“Cannibal capitalism” in Spain, where hundreds of thousands are in the streets demanding an end to the country’s housing crisis that Madrid-based journalist and Canal Red analyst Irene Zugasti says killed 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal. Zugasti joins Zoe Alexandra and Rania Khalek to explain why more than 1,500 tents now fill Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and unions have called a general strike for November 11 – Spain’s first since 2012: “If we hadn’t been in the streets, Sánchez would have done nothing.”

Zugasti explains why Spain’s housing crisis isn’t about a shortage of homes, but about who owns them, and why Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called snap elections now, after the right defeated his emergency measures meant to stem the uprising. She says the movement is inseparable from a wave of youth-led revolts across Europe, from student strikes against rearmament and conscription in Germany to French students taking the streets of Paris. And with just 50 days until Spain votes, Zugasti says the choice Sánchez is selling may not be enough to stop the far right without a mass movement behind it.

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Rough transcript follows:
[Host:] Spain has seen massive protests over the past several weeks. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand urgent measures to address the country’s housing crisis. These protests were sparked in large part by an 87-year-old woman, Mari Carmen, who had been fighting eviction from the home where she had lived for more than 70 years. On September 23, she was forcibly evicted from that home and passed away two weeks later, on October 7.

Mari Carmen’s struggle prompted a nationwide debate about the housing crisis, with activists in the streets demanding measures such as a ban on evicting vulnerable tenants, limits on short-term and room rentals, and a rent freeze. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez capitalized on this energy and attempted to push through modest housing reforms in Parliament, but both measures were defeated by the right. In response, Sánchez called for snap elections, which are set to take place at the end of November. So, the political situation in Spain is very heated right now.

Here to break down what has been happening and what to expect from the upcoming snap elections is Irene Zugasti, a journalist and analyst with Canal Red.

[Irene Zugasti:] Hello, Rania. I’m so happy to be here with you at BreakThrough News. Hello from Madrid.

[Host:] We’re very excited to have you here. Your show is incredible, and we’re excited that English-speaking audiences can hear your insight and analysis. A lot is happening in Spain right now, and we have a lot to catch up on and explain to our viewers. As I said in the introduction, mass protests have been taking place, sparked by Mari Carmen’s eviction, but they have also ignited latent anger over the housing crisis. Walk us through how this situation evolved. What is the state of the housing crisis in Spain? How did it get this way? And how did an elderly woman’s struggle against eviction bring hundreds of thousands of people into the streets?

[Irene Zugasti:] I could say that we’re not getting bored in Madrid or Spain these days. We have a lot on the table. But let me introduce Mari Carmen’s story, because some people may not know it. Mari Carmen’s story isn’t unique. There are thousands of Mari Carmens in Spain, but she became a symbol because she embodied the injustice that millions of people in my country—and in many other countries in Europe—face every day.

She was an 87-year-old woman who had lived in the same flat in central Madrid for decades, perhaps 50 years or more. Her parents rented the flat, and she had paid the rent every single month of her life. But eight or 10 years ago, an investment fund—a “vulture fund,” as we call them—bought the whole building. Her rent rose from around €500 a month to €2,650. Obviously, she couldn’t afford that. The goal was to force her out so they could buy the whole building and turn it into high-end luxury flats.

She couldn’t afford the rent. She was elderly, had a disability, and lived alone. She got in touch with the tenants’ union, the housing-rights movement, which is amazing. They helped her with the eviction process, found her a lawyer, supported her, and tried to stop the eviction whenever the police came to her home. They took direct, nonviolent action, blocking her door so the police couldn’t get through.

But finally, on September 23, two or three weeks ago, the police broke down her door. They had to carry her out on a stretcher because she was too old and too frightened to walk. That image was shocking for millions of people in Spain. They thought, “What the hell? How can an 87-year-old woman be taken out of her family home, almost dying, because an investment fund wants to do business with a house that has been her family home?”

From her hospital bed, she recorded a very moving video saying that what had happened to her should inspire people to fight and not stop fighting. Unfortunately, she died on October 7, after 15 days in the hospital.

The day after the eviction, the tenants’ union and many other political organizations—including youth organizations, housing-rights groups, anti-racist movements, and communist and socialist groups—decided to camp in central Madrid, in Puerta del Sol. Today, there are more than 1,500 tents and thousands of people organized there. It’s like a little city, a community. They’re demanding real measures and doing politics there.

Before I continue, I wrote down some figures about the housing crisis, because I’m not sure people have a sense of its scale. The problem isn’t limited to the Global North, but in Spain it’s extreme. It’s not a housing problem; it’s a problem of who owns the houses. The housing crisis is the country’s number-one problem in official polls, year after year. It reflects the failure of capitalism itself, as well as problems with wages, working conditions, and growing inequality.

To give you the full picture: the average age at which people leave home in Spain is 30. It’s hard to live with your parents until you’re 30. Renters earn around €20,000 to €25,000 a year. Landlords who own multiple properties—three, four, five, seven, or 10 houses—earn almost four times as much. Their income comes directly from renters’ pockets. The richest 10% of the country owns more than 40% of all housing wealth in Spain. Large landlords are becoming a majority. Those who own more than 10 properties are effectively taking our wages and salaries.

Imagine that you or I want to live alone in an ordinary flat in Madrid. We would have to spend 98% of our take-home pay—of the average gross salary—to do that. It’s impossible to have a life like that. My country is splitting in two: those who have nothing and those who are accumulating more and more. The gap is growing faster and faster. It’s cannibalism—it’s cannibal capitalism.

Some people say the problem is that we need to build more houses. No, that’s not the problem. There are houses for everyone. There are more houses than ever; the issue is that they’re concentrated in fewer hands. It’s not a crisis of supply. Housing is no longer treated as a human right, even though it’s written into our Constitution. Houses have become financial assets.

Let me end with this: the tenants’ union and the people in the squares are saying that Mari Carmen didn’t die; she was killed. She was killed by this whole machinery: the vulture fund, the courts that ordered her eviction, the police who broke into her home and took her out, and politicians such as Pedro Sánchez, who did nothing and said, “We aren’t strong enough to change the law in Parliament. This is a very difficult, complex problem because many people with different situations are involved.” Come on—you all killed her.

And just as you killed her, many people are suffering and dying. Two people have died by suicide because of evictions in the last two weeks. Many people are dealing with serious mental health problems because they know they may be kicked out of their homes in a couple of weeks. How can you be a healthy person in that situation? You become completely sick. That’s what’s happening. It’s a crisis of capitalism itself, not just a housing crisis.

[Host:] I like the way you described it as cannibalism. In so many ways, that’s what capitalism leads to. I want to ask you to elaborate, because you mentioned the encampment in central Madrid. Yesterday, on Spain’s national holiday, there was a confrontation at Puerta del Sol between far-right activists and people demanding housing reform. Can you talk about the encampment and what happened yesterday?

[Irene Zugasti:] The encampment is beautiful. I wish you could visit it. I think it’s one of the most beautiful things that has happened in Spain in the last five or 10 years, along with the Palestine movement and the feminist strikes.

It began around September 26 or 27, after Mari Carmen’s eviction. It’s in front of the headquarters of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who leads the right-wing regional government in Madrid. That location is symbolic. In just a few days, the encampment became a small community. They organized an assembly and teams working on different issues, including security, mediation, law, and anti-racism. A lot is happening in that square. They’ve achieved things: every morning, they go out and try to stop an eviction. They’re putting pressure on the government and calling for a general strike.

It’s not just people organized around tenant unions. There’s a large socialist movement, too. People are discussing questions such as whether to expropriate the funds and how to lower rents or impose rent control. The people there are very young. The average age may be 20 or 25, and they’re speaking in terms of class war, which hasn’t been very common in recent years in Spain.

They’ve been criminalized using the same playbook you’ve seen in the United States under Trump: counterterrorism rhetoric and attacks on Antifa. They’ve been accused of being terrorists and having weapons because they were cutting sandwiches with knives. They’ve also been accused of harboring pro-Palestinian radical organizations—which we probably do, of course. The framing is that they’re communists, radicals, and troublemakers. But they represent the feelings of millions of people.

What happened yesterday? Every year, Madrid has an awful event: the October 12 parade for the national day. It celebrates what’s called the “Conquista” of the Americas—the conquest and genocide of Indigenous people—and includes military parades, the king, the president, ministers, and so on.

Many people who came to the parade were fascists. They decided to go attack the encampment in Puerta del Sol because it’s nearby. They came with the aim of attacking the people there. What kind of patriots are you? What kind of national project, what kind of Spain and Hispanidad, do you want to build? If your plan for your national day is to attack people asking for housing rights and social justice, that’s Spanish nationalism at its worst.

The beautiful thing—and I was there and saw it myself—was that people formed a human chain around the camp, chanting, “Here we are. We’re anti-fascists. Here we are.” They were saying, “We’re ready. This is a peaceful protest, but we’re not going to allow these people to break up and destroy what we’ve been building for two weeks here in Madrid.”

They didn’t wait for anyone to protect them. They organized themselves and protected the square. There are many young people, but also older activists and people who are curious, strolling around and talking with the activists. Artists are performing. There are many things happening there, and security matters.

At the end of the day, the fascists spent hours walking around and trying to intimidate people, but eventually they left. It’s important and interesting because that’s basically the project of the Spanish right and far right. They align themselves with Trump’s international far-right movement. They’re violent and irrational, and they decide that their enemy is people fighting for justice and rights. That’s it.

[Host:] It’s quite poignant that fascists are attacking people who are simply asking for housing. That’s where their class interests lie. If you wanted any more clarity, that’s what it is. In a way, it’s helpful for us—but terrifying at the same time.

This struggle hasn’t remained confined to the streets. After these weeks of protests, Pedro Sánchez proposed two bills—albeit very lukewarm ones—to address the housing crisis. As I said earlier, they were defeated in Parliament. After the defeat, he called for snap elections on November 29. This has been controversial. Many people have speculated that the far right could make significant gains in the election. What’s your assessment of where Spain stands politically heading into the elections? And what are the other major issues on people’s minds besides housing?

[Irene Zugasti:] I would say Pedro Sánchez—I don’t like him, but he’s a smart guy. He made some calculations. The majority in Congress isn’t simply a question of right versus left. If you consider Pedro Sánchez to be somewhat left-wing, the majority is made up of landlords and capitalists. There are capitalists on the left and on the right.

It’s true that this bill—a bare-minimum decree—was proposed after the encampment and demonstrations, because of pressure from people in the streets. If we hadn’t been in the streets, Pedro Sánchez would have done nothing. He saw the situation and thought, “Now’s the moment. I’m going to propose a bill.” But of course, he knew neither of the two bills would pass. The right wing wouldn’t support them, and they were put together very quickly, without debate.

Even though the watered-down decree would have banned evictions of vulnerable people in certain cases and tried to extend rental contracts for a couple of years, it did nothing to address the key problem. The housing market has to be intervened in on behalf of working people, not landlords and capital. The market is already being intervened in, but on behalf of capitalists. That’s the only real way to stop this inequality, which is costing people’s lives, like Mari Carmen’s.

Without pressure in the streets, Pedro Sánchez wouldn’t have done this. He’s a handsome reformist, very socially liberal, and he shines in Europe because Europe is so sad, fascist, ugly, and terrible. He’s the lesser evil. A very handsome lesser evil. But he’s far from what a party that calls itself the Socialist Workers’ Party should be doing about this problem.

What little he has done has been aimed at not upsetting renters—I mean, landlords, the owner class. Every time he made a small improvement in rental conditions, he offered tax breaks and incentives for landlords. He never touched property ownership or the dynamics of enrichment in Spain.

The snap election is happening because Sánchez is smart. He turned the defeat in Congress and the anger in the streets into a campaign. He’s saying, “It’s now or never.” If he waits a few months, the far right—with all these Trump-inspired groups and powers now helping the Spanish right, which is already very strong—could take everything. But if he calls elections now, the debate might be about housing or the far right; about him or barbarism.

He’s smart because he has a chance, although a small one. I’ve been obsessively studying the numbers: how votes might go in each region, territory, and city, and whether we can get a small majority. It’s difficult. The results could be similar to those in Colombia or Peru, and the far right is getting stronger. That’s why we have 50 days to go.

There’s also a real, transformative left, an institutional left that is more radical on its terms, and they’ll run in the elections. But even with Sánchez’s Socialist Party and the parties to its left—the real left—the numbers are still very difficult. We have to vote in 50 days, and everyone is a bit anxious because we’ve seen what’s happening in Latin America and in many other countries in Europe. We’ve seen it here, too.

We’re hoping that the general strike organized by the people in the streets, the unions, and the social movements might be a game changer. Maybe it will make people feel that they have a chance to change things. But we’ll see what happens.

[Host:] On that note, as we wrap up, Spanish trade unions representing millions of workers have announced a general strike for November 11. Alongside demands concerning working hours, wage increases, health and safety in the workplace, the eradication of precarious employment, and progress in collective bargaining—all important issues—the unions have also brought housing into the strike. What do you make of this call to strike? Do you see momentum continuing in the streets in the coming days and weeks?

[Irene Zugasti:] My generation—we millennials—are very excited. This is something we thought we would never see again. It’s the first general strike since 2012. There was a feminist strike, but it wasn’t the same, because this is a classic labor strike, even though it was born outside the workplace. It began in the neighborhoods and in the squares, in response to the housing problem.

The smaller unions—the housing-rights unions and more leftist, activist unions, rather than the big ones—are the ones that have pushed them to act. The question is what the strike’s political framework will be. Whatever happens, it’s going to be historic. I’m very optimistic because I’ve never seen so many people talking about a strike in 10 or 15 years. There are strike committees organizing in neighborhoods, universities, schools, and workplaces. That’s always good—like going to the gym. It’s good to exercise.

The demands are still being decided and debated. Of course, they include wages and rent: cutting rents by 50%, getting permanent rental contracts, and expropriating the vulture funds. But many other things are on the table. For example, rearmament is an issue in Europe. I saw your interview with Bolenko; he explains it brilliantly. Europe is preparing for war at the expense of social spending, housing rights, social security, public health, and public education, with NATO’s target of 5% of GDP for each member state.

That’s closely related to the housing crisis. The amount of money the Spanish government spent just this month buying weapons from the United States and Israel is the same amount it promised to spend over the next five years on social housing. One month versus five years. They invest 10 times more in producing things to kill people than in building housing so people can live. It’s crazy.

I think one of the strike’s other goals is to connect struggles across Europe. In Germany, students are holding school strikes against military service and rearmament. In France, people are mobilizing for public education and other social rights. In Spain, the issue is housing. If you put these struggles together, maybe this awful Europe—which is the whole drama—has a chance to change things.

It’s the youngest people who are telling us, “This is over. We’re the generation that has faced the worst of this late-capitalist period, and we don’t want to be discussed as if other people can define who we are and what we want. We know this is a class war. We want to build up minorities and hegemonies to change things in the streets and maybe in institutions, too.” They’re still organizing, but they’re challenging the old structures because those structures have failed them.

They’re the real no-future generation, and they’re proving that they have tools, knowledge, and the ability to organize themselves much better than many people thought. We’ve read a lot about how the youngest generations are far-right and more conservative than ever. That’s not true. Look at Paris. Look at Madrid. There’s hope there. I’m speaking like a grandmother—no, I’m not. I still think I’m young, but I have a lot of hope in them.

[Host:] I think that’s the right direction. It’s quite impressive to see the streets of Europe filled with young people demanding change. We’ve followed the situation in France very closely, as well as the student strikes in Germany and the movement in Spain. It’s very inspiring. I think young people, including you, can turn Europe around in the right direction. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been an absolute pleasure.

[Irene Zugasti:] Let me send my solidarity to you and your colleagues at BreakThrough News. I know your government is also targeting you because you’re doing brilliant journalism. Solidarity from Madrid, from all my colleagues.

“Unparalleled and unprecedented” police repression in India, where thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar were met with mass detentions, internet shutdowns, and a brutal crackdown across Delhi over the weekend. Dr. Nitheesh Narayanan of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research joins Zoe Alexandra and Rania Khalek, following the deployment of 50,000 police and armed forces to suppress youth-led protests over the Special Intensive Revision’s removal of more than 130 million names from voter rolls.

Narayanan says Saturday’s action marked a turning point in India’s months-long wave of repression, uniting students, the left, and the Gen Z-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in the fight for a democratic, secular India – “and the idea that it’s the people, not power, who define a country.” He breaks down how Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stacked the committee that appointed Commissioner Kumar, why the SIR disproportionately targets minorities and the poor, and why the outrage and demands for accountability are growing despite the crackdown. And as Trump pushes a unified voter roll in the US, India’s purge could offer a preview of what’s at stake: “Is this democracy, or is it the daylight murder of democracy?”

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

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.

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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.

Saudi Arabia has $142 billion in American weapons. Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. So why can’t Riyadh win?

Last month, Ansar Allah seized Mokha and Perim Island, and with them the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, cutting off Saudi Arabia’s alternative oil route around the closed Strait of Hormuz. Mohammed bin Salman begged Trump for US airstrikes, then backed “Dawn of Yemen,” a 100-warplane offensive aimed at Sanaa, as crude oil again tops $100 a barrel. Veteran war correspondent and analyst Elijah Magnier joins Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra on the Red Sea front, as nearly 1,000 Yemenis have been killed and 184,000 displaced since fighting resumed.

But Magnier argues Ansar Allah – often referred to in US media as the Houthis – hasn’t lost much ground. He explains why Saudi warplanes are largely powerless in Yemen’s mountainous terrain, and why he sees the movement advancing on Taiz and Marib. And Magnier breaks down how Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb have become two fronts of the same war – different demands, same enemies – and how Israel’s quiet push into Somaliland could drag it directly into the Red Sea fight.

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

French students shut down 1,800 schools and brought more than 450,000 people to the streets Tuesday, as the nationwide youth revolt grows against Macron austerity. Danièle Obono, La France Insoumise MP in the French National Assembly, joins Zoe Alexandra and Rania Khalek to unpack how one protest in Saint-Denis over teacher shortages and overcrowded classrooms has transformed into a movement that’s shaking Paris to its core.

Obono lays out a decade of neoliberal attacks on public education under Macron’s austerity agenda, and explains why the viral video of Saint-Denis Mayor Bally Bagayoko shielding students from riot police has transformed him into a symbol of solidarity for young and working-class people across France. And she responds to Trump’s claims that immigrants and Islam are behind the rebellion; Obono argues that a growing movement of working-class youth from diverse neighborhoods singing “La Marseillaise” and demanding their rights is the only answer to the far right:

“We tell Donald Trump to mind his own business. We have absolutely no lessons to learn from him.”

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

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Rough transcript follows:
[Speaker 1:] Massive student protests have been taking place across France, where students are mobilizing for the right to education and against austerity measures undermining it. Roughly 1,800 high schools shut down on Tuesday, October 7, as students, supported by trade unions, families, and progressive politicians, took to the streets. According to trade unions, over 450,000 people participated in protests across the country. Students at 90% of French universities also organized actions that same day, adding even more weight to this historic mobilization.

The students’ main demands include urgent measures to address the critical situation in French schools: staffing, class sizes, and the condition of school buildings. They are basic demands to make education dignified and high-quality. These protests made international headlines, and even Donald Trump commented on them, which we’ll get to in this interview. The protests are expected to continue.

To talk about the significance of these protests and what they mean for the progressive camp in France, we’re very lucky to be joined by Danielle Obono, a deputy in the French National Assembly with La France Insoumise. Danielle, welcome to the show.

[Speaker 2:] Hi, thank you for having me.

[Speaker 1:] We’re so excited you’re with us. A lot of people in the United States have seen videos of the protests, but perhaps aren’t fully aware of why people have been taking to the streets. Can you tell us about the underlying causes and motivations for these protests? What is the situation of public education in France? And how did almost 2,000 high schools organize to shut down on Tuesday?

[Speaker 2:] The situation is very difficult for students. This historic nationwide movement actually started in a small high school near Paris. At first, teachers—and then teachers and students—decided to mobilize to protest the lack of staff, the condition of the buildings, the overcrowded classrooms, and, overall, the inequalities between schools and teachers. They went on strike, and then the students decided to join in and help their teachers. They blocked the whole school.

That’s how it started. Through social media, they shared videos, and students in other places recognized the same situation. This is also something that has been happening over the past two or three years. You could see videos on social media of teachers showing the appalling state of their classrooms, and students showing the very bad food they had at school, and things like that.

That’s really what sparked the movement. The root cause is ten years of Macron attacking public schools and public education in France, which used to be of a very high standard and accessible to every segment of society. In France, schools are really a symbol of the French Republic and of equality, and a way to access citizenship. It means a lot to people, and people really love public schools.

Over the past ten years, neoliberal policies have attacked this public school system. Macron, an overzealous neoliberal, has been hell-bent on privatizing it and turning it into a market. I think that’s why this movement sparked and happened: because of this decade-long rule by Macron and his attack on social services, especially public education.

[Speaker 1:] There’s a video circulating of the mayor of Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko, in the middle of Tuesday’s protest, protecting students from riot police. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Why did Bally’s actions—and the fact that he, along with other left-wing politicians and trade unionists, was on the streets with young people—have such a big impact?

[Speaker 2:] I think there are two reasons. The first is Bally Bagayoko himself, who is the new mayor of Saint-Denis. Saint-Denis is the second-largest city in the Paris region, next to Paris. It was a huge win for us that he won the election. He was immediately attacked because he is a Black Muslim mayor from La France Insoumise. That also created a lot of solidarity among young people, working-class people, and many others in France.

But beyond Bally himself, La France Insoumise members, especially elected officials, have supported the movement from the very start. Two of our MPs went to the first high school that sparked the whole movement. That’s also how it spread in videos: the students welcomed them and started asking us to come support the movement. Then, when the police started attacking the students, we went there to protect them.

Unfortunately, we’ve become used to police brutality and the police attacking social movements. That’s how Macron has dealt with social unrest in the country. We’ve always been part of the movement and supported it. As elected public officials, we go to demonstrations to protect protesters. When they’re arrested or detained, we go to the police stations and make sure everything is all right.

That’s why you could see many of us at the protests. We believe we have to be there to protect the protesters, especially because they’re very young high school students. There’s been a lot of police brutality targeting those young students.

That’s the context of this moment you see, and I think it’s very symbolic of what’s been happening in France: the brutality of the Macron regime, and who is standing beside the people and the students. We are side by side, and now we’re joined by elected officials who have been doing the same thing we’ve been doing.

[Speaker 1:] It’s a really powerful image. As you said, it encapsulates this feeling of the people versus this neoliberal regime. We know that, in addition to protracted social unrest, there have been numerous protests against Macron’s austerity measures. This is happening at a time when his government is facing pressure on the streets and a crisis of institutional legitimacy.

We know that in 2024, when the left-progressive alliance led by La France Insoumise, the New Popular Front, emerged as the largest group in Parliament, Macron blocked it from appointing a prime minister. That seems completely against democracy and the will of the people. Given this institutional crisis, how do you see the high school students’ protests connecting to the broader societal rejection of Macron’s government? And what do you see as an institutional path forward?

[Speaker 2:] The student protests have already spread. On October 6, the call to action was supported by trade unions. That’s one reason so many people came out: parents are taking to the streets with their kids, and grandparents, too. There are lots of videos of elderly people supporting the youth.

It’s already a mass movement, supported by a majority of people in France. It shows how young people are expressing all their anger and opposition to the Macron government. On the demonstrations, you can see posters saying “Macron out,” and another very important slogan is against the far right.

As you pointed out, back in 2024, when we won the election, Macron betrayed the results of the democratic process. The reason he did that was that they wanted the far right to win. Macron himself had decided to call a snap election after the European election, where the far right came first. He said, “Okay, let’s have a snap election and give them power,” but it didn’t happen because the people said, “No way.” We actually won.

This has been going on for years. Young people, especially, have been witnessing everything happening. They’ve also been witnessing what’s going on all over the world, especially the genocide in Gaza. You can see a lot of Palestinian flags and posters at the demonstrations, with people saying, “Give money to the schools, not to fund genocide.” There’s a mass politicization process among young people that is already shaking power.

We are at the end of ten years of Macron in power. Next year will be the presidential election, and a lot of young people—those who are on the streets now—will be voters. They’re calling for an end to Macron, opposing the far right, and many are supporting our movement. At the start of the movement, a lot of media said we were manipulating students, which was very condescending. They thought the students couldn’t have started the movement on their own.

There are two institutional fights we’re going to take on now as members of Parliament. The first is the budget. We’re starting to debate it, and the Macron government had planned to reduce the education budget even further. I think it will be very difficult for them to do that, since the movement is still going on and there will be a lot of pressure. The combination of people in the streets, young people striking, and us battling in the National Assembly will be very interesting to build on over the next month or so, as we head toward the presidential campaign.

The campaign is about the themes being discussed now. I also think it’s interesting that this began with the far right and a lot of xenophobic and racist media discourse. We’ve been countering that with issues like the cost of living, and we’ve been quite successful. This counter-narrative is becoming stronger because of the students’ demands. That’s what we’re talking about, and that’s what the media have to ask the government and everyone about.

I think it’s also very important ideologically that the discourse and narratives center working-class, anti-racist, and solidarity messages.

[Speaker 1:] U.S. President Donald Trump and other cabinet members have made very disparaging comments about the protests, saying that France is enveloped in chaos because there are so many, quote-unquote, illegal immigrants, and that Islam is taking over the country. What do you make of this narrative, and what is your response to Donald Trump?

[Speaker 2:] We would say to Donald Trump that he should mind his own business. We have absolutely no lessons to take from him.

But I think it’s interesting to see how racist, racialized narratives are something the right wing and the far right have been trying to promote here, too. That’s especially because the people who started this movement are from poor, working-class neighborhoods, where there are a lot of people from immigrant backgrounds.

I think it’s all the more powerful because those young people are saying, “We demand equality. We demand to be treated as citizens, not second-class citizens.” When we came to the protest, they started chanting “La Marseillaise,” which is very powerful because they were reclaiming this revolutionary history, but also this French identity, which is very revolutionary—the revolutionary side of laïcité. It was the best answer to people like Donald Trump and the far right and right-wing people: those leading the movement are very diverse, and there’s a lot of solidarity.

It was also interesting that more well-off students—young people studying in high schools in central Paris that are a little wealthier—started protesting in solidarity with students in poorer neighborhoods. You see this coalition of young people reclaiming their rights and demanding equality. I think that’s the best answer to the far right and to the racist and xenophobic discourse against them.

Among the demands of university students, they’re also opposing some of the xenophobic measures implemented against foreign students, especially those from Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. So, yes, I think that’s the best thing young people can do right now to answer Mr. Trump.

[Speaker 1:] An extremely powerful response. Of course, he doesn’t speak for the people of the United States. We’ve seen young people across the United States consistently taking to the streets for the past two years, since he took office. I know they’ve also taken great inspiration from French youth. It’s a beautiful outpouring from young people across the world. I love to see it and hear it. Donald Trump is clearly frightened by the example the French people are setting for young people in his own country.

[Speaker 2:] If I may, I think those young students have also been very impacted by the protests they watched on U.S. campuses against the genocide. You can see it in the posts. There’s also been a youth movement in Nepal over the past couple of years, and now, in Germany, students are opposing the war. They’re also leading mass movements.

I think it’s very inspiring because you see young people connecting the dots between their situation at home and a sense of internationalism and solidarity with people all around the world. It’s very inspiring, and it’s a powerful movement. It’s great to be part of it here, and also to feel this sense of an international anti-austerity, anti-imperialist movement led by young people.

[Speaker 1:] Amazing. Incredible. Danielle, thank you so much for joining us here on BT Live. We’re very excited to have you back on soon and see how Macron’s government weathers this youth-led storm.

[Speaker 2:] Thank you.

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!

#breakthroughnews

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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!

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.”

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

#breakthroughnews

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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!

#breakthroughnews

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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.

United Airlines has been sending military hardware to Israel on passenger flights, right under your feet.

A new report from the People’s Embargo for Palestine, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and others documents 2,761 shipments of military cargo to Israeli weapons manufacturers and military institutions, including Elbit Systems, Lockheed Martin Israel, Nevatim Airbase, and the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Belal Elsiesy, organizer with the PYM and the People’s Arms Embargo, joins Zoe Alexandra to break down the findings.

With cargo including F-35 bomb release units used to drop 2,000-pound bombs on Gaza, Merkava tank sights, and “hunter-killer” machine gunner sights destined for Elbit, Elsiesy argues civilian airports are a critical point of intervention. He also discusses what’s behind Elbit’s US rebrand as 26 Defense, how campaigns against Maersk and FedEx have targeted the weak links in Israel’s weapons supply chain, and why the airline’s silence on the #NoWeaponsOnUnited campaign is a good reason to act now.

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

Two years after Israel’s pager attacks on Lebanon killed dozens and maimed thousands, Lebanese investigative journalist Radwan Mortada’s new two-part Al Jazeera documentary, The Trap (Al-Mesyada), goes inside the September 2024 Mossad operation more than a decade in the making.

Mortada joins Rania Khalek to trace the web of front companies stretching from Taiwan to Bulgaria that enabled Israel to infiltrate Gold Apollo, a supplier Hezbollah had trusted for decades.

As a new Israeli propaganda film Paging Hezbollah heads for US theaters, Mortada reveals that Israel’s goal to kill as many as 20,000 Hezbollah fighters with booby-trapped walkie-talkies, in fact, fell far short. He also breaks down Hezbollah’s own fatal mistakes, and the lasting psychological toll of a terrorist attack that, contrary to US and Israeli narratives, was far from “precise” or “targeted,” destroying the lives of children, families, and medical workers.

“Hezbollah’s biggest mistake was forgetting Israel’s capabilities – forgetting how bloody and cruel they can be.”

Watch The Trap Part 1: aljazeera360.com/video/1017661

Part 2: aljazeera360.com/video/1017626

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

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Rough transcript follows:
[Rana:] And joining me to discuss this two-part investigative deep dive into the pager attacks is the producer himself, Redwan Mortada. Redwan, welcome to Breakthrough News Live.

[Redwan Mortada:] Thank you, Rana. Thank you for having me.

[Rana:] Well, it’s a real pleasure, and I got a chance to watch the documentary. I encourage everybody to go check it out. It’s available online. It’s also available with English subtitles, and it’s really worth the watch. I mean, you expose so much new information we didn’t know before. But before we get into some of the specifics, Redwan, I want to ask you, you’ve called this one of the most complex cases that you’ve ever worked on as an investigative journalist. And we have all watched Israel commit so many atrocities across Lebanon that have killed far more people than the pager attacks did. Yet, in your film, you call this the most devastating blow that Hezbollah has taken since its founding. So, two years on from this attack, why does this operation still loom so large that you felt it warranted a two-part investigative series?

[Redwan Mortada:] You’re right, Rania. Israel killed tens of thousands of Lebanese over the years. But in fact, this operation is different—the pager attack. I mean, because it came from a place Hezbollah thought was secure for years and years, for decades, if you want. There has been an intelligence war between the resistance, mainly between Hezbollah and Israel, in Lebanon and in the region. Israel assassinated several senior commanders of Hezbollah, carried out several operations against it, killing Abbas al-Musawi, the ex-secretary-general, and at the same time, Hezbollah carried out several operations against Israel. But this pager operation was different because it was one of the biggest blows to Hezbollah—an attack that only Mossad could imagine. No one could imagine this kind of operation and this kind of killing, because it didn’t only affect Hezbollah fighters. It affected tons of children and women, and it breaches all international and humanitarian rules across the world.

[Rana:] Yeah. And just for everybody who’s watching Breakthrough News and your organization, Blue House Films, you produced a documentary on the pager attacks and how they impacted civilians specifically that came out last year. People who are probably watching this have seen that documentary, and it shows the toll specifically on children and other civilians caught up in it—their faces totally maimed, destroyed, and blinded for those who did survive. I mean, just a horrific attack. But your documentary, this two-part series, really dives deep into the timeline of Israel plotting this attack. I mean, Israel spent years on this; it started back in 2015. And in your documentary, you lay out how Mossad built these front companies spanning Taiwan, Hong Kong, Hungary, and Bulgaria. They infiltrated the pager company that Hezbollah had grown to trust, they manipulated the Hezbollah representative that was dealing with that company, and they rigged the devices with small amounts of this powerful explosive substance hidden in the batteries that was so hard to detect, and then they detonated them at a moment of their choosing. I mean, the way you lay it out, it plays like a movie thriller. So walk us through some of that Israeli timeline—how did they pull this off?

[Redwan Mortada:] It is a long story. You have to watch the film and go deep into the details, the exclusive information, the exclusive data, and the interviews, because it also presents the story of Hezbollah. We post in the film the email communications between the company called Gold Apollo and Hezbollah. But in fact, if I want to go back to how this started, after the 2006 war, Israel started looking for ways to penetrate Hezbollah, especially its network and communication, because you know the result of the war in 2006 was that Hezbollah beat Israel, and Israel wanted revenge. So they started trying to penetrate Hezbollah. They tried to recruit the sales representatives in Taiwan; they failed. They tried to sell pagers to Hezbollah through several front companies, but they failed. And the story they distributed in the media about a blonde girl that manipulated a representative to sell him the pagers was not true. The truth is that they penetrated a trusted company that had a relation with this company over 20 years, starting in the 2000s—Gold Apollo. So they penetrated Hezbollah through this company. They recruited Teresa, the employee in the company, and through recruiting Teresa, they penetrated Hezbollah, and they sent these pagers. And it was not just one plan for Mossad; there was a Plan A and a Plan B. Plan A was to explode the walkie-talkies, and this operation started in 2014. I am not saying that Israeli officials declared that, but they succeeded in sending 15,000 walkie-talkies to Hezbollah. But these walkie-talkies were in storage, and Hezbollah did not decide to go into battle in full power, so they did not distribute all the walkie-talkies; they distributed around 800 walkie-talkies. So Mossad moved to the second plan, which is Plan B—detonating the pagers. This operation started in 2020, and they succeeded in sending 500 pagers to Hezbollah at the beginning, in 2023. Because of the necessity of the battle at the beginning, Hezbollah refused these pagers because this model—the new model—was different; he had ordered the old model. Gold Apollo sent Hezbollah the new model, and the representative of Hezbollah whose name was Mike said, “We don’t want to deal with you because we ordered the old version.” But because of the necessity of the battle and the urge of what was going on after October 7, it forced Hezbollah to receive 4,200 pagers, and they distributed around 3,000, of which only 1,850 exploded.

[Rana:] Yeah. And people really need to go watch this documentary, because you also lay out how the Israelis would find out that Hezbollah was on to them, and then they would stop scanners from Iran from coming to Lebanon that could have detected the substance by bombing a warehouse and another warehouse, and then claiming they were bombing this to kill somebody when it was really to stop Hezbollah from finding out about the pagers. I mean, it’s just really wild stuff. But I want to talk about Hezbollah’s mistakes here, because the attack did expose how deeply Hezbollah had been penetrated, which is what you’re talking about. And you mentioned 2006. After 2006, Hezbollah did build its own communications network, and you described in the documentary how this is precisely because Lebanon’s telecoms were so compromised by the Israelis. And then the war in Syria turned Hezbollah into a much larger and more exposed army that allowed for more penetration. At the same time, these failures come off as so shocking, because Hezbollah did have guardrails in place to try to detect if anything was messed with. What were some of Hezbollah’s mistakes? Again, people really should go watch the documentary because you go into deep detail on what those mistakes were. But if you had to give a brief explanation, what were Hezbollah’s mistakes, and could this have been prevented? And I guess I’d also add to that, has Hezbollah reckoned with this internally?

[Redwan Mortada:] I said it in the film, and I will repeat it: the biggest mistake was forgetting Israeli capabilities and forgetting how bloody and cruel they can be. This is one of the biggest mistakes Hezbollah committed. In fact, you’re right, the war in Syria exposed Hezbollah, and the capabilities and advanced technology Israel had also helped them to do this operation. But in addition to that, they used a new kind of technology, which is CL-20—a new kind of US explosive material manufactured by the United States of America. This kind of explosion is not detectable, and also when Hezbollah gave the pagers that did not explode to the Lebanese army, when they detected it… I put in the film that report that mentions this is an unknown material; it’s not listed in the explosive library. That’s why the airport scanners in Hong Kong, Turkey, and Lebanon couldn’t detect it.

[Rana:] That’s so scary. It’s so scary to think what else they’ve infiltrated.

[Redwan Mortada:] Especially, Rana, these pager devices are civilian devices; they are not military devices.

[Rana:] Yeah. Well, you also—I thought it was super interesting—mentioned in the documentary that Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyeh used to cut open screws when he would take apart devices to make sure the screw hadn’t been messed with. I mean, one of the biggest mistakes that was mentioned was that Hezbollah operatives were asking questions—there was something weird about these pagers and walkie-talkies, and they were taking them apart and looking at the different pieces to see what was wrong with them, but they never cut open the batteries because…

[Redwan Mortada:] Okay, that shows a lot, by the way. That shows a lot, because even us at the time, when this happened, our question was: where was Hezbollah? Where was the protocol for experimenting on all of these? In fact, I mentioned in the film that there was like a mind race between Hezbollah and the Mossad officer, and it was one step… I mentioned two names in the film, and Jibril Jibril is a nickname for Hussein Bazi, an engineer inside Hezbollah. He was an officer who had doubts, and when he started to remove these pagers from small groups, Israel knew about that and decided to start the operation instead of losing the element of surprise.

[Rana:] So that they could do at least some damage, even though they didn’t get to kill as many people as they wanted. I wanted to ask you, though, obviously this did not destroy Hezbollah because they were able to go on and fight the war in 2024, but it did do a lot of damage to the organization. So can you explain, in terms of manpower, command, morale, and trust in their own systems, what was the damage of this operation to Hezbollah?

[Redwan Mortada:] For me, I think the biggest impact was psychological. The Israelis started this war by exploding the pagers. The first day they exploded the pagers; the second day they exploded the walkie-talkies. Then they carried out over 1,400 airstrikes on Lebanon in one day. After that, they assassinated the special forces commanders—the Radwan Force in Hezbollah—until they assassinated Hassan Nasrallah. For around 10 days, Hezbollah and Lebanese society experienced and went through one of the hardest days in our history. The goal and target for Israel was to destroy Hezbollah. But in fact, Hezbollah survived, and you can tell that if you do a comparison between the war in 2024 and the war in 2026, the level of assassination and the level of penetration wasn’t the same at all.

[Rana:] I want to ask you also, Redwan, you talked about this in your documentary, and I covered it in the documentary that I did with Blue House: Israel and its supporters continue to celebrate this as a marvel of precision. They call it surgical, targeted, and clean. And actually, I don’t know if you’ve seen, but the Israelis also have a movie coming out called Paging Hezbollah.

[Redwan Mortada:] A propaganda film, you mean? The propaganda film where they started swimming and they are at the beach, and you will hear another voice: “We are in a special area, but in fact, we are in a hostile environment where everyone wants to destroy us”? They are justifying why they went into a major operation.

[Rana:] Yeah. So this is going to be in American theaters on October 30th. It’s called Paging Hezbollah, an Israeli propaganda film that celebrates this attack. I encourage people, instead of watching that, to go watch Redwan’s documentary, which we’ll include a link to in the description. But I wanted to ask you, what was the actual impact of what Israel did on civilians? Israel and the US celebrate the pager operation as a major achievement, calling it precise and targeted. But they are lying. They are liars, because really it was a terrorist attack, a war crime, because it also hit civilians. And you met tons of civilians, women and children, in your documentary. But in fact, this is not just my word; Human Rights Watch said it was a war crime. Booby-trapped pagers used by civilians on a daily basis—when they exploded, they didn’t target only Hezbollah fighters, because you know they are a part of Lebanese society, and they chose a peak time when families were gathered, when children came back from school. So when they exploded, they targeted, killed, and injured children, women, families, doctors, nurses. They are not all military; part of them are civilians.

[Redwan Mortada:] And the injuries—I mean, just so people understand the injuries from this explosion. It exploded in people’s faces, so it was destroyed eyeballs, destroyed facial structure and bones, missing fingers. Really, really horrific stuff. I think you experienced—my colleague told me that when you wanted to give a neck mic to one of the children to start the interview, he ran away a bit because it was similar to the pager.

[Rana:] No, they were scared. Yeah, the kids I spoke to were scared, of course. They have PTSD from this device because it looked similar. It’s just horrible. And the other thing, too, is people blinded. If you’re blind, you usually learn to read with your fingers, with Braille, but the pager—the way it exploded, people were holding it, so it also cut off people’s fingers in addition to taking away their sight, so they can’t even learn to read Braille. There are just so many layers of horror that this has impacted, and people are still getting surgeries two years later to fix their faces, if they can ever be fixed. It’s just horrifying and should not be celebrated. But you noted—and again, I encourage people to go watch the documentary because it goes into detail—Israel’s real aim was to have these exploding walkie-talkies kill as many as 20,000 fighters, and it didn’t manage to do that. So obviously they did a lot of damage to Hezbollah, but their ultimate operation failed. But connected to all this: yes, Hezbollah was able to demonstrate it survived, especially watching it fight in 2026. Like you mentioned, there weren’t major assassinations because Israel doesn’t even really know who’s in charge anymore, and they were able to fight the Israelis. However, Israel has managed to occupy a huge portion of Lebanon, and right now Hezbollah is not really responding to Israel’s daily attacks, killings, and bombings—it’s blown up like 60 villages at this point. So where does the battle stand today? Hezbollah has lost ground, Israel is expanding its occupation, and people are wondering why Hezbollah is not responding right now. What, in your opinion, is Hezbollah’s real capability as it stands today, and is there any deterrence left against Israeli aggression?

[Redwan Mortada:] This question should be addressed to Hezbollah, but I will tell you my evaluation of how I’m looking at what’s going on now. In fact, the war did not finish yet. The war is still going on, and the war is not only in Lebanon—the war is in the region, the war between the United States of America and Iran, between Iran and Israel, between Hezbollah and Israel. We are part of this big war in this region. Until now, there are rules of engagement, and the last agreement is still going on, because if you can see in Lebanon, Israel doesn’t dare to target Beirut, to target the Beqaa, to target the Dahieh, because there are rules of engagement between the United States of America and Iran. I think we have to wait and see. During the past 15 months, if you remember, everyone went out and said Hezbollah is done, Hezbollah is finished. But when the battle erupted, we saw another equation on the ground. So I think we are still in the middle of the war; we cannot expect what will go on, whether there will be another round—and that’s what we think, there will be another round, the third round. And we hope that we can survive, we hope that we can kick the Israelis out of our country, because you know that they believe in their myth of Greater Israel, and they believe that and declared that they can take part of Lebanon and part of Syria to fulfill their dream and their myth. So we are fighting with these psychopaths who are now destroying our houses, destroying our lands, killing anyone in that yellow zone in the south of Lebanon. And the United States of America, unfortunately, is backing them and covering them, and our government is involved in this betraying. So let’s wait and see how things will go on.

[Rana:] Well, Redwan, I want to thank you so much for this incredible two-part documentary that you put together. Again, we’ll include a link to it in the description for people to watch, and also for all of the incredible work you do. You really are one of the best journalists we have here in Lebanon. So thank you for all of the wonderful work you do, and hopefully we can have you on again soon.

[Redwan Mortada:] Thank you. Thank you so much.

Is the AI bubble about to burst?

Tech giants like Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle are betting over $4 trillion on data centers, chips, and AI models – but the profits aren’t there yet, and the cash is running out. Michael Roberts, economist and author of The Next Recession blog, joins Zoe Alexandra to break down the reality behind the AI boom – what he calls the biggest economic gamble in US history – and who will pay the price when the house of cards comes down.

Roberts explains how circular financing keeps AI companies afloat, what Chinese open-source models undercutting OpenAI and Anthropic mean for US workers, and why grassroots opposition to data centers is a reasonable response to hyperscale projects that drain power and water while creating few jobs. He warns of a 2008-style recession on steroids, and explains why following the money today matters more than the “shock message” of a coming AI apocalypse.

Read Michael Roberts’ article “AI: The Biggest Bet in U.S. History”: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2026/09/26/ai-the-biggest-economic-bet-in-us-history/

For more deep dives into the global economy, tech monopolies, and the real-world impact of AI – and to watch full episodes of BT Live, join breakthroughnews.org as a member today!

#breakthroughnews

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Rough transcript follows:
[Speaker 1 (Zoe):]

Is the US economy growing incredibly fast in the last year or is it a bubble that is about to burst? Tech giants like Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle are expected to pour more than four trillion into data centers, chips, and AI models by 2029. Brookings estimates total data center spending could reach 10.3 trillion by 2032. And that’s more relative to the GDP than railroads, the highway system, or the internet. Up to July, 37 billion has actually been spent on private data centers with most still not operating. In contrast, US private construction spending on everything else that it does, houses, apartment buildings, shopping centers, and so on was about 46 billion dollar below the levels in the year prior in the first seven months just of this year. So that’s a marked difference and a marked contrast. All of this is part of what experts have been referring to as the AI bubble. And so to discuss this, what does it mean for everyday people in the United States and the world, we are joined by Michael Roberts, socialist economist, author of several books on the world economy, and the author of a blog called The Next Recession. Thank you so much, Michael, for joining us today here on BT Live.

[Speaker 2 (Michael Roberts):]

Pleased to be with you, Zoe. An important matter to discuss, I think.

[Speaker 1 (Zoe):]

Extremely important. And your latest article, AI, the biggest bet in US history, was very important. We’re going to link it in the show notes because I highly recommend that everyone read this article. But of course in this article, you start out by saying that AI is the biggest economic bet in US history. As you report in this article, spending is set to pass 1 trillion next year. However, the free cash flow funding is falling below 100 billion. So, explain to us what does that gap mean? How does that impact ordinary people and is this something that we should be worried about?

[Speaker 2 (Michael Roberts):]

Well, it seems that American institutions, the financial institutions, companies, government are absolutely placing a huge bet on AI delivering faster growth for the United States, better wages for everybody, higher profits for companies. In fact, a whole new wonderful world is going to come from this AI, artificial intelligence. And that in order to do that they want to spend huge amounts and are spending huge amounts of money. Both the banks are lending money, private credit institutions are putting money into AI labs and into data centers dotted across the United States and there’s still more to come. This is a massive investment. Will it come off is the question. And also before it even does come off, will the money run out? Because already most of the money that’s been provided for this investment up to now has come from the profits from the big tech media companies who were making lots of profit from previous businesses, cloud businesses, internet businesses. Now they’re running out of how much money they can put in. So they’re now borrowing money. So the debt is rising to cover these AI investments which are taking place. And now within the next month or so, one of the big AI labs called Anthropic is going to launch a share issue where it wants to raise $2 trillion, a massive amount of money which it claims if it gets it will be able to deliver fantastic AI models that companies can use in every sort of part of their business and transform the situation, probably at the expense of a lot of jobs unfortunately for people who are currently working in them.

[Speaker 1 (Zoe):]

Well, I want to touch on something that you illustrate in the article with a slightly complicated graph, but you explain it very well, which is this concept of circular financing, and you explain how AI companies are essentially staying afloat because of this issue that you illustrated of lack of free cash flow funding. And you explain how firms are lending and buying from each other, and it seems that everyone is essentially dependent on each other’s spending. So can you exactly explain how this works and why is this actually a risk instead of a normal business practice?

[Speaker 2 (Michael Roberts):]

Well, it is in a way a normal business practice to lend money to companies in the hope that they will produce sales and revenues and that then they will get their money back. But that’s not the sort of lending that’s going on now. What’s happening is that the big companies in tech are lending money to the artificial intelligence labs as they’re called. The people who are making these models and these models are then claiming they’re making huge amounts of revenue. But the only way they’re making huge amounts of revenue is they’re getting loans from the other tech companies. So for example, Nvidia which makes all the chips for all these AI companies and for these data centers basically invested in all the AI companies and are lending the money to all the companies. So the result of course is that the companies appear to have plenty of cash but they have an obligation to deliver at some point huge amounts of revenues back to Nvidia. In the meantime this money keeps circulating around and we call it circular financing in the most complex way. That graph shows how much connection there is between all these different companies at all different levels not just in the US but right across the world now. And so if one company particularly a big one starts to lose confidence in making those investments or loses revenue and can’t achieve the targets that it has to make then the whole of this web could start to crumble and cause the bubble to burst and we see a massive reduction in the value of all these companies on the stock market and that will produce losses of jobs, losses of income for large numbers of people and we could then slip into a recession in the United States. That’s the risk. It’s so we have one huge bet now on the US economy that AI is going to work. It’s going to deliver huge profits for the companies that have made these loans and it’s going to deliver greater productivity for the economy as a whole. That’s a huge risky bet.

[Speaker 1 (Zoe):]

Well, you know, it’s interesting your piece comes out and we’re discussing it right now in the midst of this whole AI news crisis where we’ve seen several whistleblowers, so to speak, come forward and say, you know, AI could kill us all. AI could end humanity. We are racing towards a point of no return, talking about the possibilities that their AI models are unleashing on the people of the world. And it’s interesting because what you’re outlining in this article is that there’s a very real risk that will come before all of that, which is the economic impact. And so what do you think could be the fallout of any of this starting to collapse, whether it’s the circular financing or some of these investments not returning?

[Speaker 2 (Michael Roberts):]

Yeah. Well, I think an estimate was made by the IMF recently and they reckon that it could reduce the stock market value by up to 25%. It could knock back our national output in the US and in other major economies by four or 5%. If you remember the great recession that some of us remember back in 2008-2009 knocked about 3 or 4% off the national output of major economies for several years. This would be just as bad if not worse if we get into that situation. That’s the risk.

Now I have to say that at the moment stock market investors, financial institutions, AI labs, the big tech companies are completely optimistic. That’s not going to happen. They say they’re going to be able to deliver much better models which companies can use right throughout their businesses, get rid of a lot of costs, and dramatically increase their productivity and therefore sell more goods and services, and it will transform the situation for the US. The chairman of the US Federal Reserve said this is the most important thing. It’s going to keep prices down. It’s going to increase productivity. It’s going to transform the economy. That’s the optimistic message that remains.

Who actually mentioned, Zoe, the pessimistic message is it’s so powerful this AI apparently, it’s going to take over human beings’ jobs, but is actually going to control human beings and even annihilate them. I think that’s a sort of shock message which I think tells you two things: one is that the AI labs want to convince you that this is absolutely powerful and will work, and secondly, if it’s dangerous they’d like to slow down the process a little bit, so they want it both ways at the moment. They don’t want to spend too much more money. On the other hand, they want you to believe that it’s going to deliver. And that’s the big question we have now.

So I could call it a $64,000 question, but what we’re talking about is a four or $5 trillion question, which is if you know that the US economy produces labor and machines produce about $30 trillion a year, you can see that if that happened the loss of $5 trillion every year for the next five years that would be a disaster for the US economy.

[Speaker 1 (Zoe):]

No, that’s duly noted. And you know, let’s talk about data centers a bit because in your piece you wrote about how $37 billion has been spent on private data centers, and notably you included a graph showing that a lot of these are not operational yet. And across the United States and in many parts of the world, the construction of data centers has been met with mass grassroots opposition. Recent polling in the United States shows that not only do progressives and Democrats oppose the construction of data centers in their neighborhoods and their areas, but it’s actually something that’s a bipartisan issue for voters. Even Republican voters have joined in this mass opposition to the construction of data centers. How does that factor play into this? Because again $37 billion, it’s not $4 trillion, but it’s still a significant amount. Will the grassroots opposition to the construction of these centers have an impact on how this is playing out in the economy? Is that—we’ve seen a lot of vilification by these tech billionaires against people who are protesting the data centers saying that they’re anti-American. Break down a bit of this for us.

[Speaker 2 (Michael Roberts):]

Well, there are genuine worries for people who have got data centers near them. Data centers consume huge amounts of water. Why is that? Because there are computers and chips buzzing away in these data centers, increasing dramatically the temperature of what’s going on inside. So, they need to be cooled all the time. So they need a large amount of water to keep cooling the center down so that nothing catches fire or breaks down. At the same time they’re using huge amounts of electricity. They’re sucking in electricity in order to keep these computers going. And this is obviously going to have an effect both on the power situation and the water situation in many parts of the country wherever these data centers have been built. And that’s a perfectly reasonable, genuine grievance that people have: do we need this massive expenditure that’s going on in these centers sucking away power and water for us? And remember, people are getting jobs by constructing them, but once they’re built they don’t really have many people working in them. So they’re not going to increase employment dramatically at all.

Worse than that, Zoe, as you saw in that graph, large numbers of data centers that have been promised to be built haven’t been built. But companies have bought huge amounts of chips from Nvidia and other companies to put in these data centers because these semiconductor chips, that’s what really is going into them. And then they can’t put them in because the centers haven’t been built. So they’re sitting in warehouses just sitting there waiting to be used over the next 5 years maybe, because it takes about 3 to 5 years to complete a data center. So in that situation this is a real risk. Large amounts of money have been spent on computers, on chips, and started to construct data centers. But will people use them? Will companies use the AI models that are being produced to run their businesses and therefore use the data centers as a result? It remains to be seen. If they don’t, then there’s going to be a huge loss not only for companies that have invested in the data centers and the people looking to sell goods to people through the data centers, but also the people living next to the data centers will find that these things have been built for no reason whatsoever because they can’t deliver.

[Speaker 1 (Zoe):]

And you know, another aspect of this whole AI economy risk is the fact that the US is not the only country that is producing AI. It’s not only these US tech giants that are producing cutting-edge AI models, and you note the rise of Chinese open-source models, which are significantly cheaper in terms of the cost invested into creating them, but also the number of data centers etc. Overall, it’s a much cheaper investment in these open-source models, and this is overall driving prices down. And you refer to this as a classic contradiction, because there may be a rise in productivity, but the profits will also be kind of destroyed to be able to pay for this. So talk a bit more about this: what role do these open-source models play in this kind of drive to invest and this AI bubble in the United States?

[Speaker 2 (Michael Roberts):]

Two things. Open source means that basically if you’re a computer expert—not like me or you—you can go into the model and you can work out how it works, and you can get all the programs and algorithms out of it, and you can build your own model or use it for free. The models that the American companies are selling like Anthropic and OpenAI are not open source; you have to pay large amounts of money if you want to get control of that model—it’s proprietary and to use it.

Also, that means that Chinese companies, but not just Chinese companies, but other open-source companies in France and in other parts of Europe can sell their time when you go and prompt an AI model. You buy a token to use something in your business or for your information, and they can sell their tokens at virtually nothing at all because they’re not really charging any money for the source models that they’ve produced. This undercuts the position of OpenAI and Anthropic dramatically. They’ve had to reduce their charges for tokens, as they’re called in this business, for information and algorithms that companies can use in their businesses.

So there are two things here. Companies can set up their own open-source models to use in their companies; they don’t have to use OpenAI or Anthropic maybe, and also they can use the Chinese models or the open-source models very cheaply. So as you correctly say, this may improve the productivity of companies that are buying these things and using them, but it means that the profitability of the existing AI companies and the people who have made all these investments and loans to them may not be delivered as a result.

[Speaker 1 (Zoe):]

And you know, just before we let you go, I wanted to ask you one last question. It feels like we’re kind of on a precipice here, as you’ve laid out in terms of this bubble. What—of course you don’t have a crystal ball, neither do I—what should we be looking for in terms of triggering events which could change the current situation? It feels quite tenuous right now. What should people be paying attention to in terms of reports or things that could change this balance that you describe?

[Speaker 2 (Michael Roberts):]

Well, this boom, this bubble, if we want to call it that, could continue for another year, maybe longer—can’t be sure. So that’s why actually we can’t be sure. But what we should be looking for, for example, is if there’s suddenly a downturn in the demand to build more data centers, or if the share issue that Anthropic is making in November turns out to be a bit of a dud—they don’t raise the money they expect to do so, or if they raise the money then the price of the shares afterwards drops sharply. That would indicate a lack of confidence in the possibility of these AI models delivering what they claim they can deliver over the next few years. And if they don’t start changing the levels of productivity—if companies don’t adopt these AI models, and sometimes that can take a long time before they get round to doing it, putting it through their own companies and using it in an effective way—if that takes a long time, in the meantime all this money is being spent and it’s not getting a return, we will begin to see a fall in the profitability prospects for those companies and a withdrawal by the investors about making more investments. We see that beginning to happen. That tells you that the turn towards a bust from a boom in the AI stock market and elsewhere is beginning to happen. So it really depends on all of us, all the workers, company owners—not us, but—to embrace this for it not to be a boom-and-bust.

So at the moment they are embracing it. Don’t worry there, if you go into the mainstream media, it’s going to be fantastic. And I hope they’re right in some ways. We don’t want massive numbers of jobs to be lost, we don’t want a huge decline in output or people’s incomes because of this bust. But as we know in the history of capitalism, in the history of stock markets, that’s what happens quite often. And the example at the very beginning of the show when you showed the railway mania that happened in the 19th century, that collapsed before we got the railways; the dotcom bubble collapsed in the early 2000s, then we got the internet. This time we could have a huge AI bubble that collapses. We may still be left with artificial intelligence machines afterwards that we can use, but it’s going to be at a cost to us all, not only in the US, but across the world.

[Speaker 1 (Zoe):]

Well, Michael Roberts, thank you so much for joining us here on BT Live. Definitely recommend to anyone who’s watching, please check out his piece, follow his blog; you will thank us later. So, Michael, thanks for being here.

[Speaker 2 (Michael Roberts):]

Thanks for having me.

On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong stood in Tiananmen Square and declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China, bringing an end to the “Century of Humiliation” and setting a nation representing a quarter of humanity on a path toward self-determination. Seventy-seven years later, China stands as a global superpower, navigating a rapidly shifting multipolar world order and escalating containment pressures from the United States.

Professor of East Asian and global history Dr. Ken Hammond joins Amanda Yee to break down the historical, economic, and geopolitical forces that have shaped modern China’s development and foreign policy over the past 77 years.

Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Brett McGurk, and the rest of the Biden team that armed and abetted Israel’s genocide in Gaza landed cushy jobs at think tanks, universities, and on cable news. Dr. Annelle Rodriguez Sheline, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute who resigned from the State Department over Gaza, joins Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra to talk about accountability in Washington.

As a new “Drop the Genocide 20” campaign pressures institutions to shut the revolving door, Sheline unpacks why Kamala Harris is missing from its list; why her own colleagues urged her to go public with her March 2024 resignation; and why higher-ups like Samantha Power never walked out, despite literally having written the book on genocide. Trump’s suppression of the Palestine movement, Sheline argues, was enabled in the Biden era, when Washington believed it could kill the normal human reaction to watching a livestreamed genocide by rebranding criticism of Israel as antisemitism.

From Bush to Obama to Biden, Sheline describes a bipartisan culture of impunity that lets officials behind foreign policy catastrophes recycle themselves into the next administration. And in the Epstein files era, Americans have had enough.

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Polls ahead of Brazil’s 2026 presidential election on Sunday point to a likely runoff between Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, son of convicted coup plotter and longtime Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro. Stephanie Weatherbee Brito of the International People’s Assembly joins Zoe Alexandra and Rania Khalek from São Paulo to unpack what’s at stake in Latin America’s most consequential election this year.

The mobilization that drove Lula’s past campaigns has cooled, Weatherbee Brito explains, under the narrative that his Workers’ Party (PT) is bringing Brazil back to normal. But peoples movements across the country are frustrated. She breaks down Flávio’s links to the Banco Master scandal – and explains why they may not be enough to bring him down in a tight race likely to be decided by annulled votes. And with brother Eduardo lobbying the White House from Florida for sanctions against Lula’s government, Weatherbee Brito says US interference in the election is a given:

“I do think that if Lula loses this election, it effectively marks the end of an era for the PT. Of course the United States is invested in that outcome.”

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Is Ukraine becoming an “Eastern European Israel” for the EU? Sociologist and author Volodymyr Ishchenko joins Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra to discuss Ukraine’s eroding sovereignty, who profits from keeping the fighting going, and whether an off-ramp still exists to a war with Russia now costing Ukraine 27,000 casualties per month, according to Poland’s prime minister.

Europe is pushing record defense budgets and warning that Russia could test NATO within months. But this month Ukraine launched its largest drone attack yet on Moscow, Washington approved a $2.68 billion air defense sale, and the EU unblocked €6.6 billion in military aid. Is Europe readying to defend itself from a Russia with imperialist ambitions? Or preparing for a forever war, where profiteers abound and working-class Ukrainians do the fighting and dying at the direction of a state they’ve come to hate?

Ishchenko describes an emerging vision for Ukraine amongst Kyiv’s power brokers: a militarized, ethnonationalist frontier state serving as outsourced security for the European Union against Russia. Sound familiar? 

“Maybe NATO at this point is not an alliance for security, but actually a source of insecurity in Europe.” 

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The Trump administration’s assault on the ICC isn’t just about protecting Netanyahu from war crimes prosecution. It’s about preserving “imperial impunity” – Israel’s just “the smokescreen,” says Noura Erakat, professor of criminal justice and Africana studies at Rutgers University and human rights attorney. She traces Washington’s bipartisan refusal to ratify the Rome Statute to explain why the International Criminal Court has spent two decades indicting mostly African and Arab leaders. The 2024 warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant just show the court “between a rock and a hard place”: finally give up its legitimacy entirely, or face destruction by the US.

Now more than a dozen ICC judges, prosecutors, and the court’s president have been sanctioned, as Washington reportedly prepares sanctions against the entire institution, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling it an “intolerable threat” to US sovereignty. Can the court survive a war with Washington? Should it? And why do Global South states stay invested in a court that’s clearly stacked against them?

Plus: Erakat describes her arrest at a Palm Beach County budget hearing on their $1 billion-plus investment in Israel bonds; warns that Gaza’s Board of Peace could become a blueprint to replace the UN; and explains why she believes, even as public opinion on Palestine shifts, “there’s no way to be safe in this moment by hiding.”

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Can the United Nations be saved? Should it be? As world leaders and war criminals gather for the 81st session of the UN General Assembly in New York, Vijay Prashad, executive director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, says that despite today’s gangster rule by the likes of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the UN Charter still sets the standard for judging powerful states, making it “the most important treaty document that the world has ever had” – even with the institution built on it in shambles.

Prashad slams Secretary-General António Guterres’s failure to get “creative” to end the genocide in Gaza or to stand up to Trump on Iran, instead opening a free lane for the US president who has “put a loaded gun on the table and has threatened the world.” 

After the US denied visas to the Palestinians for a second year and heavily restricted Iran’s delegation, Prashad makes the case for moving the high-level UNGA out of the US: “New York doesn’t deserve it anymore,” he says, offering alternatives in Geneva or Nairobi. “Let’s move it to the Global South. Why not?”

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Chinese President Xi Jinping “holds all the cards” as he meets with Trump on Thursday, says Amanda Yee, host of BreakThrough News’ The China Report. She joins Zoe Alexandra and Rania Khalek to break down Xi’s first White House visit in 11 years. 

With Trump facing a massively unpopular war on Iran, surging inflation, growing resistance to ICE terror – and with US midterms weeks away – Washington wants quick deals it can sell as big wins. But Yee says Beijing is playing a longer game, with massive implications for the global future. Take AI: Washington’s Pax Silica forces allies to pick sides, while Beijing’s open model is available to all and centered on the Global South. Two systems, representing “the choice that’s in front of the world right now.”

Despite a stated pivot away from China as a military priority, Yee points to Latin America and Iran as proxy fronts where the Trump administration continues to target Beijing. Meanwhile the military encirclement of China continues, from US bases in South Korea, Okinawa and the Philippines, to Japan’s remilitarization and expanding war games like RIMPAC and Freedom Shield. 

But Yee says “the Cold War on China is a bipartisan affair.” From TikTok to Huawei to BYD, she traces the pattern of trumping up national security threats to mask efforts to protect US companies from competition. It’s all part of the same Red Scare targeting BT News, subpoenaed by the House Ways and Means Committee in an effort to paint anti-war voices as Chinese assets.

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Why is Pakistan’s military so afraid of Imran Khan? With Islamabad on lockdown and 35,000 additional troops deployed to stop the September 27 march in support of the imprisoned ex-prime minister. Junaid S. Ahmad, professor of religion and world politics and director of the Center for Study of Islam and Decoloniality, tells Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra the 2022 US-backed regime-change operation meant to neutralize the country’s most popular politician instead gave rise to a movement bigger than Khan himself: a new opposition coalition, TTAP, including the left-wing Awami Workers Party, as Khan’s PTI party has shattered the army’s legitimacy in Punjab.

Ahmad says Pakistan, under military rule in all but name, has become “nothing less than a police state.” Its only legitimacy, he says, comes from Washington and Rawalpindi, the home of the army’s headquarters. And with past demonstrations ending in massacres and the Shehbaz Sharif-Asim Munir regime telling hospitals to prepare for a “mass-casualty event,” Ahmad explains why this Sunday’s march has gone global, with solidarity protests planned from Washington to London to Kuala Lumpur, and why Khan refuses to call it off, even as his sisters and wife are jailed.

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