Brazil

[blindpig]

Integral to Lula's speech in São Bernardo
Published 04/08/2018


Photo: Ricardo Stuckert

"In 1979, this union made one of the most extraordinary strikes, and we were able to make an agreement with the auto industry that was perhaps the best possible, and I had a factory commission with 300 workers. and I decided to ask the factory committee to go earlier to talk to the peaozada.I would hold a meeting in the morning to avoid having people drink a little bit in the afternoon, because when we drink a little, we get bolder .

I still could not avoid it, because the guy was carrying a quart of brandy into the suitcase, and when I got past it, I'd take a little "cannula" for my throat to get better - something that did not happen today.

Well, we started putting the agreement into a vote and 100,000 people at Vila Euclides Stadium did not accept the agreement. It was the best it could be. We did not miss a holiday, did not lose thirteenth and had a 15% increase. But the peaozada 'was' so radicalized that she wanted 83% or nothing. And we could not. And we spent a year being called a fighter by the workers. We, Guilherme, went to the factory door ... [Lula begins to make various greetings]. So, mates and companions, we got ... the workers did not approve the agreement ... [interruption to medical care the person in the crowd].

I was going to tell you that we could not approve the proposal that I considered good and the staff then went on to disrespect the union board. I went to the factory door and no one stopped.

And the press wrote: "Lula speaks to the poor ears of the workers."

It took us a year to regain our prestige in the category. And I was thinking with revenge: "The workers think that they can do 100 days of strike, 400 days of strike, that they go to the end. Well, I'm going to test them in 1980. "

And we made the biggest strike in our history. The biggest strike. 41 days of strike. With 17 days of strike, I was arrested. The workers began, after a few days, to strike. I know that Tuma, I know that Dr. Almir and I know that Teotonio Vilela went into jail and said to me: "Ló, you have to end the strike, you need to give an advice to stop the strike ". And I would say, "I will not end the strike. The workers will decide on their own. "

The concrete fact is that no one stood 41 days because, in practice, the companion had to pay for milk, had to pay the electricity bill, had to pay gas, the woman began to collect the bread, he then began to suffer pressure and could not stand it. But it's funny because, in defeat, we won a lot more without winning economically than when we won economically. It means that it is not money that solves the problem of a strike, it is not 5%, it is not 10%, it is what is embedded in political theory, political knowledge and political theory in a strike.


" It means it's not money that solves the problem of a strike, is not 5%, not 10% is what is embedded in political theory, political knowledge and political theory in a strike"
Now, we're almost in same situation. Almost in the same situation. I am being sued and I have clearly said, "The process of my apartment, I am the only human being sued for an apartment that is not mine." And he knows the Globe lied when he said it was mine. The Lava Jato Federal Police, when he did the inquiry, lied that it was mine. The prosecutor, when he made the accusation, lied saying it was mine. And I thought Moro was going to solve it and he lied saying he was mine and sentenced me to nine years in jail.

That's why I'm an outraged citizen, because I've done a lot with my 72 years. But I do not forgive them for passing on to society the idea that I am a thief. They gave primacy of the bandits to make a pixuleco by the whole Brazil. They gave the primacy of the bandits to call the people of petralha. They have given the primacy of creating almost a climate of war, denying the policy in that country. And I say every day: none of them, none of them, have courage or sleep with the calm conscience of the honesty, of the innocence that I sleep. Neither of them. [Applause]

I'm not above justice. If I did not believe in Justice, I had not made a political party. I had proposed a revolution in that country. But I believe in Justice, in a fair Justice, in a Justice that votes a process based on the proceedings of the process, based on the information of the accusations, of the defenses, in the concrete proof that the weapon of the crime has.

What I can not admit is a proxy who made a Powerpoint and went to television to say that the PT is a criminal organization that was born to steal Brazil and that Lula, being the most important figure of this party, Lula is the boss and therefore, if Lula is the boss, says the prosecutor, "I do not need evidence, I have conviction." I want him to keep his conviction to their cronies, to his minions, not to me. Certainly, a thief would not be demanding proof. He would be trapped with his mouth shut, hoping the press would not speak his name.

I have over 70 hours of National Newspaper grinding me. I have over 70 magazine covers attacking me. I have thousands of pages of newspapers and stories attacking me. I have more to Record attacking me. I have more of the Bandeirantes attacking me, I have the radio from the interior attacking me. And what they do not realize is that the more they attack me, the more my relationship with the Brazilian people grows.


"And what they do not realize is that the more they attack me, the more my relationship with the Brazilian people grows"
I'm not afraid of them. I have already said that I would like to have a debate with Moro about the complaint he made against me. I wish he would show me some evidence. I've already challenged the TRF4 judges that it was a debate at the university that they want, whatever course they want, to prove what the crime I committed in that country. And I sometimes get the impression - and I get the impression because I'm a dream builder. I long ago dreamed that it was possible to govern this country by involving millions and millions of poor people in the economy, involving millions of people in universities, creating millions and millions of jobs in that country. I dreamed, I dreamed that it was possible for a metallurgist, without a university degree, to take care of the education more than the graduates and bankers who governed that country. I dreamed that it was possible for us to reduce child mortality by taking milk beans and rice so the children could eat every day. I dreamed that it was possible to take the students from the periphery and put them in the best universities of that country so that we do not have judge and prosecutors only of the elite. Soon we will have judges and prosecutors born in the favela of Heliopolis, born in Itaquera, born in the periphery. We're going to have a lot of people from the Landless, the MTST, the CUT trained. Soon we will have judges and prosecutors born in the favela of Heliopolis, born in Itaquera, born in the periphery. We're going to have a lot of people from the Landless, the MTST, the CUT trained. Soon we will have judges and prosecutors born in the favela of Heliopolis, born in Itaquera, born in the periphery. We're going to have a lot of people from the Landless, the MTST, the CUT trained.

This crime I committed.

I committed this crime and they do not want me to commit any more. It is because of this crime that I have ten lawsuits against me. And if it is for these crimes, to put poor in the university, black in the university, poor to eat meat, poor to buy car, poor to travel by airplane, poor to do its small agriculture, to be microentrepreneur, to have its own house. If this is the crime I committed, I want to say that I will continue to be a criminal in this country because I will do much more. I will do much more. [People start shouting "Lula, Brazilian people's warrior]


"I dreamed that it was possible to take students from the periphery and put them in the best universities in that country so that we do not have a judge and prosecutors only the elite"
Companions and companions, I, in 1986, was the most voted constituent congressman in the history of the country. And at the time, there was a mistrust that had only power in the PT who had a mandate. Who had no mandate was had ... [begins to greet]. So, fellows, when I realized that the people suspected that it was only in the PT that I was a deputy, Manuela and Guilherme, do you know what I did? I stopped being a deputy. Because I wanted to prove to the PT that I would continue to be the most important figure of the PT without having a mandate. Because if someone wants to win me in the PT, there is only one way: to work harder than I am and to like the people more than I do, because if you do not like it, you will not win.

Well, we are now in a delicate job. I may live the moment of greatest indignation that a human being lives. It is not easy what my family suffers. It is not easy what my children suffer. It is not easy that Marisa suffered. And I want to say that the anticipation of the death of Marisa was the sham and the shamelessness that the press and the Public Ministry did against her. I'm sure. These people I do not think have children, have no soul and have no idea of ​​what a mother or father feels when they see a son being slaughtered when he sees a child being attacked.

I then, mates, I decided to raise my head. Do not think that I am against Lava Jet not. Lava Jato, if you get a bad guy, you have to get a bad guy even if you stole it and arrest him. We all want it. All of us, all our lives, said, "Justice only arrests the poor, does not hold the rich." We all said it. And I want you to keep holding on rich. I want. Now, what's the problem? It's just that you can not make subordinate judgment to the press. Because, deep down, you destroy people in society, in the image of people, and then the judges will judge and say, "I can not go against the public opinion you're asking to hunt." If you want to vote based on public opinion, drop the toga and go to be a candidate for deputy, choose a political party and go be a candidate. Now, the toga is life-long employment. The citizen has to vote only on the basis of the case file, in fact I think that the Supreme Court minister should not give a statement about how he is going to vote. In the US, voting ends and you do not know who the citizen voted exactly so that he is not a victim of pressure.


"I want to say that the anticipation of Marisa's death was the sham and the shamelessness that the press and the Public Prosecutor did against her." He
imagines a guy accused of murder and not the murderer. What does the dead man's family want? Let him be killed, let him be condemned. So the judge has to have, unlike us, the cooler head, more responsibility to make the charge or to convict. The Public Ministry is a very strong institution. Therefore, these boys who enter very young, take a course right and after three years of competition because the father can pay, these boys needed to know a little life, a little politics, to do what they do in Brazilian society .

There is something called responsibility. And do not think that when I say this I am against. I was president and appointed four prosecutors and made speeches in all my possessions. I said, "The stronger the institution, the more accountable its members have to be." You can not condemn the person by the press and then try it. You are reminded that when I went to testify there in Curitiba, I said to Moro: "You can not absolve me because Globo is demanding that you condemn me and you will condemn me."

Well, I think that both TRF4, Moro, Lava Jet and Globo, they have a dream of consumption. The dream of consumption is that, first, the coup did not end with Dilma. The coup will only conclude when they manage to convince Lula not to be a candidate for the presidency of the republic in 2018. It's not that I will not be, they do not want me to participate because there is a possibility of each one to be elected. They do not want Lula back because poor in their head can not have right. You can not eat prime beef. Poor can not fly. Poor can not do university. Poor was born, according to their logic, to eat and have second-class things.


"They do not want Lula back because poor, in their head, he can not have right"
So, fellows and companions, the other dream of consuming them is the photograph of Lula imprisoned. Oh, I keep imagining Veja's excitement putting the cape on me. I keep imagining the excitement of Globo putting my photograph stuck. They will have multiple orgasms.

They have decreed my arrest. And let me tell you something: I'll take their warrant. And I will answer because I want to do the transfer of responsibility. They think everything that happens in this country happens because of me. I've already been sentenced to 3 years in jail because a judge in Manaus understood that I do not need a weapon, I have a bad language, so you have to shut up, because if I do not shut up, he'll keep saying phrases like I said, "Yeah. and the peasants killed a farmer and they thought it was the password.

They already tried to arrest me because of obstruction of justice, it did not work. They now want to get me in custody, which is a more serious thing, because there is no habeas corpus. Vaccari has been in jail for three years. Marcelo Odebrecht spent R $ 400 million and had no habeas corpus. I will not spend a penny. But I go there with the following belief: they will discover for the first time what I have said every day. They do not know that the problem of this country is not called Lula, the problem of this country is called you, the conscience of the people, the Workers Party, PCdoB, MST, MTST, they know that there are a lot of people.

And what our pastor said, and I have said in every speech, it is no use trying to stop me from walking this country, because there are millions and millions of Boulos, Manuelas, Dilmas Rousseffs in this country to walk for me.

It's no use trying to end my ideas, they're already hovering in the air and can not hold them.

It's no use stopping my dream, because when I stop dreaming, I'll dream of your dreams and dreams.

It is no use thinking that everything will stop the day that Lula has a heart attack, it's silly, because my heart will beat for your hearts, and they are millions of hearts.

It's no use thinking they're going to stop me, I will not stop because I'm not a human being, I'm an idea, an idea mixed with your idea. And I'm sure fellows like the landless, the MTST, the comrades of the CUT and the trade union movement know. And this is proof, this is proof. I'm going to fulfill the warrant and you're going to have to turn, each one of you, you're not going to call yourself kid, zezinho, joãozinho, albertinho ... All of you, from now on, will turn Lula and will walk around this country doing what You have to do it and it's every day! Everyday!

They have to know that the death of a combatant does not stop the revolution.

They have to know. They have to know that we are going to definitely make regulation of the media so that people do not fall victim to lies every single day.

They have to know that you, who knows, are even smarter than I am, and burn the tires you burn so much, march, occupy the countryside and the city. It seemed difficult to occupy St. Bernard, and tomorrow you will receive the news that you have gained the ground that you invaded.


"It's no use stopping my dream, because when I stop dreaming, I'll dream of you and your dreams"
Companions, I had a chance, now, I was in Uruguay, between Livramento and Rivera, and people said so you're going to go to the embassy of Bolivia, Uruguay, Bolivia and Uruguay, and you're going to go to Uruguay with Pepe Mujica and leave and do not come back, of Russia, and from there you keep talking ... "I'm no older. My age is to face them with an eye on the eye and I will face them accepting to fulfill the warrant.

I want to know how many days they'll think about holding me so tight. And the more days they leave me there, the more squids will be born in this country and more people will want to fight in this country, because in a democracy, there is no limit, there is no time for us to fight. I told my companions: if it depended on my will I would not go, but I will because they will say, as of tomorrow, that Lula is outlawed, that Lula is hiding, and no! I'm not hiding, I go there in their beard so they know I'm not afraid, that I'm not going to run, and for them to know that I'm going to prove my innocence.

They have to know that.

And do whatever you want. Do whatever you want. I'm going to pick up a phrase that I picked up in 1982 from a 10-year-old girl in Catanduva, and that phrase has no author:

The powerful can kill one, two or three roses, but they can never stop the arrival of spring.

And our fight is in search of spring.

They have to know that we want more house, more school. We want less mortality, we do not want to repeat the barbarity they did with Marielle in Rio de Janeiro.

We do not want to repeat the barbarity of black boys in this country.

We no longer want the mortality due to malnutrition in this country. We no longer want a young man to have no hope of entering a university, because this country is so stupid that it was the last country in the world to have a university. The last! All the poorer countries had, because they did not want the Brazilian youth to study.


"The powerful can kill one, two or three roses, but they will never be able to stop the arrival of spring, and our fight is in search of spring."
And they said that it cost a lot. One wonders: how much did it cost not to do 50 years ago?

I want you to know that I have pride, deep pride, that I was the only president of the Republic without having a university degree, but I am the president of the Republic who made the most university in the history of this country, to show these people not to confuse intelligence with the amount of years in schooling, this is not intelligence, it is knowledge.

Intelligence is when you have sides, intelligence is when you are not afraid to discuss with your colleagues what is a priority, and the priority is to ensure that this country regains citizenship. They will not sell Petrobras! Let's make a new Constituent! Let's repeal the oil law that they so doing! We will not let BNDES sell, we will not let Caixa sell, we will not let Banco do Brasil destroy! And we will strengthen family farming, which is responsible for 70% of the food we eat in this country.

And with that belief, comrades, with your head held high, as I am speaking to you, that I want to get there and tell the delegate: I am at your disposal.

And the story, in a few days, will prove that the one who committed crime was the delegate who accused me, it was the judge who judged me and it was the Public Prosecutor's Office that was frivolous with me.

Therefore, comrades, I have no place in my heart for everyone, but I want you to know that if there is one thing I have learned to like in this world, it is my relationship with the people.

When I take one of you, when I hug one of you, when I kiss one of you ... because now I kiss man and woman just like that ... When I kiss one of you, I'm not kissing with ulterior motives, I'm kissing because when I was president I said,

"I'm going back where I came from."

And I know who are my eternal friends and who are the eventual ones. The little ones, who were behind me, now disappeared. And those who are with me are those companions who were my friends before I was president of the Republic. He is the one who ate rabbits in the Zion, who ate chicken and polenta in the Demarchi, is the one that took Zocodo's broth, they are still our friends. They are those who have the courage to invade land to make a home, are those who have the courage to strike against social security, are those who occupy in the countryside to make a productive farm, are those who, in fact, need the state.

Companions, I'm going to say something to you: You'll realize that I'm going to get out of this bigger, stronger, truer, and innocent because I want to prove that they're the ones who've committed a crime, a political crime of pursuing a man who has 50 years of political history, and for that I am very grateful.

I can not repay the gratitude, affection, and respect you have given me over the years. And I want to tell you, Guilherme and Manuela, to you both, that it is a proud thing for me to belong to a generation, which is at the end of it, to see two young men fought for the right to be president of the Republic in this country. So, big hug, and you can be sure: this neck does not go down, my mom has already made a short neck so it will not go down, and it will not go down, because I'm going to leave with my head up and stuffed, because I I will prove my innocence.

A hug fellow, thank you, but thank you very much, so you helped me, a kiss, dear, thank you

http://lula.com.br/integra-do-discurso- ... o-bernardo

Google Translator made hash of this powerful speech.

[blindpig]

Airforce confirms Lula death threat on Police flight to Curitiba

On Saturday night a video started circulating around the social media of an airplane control panel with on-board conversation in which one of the passengers, presumably a Federal Police agent, threatened to “throw this garbage out the window” and to “get rid of him and never come back”. Today the Brazilian Airforce confirmed that the conversation took place during Lula’s flight to Curitiba, where he is currently being held without the constitutional right to habeas corpus, on flimsy charges that he committed “undetermined acts”, with no material evidence.

The threat is reminiscent of the death flights used to kill thousands of political prisoners as part of Operation Condor during the period that the US Government supported neofascist dictatorships in countries like Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Paraguay.

As worries grow that Lula will be poisoned inside of his jail cell in the Federal Police headquarters in Curitiba, thousands of people are pouring into the city from across the country to stand vigil in front of the building where he is being held. On Saturday night, Governor Beto Richa’s military police opened fire on a crowd of peaceful protesters full of women and children in front of the Federal Police headquarters, hospitalizing ten. Lula’s Prosecutor and Judge Sergio Moro has been accused of conflict of interest due to his wife Rosangela’s collaboration with the Beto Richa administration. Rosangela Moro, who’s law firm has represented several of the top defendents in Lava Jato plea bargain cases, provided legal council to Richa’s Vice Governor Flavio Arns for years.

As northern media outlets continue to routinely downplay the threat of return to dictatorship in Brazil, the Brazilian Military has been gradually increasing its power. With no end to the military occupation of Rio de Janeiro state in sight, president Michel Temer, who served as a public prosecutor and state security chief in São Paulo during the dictatorship, has reestablished the Presidential Security Cabinet and given it power over 16 government agencies, including ABIN, the Civil Intelligence Bureau, and the Federal Police. General Sergio Etchegoyen, security cabinet chief, is the son of a top adviser to General Medici during the most repressive era of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship, and grandson of General Alcides Etchegoyen, who was a key player in the coup against Getulio Vargas in 1954, which resulted in the president’s suicide.

Journalists and historians have traditionally downplayed human rights violations during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship, comparing the official death toll of union members and political prisoners, in the hundreds, favorably to that of countries like Argentina. However the Brazilian body count only refers to members of the middle class. For example, the Brazilian government did not classify massacres of peasants, Afro-Brazilians and indigenous tribes as “political assassinations”. When during highway construction in the Amazon region, the Brazilian army machine gunned down 2000 members of the Waimiri-Atroari indigenous tribe in 1967, the deaths were not classified as political killings.

Unlike other South American nations like Argentina, which arrested dozens of former military officers for torture and murder when its dictatorship came to a close, the Brazilian government conceded full amnesty to its military. As of 2015, 27% of the Brazilian Senate had held public office during the dictatorship. Before his politically motivated arrest by the US Department of Justice and FBI supported prosecuting team of Sergio Moro, Lula was the leading presidential candidate in the 2018 elections. His arrest pushes former Military Special Forces Captain, Jair Bolsonaro, a vocal advocate of torture and summary executions of dissidents, to the position of presidential front runner.

http://www.brasilwire.com/lula-death-threat-flight/

[blindpig]

Guilherme Santos
Landless Workers’ movement leader: “Lula will be freed if people take to the streets”
Posted Apr 09, 2018 by Eds.



Originally published: Brasil de Fato by Sáo Paulo (April 6, 2018) |
João Pedro Stédile, from the National Coordination of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), issued a public statement on Thursday calling on the Brazilian people to take the streets in order to express outrage over the verdict and decision to arrest former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“He [Lula] is innocent. He did not commit any crimes. This is just another chapter in the ongoing coup, which began with the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. Now the powerful elite are hoping to prevent Lula from running for president,” Stédile stated.

Stedile’s criticisms coincide with swaths of the Brazilian public who have serious concerns about the biased nature of the Brazilian judicial system. Institutions and individuals across the political spectrum have questioned the legitimacy of the legal proceedings against Lula da Silva.

Tomorrow [Friday] must be a day of national indignation. We must occupy the squares, streets, public buildings. We need people to go out and express their outrage regarding this decision. We may not control the TV networks but we have the internet. The unions must engage in strikes and show the the bourgeoisie elite that without our labor there is no wealth, they cannot keep on exploiting us.

In Stedile’s public statement, which was widely circulated across the internet, he condemned TV Globo, which is Brazil’s largest media conglomerate. He accused the corporation as being complicit in the recent Supreme Court ruling and acting in accordance with the interests of the Brazilian elite.

The Globo network, which is owned and controlled by the Marinho family, has been repeatedly accused of forming a prejudicial alliance with members of the Car Wash task force to prosecute the former president.

A recent study carried out by the Instituto Paraná Pesquisas, a market research firm, 42.7 percent of Brazilians agree that Lula is being persecuted by the media and the judiciary in an effort to remove him from the 2018 presidential race.

It has been documented that Estado de São Paulo, commonly referred to as Estadão, alongside O Globo, supported the military coup in 1964.

Due to Globo’s disproportionate power and illegal interference in Brazilian political affairs, social movement organizations and civil society groups have repeatedly called for popular media reform.

During his statement, Stedile went on to identify and criticize the corporate beneficiaries that seek to prevent Lula from participating in the upcoming presidential elections.

“Following the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, they [Brazilian elite] immediately implemented a series of political, social and economic policies that generated unemployment, inequality and worsened the conditions of the working class,” Stedile added.

Lula supporters are expected to carry out demonstrations on Friday that will likely continue over the weekend. Planned protests will likely occur along Paulista Avenue near the São Paulo Museum of Art, in Rio de Janeiro, along the Esplanade of the Ministries in Brasília, and in the northeastern cities of Recife and Salvador.

https://mronline.org/2018/04/09/landles ... e-streets/

[blindpig]

Hidden History: The US “War On Corruption” In Brasil
The story of how an overlooked Bush-era Foreign Policy edict led to Brazil's Coup of 2016 and its consolidation in the conviction of Former President

“US involvement in Lava Jato is not relevant” argued a Brazilian commentator recently, recognising its self-evidence. This is a familiar sight; the great taboo of empire is breaking the fourth wall, winking to camera, and acknowledging its existence.

Like its market forces alibi, US imperialism is considered elementary, as natural as the breeze, unnecessary background detail that we simply don’t need to question or talk about. This denial of empire is central to its persistence, and the accusation of “blaming the Yanqui for everything” is the dusty rhetorical device used by both US pundits and the comprador class across Latin America, to shut down any rational criticism of a status quo which has historically protected their privileges.

In recent years commentators have even tried to deny the extensively documented US role in Brazil’s Military Coup of 1964, or point to Dilma Rousseff’s own diplomatic remark that “we have enough coup plotters of our own”.

Despite public ignorance and its root in the media blindspot on this matter, US involvement in Brazil’s Anti-Corruption Operation Lava Jato, which has already resulted in $3bn payout to North American investors, is not some fringe theory, as some like to pretend – US Acting Attorney General Kenneth Blanco has publicly boasted about it himself:

“It is hard to imagine a better cooperative relationship in recent history than that of the United States Department of Justice and the Brazilian prosecutors. We have cooperated and substantially assisted one another on a number of public matters that have now been resolved, and are continuing to do so on a number of ongoing investigations.

The cooperation between the Department and Brazil has led to extraordinary results. In just the last year alone, for example, the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the Brazilian Lava Jato task force have cooperated and coordinated resolutions in four FCPA cases: Embraer, Rolls Royce, Braskem, and Odebrecht. Odebrecht is particularly noteworthy due to its breadth and scope.

Indeed, just this past week, the prosecutors in Brazil won a guilty verdict against former President Lula da Silva, who was charged with receiving bribes from the engineering firm OAS in return for his help in winning contracts with the state oil company Petrobras. It is cases like this that put Brazil at the forefront of countries that are working to fight corruption, both at home and abroad.”

With the fall of its allied Washington consensus governments to the so called pink tide at the turn of the century, US primacy in the region was genuinely threatened for the first time in generations. Many lauded this as Bush Jr’s failure, and the United States “losing” the region permanently, as if assuming there would or could be no response. In answer to these defeats, parallel to the War on Terror in the Middle East and War on Drugs already present in the region, a new front, a “War on Corruption” opened up across the continent, becoming part of official foreign policy in 2002, just prior to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva taking the Brazilian Presidency at his fourth attempt. Around the same time, a new rebranded hemispheric agency would replace notorious “exporter of torture” the School of Americas with expanded scope, and was tasked with bringing the continent to heel via its own police forces and militaries.



Then in Government, Cuban-born cold warrior and Office of Public Diplomacy propagandist Otto Reich, with characteristic hubris, took credit for encouraging the new focus on corruption in Latin America, describing it in military terms as a “target rich environment”. It was embraced in Washington as a new method to force political-economic realignment and “win back” the continent, especially having seen David Rockefeller’s baby the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) brought down by an alliance of Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Brazil’s Lula at the Mar del Plata conference in 2005. This was an escalation, and the US Government was, according to cables, fearful that the regional trade bloc, Mercosur, and its parallel military institution, Unasur, would be consolidated.

Lava Jato’s inquisitor judge Sérgio Moro’s first recorded visit to the United States was in 1998, on an exchange programme with Harvard University, to study anti money laundering practices in Brazil’s domineering hemispheric neighbour. That year the US stood accused of multi-faceted interference in Brazil, to guarantee the re-election of its favoured candidate, the pro-market former dependency theorist, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Currency crash, IMF bailout followed, and cut-price privatisations continued.

In 2004, following graduation from University of Paraná, Moro published the paper “Considerations of Mani Pulite”, his interpretative thesis on the 1990s Italian (with US-cooperation) anti-corruption probe which decimated Italy’s political order, in particular its centre-left, and paved the way for both political emergence of Silvio Berlusconi, the most corrupt leader in its history, and a wave of privatisations of its massive public sector nicknamed “the pillage of Italy“. Mani Pulite, in particular its use of the media to whip up public indignation in support of convictions, served as the prototype for Moro’s own operation Lava Jato, launched a decade after his paper. US officials’ open admission of involvement was all but ignored in Italy, as it has been in Brazil.

Also in 2004, the Mensalão scheme of cash for votes in Congress was being uncovered. It developed into a media scandal so great it almost gained traction enough to trigger the impeachment of then President Lula, despite originating under previous administrations. Lula was not charged, but it did result in prison for some of his closest party allies. A private spy agency, Kroll, which operates a revolving door with the CIA, was implicated in attempts to ensnare Lula when caught spying on communications of Government staff. In 2010 it was also exposed as a recruiter of Latin America based journalists to spy on behalf of Oil Giant Chevron, its client. It would, almost unbelievably, then go on to be given the contract for running the CPI (Parliamentary Inquiry) into state-controlled Oil company Petrobras, which would provide the seeds for Operation Lava Jato. Somewhat perversely, architect of Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment Eduardo Cunha (whose prosecution was delayed until after Rousseff was gone) would later suggest using Kroll to shut down Lava Jato before it reached the coup plotters themselves. The company was more recently in the news after being hired by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein to smear his victims.

Following Lula’s re-election, in 2007 with the new US “War on Corruption” displacing clumsy attempts to spread its spurious War on Terror to Brazil, Moro would visit the US again, this time on an official State Department fellowship, the “International Visitor Leadership Program“, liasing with U.S. agencies and institutions responsible for combating money laundering.

Then, in 2009, Judge Moro appears in leaked State Department cables, speaking at a joint event with the US DOJ under the banner “Project Bridges” in Rio de Janeiro. Outlining an operation similar in configuration to the future Lava Jato – ostensibly set up to investigate illicit funding for terrorism – the event coordinators talked about creating a partnership between the Department of Justice and the Brazilian judiciary to investigate corruption. The cable talks about how task forces could be set up in cities such as Campo Grande or Curitiba, which they identify as having a strong fervour for action on corruption. Those cities are known for their conservatism and default opposition to then governing centre-left Worker’s Party. Curitba and Campo Grande are also amongst the most enduring power bases of de-facto heirs to the dictatorship Government, ARENA, now called “Democratas”, which despite a collapse in its vote between 2002 and 2014, is now in Temer’s Post-Coup coalition, and enjoying life in Government for the first time in almost 20 years.

Around the same time as the Rio de Janeiro conference in 2009, new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave an address to the Council of the Americas in New York, which now feels prescient. In her speech to the David Rockefeller-founded Wall Street lobby, a grinning Secretary Clinton promotes a theme that “the ballot box is not enough” in Latin America, and that “sustainable democracies do more than have elections”. While pointedly reaffirming her commitment to democratic “ideals”, she suggests a “independent, capable judiciary” and “vibrant civil society” are what is really needed in the region for its democracies to mature.



The speech is all the more remarkable coming off the back of US loss of influence in the hemisphere following electoral defeats of its favoured candidates, and that in the intervening decade since, the US Government has gone on to bet on the most powerful, unelected arm of government in Brazil – the Judiciary – which is predominantly white, male and conservative, and now nicknamed “The Dictatorship of the Toga”.

Clinton’s predecessor John D. Negroponte (Council of the Americas Chairman Emeritus), as outgoing Director of National Intelligence, identified “Democratisation in Latin America” as a primary threat to US National Security, alongside Chinese Military expansion and Iran’s Nuclear programme – on which Lula, along with Turkey’s Erdogan, later broke from UN security council’s shackles and negotiated a deal directly. Negroponte also lamented high oil prices as a gift to governments who do not support US interests. By this point, along with Mercosur, the worldwide multipolar bloc of China, Russia, India and Brazil, BRIC (later BRICS following addition of South Africa), was being consolidated as a direct challenge to US hegemony, in particular the continuing reliance on the US dollar. Brazil, along with Russia, Venezuela and Iran, would later, under Barack Obama’s administration, fall victim to Negroponte’s desired policy of encouraging low energy prices in order to throttle competitors’ Oil-dependent economies. US Presidents and their approach to public relations change, objectives do not. Between the mandated freeze of Lava Jato, those low energy prices, and change in law enabled by the removal of Dilma Rousseff, Petrobras, despite record production, lost its monopoly on Brazil’s massive offshore oil reserves which are being sold off for cents to foreign producers such as US Chevron & ExxonMobil, UK’s BP & Shell, and Norway’s Statoil, at an estimated loss of R$1 trillion – funds once earmarked by Dilma Rousseff for a revolution in public education & health investment, deemed Brazil’s “Passport to the future”.

As publicly available cables cease in mid-2010 we do not know what level of collusion there was between Moro and the United States Government in the intervening years prior to Lava Jato’s official inception in early 2014, but his endorsement or presence at think tanks featuring current and ex-USG personnel such as CFR, Wilson Center, AEI, AS/COA (Council of the Americas), and NATO adjunct Atlantic Council – which launched its own Latin America wing in 2013 – are at the least an indicator of continued collaboration, as is the level of unanimously positive international media coverage, unprecedented for any foreign judge, lawyer or legal operation (an often excruciating parade of grey men in suits which would otherwise generate no outside interest). Those organisations come complete with their own patronage networks of journalists, scholars, thought leaders and promoted commentariat.



Although she was never officially implicated beyond innuendo, Moro’s selective and accelerated pursuit of figures from her Workers Party supplied the essential media pretext for elected President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, only for her to be replaced by her actually proven corrupt PMDB vice, former US informant Michel Temer. We can see in leaked 2011 emails from “Shadow CIA”, Stratfor, that the wider intelligence community were already betting that Temer would take office during Rousseff’s first term, and become the “bulldog” they needed to push through their Wall Street-prescribed reforms – against the will of the Brazilian electorate. This desired outcome was finally delivered in 2016, with tacit support from the Obama Administration in the form of Clinton’s replacement Secretary of State John Kerry and 2009-13 US Ambassador to Brazil Tom Shannon, who by then had returned to State Dept Bureau of Hemispheric affairs, having taken a demotion for his tenure in Brazil. Shannon was replaced in Brazil by Liliana Ayalde, who is now at Southcom overseeing the rollout of US Military presence across the continent, having been earlier implicated in Paraguay’s 2012 Coup while serving as Ambassador there. Obama’s VP Joe Biden recently boasted of manipulating Ukraine’s Judiciary by blackmailing the Government into firing their Prosecutor General in late March 2016, a few weeks before the Congressional vote on Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment – now revealed to have had votes secured via bribes to congresspeople.

Even before the impeachment was officially concluded, accelerated privatisations, decimation of workers rights and overhaul of the pension system, all demanded by Wall Street, were hastily set in motion by the interim Government. Temer himself admitted in a speech to the Council of the Americas that the real reason for Dilma Rousseff’s removal was her refusal to implement the capital-friendly “Bridge to the future” policy platform, which brought with it a 20 year constitutionally protected freeze on investment health & education, tying the hands of any near-future social democratic government. Science and Technology funding was also slashed. In 2017, with Rousseff gone, Attorney General Janot addressed the economic elite at Davos, and eulogised Operation Lava Jato, which he described as “Pro-Market” – a clear political/ideological position that both its protagonists and ardent supporters insisted it did not have.

Whether by accident or design, Moro has helped change the course of Brazil’s political history already. His continued pursuit of former President Lula – the single politican popular enough to reverse it – on a flimsy charge without material evidence, which has been admonished by Brazilian legal scholars and the international legal community alike, now threatens democracy further, with the clear 2018 front-runner facing a decade in jail, with a dangerous precedent set.

Whatever theoretical long-term advantages Lava Jato was supposed to bring, with Temer’s Brazil institutionally and morally adrift, Government decision making processes are increasingly captured with the unholy trinity of bribery, blackmail and violence.

Now imagine if you will that Moro was a Prosecutor-Judge (if such thing existed) from the United States and his training, fellowship and collaboration was with Russia. US media, and the that of the Anglosphere at large, would go into meltdown. It would gift Democratic pundits far more clear examples of collusion and interference than anything so far produced out of the red mist called “Russiagate”.

The emergence of more evidence is inevitable, but it can already be established on the basis of what is available that despite denial and obfuscation, Sérgio Moro has, in collaboration with various wings of the US Government and its expanded apparatus, aided the removal of an elected President, convicted a former President, and future candidate – all of the same party – and with that significantly contributed to a change in Brazil’s political direction, away from social democratic, mildly redistributive developmentalism, and towards discreet re-colonisation as authoritarian client state or neoliberal viceroyalty. This comes combined with a new US Military presence on Brazilian territory which was simply unthinkable just a few years ago.

While transnationals scramble for its riches, delivered to them by an entreguista elite whom in his seminal ‘Open Veins of Latin America‘ Eduardo Galeano christened the “commission-agent bourgeoisie”, ordinary Brazilians go about their daily business unaware that they are now akin to a population on the losing side of a kinetic war. Post-coup recipient of military honours, Moro, is planning a move to the United States once the Lava Jato investigation is concluded.

What on earth would Rachel Maddow and the rest make of all that.

http://www.brasilwire.com/dont-call-it-brazilgate/

[blindpig]

Lula's Arrest and the True State of the Brazilian Left

A Response to Juan Cruz Ferre’s “Lula in Jail: What You Need to Know"



Rafael Ioris, Brian Mier, and Bryan Pitts
April 13, 2018


A protest against Lula's imprisonment in São Bernardo do Campo, São Paulo, on April 8 led by the Left coalition Povo Sem Medo (People Without Fear) (Midia Ninja/Flickr)


On Friday, April 6, after Brazil’s Central Única dos Trabalhadores union federation (Unified Workers Central, CUT) issued a public call for support, some 20,000 union and social movement members surrounded the ABC Metallurgical Workers Union headquarters in São Bernardo, an industrial suburb of São Paulo. It was there that nearly 40 years ago, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, then a metalworker and union president, was projected to the national scene after leading a series of historic strikes that weakened one of the longest dictatorial regimes in Latin America.

Once again, workers united in support of Lula, by this time a former two-term president of Brazil. They refused to let the Federal Police enter the union headquarters, where Lula was staying, and arrest him even after his constitutional right to habeas corpus was denied by the Supreme Federal Court (STF) on Wednesday, in a deeply divided, tense, and controversial ruling.

Sérgio Moro, a federal judge who, ironically, was also the prosecutor in the case, had ordered Lula to turn himself in by 5:00 PM to serve a 12 year sentence, the result of a costly four-year investigation, widely misrepresented in the media, that was unable to produce any material evidence. Through his lawyers, Lula announced that he was not a fugitive but that he would not turn himself in at the time Moro had prescribed. The gathering around the union headquarters grew overnight Friday, culminating in Lula giving one of the most memorable speeches of his career on mid-day Saturday.




Lula was flanked by presidential candidates from the Partido Comunista do Brasil (Communist Party of Brazil, PCdoB) and the Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (Socialism and Liberty Party, PSOL). Afterwards, following advice from his lawyers, he tried to leave the building to turn himself in. A group of union members surrounded his car and refused to let him go. Only after explaining his case to the crowd did he manage to leave for Federal Police headquarters, from which he was taken to the airport and placed on a plane to Curitiba. Currently thousands of people from across Brazil are keeping 24-hour vigil in front of the federal police station, promising to remain until he is freed.

It is important that this story be told, not only because it will undoubtedly be remembered as a pivotal point in Brazilian history, but more immediately because it offers a needed counterpoint to an article recently reprinted in NACLA called, “Lula in Jail: What You Need to Know.” We believe this piece paints an incomplete and at times simply untrue picture of the reaction of leftist parties to Lula’s arrest, the relationship of social movements to the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, PT), and the PT project itself.

A Tone-Deaf Left or a Tone-Deaf Article?

First, the article as originally published (and as it still appears in Left Voice) contained no fewer than a dozen factual errors, from the size of the Supreme Court to the party name of a key politician. One key error is its suggestion that the arrest has ended Lula’s run for the presidency. The PT has repeatedly said it will fight for Lula’s candidacy using all legal means at its disposal. More importantly, the piece makes several serious charges about Lula and the Brazilian Left that merit further examination. Such claims have the potential to paint an unrepresentative or even misleading picture for foreign readers who may not follow Brazil closely, but who care deeply about the fate of progressive politics in the Americas.

The author prominently cites parties like the Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unificado (Unified Workers’ Socialist Party, PSTU) and Movimento Revolucionário de Trabalhadores (Revolutionary Workers’ Movement, MRT) as though they were representative of the Brazilian Left. However, in the 2016 municipal elections, when Brazilians selected 57,931 city councilors, the PSTU failed to elect even one candidate. In the 2014 presidential election, its candidate received 0.09% of the vote. It's fair to say that if dog catcher were an elected position in Brazil, the PSTU would be unable to elect one. They are a total non-factor on the Brazilian Left and ironically sided with the right on the parliamentary coup that culminated in Dilma Rousseff's illegal impeachment. Similarly, the MRT is a microscopic group of trotskyists that splintered off from the PSTU in 2015. Regardless of their position on Lula, they hardly seem worth mentioning in the context of the crisis at hand.

The piece also cites the response of the PSOL, which broke away from the PT in 2005, claiming that they lack a clear position on Lula’s imprisonment. Although the PSOL is a favorite among foreign (and many Brazilian) academics due to its principled critiques of the PT, it is nonetheless a small party that received less than 2% of the vote in the last two presidential elections. More to the point, despite its small size, the PSOL has consistently supported Lula during his prosecution, and its stance on his imprisonment was quite clear. The PSOL presidential candidate, Guilherme Boulos, was at the São Bernardo metallurgical union with Lula during the standoff, and the party has released several statements in solidarity with Lula in the past week, calling the Supreme Court decision a “stain on the constitution.” Furthermore, on April 8, the PSOL national directorate announced that they consider Lula to be a political prisoner.


PSOL presidential candidate Guilherme Boulos stands alongside Lula in São Bernardo do Campo on April 7 (Midia Ninja/Flickr)


A Mobilized Civil Society

It is also important to also clarify the role of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (Unified Workers Central, CUT), which PT militants helped found in 1983 as an alternative to the state-sponsored unionism enshrined in Brazil’s corporatist labor law. Since Lula was first elected president in 2002, CUT has faced disdain for some on the Left, influenced perhaps by writers like Dave Zirin, who accused the CUT of having sold out to the “neoliberal” PT in his 2013 book Brazil’s Dance with the Devil. Similarly the piece reprinted in NACLA claims, without citing a source, that CUT is “largely controlled by PT officials.”

Although CUT and the PT have historically had close ties, CUT is nonetheless an autonomous union federation with no official party affiliation, and its leaders are democratically elected by its rank-and-file. When CUT officials are asked about their supposed subservience to the PT, they typically point out that strikes increased during the PT years. In 2013, for instance, when the CUT ramped up its criticism of Dilma Rousseff's increasingly centrist government, affiliated unions held over 2,000 strikes. They have repeatedly shown no qualms in striking against PT governments as shown by the five teachers’ strikes against the PT mayor in São Paulo between 2013 and 2016. And when, under PT governments, some 50 former CUT leaders were elected to Congress, they were required to cancel their CUT membership before running for office. Certainly, members of CUT and the PT share a number of allegiances and goals, but it is a leap to claim that this equals control by one over the other.

Seeing CUT as an autonomous labor organization rather than a puppet of the PT lends a new meaning to its actions over the last week. On April 5, the day after Moro ordered Lula's imprisonment, the powerful, CUT-affiliated Federação Única dos Petroleiros (Unified Petroleum Workers’ Federation, FUP) announced a national strike in solidarity with him. CUT has already begun to organize its resistance to Lula's political imprisonment, calling on its members from across the country to come to Curitiba, where he is being held, and camp out in front of the Federal Police headquarters building. They are organizing a series of nationwide street protests which began on April 11, with others expected to follow.

Any analysis of the state of Brazil’s Left today should also take into account the broad-based popular fronts that have appeared since since Rousseff’s impeachment, like the Frente Brasil Popular (Brazil Popular Front, FBP) and the Povo sem Medo (People without Fear), and what they represent. The FBP is a coalition of the CUT and social movements like the Movimento de Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement, MST), the Central de Movimentos Populares (Popular Movements’ Central) and the Movimento de Trabalhadores sem Teto (Homeless Workers’ Movement, MTST).

The main difference between the FPP and Povo sem Medo is that the FBP incorporates political parties like the PT and PCdoB, and the Povo sem Medo does not. Although some writers have posited an ideological dichotomy between the two, the largest actor in both fronts, with some 7 million members, is the CUT. Working together, both groups have held hundreds of street protests against the coup, including a May 2017 protest in Brasilia which, with over 200,000 people, was the largest in that city's history.

“Bourgeois” Lula or an Elitist “Vanguard” Left?

Understanding who the real major players in the Brazilian Left are, along with their relationship to the PT, is crucial to an analysis of the current moment. So is an accurate reading of Lula himself. Here also, “Lula in Jail” falls short, particularly in its gratuitous claim is that Lula is a “bourgeois politician who has not advanced anti-capitalist measures during his presidency and who shirked from mobilizing the only real social force that could stop the right-wing attack: the Brazilian working class.”

It’s unclear how a shoeshine boy with a fourth grade education turned factory worker and union leader can in any sense be called “bourgeois.” And while Lula’s compromises with non-ideological, corrupt parties are certainly a valid target for criticism, “advancing anti-capitalist measures” was not a feasible course of action in Brazil’s eternally conservative and non-ideological Congress. Yet Lula managed to create transformative programs that accomplished long-standing but unrealized goals like ending hunger, expanding access to higher education, and raising the minimum wage.

As for the claim that Lula failed to mobilize the working class, this seems odd coming from someone who only sentences earlier claimed that the PT has CUT, Latin America’s largest union federation, in its pocket. Who is really bourgeois here? The Northeastern migrant who spent many days as a child hungry and later rescued over 40 million Brazilians from extreme poverty? Or the self-styled vanguard who too hastily dismisses eliminating hunger because it did not do enough to “advance anti-capitalist measures”?

The piece’s mischaracterizations and faulty analysis suggest a deeper flaw of some of the most militantly anti-capitalist factions of the Left, not only in Brazil, but in the rest of Latin America and beyond. Many of those hailing from upper-class families or from the halls of the academy have the privilege of demanding ideological purity over feasible goals that can improve the lives of the working class in meaningful ways. Of course we agree that the struggle against capitalism is a worthy one. But not when it becomes divorced from working class social movements and elevates doctrinal perfection over workers’ needs.

Many sectors in the left commemorate the defeat of other left sectors. This is not revolutionary, this is anti-revolutionary.As MST National Directorate member Gilmar Mauro said in a recent interview, “It’s obvious that you have to be critical, but you do not build an instrument of popular reference by annihilating another instrument. This is the old problem of vanguardism on the left. Many sectors in the left commemorate the defeat of other left sectors. This is not revolutionary, this is anti-revolutionary.”

The Brazilian Left has a record of being one of the most active and influential progressive forces across the developing world and beyond. Its current state is not of internecine divisions but rather of struggling against one of Latin America’s most dramatic, sophisticated, and vicious right-wing mobilizations in recent history. It is not divided or demagogic; rather, the coup and Lula’s imprisonment seem to be helping energize the Left, which is growing increasingly unified, sophisticated, mobilized, and assertive.



https://nacla.org/news/2018/04/13/lula% ... =hootsuite

While 'left' has come to have opportunist connotations and no doubt some of these players are, we should also keep in mind that those connotations apply mostly to the Empire and it's stooges. 'Left' in Latin America can be something else.

[blindpig]

Even From Prison, Lula Leads in Polls
Published 15 April 2018 (10 hours 54 minutes ago)

Despite being in prison, Lula keeps leading in Brazil’s presidential polls with 31 percent.

The Brazilian pollster, Data Folha, says that former president and current candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is far ahead of his competitors with 31 percent of the nation’s electoral support.

A founding member of the Workers’ Party (PT) Lula says he has every intention of running in next October’s presidential election.

Data Folha’s poll released today shows that Lula is far ahead of his next two runner-ups, Jair Bolsonaro - currently being accused of using hate speech - and evangelical environmentalist, Marina Silva, who once formed a part of Lula’s cabinet (2003-2008). Each has about 16 percent of voter support. In fourth place is Joaquim Barbosa, ex-president of the Federal Superior Tribunal (STF).

The Free Lula campaign continues in Curitiba outside of the prison where Lula has been held since April 8 after giving himself up to authorities the day before.

Protests in support of Lula have intensified since he was forced to begin carrying out a 12-year sentence for supposed money laundering and receiving kickbacks in the Brazilian Car Wash scandal. Lula’s defense team argues that the candidate is being denied his constitutional right to appeal this corruption conviction handed down nearly two weeks ago by Brazil's Fourth Regional Federal Court (TRF-4).

On Friday and Saturday, supporters of Lula held a Lula Libre ('Free Lula') conference in Sao Paulo with the intent to unite supporters, strategize a way to free the imprisoned former president, and overthrow the ongoing 'media siege.'

Brazilian Communist Party official Gerardo Nuñez told the media, "Lula is a political prisoner who is condemned without evidence."

Upcoming events to support Lula’s presidency and release him from prison include an April 17, National Day of Mobilization against Red Globo, the Act in defense of Petrobras in Rio de Janeiro to be held on April 26, and on May 1 - May Day - there will be Rights and Freedom for Lula marches across the country.

Parties have until August 15 to register their official candidate with the Federal Electoral Tribunal (TSE). The PT says that Lula will remain the party’s presidential candidate.

https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/ ... -0025.html

[blindpig]

New poll for Brazilian General Election



The oligarchs may be playing with fire.

The tribulations which Latin American Leftists are suffering will hopefully convince them that there is no compromise with capital. That said, knowing that and acting upon in in an environment of desperate imperialist reaction are two different things.

[blindpig]

Lula's fight for freedom unifies central banks in the 1º de Maio national in Curitiba
"The working class should have the right to choose as an alternative to preside over Brazil a former president who respected the workers and more did for the poor of this country," says Vagner


Gibran Mendes/CUT-PR


For the first time since the redemocratization of Brazil, CUT and other trade union centrals - CSB, CTB, Força Sindical, Intersindical, Nova Central and UGT - will make a unified 1st of May in Curitiba, Paraná, asking for the freedom of former president Lula , unjustly detained under the condition of a political prisoner for a crime he did not commit, and his guarantee to be a candidate for the presidency of the Republic in the 2018 elections.

It is in the name of trade unionism and workers' rights, of democracy and for Brazil to return to economic growth, which on May 1 will have all the trade union centrals together, with the same flags of struggle, explained the president of the CUT, Vagner Freitas, in a press conference in front of the headquarters of the Federal Police of Curitiba, the morning of this Wednesday (18).

"When Lula was President of the Republic, the categories we represented had a real salary increase. Our jobs were not scrapped and our public companies were not sold at a banana price. If we are here announcing this unified agenda, it is because the life of the worker and the worker was much better with Lula, "he said.

"All the leaders who are here are defenders of the working class, the CLT, the working conditions and know the importance of having a union legislation that protects the worker against the greed of the boss," explained Vagner, adding that Lula was the first to to announce that, if elected, it will repeal the reforms of the coup and illegitimate Michel Temer (MDB-SP), as the new Labor legislation, which took historical rights and created a precarious and informal labor market.

"It is the worker's interest that Lula can run for the elections. The working class should have the right to choose as an alternative to preside over Brazil a former president who respected the workers and more did for the poor of this country. This is the main understanding of the plants, "said the president of the CUT.

Vagner also recalled that Lula, as president of the Republic, was the one who received the trade union centrals to listen to the demands of the workers and, with that, to put in practice the policy of valorization of the minimum salary, that rescued millions of people from the poverty and helped to increase the purchasing power of the poorest population, among other policies built to improve the quality of workers' lives.


Vagner Freitas, president of CUT, during unified May 1 press conference

For the president of Intersindical, Edson Carneiro Índio, the 1st of May jointly will be in defense of the rights of workers, democracy and freedom of Lula. "We will signal to the great capital and to the political elite of Brazil that the left and the popular field will win the 2018 elections to restore democracy and guarantee the sovereignty of the popular vote," he said.

Canindé Pegado, the secretary general of the General Workers' Union (UGT), condemned the political imprisonment of former President Lula, claiming that it was an arbitrary decision and that the legislation was changed in order to arrest him.

"Taking away Lula's rights to defend himself and to apply is a blow. If you want to make changes in the Federal Constitution, you have to reform the entire Judiciary. What we stand for is citizenship and equal rights for all citizens. Our expectation is to leave here with Lula in his arms. "

The national president of CTB, Adilson Araújo, criticized the immoral and illegitimate government of Temer, which imposes an agenda of setbacks with the end of consecrated rights and stressed that the "imprisonment of Lula is the imprisonment of a people who once dreamed of having a condition more worthy of life. "

"That's why it's fair to take solidarity and stick to resistance. The 1º de Maio will happen all over Brazil, but it will gain greater importance in Curitiba, "he added.

João Carlos Gonçalves, Juruna, Secretary General of the Força Sindical, read the manifesto that the six plants did together. He emphasized in his speech that Lula was the only president of the Republic able to unite the workers, lead policies of inclusion and distribution of income, and ensure national development and sovereignty.

"This decision was historic because so far we had never held a unified 1st of May. We show that among us increased tolerance and understanding of what unites us and what needs to be done in Brazilian society. Together with Lula, the Força Sindical marched unified in the conquests. By coming here in the collective and at the camp, the Force is sure to make big changes together. "

https://www.cut.org.br/noticias/1-de-ma ... ssion=true

Google Translator

[blindpig]

When Living is a Privilege, Occupying is a Right

According to the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, land banking is a crime. Unlike in, for example, the United States, it is illegal for a landlord to hold a building empty for years, without paying real estate taxes or maintaining the property, waiting for real estate values to rise so that he can flip it. If a building does not perform its social function, any landless citizen has the right to squat in it and pressure the local government to convert it into ownership-based social housing. Although most Mayor’s Offices systematically ignore the law, since 1988, hundreds of buildings across Brazil have been occupied and converted to social housing. Currently there are around 40 occupied buildings in downtown Sâo Paulo, a city which has 290,000 potential housing units available in empty buildings and a housing deficit of 130,000 families. On May 1st, after the fire and collapse of an occupied building on Paissandu square, which killed an estimated 37 people, the Brazilian media began to blame the social movements, despite the fact that this building was occupied by informal sector entrepreneurs. As a result of this attempted criminalization of housing rights activists, a group of 37 social movements, popular fronts, unions, academic institutions and NGOs from Brazil and from around the World released the following public statement, which has been translated by Brasil Wire.

Open Letter From the Urban Reform Movement on the Media and Government’s Blaming of the Victims for the Tragedy on Paisandu Square in São Paulo.

During the early morning of May 1, 2018, in São Paulo, a tragedy occurred in the occupied building on Paissandu square. The organizations and social movements that act in the defense of housing rights give their solidarity to the families that were in the building. It is inadmissible that at this moment, the sadness and pain is being manipulated by the people responsible for these situations to criminalize the social movements and low income workers who have no alternative but to live in occupied buildings.

The families that live in occupations are victims of neglect, of the irresponsibility of the State and of real estate speculation which imposes high costs for housing, especially in the central areas of the cities. This was not the first and will not be the last tragedy, as long as public investment to resolve the housing problem is not enough and not committed to treating access to housing as a right.

While the low income population is penalized, the big urban land owners concentrate millions of Reais in real estate tax debt and repeatedly violate the Federal Constitution. The Mayors Office is not respecting the city’s Master Development Plan, since it has been over a year since it stopped notifying property owners who are failing to obey the laws about the social function of property. The Federal Government has eliminated the Minha Casa Minha Vida housing program for the poorest segment of the population and meet the needs of the poorest segment of the population while enriching the business community and landlords. Furthermore, the Judiciary – who’s members enjoy an immoral government rent subsidy – ignores the landlords who disobey the law and has systematically positioned itself in favor of the forced evictions of thousands of of families, increasing social inequality. There are numerous empty government buildings in perfect condition to be reformed for social housing.

The occupations are the response of organized families to this situation. The current governments, in accusing the social movements, is taking a cowardly attitude on the part of those who are primarily responsible for this crisis and, through allying with the market, deepening the urban tragedy.

In conclusion, we reiterate that we are united in the resistance behind every occupation and demand that the State is held responsible for: every refusal to regularize electricity service in occupied buildings; sanitation and risk prevention in occupations; public investment in dignified housing; confronting real estate speculation; Land conflict mediation policies which include popular participation; the conversion of empty buildings into people’s housing; and regularization of land rights in occupations.

How many buildings will fall until society and the governments understand that housing is a right for everyone and a responsibility of the State? We remain mobilized.

São Paulo, May 1, 2018

http://www.brasilwire.com/when-living-i ... s-a-right/

[blindpig]

Brazil: Public Security Cameras En Route to Marielle Franco's Home Were Turned Off Before Assassination


Prominent Brazilian human rights activist and leftist councilwoman Marielle Franco was assassinated on March 15. | Photo: #MidiaNINJA

Published 4 May 2018

The public security cameras belong to Rio de Janeiro's Security Department.
Five public security cameras en route to Marielle Franco's home were turned off 24 to 48 hours before her assassination. The cameras, which all belong to Rio de Janeiro's Security Department, were mounted on street posts and buildings with one of the cameras located at Estacio Metro Station a short distance away from where the Black activist and Councilwoman was murdered.

The Estacio Metro Station camera, according to Extra, records 360 degrees images and transmits those images to the Integrated Center of Command and Control if the cameras were operational they could have assisted in the ongoing investigations.

Three days before she was murdered on March 15, Marielle denounced the deaths of two youths during a military police operation in the Acari favela.

“We must speak loudly so that everybody knows what is happening in Acari right now. The 41st Military Police Battalion of Rio de Janeiro is terrorizing and violating Acari residents. This week two youths were killed and tossed in a ditch. Today, the police walked the streets threatening residents. This has always happened, and with the military intervention things have gotten worse,” she wrote on Twitter.


Also, two weeks earlier Franco was named a rapporteur in the special commission established by the city council to monitor the military intervention in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Marielle, along with her driver, Anderson Pedro Gomes, was executed in a barrage of bullets at her car while returning home from an event in central Rio de Janeiro called "Young Black Women Moving Structures."

Though her murder remains unsolved, investigators have revealed that the 9mm bullets that killed Marielle were part of a lot bought by federal police in 2006.

Two witnesses to the execution said a silver Cobalt car brushed up against Marielle's vehicle at a curve near Joaquim Palhares and Joao Paulo streets, according to Globo. As Marielle's vehicle slowed down, a passenger in the Cobalt's back seat lowered its tinted window and fired at least nine 9mm bullets from a long-muzzled firearm. Both witnesses said the sound of the gunshots were suppressed, “as if it had a silencer.”

One of the witnesses also affirmed that policemen from the 4th Military Police Battalion asked everybody who was at the scene of the crime to go home, “find something to do,” except for Marielle's assistant, who was also in the councilwoman's car and was the sole survivor of the attack.

Raised in the Mare favela complex, a community that's home to approximately 140,000 residents, Marielle's murder took place one month after a military intervention in the state of Rio de Janeiro, which is focused on poor, mostly Black communities. Soldiers have occupied Mare, again, as they did for over a year between 2014 and 2015, as part of the Brazilian government's military intervention in the state of Rio de Janeiro since Feb. 16.

https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/ ... -0002.html

All of them security cameras make us safer...