Brazil

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 10, 2018 1:49 pm

After the action of the PM, fire destroys houses of Occupation March 29, in Curitiba
A young man was murdered during the episode. Police did not pronounce
Pedro Carrano

December 8, 2018 at 01:55

Image
About 600 families are harmed and left homeless

The Military Police of Curitiba spent the day acting repressively in Occupation March 29, CIC, in Curitiba. This was soon after the death of a nearby police officer. From 10:00 p.m. on Friday, 07, police began to enter the houses. Soon after it was fired that spread by burning houses and making wounded. A young man was reportedly murdered and it is not yet known whether this was due to police action.

For Brazil de Fato, a resident * said that the police entered the houses beating people. "They even put bags on people's heads. They killed one and what we know is that children died in the fire. We have nothing to do with what happened. " The fire destroyed the entire Occupation and the villagers were revolted against the Police.

Police who were at the scene when the press arrived said that nothing will be announced for now. Firefighters form up to the spot to meet the occurrence and there is still no confirmation of dead by fire. More than 600 families have been damaged and have been left homeless.

* The name of the residents will be preserved to avoid possible persecution

Edition: Ana Carolina Caldas

https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2018/12 ... -curitiba/

Google Translator

Not even sworn in and the White Terror begins, naked, vicious class warfare.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 14, 2018 12:11 pm

Send In The Clowns.

“Welcome to the Brazilian Necropolitical Circus.”

On December 10 2018, the 70th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights, Brazilian President elect Jair Bolsonaro and his Vice, General Mourão, received their diplomas from the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE).

They were presented with the inaugural certificates after a lecture on democracy by Rosa Weber, the supreme court judge who back in April declared she was voting counter-intuitively, under military threat, in denying habeas corpus to then certain winner of the 2018 election, former President Lula da Silva. This was one link in a chain of events which saw a Neofascist elected and altered the course of Brazilian history.

There was already dark irony to it occurring on this anniversary, as Bolsonaro is on record that he does not believe in human rights. He thinks they’re a “communist thing” or as his more articulate Neofascist pin-up Augusto Pinochet put it “a very wise invention of Marxists”.

In three weeks he will assume the Presidency of a forever promising, incomplete, wealthy and chronically unequal country of almost 220 million souls, many of whom will live in fear of his prejudices, hatred, irrationality, profound stupidity, and that of his low-IQ offspring, opportunist allies and far-right supporters.

Violent, incompetent, and corrupt; the wager is now how long Bolsonaro’s imbecilic spectacle can last. Self-destruction ahead of schedule is the best hope Brazil’s progressives, minorities – even majorities, have.

As Italians did with Berlusconi before him, Brazilians will discover that satire does not function with a Bolsonaro; no joke will raise a smile, no dose of schadenfreude will suffice. Even as his sandcastle of asinine, toxic bullshit disintegrates, grimly and inevitably, into the South Atlantic, the only relief will be that Brazil itself is not taken with it.

Avoiding mention of his name is etiquette, evading his grinning mask of a face, a strategy.

People are understandably saving themselves for the struggles ahead.

We all float down here

“Vai acabar com essa palhaçada” (he’s going to end this clown show) was an election slogan used by Bolsonaro campaign and his supporters. His ministerial appointments suggest precisely the opposite.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the nature of his election, many of his voters already have buyers remorse, not least due to the prevalence of corrupt politicians in a government which came to power with specious rhetoric of anti-corruption. A cursory glance over the history of fascism could’ve tipped them off.

“Brazil: Love it or leave it.” a notorious slogan of the dictatorship in the early 1970s, chillingly re-emerged following the election, yet the torpor amongst progressives has partially cleared for the return of Brazil’s famed gallows humour. There is now an eerie calm to the final month before Bolsonaro’s inauguration. The next four years will be marked by violent oppression and resistance, but many are sensing that the new extreme-right government will collapse ahead of schedule.

The coming era will be dangerous, regardless of how intellectually stunted and pathetic Bolsonaro’s cabinet is. But just three weeks before taking office, the most incompetent looking administration for thirty years is already imploding, with some predicting that his Presidency may be even more short lived than that of Fernando Collor, who survived two years from 1990-92.

It must be reiterated that Bolsonaro is no “Trump of the Tropics” as the Guardian and others tried to depict, and the anticipation of him in power shouldn’t be equated either, nor should parallels be made between campaigns against them. In Brazil’s case, it faces actual overt, documented, genocidal threats – a situation which came about with the connivance of the United States, and involving both Republican and Democrat administrations.

With the first significant number of Military figures in the Government since redemocratisation in 1989, there is a surreal quality to watching the transition unfold. Bolsonaro’s first cabinet will contain over 30% Military personnel for the first time since the reign of Dictator Ernesto Geisel from 1974-79.

Joining the GSI, the cabinet of Institutional Security, is General Augusto Heleno. Invited by Bolsonaro as potential VP, then as Defence Minister, Heleno was the first commander of the UN’s MINUSTAH stabilisation mission in Haiti. During his time in Haiti he notoriously led an armed assault on Cité Soleil, against members of the Lavalas Pro-Democracy movement. The action killed dozens of people including community leader Dread Wilme (Emmanuel Wilmer). Some consider the Federal Military intervention in the state of Rio de Janeiro to have been inspired by the operations in Haiti, while those in Haiti consider the opposite. Days after the election, Heleno claimed that Brazilian intelligence agency ABIN and the Federal Police, which had evidently failed to protect the Rousseff administration from subversion, had discovered a terrorist plot against President-elect Bolsonaro.

Ernesto Araújo is the new Foreign Minister, Chanceler in Brazilian nomenclature, or “4chan-celer” as he has been nicknamed. Araújo advocates a range of recycled conspiracy theories, such as Cultural Marxism, UFO contact with the United Nations, and also believes that climate change is a hoax. Like Bolsonaro himself, Araújo wants to align Brazil unreservedly with the strategic and economic interests of the United States – to the delight of Washington. Former Foreign and Defence minister Celso Amorim, one of the world’s most respected diplomats, who helped elevated Brazil’s Itamaraty Foreign Ministry to its pre-coup reputation, has called Araújo’s appointment “a return to the middle ages”.

Araújo is one of several ministers picked by the philosopher king of Brazil’s extreme-right, Olavo do Carvalho. Olavo is a former astrologer, charlatan mystic, mediocre journalist, and self-imposed exile in Richmond, Virginia, where he ran until recently an obscure think tank called the “Inter-American institute for Philosophy, Government and Social Thought“, whose website mysteriously vanished following the election. In recent times he has headed the deeply odd “Brasil Paralelo” project, which was a years-long live-action roleplay for what looks very much like Bolsonaro’s incoming Government.

Brazil’s new Education minister, Ricardo Vélez Rodríguez, was also suggested by Olavo do Carvalho. A self-defined “Anti-Marxist” he is a devout supporter of the “School without Party” initiative which claims to eradicate “communist indoctrination” from Brazil’s education system, while at the same time proposing that teachers are versed in the philosophies of Margaret Thatcher. Emphasis of policy under the new government is cost cutting through distance learning in basic education, privatisation and a voucher system for privatised schools inspired by policy implemented in Pinochet’s Chile.

Another climate change skeptic is new environment minister, the “Liberal” Partido Novo’s (Banco Itaú) Ricardo Salles. A darling of ruralists, his election campaign material defended the rights of them to shoot MST landless Workers movement members and leftists, and he has his own environmental fraud case pending against him. He claimed not to have adequate data to evaluate deforestation. Bolsonaro wants to sell off and open the Amazon for exploitation to foreign corporations, this is why he has been called a threat not just to Brazil, but to the world. Salles is his choice to implement that.

On the day that the Neofascist President elect named Salles his new Environment Minister, two MST coordinators – Rodrigo Celestino and José “Orlando” Bernardo da Silva – were assassinated on their camp in Paraiba.

Science and Technology will be headed by Brazil’s first Astronaut, Marcos Pontes. Budgets have halved since 2013, and there is has been a major brain drain to Europe and North America as research programmes were regularly shuttered since Michel Temer took office. There is no indication that policy will change with this kind of ceremonial appointment.

Heading the newly combined Ministry of “Women, Family and Human Rights” is ultraconservative Evangelical pastor, Damares Alves. FUNAI, the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples, will also be folded into the new body, and the appointment of Alves to head to such a frankenstein’s monster of a ministry is pure vandalism. Alves seeks to outlaw abortion even in the case of rape, one of the few circumstances in which it is currently legal in the country. She has proposed what has been deemed “Bolsa Estupro”, a small cash allowance for victims of rape in exchange for not having the pregnancy terminated.

Alves also claims to have seen Jesus Christ climb a Guava tree. “He was so beautiful,” said the future minister, during an evangelical service, in which she described how she had tried to stop an erratic Mr Christ from climbing the tree, as she feared that he would get hurt. “He has already suffered so much on the cross”, she confirmed.

Pastor Alves has proposed a “cultural counter-revolution in schools”, despite having no specific remit for Education.

Even the supposedly credible member of his cabinet, Chicago Boy Paulo Guedes, has been called a “maniac”, even by Neoliberal standards, and Brazil is his new laboratory. Bolsonaro’s Finance minister is key to the project and to Wall Street’s support for it. In 2005 Guedes founded Instituto Millenium, a think tank drawing together Neoliberals from Brazil and outside, including journalists, economists and politicians, that was called a successor organisation to IBAD, the foreign funded NGO which disseminated anti-government propaganda ahead of the 1964 military coup. Over the next decade its alumni would come to dominate the economic media narrative in Brazil.

After linking up with Guedes, allegedly on Wall Street advice, what followed was Bolsonaro road to Damascus style conversion to the public rhetoric of free markets and the minimal state. Guedes, a founder of what became BTG Pactual bank, also worked in Chile during the Pinochet era. He describes that genocidal dictatorship as “an intellectual point of view”. As for free trade, Angela Merkel has warned that the election of Bolsonaro jeopardises completion of trade deals that have been forged for years, such as that between Mercosul and the European Union. The proposed move of Brazil’s embassy to Jerusalem, and withdrawal of Palestinian recognition will affect significant trade of meat and poultry to Arab countries, whilst he and his allies rhetoric on China risks the crucial economic relationship with Brazil’s biggest trading partner.

Guedes’ programme is effectively to privatise/de-nationalise everything.

“Poison Muse” Tereza Cristina is the new Agriculture Minister. She is so named for her enthusiasm to further deregulate toxic pesticides on behalf of the industry and Big Agro, in a country which an average person already consumes over seven litres of agrotoxins per year, with all the serious health problems that such legalised, programmed poisoning brings.

Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta, a former Military doctor, has been investigation for corruption since 2015. Like Cristina, from the hard right Dictatorship-heir party, “Democratas”, Mandetta formerly at private healthcare giant Unimed, is expected to oversee a privatisation programme of the SUS public health system. The Bolsonaro effect hit SUS before he even took office, with Cuba withdrawing over 8000 doctors following his xenophobic comments, many of whom were serving in remote or dangerous areas where Brazilian doctors refused to work, and are now left without healthcare provision.

4 Star General Fernando Azevedo will be Minister of Defence. Supreme Court President Dias Toffoli, a succession of decisions from whom were instrumental in Bolsonaro’s election, said he was consulted in a phonecall from the President-elect and quickly approved the appointment of Azevedo, who had worked with the judge as an advisor.

Operation Lava Jato Inquisitor-Judge Sérgio Moro is the most controversial appointment of the lot. Having insisted he would not enter politics, his acceptance to head the new Justice and Security super ministry sent his most vocal supporters into spirals of denial and cognitive dissonance. Having jailed the election’s likely winner, on a ridiculous charge, leaving the way open for Bolsonaro’s victory, then joining his government, it is the final sorry end to the fairytale of Operation Carwash, lauded internationally as a crucial step in Brazil’s development, when it was always a political instrument. General Heleno remarked: “It will be an honor to be sitting at the table with Dr. Sérgio Moro. He is a great value of the country, a man respected here and abroad”. Moro, after illegally wiretapping President Rousseff while in office, and releasing the recordings to the media, again illegally, contributing to both the mediatic campaign for her impeachment, and for the prosecution of former President Lula, will now have effectively carte blanche over surveillance.

Chief of Staff will be Onyx Lorenzoni, overseeing transition and facing corruption charges of his own. Onyx has admitted that Moro hatched the plan to jail Lula back in 2005, while Moro has defended Onyx’s reputation publicly.

Onyx has announced that both the Ministry of Work and the Ministry of Culture will cease to exist on January 1, 2019.

Pega fogo Cabaré

With his inauguration three weeks away, and the euphoria of his victory subsided, Bolsonaro is now engulfed in BolsoGate, a corruption scandal that is both serious and farcical. It will be a test of how much Brazilian conservatives actually care about corruption cases when the Workers Party are not implicated. We already know the answer.

After the exposure of so-called ghost employees on the payroll, it was revealed last year that his son, Federal Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, also charged with making threats against a female journalist, managed to increase his personal fortune by 432% since 2014. His brother Flavio, now elected as Senator, is the focus of this latest scandal to hit the family.

Department of Control of Financial Activities (COAF) released a report of unusual financial activity in the bank accounts of a former aide to Flavio Bolsonaro. In the COAF statement the former driver of Flavio Bolsonaro, Fabricio Jose Carlos de Queiroz, is alleged to have moved R$1.2m illegally between January 2016 and January 2017. Seven aides to Bolsonaro have so far been found to be involved, with future first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, also implicated.

A feature of the suspicious activity was a long succession of bank withdrawals and deposits just below the figure that automatically triggers an audit for money laundering in Brazil’s banking system – a common way to disguise illegal financial activity. Jair Bolsonaro tried to explain away the accusations during a press conference at a Brazilian Navy ceremony in Rio de Janeiro, which only generated new doubts about the story. So, a long game to create a political dynasty has left them looking like a would-be mafia family. The driver in question has was being paid R$20k a month by the Bolsonaros, with whom he has an apparently close friendship, photographed with them at their barbecues and fishing trips. Suspicion is that the driver is what Brazilians call a “laranja”, (literally orange) – a vessel for laundered wealth.

The sums involved already exceed those alleged but unproven in the case which saw Lula jailed and prevented from running in an election that would’ve seen him face, and in most likely beat, Jair Bolsonaro. Had details of the new case against the Bolsonaros emerged publicly when first known – 15th October – it could have affected the election, with the candidate then already reeling from a corruption scandal, the discovery of illegal campaign slush fund which was bankrolling a vast disinformation campaign on Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging platform. With that case brushed under the carpet, along with his charge for inciting racial hatred, he continued to victory without facing the legal obstacles that had taken likely winner Lula from the race.

With the election over, and Bolsonaro elected on spurious anti-corruption rhetoric, the new case is getting more attention, and not confined to ideological adversaries, with a group of political aides, and his sons, Federal Congressman Eduardo, Senator Flavio, and Rio State Congressman Carlos, all implicated in one way or another.

Coincidentally or not, in 1992 the testimony of his driver brought about the impeachment of Fernando Collor, but given the role of a compromised judiciary in Brazil’s coup and lurch to authoritarianism, it would be naive to expect salvation to arrive wearing a toga, despite it representing hope for those communities and social groups most at risk. Both Justice and Security Minister Sérgio Moro, and Prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, his wingman in the Curitiban Lava Jato taskforce, have so far brushed aside corruption scandal facing the President elect.

There has also been a wave of infantile feuding within the PSL party which rose from almost nothing to be the second biggest in congress on Bolsonaro’s wave. A motley bunch, many of whom with little or no political experience; leaked messages showed PSL Congresswoman Joyce Hasselmann attacking Bolsonaro’s sons, and her blog post from 2014 has been unearthed in which she called the idea of his Presidential candidacy “a joke”. She released a video urging her supporters not to clink to the link, claiming it was a “virus”. Hasselmann recently became the most voted female congresswoman in history, solely down to her positioning and vociferous support for Bolsonaro.

The state of Bolsonaro’s cabinet will put all the propaganda about Rousseff’s Government between 2013-16 in perspective. A group of centre left technocrats were depicted as incompetent fraudsters and a recession caused primarily by the global slowdown in commodities, and exacerbated by the Coup’s own sabotage, was wildly framed as the “worst economic crisis in Brazilian history”, when just 25 years prior, Brazil had 4000% inflation.

How long this government will survive is anyone’s guess, but any investor who believed insistances in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg that a Bolsonaro Government would bring stability to the country were comically misled. If by some miracle Brazil thrives it will be despite, not because of Bolsonaro, and it is a a question of when, not if, the crash comes. At the very best we expect a return to pre-recession, pre-Lava Jato GDP, perhaps augmented by a short term boost in foreign direct investment.

Meanwhile, in terms of human rights, equality and social cohesion, development, health, education and culture, it will be a political catastrophe that will face fierce and organised resistance.

Some are betting that sooner or later the Military will simply take over, either via VP Mourão, who already outranks the President elect, or by more senior figures such as the wildly powerful head of institutional security Sergio Westphalen Etchegoyen, and/or head of the Army General Villas Boas. After coming this far, Jair Bolsonaro could well find himself thrown under the bus.

“Pega fogo cabaré”, or let the circus burn, as they say in Brazil.

http://www.brasilwire.com/send-in-the-clowns/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat Dec 15, 2018 2:47 pm

AI-5 and the forbidden future of Brasil

On the 50th anniversary of Institutional Act 5, the 1968 “coup within the coup” which ushered in an even more brutal and repressive phase of the Military dictatorship, historian Fernando Horta explains how its malign influence never went away, and is now again casting a shadow over Brazilian society.

by Fernando Horta.

It has been said that ephemeris mean nothing. Chronological time does not lend meaning to history. It is human time, full of memories, experiences and perceptions that really matters. Philosopher Paul Ricoeur has shown that remembering is an intentional and creative act, but that forgetting is also an act.

It makes little sense to speak about 50 years of the AI-5, signed on December 13, 1968. My grandmother was born in 1934, my mother in 1955 and I in 1977. There are four generations, including my sons, directly impacted by AI -5. The military regime taught my grandmother that “religion, politics and football are not discussed.” And this was passed by my mother to me, against which I fought long after I became a historian. “Dictation” has become effective across generations of Brazilians. Politics was dirty, tainted and not fit for decent people. For this reason, supposedly, the military was going to “clean it up”. The Constitution of 1988 did not manage to change this perception. Practicing politics, since the military regime, is an act of social self-sacrifice. “Moral people” do not get into politics, it was said, only those who are not.

The Lula governments were our best bet that all this would be left behind. Seeing Dilma, a woman tortured during those times, climbing the ramp of the Planalto Palace and being greeted with salutes by those who had previously massacred her, was a symbolic moment of “page turning.” Brazil chose another way for its transitional justice. It was not the Argentine path of confrontation and stigmatization, of open sores dealt with exemplary punishments. Nor was it South Africa’s path to Mandela’s gigantism and the historical (but not criminal) recognition of the crimes perpetrated. The Brazilian path seemed to be that of institutions. Democracy, plurality, and law guided transition from the bloody past to a promising present.

In the last 90 days I caught myself asking my son not to discuss politics in high school. He was given a ride by parents who voted for Bolsonaro and they harassed him politically the whole time. Outraged, my twelve-year-old son asked me for “arguments” to use. “I asked you not to get into politics.”, it was not long before I repeated the saying I had heard from my mother. Not long at all.

If my shame can not be hidden from what I told my son, we must reflect why, after all, we are entering this same situation again. The truth is that the elected government of Bolsonaro demonstrates that AI-5 never left Brazil. The ghosts of violence, repression and torture become more and more present. We are already afraid of being arrested for “criminal opinions”, censored through “lack of knowledge” or fired for “insurgency”.

The truth is that Brazil, because it did not treat its wounds, had an amputation. Our democracy elapsed and our institutions have been taken by coup-mongers and defenders of torture and violence, certain that neither the state nor Brazilian society will do anything to oppose them. The impunity of those monsters from 1964 to 1985 guaranteed the safe passage of Temer, Padilha and their crowd through the new coup. And yet more certain is that Bolsonaro, with a totally irregular campaign, with suffer nothing. Our state does not protect our future from the violence of the present. In fact, with the elected Fascist, our state rejoices at its bestiality.

Twitter generals, who changed their uniforms for pajamas, continue to warn everyone (including the Supreme Court) that AI-5 is very present. The commander of the Army himself revealed this in a recent interview. Unafraid of any reprisal. This is the “I do because I want” that has characterized ALL Brazilian institutions since 2016, at least. A democracy that is empowered by armed powers. That, in truth, never stopped living with torture. And this can be very well understood by any young, black, poor Brazilian who has been approached by our “valiant” Military Police. And woe to those who testify in the courts of resistance. Marielle Franco remains the permanent example of our social inability to protect our future.

AI-5 was designed to attack the future. Democracy had been battered since 1964, confidence in our political system since 1961. The signing of the document that opened the doors to unbridled violence in Brazil was aimed at future generations. Maybe mine and my son’s. According to professor Carlos Fico, affected were 333 retired parliamentarians, 66 university professors, 3 supreme court ministers and a number of artists. The choices clearly followed an attack on representation. Politicians who were real politicians, because they had the capacity for popular mobilization, were dismissed.

The new Brazilian politics is inaugurated, one in which representation is maximised with minimum participation. Every four years politicians leave their palaces, supported by the weight of public gold, walk among the plebs, embrace, promise, photograph and disappear. Rodrigo Maia, president of Congress, showed the truth about the type of policy produced after AI-5 in the second half of this year. Maia said that “Parliament was not obliged to listen to the people”. Of course, after the vote, the chaos of the ballots, it is a appropriate that these sweaty, brown people who speak badly and smell badly will be restricted to the ghettoes where the system permits them to be.

Entrenched in Brasilia, the City-Palace of the Republic of Brazil, the parliamentarians live quietly for four years, recovering from electoral wear and tear. Walking, shaking hands, listening and hugging the rabble is not something simple for those who live in gatherings watered by Champagne and seafood. As of 2014, it was still possible to convince the poor and the destitute that they are not “workers”. They are potential entrepreneurs. Embryonic millionaires who only do not develop because of the “oppressor state”. And the failure of Brazil is their fault, each and every one of them.

They convinced the poor of this country that those who fight for the poor and the workers are enemies. Infiltrators. Indoctrinators. Extortionists. Well, it’s the businessman who never worked, the millionaire who has never ridden a bus, and a manager who graduated from a university that the immense majority of the population can not even repeat the name of. Unions are trash, social movements are parasites, and activists, evil incarnate. This is the same rhetoric created by AI-5 and its DOI-CODI secret police. The goal is to prohibit the future of the country. Without the dance of politics between situation and opposition on an equal footing, a monochromatic, monochronic, authoritarian and doomed country is formed.

We have the worshipper of a torturer in the presidency and a statesman who received the homeless and the landless at the Planalto with the same pomp as heads of state, arrested. Marshal Henrique Teixeira Lott buried with near anonymity in 1984, and the exaltation of Carlos Brilhante Ustra. There is no future. AI-5 is a historical demon that has never been exorcised.

The country embarks on the authoritarian adventure again. As in ’64, it is believed that “everything is functioning” and violence is only against “radical groups”. Juscelino Kubistchek would be telling us now: “Do not believe this, again.”

We are waiting for a new AI-5. We already have everything organized and prepared for this. If Bolsonaro had not been elected it would appear. If his campaign had been deemed improper by the STF it would appear. If Lula is released it will appear, and if my son or his children decide to wake up from this nightmare and protest, it will surely reappear. Brazil is living through the interdiction of its future. And this was envisaged by those who created AI-5.

I just hope that future generations will learn to punish the criminals of the past. That they arrest, dishonor and throw to the gutter those putschists of 2016 and 2018. Those with the courage to do what we have not done. Or their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will pay again, with blood, and hunger.

http://www.brasilwire.com/ai-5-and-the- ... of-brasil/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 21, 2018 12:46 am

Army High Command Meets. Lula Stays In Jail. Who Is Running Brasil?
AUTHORITARIANISM CENSORSHIP DEMOCRACY ELECTION 2018 LAVA JATO LAWFARE
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On December 19th 2018, Brazil was sent into a frenzy at the news that Supreme Court Judge Marco Aurélio had accepted a petition from PCdoB (Communist Party of Brazil) that called for the freeing of prisoners jailed while their appeals processes were still underway. This meant that former President Lula da Silva, recognised internationally as a political prisoner, would need to go free.

Lawyers and legal scholars applauded Marco Aurélio Mello’s judgement “The decision was correct according to the Constitution, the minister did what he was supposed to do, in terms of obeying the Constitution,” said the legal scholar and Constitutional Law Professor Pedro Serrano. The criminal lawyer José Roberto Batocchio, from Lula’s defense team, also praised Mello. “We finally found a Supreme Court Justice who obeys the Constitution,” he said, “unlike the others.”

Justice Aurélio justified the decision based on the need to protect Article 5 of the constitution, which establishes the presumption of innocence for defendant. Lula’s defence team immediately demanded his release, and with his freedom again a possibility, the ongoing vigil outside the Federal Police building where the 73 year old is being held, grew in anticipation of an announcement.

But it was not to come. Supreme Court Justice Dias Toffoli defied the constitution and overruled Marco Aurélio’s earlier decision.

Just hours previously Lula’s lawyer Valeska Martins had given a rare interview in English on the Michael Brooks show in the United States, explaining the lawfare strategies that have been used against Lula, their geopolitical context and implications for Brazil’s sovereignty.



Following Toffoli’s ruling, Lula’s defence responded with a second demand for his release: “Although there has been press coverage that the eminent Minister Dias Toffoli has suspended a preliminary injunction, it should be noted that the wider jurisprudence of the Supreme Court shows that the request for suspension of decisions handed down by the other STF Ministers is manifestly unreasonable.”

The Army High Command had held an emergency meeting that afternoon to discuss the new decision that could see the release of Lula. The Armed forces intervened in a previous Supreme Court ruling to deny the former President habeas corpus. It is yet unclear if the Army meeting influenced Toffoli’s latest move, but he was consulted by President-elect Bolsonaro on the appointment of General Fernando Azevedo as Defence Minister, who had served as an advisor to Toffoli prior to the election. Toffoli has been at the centre of several key decisions including that which saw barred from running, which enabled Bolsonaro’s victory.

Justice Marco Aurélio himself alluded to outside influence in an interview following Toffoli’s decision: “If the Supreme Court was still Supreme, my decision would be fulfilled”. He received death threats after his decision became public, and far-right supporters of military intervention called for the abolition of the Supreme Court itself.

Former Minister of Justice Eugênio Aragão was equally indignant: “Former President Lula has never been treated like any other person. If he were, he would be free today. He was treated as an enemy of the establishment, that allowed Bolsonaro to become president of the Republic” said the former minister.

Parliamentarians protested the decision of judge Carolina Lebbos, of the 12th Federal Court in Curitiba, to not accept Federal Supreme Court Minister Marco Aurélio’s injunction to suspend imprisonment for defendants before their appeals processes are exhausted, which would have allowed former President Lula to walk free. In addition to ignoring the injunction, the judge consulted with the Public Prosecutors office as if it had jurisdiction over the Supreme Court, a clear breach in protocol from the same local judge who has already prevented visiting rights and interviews with the former President.

PSOL Presidential Candidate Guilherme Boulos, a vociferous Lula ally, also reacted on social media: “Minister Marco Aurélio’s decision reinstates what is in the Constitution….In the last hours, the decision being attacked as if it would prevent arrest of murderers and rapists caught in the act. This is a lie. Once again the Constitution is shattered …”

“The Supreme Court of this country, that has become a banana republic, is submitting to conservatives. Minister Marco Aurélio did what he should have done sooner. Dias Toffoli can not dismiss the injunction, this would be further proof of the absence of formal and material democracy in the country” said Alagoan jurist Marcelo Tadeu Lemos, who presided over the ‘Lava Jato People’s Court’.

With each defiance of the constitution it becomes more self evident that former President Lula is being held for political reasons.

It is as if Brazil is being governed by a parallel power, ‘com o supremo, com tudo‘.

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 31, 2018 2:28 pm

“Pinochet via Fujimori”: Wall Street’s New Man In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro

“No room for feelings” say Wall Street insiders as they back another Neofascist to deliver Neoliberalism, at the point of a gun, in the most resource-rich nation on earth.

New York Times, July 1993. In an article called “Conversations/Jair Bolsonaro; A Soldier Turned Politician Wants To Give Brazil Back to Army Rule“, Journalist James Brooke interviewed a 38 year old congressman. Brazil was struggling, a President gone, in the third year of directly elected Government since the coup of 1964, and the already infamous former Army Captain Bolsonaro was proposing a return to Military Rule.

This may have sounded outlandish, but just 4 years previously, declassified documents reveal that if the 1989 election had not gone the right way, Brazil’s Military establishment and the United States already had contingency plans for another Coup to set things right. It is safe to assume that a Latin American politician featured in the New York Times is already on the US Government’s radar.

Brooke wrote: Applying to politics the boldness he once displayed as an army parachutist, Congressman Jair Bolsonaro plunged into uncharted territory a few weeks ago when he strode to the podium of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies and called for the closing of Congress. “I am in favor of a dictatorship,” he bellowed in a speech that rattled a country that only left military rule behind in 1985. “We will never resolve serious national problems with this irresponsible democracy.”

“Everywhere I go, people embrace me and treat me like a national hero,” Mr. Bolsonaro asserted. “The people in the streets are asking for the return of the military. They ask, ‘When are you coming back?’ “

But to many defenders of Brazilian democracy, the Bolsonaro phenomenon represents a flashing yellow light — a sign that people are growing impatient with democracy’s failure to curb inflation and deliver a better style of life, and a warning that politicians on the authoritarian right are eager to take advantage of this mood, and to cultivate it. The Fujimori Model. Today a new and less odious model for Latin American authoritarianism has emerged in Peru’s President, Alberto K. Fujimori. Faced with congressional deadlock last year, Mr. Fujimori, a civilian, ordered the Peruvian Army to close the country’s Congress and its courts. One year later, Mr. Fujimori rules with a compliant, one-chamber Congress.

During the interview, Bolsonaro was enthusiastic about the strategy of Fujimori, and even then, 25 years ago, was lauding political corruption as the element that would enable a return to military rule:

“I sympathize with Fujimori,” the Brazilian congressman continued. “Fujimorization is the way out for Brazil. I am making these warnings because the population is in favor of surgery.” Political surgery, Mr. Bolsonaro continued, would involve closing Congress for a defined period of time and allowing Brazil’s President to rule by decree. The justification for a such a constitutional break, he said, would be “political corruption” and Brazil’s inflation, which is now running at 30 percent a month. With Congress often deadlocked in battles among its 21 parties, Brazil’s press has displayed an increasing fascination with the Fujimori model. In the last month, Brazilian newspapers, magazines and television news programs have carried long interviews with the Peruvian leader. “Fujimori put 400,000 civil servants in the street,” Mr. Bolsonaro asserted. “How could we ever do that here?”

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Alberto Fujimori’s 1992 TV announcement of his “Auto-Coup”

The congressman was equally enthusiastic about the wave of Neoliberal Privatisations then sweeping the region and the world:

When it held power in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the Brazilian military vastly expanded Brazil’s state sector, implanting a welter of state-run companies and monopolies. Today, Mr. Bolsonaro said, the leaders of the armed forces favor bringing the state back to basics: defense, education and health. “I vote for every privatization bill that I can,” Mr. Bolsonaro said. “It is the left that opposes privatization. They just want to preserve their government jobs.”

25 years later, Jair Bolsonaro is second placed in the Presidential polls. He lies in a hospital bed, connected to all manner of tubes and devices, after suffering an apparent assassination attempt.

New Normal
The weather vane for gauging opinion in the corridors of power is anglo corporate media. In 2017 came the first public signs that Jair Bolsonaro was becoming acceptable to investors, and what followed was a concerted attempt to normalise his candidacy.

For a long time he looked like an anti-establishment outlier, yet has been part of their armoury for years – break glass in case of emergency.

Bolsonaro has never been “Brazil’s Trump” as some foreign media have depicted over the past year. Despite he and his supporters’ protestations he is an actual fascist, former Military and unlike the US President, is far from being a billionaire, nor reality TV host.

It should be emphasised however that the depiction of the Bolsonaros as “outsiders” is wide of the mark. Jair has been a federal deputy for 27 years, his sons Eduardo, a federal deputy since 2015, Flávio, a state deputy since 2010, and Carlos, a city councillor since 2000. The family has 13 apartments worth R$15 million, and a summer house in Angra dos Reis. Jair and Eduardo pocketed over R$ 700,000 in housing allowance despite having two apartments in Brasilia. Jair’s estate alone is worth R$2.3 million. Eduardo’s personal estate grew by 432% between 2014-2018.

In articles such as this one in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and this one on the BBC, his normalisation accelerated through 2018. “Outspoken comments”, “Arch-Conservative”, “Law and Order campaigner”, “Hardline candidate” have been the kind of euphemisms used for Bolsonaro’s Neofascist politics.

Human Rights dominate narratives on foreign governments when it suits, but Israel and Saudi Arabia are clear examples of how easily such rhetoric is disregarded when it is in North Atlantic interests to turn a blind eye. His public remarks from anyone else, god forbid a leader like Venezuela’s Maduro, would draw unanimous condemnation. Somehow they’re now acceptable coming from a politician who promises to let capital run free.

In the 1990s US Oil giant UNOCOL (Now Chevron) decided after negotiations to back the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Girls being banned from school was something they could live with. More recently the US and its allies had no qualms whatsoever about backing Neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

And throughout Pinochet’s reign of terror in Chile, and since, horrific crimes were relativised, diminished and ignored on account of his economic policy – the creation of a Neoliberal laboratory in the country, a glorious experiment in which thousands were disappeared, tortured and killed.

Never underestimate the levels of human suffering that “Wall Street”, and those whom blithely serve its interests, are prepared to accept.

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US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet

Blood Waltz
On September 4, speaking at a campaign rally in Acre, an excited Bolsonaro called for the machine gunning of Workers Party members.

Brazilian Prosecutor General Raquel Dodge deemed that no crime had been committed, and that no harm had been done.

Two days later, whilst being carried on the shoulders of supporters through the city of Juiz da Fora in the state of Minas Gerais, an assailant approached the Presidential Candidate and plunged a knife into his abdomen. Although initially reported as a surface wound and not a threat to his life, he arrived at hospital with, according to his son, “40% blood loss” and multiple injuries to his intestines, liver and other organs. Some of these claims were later debunked.

His attacker Adelio Bispo de Oliveira was immediately depicted by Bolsonaro allies as a Worker’s Party militant. The rumour spread quickly, and risked sparking retaliatory attacks. Coup loyalist newspaper Estadão emphased that he described himself as “moderate left”, effectively a euphemism for the PT. It was also reported that between 2007-2014 he had been affiliated to the PSOL party, who immediately denounced the attack as did all the other candidates and parties.

Dilma Rousseff was less sympathetic in her response, remarking “When you plant hatred, you harvest the storm”. Given that in 2015 he publicly expressed hope that she die of an heart attack or cancer, and dedicated his vote for her impeachment to her torturer, it was surprising that her response generated any controversy at all.

The attack amplified fears of a wider demonisation of the left in general, which always spikes at election time. In 1989, just prior to the election, businessman Albinio Diniz was kidnapped, which was blamed on Lula’s Workers Party. The timing of the kidnapping so soon before the election meant that the PT could not respond to the accusation through the media, due to a compulsory ban on campaigning for the final 24 hours ahead of voting. Lula would lose the election to Fernando Collor.

Bolsonaro’s vice, General Mourão, reacted to the attack with a chilling: “If you want to use violence, we are the professionals of violence.” while Gustavo Bebianno, leader of the PSL, the “Social Liberal Party” to which Bolsonaro belongs, said simply “now it is war”.

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Jair Bolsonaro in hospital following attack

In a video from his hospital bed Bolsonaro whimpered, “I’ve never hurt anyone”. In the first photo of the Presidential candidate conscious since arriving for treatment at São Paulo’s Albert Einstein Hospital he made his trademark “Two Gun” hand gesture.

His son Flavió posted on social media: “A message for these thugs who tried to ruin the life of a guy who is the father of a family, who is the hope for all Brazilians: you just elected the president, it will be in the first round”.

In a country where candidates and top government officials have been known to die in plane crashes at key moments in the political conjuncture, where a President elect suddenly died before taking office, and where the leading candidate has been jailed with no material evidence, people do not necessarily believe what they see on the news. The fact that Bolsonaro met with the owner of Globo, the largest media conglomerate in Latin America, 2 days before the knife attack, and that the video footage shows no blood, has led a large percentage of the Brazilian population to conclude that the incident was simulated or exaggerated to some extent. Regardless of whether this is the case or not, and we may never know, the fact is that Globo has used the incident to alter its portrayal of Bolsonaro from an right wing fringe outlier to a hero – even a martyr, during the 15 minutes of airtime they gave to the knife attack.

Wall Street was watching, and there was a sharp rise in the Real against the Dollar as news broke of an attack which was immediately interpreted as increasing his chances of election. On September 10, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders confirmed that members of the Trump administration had “reached out” to Bolsonaro.

In Plain Sight
A watershed moment for Bolsonaro came just one day before his stabbing, on September 5 2018, and was quickly forgotten in its wake.

It was a column for Folha do São Paulo by Brian Winter, editor of Americas Quaterly, the magazine of Wall Street lobby and think tank AS/COA (Americas Society/Council of the Americas). COA’s main patron is Chevron, but the corporate membership is a who’s who of US Corporations, Banks and Investment funds. A bridge between corporate, government power, intelligence, regional leaders and business, its purpose is to influence the Latin American politics in the interests of its members. In 2016, at an AS/COA event, post-coup President Michel Temer admitted that Dilma Rousseff had been impeached because she refused to implement their extreme Neoliberal programme “Bridge to the future”. The document was odd in that it appeared to have been translated from English, with social media users remarking on its unusual wording. Economist Marcio Pochmann noted similarities between “Bridge to the Future” and the “Government Economic Action Plan” (PAEG) which followed the Coup of 1964. One such similarity, he says, is the strong international influence.

The column in Folha do São Paulo openly admitted for the first time, for a wealthy Paulista readership, that Wall Street now supported the Presidential Candidacy of Jair Bolsonaro. And this was from the horses mouth, as “Wall Street” in effect equals the membership of the Council of the Americas, the actual organisation for which the author works.

Winter wrote: “There is, finally, the moral element. How can investors support a candidate with positions such as those of Bolsonaro on women, minorities and human rights? That’s the easy question. I know many honest people on Wall Street who feel repulsed by Bolsonaro. But they admit in private conversations that there is no room for feeling. As one told me, “my job is to make sure the bonds get paid on time. As for the rest-it’s up to the Brazilians to decide.”

For those familiar with the history of AS/COA, the handwringing tone of the column should have come as no surprise. Pulitzer winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote about it in his book “Price of Power“, detailing its role in the build up to the 1973 Chilean coup which left Salvador Allende dead and brought Augusto Pinochet to power.

“Millions of dollars in (US)AID and CIA funds were allocated, with the full knowledge of the Chilean and United States governments, to Roman Catholic organizations throughout the country whose objective was to oppose Protestantism and communism. Frei won handily, with 56 percent of the vote. Frei, who was fully aware of the source of his funding, also received covert help from a group of American corporations known as the Business Group for Latin America. The Group had been organized in 1963 by David Rockefeller, president of the Chase Manhattan Bank, at the express request of President Kennedy, who was directing his administration’s fight against Castro and the spread of communism in Latin America. It included on its executive committee such prominent corporation executives as C. Jay Parkinson, board chairman of Anaconda; Harold S. Geneen, head of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, which owned and operated the telephone facilities in Chile; and Donald M. Kendall, chairman of PepsiCo, the softdrink company, which had extensive business activities in Latin America.

The principal contact in Chile for the CIA as well as for the American corporations was the organization of Agustín Edwards, a close friend of Kendall’s, who was the owner of the conservative El Mercurio newspaper chain in Chile and a focal point for the opposition to Allende and the left. The CIA and the Business Group, which by 1970 had been reorganized into the Council of the Americas, relied heavily on Edwards to use his organization and his contacts to channel their moneys into the 1964 political campaign. Many of the ties between the Business Group and the CIA in 1964 remained in place long after the election. For example, Enno Hobbing, a CIA official who had initially been assigned as liaison to the Business Group, eventually left the CIA and became the principal operations officer for the Council.”

David Rockefeller remained at its head until his death in 2017. Other notable staff include former Deputy US Secretary of State, first Director of National Intelligence, key plotter in Venezuela’s failed 2002 Coup and overseer of war crimes in Central America, John D. Negroponte, and Juliana Barbassa, who now works at the New York Times Latin America desk.

Interference in Brazil’s election, and fomenting support for the subsequent coup of 1964 were amongst the nascent COA’s first tasks. Rockefeller told a meeting at West Point in late 1964 that “the banking community had decided early on that João Goulart was not acceptable and that he had to go”. It had funded Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IBAD) and a related organisation called Democratic Action (ADEP) spending between 12-20 million dollars (2018: up to $165m) financing anti-Goulart/anti-Communist candidates during the 1962 electoral campaign.

In 2005 a new think tank was formed drawing together Neoliberals from Brazil and outside, including journalists, economists and politicians, that was called a successor organisation to IBAD. Over the next decade its alumni would come to dominate the economic media narrative in Brazil. It was called Instituto Millenium, and its founder a Brazilian Banker called Paulo Guedes.

Bolsonaro’s “Brain”
AS/COA held at least one off record meeting with Bolsonaro and his advisors in 2017. What followed was a road to Damascus style conversion to the public rhetoric of free markets and the minimal state. Yet, whereas prior he had been depicted as a some kind of economic nationalist, it was clear as early as the 1993 New York Times interview, that he was always staunchly pro-privatisation.

Despite this long held commitment to free-markets, he admitted publicly in a TV Interview with Mariana Godoy that he doesn’t understand anything about economics, and that’s where his “guru” Paulo Guedes comes in.

Wall Street investors see the Bolsonaro/Guedes combination like Pinochet and the Chicago Boys. Neoliberalism at the point of a gun.

Guedes was a founder of what became BTG Pactual bank, and actually worked in Chile under Pinochet. He describes his genocidal dictatorship as “an intellectual point of view”. Wall Street Journal and others have openly defended Pinochet, and in 2015, Winter himself described the Dictator as a “Revolutionary” and equated him with Che Guevara.

Since becoming part of Bolsonaro’s team in 2017, named as his prospective Finance Minister Guedes has described the former Soldier as the representative of an abandoned Brazilian middle class, and they have worked to consolidate support amongst the Bullet, Bible & Bull congressional caucus, with a promise of carte blanche for the farming industry’s violence against Indigenous communities and Social Movements. With a nod to extractive multinationals he said “where there is indigenous land, there is wealth beneath it“.

In 2017 Guedes embarked on an international mission to improve Bolsonaro’s image with investors and foreign media. It appeared to have some effect, as this April 2018 Bloomberg article shows.

He openly supports torture and his congressional vote for Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment was marked by a demented eulogy to the man, Carlos Brilhante Ustra, responsible for her brutal and sexual torture in the early 1970s. He has twice made rape-related threats and remarks to PT Congresswoman Maria do Rosario, for which he was convicted. He has made racist remarks at public events for which he has been convicted. He is an outspoken homophobe, denier and apologist for violence and murder of LGBTQ Brazilians. He has said that “30,000 Brazilians needed to be killed for the country to function”.

Yet in the eyes of Wall Street, he is preferable to a Social Democrat.

At the point of a gun
Early in 2018 it was was reported that, at an event of Guedes’ BTG Pactual Bank, Bolsonaro proposed a solution to organised crime in Brazil’s favelas, such as Rio de Janeiro’s Rocinha, home to around 70,000 inhabitants. It was to drop leaflets from helicopter, warning citizens to evacuate and the gangs that they had four hours to surrender. After some hours the favelas should be machine gunned. He was also reportedly applauded by the audience, made up of the banking and business community.

Previously the candidate has said on television that Chile’s Augusto Pinochet did what he had to do, but “didn’t go far enough” and in early September 2018, his son and fellow congressman Eduardo tweeted (then deleted) that “We will change Brazil with or without bullets”. He was recently photographed with new advisor, white supremacist Steve Bannon.

Back in 2014, from a sound truck shared with Koch Brothers-linked pro-coup group MBL, son Eduardo addressed the small crowd at one of the first protests following the re-election of Dilma Rousseff, with a pistol in his belt, demonised “communists” and eulogised the Military Police. He has since proposed a law that would make “apologia for communism” a criminal offence.

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General Mourão at a Military ceremony in Curitiba, December 2015

His father Jair once said that he “would call a military coup on the day he was elected”, and doubled down on this by appointing General Mourão, as his Presidential running mate. With Bolsonaro in hospital, it is Mourão, who openly expresses his belief in Brazil’s return to military rule, who now takes centre stage in the campaign.

During a interview before a panel of journalists on Globo News, Mourão remarked “Heroes kill” when asked about the actions of Carlos Brilhante Ustra, head of the feared internal intelligence agency DOI-CODI during the military regime, the man personally responsible for the torture of Dilma Rousseff.

With Mourao’s rhetoric people are yet more afraid their campaign could be an attempt to induce military rule through a charade at the ballot box, with the clear leader in jail and prevented from running. The unearthing of Bolsonaro’s 1993 quotes in the NYT raised the spectre of a “Fujimorian Auto-Coup” and Mourão comes from the school of thought that the Dictatorship should have never ended.

Authoritarian Coup-loyalist and Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who was appointed following the controversial death of Judge Teori Zavascki in early 2017, is overseeing Bolsonaro’s conviction for racism, and by not acting to sentence him before the election is accused of maintaining Bolsonaro’s freedom and election prospects – effectively kept as an establishment “plan B” in case his former boss Geraldo Alckmin didn’t progress to the second round – which now looks highly unlikely.

Patriots
Filmed on a trip to Miami in 2017 saluting the United States flag, it was not the first time that Bolsonaro’s “nationalist” credentials had been tested.

On July 9 2013, the country was still gripped by mass protests that appeared to spring from nowhere. Just prior to the explosion on the streets, whistleblower Edward Snowden released documents showing United States surveillance of Brazilian Government, Law Enforcement and Strategic Companies. In congress that day, Bolsonaro all but dismissed the revelations. He was joined by PSDB’s Nilson Leitão, Ronaldo Caiado, of key 2016 coup player and Dictatorship-heir party Democratas, and their future Congressional President Rodrigo Maia.

The minutes of that Congressional session in Brasília report that:

“The Plenary approved, by 292 votes to 86 and 12 abstentions, a motion proposed by the PT and signed by the leaders of the PMDB, the PV, the PSOL and the PCdoB to repudiate the US government for the espionage of US intelligence agencies on companies and people.

Deputies stressed that the motion is a response to the gravity of the allegations made by former CIA technician Edward Snowden, that the National Security Agency (NSA) maintained offices in Brazil to monitor the communication of companies and Brazilians.

“It is a manifestation of the Legislature, which can not be omitted, it is not a diversionary maneuver, but the position of Parliament,” said the leader of the PV, Deputy Sarney Filho (Maranhão). This was reinforced by the leader of PSOL, Deputy Ivan Valente (São Paulo).

The proposal for a motion of repudiation led to divergences in the Plenary. Deputy Jair Bolsonaro (PP-RJ) said the attitude is premature and stressed that the US is a major trading partner. The leaders of the minority, Nilson Leitão (PSDB-Mato Grosso); Ronaldo Caiado (DEM-Goiania); and deputy Rodrigo Maia (DEM-Rio de Janeiro), denounced that the motion aims to divert the focus of the problems in the country.“

It is a historical curiosity that such a staggering and unprecedented level of US spying on Brazil – a friendly nation – as written about here by Glenn Greenwald, and quickly identified as a fundamental sovereignty issue on the left, was dismissed entirely by far right politicians such as Bolsonaro and Caiado.

God & Brazil above all
Bolsonaro’s 2018 campaign manifesto, created in conjunction with Paulo Guedes, is called “Project Phoenix”. Public security and liberalisation of Gun ownership take centre stage, but it is also explicitly in favour of the process which has seen privatisation of Brazil’s state owned companies and resources further opened to foreign ownership. He also proposes military style schooling, and censorship of “leftist” ideology from classrooms.

Meanwhile, in contradiction of the beliefs held by his core support, the manifesto also reaches out to Brazil’s poorest by insisting it will retain key social programme Bolsa Familia.

It also contains dozens of references to God. His support amongst Neopentecostal, Evangelical congregations is strong. (The early growth of such groups as a powerful, imported, socially conservative force in Brazilian society is documented in William Colby and Catherine Dennett’s ‘Thy Will Be Done’).

The same voices who normalise Bolsonaro now have breathlessly promoted the “pro-market” Car Wash anti-corruption operation for the past 4 years, which has drawn an official UNHRC rebuke for its imprisonment of the leading candidate in October’s elections, former President Lula da Silva. The Human Rights committee issued an order, under a treaty that is binding under Brazilian law, that Lula must be allowed to run for President, and have access to his party and media. All of these requests were denied, putting Brazil in breach of its international human rights commitments.

For Bolsonaro and his supporters, the very notion of Human Rights is “communist”. He has promised to withdraw Brazil from the UN, if elected and abandon Brazil’s Human Rights ministry.

It had long been clear that the Military would not accept a Lula candidacy, and 9th September this was made all but official by head of the armed forces General Villas-Boas, which brought instant condemnation from the Workers Party.

Jair Bolsonaro is a case-study in the relationship between Fascism and Neoliberalism.

It is critical for the outside world to understand that this new-look, market-friendly Bolsonaro is only in a position where victory is even theoretically possible because, and only because, of former President Lula’s contested imprisonment. That imprisonment has been aided through informal (and illegal) collaboration between the US Department of Justice and Brazilian Federal Police, discussion of which is an Anglo media taboo.

The first polls conducted after his attack showed only a very slight increase in voting intention, but he has steadily grown since. Thankfully he has massive public rejection, and there will be an enormous mobilisation to stop him.

If investors truly believe that a Fascist’s victory in such an obvious sham of an election would protect their assets, they massively underestimate the Brazilian people, and should think again. If, somehow Jair Bolsonaro is elected President of Brazil, we should be under no illusion – there will be blood.

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 05, 2019 2:27 pm

Brazil’s road to neo-fascism
Posted Jan 04, 2019 by Eds.
Topics: Fascism , Imperialism , Political EconomyPlaces: Brazil
Originally published: Red Pepper by Pedro Rocha de Oliveira (January 1, 2018) |
The current Brazilian political system was born in the 1980s, when the business and US-backed military regime that had governed for 20 years began to decline. The dictatorship ended of its own accord though–it was never overthrown, and that made all the difference. When the new constitution was drafted, authoritarian elements intermingled with the formally democratic structures. A strong, unassailable judiciary formed. And, purportedly in the name of plurality, the creation of political parties was facilitated. Today, there are over 30 of them operating in congress.

Brazil is a big country; our society is fairly diverse. The number of parties does not represent that diversity, however, but is an index of political clientelism. Through their nomenclature, most parties pay lip service to some ideology (mostly centre and right) but they’re really nothing more, nothing less, than political machines. Politicians at the local level, allied with businesses or an occasional drug cartel or paramilitary group (businesses of a kind, one might argue), create networks of favouritism based on the distribution of resources (fix that specific street; expand the sewage system into that specific neighbourhood; give out food at these specific locations). This gets mayors and councillors elected, and these local officials influence their clientèle into voting for deputies at state and national levels.

In a sense, that’s how it should work, isn’t it? In the UK, MPs are expected to defend their constituencies’ interests, and so on. But the key to our version of legislative representation is that we are one of the most economically unequal countries in the world. Clientelistic officials play with scarcity: they episodically and continuously ameliorate the ills of chronic poverty.

On the national level, these various political machines get together in the national assembly. Any one of them is intrinsically incapable of forming a majority on its own; so, in order to govern, whichever manages to elect a president has to form a coalition. This is where corruption comes in. Since party ideologies are either non-existent or very similar, the real bond for such coalitions is, on the one hand, the distribution of national resources for the successful management of local clientelistic networks, and, on the other hand, payments made by corporations. These payments are either made semi-legally, through so-called ‘campaign funds’ (largely what is legalised elsewhere as ‘lobbying’), or illegally through bribes distributed to influence both policy and implementation (who will build a road, hire the personnel, and so on). So post-dictatorship ‘coalition presidentialism’ is basically paying people to let you govern.

An exception of sorts
Not all political parties are equal, even if most are fairly alike. For historical reasons, some are stronger in certain regions, or among certain interest groups, such as gun manufacturers or pentecostal bishops. There is an ideologically consistent but politically minuscule left. And there is PT, our Workers’ Party, which is also an exception of sorts–not because it doesn’t play the coalition game (it ruled, therefore it sinned) but because its origins lie not in clientelistic networks but in real social movements.

PT originated in the ‘democratic reopening’ days from the labour organisations that resulted from the military’s push to industrialise. Other social forces began to coalesce around that ‘new unionism’: agrarian reform and urban neighbourhood movements, liberation theology-inspired Catholic groups–the sort of organisations whose radicalisation in the 1960s prompted the military coup to begin with. In the 1980s and 1990s PT played a significant role in Brazilian politics, as a consistent opposition to right-wing governments, as well as electing several governors and mayors, including in important state capitals.

The transition from that grassroots PT to what the party had to become to win a presidential election with Lula in 2002, and rule the country until 2016, was a complex process. It ultimately involved forging connections and alliances with entrepreneurial sectors–banks, contractors, agrobusiness. Unsurprisingly, those alliances imposed huge limitations on much of PT’s original working-class agenda–and deepened the party’s embroilment in the vote-buying routine. The vast extent of that embroilment became obvious in the mensalão vote-buying scandal of 2005, whereby congressional deputies were paid large sums from state-owned companies’ budgets (mensalão is a neologism translating roughly as ‘big monthly payments’) to back government legislation.

Brazilian politics is stricken through by such scandals, but their constancy doesn’t really reflect some special level of crookedness among our politicians. Still, coalition presidentialism is a tough game, and whistle-blowing is embedded in its structure. There are too many parties; even within a coalition, knife-point disputes for payouts are bound to happen. Frustrated vote-sellers have thus often come forward to denounce the immorality of it all to an ever-indignant corporate media, which, of course, can dose out its indignation quite deliberately. In the case of the mensalão scandal, it dealt it out with delighted ferocity: the political forces behind the corporate media never forgave PT for winning the presidential election and bitterly resented policies such as the steady increase in the minimum wage, the democratisation of higher education, and so on.

The mensalão payouts were in many respects a predictable outcome of the need to oil the gears of coalition presidentialism. When the scheme became public, though, the media treated it as something unforeseen. The left itself was (or acted) surprised. They felt betrayed, they said; they never thought a party inspired by proletarian politics could go so low. Artificial outrage, calculated cynicism and harmful naïveté thus began to give shape to the idea of PT as the epitome of Brazilian corruption: a ‘criminal organisation’. And that is when Brazilian politics began to play openly with authoritarianism.

In the favelas
The right has long known how to capitalise on the fear of crime. But in Brazil there is a fundamental interconnection between ordinary urban violence, heavily-armed drug cartels, economic inequality expressed in extreme spatial and racial segregation, a collapsed social support system and political clientelism. Picture 15-year-olds armed with Belgian automatic rifles circulating freely in Rio de Janeiro neighbourhoods where the bare-brick houses have been built by their own residents on patches of land to which they have no legal claim. These are neighbourhoods where no sewage system exists, the mail service doesn’t deliver, electricity is obtained through illegal connections and cable TV is distributed through deals made with the heads of the local drug gangs. Public transport is supplemented by van services supervised by paramilitary groups that extort the localities in exchange for ‘protection’ and monopolise the distribution of cooking-gas cylinders. Proper public hospitals are non-existent. Makeshift infirmaries are rare, overcrowded, understaffed and unequipped.

In these areas–the favelas–inhabited mostly by a black population, the state is present largely in its repressive form. Schools in many of them were closed half the time in 2017 due to conflicts between the state police and the armed kids. The UPPs, Pacification Police Units, have turned indiscriminate stop-and-search into a daily routine. Police helicopters have been filmed swooping over dense neighbourhoods firing machine guns. Dozens of ordinary folk going out to work with their electric drills or folding umbrellas have been mistaken for armed thugs and shot dead. Stray bullets wound, maim and kill thousands each year. Summary, on-site executions during ‘conflicts’ are ordinary expedients, publicly endorsed by the police spokesmen, and normalised by systematic judicial omission.

At the same time, officially-recognised local neighbourhood associations are generally known to be points of contact between government, the clientelistic system and drug cartels and paramilitary groups–useful connections each time there is an election. And there is the well-known practice of paying ‘arrego’, or ‘surrender-money’ to local police patrols in exchange for their turning a blind eye to the comings and goings of drug sellers and buyers.

For most people reading–and writing–articles like this, such a world sounds like a nightmare, maybe comparable to life under fascist regimes where the rule of law has been suspended. But this has been going on for decades–even under Lula’s acclaimed presidency. It is painful to admit that, during the time PT was in power, the death toll of the ‘war on crime’ rose steeply–currently, 14 people are killed every day on average by the police countrywide–even if such increases took place alongside a small reduction in inequality. Brazilian society has thus been functioning for a very long time with a very high degree of normalised state violence against the black and the poor. The worst-off of our citizens have had daily encounters with systematic state lawlessness and downright autocracy uninterruptedly since the dictatorship days.

Cultural complement
As one might expect, the system of state violence has a cultural complement. This includes TV shows in which helicopter footage follows police cars speeding through narrow streets shooting at swerving motorcycles as commentators urge the men in uniform to ‘annihilate’ the ‘insects’. Elite Squad 1 and 2–record-breaking film productions of the 2000s, in which torture, ridicule of human rights activists and double-barrels to the face all play a role in the self-justified war on drugs–glamourised the myth of the incorruptible black-clad SWAT officer who acts lawlessly when the situation demands in order to catch bad guys. A particularly eloquent scene has the main character railing at the Rio legislative assembly that the elected officials are all corrupt and immoral. In an interrogation scene, he threatens to insert a broomstick in the anus of a drug cartel ‘soldier’. Finally, there is aerial footage of the national congressional buildings, while a voiceover speaks of ‘where the real enemy is’.

This is the cultural environment in which the ‘criminal organisation’ discourse began to be used against PT in the aftermath of the mensalão scandal. The profoundly authoritarian and intrinsically racist forces brewing then took their first clearly-defined political shape during the countrywide demonstrations in July 2013.

Dilma Rousseff, formerly part of Lula’s technical staff, was in the second year of her first term as president. On leaving office, Lula had an almost 90 per cent approval rating; Dilma had taken office on the back of that popularity. She had been an unlikely choice, but much of the party’s leadership had been jailed in the mensalão scandal, many of them through questionable judicial processes based on little or no evidence: the judicial system had begun to openly display its political bias, with full support of the media. When the demonstrations broke out, initially inspired by bus fare increases in Rio and São Paulo, changes in the international economic situation were beginning to be felt in Brazil.

The media took the vague feeling of discontent and vigorously mixed it with an anti-corruption discourse. Minuscule right-wing organisations, previously unheard of, got money from business lobbies to organise their own anti-government demonstrations, which the media treated as indistinguishable from the bus fare movement. Protesters began to suggest that Dilma be ousted and replaced by Joaquim Barbosa, a supreme court judge famous for indicting politicians implicated in the mensalão–an institutionally absurd suggestion, which the media nevertheless popularised. By now, judges and federal police were on the news constantly, idolised as guardians of morality and probity. Barbosa, often seen on TV wearing his ceremonial gown, was sometimes referred to as the ‘man in black’, in allusion to the Elite Squad film character.

Presidential impeachment
Then came Dilma’s impeachment. In 2015, she was at the beginning of her second term as president after narrowly defeating Aécio Neves. The economy had been deteriorating from the heights reached during Lula’s presidency, especially due to plummeting commodity prices. Brazil faced serious fiscal issues, and inflation was returning. State judge Moro, another ‘man in black’, had tried and convicted Lula for allegedly being granted a free apartment refurbishment by a contracting business during his presidency. The evidence was flimsy–a non-signed real-estate purchase proposal was used to ‘prove’ that the apartment belonged to Lula. It was a political, not a criminal indictment, but the charge stuck and it was to debar Lula from the 2018 presidential election, which he had been favourite to win.

Meanwhile, congress had been making Dilma’s presidency impossible, taking its cue from Aécio Neves, who had himself been implicated in a couple of scandals involving cocaine-smuggling but against whom the supreme court repeatedly refused to open investigations. The central bank was in open rebellion, its head having refused to lower the national interest rate when ordered to do so by Dilma’s cabinet.

Dilma’s impeachment was another instance of the increasingly overt intervention of the judiciary into politics. The accusation levelled against her revolved around accounting technicalities for which, institutionally speaking, she was really not responsible, and which specialised consultants claimed had no consequence for budgetary policy. But another corruption scandal, this time involving Brazil’s giant mixed-capital oil company Petrobrás, had been all over the news. The media explored to the utmost any connection, however flimsy, between the incessant reports on the ongoing investigations and the subtleties of budget accounting. From watching the news, one got the feeling that Dilma was being impeached because of Petrobrás, even though no connection existed. While declaring their impeachment votes, congress members vituperated against PT and corruption; none of the hundreds of ‘yes’ votes made any allusion to the accounting technicality on which the bill was founded.

By the beginning of 2018, the political tide was flowing firmly rightwards and violent forces were becoming increasingly emboldened.

In March, the Rio councillor Marielle Franco was assassinated. She and her driver were shot as their car stopped at a traffic light. The assassins used silencers; nearby street cameras had been turned off. Franco belonged to PSOL, a small left-wing party. She was a human rights militant from the Maré favela complex, known for denouncing the involvement of city councillors in paramilitary groups.

Investigations of her murder have got nowhere. It is noteworthy that, since February, Rio has been under federal intervention, with key aspects of security and policing under direct command of the armed forces. It all sends a sinister message to the left as a whole.

Illustration- Luke Carter
Illustration- Luke Carter

From clown to king
Taking all this background into account, it comes as no great turn of events that a character like retired army captain Jair Bolsonaro should rise to the presidency. Despite his ‘new politics’ discourse, he has been in congress since 1991, continuously re-elected on his far-right ‘the only good bandit is a dead bandit’ platform. In the 1990s and most of the 2000s, the media treated him as a clownish extremist who spoke absurdities on second-grade talk shows–but also gave him the chance to do so repeatedly. That is how he gained notoriety for his open endorsement of the dictatorship, his belief that torture is efficient and useful, and that the whole thing should happen again. At least 30,000 people had to be killed, he once said on TV, if Brazil was to be fixed–including the centre-right then-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, at the time implementing a thoroughly neoliberal programme. Ironically, ‘parliamentary immunity’ devised after the dictatorship to protect politicians’ free speech made such declarations unchargeable.

In the 2010s, Bolsonaro played a major role in the anti-PT spectacle. He voiced the far-right view that ‘the communists’ were ruining the country and trying to turn it into a second Cuba or Venezuela. He once threatened to hit a (female) journalist for being asked something he didn’t like; and in a parliamentary discussion on the penal code he yelled at PT congresswoman Maria do Rosário that she was too ugly to be raped. On another occasion, he described members of ex-slave black communities in terms alluding to the cattle market. As he declared his ‘yes’ vote in the 2016 impeachment process, he praised a known torturer, calling him ‘Dilma Rousseff’s terror’, in allusion to the fact that she had been involved in the short-lived armed struggle against the dictatorship in the 1960s, and had been arrested and tortured.

The list goes on, to the point that one might ask how such a repulsive figure was allowed to continue saying these things in a civilised, democratic country.

It is all a matter of context. Take, for example, Bolsonaro’s statement during the presidential campaign that, under his government, the police would be authorised to shoot to kill at will. The fact is, though, that the police in Brazil already shoot to kill at will, albeit unofficially. Amnesty reports have repeatedly shown that the Rio state police is the most lethal police force in the world; other Brazilian state forces aren’t far behind.

As for Bolsonaro’s insinuations that the left should be wiped out, a recent Global Witness report says Brazil is already the deadliest country for environmental defenders in the world, with similar dangers for land-reform and human-rights activists. The statistics for crimes against women and the LGBT community are horrendous. The left has long been barred from organising in communities controlled by drug cartels or paramilitary groups. With regard to Bolsonaro’s racismo, Brazil is about half black but of its 60,000 gun deaths in 2017 about two-thirds of victims are black.

Worse not different
Scary as it may be, then, a Bolsonaro presidency, with all its promises of violence and repression, isn’t going to introduce fundamental changes in Brazilian society so much as making what exists already even worse.

There have been hints of fresh horrors ahead during the presidential campaign. A young woman in Porto Alegre was punched and held by a group of men while one cut a swastika on her stomach with a knife. University students were beaten with iron bars while giving out fliers for Bolsonaro’s PT opponent Fernando Haddad. And as a trans woman was knifed to death, her killers cried out that, under a Bolsonaro presidency, there will be an open war against gays.

But what is really new in horrors such as these? The racists, chauvinists and homophobes doing this now have, for decades, been acting out their hatred in an environment in which economic inequality mingles with racism to create a very clear social divide between citizens and expendables. Examples abound. A few years back, in a middle-class Rio neighbourhood, a group of white people beat a young black man, stripped him and tied him by the neck to a street post with a bike chain after he allegedly tried to steal from someone; none of the aggressors was charged. Back in the 1990s, in Brasilia, a similar little group set fire to a Pataxó indigenous man who was sleeping rough at a bus stop. The perpetrators later said they thought he was ‘just a bum’; decades later, after dodging most of his prison sentence, one of them became a police constable.

Members of our judiciary mostly come from that same background and operate fully within it. So, in 2014, a judge made use of her discretionary powers to create an instrument by which every inhabitant of the Maré favela complex–home to hundreds of thousands of people–was deemed a suspect in a drug cartel investigation, authorising the police to enter any house without a warrant (not that they didn’t already do so whenever they wanted).

So the Bolsonaro phenomenon is really about broadening the spectrum of systematic, unaccountable social violence to include not only black people and the poor, but also the LGBT community and the left. Probably not since the 1920s and the 1930s in Brazil, when anarchists and fascists fought in the streets, did civilians feel culturally authorised to beat up someone because of their political beliefs.

What is really horrifying, then, is not that Bolsonaro is president, but that neo-fascists like him do not represent a break with the norm but a natural development of social conditions that are common in contemporary capitalism: long-lasting economic inequality, a culture of systematic state violence, strong-arm policing and unaccountable officials. Far from being some aberration, this seems increasingly to be the face of modern capitalism.

https://mronline.org/2019/01/04/brazils ... o-fascism/

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 07, 2019 4:38 pm

Brazilians condemn submission to the US to destabilize Venezuela
The Workers Party (PT) of Brazil condemned the submission that the new government of Jair Bolsonaro maintains today to the interests of the United States, in its attempt to destabilize Venezuela

Author: Digital Writing | internet@granma.cu

January 7, 2019 09:01:58

Image
Photo: Prensa Latina

The Workers Party (PT) of Brazil condemned the submission that the new government of Jair Bolsonaro maintains today to the interests of the United States, in its attempt to destabilize Venezuela, highlights the information of the Prensa Latina news agency.

"This aggressive decision of the Brazilian government shows that our country no longer has an autonomous external policy, having aligned uncritically and against its own interests to Donad Trump's warmongering geopolitical and anti-Latin American geopolitical agenda," said a note from the PT, quoted by the Brazil portal 247

It refutes "the decision of the new Brazilian government to support the recent declaration of the Lima Group, which does not recognize the mandate of President (Nicolás) Maduro and encourages the realization of a coup in Venezuela."

Such a position, the text continues, is "contrary to the highest traditions of Brazilian diplomacy. The constitutional principles of non-intervention and peaceful settlement of disputes always opted for dialogue and negotiation as the only ways to resolve the internal conflict of that sister country. "

Signed by PT President Gleisi Hoffmann and Senator Lindbergh Farias, leader of the party in the Senate, the statement warns that "such a warmongering agenda should aggravate Venezuela's internal conflict, weaken the integration of Latin America, dwarf Brazil and , very likely, will cause serious instability throughout our region ».

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza on Friday expressed willingness to talk with his Brazilian counterpart, Ernesto Araújo, despite the position taken by Bolsonaro, who says he is willing to overthrow Maduro.

Through the social network Twitter, the Foreign Minister said that, despite the intentions of reaching a bilateral exchange, its realization is unlikely due to the union of the Brazilian authorities to the efforts of the United States and its allies to delegitimize the democratically elected government for the Venezuelans.

http://www.granma.cu/mundo/2019-01-07/b ... 9-09-01-58

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 08, 2019 2:05 pm

Government Bolsonaro suspends indefinite agrarian reform

By Daniel Camargos and Diego Junqueira | 1/8/19/19
Documents distributed to Incra's superintendencies determine the interruption of the purchase and demarcation of land for the creation of settlements. Body says measure is temporary, but does not say how long it will last

The land reform lasted less than three days under President Jair Bolsonaro's government and has no date to be re-executed. The regional superintendencies of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra) received, last Thursday (3), memoranda determining the interruption of all processes for purchase and expropriation of land. According to Incra, 250 lawsuits in progress are suspended.

Social movements, career servants from INCRA and specialists in the land issue evaluate that the suspension is the first step of the Bolsonaro government to extinguish agrarian reform. Of the four INCRA officials heard by Reporter Brazil , who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, two believe the measure reveals the new government's intention to end agrarian reform. There is also among those who evaluate that the suspension is a way for the government to save time until measures that favor agribusiness are issued.

Incra has informed that the interruption is temporary, but did not detail the duration of the measure. "As it appears in the body of the document itself, the processes were stopped until the new INCRA structure is defined," says a note sent to Reporter Brazil . When asked what criteria were adopted for the suspension of land acquisition for agrarian reform, the institute said that "there is no need to speak on technical criteria, but rather on administrative measures aimed at the operation of Incra's tasks."

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Zé Maria, in Limoeiro do Norte (CE), is one of the few organic farms in the region, where fruit farms use large quantities of agrochemicals (Photo: Lunaé Parracho / Reporter Brazil)

For the Landless Workers Movement (MST), the measure could deepen violence in the countryside. "If this happens [the extinction of the agrarian reform], there will be more clashes in the countryside," says the national leader of the MST, Alexandre Conceição. "The landowners won along with Bolsonaro and what they want is more concentration of land in the hands of few people," he says.

A second memorandum, also sent on January 3, states that the regional superintendencies will make available, until Wednesday (9), the list of all properties that can be used for agrarian reform. The document justifies that the changes are due to the change in the structure of INCRA, which in the Bolsonaro government is no longer connected to the Civil House and passes to the Ministry of Agriculture. "The transition team of the new structure needs to know the existing demand for obtaining rural properties to be incorporated into the National Agrarian Reform Program," the document says.

A third memorandum reinforces the request to suspend the processes of purchase and expropriation of lands, except those that process in the Justice, and details that the determination also applies to the areas of the Legal Amazon, that includes nine states bathed by the river basin of the River Amazonas.

Two memoranda were signed by the former INCRA director, Clovis Figueiredo Cardoso, attached to the PMDB of Mato Grosso and indicated in the management of former president Michel Temer. Clóvis was exonerated after the documents were released.

The third document was signed by Cletho Muniz de Brito, planning director of the agency's land structure. Brito was a state deputy in Rondônia, where he adopted the political name of "Brito do Incra".

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Fezinha and other 461 families produce the Guaií organic coffee at the Quilombo Campo Grande (MG) camp, which may be affected by the suspension of agrarian reform (Photo: Caio Castor / Reporter Brazil)

The land reform has been losing ground in the budget of the federal government since 2015. That year, Congress approved spending of R $ 2.5 billion to the Agrarian Reform and Land Governance program. By 2019, the Annual Budget Law brings the spending forecast to R $ 762 million - a 70% cut in four years. This policy includes not only the acquisition of land for the settlement of the families but also the management of the rural cadastre, regularization of the land structure, development of settlements and social assistance projects, education and pacification in the countryside.

In 2018, Incra had more than R $ 34 million available to obtain new rural properties to create settlements, but spent only R $ 25 million, according to the Institute.

The ruralist secretary
The head of the agrarian reform program in the Bolsonaro government is the president of the Rural Democratic Union (UDR), Luiz Antônio Nabhan Garcia, appointed special secretary of the Land Regulation of the Ministry of Agriculture. Garcia was the protagonist in the clash with the MST during the 1990s in land disputes at Pontal do Paranapanema in São Paulo. At the time, he was accused by a farmer of organizing private militias in the region and was even summoned to provide clarifications to the Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the Earth.

Image
The special secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture's Land Regulation, Nabhan Garcia, was the protagonist in the clash with the MST in the 1990s (Photo: Agência Brasil)

"They put the big fox over the chicken coop," says Marco Mitidiero, a professor at the Federal University of Paraíba, referring to Garcia. The professor investigates the Brazilian land issue and, in his analysis, the suspension of agrarian reform is part of the Bolsonaro government's plan to block land expropriation. Mitidiero understands that urban and rural social movements are articulating and that the INCRA measure must generate a new wave of land occupations.

"We do not want violence. We want agrarian reform ", emphasizes Conceição, of the MST. He points out that the priority of the MST is to take care of the safety of families, but that increased land concentration inevitably leads to more occupations.

The MST leader believes that the nature of the Bolsonaro administration is to provoke the conflict, but that the movement will seek agrarian reform in state governments, the judiciary and in spheres where there is dialogue. "Agrarian reform solves two problems. It gives the roof and food for the workers, "he says.

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Rural workers like Averson and Ivonete Batista have been waiting for four years to regularize the settlement where they live in Anapu (Photo: Repórter Brasil)

Violence in the countryside exploded in 2017. According to a report by the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), there were 1,431 conflicts in the field with 71 deaths. It is the highest number of murders since 2003, when 73 died of rural conflicts. The 2018 numbers have not yet been released by the CPT.

According to Jeane Bellini, CPT coordinator, the advances of ruralists in institutional politics have an immediate impact on violence in the countryside. "Every time the rural squad grows in influence, the grileiros advance," he says. Bellini quotes Anapu, in Pará, where the missionary Dorothy Stang was murdered in 2005 . There, over the past three years, 16 rural workers have been killed in land conflicts.

The measure of the new government affects camps in practically every state in the country. Among the rural workers who may be forced to postpone the dream to the land are the 350 families who live in the settlement project known as Mata Preta in Anapu. The site has two schools and 150 students. Families live by planting diverse crops and extracting forest resources. In the area they occupy, they preserve 80% of the native vegetation.

https://reporterbrasil.org.br/2019/01/g ... terminado/

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 14, 2019 8:57 pm

Food security under risk of backsliding in the Bolsonaro government
Extinction of the National Food Safety and Nutrition Alarm experts. Created in the 1990s, the agency played a key role in getting Brazil out of the UN's Hunger Map.

Consea played a key role in taking Brazil out of the UN's Hunger Map in 2014

"He who is hungry is in a hurry." With the symbolic phrase, the sociologist Herbert de Souza, Betinho, led in 1992 the Movement for Ethics in Politics. It was a cry from civil society organizations against corruption at a time when more than 32 million Brazilians were starving in the country. The intense mobilization articulated during the government of Itamar Franco resulted in the creation of the National Council of Food and Nutritional Security (Consea), extinguished by President Jair Bolsonaro in his first day in the Plateau.

The advisory body was directly linked to the Presidency of the Republic and made up of two thirds of representatives of civil society organizations. Policies based on the Consea, with the democratic and voluntary participation of members, played a key role in getting Brazil out of the UN's Hunger Map in 2014 and making it an international benchmark.

"From where Betinho is, he is really desperate about the situation we are going through. We are starting to see 2019 practically certain that we will go back to the UN Hunger Map or we will be very close to returning, and it is exactly this year that the Consea "says Kiko Afonso, coordinator of the NGO Action of Citizenship, an organization founded by Betinho and working for public policies against hunger and misery.

"It's a surrealism that only Brazil can produce. The government looking at the extinction of the council as something positive is something incomprehensible," he laments.

Provisional Measure 870/2019, the first one signed by Bolsonaro, amended the provisions of the 2006 Organic Food Safety Act (Losan), which aims to ensure the human right to adequate food. The government extinguished Consea's duties and also revoked the points on the composition of the council.

The guidelines and programs on food and nutritional security are now linked to the Ministry of Citizenship. It is not known whether civil society will still have a voice in food security policies.

In a statement, the Ministry of Citizenship reported that not only Consea, but all councils linked to the Presidency of the Republic were extinguished with the justification that "government delivery will become faster." The portfolio also stressed that the powers of the former councils will be kept "in other organs".

"Consea ceases to be the heart of the Presidency of the Republic, as a structuring body, and becomes only an appendage of the government's public policies," explains Larissa Mies Bobardi, professor of the Postgraduate Program in Human Geography at the University of São Paulo (USP). "This is a great loss."

The NGO Acción da Cidadania published a protest note to the government. "In practice, Consea is being phased out, officials are already being told that they will be relocated to other areas," said Afonso. We want to open a channel of dialogue with the government for the return of the Consea. We can not stand up to this arbitrariness. "

With the increase in unemployment and misery in the country, it is almost certain that Brazil will return in 2019 to the list of countries where hunger is alarming in the world. Data released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in September last year show that the fight against hunger in Brazil has stagnated. By 2017, more than 5 million Brazilians were food insecure.

Uncertainty in sight

Created in 1993, Consea was active in the follow-up and formulation of public policies to fight hunger in Brazil, such as the Zero Hunger Program and Bolsa Familia, as well as policies to improve the quality of food for the population, from the production chain to the consumer. Among the topics discussed were also product packaging, ultraprocessed foods and the labeling of transgenic foods.

"Consea's action has allowed a leap forward in excellence, because in addition to looking at the issue of food security, the council has advanced in the issue of food sovereignty, focusing on the quality of food that reaches the consumer," says Bobardi.

"Consea played a key role in formulating the National Agroecology and Organic Production Policy, the Family Agriculture Food Acquisition Program and also in controlling the use of pesticides," he exemplifies.

Among the representatives of civil society in Consea were the Institute for Consumer Protection (Idec), the Alana Institute, focused on child development, the Brazilian Association of Public Health (Abrasco) and the National Articulation of Agroecology (ANA).

"The importance of Consea is obvious.The participation of civil society in proposing and discussing food security issues, from the issue of hunger to the use of pesticides and harmful forms of food, was crucial. civil society no longer has participation forums with the government and loses this channel of direct dialogue, "says Afonso.

In addition to the national Consea, there are also the state and municipal councils, which are independent of the federal body. The fear is that the government's decision will influence governors and mayors to also extinguish local councils.

Feeding as a right

The human right to adequate food is contemplated in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 6 of the Federal Constitution. For Bobardi, the ministerial organization of the Bolsonaro government should aggravate the problems involving food security and sovereignty in Brazil.

"The ministerial organization of this government that, for example, links agrarian reform to the Ministry of Agriculture, without the autonomy that INCRA possesses, and links water security to the Ministry of Regional Development will deepen social inequalities and, consequently, worsen the situation of hunger in the country, "he observes.

"Why extinguish an organ that is merely advisory to the government and which has contributed so much over the years to Brazilian food policy?", Afonso asks: "The government has not yet expressed its opinion on the reasons for the extinction of the Consea. This comes along with actions that undermine indigenous and land issues, as well as the control of NGOs, which are threatened to be monitored by the government, "criticizes the director of the NGO Acción da Cidadania.

On Twitter, Bishop Mauro Morelli, who together with Betinho coordinated the creation of Consea, recalled the importance of the involvement of society in articulating policies to combat hunger in the country.

"Out of indignation against corruption came a supra-party and pluralist solidarity movement, with more than seven thousand autonomous groups, committed to changing the Hunger Map through emergency and structural actions," he wrote. "Sadly, I now watch the clamor against corruption dividing the country, arousing hatred and aggression."

______________

Deutsche Welle is Germany's international broadcaster and produces independent journalism in 30 languages. Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

https://www.dw.com/pt-br/seguran%C3%A7a ... a-47067455

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 21, 2019 3:25 pm

Why I went to Venezuela: PT President Gleisi Hoffmann speaks

“All of this talk about democracy in Venezuela, about Maduro being a dictator, in reality, masks very strong commercial interests in accessing the petroleum. It’s the same thing that happened in Iraq. Nobody discusses whether Iraq has democracy or whether the Iraqi people are doing well these days, they have simply forgotten.”

Gleisi Hoffmann grew up in a Catholic household in Curitiba where, after giving up plans to become a nun, she entered the student movement, affiliated with the Brazilian Communist Party (PC do B) and was elected President of the Curitiba, Parana State and National High School Student’s Unions. Afterwards, she became a lawyer, affiliated with the Workers Party (Partido de Trabalhadores/PT) and began a political trajectory which culminated with her serving as Dilma Rousseff’s Chief of Staff (2011-2014), Senator, and her current position of National President of the PT.

In 2015 she was accused of corruption as part of the US Department of Justice/Brazilian Public Prosecutors Office’s Lava Jato investigation, headed by Jair Bolsonaro’s current Justice Minister Sergio Moro. According to a plea bargain testimony made by a convicted criminal in exchange for sentence reduction, she was accused of receiving bribes from Petrobras state petroleum company. The case came up to the Supreme Court in 2017, where it was thrown out by unanimous decision due to lack of material evidence.

On January 10th, Hoffmann traveled to Venezuela to participate in the inauguration ceremony for President Nicolas Maduro. That week, she was broadly attacked in the media. I managed to catch up to her on January 19th to give her a chance to explain to an English speaking audience why she felt it so important to go to the inauguration.

Brian Mier: Your visit to Nicolas Maduro’s inauguration in Venezuela was widely criticized in the North– even by Anglo journalists who write for supposedly progressive publications such as the Guardian. You published a statement about your visit, saying that anyone who criticized it does not understand the concepts of sovereignty and self-determination. Judging from the way the Anglo media responded to your visit, I believe that a lot of people in the historically imperialist nations of England and the US really do not have a good understanding of these concepts. Why are the concepts of sovereignty and self-determination important and how do they relate to your recent visit to Venezuela?

Gleisi Hoffmann: Sovereignty is related to the non-recognition of a higher body in the external order. In other words, the nation has supreme authority – there is no hierarchy among nations. Self determination is the right that a people have to govern themselves, to make their choices without foreign intervention. This is why I mentioned that the US government and those who criticized me don’t understand sovereignty and self-determination – because they believe that forces from outside Venezuela should solve their problems. We believe the opposite. Only the Venezuelan people have the capacity to solve their problems, through a process of dialogue, learning and relationships. My trip to Venezuela, therefore, was related to what the Workers Party thinks about sovereignty and self-determination. No other nation or external body has the right to preach for violence and intervention and meddle in the affairs of another nation. We can, on the other hand, support building dialogue, drawing together the opposing parties and encourage a peaceful solution to conflicts. This is what President Lula always did.

I would like to ask you about lawfare – the use of the legal system to engage in character assassination and political persecution. Just as Lula is a victim of this process, you were persecuted for years in a US Department of Justice/Brazilian Public Prosecutors lawfare operation, Lava Jato, led by Bolsonaro’s current Justice Minister Sergio Moro. Beforehand a lot of people thought you would run for President. Personally, I saw the legal/mediatic character assassination that was carried out against you as an attempt to block you from running. How did this lawfare process affect your life?

Lawfare has evolved into a system of political persecution and an instrument of certain sectors of Brazilian society to access power. It is not just Brazilian society – it is a phenomenon that we are seeing in all of Latin America. It has spread out across the continent, unfortunately. I was deeply affected by the case against me. I was absolved of all the charges they mounted against me by a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court, but before this happened I passed through a series of public embarrassments. My house was invaded by the police. My husband was arrested and released. There were protests against me – the criticism in the press was always acidic – I was persecuted on social media and my children were harassed in public. It was a very painful process. But I was very relieved that this situation was clarified when my final appeal was analyzed and I was absolved of all charges. However, it still causes problems for me in my social relations and my political trajectory.

What are the risks of having a highly politicized ultra-conservative like former Lava Jato investigator, prosecutor and judge Sergio Moro running the Justice Ministry?

Minister of Justice Sergio Moro is now responsible for political persecution. In other words, he is that one who will eliminate rivals and enemies of the system and he will do this using lawfare. He will do this by mounting and directing investigative processes against people who oppose his government or who can create obstacles to what they are trying to accomplish in terms of negotiations and projects.

Was the US involved in these lawfare processes?

I have no doubt about the interests and involvement of the United States in the Lava Jato investigation process in Brazil. I don’t know if their objective was to persecute the PT, but certainly they engaged in the operation to advance the commercial goal of opening Petrobras to the North American petroleum companies, and they succeeded. These are very strong business interests. And certainly if they manage to weaken or destroy whoever engages in political opposition and is not aligned with their concept of international relations, they will not hesitate to do this.

What is the role that the international petroleum industry played in the 2016 coup, in the character assassination and persecution of Lula and the coup attempt that appears to be underway in Venezuela?

US government got involved in the Lava Jato process in Brazil due to its interest in accessing our petroleum. We have huge offshore petroleum reserves in the pre-salt layer. We recently developed a way to extract it very cheaply due to the technology that was developed by our state petroleum company, Petrobras. We developed an extraction process and policies for use of this petroleum that were very different from what is done with normal commercial petroleum wells. We developed specific laws and a sharing regime to give limited drilling concessions. We created a fund for saving part of the money that was raised through this drilling and we allocated part of the profits to the public education system, In other words we acted with sovereignty over our petroleum. This was not interesting to the North American petroleum companies, that wanted to come here and extract the pre-salt petroleum the way that they work in other places around the world by making a bid and keeping all of the oil without having to be accountable to the Brazilian government or the Brazilian people. Therefore I have no doubt that this coup process is totally connected to facilitated access to Brazilian petroleum- so much so that immediately after the 2016 coup which deposed President Dilma ( and there are interviews with Edward Snowden showing that Brazil, President Dilma and Petrobras were subject wire tapping and communications monitoring from the US Government) – a law was ratified in Congress changing the rules for exploitation of the pre-salt petroleum reserves. Now they are working on another one, changing the regulations for auctioning off the wells. So this is clear. Above all the coup government minimized and greatly weakened Petrobras, forcing it, after the Lava Jato investigation, to sell off its assets.

Lula is a great leader of the Brazilian people and he always worked for our sovereignty and our self-determination without ever disrespecting any other country. So they knew that Lula would have been a huge resistance to these interests that they had here. He would have mobilized popular support against these foreign interests and he would have, in fact, been elected President. They arrested him to prevent him from being elected.

This is all evident in Venezuela as well. Venezuela has the world’s largest petroleum reserves. It is a lot closer to the US than the Middle East. It has a strategic geographical position in Latin America. Since Chavez took over the government over 20 years ago, Venezuela has adopted a different posture in relation to the commercialization of its petroleum and also in relation to its internal policies. And this has greatly displeased the Americans because Venezuela has not aligned with them. So all of this talk about democracy in Venezuela, about Maduro being a dictator, in reality, masks very strong commercial interests in accessing the petroleum. It’s the same thing that happened in Iraq. Nobody discusses whether Iraq has democracy or whether the Iraqi people are doing well these days, they have simply forgotten. The Americans succeeded in positioning themselves in Iraq to access the petroleum and the situation was resolved. So paying close attention and taking a position in favor of Venezuela’s sovereignty and self-determination is essential now. The problems with the opposition should be resolved through a process of mediation and debate and a peaceful solution.

You visit Lula frequently. How is he?

Lula is well. Lula is a political, emotional and physical fortress, even though he survived cancer and so many other problems in his life. Of course he is 73, so this imprisonment has consequences on his disposition. But he is politically well and has a clear vision of his role in history and what we have to do here to defend Brazil – what we have to do to position ourselves on the side of the Brazilian people. We have no perspective on when he will be released. All legal measures were blocked. We have done everything that we could legally and we are fighting politically. Lula’s imprisonment is political. It’s not based on legal facts because no proof was mounted to back up his conviction. His condemnation was not made on the basis of material evidence. There is not even a clearly defined crime. So this is very serious. But, unfortunately, since we are victims of lawfare here in Brazil, I don’t see any perspective for a rapid release of Lula. We are going to fight a lot, and we will always defend our former President to Brazilian society.

What can the international community do to help?

The international community can and is helping us. It is fundamental that supporters of democracy, intellectuals and people who understand Lula and Brazil’s story show their support, and many already have. I also think that the Nobel Peace Prize for Lula – even just his nomination – would serve as recognition of his innocence. I have no doubt that if he won the Nobel Peace Prize it would be out of recognition of what he means for Latin America and the World in terms of pacification of conflicting relationships. Lula was very important – not only from the external point of view of peace building, but from the internal point of view when he gave the Brazilian people access to dignified living conditions.

http://www.brasilwire.com/why-i-went-to ... nn-speaks/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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