In line with International Monetary Fund dictates, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government has decided to establish a state holding company to accelerate its restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
Ceylon Electricity Board workers protesting against privatisation in Colombo on January 4, 2024.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake announced the policy at a recent economic forum organised by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. He confirmed that the stock company will be listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange.
The “super-holding company,” he said, will resemble models established in countries like Malaysia and Singapore, opening the door for both local and foreign private investors. It follows Dissanayake’s budget, which was presented to parliament on February 17, and is based on implementing the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) demands.
The IMF has repeatedly insisted that the Sri Lankan government restructure its SOEs and avert a “financial burden” on the state treasury. A report issued by the IMF in September, 2023, titled Sri Lanka: Technical Assistance Report-Governance, strongly recommended the formation of a state holding company. It also called for all commercial SOEs to be registered under the Companies Act, to comply with the principles of Good Corporate Governance, and to compete with market competitors.
The previous Wickremesinghe government had already begun implementing these recommendations for SOE restructuring.
During last year’s election campaigns, President Dissanayake and the JVP/NPP cynically promised to renegotiate the Wickremesinghe government’s agreement with the IMF. Claiming it would modify some of the harsher provisions, the JVP/NPP government is now fully implementing the IMF’s austerity demands.
Forming a holding company and restructuring SOEs are part of this process, marking the first step toward the privatisation of SOEs.
On December 31, Cabinet spokesman and Health Minister Nalinda Jayatissa told a press briefing, “Our first effort is to keep these institutions under government control and make them contribute to the country’s development. If that effort fails, only then will we consider privatisation.”
On March 1, Labour Minister and Deputy Economic Development Minister Anil Jayantha stated that the government had appointed a committee to review all SOEs and decide how best to manage them without burdening the treasury and by improving efficiency.
The restructuring and privatisation of SOEs will lead to mass job losses, reduced wages and benefits for workers, as well as increased utility prices, such as for electricity and water, in order to make them “profitable” and “not a burden on the treasury.”
Following the third review of the IMF program and the release of the fourth instalment of its $3 billion bailout loan to Sri Lanka, the IMF further stressed the necessity of restructuring or privatising the country’s 430 SOEs.
As part of this process, the government has decided to amend the Wickremesinghe government’s 2024 electricity reform bill to restructure the state-owned Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB).
The Power Sector Reforms Process Committee (PSRPC) of the Power and Energy Ministry will create three state-owned companies for the CEB, which will hold shares in fully unbundled electricity generation, transmission and distribution companies instead of the previously proposed 12 companies. The finance ministry has also directed the power ministry to consult with development financiers such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank (WB).
An article published in the Sunday Times on March 9 cited a finance ministry document revealing that the ADB and WB are supporting Sri Lanka’s reform agenda through the Power Sector Reforms and Financial Sustainability Program. This focuses on restructuring the CEB and the Lanka Electricity Company (LECO), implementing electricity pricing reforms, and promoting renewable energy development.
According to the finance ministry letter quoted by the newspaper, “The World Bank and ADB will closely monitor progress, with adherence to agreed actions being critical for future budget support… Therefore, wider stakeholder consultation is recommended, including the aforementioned parties.”
The trade unions have backed these moves. Last year, tens of thousands of workers, including CEB employees, protested against SOE restructuring and privatisation. Thousands of CEB workers stopped work between January 3 and 5, demonstrating outside the CEB’s head office in Colombo.
The Wickremesinghe government responded by suspending 62 CEB employees for participating in the protest. The CEB unions, however, did not mobilise other workers to defend the victimised employees. Instead, leaders of the CEB trade union alliance, headed by the JVP-controlled Lanka Electricity Workers Union, held round table discussions with then Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekara to discuss restructuring measures, including the reduction of the CEB workforce by 5,000.
While the suspended workers were reinstated in December after the JVP/NPP government came to power, the issue of ongoing privatisation remains unresolved for CEB workers and others.
The trade unions limited protests against the Wickremesinghe government, claiming it could be pressured. They pushed workers toward the opposition parliamentary parties, including the right-wing Samagi Jana Balawegaya and the JVP, which are fully committed to implementing the IMF program.
In July last year, the JVP suppressed nearly all of its trade union protests against the IMF’s austerity measures, sending a clear signal that they were ready to implement these policies once in office. Other unions followed suit by halting any industrial action against IMF austerity. Now, they continue to support the JVP/NPP government’s efforts to unbundle and privatise the CEB.
Spain’s ruling Socialist Party (PSOE) and the pseudo-left Sumar party are finalising plans to raise military spending to 2 percent of GDP, the largest increase in military spending in history, including that under General Francisco Franco’s 1939-1975 fascist dictatorship. While this increase was planned for 2029, the PSOE-Sumar government sped up the timeline amid escalating tensions between the European powers, the United States and Russia.
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez attends a press conference after the "Support Ukraine" summit in Kyiv, Ukraine, February 24, 2025. [AP Photo/Gleb Garanich]
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has already announced his intention to bypass parliament and impose the spending increase by decree in the Council of Ministers, with the full support of Sumar’s five ministers.
On Thursday, Sánchez convened Spain’s parliamentary parties to discuss behind closed doors his plans to increase defence spending. He met with the leader of the right-wing opposition Popular Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who declared: “Europe must rearm. Spain must do so as well.” Feijóo said the PSOE-Sumar government should carry out “serious and clean negotiations” and hold a parliamentary vote to receive PP support.
Sánchez is not refusing to hold a vote due to lack of parliamentary support. The PSOE-Sumar minority government could rely on the PP to support the measure. This would however expose the PSOE’s alliance with its pseudo-left allies like Sumar and Podemos, who are implementing policies compatible with the PP. To somewhat conceal the right-wing character of their militarist agenda, the PSOE and Sumar are now trying to approve the spending hike by bypassing a parliamentary vote and imposing it by decree.
Above all, the social democrats and Sumar want to avoid any public debate. There is deep opposition to increasing defence budgets. According to the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) survey conducted in November 2024, only 14.2 percent of respondents supported the state spending “much more” on defence. This contrasted with 50 percent of the population supporting a significant increase in healthcare and 42 percent for education.
Sánchez has therefore tried to justify the increase in military spending by whipping up unfounded fears of a Russian invasion of Europe. He said:
Spain is prepared to meet the 2 percent target, out of commitment to Europe and solidarity with the countries that are asking for the same help. … Today, they are asking for that same solidarity so that together we can prevent the threat of Putin’s Russia.
These statements are absurd. After three years of war, Russia remains bogged down in Ukraine in a costly and bloody conflict. The increase of defence spending is not aimed at so-called “Russian aggression” but at preparing wars of aggression.
Sánchez also lied, claiming: “Not a single euro will be cut from social policies to meet this commitment to Europe on security and defence.” Spain is staggering under an unsustainable debt burden equivalent to 104 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Wherever its cash-strapped government initially finds the funding for its war plans, workers will pay for it through deep cuts in basic social services.
Sánchez also met with the right-wing Basque Nationalist Party leader, Aitor Esteban. Esteban pledged support for the military build-up, declaring that his party “will not engage in domestic political maneuvering on such a serious issue.” Meanwhile, the Catalan nationalist Junts party conditioned its support for increased defence spending on greater investment in the Catalan arms industry.
The Catalan and Basque bourgeoisie thus continue their long-standing support for Spanish imperialism—from the plundering of South America and Morocco in the 19th and 20th centuries to their role in securing Spain’s entry into the European Union and NATO, and their backing of US-led neo-colonial wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans, Libya and Syria. Their complicity extends to supporting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine.
Other Catalan and Basque nationalist parties are keeping the door open to supporting the measure. The Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) tried to appear critical while signaling its readiness to compromise. Although the ERC initially postured as opponents of the increase, its spokesperson, Gabriel Rufián, quickly softened his stance, declaring: “The war is here; we must be responsible and go beyond the banner.”
The Basque Bildu party issued a vague communiqué pledging to “analyse and debate the new scenario with the depth and seriousness it deserves in order to take a comprehensive position based on our own vision.”
Both ERC and Bildu have a record of supporting defence budget increases. Both backed the 2023 budget adopted by the PSOE-Podemos government, which featured what was until now the largest increase in military spending in the country’s history.
Sánchez also met with the pseudo-left Podemos party, who ruled together with the PSOE from 2019 to 2023 and still supports the government in parliament. Podemos General Secretary Ione Belarra wore a “no to war” T-shirt and said the increase in defence spending is “a catastrophic mistake.” Two days later, she said she was “deeply concerned” by the decisions of Sánchez’s government and, addressing Sánchez and other European leaders, said: “Do you like war? Let your children go.”
Podemos displays endless hypocrisy. Its supposed pacifism is nothing more than a cynical attempt to distance itself from their split-off, Sumar, to try to regain some of the support it lost while in government. In reality, Podemos is a pro-imperialist and pro-militarist party.
In government, Podemos championed military spending. With its support, the Ministry of Defense’s budget went from 1 percent of GDP (€10.2 billion) to 1.3 percent (€19.7 billion) between 2020 and 2023. In 2023, 30 percent of the PSOE-Podemos government’s investment budget was allocated to weapons.
Podemos backed NATO-led operations, recruiting General Julio Rodríguez Fernández, who commanded Spain’s forces in the 2011 NATO war in Libya. In government, it endorsed the decision to send Leopard 2 tanks and rocket launchers to Ukraine, joining in NATO’s war with Russia. It was also complicit in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Spain’s arms trade with Israel expanded under the PSOE-Podemos government, including by purchasing Spike missiles.
As Sumar has already committed to backing the PSOE’s military spending, Sánchez thanked it for “respecting commitments to Europe and standing firm in this government.”
The neo-fascist Vox party was not invited for talks with Sánchez. The PSOE attacks Vox as a pro-Trump party that undercuts plans for war with Russia and military autonomy from Washington.
If Vox has criticized calls for a European military deployment to Ukraine, it does not oppose war or militarism. It glorifies the legacy of General Francisco Franco, who led a coup and commanded fascist forces during the Civil War, massacring hundreds of thousands of workers. It also defends Spain’s colonial wars and has fielded multiple former Spanish NATO generals involved in interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the Balkans.
Vox Vice President Ignacio Garriga said it “has always defended the need to increase defence spending,” calling it not an expense but an “investment.”
The PSOE-Sumar government’s push for record military spending without public debate underscores its deep integration into the imperialist war plans of NATO and the European Union. No faction of the political establishment opposes war and militarism. PSOE, Sumar, Podemos or the Catalan and Basque nationalist parties are united in backing the Spanish bourgeoisie’s warmongering.
The Indonesian government of President Prabowo Subianto has begun to implement major budget cuts targeting education, health, infrastructure and the public service. These severe austerity measures have sparked an ongoing student protest movement across the archipelago.
Indonesian students rally against austerity measures implemented by President Prabowo Subianto, in Jakarta, Indonesia, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. [AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim]
Announced in January, the cost-cutting drive initially totaled $19 billion in cuts, ostensibly to “free up funds” to pay for Prabowo’s free meal program. The program, set to cost $28 billion annually, is aimed at providing free daily meals to 83 million schoolchildren and pregnant mothers. This populist measure was one of the central pillars of Prabowo’s election campaign and a factor in his victory last October, winning 59 percent of the national vote, amid rising poverty and malnutrition.
In order to pay for this election promise, Prabowo has taken an axe to vital public services under the fraudulent pretext of combatting “inefficiency,” seeking to emulate the policies of the Trump administration in the US.
The budgets of several government ministries were slashed. The government claimed the cuts only affect federal workers’ travel, office supplies and electricity use. The cuts, however, are significant: a 70 percent reduction for public works, 52 percent for economic affairs and 40 percent for investment. The measures have also included the scrapping of numerous infrastructure projects and impacted on building maintenance.
“I continuously demand savings, efficiency,” Prabowo said. “I demand the courage to cut down non-essential items.”
In February, Prabowo escalated this drive when the targeted cuts were raised to $44 billion, or over 15 percent of the state budget.
Undercutting Prabowo’s professed concern for schoolchildren, funding for primary and secondary education was reduced by $480 million, while the higher education ministry’s budget was slashed by 25 percent, down to $2.6 billion.
The attacks on education sparked outrage on social media among students and young people, concerned that the cuts would mean rising university fees, the cancellation of scholarships and worsening teacher welfare. This led to large student demonstrations in every major city across the nation.
The protest movement has been dubbed “Dark Indonesia,” referring to the country’s social crisis and lack of prospects for youth. The name is a reference to “Golden Indonesia,” one of Prabowo’s election campaign slogans last year.
The protests, organised by the All-Indonesian Students’ Union, were led by university student councils and convened outside city government offices, where a list of demands was presented. Rallies were held in capital city Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan, Banda Aceh, Makassar and Samarinda, among dozens of other cities.
The largest demonstration, outside the Jakarta presidential palace on February 20, drew thousands of students. Protesters brandished signs reading “RIP education,” “education emergency in Indonesia” and “the government consists of dumb people.” Protests continue to be organised, but numbers are smaller than at those in late February.
In West Papua, high school students called for free education and an upgrade to school facilities instead of free meals. They also condemned the program’s use of soldiers in distributing the free meals and growing militarisation within their schools.
Some protests escalated into near clashes with the police. In Jakarta, police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse the crowds, according to the Jakarta Post. In Surabaya, authorities reportedly used water cannon and arrested five students.
While opposing the austerity measures, students also raised broader economic and social issues: the rising cost of living, skyrocketing food and fuel prices, lack of subsidised cooking gas and growing social inequality. In that sense, the protests, although populated by students, reflected far wider anger over declining living standards.
The students’ list of demands included a reassessment of the budget cuts and the free meal program, as well as “free, scientific and democratic education” and an end to state corruption and the military’s dominant role in the government. The protests called for the implementation of “pro-people policies” to protect education, health and social welfare.
Cleorisa, 20, a protester studying at Jakarta’s National University, told the Financial Times the free meals program is “not effective because it sacrifices education… What the public needs is education and healthcare… we need proper education to get proper jobs.”
Protest leader Herianto told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “The free meals aren’t, as promised, being delivered in all areas of the country, so millions of children aren’t even receiving them… Our demands reflect how dark the social-economic situation in Indonesia is, and how hard life in Indonesia is for young people.”
The dire conditions for Indonesian youth have prompted the social media hashtag #KaburAjaDulu (“Just Leave First”), which has been circulated widely during the protests and promotes the idea of leaving the country to seek job opportunities abroad.
Unemployment in Indonesia is dominated by Generation Z, or those aged 15-24, which makes up 16 percent of the country’s increasingly young population. According to the latest official data, the unemployment rate in this age cohort was 17.3 percent last August, far higher than the national rate of 4.9 percent, and particularly high among university graduates and those with vocational college diplomas.
While it is understandable that some students may want to flee Indonesia to escape these problems, it is certainly not a solution for many students who do not have the financial means to do so. Nor is it a solution for the Indonesian working class and rural poor, who live under increasingly impoverished conditions and are bearing the brunt of the government’s pro-business austerity policies.
In response to the protests and #KaburAjaDulu, several government ministers denounced students. Deputy manpower minister Immanuel Ebenezer said, “If they want to run away, just run. Do not return, if necessary.”
Prabowo remained silent for a week after the protests began. Then, on February 25, he publicly slammed the protesters and the idea of a “dark” future, citing predictions by investment firm Goldman Sachs from three years ago that Indonesia would be the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2050.
Since coming into office, Prabowo has claimed he will boost Indonesia’s annual growth to 8 percent, up from around 5 percent currently. However, Bank Indonesia cut its 2025 growth forecast in January down to a potential 4.7 percent, pointing to a weaker economic outlook and sluggish domestic consumption.
The government recently revealed that nearly half of the funds from budget cuts, $20 billion, will be diverted to a newly launched sovereign wealth fund, called Danantara. Prabowo has said this will help reach the 8 percent growth target, and will be used to invest in lucrative projects such as food estates, renewables and the nickel industry. In other words, he has effectively taken personal control of a significant portion of the country’s assets.
Prabowo’s austerity cuts are being undertaken amid heightened global economic instability, fueled by the Trump administration’s trade war measures, aimed in particular at China. The Indonesian ruling class, as with its global counterparts, is seeking to escalate austerity and attack the living standards of the working class.
This is the agenda Prabowo has been tasked with enacting, on behalf of the financial elite he represents. He has been promoted by the Indonesian political establishment as the right person to suppress social tensions amid rising economic turmoil.
It should be remembered that Prabowo himself, a former general in the Suharto military dictatorship, was responsible for torturing and “disappearing” 22 student protest leaders in the 1998 mass protests against the Suharto regime, which collapsed amid the Asian economic crisis. That is just one element of his blood-soaked record as an operative for the military junta, personally responsible for countless atrocities. Today, he will not hesitate to use state repression as opposition towards his policies mounts.
That such a monstrous figure has returned to power is a total refutation of the notion of reformasi—that Indonesia would undergo a democratic transformation after the fall of Suharto. All the “democratic” political parties of the Indonesian ruling elite, including the PDIP, helped to rehabilitate and whitewash Prabowo as a legitimate politician.
Brazilian troops suppressing demonstration against the military dictatorship. [Photo: Arquivo Nacional]
The recent publication of a study on secret archives of Brazil’s1964-1985 military dictatorship has shed light on this fascist terror regime’s forging of a counter-revolutionary network throughout Latin America subordinated to US imperialism.
The study led by researchers from the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), the University of São Paulo (USP) carried out the first systematic analysis of 8,000 documents in the archive of the military dictatorship’s Foreign Intelligence Center (CIEX), “the regime’s clandestine foreign intelligence agency tasked with monitoring opponents worldwide between 1966 and 1986.”
A year-long effort with the collaboration of more than 20 researchers and undergraduate students gave rise to a database they have named the Latin American Transnational Surveillance Dataset. It established that more than 17,000 individuals were under the surveillance of Itamaraty, Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, over the 20 years of the CIEX’s operation. Of these, only 30 percent were Brazilian citizens.
Through clandestine methods of espionage and collaboration with the repressive agencies of local regimes, the Brazilian dictatorship used its embassies and consulates around the world as centers for the political persecution of oppositionists. This transnational surveillance system was instrumental in the imprisonment and extrajudicial execution, or “disappearance,” of an incalculable number of individuals from Brazil and other countries.
One of the study’s important conclusions is that CIEX’s activities “sequentially targeted opposition activity in Uruguay (1966-1970), Chile (1970-1973), Argentina (1973-1975) and Portugal (1976) onwards.” In other words, its actions were concentrated in countries under nominally democratic regimes, which served, at different times, as hubs for Brazilian political exiles. Participating in these criminal operations were not only Brazilian diplomats and consular officials, but also local police and military forces with whom they held extra-official collaboration.
Reflecting on the significance of their findings, the researchers state:
The finding that TS targeted a smaller proportion of nationals compared to non-nationals has serious theoretical implications. On the one hand, it challenges conventional notions of who counts as a victim of transnational state repression by highlighting the degree to which non-nationals too can suffer the extraterritorial arm of foreign autocracies. On the other, it prompts us to reevaluate the impact of autocratic state repression against dissent on international relations writ large, including how transnational political violence may affect civil liberties in an interconnected world.
As revealing as these documents are in themselves, they are likely only a limited part of the Brazilian dictatorial diplomacy’s secret archive. Those files were preserved in the basements of Itamaraty despite an order by the National Intelligence Service (SNI) during the final days of the regime to destroy the archive.
The very existence of CIEX was kept secret until 2007, more than two decades after the end of the dictatorship, when it was brought to light by a series of reports in Correio Braziliense, which had first-hand access to the archive that was transferred to Brazil’s State Archive.
“Knowledge of this hidden chapter of the dictatorship puts back diplomacy alongside the military in the dock at the trial of history,” wrote Claudio Dantas Sequeira, the author of the award-winning journalistic series.
The CIEX was founded in 1966, according to former members of the department who spoke to Correio, by a “top secret ordinance” that remains “inaccessible, confined in an immense safe located in the basement of Itamaraty.”
Brazilian diplomat Manoel Pio Corrêa, a leading agent of counter-revolution across Latin America. [Photo: Arquivo Nacional]
The creator of CIEX was diplomat Manoel Pio Corrêa, who headed the Political Department of Itamaraty from 1959 until the end of Juscelino Kubitschek’s government in 1961. In the words of Sequeira, “As the executor of Brazil’s foreign policy,” a post to which Corrêa was elevated by the military regime, “he launched a crusade against communism, convinced that it was an evil to be extirpated from society. His efficiency earned him admiration and respect in the barracks, and the nickname ‘reactionary troglodyte’ from Brazilian political asylums.”
A fact that holds a critical political lesson is that this agency of transnational persecution began to be articulated by Corrêa well before the 1964 coup.
In a memoir, he claims to have received “a precious gift” from his predecessor in the post, Odette de Carvalho e Souza, when taking over the Political Department of Itamaraty: an archive with files on Brazilian and foreign citizens involved in “subversive” activities during the previous decades. “When I left the department at the end of the Kubitschek government, suspecting, quite rightly as we saw later, what was to come under the next government,” Corrêa wrote, “I left this archive, considerably enlarged, entrusted to an officer friend, who liaised with the then Information and Counter-Information Service (SFICI) with Itamaraty.”
Working in the meantime as the Brazilian ambassador to Mexico, once the military regime was established, Corrêa was sent to the embassy in Uruguay, where the ousted president, João Goulart of the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB), lived in exile. Working to neutralize opposition activity against the coup regime in Brazil, Corrêa forged an extensive network of contacts with politicians, military officers, police delegates and judges in the nominally democratic neighboring country. “I found in the departmental police excellent sources of information and occasionally some kind of active, unofficial cooperation,” he wrote.
Appointed Brazil’s Secretary General for Foreign Affairs afterwards, a post he held throughout the military regime, Corrêa universalized these criminal methods in the creation of CIEX.
Corrêa’s consistent role as an agent of counter-revolution across Latin America, both at the head of CIEX and in his long career before that, is closely linked to the operations of US imperialism, which sponsored the 1964 military coup in Brazil.
In his memoirs published in 1976, CIA agent Philip Agee, who was in Montevideo in 1964, testified that the decision to send Pio Corrêa to Uruguay was taken by the CIA base in Rio de Janeiro, which was “determined to carry out operations against the [Brazilian] exiles.” The CIA considered Corrêa to be “the right man” since he had “demonstrated great efficiency in operational tasks for the [CIA] base in Mexico City,” during his time as ambassador.
It is a well-established fact that the Brazilian military dictatorship acted in coordination with Washington to overthrow democratic regimes and drown in blood the wave of revolutionary uprisings that swept Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.
The CIEX archives shed light on how the fascist Latin American military, aided by the CIA, forged their secret networks for joint action, preparing coups d’état and persecuting, torturing and murdering hundreds of thousands of political opponents.
The operations promoted by CIEX beginning in 1966 led to and culminated in Operation Condor, established in 1975-76. Operation Condor formalized the collaboration of the repression agencies of the dictatorships of Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia. Under the inspiration, funding and training of the CIA, it extended its clutches also to Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia and, since the end of the 1970s, with increasing intensity to the countries of Central America.
The result of these criminal operations was the transformation of the continent into a “labyrinth of horror,” in the words of Argentine author Stella Calloni. “A political exile could be kidnapped, taken as a hostage and taken across borders, tortured and disappeared, without any judicial authorization,” Calloni wrote in “Operation Condor: Criminal Pact.”
The preserved secrets and renewed relevance of military dictatorship’s crimes
Almost 20 years have passed since Sequeira reported that the official order to create CIEX remained locked away in a secret archive in the basement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At the time, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Workers Party (PT), was beginning his second term in office.
When directly confronted in 2007 by a Correio Braziliense reporter, the Foreign Ministry, headed by Celso Amorim, declared that it had “no comments to make on aspects of a past that fortunately no longer exists.”
This response, coming from a government that proclaimed itself the representative of the “left” in Brazil, generated a wave of indignation against Lula and the PT.
The organization Torture Never Again, made up of victims of political persecution by the military regime, published a letter of repudiation against the government, stating: “It is disgusting and even revolting that these archives and many others are closed to the relatives affected by state terrorism and to the general public who have the right to know their history.” Belisário dos Santos, a prominent lawyer for political prisoners during the dictatorship, said: “Our Chancellor Celso Amorim should be stunned by this, but he reacted as if he already knew.”
Even though the PT spent another 12 years in power and Lula is now in his third term as president, the Brazilian state has never acknowledged the existence of CIEX, and documents such as its founding decree remain under lock and key.
On February 24 this year, O Globo reported that it had asked the current PT government “why it never acknowledged the espionage activities,” to what “Itamaraty gave an evasive answer.” The newspaper wrote to have also asked “how many [Foreign Relations] officials were part of CIEX, its formal role in the government, the countries where it worked and we requested the full text of the ordinance responsible for its creation, which is still unknown”. The government failed to reply.
O Globo interviewed Matias Spektor, the FGV researcher who led the recent study on the CIEX archive, who explained that one of the reasons for the Brazilian state to keep such secrets is the fact that “many of the officials who worked in the repression machine continued their careers as diplomats in Itamaraty after the dictatorship ended.”
The present political relevance of this only partially uncovered “past” can hardly be overestimated.
Throughout Latin America, the military and political heirs to the terror regimes of the 1960s-1970s have once again been brought to the center of political developments.
In Brazil, two years ago, former president Jair Bolsonaro and the fascist clique that remains at the head of the Armed Forces attempted a coup d’état aimed at reestablishing a military dictatorial regime. The evidence of this fascistic conspiracy, which culminated in a mob laying siege to government buildings in Brasilia on January 8, 2023, exposes the absolute perfidy of the PT. It continues to treat the crimes of the military dictatorship and its diplomatic operatives as a “past that fortunately no longer exists.”
Police stand aside as fascists invade Brazilian government buildings [Photo: Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil ]
The PT and its pseudo-left satellites have never raised the issue, for example, that Col. Alexandre Castilho Bittencourt da Silva—one of the 23 military accused of participating in the coup conspiracy—was living in Santiago de Chile at the end of 2022, when he took part in the drafting of the “Letter to the Commander of the Army from Senior Officers of the Brazilian Army,” considered a key piece of the coup attempt.
It is known that Bittencourt commanded the Army’s 6th Police Battalion until February 2022 and left the post to pursue a post-graduate degree in Conducting Strategic Defense Policies at Chile’s National Academy of Political and Strategic Studies (ANEPE). What political relationships did he establish during this critical period?
The existence of such relations between the Brazilian and Chilean militaries has the gravest implications. Their criminal historical ties go back to the joint plotting of the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende’s government and massacred tens of thousands of Chilean workers. They subsequently led to collaboration in Operation Condor headed by the bloodthirsty dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
Parallel to the renewed ties between the Brazilian and Chilean armed forces, the extra-constitutional relations between US imperialism and Latin America’s military forces are being rapidly revived in the context of Washington’s drive to counter the growing influence of China and Russia in the region.
Washington’s offensive to violently re-establish its hegemony over the Western Hemisphere has taken on an ever more feverish pace under the new Trump administration. These efforts are directly linked to the drive by Trump and his cabinet of fascist oligarchs to impose a dictatorship in the United States, taking direct inspiration from Latin America’s bloody history.
Trump has enthusiastically announced his goal of deporting US citizens to prisons in countries like El Salvador, where the government of Nayib Bukele has erected a system of mass incarceration of the population, without due trial and under conditions of torture and the most severe human rights violations.
In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S. to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP) [AP Photo]
On Saturday, the Trump administration formally invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a major escalation in the erection of a police-state dictatorship. The White House moved immediately to deport hundreds of immigrants, defying a court order that any action be delayed.
The Alien Enemies Act, passed in 1798 under President John Adams as part of the Alien and Sedition Acts, grants the president unchecked powers to detain or deport nationals of enemy states without due process. It has been used only three times—during the War of 1812 and World War I, and, most notoriously, during World War II to justify the mass internment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans.
In every prior case, the act was invoked during a formally declared war. Trump, however, is using it to justify an entirely fictitious “war” against gangs allegedly linked to the Venezuelan government. His executive order brands Tren de Aragua (TdA) a “foreign terrorist organization,” supposedly colluding with President Nicolás Maduro to perpetrate “an invasion of and predatory incursion” into the United States.
Anyone accused of being a member of TdA is declared ineligible for legal protections under existing immigration laws. Determination of affiliation is made solely on the basis of claims by the president. That is, it asserts the right of Trump to arrest and deport any non-citizen, with no judicial process.
Perhaps even more significant than the order itself is Trump’s defiance of a judicial order blocking the deportations, issued just hours after the order’s release. Federal Judge James Boasberg ruled that the US is not at war with Venezuela and ordered planes carrying hundreds of chained and hog-tied passengers to turn back.
The Trump administration ignored this order, landing the planes in El Salvador, whose fascistic President Nayib Bukele has offered to open up the notorious Salvadoran prison system and forced labor camps to both immigrants and American citizens.
According to Axios, the decision not to turn back the planes was made by Trump’s fascist Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—on the absurd rationale that the planes were already in international airspace so the judge’s ruling did not apply.
The White House has appealed Boasberg’s ruling, with Attorney General Pam Bondi effectively accusing the judge of treason, claiming he had placed “terrorists over the safety of Americans.” Even if the courts ultimately rule against Trump, his administration has no intention of abiding by judicial directives.
The Trump administration is following a clear blueprint for dictatorship, modeled on Hitler’s fascist regime. Trump and his inner circle of fascist sympathizers are systematically demolishing legal and constitutional restraints, with each violation setting the stage for even more brazen assertions of absolute power.
The events over the weekend followed the illegal abduction of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident, who was seized from his home and transported to an immigration prison in Louisiana solely for protesting the genocide in Gaza.
The Trump administration’s crackdown will not stop with immigrants and green card holders. At its core, these actions are driven by the expectation of mass resistance from the working class to mass layoffs, deep cuts to social programs and the purge of government employees. The administration is laying the legal and institutional groundwork for the wholesale abrogation of democratic rights and the violent suppression of all opposition.
Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is tied to executive orders he signed on Inauguration Day. These same orders threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. That law—historically used to crush strikes and social unrest—would allow Trump to mobilize active-duty troops and the National Guard against protesters, strikers and political opponents, including US citizens.
Trump is acting with confidence that he will encounter no serious resistance from within the political establishment. Indeed, late last week Senate Democrats ensured passage of a spending bill to fully fund the government for the next six months.
As the World Socialist Web Site wrote, this amounted to an “Enabling Act.” In passing the bill, the Democrats knew exactly what they were doing: giving Trump a blank check to take the actions that he is now taking. They are not an opposition party but collaborators and conspirators.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, following his lying justifications for backing Trump’s spending bill, gave an extensive interview with the New York Times Sunday in which he backed the seizure of Khalil and smeared protests against the genocide as antisemitic. “If [Khalil] broke the law,” Schumer said, “he should be deported.”
What a contemptible fraud! Khalil has not even been accused of a crime. His seizure has been justified solely on the grounds that his political views are contrary to the interests of American imperialism.
In this context, the lawsuit filed on Saturday by Cornell University student Momodou Taal—along with Professor Mũkoma Wa Ngũgĩ, and student Sriram Parasurama—is highly significant. Taal, a British-Gambian graduate student, was targeted for deportation during the final months of the Biden administration for his involvement in the protests against the Gaza genocide. Now, under Trump, the same repressive measures have been vastly expanded.
The lawsuit, brought by attorney Eric Lee and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, argues that two of Trump’s executive orders targeting free speech are illegal and unconstitutional. Referencing the seizure of Khalil and others, the lawsuit declares, “Only in a dictatorship can the leader jail and banish political opponents for criticizing his administration.”
Demonstrators rally on Capitol Hill in Washington at "No Kings Day" protest on Presidents Day in support of federal workers and against recent actions by President Trump and Elon Musk, Feb. 17, 2025. [AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana]
On Friday, President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) implemented a new round of attacks on US government workers under the guise of continuing “the reduction of the federal bureaucracy.”
In a published executive action and accompanying fact sheet, the White House announced the elimination of the operations of seven long-standing federal offices “that the President has determined are unnecessary.” The shutdowns will impact the jobs of hundreds of federal employees.
The seven offices are: the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS); the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM); the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution; the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS); the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH); the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund); and the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA).
In the presidential action, Trump and DOGE advisor Elon Musk claim that the eliminations will only impact “the non-statutory components and functions” of the government entities “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
The new round of attacks on federal workers is proceeding swiftly, with the organizations being given just seven days to confirm “full compliance with this order and explaining which components or functions of the governmental entity, if any, are statutorily required and to what extent.”
Furthermore, the action states that “the Director of the Office of Management and Budget or the head of any executive department or agency charged with reviewing grant requests by such entities shall… reject funding requests for such governmental entities to the extent they are inconsistent with this order.”
On Saturday, for example, news outlets began reporting that Crystal G. Thomas, director of human resources for USAGM—which oversees Voice of America (VOA), the largest US international broadcaster, and several other US government-funded news agencies such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia—informed all full-time employees, 1,300 people, that they had been placed on administrative leave.
A report by CBS News said:
The notice was sent to all “full-time VOA employees,” including reporters and “all the way up to senior managers,” but not to contractual employees, whose contracts expire in June, a source with VOA told CBS News in a phone interview.
The CBS News report continued:
However, a second source later told CBS News that VOA personal services contractors, who are also full-time, had received the same administrative email as federal employees. As of Saturday, all employees could not access VOA headquarters in Washington, D.C. All VOA freelancers and stringers worldwide, and those with monthly contracts or assignments, have to stop working because there is now no way to pay them, the source added.
“Some VOA employees were walking to their studios when they received the notice and were told, ‘No, go home.’”
Michael Abramowitz, director of Voice of America, said in a statement, “I learned this morning that virtually the entire staff of Voice of America—more than 1,300 journalists, producers and support staff—has been placed on administrative leave today. So have I.”
The political and ideological purpose for targeting the seven entities for elimination is transparently clear. The shutdown of these agencies aligns with Trump’s extreme nationalism, attacks on democratic rights, jobs, social programs and living standards of the working class, and his defense of the wealth of the oligarchy and preparations for war.
In the case of USAGM, the existence of news agencies with any degree of independence from the White House—even those that began broadcasting in 1942 and have functioned as a primary vehicle for US imperialist propaganda internationally since the end of World War II—are deemed obstacles to Trump’s fascist and America First agenda.
A review of the origin, purpose, budgets and number of jobs at the other six entities illustrates the politically motivated attack by Trump and Musk, as well as how far the entire US political system has shifted to the right over the past five decades:
Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS)
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) was established on June 23, 1947, as an independent agency of the US government under the Taft-Hartley Labor Management Relations Act. Its primary objectives have been to promote labor-management cooperation and prevent strikes to ensure that capitalist profit-making continues without disruption.
The FMCS budget for fiscal year 2023 was $53.7 million and the office employs 218 people, including 155 full-time FMCS mediators who are stationed at 64 offices throughout the US.
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
The Wilson Center was established by an act of Congress on October 24, 1968 (Public Law 90-637). It was created as a memorial to Democratic Party President Woodrow Wilson, the 28th US President from 1913-1921. The center is part of the Smithsonian Institution but operates independently under its own board of trustees.
According to the center’s website, it is “non-partisan” and its purpose is “to help policymakers and stakeholders make sense of global developments.” It conducts research, analysis and scholarship in furtherance of the needs of US imperialism.
For fiscal 2024, the Wilson Center’s budget is $16.1 million, allocated through federal appropriations. This funding supports salaries and benefits for approximately 57 full-time employees, fellowship programs and operational expenses. The center also relies on private funding sources such as grants, endowments, and donations to supplement its federal budget.
Institute of Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is an independent federal agency established in 1996. It serves as the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums. IMLS was created to consolidate federal library and museum programs, aiming to strengthen the institutions through support and policy development.
The IMLS website states that the mission of the agency is to ensure that “individuals and communities have access to museums and libraries to learn from and be inspired by the trusted information, ideas, and stories they contain about our diverse natural and cultural heritage.”
The fiscal 2024 budget of IMLS is $266.7 million. For fiscal 2025, the Senate proposed allocating $214.1 million for library services. As of 2023, IMLS had 70 full-time employees. In 2022, they voted to unionize, joining the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).
United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH)
The US Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) was established on July 22, 1987 as part of the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act (PL 100-77). Stewart McKinney was a Republican US representative from Connecticut who served from 1971 to 1987. The organization was originally called the Interagency Council on the Homeless and was renamed to USICH in 2002, with the change enacted into law in 2004.
The USICH website states that agency’s purpose is “to coordinate the federal response to homelessness and to create a national partnership at every level of government and with the private sector to reduce and end homelessness in the nation while maximizing the effectiveness of the federal government in contributing to the end of homelessness.”
For fiscal 2025, USICH has requested a budget of $4.3 million. This is an increase from its previous budget of $3.6 million. USICH had 18 full-time employees as of the 2025 budget request.
Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund)
The Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund) was established on September 24, 1994, when then-President Bill Clinton signed the Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act into law. The legislation received bipartisan support in Congress and was the result of efforts by both parties and community activists to expand banking and financialization into “underserved” communities in the US.
The CDFI Fund was part of the destruction of social welfare programs under Clinton and the shift from direct government funding in impoverished urban and rural communities to a national network of so-called “community development lenders,” investors and other financial parasites.
In fiscal 2025, the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended an allocation of $354 million for the CDFI Fund, which represents a $30 million, or 9.3 percent, increase from the previous fiscal year. This proposed budget includes specific allocations for various programs, such as the Native CDFI Assistance Program.
The exact number of employees at the CDFI Fund is not publicly available.
Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA)
The Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) was established on March 5, 1969 by then-President Richard Nixon through Executive Order 11458. Originally named the Office of Minority Business Enterprise, it was renamed MBDA in 1979.
The agency was created as a component of Nixon’s promotion of “Black capitalism” in response to the urban rebellions that erupted in major US cities in the mid-1960s, such as Los Angeles, Detroit and Newark. In 2021, it was made a permanent federal agency through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
According to its website, the MBDA’s mission is “to promote the growth and global competitiveness of Minority Business Enterprises (MBE) in order to unlock the country’s full economic potential.”
For fiscal 2024, the MBDA’s budget is $110 million, supporting regional offices, business centers and initiatives like the Rural Business Center Program. As of 2025, the agency employed approximately 254 people, who work within a network of MBDA business centers and “strategic partnerships.”
In related developments, the New York Times reported Friday that Elon Musk had brought one of his most trusted and longstanding business associates, private equity investor Antonio Gracias, into the Social Security Administration. According to documents reviewed by the Times, nine DOGE members including Gracias have arrived at the Social Security Administration in recent days.
Although Gracias’ specific role is not known, the Times report says, “The involvement of such a close ally with the Social Security Administration suggests that Mr. Musk has made overhauling the agency a priority; in recent weeks, the tech billionaire has regularly talked about supposed fraud inside the system.” This follows Musk’s recent comment that the Social Security system is “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
Two other Musk associates connected with Gracias and his Valor Equity Partners investment group, Jon Koval, a vice president, and Payton Rehling, a data engineer, have also been assigned to the Social Security Administration, the Times reported.
The Times also said Gracias stated during a recent podcast, “that he and his team at Valor had been scrutinizing audits of the Social Security Administration and that he had been alarmed by the size of its so-called trust funds, government accounts created to make sure Americans receive their full benefits. Mr. Gracias said he believed this showed there were ‘material weaknesses’ in the system.”
On Saturday, Oklahoma KFOR reported that retiree James McCaffrey had his Social Security benefits suddenly suspended without warning. McCaffrey, 66, who was born at a US Army base overseas to an active duty US solider, said because of recent comments by DOGE leader Musk he’s worried his benefits were cut because of his foreign birthplace.
McCaffrey noticed that his Medicare payment had not been processed and, when he called about it, he was told his Social Security had been suspended. In this case, the staff person he talked to was able to restore his benefits.
Also on Saturday, the Seattle Times published a report about Ned Johnson, 82, who had been declared dead by the Social Security Administration. Johnson found out about it when a letter was mailed to his wife, Pam, that her husband was deceased and that the recent payment of $5,201 issued by the Social Security Administration was being deducted from their bank account because Ned was paid the money “after their passing.”
This is just a foretaste of the terminations, errors and disasters that will be hitting the US public as the wrecking operation mounted by Trump, Musk and DOGE takes effect and guts the vital services masses of people rely upon each day for their survival.
