Portuguese Climate Activists on Trial Represent the True Spirit of April 25

In the coming days we will see many celebrations of April 25, the 50th anniversary of the Portuguese revolution. They will be fiercer in the face of the rise of a far-right project in Portugal, but will still far removed both from the revolt against the burden that dragged the people down until 1974, and from the profound transformation achieved at that time. On the eve of the 50th anniversary, 11 climate activists from Climáximo will be in court for standing up to stop the war on society that is the climate crisis. What and how will we celebrate?

"April 25 always, fascism never again," is the slogan most often hurled in recent times, both at the authoritarianism of a police force now intertwined with the far right and at the parliamentary manifestation of the international far right in Portugal called Chega ("enough"). It would be inspiring if these words were more aspiration than remembrance, but it is more part of a ceremony than a collective yearning for the future. On the 50th anniversary of the revolution that overthrew Europe's longest dictatorship, fear of the future dominates those who claim to be part of the revolutionary tradition. And that's why all we hear about is defending the April Constitution, the promises of April, the achievements of April. Because in 2024 wanting and having the courage to set out to conquer much more than in 1974 is considered something for half a dozen dreamers.

On the eve of the anniversary, 11 climate activists will be tried for actions in which they denounced the war carried out by governments and companies against humanity as a whole. The climate crisis is a deliberate act by the capitalist elite in government and companies, whose effects are the death of thousands of people today and hundreds of millions in the future. Our economic system today lives in the death throes of accumulating wealth and power against the viability of society in the future.

A revolution is not, and can never be, about anything other than the future, so there is a contradiction in passively "celebrating" a revolution of the past.

The revolution in Portugal was made in a historical counter-cycle, violently ripped away from a decrepit elite that was killing a generation in a war to pretend that Portugal was still what it had never been: a project by elites who exploited slaves and raw materials from the territories they plundered, while hiring out fables of epic history, paintings and statues by talented artists who needed to not starve to death and would deliver the fantasy. After the revolution, while European countries were beginning to take the first stabs of neoliberalism, Portugal was building the welfare state at full speed to try to cure the social hemorrhages left by 48 years of a fascism so archaic that it would have been fine in the 19th century. In just a few years, public health, public education, and some essential sectors were nationalized, but soon afterward history caught up with us. Reaganism and Thatcherism would arrive a decade later through former President Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who reversed the upward redistribution of wealth and power through privatizations and liberalizations, camouflaged by the influx of the first millions from the European Union.

The romantic notion that April 25 was a non-violent revolution clashes with essential information: dozens of tanks, military vehicles, and armed soldiers on the streets of Lisbon; dozens of uprising military units across the country. They captured the regime's leading figures and dismantled the main tools of power of the Estado Novo, Marcello Caetano's dictatorship, at gunpoint. The brute force at the disposal of the military insurgents, the momentary imbalance of forces, and the decision to take risks worked in such a way that the spilling of large amounts of blood wasn't even necessary. In the few places where there wasn't an abundance of military personnel, such as the dictatorship's secret police headquarters in Lisbon, the regime counterattacked by targeting and killing the civilians who were mobilizing outside. But popular disobedience was the key factor in transforming what could only have been a well-executed coup d'état into a social and popular revolution. Those who had spent almost a lifetime obeying a dictatorship decided that enough was enough. The people disobeyed the military, didn't stay home, took to the streets, and pushed the revolution forward, much further forward than the military of the Armed Forces Movement had ever planned.

April 25 was a revolution against a war. It was a revolution against the barbarity and savagery that was killing people in Portugal and independent revolutionaries in Angola, Guinea, and Mozambique. In order to maintain this barbarity, the fascist regime from the 1920s had to resort to all the weapons of repression, keeping entire generations in line. It used the regime's incessant propaganda apparatus, imposing racist, eugenic, and conservative values to justify continued colonialism, even after the end of slavery and the rise global capitalism's demand for more markets to exploit. Years of war eroded the narrative and coercive capacity of the Portuguese fascist apparatus, and the action of the Captains' movement began what was the final blow. The future was no longer written, and what happened next was not the plan of the military or the political forces that claimed to be part of the revolution.

Once the war was over, the people set out to achieve much more than just ending a war and a regime that existed to prevent them from being free. Over the next year and a half, in the typical confusion that any revolution entails, the Portuguese people leapt 60 years in history, moving faster than ever toward a better future. It fell at the wrong time to improve people's lives, as the global capitalist elite was about to launch the biggest assault on society in its history, which has led to an even more unequal world and the first stages of environmental collapse.

The social mobilization against the war today is taking place in a context that is as adverse, if not more so, than in 1974. The dictatorship is inside our heads. Passivity and respect, obedience, cynicism and hypocrisy are inculcated incessantly, and the main argument, even from the "heirs" of the revolution, is that there are no conditions for moving forward, only for staying on the defensive. Who knew in 1974 that there were? Other attempts, such as the military-civilian Beja Revolt in 1962, had failed to topple the regime. But who even knows if there would have been a 1974 revolution without the bravery and martyrdom of 1962? Or the years of resistance by anti-fascist and anti-war militants, killed and persecuted by Salazar's dictatorship?

The legacy of the revolution can not be to dwell on what was and complain about what is. A revolution is not, and can never be, about anything other than the future, so there is a contradiction in passively "celebrating" a revolution of the past. In April 1974 everything was about the future, the doors to the new were open, while the anchors of the past were being lifted. In the enthusiasm and eagerness to move forward, many of these anchors were not picked up. That is why a far-right project can exist in Portugal today.

Fifty years later, on the eve of the anniversary of the revolution, the April Eleven, climate activists from Climáximo arrested for actions in recent months to stop a war declared by governments and companies on the whole of society, leading to climate catastrophe, are to stand trial and face jail time for disruption a war waging government and regime. It's an important political signal, not about the past, but about the future.

How will we remember 2024 in 2074? As the moment when the impossible once again became reality? Passively celebrating the revolution, or, as Zé Mário Branco used to sing, "going out into the street with a carnation in our hand without realizing that we go out into the street with a carnation in our hand at the right time," is contributing to the revolution not being part of the future?

House GOP Plays Politics With Campus Antisemitism While Enabling Islamophobia

The spirit of Joseph McCarthy is alive and well in the halls of Congress. For proof, look no further than the Republican-controlled House education committee's latest hearing focused on investigating allegations of antisemitism at American colleges and universities.

During last week's widely covered hearing, many committee members followed a predictable playbook: mischaracterize any pro-Palestinian student activism as antisemitic, ask incendiary "gotcha" questions about imaginary incidents of antisemitism, and then pressure college leaders to silence young people who advocate for Palestinian human rights.

House committee members like Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) have mastered this artform, which gives them an opportunity to go viral in right-wing media, smear pro-Palestinian students, and virtue signal that they oppose any form of bigotry even as their political party enables nearly every form of bigotry.

Until House committee members stop playing Joseph McCarthy and start taking the threat of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia seriously, no one should take their dishonest, theatrical, politically motivated hearings seriously.

Months ago, the civil rights and advocacy organization we serve—the Council on American-Islamic Relations—sent a letter to House committee members encouraging them to hold comprehensive hearings focused on not just antisemitism on college campuses, but also incidents of anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Palestinian racism.

Since then, the House committee has not made any efforts to investigate the targeting of Muslim and Palestinian students despite the fact that it keeps happening with sometimes violent consequences.

At Columbia University, pro-Israel individuals allegedly doused pro-Palestinian students with military-grade "skunk spray," the chemical weapon that the Israeli government infamously uses on Palestinian protesters and worshippers.

At Stanford University, a pro-Palestinian student was hospitalized after being intentionally rammed by a car while protesting.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a pro-Israel student ripped down posters held by pro-Palestinian students who were staging a sit-in and physically rammed his way through them.

In Burlington, Vermont, a man opened fire on three Palestinian college students walking around in public wearing the keffiyeh, paralyzing one of them and seriously injuring the other two.

In Austin, Texas, a group of young Muslims who had just attended a protest near the University of Texas were attacked by a ranting racist who attempted to rip their keffiyeh off their vehicle and yanked one of the men and out of the car, stabbing him.

And those are just incidents of violence.

Students who advocate for Palestinians have also faced discriminatory, institutional efforts to silence their voices. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attempted to shut down Students for Justice in Palestine chapters, only to backtrack when CAIR and our partners filed a federal lawsuit. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order directing schools and universities to investigate and punish students who engage in pro-Palestinian activism.

Meanwhile, numerous schools have smeared and silenced their own students without any prompting from government officials.

Most recently, the University of Southern California claimed that it had to cancel the commencement speech of its Class of 2024 valedictorian, a Muslim biomedical engineer named Asna Tabassum, due to harassment and threats of disruption from pro-Israel voices.

Don't expect any congressional hearings about those incidents from the House education committee, which appears to live in an alternate reality in which anti-Palestinian racism and Islamohphobia do not exist.

The House committee's obsession with investigating only antisemitism is especially problematic because of the difference in power dynamics at play.

Many reported antisemitic incidents on college campuses involve students peacefully expressing views that other students find offensive, while many incidents of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia on college campuses involve either outright violence or school leaders, prominent advocacy organizations, and government officials wielding institutional power to smear, doxx, and silence students.

It is also important to note that pro-Israel advocacy organizations like the Anti-Defamation League have allegedly exaggerated the number of antisemitic incidents on college campuses.

For example, the ADL's latest data labels as antisemitic any protest at which a member of the crowd chants "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"—regardless of whether the person chanting it was one person among thousands, regardless of whether the protest was Jewish-led, and regardless of the fact that activists who chant the phrase have repeatedly explained that they are calling for citizens of Israel and Palestine to live together in a single state with equal rights (whereas the Israeli government and its supporters are calling for a permanent state of Palestinian subjugation when they demand "full Israeli security control" from the river to the sea).

To be clear, bigotry is not a competition, real antisemitic incidents on college campuses have undoubtedly risen over the past six months, and any manifestations of antisemitism should be condemned. But so, too, should incidents of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia.

Here's the truth about why that isn't happening.

Polls show that Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 tend to sympathize with the plight of the Palestinian people far more than older Americans. Instead of addressing or even debating the concerns expressed by those students, many pro-Israel legislators, school leaders, and advocacy organizations prefer to silence those students by simply labeling them antisemitic.

This must end, beginning in Congress.

Until House committee members stop playing Joseph McCarthy and start taking the threat of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia seriously, no one should take their dishonest, theatrical, politically motivated hearings seriously.

The Trump-Biden Rematch Is a Stunning Image of the Decline and Fall of the USA

Let one old man deal with two others.

I turn 80 in July, which makes me just over a year-and-a-half younger than President Joe Biden and almost two years older than former President Donald Trump. And, honestly, I know my limits. Yes, I still walk—no small thing—six miles a day. And I work constantly. But I’m also aware that, on my second walk of the day and then as night approaches, I feel significantly more tired than I once did. I’m also aware that my brain, still active indeed, does forget more than it once did. And all of this is painfully normal. Nothing to be ashamed of, nothing whatsoever.

I also know from older friends that we humans can still be distinctly functional, thoughtful, and capable at age 82 (when Donald Trump would leave his second term in office) or even 86 (when Joe Biden would do the same). But honestly, what are the odds? I’ll tell you one thing that couldn’t be more obvious—not as good as for someone who’s, say, 55 or 60 years old, that’s for sure. Yes, there’s also the reputed wisdom of old age—and it might indeed make Joe Biden a more thoughtful president, were he to get a second term; Donald Trump, of course, would be Donald Trump, at 60 or 82.

And I have little doubt that, whatever age you are, you’ve been thinking somewhat similar thoughts. I mean, doesn’t the very possibility of watching a televised debate between the two of them make you anxious? After all, the oldest president to previously leave office was Ronald Reagan at 77 (and by then he may have had dementia). Before him, the oldest was Dwight D. Eisenhower who ended his second term in 1961 at 70 years old, having had a heart attack while in office. Third comes William Henry Harrison, who entered the White House in 1841 at age 68 and died, possibly of pneumonia, 32 days later. Now, it’s also a fact that we Americans are generally lasting longer than once upon a time. But is that really where you want to put your political money? I doubt it.

As one old man to two others, if only you could stand down, we could face the world we’re actually in before it becomes too late.

Still, all of the above is too obvious to belabor, so here’s a question: Are there any other implications we can draw from the upcoming battle between those two old men that’s going to grab our attention and steal the headlines for all too many months to come? The answer, I suspect, is yes. Sometimes in our world, the symbolic is all too subtle, but every now and then it impolitely smacks you in the face. And at least as far as I’m concerned, the second Biden-Trump election campaign should more than qualify in that regard.

I mean, the country that still passes for the greatest power on Planet Earth is going to set a limping age record for president, no matter who wins, leaving China’s Xi Jinping, now 70, and Russia’s Vladmir Putin, now 71, as relative youths in an all-American world of absolute ancientness. And that should certainly tell you something about the state of our country and this planet, too.

To be a little clearer about just what, let me add one more factor to the equation. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are preparing a fight to the wire to lead an America that, not so many decades ago, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was considered the “sole superpower” on planet Earth. Doesn’t that tell you something?

I think it does. I think, quite bluntly (though I’ve seen no one discussing this amid the endless media headlines and chatter about Trump and Biden), that those two old codgers offer a stunning image of the all-too-literal decline and fall of—yes!—the United States. They should make us consider where the country that still likes to think of itself as the singularly most powerful and influential one on this planet is really heading.

A World Without Peace Dividends

As you might imagine, there’s a prehistory to all of this. George H. W. Bush, president at the moment when the Soviet Union went down in 1991, had that very year ordered the U.S. military to launch Operation Desert Storm, which drove Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait. In its own fashion, it also launched what would, in the century that followed, become a set of American military operations around the globe. At the same time, with Russia in tatters and China still a modestly rising power—with, that is, no true great-power enemies left on Planet Earth—that sole superpower would do something rather surprising. It would continue to pour ever more taxpayer dollars into the U.S. military-industrial complex. Yes, there was talk then about a “peace dividend” for this country and its people, but none ever arrived.

Thirty-two years later, the Pentagon budget has almost hit the trillion-dollar mark annually, while the overall national “security” (yes, it’s still called that!) budget long ago soared well above the trillion-dollar mark. Meanwhile, in this century, George H. W. Bush’s son, elected president in November 2000, would the following September respond to the 9/11 attacks, planned and carried out by Osama bin Laden and his small terror group, al Qaeda, by launching what quickly came to be known as “the Global War on Terror.” And all too global it would be with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. It would also prove a disaster of the first order for the last superpower, whose military would leave literally millions dead across the planet, destroy countries, decimate economies, and create tens of millions of refugees, while costing this country a staggering $8 trillion and counting as, over more than 20 years, the U.S. military lost wars, while terrorism as a phenomenon only grew.

Yes, in May 2011, Osama bin Laden would be killed in Pakistan by a team of U.S. Navy Seals. Still, were he alive today, I suspect he would be pleased indeed. With next to nothing other than his personal wealth, a small crew of followers, and some hijacked airplanes, he managed to outmaneuver and outplay what was then the greatest power on Planet Earth. Thanks to the slaughter of several thousand Americans in New York and Washington, he also managed to draw this country into an endless war against “terrorism” and, in the process, turn it into an increasingly terrorized country, whose inhabitants are now, however symbolically (and, in the future, possibly far more literally), at each other’s throats.

The once-lone superpower, and now perhaps the loneliest power of all, could even be heading for previously unimaginable autocratic waters or who knows what else?

In some eerie fashion, both former President Trump and President Biden might be considered creations of al Qaeda. And so might the country itself today. I mean, could an American of 1991 ever have imagined that, in 2024, polls would show the urge for violence against fellow Americans reaching eerie highs here? Meanwhile, approximately 1 in 20 of us is now armed with a military-style AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. Even young people can now possess a JR-15 (for “junior”) child’s version of such weaponry that’s all too deadly.

Perhaps not surprisingly, AR-15s have proven the weapon of choice in the worst of the mass killings that have become commonplace in this country and, in recent years, have been distinctly on the rise. They could indeed be considered “terrorist” activities, involving as they do the repeated deaths of startling numbers of us. And all of this is happening without an American-style al Qaeda yet truly in sight. Mind you, there are now an estimated almost 400 million weapons of various kinds in the possession of American civilians, a stunning arsenal for any country, no less one increasingly divided against itself. Meanwhile, according to a recent NPR/News Hour/Marist poll, 3 in 10 Republicans (or 20 million of us) claim that “Americans may have to resort to violence to set things straight” in this country, while, on the right, militarized terror-style groups are ever more the order of the day.

Consider that a brief summary of the increasingly divided and divisive American society over which those two old men are now fighting, a domestic world that could, in the end, rip apart whatever fantasies our leaders may still have about American power on this planet.

Coming Apart at the Seams?

As was true of the Soviet Union until almost the moment it collapsed in a heap, the U.S. still appears to be an imperial power of the first order. It has perhaps 750 military bases scattered around the globe and continues to act like a power of one on a planet that itself seems distinctly in crisis. It also continues to organize for a new Cold (verging on Hot) War with China in the Pacific. That explains President Biden’s recent highly publicized “summit” in Washington with the prime minister of Japan and the president of the Philippines, just as it explains the way U.S. special operations forces have only recently been “permanently” assigned to an island only a few kilometers off China’s coast. Yes, as that recent meeting with the Japanese and Filipino leaders and those commandos suggest, the Biden administration is still dealing with China in particular as if this were indeed a Cold War moment, and the sort of “containment” of a communist country the president grew up with was still the order of the day for the globe’s greatest power.

Unfortunately, that’s truly an old man’s version of the world we now live in. I’m thinking about the planet which, each month, sets a new heat record and where, despite much talk about cutting fossil fuels, the U.S. in 2023 produced more oil (13.5 million barrels a day) than at any time in its history, while China’s coal-power capacity grew more rapidly than ever. And that’s just to start down a list of fossil-fuelized bad news. On a planet that itself looks as if it might be going to hell, amid record heat, fires, storms, and the like, the urge to put such effort into organizing alliances of nations in the Pacific (led by Washington, of course) to “contain” China in an ever more warlike fashion represents, it seems to me, folly of the first order.

This presidential campaign could turn out to be about the decline and fall of it all—and, of course, if Donald Trump (“drill, drill, drill”) ends up back in the White House that decline and fall could happen in a fashion almost beyond imagining.

It’s increasingly an illusion (or do I mean delusion?) that this country has any sort of genuine control over the rest of the planet (no less itself). And today—with those two old men, one of whom is also bizarre beyond compare, wrestling each other for the presidency—this country is threatening in its own odd fashion, like the USSR in 1991, to come apart at the seams.

It’s strange to think about just how distant the America I grew up in—the one that emerged from World War II as the global powerhouse—now seems. If you had told anyone then that more than three-quarters of a century later, there would be well-armed private militias forming in a country armed to the teeth with military-style weaponry or that one presidential candidate would already be hinting at calling out the military to subdue his opponents if he ends up back in the White House, who would have believed you? It wouldn’t have even seemed like convincing science fiction.

And yet today, the greatest country on Earth (or so its leaders still like to believe), the one that continues to pour taxpayer dollars into a military funded like no other, or even combination of others, the one that has been unable to win any war of significance since 1945, seems to be threatening to come apart at the seams. Yes, this presidential campaign could turn out to be about the decline and fall of it all—and, of course, if Donald Trump (“drill, drill, drill”) ends up back in the White House that decline and fall could happen in a fashion almost beyond imagining.

The once-lone superpower, and now perhaps the loneliest power of all, could even be heading for previously unimaginable autocratic waters or who knows what else? If only it were otherwise, but unfortunately, in the months to come, we’ll be watching as an all-American world possibly spins slowly out of control, while the leftovers of the American Century fight it out in a country where all too many of us seem focused on anything but what matters.

As one old man to two others, if only you could stand down, we could face the world we’re actually in before it becomes too late.

Trump’s Partisan Spin on TikTok

Former President Donald Trump said he wants young voters to know that "Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok." But a TikTok ban enjoys broad bipartisan support in Congress. Trump himself tried to ban TikTok as president through an executive order, but it was blocked by the courts.

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Q&A on Reducing COVID-19 Risk for Elderly, Immunocompromised

While the risks associated with COVID-19 generally have decreased over time due to prior exposure to the vaccines and the virus, some people remain at elevated risk, such as the elderly and immunocompromised. The updated COVID-19 vaccines and, in some cases, a new monoclonal antibody can provide increased protection for this group.

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House Majority PAC

A Democratic PAC focused on restoring a Democratic majority in the House.

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