Tag Archives: politics

Resistance builds to the “epidemic of billionaires”

by Jim Hodgson

Back in the 1980s, a spike in global interest rates sparked a “third-world debt crisis” (yes, at the time, that is what we called it). The crisis became a shock-doctrine opportunity to strengthen a harsher form of capitalism, one that came to be called “neo-liberal economic globalization” or simply neoliberalism or globalization. Governments weakened themselves, cut taxes on wealth and on corporate profits, eased health and environmental protections, and capital became ever more transnational.

We are now more than four decades into neoliberalism. The economic crisis of 2008-09, when banks were rescued instead of people, further widened the gap between the ultra-rich one-per-cent and everyone else.

A decade of Trump and his cronies in power has produced what British writer Craig Murray calls “an epidemic of billionaires.” It is they who are now trying to force a form of transnational corporatist fascism on the rest of us.

In France, high school students lead protests

In North America, it takes some effort to get past mainstream narratives about recent student protests in France, Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Riots! Violence! Palestinian flags!! U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance blamed immigrants for France’s troubles.

But let’s dig deeper to find out what is really going on.

“Young people are asking for one simple thing: resources to get an education and access to quality studies,” writes French economist Thomas Piketty. He argues that the government of President Emmanuel Macron has presided over a “catastrophic and unprecedented 20% drop in the budget per student since 2017.”

Think here of what you might have seen in the 2019 film, Les Misérables. Not the musical, but the drama about suburban Paris riots in 2005 that was France’s nominee for best international film at the Oscars. Recommended viewing!

While the government’s budget for education increased from €13.3 billion to €15.5 billion between 2017 and 2026 (up by 17%), inflation over the same period was 22%. And the number of students rose from 2.6 million to over 3 million, an increase of 15%. The result, according to Piketty, is that the budget per student dropped by about 20%:

“Reinvesting in these sectors [education and health] today is not simply a matter of equality between regions or social classes. It is also a key issue in moving further toward the gradual de-commodification and dematerialization of the economy, and, beyond that, to building a different model of development. Let us hope the current movement helps put these issues at the heart of the upcoming elections.”

What do cuts to education budgets mean to students? Matthew Fox of Catholics for the Common Good writes:

“The French student protests began on a small scale in mid-September, in high schools in the poorer suburbs of Paris. Their complaints ran from timetables and class sizes to a shortage of teachers and classrooms that had overheated during the summer’s heat waves, and by early October some protesters were attacking police and school staff. On Oct. 17, a national day of protest against the cost of living drew 550,000 people by the Interior Ministry’s count and 800,000 by the CGT unions.”

Fox goes on to describe responses from church leaders and organizations in France and also Italy, where similar protests grew. On Oct. 5, 12 days before the riots, France’s Young Christian Workers, the Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne, a Catholic Action movement founded in France in 1927, issued a statement supporting the high school protests. The JOC objected to media coverage showing “une jeunesse qui casse et qui brûle,” a youth that smashes and burns, and it quoted a student in Nantes who criticized protesters who come only to break things. Relying on police intervention alone, the movement argued, signals decision-makers unwilling to negotiate.

(The JOC organizes about 6,000 young people between 13 and 30 from working-class families and neighbourhoods. It belongs to the Catholic Action movement of the Belgian priest Joseph Cardijn and his method of See, Judge, Act – and influential in the development of liberation theology since the 1960s.)

On Oct. 19, the presidency of the French bishops’ conference condemned the violence, expressed solidarity with injured officers and looted shopkeepers, and prayed that the students’ “just demands be heard and taken into account.”

Similar protests also took place in Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, and Albania. And in Serbia, what began as a student movement became a representative political movement and won the recent election.

Ana María Aragonés, a French-born specialist in migration law who teaches at Mexico’s national university UNAM, wrote in La Jornada Oct. 19 that protest by growing social movements in Europe is a sign of growing recognition that the existing economic and political order no longer serves most people, be they students, seniors, immigrants, renters and workers. “Discontent touches ever wider sectors of European societies,” she writes.

“Could these social movements represent the beginning of a rupture with the nationalist and xenophobic discourse that for so long has served to divide workers and to preserve the privileges of capital? Could they open the possibility of a convergence between social movements in the Global North and South, not because their conditions are identical, but because they face the same root causes?”

In the United States and Canada, and indeed throughout the Americas, the moment feels a bit different. The urgent feeling now is to defeat Trump and his allies across the hemisphere, as Brazilians did in elections last week and as U.S. voters did Tuesday.

But at some point, we have to see that Democrats in the U.S. and Liberals and Conservatives in Canada have facilitated the same transfer of wealth to the top one-per-cent. Can we learn to see past the daily political headlines to discern the signs of the times that might propel us toward more profound change?

U.S. interference mars Latin American elections

by Jim Hodgson

As I write, Colombians and Peruvians await confirmation of a victor after presidential election day results proved too close to call.

Like mid-term elections in Argentina last October and the Honduras election in November, Colombia’s vote was marred by overt U.S. interference. 

On June 21, Colombians had to choose between a progressive human rights defender, Iván Cepeda, and a far-right political new-comer, Abelardo de la Espriella. Cepeda would continue current President Gustavo Petro’s commitment to achieving peace with several armed groups that have so far resisted joining a prolonged peace process.

As Colombians headed for the polls, I received an email from Dayana Mosquera, Colombia consultant at Global Exchange: 

In recent days, foreign figures have openly inserted themselves into Colombia’s campaign. 

It began in Washington. President Trump posted his “Complete and Total Endorsement” on Truth Social, and de la Espriella answered on X, casting the two countries as “sister nations” bound to defend Western civilization. A chorus followed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whom de la Espriella met privately this year, said Washington would be “very forceful in guaranteeing” a free and fair vote. U.S. Representative María Elvira Salazar urged Colombians to rally behind him.

It did not stop there. Beyond Washington, de la Espriella has secured the unconditional support of other leaders including Presidents Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, José Antonio Kast of Chile and Argentina’s Javier Milei, who interpreted the result as a rejection of the “failed socialist model” and said the forces of freedom across the region were watching and lending their support. From Madrid, Vox leader Santiago Abascal said Colombians could recover the “sovereignty taken from them.” 

Each framed it the same way: as a defense of Colombia’s freedom and even its sovereignty. 

That is the contradiction at the heart of this election. Sovereignty and freedom are not gifts foreign politicians can hand a country by meddling in its vote. They are the very things such interference denies. Nor is this happening in isolation. 

Since Trump reshaped American politics, a familiar style has spread: elections become contests to be won by any means, opponents are cast as enemies, and institutions are treated as obstacles. That style is no longer staying home. It is carried across borders by a networked right, by officials willing to amplify it, and by compliant allies in the region eager to satisfy Washington for their own gain. This weekend, Colombia is where the line is drawn.

Next target for the far-right will be Brazil, where presidential elections are set for October.

Crime and the far-right backlash

In Peru, voters have waited since June 7 for a final result. Keiko Fujimori – daughter of a former dictator – faced Roberto Sánchez who served as foreign minister under former president Pedro Castillo, elected in 2021 but forced from office in December 2022. 

Like Castillo, Sánchez wears a traditional hat popular in rural parts of Peru. He says his hat serves as “the expression of all hats and of the diversity” of Peru. His economic proposals differ from the “market-friendly,” neo-liberal policies applied in recent decades by most Peruvian leaders. He has said he would renegotiate contracts with mining companies, saying that the state should collect more taxes. He has also said that rural communities should own a share of the mines operating in their territory and that he opposes open-pit operations.

Fujimori ran on a law-and-order platform, promising to deploy the military in prisons and on borders. In Peru, where extortion has increased fivefold in the past five years, the approach won votes, as it did in February in Costa Rica in February. Shaken by higher levels of drug-related killings, Costa Ricans chose conservative Laura Fernández for her tough-on-crime platform. 

To an extent, these right-wing politicians draw inspiration (and slogans) from El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, another Trump ally. His heavy-handed security strategies have seen tens of thousands of young men imprisoned without due process, and have targeted environmental protectors (the Santa Marta 5) and human rights defenders like Ruth López Alfaro.

Proposals from the centre and left for community violence prevention programs, better police training, and prison and judicial reforms, show results over years. But the right uses crime as an emotional rallying cry. Their short-term security strategies promise to make people feel safe soon. They come with a high price to human rights and democracy, but to people who live with real fear on a daily basis, those values seem abstract. 

Meanwhile, another right-wing strong man, Daniel Noboa, holds power in Ecuador, neighbour to Peru and Colombia. A week ago, he declared a new 60-day state of emergency across ten provinces and several additional municipalities on Tuesday, suspending constitutional rights and authorizing security forces to conduct searches of private homes without a judicial warrant when organized crime is suspected. His decree came shortly after a meeting at the Pentagon with U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to discuss joint military operations.

Trump officials, including his ambassadors, insist on such joint operations, often with the threat of acting unilaterally if governments do not comply – and the example of U.S.-government-sponsored killings of more than 200 people in aerial attacks on small boats in international waters that are alleged (without evidence) to be carrying illegal drugs.

As a result, the centre-left government of Guatemala declared a state of emergency to crack down on gang violence this year and welcomed Trump’s “help” targeting drug traffickers.

In Mexico, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was found to be working hand-in-hand with the conservative government of the northern border state of Chihuahua – without the knowledge of the federal government – after two agents were killed in a car crash. As that scandal exploded in Mexico, the U.S. government launched indictments against the governor and other officials of Sinaloa state, and sought their extradition. 

In an editorial, La Jornada newspaper described these events as “heavily charged acts of political interference, compounded, to top it off, with an implicit threat.” 

"Another World is Possible," World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brasil (2005)

The old order is dead. Let’s make a new, more just order.

by Jim Hodgson

It was too much to hope that the well-heeled audience at Davos would boo Donald Trump from the stage a day after they had offered Mark Carney a standing ovation. But by the end of Wednesday, it seemed that the wall of resistance to any U.S. take-over of Greenland was successful, and the president backed down. An important victory.

Still, “la rupture de l’ordre mondial” of which Carney spoke remains. And he’s right: we shouldn’t mourn it. The international financial institutions invented in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, gave overwhelming power to the rich countries of the Global North. 

And the United Nations system that followed, with a veto given to each of the five most powerful countries, has protected their interests – even in the face of overwhelming contrarian votes in the UN General Assembly. Think, for example, of the annual vote to end the cruel U.S. blockade of Cuba.

That order was designed by the nations that existed at the end of World War II, especially the colonial or neo-colonial states of Europe and the Americas. Most of the Caribbean, Africa and large parts of south Asia were still under colonial rule. That order imposed and perpetuated a Global North-based order on all the new nations that were born in the 25 years or so after the war: the majority of nations that exist today.

And that order, at least in the eyes of three of the five veto-holders, effectively imposed capitalism as a synonym for democracy. The United States and its allies were satisfied with a sort of formal democracy, a certain alternance between parties of the right and centre-right, and if that failed, then a military government was a useful interlude until the real order could be re-established and markets were safe. 

Canada would “go along to get along,” as Carney admitted. 

Just as it did less than three weeks ago when the United States bombed Venezuela and kidnapped its president. And just as it has for more than two years over Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

In his speech, Carney seemed to offer a vision of capitalism without the now-erratic United States. It’s still reliant on resource extraction, military spending, and massive capital investment.

But if we are all to grow and thrive, we must demand more. We require an end to practices that exploit social inequities and our shared ecology. 

Alternatives

Because of the paths on which my life has taken me, one that is especially close to my heart is the call from the Indigenous people of Zapatista communities in southern Mexico for “a world with room for all” – “un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos.” But other visions come from other places, including three decades of gatherings of the World Social Forum.

More than 50 years ago, the majority world united behind a vision of economic decolonization, sovereign development, and international cooperation across areas such as debt, trade, finance, and technology. That vision became known as the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and was adopted by the UN General Assembly. But, power relations being what they are, it was never implemented. (Progressive International put together a set of reflections that trace its history and update the proposals for the 21st century.)

In March last year, the World Council of Churches and several global communions of churches repeated their call for a New International Financial and Economic Architecture (NIFEA). “It is immoral that over a billion people – half of them children – subsist in poverty whilst billionaires increased their wealth by over 15% in 2024 to US$15 trillion. It is outrageous that the richest 10% of the global population receives more than half of global income, whereas the poorest half earns merely 8.5% of it,” they said in a statement.

They expressed deep concern about “a rapidly escalating climate and biodiversity emergency that jeopardises livelihoods and poses an existential threat to all life.” It notes that “several tipping points are close to being crossed or have already been crossed, leading us to recognise that we may be beyond a point of no return.”

The old order is dead. The time in which we are living demands we do better.