Sunday, May 23, 2021
RENTERS IN BERLIN HAVE A RADICAL PLAN TO SEIZE APARTMENTS FROM LANDLORDS
By Thomas Colson, Business Insider.
May 22, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/renters-in-berlin-have-a-radical-plan-to-seize-apartments-from-landlords/
Like many cities around the world, rents in the German capital of Berlin have soared in recent years, doubling in the last decade alone.
But unlike many other cities, the people of Berlin are actually doing something about it.
First residents persuaded the local authorities to bring in a rent cap that instructed landlords to freeze rents at 2019 levels.
However, that was overturned by Germany’s federal court in April, which ruled the measures unconstitutional.
Now local campaigners are planning something even more radical: a bid to nationalize thousands of privately owned apartments in the city.
Specifically, campaigners want the government to take apartments from real estate firms that own more than 3,000 apartments, place them into public ownership, and rent them out at more affordable rates.
The estimated market value of the real estate in question is up to €36 billion ($44 billion), CityMonitor reported, but the group has suggested compensation of as little as €8 billion ($10 billion), arguing that the prices are based on speculation and overpriced rental yields rather than real value.
“The housing market in Berlin seems like paradise if you’ve lived in London or Paris,” Jonas Becker, a 30-year-old academic who lives in the German capital, told Insider.
“The housing market in Paris is absurd because you can’t find any affordable housing. But that’s an evolution we see in Berlin as well. The rising rents don’t correspond anymore to wages, and that’s something we want to address.”
Becker is a spokesman for a group of housing activists called “Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co,” referring to the city’s biggest real estate group.
The group says the compensation would be provided to landlords gradually using the rents, rather than costing the taxpayer.
Berliners Are Rising Up For Fairer Rents
The idea is certainly very radical, but it is gathering plenty of support from Berliners.
A petition started in February for a referendum on the plan has already collected 130,000 signatures, meaning there is a very real possibility that Berlin authorities will be forced to hold a referendum on the subject in September.
In a city where around 85% of residents live in rented accommodation, and where more than 200,000 publicly owned apartments have been sold off since 1990 to private equity firms and hedge funds, the issue has taken on acute significance.
“For my generation, it’s nearly impossible to own a building or an apartment — something that has been very possible for our parents,” said Becker. “We will probably rent our whole lives.”
He said that many Berlin residents, especially younger ones, were radicalized by the German federal court’s decision to overturn the rent cap last year, which prompted thousands of people to march through the streets, banging pots and pans in protest. Many landlords are now charging their tenants more than they were before the rent cap, in order to make up for lost income.
The group wants to collect 240,000 signatures by the end of June, which would be enough to force a referendum on the subject. There is also a strong chance that the referendum could pass, forcing lawmakers to consider the plan: A poll carried out in April indicated that 47% of Berlin residents supported the proposal, with 43% opposed and 9% undecided.
However, even if the referendum is successful it will be a struggle to actually get the plan into legislation. Die Linke, the left-wing party with 69 seats of 709 in Germany’s parliament, is the only one to have offered the proposals formal support, Deutsche Welle reported. Germany’s dominant conservative parties have been quick to condemn the proposals.
Nonetheless, Becker said that even talk of a referendum has pushed radical solutions for Berlin’s rental problems into mainstream dialogue. “Many people now consider us a real opponent they have to deal with, not as left-wing radicals who want a revolution. That’s not what we want to do,” he said.
Nina Turner’s Opponent Practically BEGS Super PACs For Help
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvL_31fFZLI
THE BIGGEST CLIMATE TRIAL OF THE YEAR WAS A CHEVRON-FUELED ‘CHARADE’
By Dharna Noor, Gizmodo
May 22, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/the-biggest-climate-trial-of-the-year-was-a-chevron-fueled-charade/
After a week of proceedings, the criminal trial for attorney Steven Donziger—who won a multibillion-dollar case against Chevron over pollution in the Amazon rainforest—wrapped up on Monday. In his estimation, the trial was a “charade.” And yet he was relatively pleased with the outcome.
“Given that we stood no chance to win the actual trial, the proceeding could not be better for us,” he said.
Donziger led a case against Chevron on behalf of 30,000 Indigenous people and peasant farmers from the Ecuadorian Amazon. In 2013, he won a $9.5 billion judgment against the energy giant, marking the largest human rights and environmental court judgment in history. Chevron refused to pay and instead put all its energy into going after Donziger in court in what is one of the most outlandish cases to wend its way through the courts in recent memory. Donziger has been under house arrest for going on 22 months, a judge with an industry-friendly record has been handpicked to preside over the proceedings, and the prosecuting lawyer worked until recently at a private law firm with ties to Chevron.
The trial, which began on May 10, focused on misdemeanor charges of criminal contempt against Donziger for disobeying court orders, the charge that landed him in home detention. Specifically, Donziger refused to hand over his laptop, cell phone, and other electronic devices when the court ordered him to so back in 2019. He said doing so would violate his legal clients’ privacy.
If found guilty, Donziger could face up to six months of prison time. He and his lawyers have no doubt he’ll be convicted.
“No justice will be done here,” Martin Garbus, an attorney representing Donziger, said in the courtroom on the first day of the trial.
The criminal charges against Donziger are unusual, as they were brought by a private prosecutor, Rita Glavin, who until March was a partner at the law firm Seward and Kissel. Last year, Seward and Kissel admitted that they’d represented Chevron as a client as recently as 2018, confirming Donziger’s lawyer’s suspicions and posing a glaring conflict of interest. U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over a 2012 RICO case against Donziger, appointed Glavin to bring the charges after public prosecutors refused to do so, a move previously unheard of in the American judiciary.
The contempt trial was overseen by Loretta Preska, the same federal judge who placed Donziger on house arrest in 2019. She was also selected to oversee the criminal case by Kaplan. Handpicking a judge for a case went against the standard process of random assignment that the court normally uses, and Preska’s role an advisor to the pro-business Federalist Society and documented history of ruling in favor of energy companies has raised concerns for Donziger’s supporters.
Paul Paz y Miño, the associate director of Amazon Watch, said that Preska has applied the rules of the court selectively. She invoked them last month in her decision to disallow the criminal trial to be broadcast on Zoom despite clear public interest. Then as the trial was beginning, Paz y Miño said, she invoked court rules when Donziger’s supporters wanted to sit in the part of court designated for journalists.
“She said the Southern District doesn’t allow people who aren’t press in the press area,” he said. “But she had no problem ignoring the rules when the case was assigned to her by Kaplan. … The hypocrisy is full on display.”
Paz y Miño said Preska’s biases only became more clear as the proceedings began. From the first day, she said that she was not interested in hearing from Donziger’s lawyers about why he refused to turn over his laptop and cell phone—namely that doing so would violate attorney-client privileges. A judge for a related trial ruled that the sanctions Kaplan placed on Donziger were not clear and should be overturned in March, but put Preska deemed all of that irrelevant.
“She said he was given an order by a federal judge, he didn’t comply, he’s held in contempt. She pretty much said everything short of ‘you’re guilty’ on the first day of the trial,” Paz y Miño said.
As the trial continued, Paz y Miño said Preska continued to conduct herself unfairly. He said she only sustained one of Donziger’s team’s objections to the proceedings, whereas she upheld all but one of the prosecution’s.
Kaplan’s role in the trial also made supporters raise their eyebrows. It’s Kaplan’s orders Donziger is being accused of disobeying, so he is the aggrieved party. Despite this, he chose the judge to preside over the case. Further, he has not recused himself from the case, so he could still be in communication with Glavin, the private lawyer prosecuting Donziger.
Donziger’s team believed the trial was so clearly unfair that they spent just 10 minutes on defense arguments on Monday. Donziger himself didn’t even testify in court.
“I just was advised by my lawyers that it would not be a good idea, and as I thought it through, it just didn’t make sense,” he said at a press conference. “It wouldn’t have moved the needle.”
Closing arguments will be submitted in writing in two weeks, and a decision is expected sometime after that. Though Donziger has no question he’ll be convicted, he said the trial could actually help him construct a solid appeal if and when he is convicted because it so clearly demonstrated the reasons that the case was unfairly biased and should be thrown out.
“This trial had already been decided and the purpose of the proceeding was to try to glom on a veneer of due process over a decision that I think was made behind closed doors by judges,” he said, noting the circumstances “seriously strengthen our appeal.”
Support for his plight is also building elsewhere. Last month, U.S. representatives including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Cori Bush, sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to review the case. Whatever the verdict, it almost certainly won’t be the end of the case.
PANEL: Jimmy Dore, Fiorella Isabel, Ron Placone, Graham Elwood & Justin Jackson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFmxfL1GmQw
WHY ONE STATE IN INDIA IS SHOWING PROMISING SIGNS OF DEMOCRACY
By Vijay Prashad and Subin Dennis, Toward Freedom
May 22, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/why-one-state-in-india-is-showing-promising-signs-of-democracy/
Just before the state elections in Kerala, in southern India, a television channel ran a program called “The Great Political Kitchen.” The anchor went to kitchens across the state to talk to homemakers about their views on politics. In one kitchen, the anchor asked a woman about a dispute surrounding a temple in southern Kerala where the courts had ordered that women must be allowed full access to the temple premises in 2018. For the past five years, Kerala had been governed by the Left Democratic Front (LDF), which had taken a democratic position over this issue and had supported the entry of women into this famous temple. The right wing claimed this was evidence that the LDF government was against religious freedom; such a claim would not be restricted to the majority-Hindu population but could also be extended to other minority communities in India such as Christians and Muslims. The woman told the TV anchor, “I am a devotee [of the temple], but hunger won’t go away if I cook and eat devotion. That’s all I have to say about it.”
Her response—which went viral—conveyed the mood of the recent election in Kerala, which was won by the LDF. The LDF won 99 of the 140 seats in the Kerala assembly elections; 67 of these seats were won by candidates of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). It was the first time since 1980 that an incumbent party or coalition had been able to win a second consecutive term in Kerala.
Most people in Kerala were uninterested in the dangerous flippancy of the right-wing politics represented by the Bharatiya Janata Party—in power at the center in India—which is keener to talk about anything other than issues that concern people’s material conditions of life such as the pandemic and its social impact on their lives. The LDF leadership, on the other hand, has been focused on the pandemic and on providing the materials necessary for relief to the people in the state during the second wave of the COVID-19 crisis that the country is witnessing presently. Mass organizations of the Left and community organizations joined the state government in efforts to take care of the people. As a result, Kerala has so far been able to tackle the pandemic crisis better than other parts of India.
Pandemic Relief
A comprehensive poll by the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and Lokniti shows that 73 percent of those polled said that they were satisfied by the performance of the state government. Led by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the LDF government’s first term, from 2016 to 2021, was wracked by natural disasters (a cyclone in 2017 and floods in 2018 and 2019) and virus outbreaks (the Nipah virus in 2018 and the coronavirus pandemic), which have impacted lives globally. The government dealt with each of these crises in a similar fashion: through calm and scientific assessments of what had occurred, combined with announcing generous relief for the impacted people. This was true in all the calamities before the COVID-19 pandemic, especially during the 2018 floods, which were the heaviest in a century.
The CSDS-Lokniti poll shows that the electorate went to vote with the good governance of the LDF in mind. Asked about the LDF government’s performance in dealing with the pandemic, 72 percent said that it was either “good” or “very good.” A remarkable 88 percent said that they were satisfied with the food kits distributed by the government to ensure that no one went hungry during the crisis.
Contrary to the attitude of the right-wing government of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the LDF government of Kerala adopted a science-based approach to tackle the pandemic. It expanded public health care facilities to meet likely increases in the number of cases. It carried out a vigorous “Break the Chain” campaign, urging people to adopt the basic practices (social distancing, washing hands and wearing masks) that are necessary to prevent the spread of the virus. Testing and treatment for COVID-19 in Kerala’s government hospitals have been free and available to everyone who needs it.
To prevent mass suffering during the pandemic, the LDF government got the state’s **[self-government institutions](https://kerala.gov.in/local-self-government#:~:text=Director of panchayat and Director,government Institutions in the State.)**—which have been strengthened over the past few decades due to the efforts of Left governments—to cook and deliver food to those in need. The government provided food grain and grocery kits for free to every household to prevent hunger. The trade unions and mass organizations helped run these community kitchens as well as helped set up quarantine facilities and treatment centers.
Infrastructure
The right wing in Kerala has typically claimed that the Left is not equipped to build the state’s infrastructure. But this time, the right wing had no grounds to make its typical complaints. Since 2016, the state government has not only improved the basic transportation infrastructure but has also built up other kinds of infrastructure needed by the working class and the peasantry.
There is a conventional attitude that suggests infrastructure is built to promote the interests of business alone. But this is not the case in the way Kerala’s LDF government built its public infrastructure, including public housing—the government built 250,000 homes for the poor. There was a major focus on public education and public health care, both of which were enhanced, and a stronger public health care system in the state helped it to stave off the catastrophe that COVID-19 has wrought in the rest of India. For the first time in 25 years, students left private schools to return to the improved public education system. Improvements in facilities in public schools included providing sanitary pads for girls to encourage better attendance in school.
Roads, bridges, power lines, and a massive public sector internet project (Kerala Fiber Optic Network, or K-FON) to provide internet as a basic right to citizens have been a few of the key elements of the government’s infrastructure work.
Election manifestos are often not taken seriously; this is, however, not the case with the LDF government. “We have fulfilled 580 out of the 600 items in the 2016 manifesto. Now we are placing before the people a manifesto with 900 promises,” Chief Minister Vijayan said in March.
900 Promises
The pressing task for the LDF government is the same as before the election: to bring the second wave of COVID-19 infections under control. The Indian government of Prime Minister Modi has been hopeless, allowing the infection to run rampant while doing little to either build up the public health care system or to provide a proper vaccination program. In the first week of May, the seven-day average of doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in India was 1.9 million. At this pace, it will take until February 2024 to administer two doses of the vaccine to the entire adult population of the country.
Kerala’s government is forced to buy vaccines on the open market. An important takeaway from this pandemic has been the need for the state to redouble its efforts to strengthen its public sector enterprises, such as the Kerala State Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited, which has been producing essential drugs at low prices for the government hospitals in the state. Kerala currently has a lockdown in place to bring down the rate of infection, which has been high due to the more contagious variants of coronavirus, including the triple-mutant Indian variant, that have been infecting people.
The CSDS-Lokniti poll showed that the working class and the poor as well as oppressed castes, including Dalits, voted overwhelmingly for the LDF; there is no doubt that their interests will play a leading role in shaping the government policy. That is why the LDF returns to power with a mandate to end absolute poverty by the formulation of micro-plans that target families who live with extreme poverty, including homelessness.
Hunger can’t be eradicated by devotion. Only social action can eradicate hunger and hopelessness.
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