Brazil

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 26, 2021 1:00 pm

Poll Shows Lula Would Crush Bolsonaro in Presidential Election

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Lula has 49% of voting intentions and Bolsonaro, 23%, according to the Ipec survey. | Photo: Twitter/@estadao

The Institute for Research and Consulting Intelligence (Ipec) surveyed more than 2,000 Brazilians about their possible vote.


The former Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leads the polls for voting intentions in the country for the 2022 elections with an advantage of 49 percent, 26 points above Jair Bolsonaro, according to a survey released on Friday.

The survey conducted by the Institute for Research and Consulting Intelligence (Ipec), noted that the ultra-right leader, Brazil's current president, has a popularity that is declining, as only 23 percent of respondents would support him in an upcoming election.

In addition to Lula and Bolsonaro, the rest of the possible candidates do not reach double digits. For example, Ciro Gomes (PDT), would have 7 percent and João Doria (PSDB), 5 percent, while former Health Minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta (DEM), would receive one percent.

Some 2,002 voters in 114 municipalities were consulted between June 17 and June 21. In these days the scandal of the overpriced purchase of more than 1,000 percent of the Indian vaccine Covaxin broke. In addition, Bolsonaro lost his temper in front of a journalist in Guaratiguetá.

These attitudes, together with the visit made by the Brazilian president to Rio Grande do Norte, this Thursday, where he took a child in his hands and ripped off his mask, which was described as humiliating by local media, may have influenced the results.


Brazil has exceeded 500,000 deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic and the movement demanding Bolsonaro's resignation held mass protests on May 29 and June 19 and another is planned for July 24.

Sixty-two percent of respondents said they would not vote for Bolsonaro at all, as opposed to 56 percent who said the same in the February poll. In contrast, Lula went from 44 percent rejection to 36 percent in the current poll.

Half of the survey population considered that the government is bad or very bad (previously it was less than 40 percent). On the other hand, those who consider that the government is great or good dropped from 31 percent to 23 percent.

Finally, voters who disapprove of Bolsonaro's way of governing dropped from 38 percent to 20 percent since February and the disapproval rate rose from 58 percent to 66 percent.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Pol ... -0011.html

I think there's a mistake(translator's?) in the last sentence and it should read "voters who approve of Bolsonaro's way of governing dropped from 38 percent to 20 percent since February ".

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BRASIL WIRE , JUNE 3, 2021
White House admits CIA involvement in “War on Corruption” which jailed Lula and elected Bolsonaro

In a White House ‘Background Press Call by Senior Administration Officials on the Fight Against Corruption’, a Biden administration official admitted that the CIA and other parts of the U.S. intelligence apparatus were involved in assisting the “War on Corruption” which jailed former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and elected Jair Bolsonaro.

Read the full transcript here.https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... orruption/

The admission will come as an embarrassment to a media who has for the most part omitted, minimised or denied U.S. involvement in anti-corruption actions across Latin America, despite it being a matter of public record for years.

In July 2017, Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Blanco gave a speech at NATO think tank the Atlantic Council in which he bragged of the Justice Department’s informal involvement in Brazilian anti-corruption operation Lava Jato and its prosecution of former president Lula. FBI personnel involved later boasted that it had “toppled presidents“. Lava Jato prosecutor Deltan Dellagnol described Lula’s 2018 arrest which kept him out of the election he was on course to win, as “a gift from the CIA“. The judge who prosecuted Lula, Sergio Moro, became Bolsonaro’s Justice Minister, and both made an unprecedented visit to CIA headquarters in Langley within months of taking office, whilst the DOJ rewarded the Lava Jato task-force with a $682 million dollar kickback. Lava Jato’s origins can be traced back to 2008/09, where Moro and a blueprint for an operation of its type appear in State Department cables.

Moro is now under investigation for 7 counts of judicial bias, in working to help oust president Dilma Rousseff, jail candidate Lula da Silva, and elect his opponent Bolsonaro, with the assistance of the U.S. government.

The role of anti-corruption as U.S. foreign policy tool in Latin America has expanded gradually since the 1990s, and has continued through successive Democrat and Republican administrations. Lava Jato was central to the ouster of president Dilma Rousseff, and pivotal to the election of Jair Bolsonaro, which were both undeniably advantageous to the United States government and business/banking sector, which is represented in Latin America by lobby and think tank Council of the Americas.

The June 3 press call was to mark a new national security study memorandum or NSSM on “Establishing the fight against corruption as a core U.S. national security interest“, which is being renewed under the Biden administration, and held by unnamed “senior administration officials”.

The following exchange left little to the imagination.

Journalist: “As you know, anti-corruption activists periodically urge the U.S. government to use its various assets and capabilities, including the intelligence community, to expose specific cases of corruption overseas, to name and shame corrupt officials — and the arguments they make are familiar — but also include not only, you know, a deterrent to corruption, but also a possible contribution to the promotion of democracy. Does the does the memorandum — does the program include any component that connects with that?”

Senior Administration Official: “What I can say on that front is that the memorandum includes components of the intelligence community. So, the work on that front, in part, remains to be seen, but they are included — the Director of National Intelligence and Central Intelligence Agency.”

“And so we’re just going to be looking at all of the tools in our disposal to make sure that we identify corruption where it’s happening and take appropriate policy responses.”

“And I’ll take the opportunity to mention that we’re also going to be using this effort to think about what more we can do to bolster other actors that are out in the world exposing corruption and bringing it to light.”

“So, of course, the U.S. government has its own internal methods, but, largely, the way that corruption is exposed is through the work of investigative journalists and investigative NGOs.”

“The U.S. government — to my point earlier, in terms of the support we’re already providing — in some instances provides support to these actors. And we’ll be looking at what more we can do on that front as well.”

The journalist asked for clarification: “What does the word “support” mean in that context?”

Senior Administration Official: “Well, sometimes it boils down to foreign assistance. There are lines of assistance that have jumpstarted investigatory journalism organizations. What comes to my mind most immediately is OCCRP, as well as foreign assistance that goes to NGOs, ultimately, that do investigative work on anti-corruption, as well.”

Evidence of the very nature that the official describes above has been dismissed by supporters of partisan anti-corruption campaigns for years.

The official was asked by a journalist specifically about Vice President Kamala Harris’s upcoming trip to Latin America, and: “if there were any corruption measures associated with that, or any, sort of, additional push related to that?”

The unnamed official responded: “I’m not going to characterize the views of the prior administration, but I would say, to your point: The essence of the memorandum we’re going to release today is that the U.S. government is placing the anti-corruption plight at the center of its foreign policy, so we very much want to prioritize this work across the board.”

The latest admission of CIA involvement in the U.S. led “fight against corruption”, of which Operation Lava Jato (Carwash) was the high-profile centrepiece, has grave implications for Brazilian democracy, and that of wider Latin America.

Brasil Wire has been covering this subject in depth since 2015: All articles on Lawfare in Brazil and U.S. involvement in it, 2015-2021.
https://www.brasilwire.com/category/lawfare

https://www.brasilwire.com/white-house- ... orruption/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu Jul 08, 2021 1:11 pm

The CIA, Brazil And The New Cold War With China

The imperative behind CIA director William J. Burns classified trip to Brazil appears to be part of an effort to contain and prevent ascendence of South American governments allied with, or sympathetic to, the Peoples Republic of China.

By Nathalia Urban

The recent visit to Brazil by the director of CIA William J. Burns was focused on planning against the rise of the Latin American left and also served for the US government to strengthen an anti-China offensive with the Bolsonaro government.

The classified visit took place just days after former Brazilian president Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva gave an interview to the Chinese newspaper Guancha in which he said that “Chinese ability bothers other developed countries, like the United States”.

The anti-China offensive aims to contain Beijing’s influence in the Southern Hemisphere, and is current US state policy. The biggest defenders of the limitation of Chinese technology in Brazil and minimisation of Huawei’s activities in the country can be found in the Institutional Security Office, headed by General Heleno, who met with Burns, and this matter was the reason for a Brazilian delegation’s trip to the United States in early June.

Underpinning perception that BRICS partner China’s rise is the greatest threat to the US, including to its national security, is the idea that there needs to be a more confrontational policy against China. This competition has several dimensions. One part goes through a kind of continuing economic war. It started with Trump and the tariff wars and this is intensifying in the political-diplomatic sphere under Biden, through the attempt to create a network of alliances around China to contain it and diplomatically isolate the country. And it has another dimension which involves using the issue of human rights to create problems for China in Xinjiang, and in Hong Kong.

On the other hand, Lula said: “If we need to cooperate with China, we must establish a strategic partnership with China, just as I did when I was president. If it is necessary to cooperate with Russia, we will cooperate with Russia”.

The former president also stated: “I have fond memories of the relationship we established with China. Although the country is Brazil’s biggest trading partner, in fact, our current government does not respect China and does not treat it as a partner, because the government only sees the United States and not China.”

The latest opinion poll shows Lula da Silva on course for a first-round victory at the 2022 presidential election, beating Jair Bolsonaro by 30% of valid votes. The polls also show Lula would win in every demographic.

In his daily broadcast to supporters, Bolsonaro commented on the IPEC institute poll that puts Lula on 49% of voting intentions compared to his 23%. Without presenting evidence, Bolsonaro insinuated that there is conspiracy for him to lose the election.

“There’s candidate out there is gathering party leaders and dividing his entire government. Then, the guys are already starting to work against the auditable vote. He only has fraud. He doesn’t walk on the street and I do”, he declared.

Bolsonaro insisted that “we want clean elections next year, because they took Lula out of jail, made him eligible, for him to be president through fraud. This will not happen!”

https://www.brasilwire.com/the-cia-braz ... ith-china/

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Bolsonaro And The CIA Conspire Against “New Pink Tide” In South America

A picture is emerging of the agenda being pursued by CIA director William J. Burns on his classified visit to the Bolsonaro government.

By Nathalia Urban

As reported yesterday, the CIA Director William J. Burns travelled to Brazil to meet Bolsonaro government ministers. The reason for the meetings had been kept secret, but Jair Bolsonaro during his daily social media broadcast to his supporters, claimed he had a meeting with Burns (although not on his official schedule). The Brazilian president openly admitted that the meeting was held with the purpose of discussing the political situation in South America, or more specifically the new rise of the left, and Bolsonaro attacked neighbouring countries:

“I’m not going to say that this was dealt with him, but we analyzed how things are going in South America. We can’t stand to talk about Venezuela anymore, but look at Argentina. Where is Chile going? What happened in Bolivia? The Evo Morales gang returned. And even more: the president who was there in the interim term is in prison, accused of undemocratic acts. Are you feeling any resemblance to Brazil?”.

As published here at Brasil Wire, Bolsonaro played an active role in the 2019 coup in Bolivia and in the same year aided repression promoted by Sebastian Piñera in Chile.

Before arriving in Brazil, Burns had been in Colombia.

In a speech on the 1st of July, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro spoke about the “tour” of US authorities in the region and of a “plan against Venezuela”:

“The commander of the Southern Command and the head of the CIA are prowling around Venezuela, and they are received like heroes in Colombia, Brazil, to make plans against you,” the Venezuelan head of state said in a Television address.

“In Colombia there was the commander of Southern Command, Craig Faller, and they told me that the director of the CIA was also there recently. They are working on some secret plan to harm Venezuela,” he said.

Maduro has a point. According to the Colombian Foreign Ministry on the 28th of June, Joe Biden and Iván Duque had a phone call where they spoke about the situation in Venezuela and its regional impact, and highlighted the importance of seeking an international consensus for “free and fair elections” in the country.


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CIA director William J. Burns

Burns’ Agenda

During the day, the US authority visited the Palácio do Planalto and met with members of Jair Bolsonaro’s government.

In the afternoon, Burns attended an audience with the director of the Institutional Security Office (GSI), General Augusto Heleno. Also present at the meeting were Alexandre Ramagem, director general of ABIN, the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, and General Walter Braga Netto, Minister of Defence.

In the evening, the director of the CIA participated in a dinner with Heleno and with the Government Secretary, General Luiz Eduardo Ramos.

There is no exact information on where exactly the CIA director met with Bolsonaro. As Burns held meetings with Generals at the heart of the Bolsonaro regime, Bolsonaro announced that he would not relinquish the presidency at the 2022 election in the event of “election fraud”. The president of the TSE (Electoral Court) last week denounced Bolsonaro’s plan for Brazil’s return to a system of printed votes, as a “return to election fraud” and threat to democracy.

Bolsonaro’s statement has caused concern, especially given that baseless allegations of voter fraud were the pretext for both the 2019 US-backed coup in Bolivia, and the current situation in Peru, with efforts to prevent its election winner, socialist Pedro Castillo, from taking office. Former president Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro’s would be opponent in 2018, who led polls before being jailed in the joint US-Brazil anti-corruption operation Lava Jato, is now absolved and free to run, with opinion polls showing he that he would win the 2022 election in the first round, with a 30% lead over the sitting president.

In Brazil, Chile and Colombia, the United States’ three key allies in South America, left wing candidates currently lead election polls for forthcoming elections, against a backdrop of massive street protests against their far-right, US-supported leaders, in what many are describing as a repeat of the “pink tide” that swept the continent twenty years ago.

https://www.brasilwire.com/bolsonaro-an ... pink-tide/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Aug 09, 2021 1:42 pm

Brazil’s US-Backed Military Regime Casts Shadow Over Hopes For 2022 Election

Without acknowledgement of Brazil’s government for what it is – effectively a US-backed military regime – no sense can be made of its recent past nor useful analysis of its coming elections. With attempts to force changes to the voting system, backed by threats that the 2022 elections will not take place at all, Brazil is entering phase three of its slow coup, and the consolidation of the military in power.

18.6% of 14,600 Brazilian government positions appointed under President Bolsonaro have been occupied by military personnel.

This figure is higher than the 1964-85 dictatorship-era peak.

There is needless semantic fog obscuring what Brazil’s government now is. Whilst the word “regime” is usually reserved in the anglosphere for officially enemies of the US and allies, Brazil surely fits within objective definition; a military dominated, far-right authoritarian administration, which came to power by anti-democratic means – with coercion, threats, propaganda and abuse of the judicial system – which favours the interests of foreign capital, and which maintains itself through corruption, institutional confrontation, and violence.

Bolsonaro’s candidacy was democratic packaging for the long game of the military’s return to government. As they look to defend their position a year out from elections, the situation has escalated.

Bolsonaro’s former chief of staff and now defence minister, General Braga Netto is being called before the Supreme Court for his reported threat to head of Congress Artur Lira that if their desired change to the voting system – the introduction of a printed vote – was not implemented, that the 2022 elections would not go ahead.

Weeks prior, Braga Netto and other key Generals signed off on a letter threatening the Brazilian Senate over its investigation of former health minister, General Pazuello.

Now, Bolsonaro too is to be investigated by both the Electoral Court and the Supreme Court, for intentionally casting doubt on the country’s electoral integrity by spreading conspiracy theories about Brazil’s electronic voting system.

Both Braga Netto and Bolsonaro’s actions could constitute crimes. Bolsonaro already faces over 130 impeachment requests.

In a live broadcast on social media, which was reportedly the idea of Government Secretary General Luiz Eduardo Ramos, Bolsonaro made baseless claims of fraud at the 2014 election, blaming the voting machines, and calling supporters to the streets.

Using psychological operations techniques learned from WHINSEC, which have underpinned every stage of the long coup, the military’s ‘green and yellow nationalist’ supporters were again mobilised in support of this objective, which they depict as making voting “auditable” and “transparent”, under the false pretext that the current system is not.

Electoral Court President Barroso has warned that these changes would simply open the door to old school election fraud.

Bolsonaro looks like he will certainly need a means to contest the 2022 result; as things stand he is on course to lose heavily to Lula da Silva. The two would have faced eachother in 2018, had the former president not been jailed on since annulled charges to keep him out of the race, which happened with the judiciary acting under a succession of threats from the Armed Forces. Bolsonaro-allied, FBI-tutored prosecutors called Lula’s imprisonment “a gift from the CIA”.

It is extremely naive to expect the military to peacefully relinquish power after the decades it took to get back in government. Wishful thinking that Braga Netto and the other senior generals were adults in the room, a moderating force on Bolsonaro, or even that they would remove him, should have evaporated completely with admissions from General Villas Boas and Michel Temer about the military’s guiding hand throughout the 2013-16 coup and its second phase, the 2018 election campaign.

Bolsonaro was not a political accident that they reluctantly got behind, as some depicted. On the contrary, he was their candidate all along.

Now we are entering a third phase of Brazil’s long coup; a battle for the post 2022 scenario, with an effort to maintain the economic and foreign policy status quo under a more respectable face, meeting parallel neofascist attempts to consolidate power by any means.

Failure of any “third way” candidate to emerge that is capable of even competing with Lula at the polls may well have convinced both the military and the US to stick with the name recognition they have, as Bolsonaro considers hikes to social security payments in election year to boost his trailing numbers.

Meanwhile US-trained, military-decorated Lava Jato judge, Sergio Moro, who helped put Bolsonaro in power by jailing Lula in 2018, is maintained as plan B or his potential successor. Moro recently returned from his new home in the United States to discuss his candidacy with the centre-right, Bolsonaro-allied Podemos party, and as was reported, even talk of a presidential ticket with current vice, General Mourão.

All of this is happening with the apparent blessing of the US government. Visits in quick succession by both CIA director and National Security Advisor are tacit displays of support, expose the limits of environmental rhetoric over the Amazon, and pierce any remaining wishful thinking that Biden would be automatically opposed to Bolsonaro ideologically.

Brazilian governance in its current militarised state is far too useful to the US strategically, and too good for business, to let go. After helping orchestrate much of the process that reduced Brazil to its desperate state, across Republican and Democrat administrations alike, it is extremely naive to expect the US to change anything other than the superficial presentation of its Brazil relations.

CIA think tank CSIS is now promoting even closer ties, and the establishment of a “binational institution” to formalise the relationship between far-right, military-governed Brazil, and the United States.

Time is long overdue to drop any pretence about what Brazil faces. Depiction of Bolsonaro as the cartoon villain; a sole representative of what is actually a US-aligned, long term military power project, is disingenuous. Anglophone media has for the most part adhered to the military and US government’s coup-friendly master narratives throughout the process, and they continue to in this manner.

Similar refusal to acknowledge the gravity of what Brazil faces is how the 2016 coup against Dilma Rousseff’s government was placed in inverted commas and reduced to a matter of opinion, how Lula’s political persecution was depicted as legitimate, and how a neofascist military backed candidate was reduced to simply a “conservative”, whom moderate voters and foreign investors alike could be comfortable with.

Without recognition of Brazil’s government for what it is – yes, a US-backed military regime – no sense can be made of its recent past, nor its troubling near future.

https://www.brasilwire.com/military-reg ... -election/

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Brazil: Bolsonaro Calls Supreme Court’s Head “Son of the Bitch”

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Supreme Court Headquarters, Brasilia, Brazil, Aug. 5, 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @AndyVermaut

Published 7 August 2021

The offenses came after last week's clashes with the senior judge over the national electronic voting system.


Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro publically offended the country's Head of the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) Judge Luiz Barroso by calling him "son of the bitch" and "terrorists' defender" during a visit to Joinville.

Bolsonaro took part in a motorbike rally in Santa Catarina while violating all health measures established by federal and local authorities to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

The President also accused Brazil's Supreme Court of defending "impunity and corruption," since it released former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from all charges and allowed him to take part in the 2022 Presidential Elections.

The offenses came after last week's clashes with the senior judge over the national electronic voting system, which Bolsonaro has tried to change with no success so far.


The meme reads: Minister Alexandre de Moraes opens an investigation against Bolsonaro for attacks on electoral system. The minister accepted news-crime forwarded by @TSEjusbr and determined that those involved in the President's statement on 29/7 will be heard.

Electronic polling stations were introduced in 1996 for the first time and have proved to be trustable so far. However, the President said he does not trust the system and would disregard the 2022 Presidential Elections result if the system isn't changed before.

Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes will investigate Bolsonaro for spreading fake news, misinforming, offending public authorities, and another 11 law violations related to the president's unfounded accusations of alleged electoral fraud.

Since the political rehabilitation of Lula, Bolsonaro and its allies have started a discrediting campaign against the national electoral system, fearing a defeat versus Lula in the 2022 Presidential Elections.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bra ... -0007.html
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 31, 2021 2:12 pm

Bolsonaro’s Coup: The Bolivia Model?

As Brasil Wire has reported, Bolsonaro and his allies played a behind the scenes role in Bolivia’s November 2019 coup. Liszt Vieira argues in Le Monde Diplomatique that the increasingly unpopular far-right president may base his own auto-coup on the Bolivia model in order to stay in power.

Vieira warns that beyond the risk of a U.S. Capitol style insurrection, the risk of something more like Bolivia, with the involvement of Military Police, militias, private security guards, and soldiers, should not be ignored.


by Liszt Vieira

President Bolsonaro presented to the Senate a request for impeachment against Minister Alexandre de Moraes of the Federal Supreme Court (STF). For most political analysts it was an absurd gesture, with no chance of prospering. Anyway, a shot in the foot. But I don’t think it’s a crazy psychopath gesture. It is worth remembering here the famous passage from Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet: there is a method to this madness.

Bolsonaro collapsed in opinion polls, fearing he would lose the re-election he never wanted and always sought to sabotage. When attacked, he usually responds with an offensive, in strictly military reasoning. These offensives are often absurd, meaningless, but they serve to put your opponents on the defensive.

At the moment, he feels attacked by the Covid-19 inquiry (CPI) and the STF and doesn’t hesitate to fight back, even with zero chance of success. With that, it aggravates the conflict between your government and the Judiciary, and also with the Legislative. After all, the newly appointed minister Ciro Nogueira, one of the powerful leaders of the Centrão, failed in his mission to act as a buffer for conflicts between the institutions.

Bolsonaro’s strategy is a coup d’état to implement a military dictatorship. Its tactic is to generate conflicts and disrupt the country, creating conditions for civil war and chaos, which would justify military intervention and dictatorship. This is the script he pursues. The impeachment request of minister Alexandre de Moraes is another chapter of this script, aiming to inflate his militancy for the coup demonstration on September 7th. The governor of São Paulo, João Dória (PSDB), removed the colonel from the Military Police, who called for this demonstration, attacking the STF. And the Forum of Governors, which met in Brasília on August 23, decided to ask for a meeting with the president to stop the crisis between the powers that be.

Bolsonaro has been losing important support, mainly from the market, as seen in the letter released on August 5th by important businessmen and economists, as well as in the interview of the former president of the Central Bank, Affonso Pastore, who told Estadão, on 19/ 8, that “Faria Lima’s euphoria ended, the business community woke up. The alarm went off so loud that I couldn’t stay asleep. Woke up and came out of the shell”. And the support of the Centrão, a guarantee of the government’s parliamentary majority, has its limits because the Centrão is not interested in a dictatorship, since its power depends on the democratic regime based on the current system of coalition presidentialism.

On the other hand, Bolsonaro has already lost undeniable support in the Judiciary. Many judges began to fear reprisals and punishments that would be imposed on him if Bolsonaro were victorious in his coup project, as happened in Poland and Hungary, according to journalist Maria Cristina Fernandes in her article “Bolsonaro Une Toga Contra” (Valor, 8/19 /2021). It can be said that the Judiciary, based on the initiative of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) and the STF itself, left the inertia of verbal statements in defense of democracy to react with concrete actions against the president’s authoritarian decisions.

The democratic issue, the pandemic and inflation threaten the current government. Feeling cornered, Bolsonaro counterattacks with the initiatives coming from his insane mind. The weaker you feel, the more turmoil you will cause. But his field of possibilities is narrowing, given the reduction of his support base in the market – which, finally, assumed that Bolsonaro does not govern – and, perhaps, in the very military milieu that officially continues to give him formal support. It remains to be seen to what extent. Some government generals have already signaled support for the coup, using the euphemism of “moderating power ” of the military, which does not exist in the Constitution.

Despite his limited room for manoeuvre, Bolsonaro will attempt a coup, no one doubts. Maybe he will try it this year. This would not be a classic, outside-in military coup. His expectation is that the military will be able to sit back in the event of an attempted coup by Military Police, militias, private security guards, soldiers, etc. It would be the Bolivian model of November 2019. In addition to the “Capitol risk”, it is good not to ignore the “Bolivia risk”.

The democratic movement will have to decipher and prevent the threat of a coup, acting at the institutional level and in street demonstrations, calling for Bolsonaro out and pressing for impeachment.

Liszt Vieira is a retired public defender. He was a political exile, state deputy in RJ, secretary of the Environment in RJ, president of the Jardim Botânico RJ, university professor. He is a lawyer with a doctorate in Sociology at IUPERJ.

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Steve Bannon Declares War On Lula
DEMOCRACY ELECTION 2022 UNITED STATES
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By Nathália Urban

Far-right guru and former White House strategist Steve Bannon has been using his political weight to support Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral campaign. Eduardo Bolsonaro, Jair’s congressman son, met Bannon last Tuesday, at a conference organized by Mike Lindell, Trump supporting businessman and one of those responsible for spreading conspiracy theories about the victory of Joe Biden in the United States, in 2020.

Eduardo was invited to take the stage and was introduced by Bannon as “the third son of Trump from the tropics”. The congressman repeated disinformation about Brazil’s electronic voting machines and presented videos of his father on motorcycle convoys with his supporters.

In an opening speech, international far-right ringleader Bannon attacked former President Lula, and claimed that Brazil’s 2022 presidential election is “the most important of all time in South America.”

Bannon said, “About 30 days before the big intermediate elections, Jair Bolsonaro will face the most dangerous leftist in the world, Lula. A criminal and communist supported by all the media here in the US, all the left-wing media. This election is the second most important in the world and the most important of all time in South America. Bolsonaro will win unless it is stolen by, guess what, the machines.”

Bolsonaro has been making constant attacks against the Brazilian voting system. Bolsonaro has made at least 192 statements against the current model of electronic voting and in favor of the printed vote since he came to power, but 160 of these statements took place since April, when Lula da Silva regained his political rights.

Bolsonaro has argued that without this voting mechanism he will be a victim of fraud to favor one of his opponents and he repeated, without ever having presented any evidence, that he was already the target of this strategy because he would have won the presidential elections in the first round in 2018. Inspired by the Trump playbook he casts doubt on the voting system in fear of defeat at the ballot box, using increasingly radical rhetoric to keep himself in power by mobilizing his hardcore far-right supporters.

Filipe Martins, a former “economic advisor” to the US embassy in Brasilia is credited with introducing Jair Bolsonaro to Steve Bannon. Martins worked at the embassy for the duration of the coup period between December 2014 and July 2016.

It is not the first time Bannon has spoken about Lula. Following his release from politically-motivated imprisonment in November 2019, Bannon called the former president “the biggest idol of the globalist left in the world” since the end of the Obama presidency, and that that his return to the streets will bring “huge political disturbance to Brazil”. Bannon called Lula “cynical and corrupt,” insisted that he had been corrupted by power, and warned that his return would mean the “return of corruption” to Brazil.

“Now that he is free, Lula will become a magnet for the global left to intrude on Brazilian politics. He is the poster boy of the globalist left,” Bannon claimed.

Lula currently holds a commanding lead in opinion polls for the 2022 presidential elections.

https://www.brasilwire.com/steve-bannon ... r-on-lula/

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Tanks on the streets: who will laugh last?

Many are laughing at Bolsonaro’s failure to intimidate Congress, but things could still get a lot worse.

by Brian Mier

Brazilians woke up yesterday to visions of a nightmare they thought would never return: military tanks and armored vehicles rolling down the national mall in Brasilia, past the Congress and Supreme Court Buildings in an attempt, admitted by top aides of far right President Jair Bolsonaro, to scare Brazil’s democratic institutions. It was no coincidence that this show of force was happening on the same day that Congress was voting on whether to approve the President’s pet project, a return to paper votes that would significantly weaken the integrity of the electoral process. In past weeks, Bolsonaro has repeatedly rallied against the electronic voting system, which hasn’t had one case of proven fraud since it was implemented in 1996, to his Facebook live audience of millions. On August 4, the Supreme Court opened an investigation against the president for spreading Cambridge Analytica style disinformation about the electoral system on social media outlets like Facebook.

By the end of the day it was clear that Bolsonaro’s attempt had failed. To their credit 208 members of Congress refused to give in to the military threat and the bill for a return to paper ballots was irreversibly rejected. Members of PT, PCdoB and PSOL voted unanimously against Bolsonaro’s initiative, while, once again in a process which has continually repeated itself since the 2016 impeachment vote, ostensibly center left parties PSB and Ciro Gomes’ PDT failed to maintain party discipline. Together, 17 of their lawmakers ignored party orders and voted in favor of the bill. The surprising thing about the vote, however, was the number of members of the most far right wing parties in Congress jumped sides. Six members of the party Bolsonaro rode to power with, PSL, sided with the opposition along with 2 members of the far right Patriota. Although the majority of the traditional elite, right wing parties like DEM and MDB that Bolsonaro promised not to work with during his 2018 campaign sided with him yesterday, 18 of their lawmakers voted against the Bill. In total, this wasn’t enough to get an absolute majority in rejecting the bill but it was enough to prevent the super majority of 308 votes needed to change the electoral system.

Bolsonaro’s attempted show of force collapsed in a flurry of ridicule in the national, international and social media.

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However, as veteran journalist Paulo Moreira Leite says, things can still get a lot worse before they get better. Bolsonaro tried to use tanks to threaten Congress and the Supreme Court less than a week after meeting with Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. His support base, whose protest participation has shrunk into the hundreds, may be weakening, and he no longer appears to have the support of the majority of elites, but what he showed yesterday is that he will not go down without attempting to destroy the rule of law.

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri Sep 03, 2021 1:35 pm

The Threat of a Coup: September 7th and Beyond
Bolsonaro prays every day for a major crisis, be it Covid-related or out of growing hunger. He hopes the desperation of the people will lead to riots, mayhem, and violence.
By Jean Marc von der Weid*

I don’t believe a coup will happen now, but I do believe we are rehearsing for one. I have been writing about the threat of a coup by Bolsonaro since mid-2019. At first I was seen as a staunch alarmist, someone out of touch with reality. Time has shown that I was right to be concerned.

What has Bolsonaro done since taking the presidency? He has not paid attention to his popularity as measured by opinion polls and has governed only to his close supporters, pushing decrees and laws that only benefit them. Policy, military and militia groups have all benefited by his actions, gestures and speeches. Not by chance, this bellicose minority is the one that plans to intervene. It clear that Bolsonaro’s logic is the Maoist: “power is at the barrel of the gun”. Since Bolsonaro has lost support from many of his original voters, he has radicalized by moving even closer to his most loyal base. His image, initially presented as the honesty of an outsider fighting a corrupt system quickly revealed to be false, due to the multiple corruption scandals involving his famiglia. But erosion of popular support does not matter to this despot in the making. He is arming his core followers in gun clubs around the country. Those who believed in his liberal economic agenda have now realized that Guedes was nothing more than a puppet used to distract the electorate. Those who believed the anti-establishment rhetoric have now seen their new leader make concessions to the old political center-right. But none of this matters. He is gaining ground where it matters – with his radical base – and as he does, his plot advances.

Bolsonaro is betting on the rupture of the democratic institutions and has succeeded in discrediting them. The country is left in disarray, with the pandemic out of control, hunger on the rise, reaching almost half of the population, unemployment or underemployment affecting half of the labor force, the environment being literally burned down, educations in ruins, science underfunded, rising inflation and a ridiculous GDP growth rate of 1.5% forecast for next year. The list of problems is vast and always incomplete because the mismanagement reaches all sectors of the economy, society, culture, science, health, education, etc. But none of this matters to Bolsonaro as long as big miners, loggers, farmers, the police, the military and militia groups are pleased and demanding more.

What matters to Bolsonaro is not passing laws, but saying to his followers that the system does not let him govern. It does matter that 600,000 people have died from Covid, but his only narrative is that the responsibility lies with the Supreme Court, for preventing unproven treatment with Cloroquine from being made available to the people. This narrative also place the blame on the governors, for “ruining” the economy with their decision to implement lockdowns and to make people wear masks and not be able to attend gathering in stadiums.

Bolsonaro prays every for a major crisis every day, be it Covid-related or out of growing hunger. He hopes the desperation of the people will lead to riots, mayhem, and violence. All he needs is such a state of social convulsion to implement his exceptional measures for “the sake of public safety” and “the defense of property”. Those who still think he can’t reach his goal because he will be stopped by the Supreme Court or Congress do not see that he does not plan to follow the rules. If he asks Congress to approve his special measure and they deny his request, Bolsonaro will use that fact as an excuse to shut down Congress. Many believe Congress, even members of his own coalition would indeed not grant such a request because it would make them irrelevant with a super powerful president. But the point is not about Congress. The point is whether those with guns are willing to support such an illegal course of action.

I have heard claims that the 1964 coup happened because Jango Goulart was opposed by the the church, the media, business elites, the middle classes and the armed forces and that it won’t happen this time around because Bolsonaro also has these actors, with the key exception of the armed forces, mobilizing against him. Some also said that the generals would restrain his actions. But what happened is that Bolsonaro purged the moderates from military leadership and replaced them with officers who are either as extremist as he is or at least sympathetic to his views. Some people believe that the lower ranking generals are democratic, but it is not clear whether this is true or not. I believe these generals don’t want to rock the boat. However, even they must realize how much more they can gain from Bolsonaro’s radical moves. Moreover, the Cold War ideological views of the the dictatorship are very much alive in their ranks, particularly among junior officers, most of them who are said to be staunch bolsonaristas. But even with such high support in the military, Bolsonaro continues to engage in political organization in their ranks, seeking to subvert the chain of command so that reticent leaders will go along with a radical move for the sake of preventing internal ruptures from below. It is even possible that Bolsonaro will try to dismantle the existing command structure and replace it with a parallel structure directly under his control. Hitler did this as soon as he achieved power.

But will this happen on the September 7th, Independence Day holiday? It is unlikely. The recent rehearsal for a general truck-drivers’ strike proved to be a fiasco. Had it gone well, Bolsonaro would have had the ingredients he needed: food shortage, lack of vaccines, deepening pandemic numbers, lack of supplies in hospitals, hunger, revolts, riots and mayhem. All of this would take place with the police apparatus acting either as a bystander or violently repressing the population, furthering the crisis. There won’t such a strike, but Bolsonaro is counting on massive mobilizations trying to invade the Supreme Court and Congress. I am not exaggerating – this is what is being called for all over the internet. Whether they will succeed is unclear – the big question is how many core bolsonaristas would it take for these symbolic buildings to be taken over.

What is clear is that those being called to act are being asked to bring their guns. Who would prevent thousands of bolso-minions, hundreds with guns, from invading the Supreme Court and Congress? The Congress police and a few poorly armed soldiers? If the occupation succeeds the question will be whether the police are unable or unwilling to remove the invaders, whether the armed forces will do the job. This would be an opportune moment to see who is really in charge. Will the generals obey Bolsonaro? Will the colonels obey the generals?

Another possibility is a rise of violent repression of popular demonstrations. An attack like this, with high levels of violence, panic and bloodshed is easy to organize. In this case, the police, upon previous coordination with the armed forces, would act to escalate the course of events. What would be the day after such an event be like? Would Bolsonaro order a State of Siege? Would he directly called the armed forces to shut down Congress and the Supreme Court?

Everything is possible, including that nothing will actually take place and that this was all a big bluff, with Bolsonaro believing his own fake news. In any case, this is the logic at play and Bolsonaro will continue to look for opportunities to further it. He has no other alternative. If he stays in power to the end of his term, it is possible that he won’t even make it to second round of next year’s presidential elections, should a third-party candidate become electorally viable. Therefore, until then, he will continue to provoke crisis after crisis, seeking his chance to further destroy the country.

What can the opposition do? Continuing mobilization is key. But it this mobilization will be needed to move beyond the bubble of the left. It won’t be possible to put millions on the streets unless the front calling for mobilization expands into other groups. The model used during the Diretas Já movement in the mid 1980s needs to the revived, under the coordination of largely accepted organizations such as the Bar Association (OAB), the National Bishops Confederation (CNBB), and the National Press Association (ABI). We need a large civic movement of national salvation, moving beyond the left to include the center-left, the center and even the center-right. Without this, be it either via the continued intimidation of the democratic institutions of the Republic or their direct destruction, Bolsonaro will extend his term in power. Will it work? Probably not, but he will fulfill his promise to kill the 30 thousand people the dictatorship was supposed have killed, and many of us won’t live to see the return of freedom in Brazil.

*Jean Marc von der Weid is an agro-ecologist and former president of the Brazilian National Students Union from 69-71, during a period in which it was outlawed by the military dictatorship. In 1969, he was arrested and tortured. On December 7, 1970, he and another 69 political prisoners where released in exchange for Swiss Ambassador Giovanni Bucher, who had been kidnapped by the Vanguarda Popular Revolucionária (People’s Revolutionary Vanguard/VPR).

This article was translated from its original Portuguese by Rafael Ioris

https://www.brasilwire.com/the-threat-o ... nd-beyond/

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5 years since the 2016 Coup: an Interview with Dilma Rousseff

The 2016 coup was ground zero. It was the inaugural act, but the process continues

By Olímpio Cruz Neto

Five years after being removed from the Presidency of the Republic during an impeachment in which no crime of responsibility was established, economist Dilma Rousseff has a clear vision of the process that culminated in her downfall, that led to former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s political imprisonment and the rise of the right-wing extremist Jair Bolsonaro to the Planalto Palace.

From her home in Porto Alegre, where she has remained since the beginning of the pandemic, the former president remains attentive and closely follows the developments of the political crisis that the country has been going through for the past year. After half a decade, she says the picture is one of general deterioration: economic, social and institutional.

For her, the drama that the country is experiencing today is a direct result of the 2016 Coup, a process of democratic erosion that began on August 31 of that year, when the Senate approved her removal. “The coup enabled two immediate crimes against the country: the spending freeze — which crippled social programs and investments — and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest”, she says.

“The coup was not soft. There was nothing soft about it. And remember, coups come in stages. It’s a process”, she points out. “The 2016 coup was ground zero. It was the inaugural act, but the process continues. It is the original sin of this crisis that the country is going through. It is from there that the whole coup process unfolds”.

In this interview with Focus Brasil, Dilma analyses the situation and predicts that Bolsonaro’s defeat in the 2022 elections will be the first step in the country’s reconstruction, but emphases that the road Brazil faces will not be easy. “There will be a lot of problems. In the environmental area, for example, some effects of the devastating polices currently promoted may be permanent. I don’t know… The deterioration, for example, regarding the indigenous reserves, is worrying. I’m worried,” she says.

Five years after the fraudulent impeachment, is there room for a new coup?

Dilma Rousseff — You have to understand the game. The coup took place on August 31, 2016. What we are experiencing now is the possibility of a new coup based on forms derived from hybrid warfare. The 2016 coup was parliamentary, judicial and mediatic but, above all, it was executed by the financial sector, by financial capitalism. It was a neoliberal coup. There was no classic military intervention- it was done through manipulation of laws. Although they appeared to respect the legal procedures, they broke the law and fabricated crimes where none existed. It was a violent break with the democratic status quo.

Why?

Because it led to all of the measures that led to the return of poverty and unemployment in Brazil. It enabled measures that compromised national sovereignty, whether through the sale of state-owned companies or the dismantlement of Petrobrás, or that nonsense of trying to privatize Eletrobrás, which is a scandal! They held an Eletrobrás fair, as if it could be auctioned off in a county fair.

And now there is an energy crisis…

We are currently run an immense risk of rationing, blackouts, and energy bills are already nearing all time highs. All this without even getting into Petrobras’ pricing policy which is now entirely tied to the international oil market and financial interests. This is why cooking gas is now R$ 120 per cylinder. It is the dismantling of Petrobrás that enabled this. Petrobras was created to be an integrated energy company, vertically integrated from the oil well to the gas pump… It was Petrobras that allowed the country to have combined cycle thermo-electric plants. When President Lula took office, we were still suffering from the crisis of 2001…

The blackouts

…of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

But they built thermal plants.

But they didn’t build natural gas pipelines, which made it possible to build thermal plants where they were needed. [The FHC administration] built the thermal plants in the Northeast without installing pipelines to delivering enough natural gas to power turbines. It was during the Lula administration that the Northeast gas pipeline, the well-known Gasene, was built to take natural gas from the Santos Basin to the Northeast, in partnership with China.

That Bolsonaro privatized, right?

Yes. They sold Gasene. That is a crime.

Everything was only possible with the 2016 Coup.

That’s why you can’t say it was soft coup. It wasn’t a soft coup at all.

It reminds me of Folha de São Paulo’s talk about Brazil’s “soft dictatorship”.

Exactly. There is no soft coup, just as there is no soft dictatorship. The coup not only eroded democracy, as we are seeing, but it is responsible for the increase in poverty because, even before the pandemic began, in 2020, there was already an extraordinary increase in the poverty rate and the first signs of the return of hunger.

Systematic setbacks…

Because the coup enabled two immediate crimes against the country: the public spending ceiling — which crippled social programs and investments — and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

The rich prefer to have control over the public budget.

Yes. And the freeze is for a long 20 years. What is really decided in elections after all? Where public resources will be spent and how money should be allocated for public policies. When that possibility is taken away for two decades, as it is through the spending freeze which will decide where the resources will go for five elections — it means that our democratic system was invaded. In short: they put the fiscal austerity into the Constitution.

They have institutionalized austerity.

And the fiscal adjustment policy and the role of the State in the economy, reduction of social education, science and health spending. They decided to put reduction of investments that created social infrastructure into Constitution.

And the second thing?

The destruction of the environment in Brazil. This state policy that has now been officially adopted by the Bolsonaro government. And this is perhaps the biggest tragedy, because there is no going back, right?

Is there no way to recover?

There are things you destroy in nature that take decades and sometimes even centuries to rebuild. What they are doing on Amazon is horrible. They opened the Amazon reserves to something that we have never allowed and no previous government has allowed: the entry of large mining companies.

[Former environmental minister] Ricardo Salles’ herd.

Yes. That’s why I say the coup was not soft. The coup was anything but mild. And remember, coups come in stages.

Just like during the dictatorship.

Yes… In the 21 years of the military dictatorship, you had first 1964, then 1968 — Institutional Act 5 on December 13, 1968 — then came the April 1977 Package, with the tough dispute between General Geisel General Frota. Geisel got the better of it and the hard line was defeated, but he tried again to harden the regime with the attacks on the Brazilian National Lawyers Guild, newsstands and Riocentro convention center [in April 1981, a bomb exploded in the convention center in Rio de Janeiro, in a terrorist offensive armed by agents of the hard-line military repression apparatus].

A dispute within the military regime.

Remember that every dictatorship is a process. That’s why I say that the 2016 Coup was act zero of the coup, it was the inaugural act but the process continues. It was the original sin of this crisis that the country is going through. It was from there that the entire coup process unfolded.

And it also has several outstanding moments.

I call them “acts”. The first act following the impeachment coup was Lula’s arrest [in April 2018]. That was done to make it impossible for him to run for office. This guaranteed the process of reproduction of the coup. If Lula was elected, the coup would have been stopped. But arresting him was not enough. After all, he hadn’t lost his popularity. He was still competitive [from behind bars]. He hadn’t lost the peoples’ trust. So there was a new act of the coup: the removal of Lula from the electoral process. He was convicted, imprisoned, and finally removed from the 2018 elections. He was barred from speaking publicly or campaigning. The blow deepened. And they had already taken the genie out of the bottle…

How?

When I say the genie in the bottle, I mean the military. Remember how the Temer government they gave so much importance to the military. Temer reestablished the Institutional Security Cabinet (GSI), handing it over to General Sérgio Etchegoyen. And he appointed a soldier to head the Ministry of Defense. This had never happened since the return to Democracy. Even Fernando Henrique refused to appoint a military officer to head the Ministry of Defense.

But there is also another important aspect in the Temer government: the military intervention in Rio de Janeiro. This was an unmistakable mark of the military’s return to politics. So, look, there were two movements taking place parallel to Lula’s political imprisonment.

The action was due to the security situation in Rio.

But it wasn’t a typical GLO (Law and Order) military operation. They took it a step further -it was an occupation.

And the man who led the operation is now Defense Minister General Braga Netto…

— [interrupting] More importantly is that everything that existed there in the criminal world, in terms of its power to contaminate, exploded on top of the officers. I’m not talking about the soldiers but the officers. They had never done any policing before and suddenly they had to do this type of action on the streets… making the rounds. And we still don’t know, at that time of the military occupation, what really happened to Marielle [PSOL city councilwoman Marielle Franco, who was assassinated on March 14, 2018]. The process had radicalized. Why did the militias decide to assassinate a city councilor? And it doesn’t matter if [Bolsonaro’s] children are involved with their father [the President of the Republic]. Suspicions remain, but what I say is that this process of the country swinging to the right was being set up then and there. The 2016 coup enabled it all. Unequivocally, a trajectory was set in Brazil for the right to grow. We need to remember that even the integralists are returning now. We have a strong integralist matrix returning and let’s not forget that the architect of the Cohen Plan [against the alleged uprising of the communists in 1937] was the integralist captain Olímpio Mourão, who later became a general and one of the conspirators in the 1964 coup. The integralists have their own conception of the internal enemy within the Armed Forces, which dates back to the Cold War era. So, there is a group behind the scenes working to generating dislike of social inclusion in Brazil that dates back to slavery. Slavery is responsible for having such unimaginable patterns of poverty in the 21st century and this situation of contempt that part of Brazilian elites have for the people.

I had always thought that parrot’s perch [a torture instrument used during the military dictatorship against political prisoners] came from the Algerian war. But I saw a 19th Century painting by Jean-Baptiste Debret that shows a slave on the ground attached to a parrot’s perch. So, look, the parrot’s perch was our thing – a remnant of slavery.

This is an example of the process I was talking about. Letting the genie out of the lamp, bringing the military back into politics. And they liked it and don’t want it to go back to the bottle. Hence the tweets made by Army Commander General Villas-Boas on the eve of the Supreme Court’s order of imprisonment of Lula.

The STF accepted his “suggestion”.

Yes. His pressure worked on the Supreme Court. They accepted it. The Chief Justice at the time was being advised by General Luiz Azevedo [who went on to serve as Bolsonaro’s defense minister from January 2019 -l March 2021]. There is no democracy in the world where the Supreme Court takes orders from the Army.

The 2016 Coup is also similar to 1964 in the sense that elites never admitted that it was a coup.

As in 1964, people refuse to acknowledge the coup from the first moment. Even during the impeachment process there were congressmen who filed charges against me in the Supreme Court because I was calling a coup a coup.

The mainstream media still refuses to call 2016 a coup.

Correct. Nor has it engaged in any self-criticism on its role.

[Editors’ note: For more on coup denial in the Anglo media see here and here]
And you are still banned by TV Globo. You have never been heard and are never invited to any program… And this same media now warns of the possibility of a coup by Bolsonaro.

As if we hadn’t already experienced the coup, which has already happened. What we are experiencing are the stages of a possible hardening of the political regime in Brazil. The government flirting with the possibility of an auto-coup.

[5 years ago] you warned that the coup would lead to the erosion of democracy. This has happened, as demonstrated by the growing deterioration of the country’s institutions. And now the Judiciary itself is making a fuss…

And why has the judiciary only just noticed?

What is your take?

Because it’s finally affected them. When I said five years ago that the coup would end there, it was because I knew there would be a rapid advance against all institutions.

Like in that poem by Brecht?

Yes. First it was the Communists… Then the Social Democrats. Then the conservatives, and finally, I was taken. What happened with the Supreme Court is that, from a certain point on, for example from the episode of placing an army general as advisor inside the office of the Chief Justice, there were a series of concessions. This was already an absurd, unprecedented thing.

Not even during the dictatorship, when cabinet ministers such as Evandro Lins e Silva and others were removed from office, was an army officer ever nominated as advisor to the Presidency of the Supreme Court…

Exactly. And so why is the Supreme Court only beginning to radicalize now? Because the Executive branch is trying to bring the STF to its knees ordering organizations like the Federal Police to investigate Court Justices. It’s fomenting fake news against Justices and Eduardo Bolsonaro is making violent threats like: “It only takes one soldier to close the Supreme Court”. And now, they are planning a demonstration [on September 7] to shut down the Supreme Court …

Until recently, there was the illusion on the part of the Brazilian establishment that it was possible to moderate the president…

He doesn’t have a moderation chip. Conflict is intrinsic to his being. He needs conflict. In March 2019, he declared in the United States that he did not take power to rebuild. He didn’t come to rebuild anything, remake anything. He’s not interested in that. What he always said he wants is to put an end the “communists and leftists” operating in Brazil. That’s it. The phrase he said was: “Brazil is not an open land where we are going to build things for our people. We have to deconstruct a lot”. He was crystal clear. Also, Bolsonaro has this conflict strategy. He is a neo-fascist. It’s that strategy: put the goat in the room. And then take it off. Then he puts two goats in the room and takes one out. Further on, there are four goats in the room. And he comes back and takes a… So,they keep getting more goats, successively. And Bolsonaro has always done that. From the start.

He doesn’t manage anything. There is no dialogue within the government about science or the environment… There is no policy or management, just emptiness. This is the stage of the process we are at now: He’s set a date to see if they can pull off a coup dress rehearsal, September 7th. If he said he’s going to appear in person in both São Paulo and Brasília on that date, he’s established it for a test.

— And there has been infiltration Bolsonarismo in the state police apparatus and in several sectors.

He will test his ability to mobilize.

Faced with so many setbacks, do you think it will be possible fora new government to rebuild the country in 2023?

It will be hard. In the environmental area, for example, some effects of Bolsonaro’s devastation may permanent. I don’t know… The deterioration in the indigenous reserves is troubling. I’m worried. The indigenous people’s march is important. The dismantlement of Petrobras will have great consequences. What needs to be undone is the spending freeze. This is clear. Another thing: we still don’t know the level of deterioration at the Brazilian National Socioeconomic Development Bank, the BNDES. This is an important instrument for the resumption of growth. Not even the private sector holds that kind of power because it makes no investments in equity.

What about Petrobras anticipating bonuses to its directors this year?

This is a scandal. It doesn’t even happen in the United States.

The was originally published in Portuguese in the Perseu Abramo Foundation’s Focus Brasil Magazine.

edited by Brian Mier

https://www.brasilwire.com/fpa-dilma-ro ... interview/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Tue Sep 07, 2021 1:33 pm

Celso Amorim, Former Foreign Minister: “A Climate of Civil War is Being Created in Brazil”.
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 6, 2021
Héctor Bernardo

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Supporters of Brazil’s ultra-right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, have called for marches on Tuesday, September 7, against the Supreme Federal Court (STF). Faced with an almost certain electoral defeat to the former president Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro is putting pressure on the other branches of government to delegitimize the elections scheduled for 2022. Rumors of a self-coup are gathering strength and Brazilian democracy seems to be increasingly weak.

To understand the dangers implied by Bolsonaro’s stance and his followers, Contexto talked to Celso Amorim, a renowned diplomat with a long and distinguished career inside and outside Brazil. He was foreign minister in the government of Itamar Franco (1993-1994), permanent representative of Brazil to the United Nations (1995-1999), ambassador to the United Kingdom (2001-2002); he returned to be foreign minister during the governments of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva (2003-2010) and defense minister during the government of Dilma Rousseff (2011-2014).

Below is the video with the complete interview and an excerpt with the highlights of the interview:


Marches and rumors of self-coup

“It is very striking that President Bolsonaro canceled the parade on September 7, the commemoration of Brazil’s independence. I don’t know the reason why because he has never been concerned about the pandemic, he has said it was a gripecita. And he is going to go to other events far more crowded in Brasilia and in Sao Paulo, in the two largest gatherings. Besides that there are other marches being called by his supporters, with his blessing, obviously. Some of them say that people should be armed, carry their rifles.”

“What I see is that Bolsonaro knows he is not going to win the next election. All the polls give, at least, twenty points of advantage to President Lula. Bolsonaro would lose even with someone else, but President Lula is the overwhelming favorite, he has close to 50% support for the first round and between 55 and 60% for the second round.”

“Bolsonaro knows he would lose, so what was his intent? Initially, he tried to delegitimize the election by saying it was unreliable. Everyone knows that elections in Brazil have long been very reliable. There were elections in states where the advantage for the winner was 0.2% and they were not questioned.”

“Bolsonaro was thinking of disqualifying the elections, but I think he is seeing a very large opposition to those attempts, from the Supreme Court, from a large part of the National Congress, especially the Senate, despite the fact that it is not a progressive Senate, it is a Senate with a conservative majority. And there is also a large opposition from the population in general. So what Bolsonaro is trying to do is advance the crisis. I cannot say that he is planning a coup because, with Bolsonaro everything is highly unpredictable. But he does want to create confusion and chaos and in the middle of the confusion there might be a part of the Military Police, which is very important in Brazil, a large part – it is said – is close to Bolsonarism, besides that, he is always encouraging the arming of the population, which means, in reality, militias, irregulars that will be able to act as in Bolivia.”

“To complete this political-military picture, there is, at least, a neutralization of the Armed Forces. I personally do not think that a military coup by the Armed Forces is likely, but it may be that the Armed Forces will be divided and paralyzed in the face of a coup attempt that will be led by the Military Police, by the militias, and so on.”

“Bolsonaro’s script is Trump’s script, although he is having to anticipate it.”

A regional right-wing script

“Yes, I think there is a script for that, I cannot talk about all the countries because I think there are differences, and nuances in the situations, but I see that today the Brazilian government is the epicenter of the international extreme right. Before it was Trump, but since he obviously lost the election, Trump’s followers have a lot of strength, a lot of economic power, but they don’t have the instruments of government. Interpreting the words of Steve Bannon, in a recent cyber conference of the extreme right in the United States, in which Bolsonaro’s son was present, Steve Bannon said that it was necessary to act in the Brazilian election, because it is the second most important in the world (obviously the first one is the United States).”

“They want to defend in every possible way the permanence of Bolsonaro in power because, if Bolsonaro loses the extreme right will leave Latin America.”

The 2022 elections

“Today in Brazil a great democratic front is essential and, for that, a minimum of civilized dialogue between the different factions is necessary. Unfortunately, I don’t know if it is because he wants to attract Bolsonaro’s votes, Doria has taken a very aggressive attitude in relation to Lula.”

“It may be that there will be a second round in which Bolsonaro will not be there. Because Bolsonaro has been falling in the polls. They say he has a fixed 15 or 20 %. But, the inflation that there is in Brazil, which is an inflation very concentrated in staple products, can make Bolsonaro’s fall faster than it was thought, that’s why he is also looking for this agitation, that’s why he wants to create a climate of civil war. There is a climate of civil war being created in Brazil.”

“I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I’ve never seen Brazil with a specter of civil war so close. A spectre that is being invoked, that is being called upon, and it is not being called upon by the poor people, the one summoning it is the president. He may not have used that expression ‘civil war’, but he used words that, interpreted by the most radical sectors of his followers, mean exactly that”.

Lula can change the future of Brazil and Latin America.

“It is necessary to understand that Lula is a reformist, that Lula wants greater independence, greater integration. All that is true. But it is also true that Lula is a man of dialogue. Lula firmly defended our interests (Brazil’s and Latin America’s). But always through dialogue.”

“Lula is not going to be subordinated to the Americans, but neither to China.”

“I believe that with Lula, with Alberto Fernandez, with AMLO, with Arce, etcetera, Latin America and the Caribbean can be relevant in the redesign of the international order that is indispensable after the inequality crises, the pandemic crisis, and for this we need to stand together and a Lula victory can contribute significantly to this.”



https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/09/ ... in-brazil/

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Brazil Fears Possible Military Coup Amid Pro-Bolsonaro Rallies

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More than 5,000 police officers will reportedly be deployed to protect Congress amid fears that it could suffer the same fate as the US Capitol after Trump’s defeat. | Photo: Twitter/@rnasc1

Published 6 September 2021 (16 hours 27 minutes ago

Brazil's President Bolsonaro and allies may be preparing a military coup in Brazil, according to an influential group of former leftist presidents, prime ministers, and public figures.

An open letter alleges pro-Bolsonaro followers staging rallies Tuesday represent a danger to democracy and amount to an insurrection modeled on Donald Trump supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol on 6 January.

The leaders state that marches by Bolsonaro supporters against the Supreme Court and Congress, including white supremacist groups, military police, and public officials, are “stoking fears of a coup in the world’s third-largest democracy."

José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Spanish former prime minister, Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, Jeremy Corbyn, the former UK Labour leader, Fernando Lugo, the former Paraguayan president, Caroline Lucas, the British Green MP, and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the Argentine Nobel laureate and human rights activist, are among the signatories.

They point out that on August 10, Bolsonaro “directed an unprecedented military parade through the capital city of Brasília, as his allies in Congress pushed sweeping reforms to the country’s electoral system that he says is critical before the presidential elections next year."

The president himself said on August 21 that the marches were preparation for a “necessary countercoup” against Congress and the Supreme Court, bolstering his message that Brazil’s “communist constitution” had taken away his power, and accused “the judiciary, the left, and a whole apparatus of hidden interests” of conspiring against him.

The open letter warns: “Members of Congress in Brazil have warned that the 7 September mobilization has been modeled on the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, when then-president Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to ‘stop the steal’ with false claims of electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential elections."


The letter further states: “We are gravely concerned about the imminent threat to Brazil’s democratic institutions – and we stand vigilant to defend them ahead of 7 September and after. The people of Brazil have struggled for decades to secure democracy from military rule. Bolsonaro must not be permitted to rob them of it now.”

Other signatories include Ernesto Samper Pizano, a former president of Colombia; Cori Bush, a U.S. Democrat House of Representatives member; Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the French presidential candidate and Manon Aubry, the French MEP.

Over 5,000 police officers will reportedly be deployed to protect Congress amid fears that it could suffer the same fate as the U.S. Capitol after Trump’s defeat. Leftist figures urged their followers to avoid confrontations by not holding counterprotests, and the U.S. embassy told its citizens to steer clear.

On Thursday, the chief justice of Brazil’s supreme court, Luiz Fux, said people should be aware of the “judicial consequences of their acts," whatever their political leanings. “Freedom of expression does not entail violence and threats,” Fux stated.

Polls show 60% of voters do not plan to vote for Bolsanaro in any circumstances in the 2022 presidential elections, with voters furious at his mismanagement of the Covid crisis.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bra ... -0012.html

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Bolsonaro signs decree to limit content on social networks

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The Brazilian president faces an investigation for the dissemination of false news and accusations without evidence to the Superior Electoral Court. | Photo: The Trade
Published September 6, 2021 (10 hours 40 minutes ago)

Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva denounced that with the measure, Bolsonaro incites hatred and violence.

The Special Secretariat for Social Communication (Secom) reported on Monday that the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, signed a provisional decree that limits the ability of social media companies to expel users.

"President Jair Bolsonaro has just signed a provisional measure that alters the Civil Framework of the Internet, reinforcing the rights and guarantees of network users and combating the arbitrary and unjustified blocking of accounts, profiles and content by providers," said the Secom.

At the same time, the Secretariat explained that the measure intends to limit broad-scope social network providers, "those with more than ten million users in Brazil, from being able to moderate content on their social networks so that it does not imply a undue curtailment of fundamental rights and guarantees, "he said.


They add that the decree seeks greater clarity on the "policies, procedures, measures and instruments" used by social network providers in order to elucidate "just cause and motivation." In addition, the measure stipulates the right to return the content made available by the user on the network, with which the president would be favoring many supporters who on more than one occasion have been blocked for spreading false or misleading news.

The decree comes in the midst of a tense environment, as the president summoned his followers to concentrate on Tuesday to "defend democracy" against what he represents an "intimidation of the institutions", he also urged to promote the closure of the Supreme Court. Federal Court of Brazil (STF).

Regarding the decree, the former president and leader of the Workers' Party (PT), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, denounced that Bolsonaro, far from presenting solutions in favor of the people and urging the unity of Brazilians, is calling for its supporters to confrontation, to call for acts against the powers of the Republic and a democracy that it has never respected, sowing divisiveness and hatred, and inciting violence.


While the "Fora Bolsonaro" campaign, which brings together the Povo Sem Fedo and Brasil Popular fronts, together with political parties, union centrals and popular movements, has organized another day of demonstrations, which projects actions in more than 160 cities in that South American country and other European nations such as Spain, Germany, Austria and Portugal.

In this regard, about 150 political figures from 26 countries grouped in the Progressive International denounced the undemocratic nature of Bolsonaro in his administration and warned of a possible coup d'état, given the possibility of a clash between forces for and against the chief executive in the streets of Brazil.

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Since last April, Bolsonaro and his ministers have sought mechanisms to limit the maneuverability of platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, precisely in response to the blocking of false publications by the Executive himself and his followers, some related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Precisely for these actions of spreading false news and accusations of fraud without probative elements to the Superior Electoral Court, the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) investigates the president.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/brasil-b ... -0031.html

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri Sep 10, 2021 1:31 pm

September 7th, the View from Brasília

The Supreme Court is still operating as usual. The “coup” was getting everyone to think one was about to happen.

By Brian Mier

On the afternoon of September 6th I headed to Guarulhos airport to catch a flight to Brasilia, where I would cover the planned Independence Day protest, announced by President Bolsonaro and his followers as an event that would have 1 million people in it, that had the primary goal of pressuring the Supreme Court, with some followers even threatening to violently occupy and shut down the court itself. I imagined that the flight would be packed with Bolsonaro supporters and was surprised to look around the waiting area and only identify a few people who looked like they were going to the protest. There were two middle aged women with died blonde hair wearing green and yellow scarves, one guy in a yellow Bolsonaro hat, two men who looked like off duty military special ops and a chubby middle aged guy wearing his mask on his chin in camouflage shorts and a Helloween T-Shirt – I just knew he was going. I boarded the flight and sat next to a middle aged guy with a buzz cut. ‘He must be a bolsominion‘, I thought, until I noticed he was reading a book by Bertolt Brecht. Bolsonarism is an anti-intellectual movement. To many of them, if a book is not about Jesus or free market economics, it should be burnt.

I arrived in Brasilia and, once again, was surprised to see the airport nearly empty with very few people who looked like they were arriving to go to the protest. ‘Is this thing going to be a flop?’ I thought to myself. Then, on the way towards my hotel, we passed a road leading to the Esplanade with dozens of RVs, buses and vans parked on it, with people sitting on the grass barbecuing and drinking beers. I had booked a room in a large hotel on Brasilia’s lakefront that is popular with conventioneers – the last place I could find that still had rooms. It was entirely packed with people in yellow and green Bolsonaro shirts and jerseys. There were groups of 40 or 50 people with identical shirts on, with a dozen buses parked outside the hotel. Hoping no one would recognize me from my popular web TV program Globalistas and regular appearances on TV 247, I pulled my hat down and checked in. I got in the elevator to go up to my room. On the next floor, an elderly couple appeared, looking nervous. “We are from the country” the man said, “could you explain how this thing works? How do we get to the lobby?”. They had never been in an elevator before. Later, I went down to the lobby to buy a soft drink and a man, who appeared to be part of a bus that had arrived from rural Mato Grosso, the soy-producing state of former Amazon rainforest, asked me how a vending machine works. “I am trying to buy a coke,” he said, “could you help me? What do I have to do?” He’d never seen one before.

The next day, Rede Brasil Atual, the media outlet connected to the CUT labor union federation, broke a story about conservative business leaders offering poor people R$100 to travel in buses to the protest. This seemed to be the case with many of the people staying in my hotel. Not that they necessarily were not Bolsonaro supporters, but I got the feeling that a lot of them were in this for the free trip. Interspersed among the group were a few people who definitely looked like Bolsonaro fanatics and there were a dozen big motorcycles parked in the lot out front belonging to some kind of right wing, bourgeois motorcycle gang.

The hotel was a circus of drunks running up and down the hallways. The internet had crashed, my TV was broken and the whole place stunk like stale beer. I decided to put in early so I could get up at dawn and go out to cover the protest. Suddenly the news broke that a group of truckers had broken through the security barrier on the Esplanade and, together with hundreds of jubilant Bolsonaro supporters and allegedly even Eduardo Bolsonaro himself, they were heading toward the Supreme Court Building.

A sinking feeling came over me. What would happen if they overthrew the Supreme Court and started clamping down on leftists – a promise Bolsonaro made on the campaign trail and has reiterated repeatedly since. I started thinking of a possible escape route, then wondered if it was worth risking filming the protest the next day. I got on Twitter to see what the news was and saw a calming message from Workers Party (PT) President Gleisi Hoffmann, the former liberation theology activist and student union leader who is featured in the documentary O Processo about the coup against Dilma Rousseff. “It’s true that tomorrow is September 7th,” she said, “but the next day is September 8th… Look at this video. Congress and the Supreme Court are completely secure. No one is coming anywhere near them. The truckers got onto the Esplanade because the police opened the barricade for them.” Essentially, she said it was a stunt.

What had really happened? As a Military Police Officer who I met at a bag-searching checkpoint in the protest the next day told me (information that was later confirmed in the media), a group of truck driving Bolsonaro supporters had obtained permits to park their trucks on the Esplanade for the protest that came into effect at 12:01 AM, September 7th, but they arrived 2.5 hours beforehand and negotiated with the police to park early. Among their group were several truckers who didn’t have their permits in order. After promising not to get anywhere near the Supreme Court and Congress, the police on the scene opened the barricades for them and a group of apparently drunken Bolsonaro supporters followed them in as if it were a victory parade. As the video posted by Gleisi Hoffman showed, no one came within a hundreds of meters of the Supreme Court.

This did not stop a 10 hour international news cycle from unrolling about chaos in Brasilia. For the next hours, it looked like a there would be a violent occupation of Congress and the Supreme Court, something that had been promised for months by elite supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, several of whom had been jailed for publicly calling for it. ‘When would it happen?’ surpassed, ‘would it happen?’ in the minds of many, including myself.

It is no secret that well known figures from the international far right like Steve Bannon, Beatrix von Storch and Jason Miller had met with the Bolsonaros during the weeks leading up to September 7th to help them develop tactics and strategize. One apparent result of this, which has Bannon’s footprint all over it, is the use of social media bots. A study released on September 5 by ITS (Instituto de Techologia e Sociedade to Rio) identified 2621 Twitter Bots calling people to the Anti-Supreme Court protests/insurrection, in 81,000 tweets the week before the event. An earlier study shows over half of Jair Bolsonaro’s Twitter followers are bots.

That night, my twitter feed suffered its first ever coordinated bot/troll attack. After dozens of users with mysterious handles and under 20 followers, and a handful of right wing social media influencers repeated the same insults over and over again – “fake news!” “Gay communist”, “Liar”, “go back to your country” – I had to temporarily lock my account. Some of the comments hinted at physical violence against me the next day, so I decided to shave my beard, dress like a bolsominion and discretely walk around filming with my smartphone until I assessed the security situation.

Putting on my Kris Bryant Chicago Cubs T-Shirt, with its big number 17 (Bolsonaro’s 2018 ballot number), a black cap and fake ray ban aviator classes, I hoofed my clean shaven self a mile over to the Esplanade. It was big but there were definitely nowhere near a million people there. I had been in the largest protest in Brasilia history in 2017, when union members came in thousands of buses from across Brazil to protest US-backed coup President Michel Temer’s neoliberal labor reforms. That day, there were 230,000 of us on the Esplanade. By my calculations, this crowd was about half that size. One of the first things I saw arriving on the scene was a huge line stretching up to two airport style metal detectors. Anyone who wanted to come anywhere near the stage had to go through a full security check. There were also checkpoints in various points around the Esplanade where military police officers where stopping people and searching their bags.

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The crowd, almost entirely dressed in green and yellow, with many people draped in Brazilian and occasionally Israeli flags, was well behaved. Speakers led chants about things like Jesus praying for Bolsonaro and throwing Lula in jail. Anti-Communist banners and signs were everywhere. Military jets flew in formation over the crowd and every time a military helicopter flew over exuberant Bolsonaro supporters waved their arms to the heavens in joy. There were giant, green images of Brazilian founding fathers with conservative sounding quotes suspended from the roofs of every Ministry building. I started filming and noticed that I was using Leni Reifenstal style, majestic camera angles. ‘This is what it must have been like in the 30s,” I thought. Nearly everyone was acting friendly, but most didn’t seem especially bright or coherent. Telling people I was working for a German news agency’s Instagram page broke the ice. Bolsominions love anything white.


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“People are trying to make Jesus seem gay,” this bolsominion angrily warned passers by.

“My ancestors are from Germany,” a middle aged woman told me. “and we are here for freedom.” I asked another woman about her sign which read, in English, “Criminalization of Communism”.

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“We are criminalizing communism – the Toga Communism of the Federal Supreme Court – which is implanting communism in our country and censuring our freedom,” she said, “and this is why we support Bolsonaro – we are against the criminalization of the Toga.”

It’s important to note that this is the same Supreme Court which, in 2018, opened an exception to the Constitution under pressure from the military to jail ex-President Lula during election season in order to remove him from the race and open the door for Jair Bolsonaro. The main target of the protesters ire, Alexandre de Moraes, is a Michel Temer appointee who, as conservative governor Geraldo Alckmin’s State Security Chief in São Paulo, legalized the use of rubber bullets against teenage protesters during the public school occupations. I shouldn’t even have to say this, but he is clearly not a communist.

After an hour working my way through the crowd. It began to look like there wasn’t going to be any storming of the Supreme Court. I asked a police officer what he thought and he said that it was definitely not going to happen, so I worked my way through the crowd to Oscar Niemeyer’s National Mall for a coffee and some air conditioning.

Later that day, it came out that operatives connected to the Trump administration including Jason Miller had been held for questioning by the Federal Police as they tried to leave the country. Brazil doesn’t have the same free speech laws that the US does – it’s closer to the German model – and, perhaps surprisingly for Steve Bannon, he and some of his henchmen are now under investigation for breaking the law by spreading fake news on social media and supporting calls for violence against government institutions as part of an organization that is being called “Carlos Bolsonaro’s Electronic Militia”.

As reports came in about lower than expected turnouts in other cities across the country, it dawned on me. We’d been sucker punched by Bannon and his crew yet again. The “chaos” wasn’t the pre-ordained storming of the Supreme Court Building. It was scaring the media and the public into thinking it was going to happen. The early arrival of trucks on the Esplanade was spun by thousands of bots and paid social media influencers into a media event that was used to generate expectation of something which was never going to happen. The chaos in Brazil was the 10 hours between the truckers arrival on the esplanade and the start of the peaceful protest. As the Bolsonaro’s “Electronic Militia” now works overtime on the social media to artificially blow up the protests into a massive success story and shout down or insult any journalist who tries to accurately depict the crowd size, even using the Military Police’s own estimates, it’s time to regroup and ask ourselves the following questions: How did we fall for this again and what can we do to fight back so these tactics stop working?

https://www.brasilwire.com/september-7t ... -brasilia/

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Endless lands

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

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Some 13 percent of Brazil is demarcated as indigenous lands. Some 800 lots are pending pending the completion of the demarcation process, and in many indigenous communities, the process did not even begin.

The recovery demand was established by the Government of the southern state of Santa Catarina against the Xokleng people. It is about the Ibirama-Laklãno aboriginal lands.

A historic judgment will define the fate of ancestral lands in Brazil. The Supreme Federal Court (STF) debates the validity of the “temporary framework”, which would only recognize as native territories those occupied by native peoples when the federal Constitution of October 5, 1988 was promulgated.

The recovery demand was established by the Government of the southern state of Santa Catarina against the Xokleng people. In other words, it is about the Ibirama-Laklãno aboriginal lands, the Guarani and Kaingang peoples.

For the natives it is clear that their lives are going to be lost on this, their land claims are necessary for indigenous survival. While the Government of Jair Bolsonaro defends at all costs the legal security of the farmers and owners in these areas, on a framework imposed, clearly unconstitutional from the point of view of the native peoples.


The Time Frame

"There is a scenario of legal insecurity and violence against indigenous people" and the time frame "would legalize illegal acts committed before 1988", denounces the representative of the Xokleng ethnic group, Rafael Modesto dos Santos.

There is no time in the Constitution, there is no time of possession and occupation, it also specifies on behalf of the ethnic group in dispute -the Xokleng- Carlos Frederico Marés de Souza Filho.

"The time frame is detrimental because it erodes, contaminates the concept that the Constitution establishes." In this, the "Constitution is categorical, recognizing the original right of indigenous peoples to the land," says the member of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, Luiz Eloy Amado.

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Photo: Karla Mendez

"To adopt the temporary milestone is to ignore all the violations to which the native communities are subjected," he says.

The Xokleng community that lives in the state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil, claims the hectares of land that belonged to them until the arrival of European settlers who settled in their ancestral territories.

Now, the Court is analyzing whether the state government applied too narrow an interpretation of indigenous rights by recognizing only the lands occupied by native communities at the time the Brazilian Constitution was ratified in 1988.

The right to ancestral lands is determined in the Constitution and denying it would create a dire precedent.

Demarcation

Some 900,000 indigenous speakers of almost 300 languages ​​inhabit Brazil in 305 tribes. Being indigenous in Brazil means living on alert against the violence of the invaders, racial discrimination, food insecurity and unhealthy conditions.

A childhood burdened by chronic malnutrition, parasitic and infectious diseases of 25 percent of indigenous children under 5 years of age, plus Covid-19.

Native natives occupy around 13 percent of the country's surface, of the 690 territories with indigenous inhabitants recognized, until now, by the Government.

The demarcation of an Indigenous land aims to guarantee the indigenous right to the land. It must establish the real extent of indigenous possession, ensure the protection of the demarcated limits and prevent its occupation by third parties.


Since the approval of the Indian Statute, in 1973, this formal recognition obeys an administrative procedure, provided for in article 19 of that Law.

Such procedure stipulates the stages of a long demarcation process, regulated by Executive Power Decree. Over the years it underwent several modifications. The last and most important took place through Decree 1,775 in January 1996.

For the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) the so-called "time frame" is "a ruralist thesis that restricts indigenous rights."

The indigenous interpretation considers the time frame unconstitutional. Instead, this thesis is defended by companies and economic sectors interested in exploring and appropriating indigenous lands. This is opposed by the so-called “indigenous theory”, enshrined in the 1988 Constitution.

APIB states that “the indigenous right to land is original, that is, it predates the formation of the Brazilian State itself, regardless of a specific date of possession of the land (“ time frame ”) and even the administrative demarcation procedure. territorial".

Luiz Eloy Amado, APIB lawyer, assured that it is unconstitutional because there was no term in the 1988 Magna Carta that guarantees the right to ancestral lands.

"The land issue," said the lawyer, "is fundamental for the indigenous peoples of Brazil," adding that some 800 claims will be paralyzed if the court does not reject the 1988 deadline.

On behalf of the Government, Attorney General Bruno Bianco argues that the "time frame thesis" provides legal certainty to farmers.

Many ranchers have lived for decades on land that was once inhabited by natives, driven out by the arrival of European settlers.

According to anthropologist Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, indigenous people can only request the areas they occupied on that date. But it turns out, the specialist emphasizes, that the forced expulsions of indigenous people occurred in Mato Grosso do Sul and western Paraná in the 1940s, which does not invalidate their right to land.

The executive coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), Dinamam Tuxá, added that they have not delimited the land for a long time, even so, he trusts that the STF ministers will rule in favor of the indigenous peoples.

Distrust

Most do not trust. It is also the suspicion of 8 percent of the population in Latin America, where some 45 million belong to marginalized ethnic groups.

For all, thousands of Brazilian indigenous people raise their voices. They have demonstrated in recent days in front of the STF to demand respect for the original right over their lands.

The claim of some 4,000 women is also going towards this. They come from 150 peoples from all regions of the country, added to the mobilizations of indigenous people in the federal capital in defense of their rights.


Before their eyes they have seen hell. The devastating fire consumes thousands of hectares in the Brazilian jungle and vast inhabited territories. During this year there was an increase of 85 percent in deforestation in relation to the previous one.

According to the Environmental Research Institute of the Amazon, these fires occur -for the most part- in private areas and in public forests without use or in areas without property deeds.

In other words, it could well be a fire to guarantee private control of the land, in line with the policy of the federal government of Jair Bolsonaro. Anti-indigenousism is not something secondary, it is one of the president's priorities. He made it clear in the electoral campaign.

It was necessary to fight. Confronting indigenous peoples as a political force against devastation. Although the indigenous areas were the least burned within the conservation units, whose fires are the responsibility of invaders of their lands.

More than 160 invasions of indigenous lands were documented in 2020 by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI). The group linked to the Catholic Church denounces violence against indigenous peoples in Brazil.

Out of that total 21 burned areas were also identified, affecting indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. Retired communities, due to their epidemiological vulnerability, represent the greatest risk of genocide.

According to the Socio-Environmental Institute, 2020 has been the worst year for indigenous lands and Conservation Units since 2008.

188,000 hectares of forests have been destroyed in these territories, that is, an area larger than the city of Sao Paulo, only surpassed by the almost 200,000 hectares registered in 2019.

These catastrophes may be the consequence of a set of measures whose final objective is the implementation of the development plan executed by the current Government.

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Photo: Scarlett Rocha

We could cite the freezing of fines charged by the Brazilian Environment Institute (Ibama), legislative proposals that threaten protected areas, technical advice to release illegal wood.

Or the harassment of environmental agents and exoneration of the guilty, not executing the inspection and fire extinguishing budget.

Perhaps failed military operations to combat deforestation or reductions in illegal deforestation actions and embargoes. Until the defamation of the scientific knowledge of the National Institute for Space Research.

The indigenous areas most affected by the joint action of illegal mining, the agricultural front, burning and illegal invasions were the Xingu basin, TI Munduruku, TI Urubu Branco, TI Manoki, TI Karipuna; Conservation Units: Southwest of Pará, Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Preservation Area (APA).

Mobu Odo, indigenous macaw and head of the Cachoeira Seca village, sentences: "We are threatened, deforestation will end our territory."

So war has been declared. That is why the indigenous people were the first to confront the policies of the current president. The choice is to fight or be exterminated.

War of attrition

Violence against indigenous peoples is experienced day by day. Institutional racism, media disqualification, assassinations of leaders, attacks in villages, threats, lack of opportunities, access to basic needs, health and public services.

Denigrating statements are constantly posted on social media and media. For example, Generals Hamilton Mourão (Vice President) and Augusto Heleno (Minister of the Institutional Security Cabinet).

The offensive expressions of the ministers Nahban Garcia, a ruralista, founder of the Unión Democrática Ruralista, described as instigators of the murder of the trade unionist Chico Mendes are known. The Brazilian trade unionist and environmental activist, a peaceful fighter against the extraction of timber and the expansion of pastures over the Amazon, was killed by ranchers.


Likewise, from the landowner Tereza Cristina da Costa, Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply, as well as from parliamentarians who support the Governments in states and municipalities.

A whole fascist discourse that encourages the annihilation of the indigenous people. Aimed at forcing indigenous reserves to capitalist exploitation and withdrawing legal guarantees of land demarcation.

But the indigenous response is largely silenced. Who defends the native peoples who were before the European invaders?

Some 13 percent of Brazil is demarcated as indigenous lands. Some 800 lots are pending pending the completion of the demarcation process, and in many indigenous communities, the process did not even begin.

President Jair Bolsonaro signed an amnesty decree, in late December 2019, for irregular land acquisitions.

Regulation 910 allows the privatization of public lands illegally invaded until the end of 2018, especially unused areas. Also in nature reserves that can be canceled. Raised the race pennant for the mob and international finance capital.

In Brazil there are 114 isolated indigenous peoples, according to the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) and 104, according to the registry of the National Indian Foundation (Funai).

They are peoples in resistance against the colonizer. Self-employed. Many of their lands must be demarcated. Meanwhile, more than twenty isolated indigenous peoples were invaded by loggers, illegal miners, gold prospectors, hunters, grileiros, fishermen and extractivists, denounces the CIMI.

Amazon

Isolated peoples must be preserved. Many of the villages are headed by indigenous women. They lead with the influence of educational and health measures. Such is the case of the indigenous councilors in Atalaia do Norte.

This is how stories of the Spanish invaders tell it, such as those of Francisco de Orellana and the missionary Gaspar de Carvajal, about warrior women, the Amazons.

Five villages of the Kayapó people are led by women in the Amazon. Also in the Xavante people, Carolina Rewaptu, leads the Marãiwatsédé indigenous land.

To the south, Eunice Kerexu of the Guaraní Mbya people stands out, who heads the Morro dos Cavalos village. In the upper Xingu, the Yamarikumã movement of warrior women emerged. Watatakalu and Ana Terra emphasize. Both daughters of a great - deceased - chief of the Yawalapiti people, Pirakuma.

For the first time in Parliament, an indigenous woman represents indigenous rights. This is Joenia Wapichana, a Brazilian lawyer. The first indigenous woman to practice such a profession in Brazil.

In the 2018 elections, she became the first indigenous woman to be elected to the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil, representing the state of Roraima and as an affiliate of the Sustainability Network (REDE)

Sonia Guajajara, executive coordinator of the great institutional movement, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), stands out, aspiring to the Vice Presidency of the Republic in the 2018 elections.

In August 2019, the first indigenous women's march took place in Brasilia, with more than 2,000 women from 113 villages.

According to the indigenous leader Joziléia Kaigang, one of our victories was the approval, by the Supreme Court, of the demand for breach of constitutional precepts (DPF 709).

The Union was forced to draw up a plan to fight Covid-19 for indigenous peoples. Sanitary barriers were established on 33 lands, with the confirmed presence of uncontacted Indians, and it also made it possible to contain potential invaders or spreaders of the disease.

According to this action, "the death rate of Covid-19 among indigenous peoples is 9.6 percent, while among the Brazilian population in general it is 5.6 percent."

This forced the Government to carry out within 30 days, a plan to deal with Covid-19, with a guarantee of sanitary barriers and the isolation of indigenous lands. "This was a great victory."

Cobra

In the midst of the aggravated pandemic in Brazil, a historic decision is looming, transcendent for indigenous peoples.

If the time frame is regularized, it opens -by decree- the possibility of making numerous demarcations of indigenous lands unviable, which have not yet completed their procedures.

According to data from the Conselho Indigenista Missionário (CIMI), 63 percent of indigenous lands are not legalized.

In other words, of the 1,290 indigenous lands, 821 have no demarcated limits and most of these, without legalization procedures. Those who sharpen their teeth know that well, with the capitalization of those lands.

With this, the rights of indigenous peoples to their self-determination are exposed, as has been observed in the report of the UN Special Mission on the rights of indigenous peoples, in August 2016.

The saga of the indigenous people can be synthesized by the myth of the big cobra, of the Katxuyana people, in the face of the abuses practiced by the public power, in favor of the invaders.

In the context of the struggle for possession of ancestral land, perhaps the true snake is the current Brazilian state prepared to swallow up the original peoples.

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Photo: T. Turner.

The use of the structure of state institutions - by the dominant political group - to achieve their private purposes is part of the Brazilian heritage history.

Undoubtedly, a great threat to the indigenous peoples who fight against the Brazilian states and municipalities, administered by the interests of the invaders of public lands.

This recalls the plot of a great literary work, about the exploitation of cocoa in the Ilheus region in southern Bahia.

The most diverse human types, attracted by fertile lands and abundant money, as the famous Brazilian writer Jorge Amado describes it well in his book “Tierras del sin fin”.

But this story, which also carries memory, is too current.

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:25 pm

João Pedro Stedile: ‘Brazilians are Hungry Because They Have No Income, Not Because of a Lack of Production’
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 15, 2021
Brasil de Fato

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“The problems of the working class areonly get worse”, says João Pedro Stedile. Photo: José Eduardo Bernardes

For Stedile, large sections of the bourgeoisie have already manifested their deep dissatisfaction with the Bolsonaro government but have not reached a consensus about an alternative


“The Bolsonaro government is a reflection of the crisis. He [Bolsonaro] is the mirror of the bourgeoisie,” says economist and agrarian reform activist João Pedro Stedile. He criticizes recent positions of part of the Brazilian business, who are only now opposing President Jair Bolsonaro (non-party) while the country suffers its worst social and economic crisis.

This week’s guest at the BdF Entrevista (BdF Interviews), Stedile, one of the founders of the Landless Rural Workers Movement, also talks about the precariousness of work in Brazil, Bolsonaro’s coup attempts, and how a new government of former president Lula, the main candidate in the 2022 elections, can be organized.

Read the interview below:

Brasil de Fato: Brazil is experiencing an unprecedented crisis. Hunger has returned to affect families, the economy is not growing, and the risks of the proposed reforms have materialized. What is the real condition of our democracy since 2016?

João Pedro Stedile: The country is going through a difficult moment because it is the worst crisis in its whole history. It is a structural crisis in the way capitalism dominates the society and the economy. This dominance is shown in production, in an increasingly concentrated economy. Before the crisis, we had 45 billionaires; today, we have 65.

We have an ultra-concentrated economy with a fundamental contradiction since it does not produce the goods the population needs. That is the great contradiction of the dependent Brazilian capitalism, and it has consequences of a real social tragedy, which is the deepening of social inequality.

At this moment, the main thing to know is that the crisis in Brazil is structural, which means that it goes beyond the current situation and the current government. It means that, after the “Out, Bolsonaro”, we have to think about structural changes to take the country out of the crisis and put it back on new paths, which can guarantee the well-being of the entire population.

BDF: Part of these unemployed people was already in informal works, which has grown enormously since 2018. The pandemic came to take these people off the streets. What is the level of the precariousness of labor in Brazil?

JPS: The precariousness of labor revealed by data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD, in Portuguese) is only a picture of the structural crisis. It is not because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have had these signs since 2014. And it is useless for economists to say that this is the trend of modern capitalism either.

That’s not all. In the next period, Brazilian society will have to carry out a major reindustrialization program in the country and refocus productive investments in family farming to produce food. We need shoes, clothes, houses, food, and all of this needs to be produced in the industry and family farming.

So, these times of precariousness, of withdrawal of rights from the [Michel] Temer government until now, are just signs of this greed of the Brazilian bourgeoisie. In the face of the crisis, they put all the burden upon the back of the working class. It’s absurd that a continental country like Brazil has around 20 million people starving since Brazil has a huge potential for food production. They are not starving because of a lack of production. They are starving because they have no income. They cannot afford to buy food at the supermarket or the street markets.

And according to researchers, we have another 70 million people in the so-called food insecurity, which means they are eating in the worst possible way, below the needs, or eating unhealthy food, “non-nutritious” food. That is the picture of the crisis.

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Unemployment and lack of income are major problems in Brazil since 2014, according to Stedile. Photo: Toni Pires

BDF: Currently, the Bolsonaro government has the support of the centrist parties. Indeed, “physiology” took the government by storm. Bolsonaro no longer seems to have the market support, and even that social base used to support him is increasingly restricted to 20%. Even so, is it still difficult to talk about impeachment?

JPS: First, we have to understand the nature of the Bolsonaro government. We, the social movements of the Frente Brasil Popular and the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement, have said that Bolsonaro is there only because the Brazilian bourgeoisie put him there.

Now, a large portion of them regret it, and Bolsonaro, as a mirror of the crisis, does not have his own organized social force, a union, a university, or intellectuals because he does not have a project for the country, he has no proposals for the nation.

At heart, he is an aberration that privileges his family. His practice of “rachadinha” and all his life always was dedicated to enriching himself with public resources.

BDF: But even so, in the defeat of the proposed constitutional amendment to adopt printed vote, the Bolsonaro government had a majority to the point of approving it. Does that bury the chances of impeachment for now?

JPS: The issue of the “Out, Bolsonaro” and the impeachment are not the same. We think that the removal of Bolsonaro from the government by impeachment or any other measures depends on the bourgeoisie behavior or the working class.

The bourgeoisie has been demonstrating daily against Bolsonaro, but it is divided on what to do.

In my opinion, a fraction – stupid – of the bourgeoisie bets on the maintenance of Bolsonaro, on access to public resources, and on this stupid policy of privatizing state-owned companies. According to analysts, there must be 20% of the bourgeoisie thinking like that. Among those, there are Bradesco (bank), Banco Pactual, BTG, the most speculative financial capital sector, “Veio” da Havan [pejorative way of referring to Havan’s owner, Luciano Hang], and others.

Another sector of the bourgeoisie, which in my opinion is the majority and difficult to quantify (but let’s say they are 60%), can no longer stand with Bolsonaro. They are even the majority of economic power. I think that the president of FIESP disagrees with Bolsonaro. Itaú (bank) does not agree, Mrs. Maria Luiza [Trajano] (owner of Magazine Luiza chain of stores) does not agree with Bolsonaro.

However, this group – the majority – needs to solve an unknown issue before taking Bolsonaro out, which is to create a unit on who is the going to participate in the so-called third way. That done, the third way is only viable if Bolsonaro is removed.

There is a third group of the bourgeoisie – in my opinion, it is still the minority – which has expressed itself together with Delfim Neto. Delfim is an organic intellectual of the bourgeoisie, a historical reference for the bourgeoisie, and has repeated: “stop talking nonsense about the third way. We need to support Lula in the first round because Lula will win the elections”.

This sector of the bourgeoisie is likely to be better positioned in an alliance with Lula because they know that if Lula wins the elections, they will have to carry out a program of structural reforms.

With an agreement on the “third way”, the bourgeoisie can use its economic and media power, in addition to its influence in the National Congress, to find a legal way to remove the government. Another hypothesis is that if there is not enough time for impeachment, they may find some way to criminalize the president because of what the Senate commission of inquiry is revealing and interdict him, therefore preventing him from running for reelection.

On the part of the working class, we must continue with the slogan that unites us, “Out, Bolsonaro”. However, the working class is unable to exercise its political force, which is shown in street demonstrations, in the de facto struggle, whether by strikes or occupations. Due to COVID, unemployment, and hunger, [the working class] has not actively engaged in [recent] mobilizations.

But we can never be pessimistic. As activists and members of social movements and left-wing parties, our work is to keep on doing grassroots work, organizing the people, and trying to mobilize them for the struggle.

BDF: The support from the military police and armed militias to the Bolsonaro government is a component that has been strengthening in recent days. Is it a fact? Should we be concerned about it?

JPS: There may be provocations here and there, but I don’t believe it, and we shouldn’t fall into this paranoia that there will be a coup attempt by the military police personnel. I think the meeting of the twenty-five governors was very symbolic, because governors are the ones in charge of the military police. I think most of the police personnel are reasonable. They are responsible professionals, even though they practice racism and violence in the poor neighborhoods.

The bulk of the military personnel is responsible professionals. They know their constitutional responsibilities. I don’t even believe that there is any support from them [to Bolsonaro], nor that there are coup attempts, just as I have said several times that we can’t think that they are all the same kind.

The contradictions are evident between those who went to Brasília, those who are taking public money. There are generals whose salary is R$ 100,000. Some weeks ago, Brasil de Fato revealed that [Eduardo] Pazuello’s salary is worth R$57,000 a month, and he went to his office twice in the last two months. In other words, it is an insult to the working class.

Another thing is the military, which is in the quarters, has its responsibilities and has shown signs of dissatisfaction with the government, especially because Bolsonaro keeps screaming that he is a captain (even though he was expelled from the Army). Bolsonaro knows that all the perversities of the current government have had repercussions over the military, and the military personnel with good sense want to get away from this fan that spreads problems.

BDF: You mentioned national sovereignty, and I wonder if the military must also be concerned about the environmental matter. We recently saw a study by Mapbiomas aim that Brazil lost about 15% of its water. Is it possible to stop these environmental abuses?

JPS: It can be explained by the greed with which the capitalists went over the Amazon, the public lands, minerals, indigenous lands, and quilombola lands. That explains this uncontrollable rage for the liberation of any pesticides. The pesticide used by agribusiness kills biodiversity and, therefore, unbalances the environment and affects the climate throughout Brazil.

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Problems of water supply can be seen in many places in Brazil. Photo: Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom/Agência Brasil

These aggressions against the environment cause contradictions for the capitalists themselves because this aggressive agribusiness model (which uses pesticides that kill biodiversity and alter the climate) ends up affecting other sectors of agribusiness.

The last orange harvest here in São Paulo state, the world’s largest producer of orange juice, dropped 40%. Why? Because the rain which used to come from the Amazon Rainforest and the Pantanal wetlands did not come due to fires.

With the drought here in the Southeast region, the sugarcane sector and livestock were also affected. In short, other agribusiness sectors are beginning to realize that this predatory agribusiness model, with intensive use of pesticides, is unsustainable.

BDF: Before ending our conversation, there is the perspective that former president Lula will reach, at least, the second round. Surveys are indicating his victory in the first round. Is it possible to analyze the composition of a Lula administration amid this correlation of forces?

JPS: A progressive and popular government is not only possible but necessary. However, to see a viable Lula government, we have several aspects: one of them is the party alliances, which have their own methodology since the parties do not necessarily represent the forces of organized society, whether in the bourgeoisie, the middle class, or the working class.

The key to making Lula’s candidacy viable is not the party alliances or which people will support him. Of course, the more parties and more public figures supporting him, the better. But I think after removing Bolsonaro – our task number zero -, we, as a popular movement and as militants, should be concerned with taking advantage of 2022 to carry out a great national campaign in which the population and the working class discuss a new project to the country.

It is impossible to put Brazil on track without controlling the financial capital, which is what gets all the wealth. It is not possible to put Brazil on track without taking control of the transnational companies. It is not possible to get Brazil back on track without having a wealth tax.

And these structural reforms will not depend on Lula’s goodwill nor party alliances. They will happen because of the people’s ability to understand their need to fight for them [the measures].

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/09/ ... roduction/

***************************************************

JAIR BOLSONARO IN HIS LABYRINTH
16 Sep 2021 , 9:38 am .

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It is difficult for Jair Bolsonaro to reverse the situation and achieve a second term (Photo: EFE)

The government of Jair Bolsonaro from the beginning of his administration has been marked by a deep political crisis that has impacted sensitive areas of Brazilian society, with the collapse of its health system due to the covid-19 pandemic dismissed by the president one of the milestones that ended up demolishing his figure.

For now, it is not known what the political fate of Bolsonaro will be since he no longer has the same base of social support that brought the former army captain to power. However, he continues to have the same emboldened attitude that has led him to be in conflict with other powers and even against those who supported him in his rise.

Despite the fact that he seems to have everything against him, the president aspires to be reelected for next year, elections for which he has had a controversial attitude. Like Donald Trump, he questions the reliability of the electronic voting system and, with it, the transparency of the upcoming presidential elections. It should be mentioned that before the controversial statements, Congress rejected the proposal to impose the printed vote.

Bolsonaro threatened not to recognize the result of next year's presidential elections if his proposal for a mixed vote was not approved, while arguing that said electronic system promotes fraud. So far it has not provided any proof of this. This shows the conflict between powers currently in Brazil.

Faced with this situation, it is worth asking, is it really possible that Bolsonaro will lose in the upcoming elections due to fraud and not due to the loss of popularity due to the bad management of the government?

ALL AGAINST BOLSONARO

The truth is that the current Brazilian president has several conflict fronts that seem to put his re-election in doubt.

Although Jair Bolsonaro's image was already in a tailspin, his management of the pandemic ended up ruining it. His denialist stance, which turned the South American country into the second with the most infections and deaths, has provoked strong protests throughout the territory.

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Jair Bolsonaro is accused of genocide for not applying effective measures against the pandemic (Photo: AFP)

Political parties, popular organizations, workers and students called the protests in at least 400 cities in Brazil under the slogan # 19J.

Likewise, the demonstrations of indigenous movements and environmental protection organizations are added against Bolsonaro. In August, numerous members of different original peoples of the Amazon region mobilized against the measures promoted by the president known as the "Temporal Framework", which recognizes as ancestral lands only those that were occupied by indigenous communities before 1988, this, according to the indigenous representatives, it is an occasion for large companies to use these territories for logging and livestock.


"If the law materializes, these peoples would see their territory significantly reduced. The indigenous people consider that taking 1988 as a reference to classify a land as ancestral or not is 'unfair' because during the military dictatorship (1964-1985) they were expelled most of their homes and by 1988 they had not been able to return to them, so they only dominated a small percentage of what used to belong to them, "says France24 .

Although the "Temporal Framework" has already been processed in Congress, the last word is held by the Supreme Federal Court (STF), which is currently in conflict with the Executive. Indigenous organizations argue that their situation has worsened since Bolsonaro came to power. "The politician has been on several occasions an admirer of the dictatorship that did so much damage to the Brazilian indigenous peoples and also came to power thanks to the financial support of logging and meat companies," they point out.

LOSE BASE OF SUPPORT

Recently, there have also been protests in several Brazilian capitals against President Jair Bolsonaro organized by conservative movements, such as the Free Brazil Movement (MBL) and the VPR (Vem Pra Rua), demonstrations that promise to continue taking place throughout the country.

"Marches were planned in 15 capitals, with a special focus on cities that had a large agglomeration last Tuesday, with the demonstrations of the president's supporters on September 7, which included anti-democratic flags and authoritarian Bolsonaro speeches," Telesur reports .

Although the groups are considering being opposition to the current president, none has an alliance in mind with popular movements, trade unions or the PT, the largest opposition party in Brazil. Both the left and the more conservative sector have organized protests against Bolsonaro on their own.

The level of unpopularity of Jair Bolsonaro reaches the point that "the MBL of the Red Atlas, which was created for the coup against Dilma, and supported Bolsonaro, is trying to rename itself as an opposition," says BrasilWire .

"MBL is trying to co-opt the street demonstrations against Bolsonaro, while its neoliberal allies in RenovaBR make a play for the post-Bolsonaro scenario, with the support of Wall Street, preparing future leaders," the Brazilian media said.

And it is that the extreme right is looking for a way to project a third way under the slogan "neither Lula nor Bolsonaro."

"The 'third way' candidate Ciro Gomes and his PDT party have declared their participation in the September 12 protest, led by the MBL of the Red Atlas, which is being promoted with propaganda that equates Bolsonaro with the former president Lula, "he details.

But Bolsonaro's decline in popularity is not solely due to his stridency and mishandling of the pandemic. The increase in poverty, the death of children due to malnutrition, among others, add to the negative image of the president.


DOTTED WITH CORRUPTION

In addition to what we have said throughout this note, President Jair Bolsonaro has been plagued by corruption crimes committed by his son, Flávio Bolsonaro. Who works as a senator formally accused by the Rio de Janeiro Prosecutor's Office for embezzlement of public funds, money laundering, belonging to a criminal organization and misappropriation, a complaint that was introduced months ago, but that proceeded on the days of the State elections United.

The corruption of the first-born is long-standing, since Bolsonaro Jr. "diverted part of the salaries - paid with public money - of 23 former advisers of his cabinet while he was a state deputy, between 2007 and 2018," reports El País , which is why it is considered as "leader of a system of corruption".

"The accusations of corruption against Bolsonaro's eldest son are the Achilles heel of the president, who came to power with a relentless fight against corruption," says the Spanish media.

In March of this year, Bolsonaro's son came under the spotlight again for corruption. On this occasion, he is appointed to acquire a luxurious mansion valued at one million dollars. These undoubtedly raised discomfort due to the link with the president and because he has not been able to justify obtaining said resources.

"It is the twentieth property that Flavio Bolsonaro has negotiated in 16 years. Even so, in his income tax return presented to the Electoral Justice in 2018, he said that he had 1.74 million reais ($ 303,000) in equity assets. net salary as a senator is 24,900 reais (4,435.00 dollars), "says another note from the same media .

In June of this year, Bolsonaro himself once again touched on a scene of impeachment after a plot of corruption of anticovid vaccines was uncovered that directly links his government, refers a report from the Robinson Institute reviewed in this forum .

"A purchase order for 20 million doses of the Covaxin vaccine, developed by the Indian pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech, was mediated by various irregularities, lobbying and price premiums charged to a $ 320 million bill involving a shell company. domiciled in Singapore, "says the institute.

As you can see, the chances of the Brazilian president achieving a second term are slim. Adding to the collapse of his image is the fact that the greatest rival at the moment, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was released from prison after the end of the lawfare against him, a maneuver by the elites promoted by the United States to leave him free. Bolsonaro in the last presidential elections.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/ja ... -laberinto

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Bolsonaro Going to UN General Assembly Unvaccinated

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The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro | Photo: EFE / Joédson Alves

Published 16 September 2021 (10 hours 27 minutes ago)

Bolsonaro confirms he will go to UN General Assembly despite not being vaccinated.


Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro confirmed Thursday that he would attend the UN General Assembly next week in New York despite not being vaccinated after the city government imposed the presentation of an anti-virus vaccination certificate to delegations.

"I will be next week at the UN General Assembly; I will give the opening speech" Tuesday, the president said in his regular broadcast on social networks.

It will be "a calm speech, quite objective, focused on the points of interest to us," added Bolsonaro, who highlighted addressing the pandemic in Brazil, agribusiness and energy.

On Wednesday, when it became known that the New York authorities would require to present a vaccination certificate to access the meeting, some doubts arose about Bolsonaro's participation.

"All persons entering the UN premises for the purpose of entering the General Assembly Hall would be required to show proof of vaccination in order to gain entry to the Hall.," said a letter signed by the head of the New York City Health area, dated September 9.

Hours after the release, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he could not impose such a requirement on heads of state.

According to data from Our World in Data, Brazil, with 213 million inhabitants, is the fourth country worldwide in the number of vaccines administered (214 million). But Bolsonaro has so far refused to take the jab.

"On the last day, guaranteed," said Bolsonaro, who has repeated several times that he will be "the last" Brazilian to receive the anti-virus vaccine.

The president, infected with coronavirus last year, again argued that he is already immunized. "My antibody levels are at the top," he said to Minister of Health Marcelo Queiroga, who recommended the immunization.

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 04, 2021 1:25 pm

“Fora Bolsonaro”: Massive Protests in Brazil Call for President’s Impeachment
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 3, 2021
Dario Pignotti

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Similar to the resistance against the dictatorship. A dozen parties together with unions and social movements participated this Saturday in mobilizations in which the dominant slogan was “Bolsonaro out”, together with other slogans on the socio-economic crisis and corruption.

Broad support

A fact: this day of struggle also achieved the support (although they did not participate in the organization) of conservative groups that had kept their distance from the rallies carried out since the end of May by the democratic-popular camp.

For some, what happened this Saturday in the center of São Paulo and in about three hundred cities in which there were around 600 thousand people, according to the Central of Popular Movements (CMP), is comparable to the unitary marches, covering a wide political spectrum, which demanded from the dictatorship in 1984 the realization of “Direct Elections Now”.

37 years ago the country was under the whip of General Joao Bapitista Figueiredo (he boasted of being a good horseman), a dictator who liked the smell of horses more than the smell of the people ( so he said ), for whom Bolsonaro often expresses his “saudades”.

“Nice rally on Paulista Avenue with more political forces, union entities and civil society, the expansion of the unity of these forces is being built with the common goal of removing Bolsonaro,” summarized Gleisi Hoffmann, the president of the Workers’ Party (PT).

According to Augusto Bomfim, of the CMP, “we wanted these marches to have room for all the banners and we are also getting more participation from the population in the periphery”.

In turn, Djalma Bom, PT militant, who was imprisoned in 1980 together with his comrade and metalworkers’ leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, pointed out: “We came to fill Paulista Avenue with people to get rid of these fascists who are oppressing the people. In 1984 we fought to get rid of the milicos, in 2021 we have another juncture ,now we come to defend democracy. Bolsonaro and the army have coup DNA, they will always want to carry out a coup”, assured Bom in a telephone interview with Página/12.

Last September 7, Independence Day, Bolsonaro gathered some 125 thousand people in Sao Paulo, far from the million he had promised throughout weeks of agitation and propaganda in favor of a coup attempt. The attempt failed. For now.

This Saturday, Sao Paulo was the scene of the most crowded rally in the country with a caravan of big trucks equipped with loudspeakers, from where the leaders delivered their speeches before tens of thousands of people.

The audience was heterogeneous: militants of left-wing and democratic parties, activists of the homeless movement, groups linked to the LGBT cause and unionized workers. These tribes with their predominantly red flags, accompanied the speeches, while other citizens without party affiliation circulated along the avenue without stopping before the speakers and, sometimes, making jocular comments on the dolls dedicated to parodying the president.

One of the main speakers was Fernando Haddad, presidential candidate in 2018 for the PT, when Lula could not run due to a multiple conspiracy: on the one hand the judicial one through the forced convictions in the Lava Jato case to which was allied the pressure of the army to prevent the freedom of the petista while he stood behind the candidacy of Bolsonaro.

“We are here in the Paulista giving an answer to September 7 when this avenue was occupied by Bolsonaristas, now we decided to double the bet. Every time Bolsonaro threatens us we will double the bet for democracy”, Haddad promised.

In his speech, the leader of the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST), Guilherme Boulos, put the accent on social issues. “The real Brazil is the one that is standing in line (in butcher shops and meatpacking plants) waiting for a bone. The real Brazil is suffering from genocide, unemployment and hunger,” said Boulos, of the Socialism and Liberty Party (Psol).

A ten-meter-high inflatable doll caricatured the far-right president with Dracula-like comrades a few meters from where Haddad and Boulos spoke. In one hand the parody of Bolsonaro carried a box of “Chloropropine” brand medicine, apocope of hydroxychloroquine, the drug he recommended against the coronavirus, knowing that it does not fight that ailment, and “propina”, a word that in popular language means “bribe”.

From the drones flying over the avenue, dozens of large balloons of the Central Unica de los Trabajadores (CUT) could be seen. Below, on the asphalt, there were young people jumping like in the stands of a soccer field, chanting slogans against the Paulista Military Police in whose ranks there are Bolsonarite elements, as happens in the security forces of several states.

The São Paulo rally began in the afternoon after the one in Rio de Janeiro, where thousands of people walked through the center behind black banners with the slogan “Bolsonaro Genocida” (Bolsonaro Genocidal). The Single Federation of Oil Workers carried replicas of giant, orange gas cylinders (like the oil workers’ jumpsuits) with the price of 15 reais and the phrase, “Is it expensive. It’s Bolsonaro’s fault.”

“Mi-cheque”

In Brasilia there were expressions of repudiation against Bolsonaro for his policy before the Covid-19, with posters branding him as “Genocidal” and demanding that there be more “vaccines in the arm and food on the plate”. The Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the pandemic (CPI) confirmed that the President pressured to delay the purchase of Chinese Coronavac and American Pfizer vaccines, despite having received offers for tens of millions of doses.

In the Esplanade of the Ministries, in the center of Brasilia, the criticism of the retired captain was mixed with ironies directed to his wife, Michelle, involved in a scandal of influence trafficking in the state bank Caixa Economica uncovered last Friday. In spite of her overacted marketing as an evangelical and submissive woman, Mrs. Bolsonaro apparently pulls strings within the mafia organization that operates under the protection of the family clan, in which her father and four sons also participate.

Under a cloudy sky, students from the University of Brasilia walked along the avenue with placards dedicated to the first lady with the nickname “Mi-cheque”. This nickname that joins the words Michelle and check comes from another shady case aired years ago: according to official documents of an agency under the Ministry of Economy, the presidential wife received checks from an alleged paramilitary hired to launder money illegally pocketed by the family.

Bolsonaro came to power after a campaign in which he promised to adhere to an uncompromising morality that his Minister of Justice, former judge Sergio Moro, the man responsible for Lava Jato, was going to watch over. But as the months went by, the evidence of corruption became undeniable while Moro took measures to cover up for his boss. In today’s marches in Brasília, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro there were posters against government corruption and dollars with the ruler’s face on the bills.

In a year’s time

The thousands of Brazilians who occupied the avenues of the Brazilian capitals give proof of the size of the discontent against a government with barely a thousand days in office.

What was seen this Saturday is repeated in the polls. All indicate that Bolsonaro would be defeated by ten or more points by Lula in the first round of next year’s elections, and in a runoff the difference would exceed twenty points.

These polls also indicate that Lula would beat any of the possible candidates of the non-fascist right, among them Joao Doria, the governor of Sao Paulo and candidate for the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

It is not mere coincidence that the PT and other organizers have chosen to protest against the government this Saturday: exactly one year before Sunday, October 2, 2022, when the presidential elections will be disputed.

Fernando Haddad said this Saturday in downtown Sao Paulo: “the elections are in one year, ask the people of the periphery, ask the people of the countryside, the unemployed, ask the high school students (they vote from 16 years old) if it is possible to wait one year to end this nightmare”.

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 09, 2021 1:30 pm

After Sept. 7: Bolsonaro’s Record Disapproval

Beleaguered far right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s attempt to boost popularity through public rallies and fascist threats against government institutions has backfired, as his approval rating falls to a new low.

by Gabriel Deslandes

A survey by Datafolha, the research institute linked to Folha de São Paulo newspaper, shows that President Jair Bolsonaro’s disapproval rating has reached a record high. 53% of Brazilians surveyed consider him either poor or very bad, up two points from the record level reached during the last survey, conducted in July.

The survey shows the people’s weariness of the government’s response to issues such as the economic crisis, rising inflation, 14.4 million unemployed and its management of the Covid-19 pandemic. This on top of successive institutional crises involving the attacks by Bolsonaro and his followers on the National Congress and Supreme Court. To make things worse, there is a real possibility of forced electricity rationing by early 2022 and a risk of rolling blackouts, as Brazil faces the worst drought in the last 91 years and hydroelectric plants continue to operate with low reservoir levels.

The survey, which took place between September 13 and 15 based on interviews with 3,667 people in 190 cities across Brazil, is the first since the September 7 pro-Bolsonaro demonstrations in which the president threatened to stop obeying orders by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Moraes is the rapporteur of the so-called “fake news inquiry” (Inquiry 4781), which began investigating the illegal dissemination of disinformation and violent threats against Supreme Court Ministers in 2019. In August 2021, Moraes added Bolsonaro as a suspect, after the he made unsubstantiated accusations about fraud in the Brazilian electronic voting system.

Nevertheless, 22% of the Brazilian population still views the Bolsonaro government as good or excellent by 22%, down 2% from the July survey. And the percentage of Brazilians who view the government as average maintained steady at 24% during the last two surveys. According to Datafolha, Bolsonaro’s rejection level trails only that of Fernando Collor during his 3rd year in office, in terms of post dictatorship-era presidencies. That year, Collor’s rejection level reached 68%.

According to an article by Igor Gielow in Folha de S. Paulo, the poll data contradicts with the scenes of the September 7th Bolsonarista demonstrations across Brazil,especially on São Paulo’s Avenida Paulista where the President spoke to around 125,000 supporters. This trend of increasing rejection levels has remained constant in 2021, after initial improvement over 2020, during which Bolsonaro regained some approval against his bungling response to the Covid-19 pandemic thanks, in part, to emergency aid payments to workers affected by the crisis.

Rejection grows among young people, the middle class and evangelical Christians

Although the average disapproval rating of Bolsonaro climbed by two percentage points, the increase is more intense in certain segments of the population. A more significant increase in rejection of the president was identified among those earning five to ten times the minimum wage (41% to 50%) and among those over 60 (45% to 51%).

Rejection also rose among people who earn less than double the minimum wage (54% to 56%) and those who earn 2-5 times the minimum wage (47% to 51%). On the other hand, there was a drop in rejection of Bolsonaro among Brazilians earning over 10 times minimum wage, from 58% to 46%. Entrepreneurs are still the only segment of the Brazilian population in which Bolsonaro has a higher level of approval, 47%, than rejection, 34%.

The Datafolha data shows that Bolsonaro has become more rejected in the North and Midwestern regions of Brazil (16% of the sample), where he traditionally has more support and where many of the truck drivers who threatened to attack the Supreme Court in Brasilia during the acts of the September 7th come from. In these regions, his rejection level rose from 41% to 48%.

Among the millions of Brazilians who only have elementary school education, Bolsonaro’s rejection level rose from 49% to 55%. Rejection levels among those whose highest level of education is high school (46% of the population) remained stable at 48%. Disapproval ratings were highest among 16 to 24 years old (59%), students (63%) and gays and bisexuals (73%).

The most surprising data is on evangelical Christians, a demographic group that was key to Bolsonaro’s electoral victory in 2018. Bolsonaro’s disapproval rating has rising by 11 points since January and is now, at 41%, higher than his approval rating of 29%. In July, these numbers were 34% and 37%, respectively.

Low popularity and the pandemic

The survey also sought to gauge how Brazilians rate Bolsonaro’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic. 54% of Brazilians believe the President is doing a poor or very poor job fighting Covid 19, which has already killed almost 600,000 people in the country.

This appears to be a direct reflection of the Bolsonaro administrations’ denialism since the beginning of the pandemic. For example, parliamentary committee investigating the conduct of the pandemic in the Senate demonstrates, the government took at least three months to buy Pfizer’s vaccines, thanks to the ill will and bureaucracy in the Ministry of Health, which ignored repeated offers from the American pharmaceutical company.

Furthermore, Bolsonaro is also leading a campaign to discredit CoronaVac, a vaccine developed by Chinese bio-pharmaceutical Sinovac in partnership with the Butantan Institute. CoronaVac was brought to Brazil by his political rival, São Paulo state governor João Doria (PSDB), and for that reason it has been constantly attacked by Bolsonaro.

Despite the improvement in Covid-19’s numbers as a result of the progress of the immunization campaign – nearly 70% of the population has already taken the first dose and more than 35% have had both – Brazil’s serious political and economic crises have the potential to further erode Bolsonaro’s image. As things stand today, there is a real chance that the President will not even reach the second round in the 2022 presidential elections. According to Viomundo, the consequence of this fact is that during the next few months we should see more and more attacks against former President Lula and the Workers Party (PT) on the part of the mainstream media, in an attempt to strengthen a “third way” candidate to face Lula in a potential run off.

https://www.brasilwire.com/after-sept-7 ... sapproval/

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Social Movements March on Brazilian Finance Ministry
BRIAN MIER , OCTOBER 7, 2021

A coalition of 6 urban social movements demands the resignation of Paulo Guedes who was recently exposed in the Pandora Papers as profiting personally from his policy of devaluing the Brazilian Real.

On Monday, October 4, I arrived at the Belém metro stop in São Paulo and met members of one of hundreds of community based, working class housing movements associated with the National Peoples Housing Union (UNMP) – Brazil’s second largest social movement after the MST.

I had been invited to a protest in Brasília that was coordinated offline by 6 of Brazil’s largest urban social movements, and buses were pulling up to take us on the 18 hour drive to the nation’s capital. It was going to be a bate volta, meaning we would drive all night, spend the day protesting and return back that evening – a grueling 36 hours of bus travel during a 48 hour period.

The buses were hired for by one of São Paulo’s labor unions. The unions took a big financial hit after the 2017 butchering of federal labor laws transformed the nation into a right-to-work country but are still able to show some level of solidarity with the social movements. Everyone was required to show proof of vaccination to get on the bus and food, water and N-95 masks were provided to all.

I looked around on the bus and was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of young people. Most members of the urban social movements have traditionally been poor, middle-aged, single moms, but I saw young working class LGBTQ+ couples and scattered people in their 20s, showing that the political formation work the movements with youth that the movements refocused on after the coup is finally coming to fruition.

After a long afternoon and night of barreling though endless fields of cattle raised almost entirely for the export market, we arrived at the Oscar Niemeyer-designed National Cathedral on Brasilia’s esplanade.

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View from bus window: 18 hours of parched cattle ranches

Neimeyer was a great architect but he didn’t seem to care much about shade. The sun was blazing and as I stepped out onto the burning hot, treeless sidewalk in front of the National Cathedral. I saw groups of activists huddled under tiny patches of shade behind the modernist statues of the 7 Evangelists.

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Beautiful architecture, Oscar, but where are the trees?

There were two newer, working class social movements present but most were older movements which rose out of the successful fight to create a amendment 182 to the 1988 Constitution. That amendment, ratified through delivery of a physical petition with over 1 million signatures on it, guarantees the right to squat in empty tax-scoflaw properties and requires local governments to convert them to ownership-based low income housing.

As is frequently the case when the housing movements meet in Brasília, the São Paulo-based MTST led by 2018 Presidential candidate Guilherme Boulos did not participate. During the PT presidencies, the MTST refused to participate in the Federal Ministry of the Cities assembly system, which turned power over urban policy to a system of 5000 voluntary delegates from the unions and social movements. A long standing gripe against the MTST often heard behind the scenes from leaders of the other urban social movements is that its supporters criticized them as being sellouts for participating in the PT government’s national public housing program, but it had no ideological problem competing with them in public bids for federal funding provided by these programs.

As the movement members gathered in front of a sound truck, drinking water and coffee and eating fruit, I bumped into Evaniza Rodrigues from the UNMP and asked her what the strategy for the day was.

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“First, we are going to March on the Ministry of Regional Development, which has cut social housing funding by 95% since the coup,” she said. “We already know they are going to receive a delegation of ours. And we know they are going to apologize and tell us it’s all Finance Minister Paulo Guedes fault and they can’t do anything for us. So, we are going to have a small ceremony remembering the 600,000 dead from Covid 19 and then we are going to march to the Finance Ministry and demand an audience – which we are pretty sure isn’t going to happen. Then we’ll have lunch and march over to the Caixa Economico (Public Mortgage Bank), where the union has set a stage up for us and we are going to protests against Guedes’ privatization plans. Then, at the end of the day, we are sending a delegation to Congress to register an official request for a law establishing guidelines for non-profit, self managed autonomous, ownership based social housing construction. Our hope is that our request, which was designed by the 6 social movements collectively, will be submitted as is as a bill by one of our allies in Congress. We are pretty sure it won’t pass, but the strategy is to get people debating the concept of self-managed social housing construction on the floor of Congress – to insert this issue, which has disappeared since the 2016 coup, back in the debate. We hope that this debate will also push them to finish all the social housing construction projects underway that have been stalled since Michel Temer took office. There are thousands of poor families in limbo still waiting for their housing because of this.”

Minutes later the march began as the Military Police shut down two lanes of the Esplanade, meeting a formal request that was filed with the mayor’s office 2 weeks before the protest. From his position on top of the sound truck, Christiano Shumaker, a long haired Gaucho from the Movimento Nacional de Luta Pela Moradia (MNLM), spoke of the hypocrisy of a finance minister who deliberately profited from his own devaluation of Brazilian currency by depositing millions of dollars in secret offshore accounts in the Virgin Islands, while millions of Brazilians can no longer afford cooking gas.

As the sound car arrived in front of the Ministry of Regional Development, a group of activists charged to the front door, blocked it off and yelled, “Out with Bolsonaro, food on the plate”. As the rest of the crowd moved towards the door, a representative of the Ministry came out and agreed to allow a delegation to come in and talk. In a situation that reminded me of a story on the importance of pragmatism in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals everyone already knew this was going to happen.

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Activists at the door of the Ministry of Regional Development

From there we marched across a burning hot field of yellow grass to the Finance Ministry where the reception was a lot cooler.

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The advance group charged the front door but was blocked from entering by a group of military police. As the sound car rode up blaring its message of Guedes hiding R$51 million in a Virgin Islands tax haven while millions of people are going hungry, we looked up and saw group of his staff through a fourth floor window in the Ministry Building. One of them stuck his arm out of the window and gave us the finger – a sign that, at the very least, we were bothering him to the point that he lost control of his behavioral filters. For the next two hours, a crowd of 1500 sat down in and around the Ministry’s two front doors, forcing employees to use the service entrance as the sound truck blared protest songs and accusations of criminal behaviour by Paulo Guedes and Jair Bolsonaro.


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Blocking the door to the Finance Ministry

I decided to get a head start and make my move to the Caixa Econômica bank headquarters, knowing I could edit video in their lobby on my notebook computer. On the way, I had a few thoughts about big street protests which the CUT union federation has been saying for years that, due to the ease with which they can be manipulated, are useless in creating social change unless the are combined with other tactics.

Since the social media-orchestrated mega-protests associated with the Arab Spring began over a decade ago, it seems like there has been an overemphasis placed on protest size. Even though Brazil’s largest anti-Military dictatorship protest ever was called the March of 100,000, some people in the bourgeois left now refer to protests that “only” have 100,000 in them as failures.


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The 1968 March of 100,000 in Rio de Janeiro.

Smaller protests that are organized with clear objectives can be just as, or more effective as the huge ones – especially if they are not coordinated over right wing social media platforms like Facebook, that give political enemies and mainstream media outlets all the information they need in advance to discharactarize, water down or hijack them.

In 2018, the Ele Não (Not Him) protests against Bolsonaro had huge coverage in the international media with celebrities like Madonna joining in. I was there and left that day feeling euphoric, but the end result was that women’s support for Bolsonaro increased because Steve Bannon, Carlos Bolsonaro and the Koch-Brothers supported PR actors from the Free Brazil Movement had advance notice to come up with a successful counter strategy – bombarding Christians on WhatsApp with photos of topless women kissing from unrelated slut walk and FEMEN protests and telling them that was happening right then and there in Ele Não.

Likewise I noticed a carnaval like atmosphere during my coverage of the right wing pro-Bolsonaro protest in Brasilia on September 7. Entire families dressed in green and yellow ate ice cream together, cheered military jets as they flew overhead and prayed for Jesus to do bad things to former President Lula as if they were at a big, fascist state fair. With the bourgeois media that once supported him now turned against him, Bolsonaro’s disapproval rating grew by 8% in the week after these protests.


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Gegê, former anti-dictatorship freedom fighter and national leader of the CMP, speaks on the need for self-managed, autonomous social housing construction in Congress on October 5, 2021

Our day in Brasília came to a close with a televised, 2 hour session of Congress debating a new bill that would regulate and fund self-managed public housing construction, complete with speeches by social movement representatives, sympathetic university professors and members of Congress. The goal of the movements to reinsert the housing issue into the public debate succeeded, and it looks like their suggested text will be introduced as is and make it to the floor for a vote. There, even though it may not fully succeed it will probably force the government to restore some of its social housing budget.

In conclusion, Tuesday’s urban social movement protest in Brasilia may have had a more timid set of goals than the national, “Out with Bolsonaro” protests but for now it looks like it has more of a chance of reaching them.

Note: One day after this article was first published on October 7, 2021, Brazilian Congress passed Law 14.216/21, banning all evictions, including in squats, until December 31, 2021 – another bill that was first introduced by the urban social movement coalition as part of its Zero Evictions Campaign.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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