On the eve of the momentous mid-term elections that will, whatever the result, help to determine no less than the fate of the world, the prosecution (and perhaps the outcome) of the defensive war again Putin’s aggressive Russians, the existential pursuit of freedom in Ukraine and everywhere else, the contours of the hegemonic contest with China, and whether our democracy remains secure, there have been several notable positive not-to-be-overlooked global developments.
Brazil
In Brazil, as we wrote on Nov. 1, (#113, “Brazil’s Important Triumph over Trumpist Fascism”) President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva narrowly defeated incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro (the self-anointed “Tropical Trump”), and was promptly congratulated by Presidents Biden, Emmanuel Macron, and many other world and South American heads of state and heads of government.
Brazilians worried that Bolsonaro would refuse to accept the result. But after two days of dead silence, he authorized the necessary transition to a successor administration. (Lula will take office on January 1.) But what was especially significant (American deniers please note), Bolsonaro further instructed those who were protesting in his name, blocking roads, and threatening insurrection, to go home. “Please desist,” he told supporters. Blocking roads was an “illegitimate form of protest.”
Bolsonaro said: "I know you are upset... Me too. But we have to keep our heads straight. "I want to make an appeal: clear the roads," he said, adding that blocking roads "obstructs our right to come and go, which is in our constitution". If only Bolsonaro’s sensible words resonated with the 2020 election deniers and bomb-throwers who will be elected tomorrow!
Ethiopia
Another unexpected and equally positive development took place in South Africa. Representatives of the government of Ethiopia and the Tigrayan military forces that have been engaged in deadly internecine warfare for two years agreed on a sustainable truce; former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, with African Union and South African assistance, persuaded both sides to cease fighting, thus potentially mitigating one of the planet’s more devastating humanitarian crises. Already 600,000 Tigrayans have lost their lives; another 2 million or so were at risk of starving before the two sides halted their assaults.
Yet, the full details of the agreement have not been revealed; we do not yet know if Ethiopia has agreed to permit the World Food Program and other relief organizations to deliver food and medical supplies to Tigray unimpeded. The Tigrayan army will, according to the truce agreement, disarm. It has not been disclosed whether the Ethiopian army will do the same, and if the Amhara vigilantes who have also been warring against Tigray will cease shooting. Most of all, nothing that has emerged from the peace conclave in South Africa tells us that Eritrea, Ethiopia’s cross-border partner in the war to punish and subdue Tigray, has also committed to withdraw back within its national confines. Without assurances of complete freedom from attack, Tigray is bound to defend itself again.
Grain Shipments
Starving Somali should now continue to receive vital wheat, barley, and corn exports from Ukraine. Putin first cancelled the shipments, threatening to obstruct sailings from Odesa and other Black Sea centers. Then he suspended them. Finally, Turkey and the UN convinced him that his image and Russia’s standing in the world would suffer less if he relented.
About 9 million tons of Ukrainian grain has already been exported. Another 10 to 12 million tons is ready to be dispatched, with a new harvest about to be reaped. Allowing vessels to steam unimpeded (but inspected) gives Ukrainians necessary cash but – more importantly – sustains the 10-12 million persons in the Horn of Africa who (as I wrote recently --#110, “Desperate Days in the Horn of Africa,” Oct. 27) are already food insecure and in imminent danger of starving. Somalia, for one dramatically affected country, is refusing officially to declare that famine has hit, but aid agencies know that it has, and implore the world to pay attention and provide vast amounts of foodstuffs so that fewer people die.
Now some very bad news to counter the good:
Ukraine
Putin’s armed forces are hardly holding their own on the southern and eastern fronts, but he and his generals are committing war crimes right and left every night by effectively destroying the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine. Kyiv may consequently be forced to shut itself down and send 3 million cold and power-short inhabitants to more livable cities in far western Ukraine. An evacuation of the capital is being discussed.
What all of this Putinesque action means for the war in Ukraine is pressure where he can exert it and make it hurt so that Ukraine and the troubled West might be compelled to sue for peace – on his terms. Additionally, by attacking the soft underbelly of Ukrainian life, he satisfies his right-wing pro-war supporters at home, especially those like Ramzan Kadyrov, the insatiably despotic dictator of Chechnya, who have been criticizing the conduct of Russia’s war and Putin and the competence of his generals.
I and others have written many times already that the Pentagon and President Biden need, especially now, to cease curtailing the Ukrainian military’s ability to hit back. If what is left of the electricity generating capacity of Ukraine, and the ability to pump water and sewage, is to be secured, Ukraine (or the U. S.) must destroy the missile launching pads and Iranian drone bases that are the source of all of the recent successful destruction of Ukrainian facilities.
President Biden has so far refused to retaliate so as not to provoke Putin. But the war has crossed a perilous Rubicon and either Washington should immediately clear the skies over Ukraine itself or give Ukraine the means and the go ahead to take out Putin’s launch sites. Otherwise, life in Ukraine will hardly be worth sustaining (a result on which Putin is depending).
Our Elections
The Republic has always endured in the past, despite those who attempted with some success to undermine our fragile democracy in the 1917-1921 era, during the Great Depression, and in the re-baiting 1950s. But now those who revel in conspiracy and alternative facts will be elected. Liars will become representatives and senators, and the big deceit man may even declare another presidential run to attempt to thwart prosecution by the Department of Justice and others.
Even if the Democrats somehow hold their own in key states, the political atmosphere has been so deeply poisoned by those who feign belief in unreal and untruthful realities that these United States are deeply at risk of denying democracy and failing to learn the Bolsonaro lesson that no good can come from incessant polarization. There are too few Republicans willing or able to purge their own party of deceit and deception.
At a time when Ukrainians are being pummeled by a consummate narcissistic troll and Africans are suffering nutritional failure, Americans will be voting in their millions for candidates concerned only with pleasing another kind of unprincipled troll.
Out of despair, perhaps, may come enlightenment and a plan to take the planet and our own country back from those who would destroy it, and us. After the brutalities of an Apocalypse, just possibly, we will be able to find our way back to a place of truth and integrity.
The Know Nothing party of the 1850s were also a bunch of anti-Catholic conspiracist wackos.
Linda Agerbak