Tunisians take to the streets again to demand an end to the genocide being committed in Gaza by Israeli occupation forces.
Israeli media rumour: “It is expected in the coming days that the Netanyahu government will announce the conclusion of the operation in Rafah and the end of the war in its current form”
Tunisia saw on Sunday mass popular demonstrations outside the US embassy, in support of Gaza and in rejection of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Strip, amid demands for the expulsion of the American ambassador and the closure of the embassy.
Since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, Tunisians have been continuously taking to the streets and staging sit-ins to raise their voices in support of the Resistance and to demand an end to the genocide being committed in Gaza by Israeli occupation forces.
تظاهرة من أمام السفارة الأميركية في #تونس للمطالبة برحيل السفير الأميركي وغلق السفارة فيها
Salaheddine al-Masri, the chairman of the Tunisian League for Tolerance, told Al Mayadeen that the Israeli occupation would destroy itself if it dared to confront the Lebanese Resistance, as evidenced by the United States sending messages to the Israeli entity not to open a front with Lebanon.
Al-Masri also hailed Yemen’s stance, which, according to him, “humiliated” both the Israeli and American armies.
He emphasized that the steadfastness of Palestinian women was the greatest message and slap in the face to the international community, pointing out that inaction toward violations committed by Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian women is a disgrace to the Arabs and humanity.
Elsewhere, the chairman of the Tunisian League for Tolerance pointed to the elderly Palestinian woman who was attacked by the Israeli occupation forces and their dogs during a night raid on her home in the Gaza Strip.
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Israeli media rumour: Netanyahu is currently in discussions with senior military leaders regarding ending the operation in Rafah and the dramatic change in the nature of the war Israeli media: It is expected in the coming days that the Netanyahu government will announce the conclusion of the operation in Rafah and the end of the war in its current form
Voter turnout in the French legislative elections reached 59.39% at 5 pm local time, compared to 39.42% in 2022: Al Mayadeen’s correspondent
Israeli media: 9 army soldiers were injured, 3 of whom are in serious condition, as a result of the explosion of a drone in the Golan Heights launched by Hezbollah
The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon announced targeting the military workshop of the Beit Hillel occupation base with a Falaq rocket, directly hitting it and destroying a part of it
Israeli media: This year, 900 officers with the rank of captain and major requested to be discharged from the army
Ernst Albrecht with his beloved “Röschen.” [Source: welt.de]
Her father Ernst Albrecht, President of the German state of Lower Saxony from 1978 to 1990, brought unrehabilitated Nazis into his administration and carried out a black terrorist operation designed to discredit the left-wing Red Army Faction.
In the wake of the Russo-Ukrainian war, terms like “European values” have come back into the mainstream. One of the people who has been most responsible for this is Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission who is now a nearly omnipresent figure in the media.
According to Ursula, “European values” represent only the highest attributes of humankind: freedom, justice, solidarity, and rule of law.
Ursula shoveled nearly half a billion euros into the coffers of CIA linked McKinsey and others for “consulting” services, and received absolutely nothing in return.
Of course, anyone with even a passing knowledge of history can tell you that these are nothing but euphemisms. Not long ago, “European values” meant something very different.
Those values drew the borders of the world in oceans of blood, both of Europeans and those they conquered.
A look at the history of Ursula’s aristocratic European family can show us the true face of these “European values” and how the ruling class profited from imposing them on the world.
“If we succeed in bringing people of above-average capabilities to governance an autocracy or the rule of the few will be able to create a better order than the rule of the people.” – Ernst Albrecht
Ursula von der Leyen is the scion of two aristocratic German families. She was born Ursula Albrecht, the daughter of a prominent European bureaucrat, CDU party leader, and former governor of Lower Saxony, Ernst Albrecht.
The family carefully nurtured a cosmopolitan image as Ernst spent most of his life working for the EU and various precursor organizations. Growing up, Ursula was nicknamed “Röschen” (Rosie in English) by her father, and images of the happy family featured heavily in her father’s political advertisements.
The Albrecht family made its fortune by using its position as customs enforcers in the Holy Roman Empire to dominate the cotton markets of 19th-century Bremen and, from there, the name Albrecht has been a fixture throughout German history.
As is typical for bourgeois Germans, the otherwise exhaustively documented history of the Albrecht family has a mysterious gap between 1936 and 1945.
To avoid uncomfortable questions about where their power and money came from and what they did to earn it, the House of Albrecht, like so many others, is content to pretend the Nazi regime simply never existed.
Since we will never have answers, perhaps if we raise a light to what surrounds this void, the shadow it casts can show us the true shape of the “European values” Ursula is so fond of.
To begin, we can look at Ernst’s first job in politics, with the European Coal and Steel Commission under the direction of another aristocrat, Hans von der Groeben.
Hans was already a long-time bureaucrat by this point. During the war, he worked as a deputy for the Reich Ministry of Agriculture under the command of Richard Walther Darré.
Darré was a fanatical Nazi, writing his first fascist propaganda in 1926 and joining the Nazi Party in 1930.
He soon joined the SS and his loyalty and dedication to the cause led Heinrich Himmler to personally select Obergruppenführer Darré as head of both the SS Race and Resettlement Office and later the Reich Department of Agriculture.
Darré was one of the party’s leading ideologists, and he combined the tasks of the agricultural and race offices to set the foundation for Generalplan Ost, the Nazi plan to exterminate the entire Slavic race and colonize Eastern Europe.
Darré was the architect of the Nazi “blood and soil” agrarian policies and sought to create a new land-owning “Aryan” aristocracy.
He passed laws requiring an “Aryan certificate” to inherit farmland and was instrumental in Nazi eugenics programs, particularly the Lebensborn program, designed to breed a new generation of “Aryan” supermen and purge the German people of “undesirable bloodlines.” Darré shaking hands with Hitler. [Source: collections.ushmm.org]
One of his most promising acolytes was a doctor by the name of Josef Mengele who was put in charge of “racial health” policies within the department. Mengele would later go on to become the infamous angel of death who carried out some of the vilest crimes in history with his industrial-scale medical experiments at Auschwitz concentration camp.
Mengele, known to the CIA as Helmut Gregor. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Mengele particularly targeted children as his victims and kept them alive for months to gain as much data as possible. He never forgot where he came from: Mengele always cited Darré as inspiration for his ideas on “racial hygiene.”
Some of Mengele’s victims after their liberation by the Red Army. [Source: bbc.com]
After the war, Mengele escaped justice by fleeing to Argentina and later Brazil on the “rat lines” operated by CIA agent, future head of West German intelligence and unreformed Nazi Reinhard Gehlen and was protected under the personal order of CIA Director Allen Dulles, who viewed Mengele as a useful ally in his war against the USSR. Mengele died a free man in 1976 and was buried under the name Wolfgang Gerhard in São Paulo, Brazil.
Darré was proud of his work. He wrote thousands of pages outlining his plans in various publications, and routinely gave speeches inside Nazi Germany promoting his ideas.
“By blitzkrieg…before autumn…we shall be the absolute masters of two continents…a new aristocracy of German masters will be created….[With] slaves assigned to it, these slaves to be their property and to consist of landless, non-German nationals…we actually have in mind a modern form of medieval slavery which we must and will introduce because we urgently need it in order to fulfill our great tasks. These slaves will by no means be denied the blessings of illiteracy; higher education will, in future, be reserved only for the German population of Europe…” – Richard Darré
Together with Hans von der Groeben, they implemented what was known as the Hunger Plan to feed the Reich at the expense of conquered territories.
Millions of slaves worked on starvation rations, forced to send every morsel of food to the Reich where it would be used to quite literally sustain the Nazi machine which oppressed them.
By 1944, more than 15 million tons of foodstuffs had been requisitioned from the USSR, and this led to the intentional deaths by starvation of more than 10 million people.
According to Darré’s plan, after they had been all been sterilized and starved to death, the Slavic “Untermensch” was to be replaced by Darré’s new race of “Aryan” aristocrats, ready to use this land for the benefit of the Reich.
After the war, Darré was arrested and tried for war crimes at Nuremberg. He was found guilty, but despite the scope and scale of his crimes, he received a sentence of only seven years.
He served just three of them and was released in 1950. He died of liver cancer in 1953. While this sentence was shockingly lenient, it could have been worse. Hans von der Groeben never saw the inside of the courtroom.
A squatter, who goes by the name of Leaf, 28, relaxes in an empty former youth centre that is now occupied by squatter activist group Reclaim Croydon, in Croydon, South London. [Hannah McKay/Reuters]
A new leap in already Extortionate Rents has pushed million of Britons to the edge of Homelessness.
In the shopping streets and housing estates of the South London town of Croydon, some once-derelict buildings are slowly coming back to life.
People walk past a homeless man on a high street in Croydon. London Councils, an umbrella group representing the capital’s local authorities, said the number of people presenting as homeless increased by 14.5 percent in the year to September 2023, with more than 175,000 homeless and living in temporary accommodation. The cost of providing temporary housing in hotels, hostels or house shares rose by almost 40 percent last year to 90 million pounds ($113.54m) a month, London Councils said. [Hannah McKay/Reuters]
At a former school, peeling walls are getting a new coat of paint, and laundry hangs on a line to dry. Over at a disused youth centre, there is laughter in the gymnasium-turned-dormitory, and a vase of purple flowers decorates a scrubbed kitchen counter.
A child watches TV from his highchair in the space where he lives. The Reclaim Croydon collective has taken over disused commercial premises to provide beds for the homeless, saying it is providing a community-based solution to a broken housing market. [Hannah McKay/Reuters]
The Reclaim Croydon collective, a squatters group, has taken over disused commercial premises to provide beds for the homeless, saying it is providing a community-based solution to a broken housing market.
“The government is failing homeless people,” one of the youth centre’s new occupants, who goes by the name Leaf, told Reuters.
Zin, 47, paints a wall in an area used as a common room of the place he lives, which was once a school and is now occupied by Reclaim Croydon. [Hannah McKay/Reuters]
Britain has long lacked enough housing, but a 22 percent jump in private rents in England over the last five years has left growing numbers of people struggling to find anywhere to live. Housing routinely appears in the top five issues that pollsters report as the most important for voters ahead of Thursday’s general election.
The high rents and unaffordable house prices have meant people in their 20s or 30s are still living at home with parents or in house shares. At the most acute end, growing numbers are sleeping on the streets and in empty buildings, official figures show.
Squatters eat an evening meal together in a room used as a common room in the place where they live. [Hannah McKay/Reuters]
Studies have found that ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected, with a 2022 report published by the Centre for Homelessness Impact charity showing that Black people were more than three times as likely to become homeless as white people in England.
Both Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives and the main opposition Labour Party have pledged to tackle the housing crisis by building more homes.
Housing campaigners have long argued that local councils should also utilise some of the roughly 700,000 vacant homes in England as a cheaper and faster solution.
An external view of a former solicitors’ office, an empty building which Reclaim Croydon formerly occupied before they were evicted, is seen on a high street in Croydon. [Hannah McKay/Reuters]
“We’re seeing more and more councils saying that temporary accommodation budgets for people that they theoretically have a legal duty to house are literally bankrupting them,” Chris Bailey, campaign manager for the Action on Empty Homes charity, told Reuters.
KFARHAMAM, LEBANON – MAY 08: A view of damage after Israeli air strike hits Kafr Hamam town in Hasbaya district in southern Lebanon on May 08, 2024.(Photo by Ramiz Dallah/
The Israeli army wants to impose a buffer zone on the border with Lebanon approximately 100 kilometers long. It is doing so by devastating the forests and vegetation cover with phosphorus bombardment, as an even hotter summner begins..
Amnesty International has confirmed that Israel is using white phosphorus, an unconventional weapon, in its bombardment of southern Lebanon.
Tel Aviv justifies itself by saying that it is destroying shelters used by Hezbollah for its military operations against its residents.
In December last year, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati raised his voice. “Large areas of Lebanon are subject to a regression of environmental conditions due to continuous Israeli attacks,” he warned.
Israel was defeated by Hezbollah in 2006 in Southern Lebanon and ever since the military have been screaming for revenge. In recent months, the strong Lebanese resistance has systematically destroyed dozens of radar stations, night vision cameras, infrared sensors, long-range communications towers, telescopes antennas inside Israel. This makes all Israel a target if war breaks out, including Jerusalem and the main Haifa port.
Hezbollah’s policy has left many Israeli bases unprotected, and forced a mass evacuation of up to half a million Israeli colonizers. Frustrated by failure to eliminate Hamas or complete the Genocide in Gaza the now unhinged extreme rightwing military/ regime is crying out for blood, threatening to “bomb Lebanon back to the stone age” and ‘devastate Beirut like Gaza‘.
It remains to be seen whether the Israeli dominated neocon US regime, which has bankrolled the ongoing Gaza genocide, will provide the billions of dollars necessary and risk a wider world war, spreading to Russian backed Iran, and even China.
“Constant Israeli attacks, including the use of banned white phosphorus weapons are killing civilians and causing irreversible damage to more than 5 million square meters of forests and agricultural land, in addition to having damaged thousands of olive trees,” the Lebanese prime minister claimed.
The situation is deteriorating as the days go by. The NGO Save the Children even fears a humanitarian crisis affecting tens of thousands of families in southern Lebanon, who were left without livelihoods after Israeli army fire destroyed more than 47,000 olive trees as well as other crops during their harvest.
Israel white phosphorous attacks on Lebanon are harming people and ecosystem… More than 92,600 people have been displaced from their villages in south Lebanon by the attacks, according to the IOM.
Four-year-old Merve has serious burns on her body due to phosphorus used by Israel on Gaza, according to doctors, shown here being treated at El Arish Hospital in El Arish, Egypt on November 15, 2023 [Burcu Calik Gocumlu/Anadolu via Getty Images]
With eight hundred hectares of land completely devastated, 340,000 head of livestock dead and about 75 percent of farmers destitute, Prime Minister Mikati warns that southern Lebanon risks becoming an “agricultural disaster zone.”
This part of Lebanon is famous for the production of citrus fruits, olives and tobacco in particular.
It is an area more than 100 kilometers long, stretching from Naqura to Mount Hermon and the hills of Kfar Shuba, and at a depth that exceeds an average of 6 to 7 kilometers.
More than eight months of war have left at least 458 people dead in Lebanon, including some 90 civilians and nearly 300 Hezbollah fighters.
Since the beginning of the Gaza war, in solidarity with the Palestinian people, Hezbollah has periodically exchanged fire with the Israeli army.
Israel believes that the Lebanese resistance movement uses the vegetation cover adjacent to the Lebanese border to conceal its military operations.
In addition, Israeli shelling targeted several southern regions, killing two people, including a Hezbollah fighter, and sparking large fires on Saturday.
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Since October 7, all eyes have been on Hezbollah. The Zionists know that if it makes a false move in Gaza, the various factions of the Axis of Resistance, and first and foremost Hezbollah, will be confronted.
Hamas spokesman Abu Obaida says in a statement posted on social media that his organization had captured several Israeli army soldiers during an ambush in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip. Members of the Palestinian organization lured an Israeli unit into a tunnel in Jabaliya refugee camp and ambushed it.…05.06.2024
Hezbollah attacked 15 sites in Metulla yesterday with anti-tank missiles and Shlomi Eldar, Israeli correspondent for Channel 13, confesses that the protectiles are a significant threat because Israeli warning systems are unable to detect them. Israeli media acknowledge that Hezbollah’s missiles, which are aimed beyond Israel’s border, have intensified and…14.12.2023
The recovery of a species that was on the brink of extinction is very good news, but these measures and efforts should have been applied to other species, such as the wolf, and this was not done. This is why it became extinct only a decade ago in Andalucia. In other parts of Spain wolves are making a comeback and soon they may return to the south.
Ecologistas en Acción publicly shows its satisfaction with the increase in lynx populations that has led to their transition from endangered to vulnerable, although trhis should not lead to triumphalism that coukld relax protection measures.
Now it is the turn of the wolf, the great predator of the Mediterranean forest that became extinct in Andalusia just a decade ago
The Iberian lynx has gone from less than 100 individuals at the beginning of the century to more than 2,000 this year. The success of the species conservation program is good news, the result of cooperation between public administrations, research centers and environmental associations.
Citizens have become more aware of the importance of conserving our biodiversity and the lynx has been a symbol.
But not all is rosy in the recovery of lynx populations.
There are shadows that should not be ignored if we want greater success and for the lynx to once again be present throughout Andalusia, fulfilling its important ecological function: balancing ecosystems, keeping other generalist predators such as the fox at bay, and controlling the number of rabbits where they can pose a problem due to overabundance.
One of the weaknesses of the lynx recovery program is its excessive dependence on captive breeding to compensate for deaths from unnatural causes, such as run-overs on trails and roads which is the main cause of death, and deaths from gunshots.
Another weakness is the lack of rabbits in the spaces where the habitat is most conducive to the conservation of the species. The rabbits are still decimated by involuntarily introduced diseases, which is why supplementary feeding is required to conserve lynx populations.
Paradoxically, the Andalusian Government continues to approve hunting emergency orders due to the abundance of rabbits in many agricultural regions, allowing rabbit hunting during the closed season due to alleged damage to agriculture.
The future of the lynx will not be guaranteed until its dependence on these policies is broken. To do this, it is necessary to expand the habitats in which the species can thrive, including agroforestry spaces such as riverbanks and livestock trails in agricultural environments, where lynxes have guaranteed food.
To do this, these public domain spaces must be renaturalized in their entirety, and thus provide refuge and reproduction areas for the species.
The recovery of a species that was on the brink of extinction is very good news, but these measures and efforts should have been applied to other species, such as the wolf, and this was not done, which is why it became extinct only a decade ago in Andalucia.
The recovery of predators in the Mediterranean forest must be a priority objective in Andalusia, as it will allow the ecosystems to be rebalanced, control the populations of wild boars and feral pigs, reduce the expansion of epizootics and even carry out positive selection of their prey, as opposed to the selection by hunting activity.
The Iberian wolf population has increased in Spain by 26% since 2014, although made extinct in Andalucia.
The Pyrenean bear population is consolidated with 83 specimens… Apr 4, 2024
The Pyrenean bear population continues to consolidate with a total of 83 specimens detected in the mountain range in 2023, four more than the previous year.
According to provisional figures, 16 cubs have been born to a minimum of 11 bears, the highest number of litters since the reinforcement began..
Some ‘Farmers’ oppose protection of fauna despite compensations
“La recuperación de una especie que estuvo al borde de la extinción es una muy buena noticia, pero estas medidas y esfuerzos se deberían haber aplicado a otras especies, como el lobo, y no se hizo, por lo que hace tan sólo una década se extinguió en Andalucía.
Ecologistas en Acción muestra públicamente su satisfacción por el aumento de las poblaciones de linces que ha motivado su paso de peligro de extinción a vulnerable, lo que no debe llevar a triunfalismos que relajen las medidas de protección.
Ahora le toca el turno al lobo, el gran depredador del bosque mediterráneo que se extinguió en Andalucía hace tan sólo una década.
El lince ibérico ha pasado de menos de 100 ejemplares a principios de siglo a superar los 2.000 este año. El éxito del programa de conservación de la especie es una buena noticia, fruto de la cooperación entre las administraciones públicas, centros de investigación y asociaciones ecologistas. La ciudadanía ha tomado conciencia de la importancia de la conservación de nuestra biodiversidad y el lince ha sido un símbolo.
Pero no todos son luces en la recuperación de las poblaciones de linces. Perviven sombras que no se deberían obviar si se quiere que el éxito sea mayor y que el lince vuelva a estar presente en toda Andalucía, cumpliendo su importante función ecológica: equilibrar los ecosistemas, manteniendo a raya a otros depredadores generalistas como el zorro, y controlando el número de conejos donde puedan suponer un problema por sobreabundancia.
Una de las debilidades del programa de recuperación del lince es su excesiva dependencia de la cría en cautividad para compensar las muertes por causas no naturales, como los atropellos en pistas y carreteras, su principal causa de muerte, y las muertes por disparos.
Otra debilidad es la falta de conejos en los espacios en los que el hábitat es más propicio para la conservación de la especie, diezmados por las enfermedades introducidas de manera involuntaria, por lo que se precisa alimentación suplementaria para conservar las poblaciones de linces. Paradójicamente, la Junta de Andalucía sigue aprobando órdenes de emergencia cinegética por abundancia de conejos en muchas comarcas agrícolas, permitiendo la caza de conejos en periodo de veda por supuestos daños a la agricultura.
El futuro del lince no estará garantizado hasta que no se rompa su dependencia de estos artificios. Para ello se precisa ampliar los hábitats en los que la especie puede prosperar, entre ellos los espacios agroforestales como son las riberas y las vías pecuarias en entornos agrícolas, en los que los linces tienen comida garantizada. Para ello hay que renaturalizar estos espacios de dominio público en su integridad, y así facilitar zonas de refugio y reproducción a la especie.
La recuperación de una especie que estuvo al borde de la extinción es una muy buena noticia, pero estas medidas y esfuerzos se deberían haber aplicado a otras especies, como el lobo, y no se hizo, por lo que hace tan sólo una década se extinguió en Andalucía.
La recuperación de los depredadores del bosque mediterráneo debe ser un objetivo prioritario en Andalucía, pues permitirá volver a equilibrar los ecosistemas, controlar las poblaciones de jabalíes y cerdos asilvestrados, reducir la expansión de epizootias e, incluso, realizar una selección positiva de sus presas en contra de la negativa que realiza la actividad cinegética.
Apr 4, 2024 La población deosos del Pirineo sigue consolidándose con un total de 83 ejemplares detectados en la cordillera en 2023, cuatro más que el año anterior. Según las cifras provisionales, han nacido 16 crías de un mínimo de 11 osas, el mayor número de camadas desde que comenzó el refuerzo
Anarchists in Southern Brazil on the Floods of May 2024
In the first days of May 2024, the territory known as Rio Grande do Sul in so-called Brazil suffered the biggest climate catastrophe in its history.
More than a week of intense rain caused several rivers to overflow, wrecking dozens of cities and destroying everything in their path, before flowing into the Guaíba River, causing the biggest flood ever recorded in the Greater Porto Alegre region.
By June, 171 deaths had been confirmed. Thousands of people lost everything; 614,000 were rendered homeless; over two million were impacted. The force of the waters erased entire cities from the map. More than 90% of the industry of the state of Rio Grande do Sul was flooded.
This is the greatest economic and structural damage a climate event has ever caused in Brazil. Reckoning by the number of people affected and the material damage, the tragedy already surpasses the destruction that Hurricane Katrina inflicted on New Orleans in 2005.
The state and the capitalist mode of production are directly responsible for the devastation of the planet. They have cut down forests to make way for cattle, monoculture, and mining, degrading the soil with urban expansion. They are producing more and more catastrophes like the one that struck Rio Grande do Sul. Amid all the horror, we see the complete failure of the ruling class to care for our lives and our environment.
The Municipality of Lajeado after the waters of the flood receded.
At the center of this tragedy, anarchists, Indigenous communities, quilombos, and social movements have been organizing solidarity efforts as they try to rebuild their lives and their territories—soliciting and distributing donations, calling for joint efforts for cleaning and reoccupying affected properties, and organizing new occupations of empty buildings to house those who lost their homes.
Here, we explore how capitalists and the state have taken advantage of the catastrophe and how grassroots movements have responded to it, and present an interview with anarchists impacted by the flooding.
If you are dismayed or inspired by what you read here, please considering supporting anarchists in southern Brazil here as they address the ongoing impact of the floods.
The State
Whenever a “natural” disaster strikes, we see once again that the priority of the state has never been to protect our lives. For decades, the Brazilian government ignored warnings about the dangers of environmental destruction and climate change and failed to take effective measures to prevent catastrophes like this. On the contrary, it played an active role in the destruction—sometimes at a slower pace, sometimes devouring the land voraciously.
This contempt for life and hatred of nature was blatant in Bolsonaro’s neo-fascist government. But even social democratic regimes, including progressive governments involving parties like the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party, or PT), contributed heavily to global warming, relying on the automotive industry, oil extraction, and other energy sources with a high environmental impact to boost economic growth.
In 2015, during the tenure of the PT’s Dilma Rousseff, scientific reports warning that climate change would cause floods were shelved as “too alarmist.”
At the state and municipal levels, the government’s continuous negligence has an immediate impact on our lives. Despite threats from one weather system after another, the governor and mayor did not develop adequate evacuation plans or warnings.
They did not even invest in the most minimal steps to protect the population. The current governor, Eduardo Leite (from the right-wing Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, Brazilian Social Democracy Party, or PSDB), shredded the state’s environmental legislation in order to favor businesspeople and reduced investments in Civil Defense during his government.
Confronted by journalists, Leite tried to justify this by claiming that “There are these studies that, in some way, warn, but the government also has other agendas.”
In Porto Alegre, the dam floodgates that protect the city failed due to lack of maintenance and closing errors. This became even more serious because the last administrations of Porto Alegre city hall had scrapped the DEP (Department of Storm Sewage), the body responsible for the system of dikes, floodgates and pumping stations that protect the capital of Rio Grande do Sul against floods, which imposed further demands on the DMAE (Municipal Department of Water and Sewage). According to experts, the city would not have flooded if the system had been properly maintained and managed.
Making matters worse, the mayor of Porto Alegre, Sebastião Melo, only decreed water rationing after 85% of the city was already without access to drinking water.
The populations of some neighborhoods were only notified that the pumps that prevented the flooding of their homes had been turned off after the fact, giving them no time to evacuate.
The Impact of Capitalism
The capitalist mode of production is the cause of climate shifts that threaten all life on earth. At the same time, the corporations and executives that profit from it are doing very little to mitigate the suffering of the population. In this case, if anything, they have made the situation even worse.
The capitalists failed to keep the supermarkets that were still operating stocked. Since they were interested in making a quick profit on people’s despair, they allowed those with money to buy up all the available water and supplies.
At the same time, dozens of stores were flooded while they were still filled with food, water bottles, and other essential items for the population, which had been locked inside under the protection of police and security guards armed with rifles—who had formed paramilitary groups to prevent hungry people from accessing food or other resources destined to rot in water.
The corporations and the state were more interested in protecting these goods than saving the lives of those who needed them, even if the items were bound to be discarded and compensated for by insurance companies.
flooded prison… Imagem do Complexo Penal de Charqueadas inundado em 4 de maio de 2024 | Foto: Divulgação/Susepe
A civil police officer shoots in the direction of a person suspected of looting a supermarket in Porto Alegre.
By Gilberto López y Riva | La Jornada In Mexico, a democratic transition does not take place with the collapse of the state party regime, upon the arrival of Vicente Fox to the Presidency of the Republic. There is a rotation of State parties, in which there is systemic continuity, a mere replacement of political […]
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