Lula Wins

Countercurrents | October 31, 2022

After enduring lawfare , jail, and persecution, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was once again elected president in Brazil.

Former president Lula da Silva has clinched victory over his right-wing rival Jair Bolsonaro in a tightly contested second round of Brazilian election on Sunday. The country’s election authority announced Lula’s victory with 50.90% of the vote to Bolsonaro’s 49.10%.

At 00:18 (local time) this Monday, October 31, the Superior Electoral Court of Brazil confirmed on its website the closure of the count in one hundred percent of the 472,075 polling stations open in the country for the second round of the elections in which the presidency was defined.

The website of the Superior Electoral Court reported an attendance at the polls of 79.41% (124,252,796) of voters and an abstention of 20.59% (32,200,558). 118,552,353 valid votes (95.41%), 3,930,765 invalid votes (3.16%) and 1,769,678 blank votes (1.43%) were counted.

President Lula!

Thousands took to the streets to celebrate as Lula, the candidate of the Workers’ Party of Brazil, defeated Jair Bolsonaro in one the most crucial elections in the country’s history

Peoples Dispatch | October 30, 2022

Thousands took to the streets of Brazil to celebrate as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT) was elected president on Sunday, October 30. With almost 50.9% of the votes, Lula, a trade unionist who was also president from 2003-2010, defeated incumbent Jair Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party who got around 49.1% in the run-off election. Lula is set to be in office from 2023-2027.

The second round of the presidential election was held after neither candidate managed to obtain the necessary 50% plus one vote in the first round held on October 2. Elections were also held for the post of Governor in 12 States. Around 156 million Brazilians were eligible to vote.

The results mark a remarkable comeback for Lula who just a few years ago was in jail on corruption charges which were later overturned. His campaign for this election was driven by the left, people’s movements, trade unions, and radical and progressive forces across the country.

Defeated, Bolsonaro isolates himself, cancels interviews and does not respond even to close advisors

“Bolsonaro doesn’t want to receive anyone,” aides say after Lula’s presidential election victory

Brasil de Fato | October 31, 2022

Caption: Ex-captain left his official residence, the Alvorada Palace, to travel to Granja do Torto—Flickr/Beto Barata

President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, who was just defeated in the elections, isolated himself after the confirmation of the victory of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on October 30. The former captain canceled a press statement at the Alvorada Palace, in the capital of Brasília, right at the beginning of the vote count.

According to Globo, “Bolsonaro does not want to receive anyone.” The report continues, “ministers and deputies who tried to visit him this Sunday after the results of the polls were informed that the president does not want to see anyone at this time, not even his closest allies.”

The World Rejoices Over Lula Da Silva’s Victory in Brazil

teleSUR | October 31, 2022

Lula da Silva, Brazil, Oct. 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @LuchoXBolivia

On Sunday, governments and citizens of Europe, Africa, Asia and America enthusiastically experienced Lula da Silva’s victory in the presidential elections.

His presidency will mark Brazil’s return to international collaboration for the resolution of common problems such as the struggle against climate change.

UNITED STATES: President Joe Biden greeted the Brazilian democratic process just 40 minutes after Lula’s victory in elections that he described as “free, fair and reliable.”

SPAIN: President Pedro Sanchez said that Brazilians have decided to “bet on progress and hope” and that he will work with Lula “for social justice, equality and against climate change.”

How the World Bank weakens health systems

Health researchers Natalie Rhodes and Remco van de Pas discuss about the nature and limitations of the World Bank Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response fund.

Peoples Dispatch | October 31, 2022

Natalie Rhodes, PhD candidate at University of Leeds, and People’s Health Movement, along with Remco van de Pas, researcher at the Centre for Planetary Health Policy, and People’s Health Movement discuss in detail about the implications of the newly established World Bank fund for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response and the Bank’s other policies pertaining to public health.

Ecological Civilization, Ecological Revolution

An Ecological Marxist Perspective

John Bellamy Foster

Monthly Review | 2022, Volume 74, Number 05 (October 2022)

Aerial photo taken on Sept. 18, 2020 of Dihua, an ancient town in Danfeng County, Shangluo City of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. Dihua ancient town has attracted many tourists with its well protected ecological environment, rich history and unique folk customs. Source: “China to adhere to green development, advance ecological civilization: position paper,” Xinhua, September 21, 2020.

This is an adapted version of a lecture delivered to the John Cobb Ecological Academy in Claremont, California, on June 24, 2022, on the topic of ecological civilization. It was intended to follow up on the Fifteenth International Conference on Ecological Civilization,” held in Claremont on May 26–27, 2022. The talk, which was delivered to a largely Chinese audience, was followed by an extensive interview conducted by Chinese ecological Marxist scholars, entitled “Why Is the Great Project of Ecological Civilization Specific to China?,” which is being published simultaneously as a Monthly Review Essay at MR Online. Both the lecture and the interview are being co-published by the Poyang Lake Journal in China.

I would like to speak to you today about the connections between ecological civilization, ecological Marxism, and ecological revolution, and the ways in which these three concepts, when taken together dialectically, can be seen as pointing to a new revolutionary praxis for the twenty-first century. More concretely, I would like to ask: How are we to understand the origins and historic significance of the concept of ecological civilization? What is its relation to ecological Marxism? And how is all of this connected to the worldwide revolutionary struggle aimed at transcending our current planetary emergency and protecting what Karl Marx called “the chain of human generations,” together with life in general?¹

The Euro Without German Industry

Michael Hudson | October 04, 2022

The reaction to the sabotage of three of the four Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in four places on Monday, September 26, has focused on speculations about who did it and whether NATO will make a serious attempt to discover the answer. Yet instead of panic, there has been a great sigh of diplomatic relief, even calm. Disabling these pipelines ends the uncertainty and worries on the part of US/NATO diplomats that nearly reached a crisis proportion the previous week, when large demonstrations took place in Germany calling for the sanctions to end and to commission Nord Stream 2 to resolve the energy shortage. 

The German public was coming to understand what it will mean if their steel companies, fertilizer companies, glass companies and toilet-paper companies were shutting down. These companies were forecasting that they would have to go out of business entirely – or shift operations to the United States – if Germany did not withdraw from the trade and currency sanctions against Russia and permit Russian gas and oil imports to resume, and presumably to fall back from their astronomical eight to tenfold price increase.

Michael Hudson: A roadmap to escape the west’s stranglehold

Pepe Escobar

THE CRADLE | October 06, 2022

It is impossible to track the geoeconomic turbulence inherent to the “birth pangs” of the multipolar world without the insights of Professor Michael Hudson at the University of Missouri, and author of the already seminal The Destiny of Civilization.

In his latest essay, Professor Hudson digs deeper into Germany’s suicidal economic/financial policies; their effect on the already falling euro – and hints at some possibilities for fast integrating Eurasia and the Global South as a whole to try to break the Hegemon’s stranglehold.

That led to a series of email exchanges, especially about the future role of the yuan, where Hudson remarked:

“The Chinese whom I’ve talked to for years and years did not expect the dollar to weaken. They’re not crying about its rise, but they are concerned about flight capital from China as I think after the Party Congress [starting on October 16] there will be a crackdown on the Shanghai free-market advocacy. Pressure for the coming changes has been long building up. The spirit of reform to rein in ‘free markets’ was spreading among students over a decade ago, and they have been rising in the Party hierarchy.”

China: Xi’s third term – part one: growth, investment and consumption

Michael Roberts Blog | October 16, 2022

China’s Congress of the Communist Party takes place this week.  This is an important event not only for China, but globally.  The Western media have concentrated on the fact that current party leader Xi Jinping will be confirmed for an unprecedented third term as party leader and thus also continue as President of China when the National Congress meets next March.

Naturally, the Western pundits are strongly opposed to Xi having a third term.  The FT’s Keynesian guru, Martin Wolf reckoned Xi’s continuation in power would ‘dangerous’ for China and the world. “It is dangerous for both. It would be dangerous even if he had proven himself a ruler of matchless competence. But he has not done so. As it is, the risks are those of ossification at home and increasing friction abroad… Ten years is always enough.. It is simply realistic to expect the next 10 years of Xi to be worse than the last.”  And apparently, that has been bad enough.

China: Xi’s third term – part two: property, debt and common prosperity

Michael Roberts Blog | October 18, 2022

In part one of my analysis of China’s economic future, I dealt with the claims that China would slow towards stagnation because its investment rate was too high, the working population was falling fast and the economy needed to become like mature Western capitalist economies based on consumption-led growth.  I argued that the Western capitalist model was hardly great shakes, given its regular and recurring crises and the much lower levels of consumption growth.  Anyway, in an economy, consumption does not lead investment and national output.  On the contrary, it is investment that leads in capitalist economies just as much as in China.