i relativi profitti previsti. Questo accordo perpetuo non dice assolutamente nulla su come le tre parti debbano spartirsi i ricavi, né su quale debba essere la quota di spettanza della Groenlandia. In altre parole, non c’è una sola parola su come Danimarca e Groenlandia intendano evitare una situazione in cui ‘chi vince prende tutto’.

Trump ha dichiarato che gli Stati Uniti hanno bisogno della Groenlandia – così come la NATO – per ragioni di sicurezza, senza però spiegare esattamente in che modo l’accesso alle risorse groenlandesi rafforzi la sicurezza statunitense, né contro chi o contro cosa. In termini di realpolitik, a lui e ai futuri presidenti basterà dire semplicemente: ‘È necessario per la nostra sicurezza’. A quel punto, Copenaghen e Nuuk saranno costrette ad allinearsi. L’accordo è eterno nella durata e onnicomprensivo nella portata. Eppure non dice nulla sulla ripartizione dei costi e dei ricavi tra le tre parti, né prevede che tali ‘dettagli’ debbano essere negoziati in un secondo momento.

È anche per questo che si profondono tanti sforzi diplomatici e di comunicazione nel ribadire che la Danimarca mantiene la propria sovranità e la Groenlandia il proprio diritto all’autodeterminazione: Trump ha ottenuto esattamente ciò che voleva, ora e per ogni evenienza futura.

Commentatori dei media europei con scarsa o nulla competenza in materia di sicurezza stanno diffondendo la tesi senza condurre alcuna analisi sostanziale dei contenuti dell’accordo. Esso, piuttosto, va definito come una svendita da parte di Danimarca e Groenlandia. Sebbene formalmente preservi il diritto all’autodeterminazione della Groenlandia e la sovranità della Danimarca, l’accordo comporta una decisiva rinuncia alla libertà d’azione, sia nell’immediato che in un futuro incerto.[1]

Ciò è stato reso possibile da decenni di sottomissione danese agli Stati Uniti – una sottomissione sempre più totale, al punto che non è più possibile parlare di una politica estera e di sicurezza indipendente e sovrana da parte di Copenaghen.

Dell’accordo verrà pubblicata solo la versione ufficiale, infarcita di belle parole, senza scendere nei dettagli; questi ultimi, infatti, riguardano questioni di sicurezza che non possono essere divulgate. Alcuni analisti considerano questo accordo una sorta di naturale estensione di quello del 1951 e dell’Accordo di Igaliku. Se così fosse, basterebbe prorogarli legalmente. In realtà, è evidente che questo nuovo trattato conferisce agli USA qualcosa che attualmente non possiedono. I cosiddetti ‘rivali’ degli Stati Uniti saranno esclusi dalla Groenlandia: non potranno effettuare investimenti né costruire basi. Ciò implica, di fatto, la mancata cooperazione con Paesi come Russia e Cina – e altri ancora – che nutrono interessi economici e di sicurezza altrettanto legittimi nella regione (“nessuno Stato non membro della NATO sarà autorizzato a stabilire in Groenlandia propri impianti militari, presidiati o non presidiati, né sarà consentita la presenza permanente di forze militari in Groenlandia, salvo diverso accordo tra le Parti”).

Significa adottare un atteggiamento conflittuale. È esclusa a priori qualsiasi forma di cooperazione razionale a vantaggio di tutti e di sicurezza condivisa. La regione passerà da un contesto di bassa tensione e scarsa militarizzazione a un’area ad alta tensione: d’altronde, ovunque siano presenti gli Stati Uniti, si generano tensioni e dinamiche di ‘deterrenza’ nei confronti di altri attori che si sentono minacciati.

Infine, al paragrafo 7 si chiarisce che: “Le Parti convengono che il territorio adiacente a un’Area di Difesa non debba essere utilizzato in alcun modo che comprometta la sicurezza di tale Area. Al fine di dare attuazione a tale disposizione, le Parti intendono cooperare per garantire la sicurezza delle Aree di Difesa. Gli Stati Uniti avranno il diritto di sollevare obiezioni in merito alla costruzione, o alla modifica di destinazione d’uso — qualora tale modifica comporti una minaccia per un’Area di Difesa — di qualsiasi edificio, struttura o impianto situato nelle vicinanze di detta Area. A seguito di tale notifica, le Parti determineranno di comune accordo le misure necessarie per far fronte a qualsiasi minaccia. Le Parti collaboreranno per contrastare lo spionaggio in Groenlandia. Le autorità competenti del Regno di Danimarca manterranno stretti contatti con le autorità statunitensi competenti e con altri partner, nella misura necessaria all’attuazione del presente Articolo”.

Per l’Unione europea l’accordo economico è un duro colpo, perché i giacimenti di terre rare di cui l’UE ha bisogno per attuare le proprie agende – Green Deal, libro bianco per la difesa e strategia di competitività – le sono stati sottratti da sotto il naso.

Eppure all’inizio del 2026, sul dossier Groenlandia, Von der Leyen aveva spiegato che l’Unione si è mossa seguendo “quattro principi fondamentali: fermezza, apertura, preparazione e unità, e questo approccio si è rivelato efficace”. Nei giorni precedenti al vertice, la posizione europea si era già delineata attraverso una serie di prese di posizione unanimi dei leader, improntate “alla calma e al dialogo” con l’Amministrazione statunitense, senza escludere però il ricorso agli strumenti commerciali, il cosiddetto “bazooka”, qualora necessario.

Alla fine, nulla di tutto ciò si è verificato, perché considerando la NATO come il proprio eterno strumento militare, l’Europa rimane un soggetto geopolitico inesistente e totalmente subordinato alla volontà di Washington. Ciò spiega anche i risultati del recente referendum in Islanda: la scarsa attrattività dell’Unione Europea è stata certificata dai cittadini dell’isola vicina.

In Groenlandia non poteva che andare così.

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^[1] Le Parti faranno il miglior uso possibile delle procedure stabilite negli Accordi di Difesa, inclusi l’Accordo di Difesa del 1951 e l’Accordo di Igaliku del 2004, come qui modificati e integrati, per consentire quanto segue:

1. Agli Stati Uniti sarà consentito modernizzare ed espandere le proprie attività presso la Base Spaziale di Pituffik;
2. Agli Stati Uniti sarà consentito istituire un’ulteriore Area di Difesa a Narsarsuaq e Mestersvig, secondo modalità e dettagli tecnici da concordare reciprocamente tra le Parti;

iii. Gli Stati Uniti potranno istituire ulteriori aree di difesa in Groenlandia e potenziare le proprie operazioni o strutture militari. Ciascuna delle Parti potrà individuare la necessità di una nuova Area di Difesa per la difesa dell’area del Trattato del Nord Atlantico, della Groenlandia e del continente americano. Tale Parte presenterà una proposta descrivente l’ubicazione, la finalità, le dimensioni e le tipologie di attività della proposta Area di Difesa, nonché altre modalità quali le misure di mitigazione, incluse quelle necessarie per tenere conto del Memorandum d’Intesa del 1991 e della Dichiarazione Congiunta del 2004. Le Parti si riuniranno immediatamente per avviare consultazioni tramite il Comitato Permanente al fine di definire i dettagli attuativi sulla base di un accordo reciproco. Qualora non si raggiunga un accordo entro 90 giorni in sede di Comitato Permanente, le consultazioni saranno elevate al livello di vice-ministro e, successivamente, a quello di ministro;

2020. Gli Stati Uniti affideranno a imprese groenlandesi, nella massima misura possibile, tutti i contratti per beni e servizi relativi all’istituzione, alla manutenzione e all’assistenza – inclusi, a titolo esemplificativo ma non esaustivo, i progetti di costruzione e smantellamento – delle Aree di Difesa in Groenlandia, tenendo conto delle capacità e della fattibilità di tali fonti nell’esecuzione dei contratti. Al fine di garantire l’assegnazione dei contratti a fonti groenlandesi, le Parti concordano di aggiornare di conseguenza le Note Diplomatiche del 2020.

In late September, Israeli media reported that Netanyahu’s government intends to adjust access to key routes in the central West Bank. It plans to reopen Route 463 to settler-only traffic in the governorate of Ramallah and Al-Bireh.

Yisrael Gantz, the leader of the Yesha Council (an umbrella organization representing Israeli municipal councils across Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley) confirmed that plans to reopen the road received preliminary approval and funding.

Preparations are also underway by the Israeli military to complete “the security, legal, and logistical” steps required to reopen the route (also known as Wallerstein Road).

History of the road

The road was paved in 1994 under the directions of Pinchas Wallerstein, a founder of the settlement movement, to connect the illegal settlements of Beit El (north-east of Ramallah and Al-Bireh) and Dolev (north-west of Jerusalem).

However, following the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, the Israeli army barred Israeli people from using the road for security reasons. They also placed a locked iron gate on its end near Ein Qiniya village, northwest of Ramallah.

Why has the reopening of the route raised concerns among Palestinians in the West Bank?

Experts argue that Israel’s move will impact not only the governorate itself, but the entire occupied West Bank because of its central location, major metropolitan status, and role as a commercial hub.

To understand the repercussions of the route reopening, BreakThrough News spoke with Jamal Jumaa, a Palestinian activist, expert on Israeli settlement and apartheid-related issues, and coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (Stop the Wall).

Aside from dividing the governorate’s northern and southern halves, Jumaa noted that reopening the road is dangerous because it will block the center of Ramallah and Al-Bireh from two-thirds of its villages, which are situated to the west.

The prominent Palestinian activist added that when Israel builds such roads for settler traffic, it fences them off on both sides and prohibits the use of adjacent lands. The Israeli authorities consider those lands a buffer zone, citing the security of the settlers as their reason. 

“This entails setting up military towers and checkpoints. The road will cut off continuously inhabited Palestinian villages north-west and south-west of Ramallah. Therefore, we are talking about the establishment of roughly four military checkpoints along the road,” he continued.

Jumaa pointed out that the road will complicate the life of Palestinians by restricting their access to vital healthcare and education facilities, including the Istishari Arab Hospital, Birzeit University, and the Arab American University.

He also noted that the intended reopening of the road “is part of dividing and dividing more Palestinians from each other.”

On the political level, Jumaa suggested that the road “hits the heart of the West Bank, which gives a clear signal to the Palestinian Authority that it has no sovereignty over anything.”

It is worth noting that since its establishment, the Palestinian Authority has designated Ramallah and Al-Bireh as a de facto administrative capital. Yet, this has not prevented the Israeli authorities from fragmenting and isolating the governorate by establishing illegal settlements, military outposts, checkpoints, and gates.

Read more: IOF storms Ramallah city center, wounding 58 civilians, including a child

Brazil’s presidential elections are sparking reactions across the region. The economic (and, by extension, geopolitical) importance of this South American giant leaves no regional politician or social organization indifferent, as they know that much of the continent’s future is at stake at the Brazilian polls.

Support for Bolsonaro from Washington and Milei

Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro (who is in prison for conspiring to carry out a coup d’état against Lula da Silva), has received explicit support from Argentine President Javier Milei – a move that cost Buenos Aires a diplomatic crisis with Brasília due to the Argentine leader’s anti-Lula statements made on Brazilian soil.

Likewise, Flávio Bolsonaro enjoys the direct support of President Donald Trump. The US president has maintained a recent tradition (heavily criticized by many) of publicly expressing support for this or that far-right Latin American candidate who, upon winning the election, fully aligns their country with Washington’s foreign policy and joins the US-led military alliance known as the Shield of the Americas.

Trump has also imposed direct trade sanctions on Brazil over the conviction of Jair Bolsonaro, whom Trump calls a “friend.” In addition, the United States sanctioned the judge who convicted Bolsonaro, Alexandre de Moraes, sending a clear message of condemnation against the Brazilian justice system – a move that some political analysts have called foreign “interference” in the Brazilian judicial system.

Unions and the Latin American Left support Lula

Lula has also received support from another very important female leader in the region: Claudia Sheinbaum. In recent weeks, the president of Mexico has repeatedly highlighted the positive aspects of Lula’s administration: “I believe that President Lula has been a very good president … He has done an extraordinary job leading Brazil, and the indicators show it.” The endorsement of his candidacy has clearly been indirect, but given Mexico’s geopolitical importance, many in Lula’s Workers’ Party surely appreciate it.

Lula has also received support from neighboring countries to the south. In Uruguay, the ruling coalition, the Frente Amplio (FA), has shown direct and militant support for Lula’s campaign. Fernando Pereira, president of the FA, stated that the electoral battle in Brazil “is between democracy and barbarism.” He also warned against US interference in the elections: “Brazil will not accept U.S. interference in the election.”

Former Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero, who is currently a member of Congress, also expressed his support for Lula: “If Lula wins, he will create a countercurrent to what has been taking hold in the region and demonstrate that there is resistance to these right-wing winds.”