Brazil

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 18, 2022 2:17 pm

Economist From AS/COA Member Santander Suggests New Coup To Prevent Lula’s Return
By BRASILWIRE
August 13, 2021

Brazil’s Workers Party has reacted with indignation to a report from an economist at Banco Santander which openly defended a new coup to prevent former President Lula da Silva from returning to the presidency. Santander is a member of Wall Street Lobby and Think Tank Council of the Americas (AS/COA), and its head of corporate & investment banking Marco Antonio Achón is a director on the AS/COA board.

This should cause alarm, as AS/COA, which was then called Business Group for Latin America, was created in the 1960s to interfere in Latin American politics on behalf of US corporate interests and prevent leftist governments taking power, playing a major role in the fomentation of Brazil’s 1964 coup and Chile’s in 1973. More recently AS/COA has been a prominent supporter of Operation Lava Jato which underpinned the 2016 coup against Dilma Rousseff, and removed Lula from the 2018 election.

Rede Brasil Atual – A report signed by economist Victor Candido, Santander Bank appears to share the threats and coup objectives of Jair Bolsonaro to prevent the candidacy of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) in 2022.

Sent to clients and financial operators from the Spanish bank in Brazil, the statement says: “If the political and judicial system, if the Brazilian political establishment finds the Bolsonaro government comical, the return of Lula and his allies represents a far more serious threat. Today, Lira is the president of the Chamber, but under a PT government, he would be a modest ally sheltered in a lower position”.

In its opening excerpt, the executive states that “(…) it is necessary to recognize a problem in the 2022 election: the prospect of the Lula government’s corruption machine returning to power”. The text was sent by email to customers and financial operators. The Santander economist goes further: “In short, no one will support a coup in favor of Bolsonaro, but it is possible to speculate on a coup to prevent Lula’s return. He was ineligible, for example. He can go back to being so”.

The report provoked indignation in the PT, at a time when Lula leads all polls in voting intention since he was cleared of accusations against him and had his political rights restored. “There is no doubt that the e-mail is part of an analysis that Santander sends to many people in the markets,” one party economist told Forum magazine. According to the report, the PT is studying the possibility of suing the bank for defending a coup.

Santander’s profits in Brazil were R$4.1 billion in the second quarter of 2021 alone, despite the serious health, social and economic crises that the country is going through.

https://www.brasilwire.com/santander-ec ... as-return/

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They reveal that several Bolsonaro voters could go with Lula

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13 percent of the voters that Bolsonaro had in the 2018 ballot would vote for Lula in 2022, according to the survey by the company PoderData. | Photo: EFE
Published June 18, 2022

Jair Bolsonaro's supporters are diminishing in the face of the precariousness, inflation, hunger and unemployment left behind by his policies.

A few months before the presidential elections, a survey by the Market and Opinion Research Division of digital newspapers (PoderData) revealed that at least 13 percent of the voters who elected President Jair Bolsonaro would now vote for former President Luiz Inácio. Lula da Silva.

According to the survey carried out from June 5 to 7, 74 percent of the far-right voters in the second round of 2018 would repeat the vote in 2022. This figure in the survey from May 8 to 10 was 61 percent hundred.

In addition to Lula, other candidates who would receive votes against Fernando Haddad of the Workers' Party (PT) would be Ciro Gómez, of the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), Simone Tebet, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) and José María Eymael, of Christian Democracy. (DC), who would remain with the remaining 7 percent of Bolsonaro's voters in the last elections.


In this poll, Lula maintains 43 percent of voting intentions, the same as 15 days ago, while Bolsonaro maintains 35 percent. The gap between the two is eight percentage points.

After the resignation of João Doria, of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) from his presidential race on May 23, Senator Simone Tebet became the only representative of the so-called third way. Despite her media exposure in recent weeks, she did not have an effect on voters, since, from 2 percent in intention to vote in the May study, she dropped to 1 percent.

Meanwhile, in Brazil there are several difficulties that citizens face on a daily basis. Hunger has impacted from 19 million to 33 million people in just one year. This implies that more than half of the Brazilian population (58.7 percent) suffers from food insecurity, according to data from the Brazilian Network of Research on Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security (Red Penssan).

To this is added the deficit of 6 million homes, so thousands of people are homeless, many of them also unable to obtain employment.



A large part of this situation has been generated by the absence of public policies designed in this sense by the far-right government in these four years and the dismantling of the social programs of previous governments, such as the Family Grant, implemented by Lula, which since 2003 favored the food security of some 13 million people.

The former military deepened the neoliberal policies initiated by the former head of state, Michel Temer. He privatized Eletrobras, the largest energy company in Latin America, and extinguished programs for health, education, food, the environment, housing, and culture.

Given all this precarious situation, discontent is increasing and has been expressed in multiple and massive demonstrations in these years against the figure of the ruler. Bolsonaro sold himself as an alternative outside the political system, an anti-system, and he gained a lot of popularity during his campaign time. Several relatives and allies of the president's parliamentary bloc are being investigated for acts of corruption.


The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) recorded a slowdown in inflation of 0.47 percent in the month of May. That was the lowest monthly increase since April 202 and so far in 2022 inflation is located at 11.73 percent when the previous month it was at 12.13.

For 42 percent of the population, Bolsonaro is the main responsible for the increase in prices, according to data from another survey by PoderData in June. 18 percent blame state governors and another 13 percent blame the Covid-19 pandemic, compared to 8 percent who mention the war crisis in Ukraine as the main cause.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/electore ... -0003.html

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 22, 2022 3:49 pm

“…Chile…Colombia…Brazil???”: Bolsonaro Despair at Left Resurgence
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 21, 2022
BRASILWIRE

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Folha’s Monica Bergamo reports that, following the victory of Gustavo Petro, President Jair Bolsonaro sent a message on a private WhatsApp group in which he despaired at the result.

Left-wing candidate Gustavo Petro was elected president on Sunday with 40.32% of the vote. It is the first time the left has won an election in Colombia’s history, and his Vice President Francia Marquez is first Afro-Colombian to hold the position.

Bolsonaro sent a message to a restricted group of BBC News Brazil with the title “Ex-guerrilla wins election in Colombia and will be the country’s first leftist president”.

Accompanying the photo, beleaguered far-right president Bolsonaro wrote: “Cuba…Venezuela…Argentina…Chile…Colombia…Brazil???”, referring to the October election, in which he trails left-wing former President Lula by around 20% in opinion polls.

Although Bolsonaro did not yet react publicly, his main advisor on international affairs, Filipe G. Martins, a former US Embassy and Electoral Court employee who is credited with introducing the Bolsonaros to Steve Bannon, posted on social media, appearing to share the president’s panic at the Colombian election result:

“Faced with the advance of the extreme left in Latin America, with successive victories of candidates from Foro de São Paulo, our responsibility as Brazilians becomes even greater.”

“May God have mercy on us and give us conditions to protect our country and our people!” the ex-US State Department employee continued.


Colombia, along with Bolsonaro’s Brazil, was the United States’ principal ally in South America, and a clean sweep for the left is now a possibility. Already in power in Argentina, progressive candidates have recently won elections in Bolivia, Peru and Chile. Brazil is next.

After a wave of US-backed victories and coups on the continent since 2015, only Ecuador, Uruguay and Paraguay still have right or centre-right governance.

Bergamo notes that “Petro’s victory had another symbolism: it was recognized by his main opponent, Rodolfo Hernández, less than an hour after the results were published.”. This is in reference to Bolsonaro’s threats to not accept the result if he loses in October.

At the Summit of the Americas in early June, Bolsonaro reportedly asked US president Biden for help in defeating Lula, on account that the former president is a “threat to US interests”.

At a recent campaign rallies Lula has dismissed Bolsonaro’s reported coup plot as doomed to fail.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/06/ ... esurgence/

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Stop Pretending This Is A Normal Election.
By BRASILWIRE
April 21, 2022

Analysis of Brazil’s conjuncture is rendered useless by pretense that the 2022 election is business as usual.

On April 9 Brazil’s Workers Party (PT) and the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) held a special press conference. It was a quietly sensational event. After months of rumour and noise, it was the first official confirmation that Lula’s former presidential adversary Geraldo Alckmin would be the vice on his 2022 election ticket.

It unleashed a furore which had long been brewing among Brazil’s progressives. To some it is beyond the pale, while many see an alliance of Lula and Alckmin as essential realpolitik in desperate times.

But those who have most trouble understanding the Lula/Alckmin candidacy are those who think this election is a normal one. These analysts disregard the military and US shadow over the coming vote, and seem intent to pretend the democratic rupture of the past six years never happened.

What many are missing is the existential long term rationale behind this move. Lula is trying to build not simply a vote winning electoral package, but the closest thing he can to a unity government of reconciliation for extraordinary circumstances, namely a need to restore and sustain Brazilian democracy in the face of fascism.

In very different times, Alckmin was himself once called a fascist by some on the left. As Governor he was widely blamed for the brutality of the São Paulo Military Police, in particular when they were smashing the June 2013 protests, and then later when coming down to crush further demonstrations against the coup which Junho had gone on to help precipitate. It was even insinuated that Alckmin may have deliberately incited protests with such police brutality, for political ends. These accusations belong to another Brazil, and have not dated well, given what else is now known, but it is entirely understandable that people are anxious about what comes next if anything happens to Lula. ‘Is this another coup in waiting?’ they wonder.

Some are comparing the Lula-Alckmin alliance more positively with that of Tancredo Neves and José Sarney in 1985, which was elected by parliament, ushering in a four year transition to direct democratic elections in 1989.

This analogy is imperfect as Sarney had actually been part of the ARENA dictatorship government. Say what you will about Geraldo Alckmin’s politics, but he was São Paulo governor until 2018 and played no direct part in either the post-coup governments of Temer and Bolsonaro, though his former party the PSDB did. It was a key protagonist in the coup against Rousseff, before being decimated at the 2018 general election. It is forgotten however, that in 2016 Alckmin was actually harassed by anti-Rousseff protesters, who amidst the far-right radicalisation taking place, considered the PSDB opportunist, or no different to the PT.

Increasingly isolated in his old party, Alckmin has now migrated to the soft left PSB, and is said to have undergone a political shift, away from the PSDB’s neoliberal present, and back towards its origins of bourgeois Social Democracy under founder Mario Covas, who eventually backed Lula in 1989, and with whom Alckmin served as vice governor of São Paulo. That wasn’t a normal election either.

Yet regardless, to a commentariat who still do not even acknowledge what has actually happened to Brazil, let alone the military hand and US role in it, this alliance is bizarre. Because they are pretending that this is a normal election.

Others more astute are also struggling to accept it, because they are pretending this is a normal election.

To ideological purists it is a betrayal, because they’re pretending this is a normal election.

The PT was always a coalition of progressive forces, never a pure ideological base, yet even to many Lula loyalists, Alckmin on the ticket is deeply uncomfortable. Because they want to believe this is a normal election.

To others it is another political masterstroke of Lula the grand conciliator.

Even that assumes this is a normal election.

Misunderstood in purely electoral terms, Alckmin is unlikely to win Lula many votes outside the state of São Paulo, though that should not be underestimated as the polls get tighter. But also overlooked is that a Lula-Alckmin candidacy comes with the support of crusading Supreme Court Minister Alexandre de Moraes built in.

De Moraes, once arch-nemesis of São Paulo social movements as secretary of security under Alckmin, has transformed into an anti-Bolsonaro ally and is a target of constant fascist threats. He will assume the presidency of the electoral court in September, one month before the first round, and will thus will potentially be guarantor of a Lula victory at the ballot box in the face of any rejection of the result, or worse.

For years, and right through the 2016 coup and 2018 election, we would regularly hear from the most dubious of foreign commentators that the Brazilian left must “move beyond Lula and the PT”.

It sounds so easy: move beyond the most electorally successful left wing political project in Brazil’s history, if not the hemisphere, and put faith in tiny parties with no chance of taking power, nor genuine plan for doing so.

Lula-Alckmin is certainly a move beyond the PT, but perhaps not what they had in mind. Had the instruction been obeyed, in the literal manner then suggested, Brazilian progressives would now be staring into the abyss of a second Bolsonaro term. Some insist Brazil needs to “get over the coup”, or “get over 2016 politics” but appear unhappy with how that actually looks in reality. Yet most of the left, including the PSOL, are on board with Lula in the first round and the rest will, for the most part, back him in the second.

Lula insists that Alckmin, whom he defeated to win re-election in 2006, was always an adversary, not an enemy. The former president evokes an era of calm and normality, of democratic adversaries facing each other with respect in what now seems like a golden age for Brazil.

Questions remain. Is Alckmin as vice president enough of a concession to US concerns for them to give up on Bolsonaro, or does it just mean they are guaranteed more than one horse in the runoff. With what is being called a new ‘pink tide’ of left victories already in motion across the region, controlling policy of the resulting governments would be smarter statecraft than clumsy intervention, be it by sabotage, lawfare, or other means. We see a return of the “good left-bad left” paradigm, but the question is which side the State Department now considers Lula and the PT to be on.

Souverainism, and resource sovereignty in particular, is a US red line, and always will be. In the eyes of the United States, Bolsonaro is the outright winner in this regard. Lula said, upon his release from the political imprisonment that kept him out of the 2018 election, that Brazil is “returning to colonial times“. PT President Gleisi Hoffman emphasized protection of Brazilian sovereignty at the event which launched the partnership with Geraldo Alckmin.

With the ideal world US-backed candidate Sergio Moro out of race, on cue have come the first signals that Council of the Americas – the most visible representation of US extractive, business and banking interests in Lat Am – wants Bolsonaro to be reelected, which is in turn a tacit indication of the State Department’s wider view. An analysis in COA in-house propaganda platform Americas Quarterly which hand-wringingly identified self-evident weaknesses in Lula’s campaign appeal to conservatives, called the incumbent a “more disciplined candidate” and betrayed COA’s obvious preference for a continuation of the Bolsonaro/Guedes government. And of course the analysis by COA Vice President of policy whitewashed its support, even protagonism for the sacking of Brazil’s democracy over the last six years. The analysis also failed the fundamental test: it pretended that this is a normal election.

As usual, the most mediocre anglo correspondents followed COA’s lead, talking up Bolsonaro’s chances of victory in a manner which could actually help the fascist. Should the numbers be tight enough, and he carries out his threat to contest defeat, he will benefit if media (internal and external) has been amplifying the strength of his candidacy for six months prior to the vote. In the ongoing information war, “razor thin victories” of left candidates in Latin America are a common propaganda trope; see the example of Dilma’s “razor thin” 2014 victory over Aécio Neves, which was in fact a comparable margin to Obama’s over Mitt Romney. Repetition of this cast doubt on the legitimacy of Dilma’s mandate and was the first justification to dispute the result, which eventually led to the coup against her.

It was a wildly naive assumption that a Biden administrated United States would refuse to support Bolsonaro again, given that the 2016 coup happened on Obama’s watch, and considering the wide scope of advantages his government had brought the US since his inauguration.

Bolsonaro’s unprecedented submissiveness to US interests was described as a wishlist for its’ foreign policy, and the “holy grail” for the private sector, regardless of any recent superficial approximation with Vladimir Putin. 2021 meetings between the new head of the CIA and Secretary of State with the Bolsonaro administration were depicted as business as usual, but clear signals that Biden was fully prepared to accomodate Brazil’s far-right president.

US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the notorious Victoria Nuland, recently visited Colombia. With an election imminent, Nuland met with all candidates except left wing frontrunner Gustavo Petro. At the same time she revealed she was talking to the Brazilian foreign minister. It is certainly difficult to imagine that she has anything good in mind for Brazil.

The other question being ignored is if the military will accept a Lula victory. It had been involved behind the scenes at every stage of the coup and its long term planning for 15 years. Would it go through all that just to relinquish the expansive political power it had regained? And would it do so peacefully and fairly?

Lula has reportedly enlisted Geraldo Alckmin with the task of building bridges with anti-Bolsonaro factions within the military. The possibility that former chief of staff and defence minister General Braga Netto will be Bolsonaro’s new vice does theoretically elevate the threat of Army intervention should the result be contested as feared. He is far more serious, influential and powerful a figure than current VP, General Mourão.

To ignore the military’s role in Brazil is denial of history itself. Yet any useful analysis now must acknowledge not only what has happened over the past decade, but what is at stake for the next. The 2022 vote will effectively be a plebiscite on the survival of Brazil itself, as another four years of this self-destructive kakistocracy is unthinkable.

Because this is not a normal election.

https://www.brasilwire.com/stop-pretend ... -election/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 28, 2022 5:35 pm

White House admits CIA involvement in “War on Corruption” which jailed Lula and elected Bolsonaro
By BRASILWIRE June 3, 2021

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.

Former US Embassy advisor and Bolsonaro aide accused of White Supremacist gesture
By BRASILWIRE March 25, 2021

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It was caught on the Senate’s own TV channel, and Randolfe Rodrigues, Senator for Amapá, reported the incident to the police. Martins has denied making the infamous racist gesture, but video captured from TV Senado appeared to confirm the accusation, and images of it viralised on social media, generating a wave of outrage at Bolsonaro’s key ally.

The incident draws attention to Martins, his current position, unusual employment history, direct connections to the US Government, and its relationship with the Brazilian far-right.

After working at the TSE electoral court until the 2014 election, Filipe Martins became an “economic advisor” to the US embassy in Brasilia.

Martins, who is credited with introducing Jair Bolsonaro to Steve Bannon, worked at the embassy for the duration of the coup period between December 2014 following the election and July 2016, when Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment was all but sealed.

According to Martin’s LinkedIn profile, he was responsible for research about the political conjuncture and economy in Brazil, in particular bilateral relations with the US, and media monitoring during that coup period.

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Excerpt from Filipe Martins’ LinkedIn profile

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Filipe Martins with Donald Trump, Eduardo Bolsonaro, Mike Pompeo, Ernesto Araújo and others, 2019.

Leaving the embassy following Rousseff’s impeachment, Martins then became part of the group around Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential bid, ultimately landing an advisory position with him. Martins is a 32 year old discliple of US-based far-right “guru” Olavo de Carvalho, and gives courses in his “philosophy”. He been an influence on the foreign policy of the Bolsonaro government, alongside the President’s son, congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, who was accused by a former ally of handing a dossier of leftists and anti-fascists to the US embassy in Brasilia. Martins 2014-16 advisory work for the State Department is evidence that the US government’s relationship with Brazil’s Olavista far-right did not begin with the election of Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro.

In July 2019 Martins met with the head of the FBI in Brazil, David Brassanini, who was accompanied by William Popp, Deputy Chief of Mission at the US embassy. Brassanini is the main overseer of the FBI’s expansion in Brazil since Bolsonaro (and Sérgio Moro) took office, as documented here.

During the CPI (Congressional Inquiry) into so called fake news, Felipe Martins was accused by federal deputy Alexandre Frota of introducing Bolsonaro to Steve Bannon and of “promoting virtual lynchings”. Martins was summoned to appear at the CPI to clarify his alleged participation in the so called “hate office” which controls the President’s digital militias, and operates as a factory for fake news.

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Filipe Martins with Steve Bannon, unknown date.

https://www.brasilwire.com/former-us-em ... t-gesture/

The Ciro Delusion
By BRASILWIRE May 17, 2021

There is one person who believes that Ciro Gomes will be the next president of Brazil. His name is Ciro.

18 months out from the 2022 presidential election, Gomes sits on 6% in the latest Datafolha polls. This figure is less than half of what he achieved in the 2018 first round, and a withering 35 points behind former president Lula da Silva. Still, it is very early days.

Gomes’ political reputation was built in the 1990s, first from his popularity as a young governor of Ceará, and then as Minister of Finance under Itamar Franco, during which the Plano Real currency programme was implemented. He would later serve as Minister of National Integration in the first Lula administration, and built a certain level of cross party support.

He also has a reputation as a loose cannon, an opportunist, and a political chameleon. 63 year old Gomes has been affiliated to a succession of political parties across the ideological spectrum since entering politics in his early twenties; PDS (formerly the ARENA dictatorship government) 1982–1983, PMDB (the dictatorship’s approved opposition) 1983–1990, social democrats turned neoliberals PSDB 1990–1997, left wing PPS (now third way Cidadania) 1997–2005, the centre-left socialist party PSB 2005–2013, centrist republican party of the social order PROS 2013–2015, and the democratic labour party PDT 2015–present.

By then a presidential candidate in waiting for the PDT, during the 2015/16 coup period Gomes talked the talk; of developmentalism, of sovereignty, and built some trust on the left at a time when most media was running with the narratives of the coup and neoliberalism. Presenting himself as an heir to Dilma Rousseff’s one time mentor, Leonel Brizola, Gomes was open in opposition to her impeachment, called it a coup, and publicly identified the geopolitics behind it when that subject was practically taboo.

Yet as her ouster came closer, and with an eye on 2018 election, he became increasingly critical of the Rousseff-led government. But it was with Lula’s prosecution that he saw what he believed was his moment, and he was positioned as a centre-left alternative without the baggage of the Workers Party, and not for the first time.

PDT is to the right of the PT in most regards and is somewhat incoherent ideologically, as exemplified by Wall St-backed liberal Tabata Amaral and the RenovaBR movement she fronts. In an intriguing plot twist, for the coming election PDT have contracted strategist and PT’s former “political midas”, João Santana, who had been jailed by the Lava Jato investigation and sat out the 2018 election. Veja magazine excitedly called Santana a living archive of the Workers Party, no doubt hoping he has useful scandal up his sleeve. Santana said in his first interview since release from prison, for TV show Roda Viva, that he considered a combined Lula-Gomes ticket unbeatable.

Despite subsequent meetings between Lula and Gomes following that interview, he quickly returned to attacking the former president. His most recent diatribe against came in Valor magazine, where he announced “I’m going after Lula, the biggest corruptor in Brazilian history” and made a succession of allegations, such as claiming that Lula and PT are responsible for Bolsonaro, accusing them of an “unsustainable national-consumerism” and insinuating that the annulment of charges against the former president do not signify his innocence.

Ciro has been identified by some as Brazil’s wing of a culturally conservative left now in ascension, yet along with his new role as an anti-Lula attack dog, he is making play to the right-wing so called Centrão. Gomes is explicitly seeking alliance with hard right dictatorship heir party Democratas, a leading force behind the 2016 coup and part of Bolsonaro’s original coalition.

Lula has also been talking directly with PDT leadership, but party president Carlos Lupi has maintained that Gomes would be their candidate in 2022, predicted a second round runoff between him and Lula, and insisted that despite Ciro’s attacks, that Bolsonaro, and not Lula was Brazil’s public enemy number one.

Ciro’s explicitly centre-left position of 2015-18 (he would correct those who referred to him as a left candidate) has been jettissoned, and with it commitment to unity of progressive forces for the defeat of Bolsonarismo. By trying to build his own alliance, excluding the biggest party in Congress, Gomes is a principle obstacle to a frente-ampla, and his tactics appear designed primarily to prevent a possible first round win for Lula.

Whatever Ciro Gomes now is, it appears to have little to do with the left at all.

Friend and ally of PDT founder Leonel Brizola, Vivaldo Barbosa said: “PDT and Ciro are already on the other side. They are no longer labour and Brizolistas. It reminds me of a line by Drummond: just a picture on the wall, and how it hurts.”

The Candidate

“He’s in prison, idiot!” was the defining statement of Ciro Gomes’ 2018 presidential campaign, referring to Lula da Silva.

Following Lula’s eventual barring from the race, overtures to form a joint PT-PDT ticket came to nothing, and mutual distrust between the camps only grew. It was as if Gomes expected them to step aside, and was infuriated when they did not comply.

In 2018 there was a rationale that antipetismo, and not Bolsonaro, was the electoral opponent, and that it had become too strong for the Workers Party to defeat. Their candidate would be facing an unstoppable coalition of anti-PT feeling, whereas Ciro and the PDT’s credentials for this scenario were well articulated in this piece which was published by Brasil Wire at the time.

Many who would have normally supported the Workers Party candidate opted to vote for Gomes in the first round, convinced that he stood a better chance in the runoff of defeating Bolsonaro than Fernando Haddad.

There was no doubting antipetismo’s strength. It had transformed from embedded conservative sentiment to inchoate political movement, almost a party in its own right. Once announced as Lula’s replacement, Haddad was bombarded with spurious corruption allegations, all of which evaporated one by one once Bolsonaro had been elected. Lava Jato judge Sérgio Moro was later found to have leaked stories deliberately during the election to aid Bolsonaro’s campaign.

Abstentions rocketed in the 2nd round, attributed in part to this phenomenon, with Liberals who could not stomach Bolsonaro voting blank/null rather than back another “corrupt” PT candidate with the party’s reputation obliterated by the now disgraced Lava Jato.

Although polls showed some evidence of it, we will never know if Gomes would have done any better than Fernando Haddad, who got 47 million votes after being named as the candidate only six weeks before.

But many of those who went with Gomes in the first round on this basis would not do so again. He alienated many of them by leaving the country, taking a vacation in Paris after the first round, without first endorsing Haddad for the runoff against Bolsonaro. This was considered betrayal. Then upon his return a few weeks later, with half of Brazil still in deep despair, Ciro reassured a group of investors that the neofascist represented “no threat to democracy”, and that he was not going to stand in fierce opposition to the president elect.

A little known historical curiosity is that ex US Democrat and UK Labour party online organiser, political and technology consultant Zack Exley, was parachuted in to assist Ciro Gomes’ campaign. At soirées in the downtown São Paulo apartment of a prominent US journalist and writer, Brazil’s invited left-wing parties rubbed shoulders, with the exception of the PT. Although seemingly of a more informal advisory nature, the mere presence of US left campaigners is noteworthy; Gomes is no Bernie Sanders.

The same journalist also favoured the Marina Silva campaign in 2014. Ex-Lula minister Silva was a similar centre-left candidate to Gomes, who, with 21%, and US State Department support, succeeded in splitting the progressive vote and preventing a first round victory for Dilma Rousseff. Silva then abandoned all pretensions and backed PSDB neoliberal Aécio Neves in the second round. An indicator of their internationalised campaigns, both Silva and Neves received incongruous social media support from US celebrities who were unlikely to have ever heard of them, as did Gomes four years later.

2018 was Ciro Gomes’ third shot at the presidency. Twenty years earlier he ran on a PPS ticket and came third with 10.97% behind Lula/Brizola’s 31.71% and Fernando Henrique Cardoso with 53.06, which was enough to take the election in the first round, with some special help from Robert Rubin’s all-powerful US Treasury.

After the currency crash and economic crisis that followed the re-election of FHC, Conservative Veja magazine was already pushing Gomes as the “Esquerda Light” with cover story depicting him as the Workers Party’s arch nemesis. Yet after what looked like a strong candidacy, in 2002 the pragmatic, gaffe-prone Gomes would increase his vote by only 1 point to 12%, with Lula going on to emphatically defeat PSDB’s Serra in the runoff, ushering in the PT era. Gomes backed Lula against Serra, and went on to join his first government.

He did not contest the presidency again until 2018, where he equalled his 2002 result of 12%. After her own vote collapsed to 1 point, three time candidate Marina Silva has now also signalled her support for a PT-free alliance behind Ciro.

Yet three years after that last run, antibolsonarismo is a far stronger electoral force than antipetismo, and he will not have that working in his favour in competition for the progressive vote. 2022 is likely to be his last shot at the presidency.

There is every possibility that Ciro Gomes, if elected, could be, or could have been, a very competent president of Brazil. Yet with a career of switching parties, positions, and these latest overtures to the children of the dictatorship, there is little evidence that his political ambitions are motivated by ideology or principle.

https://www.brasilwire.com/the-ciro-delusion/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat Jul 02, 2022 4:07 pm

Guilherme Boulos: Is A Coup In Brazil A Risk Or A Smokescreen?
By BRASILWIRE May 16, 2022

By Guilherme Boulos

Bolsonaro, after a “sabbatical period” in which he stopped talking about electronic voting machines, returned to threaten the integrity of the electoral process. In the last few weeks, he attacked the Electoral Court (TSE) again, spoke again about the “secret room”, and demanded military personnel in the investigation process…

As October approaches and he remains well behind Lula in the polls, Bolsonaro switches to desperation mode. He attacks institutions and threatens a coup.

Visibly, he uses the coup rhetoric as a smokescreen, a distraction maneuver to avoid discussing the issues that really matter to the majority of the Brazilian people: inflation, unemployment, falling incomes. But it’s not just that.

It cannot be ignored that, if Bolsonaro could, if it were only in his hands, he would have already carried out an auto-coup. Just look at the 7th of September of last year. Bolsonarism has an authoritarian DNA, heir to Silvio Frota and the military of the so-called hard line.

But the Brazil of today is not the same as it was in 1964. Neither is the international scenario. Today, a coup would have hardly any external support. More likely, it would generate a series of sanctions and the isolation of Brazil. Very different from 64, where the United States supported the coup from start to finish.

Today it is very unlikely to imagine a situation in which the command of the active Armed Forces would embark on a coup adventure for Bolsonarismo. It hasn’t got onboard until now, despite attempts.

That there is now apparently no risk of a traditional coup, with tanks on the streets, it does not mean that Bolsonaro will not act, as he is already acting, to disrupt the electoral process, and create a coup environment.

He will do his best to mobilize his political militias and his followers in the military police. This is not enough to carry out a coup and turn the tables, but it is capable of creating turmoil in the country, as Donald Trump did with the Capitol Hill episode.

In summary: It is very unlikely that we will have a traditional military coup. But it is also very unlikely that we can imagine Bolsonaro losing the elections and accepting defeat. You will have to defeat him at the polls and on the streets.

We are not in a normal electoral process. Our role will not only be on October 2nd. This election will require engagement and mobilization from all of us. We have 5 months to dispute the conscience of society, elect Lula and defeat the Bolsonarista threat. Rise above them.

Guilherme Boulos is a housing activist, former presidential and now congressional candidate for PSOL.

(Translated and adapted from content on Guilherme Boulos’ social media accounts)

https://www.brasilwire.com/guilherme-bo ... okescreen/

Tucker/Fox Rally Behind Bolsonaro
By BRIAN MIER June 28, 2022

From Rio de Janeiro, son of former Voice of America chief invents new cold war narrative.

by Brian Mier

Multi-millionaire Fox News host Tucker Carlson, son of former Voice of America and USIA chief Dick Carlson is spending the week broadcasting his popular program, Tucker Carlson Tonight, from Rio de Janeiro. During his first broadcast on June 27, he made it clear what the goal is: to rally support of US casual news consumers behind neo-fascist President Jair Bolsonaro’s reelection campaign.

His first guest, on Monday, June 27, was former US embassy economic adviser turned Bolsonaro aid, Filipe Martins. Martins, an alleged white supremacist and disciple of Bolsonaro’s late astrologer/guru Olavo de Carvalho, credited as one of the interlocutors between the Bolsonaro family and Steve Bannon, was given 4 minutes of airtime on the most popular news program in the United States to slander former President Lula, associating him with “$2 trillion of corruption”, as Carlson added, “and he went to jail for it”.

The fact is, Lula was unjustly imprisoned during the 2018 election season over incredibly flimsy allegations of an upgrade to a $600,000 apartment from an apartment that his wife had been paying monthly installment on for years, but he was later proven innocent. Not only was his conviction annulled by the Supreme Court for illegal forum shopping and judicial bias, subsequent attempts by prosecutors in the Brasilia district court that was ruled to actually have jurisdiction over the annulled Lava Jato convictions were immediately thrown out by the judge for lack of evidence. As in the United States, defendants are considered innocent until proven guilty in Brazil, and Lula has not been proven guilty of any corruption allegation.

Meanwhile, there are corruption investigations underway against President Bolsonaro, his sons, his ex-wife, his current wife, his mother-in-law and his grandmother-in-law. Furthermore, multiple Bolsonaro cabinet ministers have been forced to resign due to corruption scandals, including his 3rd Education Minister Milton Ribeiro, who took office after his second education minister, Abraham Weintraub, fled to Florida to avoid criminal prosecution. Innocent until proven guilty applies here too, but unlike Lula’s case, these investigations are ongoing. Any serious journalist, therefore, would have to at least mention them in the context of mentioning any past corruption investigation against Lula.

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Martins has been credited for introducing international white supremacist symbolism to the Bolsonaros

The main purpose of Martins’ conversation with Tucker Carlson, however, appears to have been to convince Americans that Bolsonaro, who is currently being blamed for opening the door to genocide against indigenous peoples and the assassination of former New York Times and Washington Post journalist Dom Phillips, should be reelected because he is a staunch ally to the US in the new cold war against China, whereas Lula will side with China against the US.

China has been Brazil’s most important trade partner since 2009, as US economic influence has waned throughout Latin America. Under Presidents Lula and Dilma Rousseff, Brazil maintained Brazil’s long tradition of non-alignment in US geopolitical conflicts, most famously when Lula refused to support the invasion of Iraq telling George Bush, “my war is against hunger.”

When Bolsonaro was elected, due to his family’s relationship with Steve Bannon and vocal racism against Chinese people on the social media accounts of his sons and some of his cabinet ministers, many expected him to leave BRICS and cut trade relations with China. It didn’t happen. Instead, China increased imports of Brazilian soy, with an increase of 251% during the first quarter of 2022 alone. Likewise, since Bolsonaro took office, Chinese state petroleum companies have been the overwhelmingly largest buyer of Brazil’s offshore petroleum reserves. Essentially, after China threatened to cut soy imports, Bolsonaro fired his two biggest anti-China ideologues, Foreign Affairs Chancellor Ernesto Araujo and Education Minister Abraham Weintraub, and completely revamped his government’s position on China, most recently praising Brazil’s “strategic relationship” with China to Xi Jinping at the BRICS Summit last week. Furthermore, Bolsonaro disobeyed repeated requests by the US State Department and visited Vladimir Putin this February, calling Brazil-Russia relations “a perfect marriage”, and has refused to join the NATO sanctions campaign.

Image

The fact of the matter is, no matter who is elected in October, Brazil will maintain its neutral stance in the new cold war and will not engage in sanctions against China or Russia or any other geopolitical enemy of the US. The reason for this is that takings sides against important trade partners does not make rational economic sense to Brazil. Suggesting otherwise, as Glenn Greenwald’s colleague Tucker Carlson is doing, is just another example of Fox News bullshit.

Update (6/30/2022): Hear author Brian Mier talk about this article, as well as Tucker’s 6/30 interview with President Bolsonaro, in Eoin Higgens’ podcast, Flashpoint, here. https://www.callin.com/room/tucker-goes ... pjyEvDWKzu

https://www.brasilwire.com/tucker-fox-r ... bolsonaro/

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Brazil ranks as one of the 10 worst countries to work

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After the sanction of the labor reform, the collective bargaining system was seriously affected, evidenced by the 45% decrease in finalized union agreements. | Photo: The Country
Published July 2, 2022 (10 hours 52 minutes ago)

The Global Index placed the Brazilian nation in rank five of countries that do not guarantee workers' rights.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) registered this Friday Brazil as one of the 10 worst countries in the world to work for the fourth consecutive year; since the approval of the labor reform during the Government of Michel Temer.

According to an annual study carried out by the confederation, after the sanction of the labor reform, the collective bargaining system was seriously affected in the country, evidenced by the 45 percent decrease in the number of finalized union agreements.

Likewise, the entity pointed out the dire consequences of the measures adopted during the epidemiological context of Covid-19 by President Jair Bolsonaro, directly impacting the health sector and the meat industry.


In this sense, he specified as main damages during the period, the detriment of working conditions; as well as non-compliance with health and safety measures.

In another order, the ITUC indicated that in the analyzed period there were violations of the labor law, among them, salary cuts to union leaders in Banco Santander; the declaration of illegality of the strike of the metallurgical workers of General Motors in São Bernardo do Campo; as well as the reduction of benefits and job cuts at Nestlé.


It is worth specifying that the organization reported an increase in violations against labor rights in the period from April 2021 to March 2022; being the most affected nations Bangladesh, Belarus, Colombia.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/brasil-c ... -0029.html

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 04, 2022 1:38 pm

Portuguese President Meets With Lula Despite Bolsonaro’s Snub

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President Rebelo received Lula at the Portuguese consulate in Sao Paulo. Jul. 3, 2022. | Photo: @LulaOficial

Published 3 July 2022 (17 hours 39 minutes ago)

De Sousa and Lula talked about the political situation in Europe, Latin America and the war in Ukraine.

This Sunday, the president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, held in Sao Paulo a meeting with the former Brazilian governor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and thus ignored the anger generated by the mere announcement of the meeting in the far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro.

After the announcement of the exchange with Lula, Bolsonaro canceled an official audience he was to have with De Sousa on Monday in Brasilia, the Brazilian capital.

Despite this decision, the Portuguese president continued with his agenda and received Lula at the Portuguese consulate in Sao Paulo, where the former head of state went with his former foreign minister, Celso Amorin, one of those who drafted the chapter on foreign relations to be presented by the current candidate with the highest percentage of voting intentions in the polls, in view of next October's elections.


After their meeting, De Sousa will make another visit to the Sao Paulo Book Biennial, whose inauguration he attended on Saturday night and which this year is dedicated to Portugal, for the bicentennial of Brazil's independence from the Portuguese metropolis, to be celebrated on September 7.

Later, he will hold a meeting with another former Brazilian president, Michel Temer, and will attend a reception at the Portuguese Consulate for members of the Portuguese community living in Sao Paulo, according to his agenda.

The Presidency has not yet announced whether or not the President will return to Lisbon after Rabelo's commitments, since the schedule of his visit before arriving in the South American country included a trip to Brasilia on Monday, which finally did not materialize.

Rabelo de Sousa arrived in Brazil on Saturday and made a stopover in Rio de Janeiro, where he attended a ceremony to commemorate the centenary of the first air crossing over the Atlantic Ocean, which took place in 1922 by two Portuguese pilots.

He also dived into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean at Copacabana beach, where he was able to take a stroll prior to the development of the official agenda.

There he talked to the press and gave little importance to Bolsonaro's decision to cancel Monday's meeting and said that this fact does not affect the bilateral relationship, since it transcends the governments themselves, when in fact it belongs to the peoples, he said.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Por ... -0007.html

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Brazil’s MST Fight Against Evictions and Bolsonaro
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 3, 2022

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Cassia Bechara of the MST’s National Board sits down with Kawsachun News at Armazém do Campo in São Paulo. June 29, 2022.

Brazil is heading towards this year’s elections with a strong appetite for change after four years of Jair Bolsonaro which followed a coup against President Dilma Rouseff.

In São Paulo, Camila spoke to Cassia Bechara of the National Board of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) at the movement’s Armazém do Campo store where one can find a selection of agroecological, organic and family farming products. Cassia sets the backdrop for the upcoming electoral campaign and describes some of the main issues in Brazil today and reflects on the recent victory of Gustavo Petro in Colombia. Below is a transcription of the interview which can be seen here.



Cassia Bechara: The MST is a peasant movement that organizes people to struggle for agrarian reform and for the democratization of land in Brazil. So I believe most of the people in Latin America knows, but Brazil has one of the highest land concentration in the world. It’s one of the, let’s say, the foundations of the Brazilian state is basically the large states monoculture and slavery, slave work.

And those foundations are still a very strong heritage that we have in Brazil. A lot of people with no land, a very high land concentration, structural racism, all of this comes from I mean, our vocation for exporting commodities and all of this comes from this from nations of the Brazilian state. So when we struggle for the democratization of land and for agrarian reform in a country like Brazil, we are struggling to change the foundations; the basis of this unequal society that we have here.

In the MST, we have around 1.5 million people organizing today in the MST camps and settlements. And when we talk about agrarian reform we are talking about much more than only distribution of land, but how we build a new model of agriculture that is basically founded on agriculture on producing healthy food for people of a healthy relationship with nature, new relations with people with some new mode of new form of organizing life in our territories.

Evictions in Brazil

Today, we are living under a very strong threat of evictions in Brazil. I believe you see you’re seeing the demonstrations and then we’re talking about urban evictions, but also about rural evictions. We are talking about 30,000 families that are at risk of being evicted and losing not only their houses and their territories, but their forms of surviving because they live from that land.

And we are talking about places that people have been living in for more than ten years. So they have good schools, children have were born there. These are the only places that those people have known, in many cases. So today we are having this Twitter storm to pressure the Supreme Court to keep the the law that this since is pending on the evictions and to at least until the end of the year.

So those are one of the main struggles that we are now the housing movements and the land movements are together. We have two days to try to pressure the Supreme Court not to propagate the suspension of the evictions.

Thousands are marching in São Paulo & 20 Brazilian cities against evictions.

A law passed by the congress making evictions illegal during the pandemic will be revoked at the end of the month and will immediately result in hundreds of thousands of evictions. pic.twitter.com/xZmhwKmUeI

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) June 21, 2022


October elections

For us, the the second main struggle this year is we need to change the government. But the lessons from Latin America have told us, and not only from Latin America, but from the last periods, have told us that [winning] the election is not enough.

I mean, we can [win] the election but we need people organized to guarantee that our project so that we can advance in our project because the governments are always going to be in dispute, but also organize people to be able to defend that government. The extreme right in Latin America, well, the whole world, have been much stronger in the last years.

And so we need to be organized to to defend our project. And that’s what we are calling the ‘People’s Committees’. So the People’s Committees are basically grassroots work in the communities to organize people, to discuss what do we need for this country, what do we need to improve the living conditions. What are the solutions for the problems in the territories, and also to build this a space where people can basically participate and feel that the decisions for the country are not only in the hands of the government, it must be in our hands.

So we need to organize and to be able to participate to guarantee our rights and to guarantee that we may be able to improve the conditions of this country.

Gustavo Petro victory in Colombia

For us, I mean, the victory of Petro and Francia is very symbolic. It’s very symbolic for the people of Colombia, but it’s very symbolic for the whole of Latin America.

We say in Latin America that Colombia’s the Israel of Latin America. So it’s the base of imperialism. It’s the main ally of the United States. Having a progressive government for the first time in history in Colombia changes the whole geopolitics of Latin America. I mean, we’re not saying that [Petro] is going to make the revolution.

We know that even he wanted to, it would be almost impossible to make a revolution in this situation. He’s going to have a lot of pressure, even from the United States. Because sometimes we just say, OK, he’s betraying his base and he doesn’t want to do it and we need to see the whole picture.

And he’s going to be pressured from all sides. But for us in Brazil, I mean, in Latin America, I wouldn’t say only Brazil, it changes the map of Latin America: having Colombia with the government, which is not 100% aligned with the United States. It changes the situation for Venezuela, it changes the situation for Brazil. And we do believe very strongly that the only way for Latin America is building another kind of regional integration.

And of course, having Petro in the government, having AMLO in Mexico, if we have Lula in Brazil, having Argentina, Honduras, and Peru. We are building a group of countries that even with all the limits that they may have in the government to make radical change, but they can start building an integration that will help national governments to make bigger changes.

The pressures that we have from the United States and from imperialism – we don’t face it’s isolated. But if we can build this bloc as we started doing some years ago to face the United States hegemony in Brazil and to build alternatives amongst us for commerce, for exchange and so on, it certainly will make a lot of difference for all those governments.

Kawsachun News will be in Brazil to report on this year’s election, providing exclusive interviews with social movement and political leaders and Portuguese to English translation. You can support this reporting on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/KawsachunNews



Kawsachun News

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... bolsonaro/

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Bolivia Angrily Rejects Bolsonaro’s Añez Asylum Offer
By BRASILWIRE July 1, 2022

Bolivian Foreign Minister Rogelio Mayta described Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s plan to grant Jeanine Áñez political asylum as “absolutely impudent” and “inappropriate interference in internal affairs”.

Originally published by Peoples Dispatch

The government of Bolivian President Luis Arce on Tuesday, June 28, rejected the recent statements made by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro wherein he claimed that former de-facto Bolivian President Jeanine Áñez was innocent and offered her political asylum. The Bolivian government described Bolsonaro’s statements as “absolutely impudent” and “inappropriate interference in internal affairs.”

Bolivian Foreign Minister Rogelio Mayta held a press conference in capital La Paz to respond to the Brazilian President and clarified that Bolivia would never allow interference in the decisions that sovereignly relate to its justice system.

“We regret the unfortunate statements by the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, which are absolutely impertinent, constitute an inappropriate interference in internal affairs, do not respect the forms of relations between States, and do not coincide with the good neighbor relations and mutual respect between Brazil and Bolivia. Under no circumstances we will accept interference in decisions that sovereignly correspond to the Bolivian justice system and the constitutionality of the Plurinational State of Bolivia,” said Mayta.

Mayta, who is also a human rights lawyer, recalled that Áñez is being prosecuted by the Bolivian Justice for “various criminal charges, including having committed serious human rights violations according to the investigation carried out by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts sent by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).”

He also reiterated that in the first days of Áñez’s rule, she passed a decree (4078) that exempted police and military officials participating in repression operations against protesters on the streets against the coup from criminal responsibility, which subsequently resulted in the massacre of 11 peaceful protesters in Sacaba city on November 15, 2019, and of 11 people in Senkata on November 19, 2019 by security officials, in addition to injuring hundreds of protesters.

Mayta stressed that the deaths and grave human rights violations that occurred in November 2019 “deserve justice” and “for that, the necessary processes must be developed.” He added that the Bolivian state has the “obligation” to carry out the necessary judicial processes to provide justice to the victims of that period, which has also been recommended by various international human rights organizations.

The Foreign Minister stated that “even thinking of a situation in which Áñez could evade justice is inadmissible. Impunity is inadmissible.” He also indicated that the government is working on a “diplomatic espousal” in response to Bolsonaro’s statements.

What did Bolsonaro say?

In an interview with the online program “4 x 4” on Sunday, June 26, Bolsonaro announced that he would offer political asylum to Áñez, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison earlier this month for illegally assuming the presidency in November 2019 following a right-wing civic-military coup that overthrew democratically elected socialist President Evo Morales.

Bolsonaro described Áñez’s detention and the judicial conviction against her as “unfair”, and said that “Brazil is putting into practice the issue of international relations, human rights, to see if it can bring Jeanine Áñez and offer her asylum in Brazil. It is unfair to the woman imprisoned in Bolivia.”

Confirmation of Brazil’s involvement in 2019 coup

Various legislators of the ruling left-wing Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party said that Bolsonaro’s offer confirmed his complicity in the 2019 coup d’état.

“We are gradually seeing how the whole plan of a coup is becoming much more visible. We were aware that this plan was not only an internal plan, but also an external one,” said Freddy Mamani, the president of the Chamber of Deputies.

Meanwhile, Senator Luis Adolfo Flores rejected Bolsonaro “openly interfering in decisions of independent bodies in Bolivia” and questioned his offer, stating that it went against international regulations for granting political asylum.

“According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), political asylum is only granted to an exiled person or who has fled their country for political reasons. Jeanine Áñez is not contemplated in any of those conditions,” said Flores.

Flores also pointed out that Bolsonaro’s recent confirmation that he had met Áñez in person and her denial of meeting him personally was another evidence of Brazil’s complicity in the coup.

https://www.brasilwire.com/bolivia-angr ... lum-offer/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat Jul 09, 2022 2:00 pm

“Free And Fair”: US Government’s Unsettling New Calm On Brazil Election
By BRASILWIRE May 23, 2022

Until recently US lawmakers and officials had warned of “democratic decline” in Brazil. Now emerges a new official insistence that the coming election will be “free and fair”. There are few examples in Latin American history that suggest anyone should take such a statement at face value.

Over the the past twelve months, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, and CIA director William Burns, have all, through official statements, interviews, or media leaks, commented on threats to the electoral process in Brazil ahead of the October 2 presidential election, a do or die vote, considered to be the most pivotal since restoration of democracy in the 1980s.

Yet in the past week, both incoming United States Ambassador Elizabeth Bagley, at her Senate confirmation hearing, and US Assistant Secretary of Commerce Don Graves, have appeared with a new and near identical script.

This new narrative seeks calm and asserts that Brazil’s 2022 presidential elections will be “free and fair”. A return to familiar reasurring language of public diplomacy.

Brazilian analysts do not agree. On the eve of Bagley’s hearing, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Diego Garcia, received a document in which 85 Brazilian professors and jurists warned of an “unprecedented” authoritarian risk to the October election.

“Brazil’s institutions are working” redux

In their letter to the UN, the Brazilian scholars wrote: “Those who believe that democracy in Brazil is sufficiently guaranteed and protected, and that the institutions are functioning perfectly, are mistaken. It is not exactly easy to see when the line between democracy and dictatorship has been crossed, and Brazil may be crossing that line in the coming months.”

At her hearing, Ambassador Bagley was challenged on Bolsonaro’s threats to the electoral process.

“You are going to a country where democratic regression is a real concern. We are concerned as the current leader of Brazil is tempted to undermine the essence of the electoral process,” said Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, President of the Foreign Relations Commission.

Bagley told Senators that despite what Bolsonaro has said, Brazil “…has democratic institutions, an independent Judiciary and Legislature, freedom of expression. They have all democratic institutions to carry out free and fair elections. I know that it will not be an easy process, because of all the comments from him (Bolsonaro), but, despite that, we all have these institutions and we will continue to express confidence and expectation in a fair election,”.

Bagley then went on to praise Bolsonaro’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos França, and the Minister of the Economy, Paulo Guedes, as “moderates”.

Bagley’s praise of Guedes is key, as he was central to US business support for the Bolsonaro project in 2018. In economic terms at least, Guedes is no moderate. The Chicago school graduate is an advocate of extremist ultraliberal policy, and a veteran of Pinochet’s Chile.

Meanwhile Bolsonaro’s pro-US, pro-Israel Minister of Foreign Affairs, França has voiced opposition to the presence of EU election observers in October, on the grounds that Brazil is not a member of the European Union. This followed the exposure of a Mossad-linked Israeli cybersecurity firm which had been irregularly contracted by the Brazilian Armed Forces to help “supervise” the election.

Also noteworthy is that the hearing focussed on insinuations of Russian and Chinese electoral interference, and the tenuous suggestion that Bolsonaro, the most US-subservient Brazilian president in history, and the military-dominated government he fronts, is somehow allied with Vladimir Putin. The unsubstantiated idea that Russia might meddle in the October election was first suggested in a BBC Brasil interview with Undersecretary of State, Victoria Nuland.

As the United States also considered Brazil’s 2018 election to be legitimate, despite then and current frontrunner Lula da Silva jailed through a trumped up prosecution in which the US was directly involved, the return of this newfound confidence in the electoral system is noteworthy, coinciding as it does with some developments in bilateral relations which should impact the Biden administration’s electoral preferences. This of course includes the need for Brazilian crude oil to offset the issues with Russian supply.

From “democratic decline” to “free and fair”

In September 2021, the same Senate democrats had sounded the alarm on Brazil’s “democratic decline and creeping authoritarianism under Bolsonaro”.

A letter to Secretary of State Blinken from Menendez along with Dick Durbin, Ben Cardin, and Sherrod Brown voiced their concerns over Brazilian “President Jair Bolsonaro’s defiance of basic democratic norms.” echoing the themes discussed at Bagley’s hearing eight months later.

The Senators wrote of Bolsonaro’s “repeated challenges to the rule of law and promises to disregard rulings of his country’s Supreme Court”, that he “has reiterated that he will only end his current tenure in office by being ‘jailed, killed, or victorious.’”, “has repeatedly insisted that he will refuse to concede the elections if he loses.” and that “He also claims, without evidence, that these elections will constitute a farce marred by fraud barring a substantial reform to the voting system.”

The Senators letter concluded, however, with a telling remark, echoed in Bagley’s hearing: “Our partnership with Brazil should be a bulwark against undemocratic actors, from China and Russia to Cuba and Venezuela, which seek to undermine democratic stability in our hemisphere.”

It was at the time of the Senator’s letter to Secretary of State Blinken that he met in New York with Brazilian Foreign Minister Carlos França.

Blinken made no public remarks about Brazil’s democratic process, then went on to skip a potentially embarrassing Brazil visit on his subsequent South American tour. He would call França again in January 2022 however, urging the Bolsonaro government to ally with the US against anticipated Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Subsequently the US asked Petrobras to increase crude oil production to cover shortfall in Russian supply caused by the war and subsequent sanctions. Petrobras refused.

On April 1, members of Lula’s team announced in Folha de S.Paulo newspaper a game changing plan for a unified currency to help integrate and protect sovereignty in South America, removing dependence on the US dollar.

Weeks later, a delegation, containing multiple energy officials and led by Victoria Nuland, went to Brazil for “high level dialogue” with the Bolsonaro government. Shortly after meetings, a plan to privatise Petrobras was announced, which was interpreted as an attempt for Bolsonaro to secure the kind of national and international business backing he enjoyed in 2018.

In addition, on the same day state energy company Eletrobras moved one step further towards privatisation, which former president Dilma Rousseff described as an abdication of Brazil’s sovereignty.

This makes the subtle change of script from US officials all the more unsettling.

Business as usual

On May 18, as Elizabeth Bagley was being prepared for her Ambassadorial post, US Assistant Secretary of Commerce Don Graves was leading a mission of 70 American corporate executives to Brazil, Graves told media that businessmen from both countries are not worried about the Brazilian electoral system and the risks of instability. “The real concern is with the resilience of supply chains, inflationary pressures and facilitating investments on both sides.” Graves insisted.

Graves said, echoing Bagley’s remarks, that the Biden administration believes that “a winner will be elected freely and fairly in Brazil”, and that he hopes that after the elections, business and trade between the two countries “continues as usual”, in what he called a “long-term partner democracy”.

One of Graves’ priorities was to convince Brazilian authorities on the importance of President Jair Bolsonaro’s presence at the June 9-10 Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. Bolsonaro has not yet made a decision whether to attend. Given democratic threats made by Bolsonaro, his invitation contradicts official justifications for the exclusion of Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, which threaten the Summit’s already diminished credibility.

Update: On May 24 former US Democratic Senator & lobbyist and Biden advisor Christopher Dodd met Jair Bolsonaro at the Planalto Palace, outside the president’s official schedule. He was joined by US embassy business officer Douglas Koneff, with the special envoy reportedly sent by President Biden to talk Bolsonaro into attending the Summit of the Americas.

Graves said the US Department of Agriculture and the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture are working with the White House to find alternative fertilizer sources to Brazil, after Bolsonaro’s meeting with Putin to secure supply. This also needs to be viewed in context of the decimation of Brazil’s own fertilizer manfuacturing capacity, caused by the US-backed carve up of Petrobras.

On the same day as Bagley’s hearing, Brazilian Senator, Carlos Bolsonaro, son of current far-right president, told SBT news that without changes at the Electoral Court (TSE), the response to defeat in October will not be “judicial”. It was the latest threat of what is being called the most pre-announced coup in history.

Bolsonaro said “you only have to look at what is happening in the United States”, it is assumed referring to what is also being called a coup threat.

This puts him, his father and the government on the opposite side to the Biden administration and DNC – domestically. Does this automatically translate into support for opposition to Bolsonaro? Possibly. Does it signify US desire for frontrunner Lula to win? Absolutely not.

Regardless, the Biden administration is intensifying meetings with a US-allied president and government which is heading for defeat and openly threatening a coup if they don’t win the election.

US preference

Regardless of change in US leadership, the military dominated government which Bolsonaro fronts came to power through a process which straddled the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations.

Recent US media coverage, such as in the Washington Post, has talked up Bolsonaro’s modest growth in opinion polls following the exit of Sergio Moro from the race, and has cast doubt on Lula’s ability when he is anything up to 20 points ahead, while in Brazil itself major newspapers such as Folha de S.Paulo are instead detailing the coup threat, reiterating that this election should not be treated as normal.

It is increasingly difficult to imagine any genuine US preference for a Lula government, despite reductive wishful thinking to that effect. Would he bring stability? Economically, administratively, he would bring competence and coherence after four years of kakistocracy, but not necessarily to the benefit of the United States. A cursory glance over US attitudes towards him as president from 2003-2010, in State Department cables and other communications, reveals a passive hostility. Obama’s frivolous “you’re the man” or “world’s most popular president” remarks about Lula have long since ceased to have meaning, not least in light of the US role in his prosecution and jailing to prevent his return to office, which was in motion long before Trump’s election.

The leaked account of Burns’ meeting with Bolsonaro loyalist chiefs General Heleno (Insitutional Security Office) and Ramagem (ABIN, Brazilian Intelligence) made it sound as if their meetings with the CIA in Brasilia were not a routine occurrence. Occasionally these meetings are revealed by accident, as was with General Etchegoyen, Heleno’s predecessor.

Put simply: At every stage, the US supported the processes that returned the Brazilian Military to government.

There are of course genuine signs that there are progressive voices in the DNC who favour a Lula victory, with caveats, and also a core in the Biden administration who would prefer Bolsonaro – or at least Paulo Guedes – to remain in power.

So long as the latter outcome happened “freely and fairly”, who could complain?

https://www.brasilwire.com/free-and-fai ... -election/

Exclusive: US Lawmakers Pressure Brazilian Military
By BRIAN MIER July 6, 2022

Amendment 893 to National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 calls to end military aid to Brazil if its armed forces tamper with this year’s presidential elections.

by Brian Mier

Brazilian President Bolsonaro and his cabinet ministers, nearly half of whom are military generals, have made repeated threats against the integrity of this years upcoming elections over the past year. As former President Lula da Silva opened a 20 point lead in the polls, the threats worsened. Last week former Defense Minister, now Bolsonaro’s Vice Presidential candidate, General Braga Neto, told a group of businessmen that the military will not honor this year’s election results unless the Superior Election Court changes the ballot system according to the Army’s orders. A few days later, an allegedly exasperated President Bolsonaro reiterated this threat in a meeting with his cabinet.

Since taking office the Biden administration has given mixed messages on Bolsonaro. It warned the Bolsonaro government against undermining the elections, then invited the Brazilian President to a one on one meeting with the US President at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles where, during the same week when people around the World criticized Bolsonaro for the murders of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips, Biden praised his management of the Amazon rainforest.

Regardless of what Biden himself may be thinking about Brazil, a group of Democratic lawmakers moved to help him make up his mind this week by inserting an amendment into H.R. 7900- The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, which puts continuation of all military aid to Brazil in 2023 contingent on non-interference by the Brazilian military in this year’s presidential elections.

Amendment 893, entitled, “Neutrality of Brazilian Armed Forces During Presidential Elections”, requires that within 30 days of the passing of the Act (which still has to pass Congress), the US Secretary of State must deliver a report on Brazilian armed forces interference on the October, 2022 Presidential elections, and to consider such actions as “statutory guardrails on US security assistance.”

“It calls for the “discontinuation of security assistance”, says a Washington insider who prefers to remain anonymous, “basically a way of saying ‘you need to consider whether these actions amount to a coup because, if so, that would necessitate cutting off US. assistance.'”



Over the last several years a growing group of progressive Democratic lawmakers led by Congressman Hank Johnson have pressured the federal government to clarify its role in the Lava Jato investigation and the arbitrary, 2018 election-year arrest of presidential front runner Lula da Silva. The signatories of this amendment include some of these familiar names like Johnson, Raul Grijalva, Ilhan Omar and Susan Wild. The author of the amendment, however, is New Jersey Congressman Tomasz Malinowski – a moderate with not much of a track record on Brazil. This shows that more and more Democrats are worried about the ramifications of a possible military coup in Brazil this year.

Essentially, although the role of the US DOJ and State Department during the 2016 coup against Dilma Rousseff and kangaroo court procedure against Lula da Silva appear to have slipped under the radar of the handful Democratic lawmakers who genuinely care about Brazil, this amendment gives a signal to the State Department and intel community that the legislative branch is watching and that some lawmakers will cause problems if they attempt to support another coup in Brazil this year. Likewise, it sends a signal to Brazil’s notoriously entreguista military that it may not have as much support from the US Government as it thought it did.

https://www.brasilwire.com/exclusive-us ... -military/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:12 pm

Brazil: Bolsonaro Supporter Murders Leader of Workers' Party

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Marcelo Arruda at his Workers' Party themed birthday celebration, in Foz do Iguaçu. Jul. 10, 2022. | Photo: Twitter: @gleisi

Published 10 July 2022 (15 hours 3 minutes ago)

Marcelo Arruda was affiliated to the Workers' Party in Foz do Iguazu.

A policeman shot and killed Marcelo Arruda, a member of the Workers' Party (PT) of Brazil, when the victim was celebrating his 50th birthday, while the officer was shouting slogans in favor of the current president and candidate, Jair Bolsonaro.

The tragedy occurred in the southern city of Foz do Iguaçu, western region of Paraná, at the hands of the federal penitentiary agent Jorge José da Rocha Guaranho, who first went to the place and after 20 minutes, returned armed and began to shoot the PT leader, whose party was being held with themes dedicated to the PT and Lula.

The PT issued a message via the social network saying, "Enough of the violence! Enough of the destruction! It is time for the reconstruction and transformation of Brazil and the relations between Brazilians and Brazilians! Let's cry and bury another comrade who fell victim to political violence, that's enough!"

Arruda, who was a guard of the municipality of Foz do Iguaçu, local treasurer of the PT and had been a candidate for deputy mayor in the municipal elections of 2020, responded with his regulation weapon. Guaranho was shot five times and had to be seriously hospitalized.


This Thursday, July 7, 2022, in Rio de Janeiro, a man was arrested after throwing a homemade explosive against the crowd that was waiting for the candidate for the presidency of Brazil, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, at a campaign rally.

Due to this situation, the candidate wore a bulletproof vest for the first time in an open event.

According to eyewitness accounts: We heard his wife screaming asking him to leave and he was very upset, with a lot of hate. Cursing the PTs and saying that Bolsonaro would be elected. That Lula is a criminal and that all PTs should die.


Enough of the violence! Enough of the destruction! It is time for the reconstruction and transformation of Brazil and the relations between Brazilians and Brazilians! Let's cry and bury another comrade who fell victim to political violence, that's enough!

Marcelo was killed with two shots at point blank range. Before falling he managed to defend himself and fired three shots at Jorge José, who also died after being admitted to the hospital.

Lula da Silva issued a message saying: "Our companion Marcelo Arruda celebrated his 50th birthday with family and friends, in peace, in Foz do Iguaçu. Affiliated with the Workers' Party, his party had the PT and hope for the future as its theme; with the joy of a father who has just had another daughter."

Gleisi Hoffmann, president of the PT, said: "Imbued by a discourse of hatred and dangerously armed by the current policy of the President of the Republic, which stimulates confrontation, conflict, attack on adversaries, any person adhering to this project of death and destruction is becoming an aggressor or murderer".

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bra ... -0008.html

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Brazil is bracing for a right-wing insurrection far worse than the 2021 US Capitol attack
Post-2020 US elections, right-wing groups stormed the Capitol. As we approach the 2022 elections, Brazil is bracing for something worse.

July 08, 2022 by Brasil de Fato

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Democrat US congress members have proposed an amendment to the Fiscal Authorization Act that pressures Brazil's armed forces not to interfere in this year's presidential elections - Fernando Frazão/ABr

The president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Minister Edson Fachin, declared that during this year’s presidential election, Brazil may have a more serious attack than the January 6, 2021, invasion of the Capitol in the United States.

“We may have an even more aggressive episode than January 6 from here on Capitol Hill. We understand that there are six fundamental conditions to prevent this from happening in Brazil,” said Fachin, during a discussion at the Wilson Center in Washington DC on Wednesday, July 6.

“If there is a dissolution of one of the branches of government, the danger could go to the other side of the street,” he said. “Brazilian society, on October 2, will hold up a mirror to itself. Whether it longs for the war of everyone against everyone, or it longs for democracy and, from there, make its choices in a free and conscious way.”

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For Fachin, those who attack the electoral process are undermining the Constitution and democracy / Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil

To prevent anything worse from happening in Brazil, Fachin said that the Electoral Justice, civil society, the national congress, the Armed Forces, the press, and the international community must act to protect Brazilian democracy.

In his customary Thursday live broadcast on social media, President Jair Bolsonaro said he is “suspicious” of the work done by the TSE and that the people should prepare for the elections. “You know what’s at stake, you know how you should prepare – not for a new Capitol, nobody wants to invade anything, but for us to know what we have to do before the elections,” he said.

US Congress creates amendment against interference in Brazilian elections
Six Democrats from the US House of Representatives have proposed an amendment to the Tax Authorization Act that puts pressure on Brazil’s armed forces not to interfere in this year’s presidential elections.

Amendment 893, “Neutrality of the Brazilian Armed Forces During Presidential Elections,” was introduced on Tuesday, July 5 by Congressman Tom Malinowski of New Jersey and signed by colleagues Albio Sires (New Jersey), Joaquín Castro (Texas), Susan Wild (Pennsylvania), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), and Hank Johnson (Georgia).

The document stipulates that, after the elections in Brazil, the US Department of State has up to 30 days to produce a report to be sent to the US Congress, describing the performance of the Brazilian Armed Forces during the election process.

Should the report point to decisive interference or a coup d’état by the armed forces, the amendment provides for the US to discontinue financial assistance in Brazilian national security.

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Jair Bolsonaro / Agência Brasil

For the report, congress members established five criteria. If the Brazilian Armed Forces:

1) Interfered with, impeded, or obstructed voting, counting operations, or election operations by independent election authorities.

2) Manipulated, sought to manipulate or canceled the results of the elections

3) Engaged in coordinated information or communication efforts to undermine popular faith and confidence in independent election authorities or questioned the validity of election results

4) Used social media or other mass communication systems, including mobile messaging applications, to attempt to influence widespread opinions about the validity of the election results or the desirability of any particular outcome

5) Encouraged, incited or facilitated activities or rebellions in relation to electoral processes, electoral counting or electoral results, before and after the presidential elections

Bombing Lula’s event

A homemade bomb exploded during an event organized by presidential pre-candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) and supporters, in Cinelândia, downtown Rio de Janeiro, on the night of July 7. The explosion occurred before Lula’s arrival, and no one was injured.

The bomb was dropped by an “event infiltrator”, according to Rio’s Military Police, in the area surrounded by the stage. The person responsible was charged with the crime and taken to the police station, where he confessed to launching the explosive.

As the press office of former President Lula reported, “two fireworks exploded, causing noise, thrown from outside into the area of the event,” but that “no one was injured and there was no rioting.”

Attack against judge who arrested Milton Ribeiro
On the same day, the judge who ordered the preventive imprisonment of former Education Minister Milton Ribeiro, Renato Borelli, was the target of an attack as he was leaving his home on his way to work in Brasília. His car was hit by animal feces, eggs and dirt. Although the material was thrown against his windshield, Borelli managed to drive to safety. The judge was not injured.

After he authorized the Federal Police’s “Operation Paid Access”, Borelli reported threats from groups of supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro.

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Judge Borelli’s windshield / Divulgação

The Federal Police is investigating former minister Milton Ribeiro for the alleged bribery scheme, through the intermediation between lobbyists and city halls, for the release of funds from the National Fund for Education Development (FNDE) at the Ministry of Education.

Liberal Party member accused of sexual abuse

José Renato Silva, former state vice-president of the Liberal Party (PL) in São Paulo, the same party as Bolsonaro, was accused of sexually abusing his daughter and two granddaughters. The Civil Police have been investigating the case since April of this year.

Cintia Renata Lira da Silva, José Renato’s daughter, made the case public with a publication on her Instagram account, on July 7. In the publication, Cintia says that she kept silent about the abuse until the day she found out that José Renato also abused her daughters. “The courage I never had as a daughter, I had as a mother,” she said.

“The feeling of lifting a weight off your back is very intense. Each day that we manage to face one more battle and overcome it, serves as more strength to continue and stay well. It is very important that this issue not be overshadowed,” Cintia wrote.

According to Cintia, José Renato has already been indicted and the case is being kept in judicial secrecy, as confirmed by the Secretary of Public Safety of the state of São Paulo. The case is investigated by the Suzano Police Department for the Defense of Women, through a police investigation.

José Renato’s lawyer, Denis Souza do Nascimento, told Folha that “the investigation is under judicial secrecy to preserve everyone’s privacy, therefore, at the moment, we cannot give more details about the contents of the investigation.”

Ciro Gomes and Bolsonaro to make their candidacies official in July
The former governor of Ceará, Ciro Gomes (PDT) will make his candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic official on July 20, during the party’s national convention in Brasilia. The choice for the date, the first day of the deadline for conventions, according to the legislation, was made “to make the most of Ciro’s official candidacy.”

President Bolsonaro will also make his candidacy official on July 24, at the Maracanãzinho Gymnasium, in Rio de Janeiro.

According to the Genial/Quaest poll, released on July 6, Ciro Gomes has 6% support, behind Lula, who continues to lead the presidential race, with 45%, and Bolsonaro, who has 31%.

The parties have until August 5 to confirm the names of their slates in party conventions.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/07/08/ ... ol-attack/

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Lula Leads Rally for Democracy and Against Hunger

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Lula is accompanied by the former governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin, designated as vice-presidential candidate, and Saturday's event is part of his tour of Brazil. Jul. 09, 2022. | Photo: @LulaOficial

Published 9 July 2022

It is part of the electoral pre-campaign of the petista leader for the presidential elections next October.

The former president and candidate for the Together for Brazil coalition, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva heads this Saturday an electoral pre-campaign event in Sao Paulo, whose central theme is the defense of democracy and the fight against hunger, two of the axes of the government program promoted by the petista leader.

Lula is accompanied by the former governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin, designated as vice-presidential candidate, and Saturday's event is part of his tour of Brazil to strengthen the national reconstruction movement Vamos Juntos pelo Brasil, with which they will run in the October 2022 elections.

This event takes place after visiting Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday and Thursday and is attended by the city's mayor, José de Filippi Júnior, historic leader of the Workers' Party (PT).


I have four years of my life to dedicate myself to taking care of the people. I want to establish a sister relationship with governors and mayors. It is not possible for a country to succeed with a ruler encouraging fights. I will show that it is possible for Brazil to be happy again.

In his speech, the former president pointed out that his "history is confused with the history of Diadema. I came for the first time in 1969. The only paved street was Av. Antonio Piranga. This city was the first to have the courage to elect a metallurgist mayor".

Lula also denounced that "the country is worse than in 2003", when he became President for the first time and pointed out that "inflation and unemployment are higher. The union categories are making deals below inflation. And our solution is to put the poor in the budget and the rich in the income tax".


In the same vein, the former president pointed out that "after the Workers' Party put an end to hunger in the country, now 33 million Brazilians go to sleep without eating" and asked "How can this be explained in a country that is the third largest food producer in the world?".

He also criticized the policies developed by the current president and candidate for reelection, Jair Bolsonaro, and blamed him for the current crisis that the South American giant is experiencing.

Lula, according to polls, is the favorite to win the presidential elections next October

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lul ... -0005.html
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 12, 2022 1:49 pm

Incitement To Murder: Bolsonarista Terror Threatens Election
By NATHALIA URBAN July 11, 2022

The murder of a Workers Party militant by a Bolsonaro supporter has shocked Brazil, but it is not without precedent, and reflects the use of incitement by the Bolsonaros and their allies as a political tool.

By Nathalia Urban

Coup threats, radicalization, dog-whistling and political violence have become commonplace in the Brazil since the rise of Bolsonarismo. But with the elections approaching this has escalated to new and dangerous levels.

Democratic Threat

Bolsonaro threatening cancellation or interference in the elections has already become the norm. Now, not a day goes by without the candidate launching attacks against the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), invoking the support of the military as the supreme commander of the Armed Forces, disagreeing with the forecasts projected by electoral polls, also targets of his ire.

However, in an attempt to maintain power at all costs, Bolsonaro is using a dangerous strategy to radicalize his supporters. On Thursday (07/07), during one of his weekly broadcasts on social media, he said: “I don’t need to say what I’m thinking, what you’re thinking. You know what’s at stake, and you know how to prepare, not for a new Capitol, nobody wants to invade anything, but we know what we have to do before the elections.”

Bolsonaro’s statement came one day after the president of the TSE, Minister Edson Fachin, stated that Brazil could face an even more serious situation than the invasion of the Capitol, recorded on January 6, 2021, in the United States. His son, Rio de Janeiro city councillor Carlos Bolsonaro made another provocation through social media after his father’s, when he posted a photo in front of the Capitol, saying: “Trying to assassinate the President of the Republic, a party being financed by organized crime, annulling parliament with money stolen from Petrobras, none of this threatens democracy, but they will certainly say that these pixels that make up this photograph are a great threat.”

We know that the Bolsonaros were involved in the Capitol episode. Eduardo Bolsonaro, congressman and Jair’s “geopolitical” son was mentioned by Seth Abramson of the Proof website as the only foreigner to participate in a meeting of Trump’s so-called “war council” at the then US president’s private residence, at Trump International Hotel. The episode, which ended with 90 people arrested, dozens injured and five deaths, sought to prevent recognition of Joe Biden’s election to the presidency.

Several allies of the former US president, including Eduardo, were seen at the hotel that day. One of those allies is Michael Lindell, a Republican businessman who played down the invasion of pro-Trump protesters into Congress and campaigned for Trump alleging election fraud.

Eduardo Bolsonaro even published a photo with Lindell when the invasion of Congress was in motion. In addition, the businessman himself stated on the morning of the attack that he was with “the son of the president of Brazil” the night before.

Many considered the Bolsonaro’s rhetoric over the last week or so dog-whistling, an attempt to radicalize his most most fanatical followers. Unfortunately the worst happened.

The murder of Marcelo Arruda

Municipal guard Marcelo Arruda, treasurer of the Workers’ Party (PT) in Foz do Iguaçu, was shot dead on Saturday, 9 of July (two days after Bolsonaro mentioned the Capitol) during his 50th birthday party, whose theme was the PT and former president Lula.

The crime was committed by a Bolsonaro supporter, Federal Police officer Jorge José da Rocha Guaranho, who invaded the party and shot the victim three times.

Civil Police investigator Pamela Suellen Silva, widow of the municipal guard and PT activist Marcelo Arruda, said that: “At the end of the party, this person that no one knew appeared in a car, opened the window and shouted: ‘Out PT, Lula thief, Bolsonaro myth’. Marcelo went to ask him to leave and he took out a gun and pointed it at Marcelo. His wife was in the car with a child and asked him to leave. He went away, but he said he would come back,” Pamela told Globonews.

And she continued: “When he returned I said, ‘Go away, man, we are the police,’ showing that we were police officers. But he started shooting at random, with the intention of killing people at the party.”

On his social media, Jorge José has several posts in support of President Jair Bolsonaro, in favor of guns, and the police.

Some years ago, Guaranho also posted a photo stood next to Eduardo Bolsonaro, with the caption “thanks for the support”.

On Twitter, Guaranho’s devotion to Bolsonaro begins in his profile description. He defines himself as a “federal, conservative and christian criminal police officer”, quotes Bolsonaro and defends guns “for self defence”. The last publication shared by Guaranho is by the former president of the Palmares Foundation, Sérgio Camargo, which associated the Workers’ Party with organised crime – a continuation of the narrative pushed by anti-corruption operation Lava Jato and its disgraced Judge Sergio Moro, who enabled Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 by jailing Lula. The Police agent declared his vote for Bolsonaro in the 2018 elections, and support of Bolsonaristas actions against political opponents.

The violence of this crime has shocked Brazilians, but it is not surprising that after continual attempts by the Bolsonarista far-right to radicalize their supporters, that something like this has happened – again.

In 2018, capoeira master Romualdo Rosário da Costa, known as Moa do Katendê, was murdered by another Bolsonarista. The police inquiry concluded that the crime was motivated by a political-party argument between Moa and Paulo Sérgio Ferreira de Santana, who was 36 years old at the time.

Moa was killed for having criticized the elected president Jair Bolsonaro and declared his vote for Fernando Haddad, of the PT. The assassin, Paulo Sérgio Ferreira de Santana, was reportedly irritated by the statement and attacked the capoeirista with a knife.

A month before the murder of Moa do Katendê, during a rally in the state of Acre, Bolsonaro took a camera tripod, raised it, and mimicked firing a machine gun saying: “We’re going to shoot all the worker’s party supporters here in Acre. Let’s run these hacks from Acre… to Venezuela to eat grass”.

Radicalization and Political Terrorism

Bolsonaro’s extremist rhetoric is a way of shielding himself from opponents or to maintain his position as the leader of the far-right in the country, while keeping his base mobilized despite the collapse of his mainstream political support. And this is not just a campaign strategy, he has done it throughout his administration. Attempts to discredit the Federal Supreme Court, to spread hateful ideologies, and even the disastrous and murderous handling of the pandemic.

According to a study carried out by anthropologist Isabela Kalil in 2019. “There is a group of loyal voters, between 10% and 12%, who support a greater radicalization of the Government. Despite the relatively low number, this wing represents a new phenomenon in politics. They are supporters who, from a communication point of view, act as a group to organize demonstrations and promote attacks on public figures opposing the president. In the quantitative aspect, the group of radicals is still in the minority in the universe of Bolsonaristas, but, in the qualitative, it has great capacity to generate repercussion and undermine the performance of opponents on social networks.”

The scenario changed with the arrival of the elections and especially with the return of Lula as a political opponent, so what were mild threats to the institutions that prevented him from acting as a fascist dictator became a frantic campaign of fear and hatred.

Red-scare in Latin America

With the recent election of Gustavo Petro in Colombia, and Gabriel Boric in Chile, both center-left progressive politicians, the Brazilian government is trying to push a delusional anti-communist terror narrative.

After the election in Colombia, Eduardo Bolsonaro on his Twitter account, the deputy referred to the role that Brazil has today in the face of the news of the progressive field on the continent. “The responsibility of the Brazilian voter only increases. It’s not ‘only’ for Brazil anymore, it’s for the entire region”, with a photo that shows a map of South America showing that Bolivia, Venezuela, Argentina, Peru, Chile and now Colombia have turned “communist”.

The Bolsonaro clan’s concern is not new, but it is now a campaign strategy, and not only on a national level, but in the context of garnering support from the global far-right, as represented by Steve Bannon and his billionaire-funded “movement”.

Lula’s safety

Marco Aurélio de Carvalho, lawyer for Grupo Prerogativas, a group linked to the Lula said that after recent episodes of political violence such as the death of Marcelo Arruda, and also attacks on events with Lula’s presence in Uberlândia and Rio de Janeiro, where the public was attacked by drones carrying out a explosive device filled with animal excrement, the former president’s security was reinforced.

With less than 90 days until the election, Lula is expected to hold events across the country in the coming weeks and months, drawing large crowds, which increases the possibility of attacks. In addition, the former president often interacts with people during rallies, which makes the situation more dangerous. It is important to note that at no point the feeling of revenge or retaliation has been expressed by the Workers’ Party.

About Marcelo’s tragic death, several PT party leaders wrote notes of condolence “Another dear comrade passed away this morning, a victim of intolerance, hatred and political violence”, said the national president of the PT, Gleisi Hoffmann.

Former President Dilma Roussef said: “The assassination of comrade Marcelo Arruda is the result of incitement to intolerance and violence by a government that is arming its followers and creating an environment of political terrorism to intimidate the people. My condolences to his family, especially Pamela (the widow) and her children.”

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro, after spending years indirectly and directly instigating radical and violent behaviour, simply said he “refuses the support from those who practice violence against opponents”.

Lula released a lengthy statement about the case, not only in solidarity with the victim’s family, but also with the murderer’s family, saying that “they lost their father and husband to hate speech encouraged by an irresponsible president. “

Each day Bolsonaro stays in power, his hate speech is creating more victims in Brazil. Marcelo and Mestre Môa died believing again that there was a better alternative than the horror that Brazilians are currently experiencing.

https://www.brasilwire.com/incitement-t ... -election/

With Re-Election Hopes Bleak, Bolsonaro Bets On Privatising Petrobras
By BRASILWIRE May 11, 2022

With his re-election looking unlikely, Jair Bolsonaro now tries to unify international capital and supporters of the 2016 coup around his candidacy with a final throw of the dice: a fast-track privatisation of Petrobras and delivery of Brazil’s massive oil wealth to the foreign corporations which originally backed his presidency. Bolsonaro’s new Mines and Energy Minister Adolfo Sachsida says privatisation is his priority, as Lula vows to halt any sell-off after the election.

Incoming Minister of Mines and Energy, Adolfo Sachsida has announced that he will work towards the privatisation of both state controlled oil and gas company Petrobras and Pre-Sal Petróleo SA, the entity responsible for managing the Brazil’s pre-sal (subsalt) exploration contracts.

The first of Brazil’s pre-sal offshore oil deposits were discovered by the state oil company in 2006 during Lula’s first presidential term and were once called Brazil’s “passport to the future”, earmarked by Dilma Rousseff for investment in public education and health. The discoveries doubled Brazil’s proven oil reserves, with the company developing its own proprietary deep drilling technology to make the oil’s extraction cost effective.

Since the pre-sal’s discovery, the destiny of Petrobras has been interwoven with Brazil’s democratic collapse, and the United States‘s role in it. One of the first acts of the interim government of Michel Temer following Rousseff’s removal in 2016 was to break the so called “pre-sal law” which was designed to protect the sovereignty of the pre-sal by guaranteeing Petrobras involvement in all exploitation of the oil and gas fields. Following the discovery, the Bush administration drew Brazilian anger by re-inaugurating its fourth fleet, its first specific Naval force to cover the South Atlantic since the 1940s. In 2008 Lula himself warned that the fleet could be a signal that the United States covets Brazil’s new oil wealth. Two years later leaked cables showed that breaking the pre-sal law was a long term objective of the US State Department, working in tandem with international petroleum interests, as represented by lobby Council of the Americas – home to Chevron and ExxonMobil. The strategy was to secure partners in Brazil’s senate who would support US objectives. Petrobras and the Ministry of Mines and Energy were the principal targets of US National Security Agency spying on Brazil exposed in 2013, and the oil giant was then primary target of US-Brazil anticorruption operation Lava Jato. Lava Jato worked to bring down Dilma Rousseff, and jailed 2018 election frontrunner Lula, opening the door to the Bolsonaro presidency. Petrobras has been severely damaged and asset stripped since the now disgraced operation began in 2014. In addition US funded groups campaigning for the removal of Dilma Rousseff made privatising Petrobras – ostensibly to “stop corruption” – a centrepiece of their platform.

Fast-track privatisation

Minister of the Economy Paulo Guedes right-hand man, and apparent admirer of deceased Richmond, Virginia-based far right philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, Sachsida worked on the economic programme for Bolsonaro’s 2018 campaign, which came with the blessing of international capital.

Sachsida has recently attacked Brazil’s biggest trading partner, China, as “shit”, and stated that Chilean fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet, who implemented one of the most radical ultraliberal economic programmes in history, was “on the left”. Sachsida has also said that “women are more efficient outside the market”.

Upon his appointment the minister announced that the final privatisation of Petrobras, one of Brazil’s economic engines and a symbol of its sovereignty, created by then president Getulio Vargas in the 1950s, will be his first act as minister. He vowed to set studies in motion immediately on how to achieve full privatisation of the state controlled mixed capital company as quickly as possible.

“My first act as a minister will be to ask [Economy] Minister Paulo Guedes, chairman of the PPI [Investment Partnerships Program] Council, to take to the council the inclusion of PPSA in the PND [National Privatisation Program] to evaluate the alternatives for its privatisation,” said Sachsida.

“As part of my first act, I will also request the beginning of studies aimed at proposing the legislative changes necessary for the privatisation of Petrobras”, he added.

Brazil’s oil is arguably the biggest strategic asset the country has, especially given increasing uncertainty over world supply from Russia. A day before Sachsida’s announcement Reuters reported that the United States had asked Brazil in March to increase its crude oil output to curb soaring prices amid international sanctions against Russia, but Brazil refused.

“We are … doing everything possible with our allies and partners to mitigate the economic impacts of Russian actions on other economies like Brazil,” a State Department spokesperson told Reuters. “We are working with energy companies to surge their capacity to supply energy to the market, particularly as prices increase.”

Yet Petrobras denied any meeting with the State Department. “It did not respond to a request for comment when asked if it had been contacted by any other U.S. government agency.” Reuters clarified.

Three weeks prior to Sachsida’s announcement, a US delegation led by Under Secretary of State for political affairs Victoria Nuland, visited Brazil for “High-level dialogue” with the Bolsonaro government. Also present on the delegation were Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jose Fernández, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Ricardo Zúniga, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Mark Wells, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Transformation Anna Shpitsberg.

It is unclear if Petrobras privatisation was on the agenda.

On his first day as Minister of Mines and Energy, Sachsida, proposed that Brazil “move away” from its key BRICS partners China and Russia, and closer to “friendly democracies”, and that one of his goals was to promote a “global realignment of investments”. China is currently Brazil’s largest trading partner and Russia is also important since it is the origin of most fertilizer needed for Brazilian agribusiness.


Image
Adolfo Sachsida

Adolfo Sachsida also indicated that he intends to privatise state energy firm Eletrobrás. A project that has already been widely condemned, even denounced by former President Lula in recent speeches as treasonous.

In his speech to launch the “Vamos Juntos pelo Brasil” coalition behind his presidential candidacy, Lula remarked: “Eletrobras was built over decades, with the sweat and intelligence of generations of Brazilians. But the current government does everything to sell it off it at a bargain price. The result of this crime against the homeland would be the loss of our energy sovereignty. Defending our sovereignty is also defending Eletrobrás from those who want Brazil to be eternally submissive”.

Journalist Leonardo Attuch, editor of Brasil 247, said that the privatisation of state-owned companies is “Bolsonaro’s last gambit to unify capital and all the coup plotters of 2016 around his candidacy.”

At a rally in Juiz de Fora on the day of Sachsida’s announcement as Minister of Mines and Energy, Lula denounced the privatisation of Brazilian public companies: “I want to take advantage of the humanism that reigns in this room, the democratic warmth in this room, and say to the government and to businessmen: stop privatising public companies”.

In a signal that an incoming Workers Party-led government intends to reverse such privatisations, Lula insisted “Whoever tries to buy Petrobras will have to talk to us after the election. Stop trying to privatise Eletrobras. Stop privatising Correios, Banco do Brasil, Caixa Econômica, BNDES, BnB. Learn to work, invest and make economic policy instead of selling things that are already made”.

Lula is maintaining a double figure lead over Bolsonaro in polls for the October election, whose pre-campaign has begun under a shadow of an antidemocratic threat from the far right president and his military backers.

https://www.brasilwire.com/with-re-elec ... petrobras/

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

Brazil Announces Deal To Buy Diesel From Russia

Image
Three months before presidential elections, Brazil's economic situation has undermined the government's popularity. Jul. 11, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@ciancaglini_15

Published 11 July 2022 (10 hours 47 minutes ago)

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said Brazil is close to reaching an agreement with the Russian Federation to buy diesel from Russia.

The Brazilian President already spoke of this possibility two weeks ago and said that the subject had been discussed in a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"It is closed, in 60 days (diesel) can start arriving here, there is already that possibility, Russia continues to do business with everyone, it seems that the economic sanctions did not work," Bolsonaro said.

According to the president, Brazil imports almost 30 percent of the diesel it consumes. Bolsonaro said that now it is necessary to import from whoever sells cheaper, no matter from whom.

Currently, the Brazilian economy is facing a difficult situation with rising fuel prices, which has an impact on the inflation of all consumer goods.


This panorama constitutes a considerable undermining factor for the government's popularity, three months before the presidential elections.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bra ... -0029.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 19, 2022 3:42 pm

Brazilian Congress allows Bolsonaro to increase social spending

Image
The majority of the deputies approved the project that will reduce taxes and grant economic aid to workers and the most vulnerable population in the country. | Photo: Legion Media
Published 14 July 2022

Opposition parties voted in favor of measures to give Brazilians access to government aid.

Brazil's Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday approved a plan proposed by President Jair Bolsonaro to increase public spending to an estimated $41.2 billion ($7.7 billion) three months before presidential elections.

With this project, taxes will be reduced, economic aid will be granted to workers, and the purchase of food for vulnerable people with little economic solvency will be increased.

Although the opposition parties to Bolsonaro, such as the PT, recognize the measure as a strategy of the president given his low probability of re-election to the high post, they voted in favor of the measures for Brazilians to access government aid.


Until the end of this year, the Bolsonaro government will apply free transportation for the elderly, and will raise the monthly aid to vulnerable families within the Auxilio Brasil program from 400 to 600 reais (from 75 to 112 dollars).

Meanwhile, the temporary bonus for self-employed truckers will be 1,000 reais (187 dollars) and taxes on ethanol will be reduced as a measure to support the taxi driver union.


The plan was approved with 469 votes in favor and 17 against to be applied as a "state of emergency", because the Electoral Law vetoes the possibility of creating new government plans in election years.

For former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Workers' Party (PT), the new measure demonstrates "the fear of the people's vote" that the current government possesses after an exhausting administration.

On July 8, the Statment Research Department published data with the intention to vote for the Brazilian presidential elections that "gives Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as the favorite" with support "between 39% and 45% of those surveyed".

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/congreso ... -0004.html

Bolsonaro renews attacks on Brazil's electoral system

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The president suggested the use of the Armed Forces to prevent alleged problems in the electronic ballot boxes to be used in the October presidential elections. | Photo: The Universe
Published 19 July 2022

Bolsonaro's continued attacks on the upcoming elections indicate that he may refuse to accept a hypothetical victory by Lula da Silva.

President Jair Bolsonaro resumed his attacks on the Brazilian electoral system on Monday, describing it as completely vulnerable before 40 foreign diplomats gathered in the presidential residence, the Alvorada Palace.

With the justification of correcting flaws, the Brazilian president expressed that his questions are aimed at "solving the problem" in time "with the participation of the Armed Forces."

The president alluded to the investigation opened by the Federal Police (PF) in 2018 to detect attacks on the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) systems and stated that a hacker had access to the entire system during the elections that he himself won.

Bolsonaro summoned the ambassadors in Brazil and repeated his criticism of the electronic voting system, in addition to attacking the Superior Electoral Court for not accepting "suggestions" from the Armed Forces that consist of an audit of the process and even a parallel printed vote.

– Nacho Lemus (@LemusteleSUR) July 19, 2022
The person in charge of the investigation, Victor Neves Feitosa Campos, stressed that no indications were found that a hacker manipulated the votes, gave way to fraud or sabotaged the integrity of the ballot boxes.

Jair Bolsonaro attacked ministers of the ISE and the Federal Supreme Court (STF) such as Edson Fachin and Luís Roberto Barroso, respectively, alleging that they are planning a coup to position Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Edson Fachin responded that "the electoral denialism of an important public figure in a democratic country is unacceptable. The accusation of fraud, of bad faith with an institution once again without presenting evidence is very serious."

A second irony: Bolsonaro assures that it is not necessary for the international observers invited by the Superior Electoral Court to come to Brazil since he is already denouncing alleged irregularities in the electoral system.

– Nacho Lemus (@LemusteleSUR) July 19, 2022
Jair Bolsonaro also requested that the electronic electoral vote be accompanied by a parallel printed vote, which was rejected by the TSE.

In response to Bolsonaro's accusations, Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco reaffirmed that "the security of electronic ballot boxes" and "the integrity of the electoral process can no longer be questioned."

Today Bolsonaro made it official before the world that he will attempt a coup, he did it in advance like Trump.

Tonight in Brazil more than one will go to sleep thinking about what will be necessary for a possible victory of Lula in October to be respected.

– Nacho Lemus (@LemusteleSUR) July 19, 2022
The president's continued attacks on the elections to be held in October of this year suggest that he will probably refuse to accept defeat and try to stay in power by other means.

The statement in question is an attempt by the current president to sabotage the upcoming elections which, according to preliminary counts, have Lula as the favorite.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/bolsonar ... -0006.html

Google Translator

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

With Re-Election Hopes Bleak, Bolsonaro Bets On Privatising Petrobras
By BRASILWIRE
May 11, 2022

With his re-election looking unlikely, Jair Bolsonaro now tries to unify international capital and supporters of the 2016 coup around his candidacy with a final throw of the dice: a fast-track privatisation of Petrobras and delivery of Brazil’s massive oil wealth to the foreign corporations which originally backed his presidency. Bolsonaro’s new Mines and Energy Minister Adolfo Sachsida says privatisation is his priority, as Lula vows to halt any sell-off after the election.

Incoming Minister of Mines and Energy, Adolfo Sachsida has announced that he will work towards the privatisation of both state controlled oil and gas company Petrobras and Pre-Sal Petróleo SA, the entity responsible for managing the Brazil’s pre-sal (subsalt) exploration contracts.

The first of Brazil’s pre-sal offshore oil deposits were discovered by the state oil company in 2006 during Lula’s first presidential term and were once called Brazil’s “passport to the future”, earmarked by Dilma Rousseff for investment in public education and health. The discoveries doubled Brazil’s proven oil reserves, with the company developing its own proprietary deep drilling technology to make the oil’s extraction cost effective.

Since the pre-sal’s discovery, the destiny of Petrobras has been interwoven with Brazil’s democratic collapse, and the United States‘s role in it. One of the first acts of the interim government of Michel Temer following Rousseff’s removal in 2016 was to break the so called “pre-sal law” which was designed to protect the sovereignty of the pre-sal by guaranteeing Petrobras involvement in all exploitation of the oil and gas fields. Following the discovery, the Bush administration drew Brazilian anger by re-inaugurating its fourth fleet, its first specific Naval force to cover the South Atlantic since the 1940s. In 2008 Lula himself warned that the fleet could be a signal that the United States covets Brazil’s new oil wealth. Two years later leaked cables showed that breaking the pre-sal law was a long term objective of the US State Department, working in tandem with international petroleum interests, as represented by lobby Council of the Americas – home to Chevron and ExxonMobil. The strategy was to secure partners in Brazil’s senate who would support US objectives. Petrobras and the Ministry of Mines and Energy were the principal targets of US National Security Agency spying on Brazil exposed in 2013, and the oil giant was then primary target of US-Brazil anticorruption operation Lava Jato. Lava Jato worked to bring down Dilma Rousseff, and jailed 2018 election frontrunner Lula, opening the door to the Bolsonaro presidency. Petrobras has been severely damaged and asset stripped since the now disgraced operation began in 2014. In addition US funded groups campaigning for the removal of Dilma Rousseff made privatising Petrobras – ostensibly to “stop corruption” – a centrepiece of their platform.

Fast-track privatisation

Minister of the Economy Paulo Guedes right-hand man, and apparent admirer of deceased Richmond, Virginia-based far right philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, Sachsida worked on the economic programme for Bolsonaro’s 2018 campaign, which came with the blessing of international capital.

Sachsida has recently attacked Brazil’s biggest trading partner, China, as “shit”, and stated that Chilean fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet, who implemented one of the most radical ultraliberal economic programmes in history, was “on the left”. Sachsida has also said that “women are more efficient outside the market”.

Upon his appointment the minister announced that the final privatisation of Petrobras, one of Brazil’s economic engines and a symbol of its sovereignty, created by then president Getulio Vargas in the 1950s, will be his first act as minister. He vowed to set studies in motion immediately on how to achieve full privatisation of the state controlled mixed capital company as quickly as possible.

“My first act as a minister will be to ask [Economy] Minister Paulo Guedes, chairman of the PPI [Investment Partnerships Program] Council, to take to the council the inclusion of PPSA in the PND [National Privatisation Program] to evaluate the alternatives for its privatisation,” said Sachsida.

“As part of my first act, I will also request the beginning of studies aimed at proposing the legislative changes necessary for the privatisation of Petrobras”, he added.

Brazil’s oil is arguably the biggest strategic asset the country has, especially given increasing uncertainty over world supply from Russia. A day before Sachsida’s announcement Reuters reported that the United States had asked Brazil in March to increase its crude oil output to curb soaring prices amid international sanctions against Russia, but Brazil refused.

“We are … doing everything possible with our allies and partners to mitigate the economic impacts of Russian actions on other economies like Brazil,” a State Department spokesperson told Reuters. “We are working with energy companies to surge their capacity to supply energy to the market, particularly as prices increase.”

Yet Petrobras denied any meeting with the State Department. “It did not respond to a request for comment when asked if it had been contacted by any other U.S. government agency.” Reuters clarified.

Three weeks prior to Sachsida’s announcement, a US delegation led by Under Secretary of State for political affairs Victoria Nuland, visited Brazil for “High-level dialogue” with the Bolsonaro government. Also present on the delegation were Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jose Fernández, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Ricardo Zúniga, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Mark Wells, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Transformation Anna Shpitsberg.

It is unclear if Petrobras privatisation was on the agenda.

On his first day as Minister of Mines and Energy, Sachsida, proposed that Brazil “move away” from its key BRICS partners China and Russia, and closer to “friendly democracies”, and that one of his goals was to promote a “global realignment of investments”. China is currently Brazil’s largest trading partner and Russia is also important since it is the origin of most fertilizer needed for Brazilian agribusiness.

Image
Adolfo Sachsida

Adolfo Sachsida also indicated that he intends to privatise state energy firm Eletrobrás. A project that has already been widely condemned, even denounced by former President Lula in recent speeches as treasonous.

In his speech to launch the “Vamos Juntos pelo Brasil” coalition behind his presidential candidacy, Lula remarked: “Eletrobras was built over decades, with the sweat and intelligence of generations of Brazilians. But the current government does everything to sell it off it at a bargain price. The result of this crime against the homeland would be the loss of our energy sovereignty. Defending our sovereignty is also defending Eletrobrás from those who want Brazil to be eternally submissive”.

Journalist Leonardo Attuch, editor of Brasil 247, said that the privatisation of state-owned companies is “Bolsonaro’s last gambit to unify capital and all the coup plotters of 2016 around his candidacy.”

At a rally in Juiz de Fora on the day of Sachsida’s announcement as Minister of Mines and Energy, Lula denounced the privatisation of Brazilian public companies: “I want to take advantage of the humanism that reigns in this room, the democratic warmth in this room, and say to the government and to businessmen: stop privatising public companies”.

In a signal that an incoming Workers Party-led government intends to reverse such privatisations, Lula insisted “Whoever tries to buy Petrobras will have to talk to us after the election. Stop trying to privatise Eletrobras. Stop privatising Correios, Banco do Brasil, Caixa Econômica, BNDES, BnB. Learn to work, invest and make economic policy instead of selling things that are already made”.

Lula is maintaining a double figure lead over Bolsonaro in polls for the October election, whose pre-campaign has begun under a shadow of an antidemocratic threat from the far right president and his military backers.

https://www.brasilwire.com/with-re-elec ... petrobras/

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

Thousands paid homage to Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips in São Paulo
Thousands of people attended a tribute to the Indigenous rights activist and journalist held on July 16 in downtown São Paulo

July 18, 2022 by Brasil de Fato

Image
Beatriz Matos (left), widow of Bruno Pereira, and Alessandra Sampaio (right), widow of Don Phillips were present at the event (Photo: Roberto Parizotti)

Indigenous rights defender Bruno Pereira and English journalist Dom Phillips were honored on Saturday, July 16 in an multi-faith ceremony carried out at the Sé Cathedral of the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Bruno, an Indigenous rights leader and Dom, a journalist, were killed on June 5 while they were on an expedition in the region close to the Vale do Javari Indigenous territories in the western Amazon. Three suspects have been arrested, and the police are still investigating possible links between drug trafficking and environmental crimes in the region.

Thousands of people, including Indigenous leaders, Beatriz Matos, Bruno Pereira’s widow, and Alessandra Sampaio, Dom Phillips’ widow participated in the act in the center of São Paulo. Musicians Chico César and Daniela Mercury also were in attendance.

The event was attended by people of all faiths including Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, Pentecostals, Jews, Muslims, Bahá’ís, Buddhists, Kardecists, people observing traditional religions of African descent, and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Dom Pedro Luiz Stringhini, bishop of Mogi da Cruzes, represented the Catholic Church. The Ialorixá Omi Lade spoke on behalf of religions of African origin.

The ceremony also paid tribute to Dom Claudio Hummes, archbishop emeritus of São Paulo, who died on July 4. Hummes was known for his defense of Indigenous peoples and for opening the doors of the church to militants persecuted by the forces of the Brazilian military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985.

Alessandra Sampaio spoke at the action. “First of all I would like to express my true gratitude for the Indigenous and traditional communities of this country,” she said. “Who keep our forests standing.”

Beatriz Matos also dedicated a good part of her speech to honor and thank the Indigenous communities “for all the strength they have”. She ended her speech by demanding that “people so dedicated to fighting to better our lives” should no longer be allowed to “meet this tragic end”.

Taking the stage, singer Daniela Mercury asked Alessandra Sampaio and Beatriz Matos to join in as well. “I’m now going to do a song suggested by the two of them that Bruno and Dom really liked.” The three sang Mercury’s “O Canto da Cidade”.

Image
Hand in hand, from left to right: Beatriz Matos, Daniela Mercury, Alessandra Sampaio and Ialorixá Omi Lade / Roberto Parizotti

“My song today is for the Indigenous peoples. We are here because of all that has already been said in this tribute. Our responsibility is to end this cycle of violence in Brazil. Democracy needs all the Brazilian people,” said the artist before she started singing.

Chico César, who went on stage earlier, dedicated his performance. “for Bruno and Dom, for Alessandra and Beatriz.”

Image
Chico César sang two songs in his performance / Photo: Roberto Parizotti

The event was organized by the Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns Inter-religious Front for Justice and Peace, in partnership with the Justice and Peace Commission of São Paulo, the Arns Commission for Human Rights, the Vladimir Herzog Institute, and the São Paulo section of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB).

Murder in the Amazon
Last week in Tabatinga, the Federal Police (PF) arrested the man known as “Colombia”, suspected of involvement in the deaths of Bruno and Dom. While he is yet to be officially identified, local Indigenous leaders believe him to be a possible suspect for the murders of the Indigenous rights defender and the British journalist. The PF have not publicly confirmed the man’s guilt.

Since the disappearance of Bruno and Dom, Indigenous people familiar with the illegal activities in the region have said that Colombia is one of the main financiers of illegal hunting and fishing in the Javari Valley. According to them, the deaths were a reprisal for the financial loss caused by Pereira, who mapped the illegal activities and reported them to the authorities.

The superintendent of the investigative body in the state of Amazonas, Alexandre Fontes, said that the man denies having involvement with illegal fishing and the murders, but admitted to maintaining legitimate business related to fishing with Amarildo da Costa Oliveira, also know as the “Pelado”, who was arrested on suspicion of having shot the victims.

Brasil de Fato was unable to locate the lawyer of “Colombia”.

This article was originally published in Brasil de Fato.[/i]

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/07/18/ ... sao-paulo/

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

Machete’s Edge: The Internationalism of the Landless
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 18, 2022
João Pedro Stedile

Image

Landless, but with a lot of history, the peasants of Brazil’s MST have been practicing internationalism as a principle since 1984. As in their own flag, the machete overflows the borders and traces the itinerary of new possible maps.

For the Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil (MST), the dialectic between nationalism and internationalism occurred in a peculiar way: we acknowledged receipt of the influences of internationalism, of the historical experiences of the working class and peasants of the world, just when we were just beginning to stammer out the construction of our organization. We already had experience in the struggle for land, but it took us two or three years to form ourselves as a movement, to build a program, to elaborate a doctrine, and above all to build the organizational principles that govern us to this day.

By studying these principles, by taking a look at the organizations that preceded us, whether in Brazil or internationally, we realized that internationalism should not be one activity among many, but a guiding principle. Just as we doctrinally incorporated collective leadership, planning, study and permanent training, we also incorporated the principle of internationalism.

Our generation, which began its struggles between the late 1970s and early 1980s, was marked by the great epics of internationalism such as the Vietnam War. Some even argue that it was the internationalism practiced first in the United States and then around the world that decided the fate of the conflict against U.S. interests. Also, of course, the Sandinista Revolution, which had a tremendous impact in Brazil. Who made it known here was in fact the Catholic Church itself, in particular the sector linked to Liberation Theology, which was not only part of our struggles for land, but also participated at that time in the construction of the Workers’ Party and in the Basic Ecclesial Communities, the so-called CEBs. The events in Nicaragua had a great political-ideological influence and soon the Brazilian left organized brigades to go and participate in the coffee harvest.

Although somewhat more distant in time, a very vivid memory of the Spanish Civil War was preserved in Brazil, since a brigade of more than fifty combatants – some with military training, others without – had left from here, an epic organized by the then Brazilian Communist Party from the underground. Among them was Apolônio de Carvalho, the most internationalist of all our compatriots.

From 1979 to 1985 there were six years of land occupations, of the resumption of peasant struggles in Brazil, even in the difficult context of the military dictatorship. But we were not yet aware of the need for a national movement: when we wanted to build it we dedicated ourselves to study, particularly the peasant experiences that preceded us, not only in our country, but also in Latin America and the Caribbean, where there was a much greater experience, such as Cuba, for example. We were deeply shocked when Fidel sent a plane to pick up numerous leaders of the peasant movements in northeastern Brazil so that they could learn firsthand about the Cuban experience. The fact was very funny because nobody had any idea where the island was: they were poor peasants, sugarcane workers, from the state of Pernambuco most of them, took a plane for the first time in their lives to go and get to know a revolutionary process.

There was also an internationalist germ in our Peasant Leagues, which were very active in solidarity with Cuba. Here the Communist Party, the main left-wing force at that time, had its eyes fixed on Moscow and looked at the Cuban Revolution with distrust, branding it as the work of adventurers, of guerrillas without a party or program.

In Brazil, peasant struggles arose after the Second World War, while in Latin America and the Caribbean they are four or five hundred years old; even older, because before European colonization there was already a peasantry here: their historical experience is much more vast than ours. Our will was to learn with them. From the Ligas Campesinas of northern Argentina, from the Rondas Campesinas of Peru, from the Bolivian experience with the peasant-indigenous marches: if we are marching today it is because we learned from the Bolivians, capable of walking dozens of kilometers a day. We also learned a lot from the Ecuadorian movements, from their great tradition, and not to mention Mexico: I studied there when I was young, and I was able to get involved in the land seizures of the Mexican peasantry and in their enormous mobilizations towards Mexico City.

A peasant internationalism

We drank from all this broth of internationalism, in a process that led to the founding congress of the MST in 1985, held in Curitiba, capital of the state of Paraná. Symptomatically, although we did not even know where we were going to end up, we counted there with the presence of delegates from peasant movements from sixteen countries. This was already a mark of origin. This generated a lot of commotion in the press; we were just coming out of the dictatorship and some crazy peasants were meeting with their peers from all over the continent. For example, there was Hugo Blanco, the historic leader of the Peruvian peasants.

From then on we tried to participate in all the ongoing international articulations, at Latin American and international level. Towards the end of the 80s, for example, we were invited as observers to a congress in Prague of the UISTAAC, a peasant and rural articulation linked to the World Federation of Trade Unions. The congress was otherwise very boring, following that orthodox Soviet pattern. They were four whole days of “speech championship” where no conclusion or plan was reached.

But in the evenings the Latin American delegations rebelled. We concluded that that method was totally unproductive and that it was not internationalism. We were grateful for the ticket, the hotel, the food, the space that allowed us to get to know each other, and we began to conspire. We decided that we had to set up our own articulation, of the peasants, with other methods, with young leaders, with a real internationalism, not one of acronyms and bureaucracies. There were people from the ATC of Nicaragua, from the FENOC of Ecuador, people from Mexico, the MST and the CUT Rural of Brazil, etcetera.

When we returned, we decided to organize our own event, which was not so easy in times when there was no internet or digital communication. We agreed that at least every national congress of our organizations would have international invitations, in order to continue accumulating forces as a whole. In 1992, the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, the first of its kind organized by the United Nations to deal with the environmental issue. It was there that Fidel Castro delivered his famous speech.

In that context we invited all the peasant organizations and held a parallel assembly -since the summit was only for presidents-. It was there that we decided to launch the Latin American Coordinating Committee of Rural Organizations, the CLOC, and we set 1994 as the date for its founding congress. The venue would be Peru, and there a real articulation of peasants from all over our continent would be born.

From the 500 Years Campaign to the CLOC

In 1991 we organized a meeting in Guatemala, in view of the upcoming anniversary of the 500th anniversary of the Conquest of America. There the “Continental Campaign 500 Years of Indigenous, Black and Popular Resistance” was born, which brought together all the forces: peasants, workers, indigenous, blacks, and even sectors of the Church. The decision was then taken not to participate in the official programmed events, especially in “Spanish America” and Europe. We decided to break with all those things and dedicate ourselves to our own. The other big decision was to support the candidacy of the indigenous Mayan Quiché Rigoberta Menchú for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was then the symbol of the peasant-indigenous struggle in Guatemala, and of a civil war that had cost more than fifty thousand dead. Her own mother and other members of her family had been killed by death squads, and her father and cousin were two of the victims murdered with white phosphorus by the National Police in the Spanish Embassy massacre in Guatemala City.

Rigoberta was invited to speak at that 1991 meeting. To provide security cover for the event – Guatemala was still under dictatorship – the First Lady of France, Mrs. Danielle Mitterrand, was invited: she kept her promise and showed up without any official diplomatic agreement, just guarded by a few bodyguards. On her return to Europe, she was one of the people who contributed to raising the profile of Rigoberta’s candidacy, who was finally awarded the prize. The articulation of the campaign was to last until the year 2000. It was then that Brazil would be celebrating its 500th anniversary since Portuguese colonization. But the campaign did not progress and died out in 1994.

However, we met many people, and that was the seed from which multiple articulations were born. Then the protagonism was taken over by the Cubans, who began to promote a series of hemispheric conferences against the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) promoted by the United States since its launch by Bill Clinton in 1995. The Havana conferences were animated by Fidel Castro. The great novelty, to everyone’s enthusiasm, was that the Cuban Communist Party, still going beyond its own tradition – very much marked by the experience of the Communist Internationals – was promoting a popular type of articulation, which transcended the parties or the States. There were even people from organizations in Canada, because the FTAA was a continental “free trade” project.

Meanwhile, we peasant movements continued our specific articulation and held our first congress in February 1994 in Peru. It should be remembered that the Europeans had long had their own organization, called the European Peasant Coordination (CPE, for its French acronym). In 1995, a Dutch foundation invited the CPE and our coordinator to a conference whose objective was to set itself up as the representative of the peasantry and co-opt it with financing projects, a strategy behind which was the Dutch government. Again there was a rebellion: representatives of the CLOC and European delegates such as Paul Nicholson rejected the attempt, deciding to convene what is today La Via Campesina International, a generic name under which we identify ourselves, beyond language or country, in the defense of our own autonomous project of the peasants of the world. The first world conference was scheduled for April 1996, and was to take place in Mexico, since the Mexican peasantry enjoyed great prestige and representativeness.

But in the midst of that founding congress, the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre took place, in which nineteen landless peasants were murdered in the south of the state of Pará, Brazil. This created a very strong pact among the five or six hundred delegates present, not counting the hosts. Not only was La Via Campesina born, but also April 17 was established as the International Day of Peasant Struggle.

From the Bolivarian Alliance to the International Peoples’ Assembly

There is a common thread that runs from the 500 Years Campaign, through the “No to the FTAA” campaign and then feeds into what today is the Articulation of Social Movements towards ALBA. It was around that time that several comrades held a historic meeting with Hugo Chávez in Barquisimeto, where this metamorphosis from the rejection of the FTAA to the construction of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) began to take shape.

In his generosity, Chavez wanted to contemplate our articulation of popular movements within the formal organization chart of ALBA, so that they would have more protagonism, on an equal footing with the governments. In fact, the original proposal included three councils: one of presidents, one of ministers and one of leaders of popular movements. But after a year we realized that this was unfeasible. Nicolás Maduro, who was Foreign Minister at the time, helped us to see the problems that this would bring: What would happen if movements of the articulation started forceful actions against governments that ALBA wanted to incorporate into its alliance? This could generate tensions, especially where the movements are very dependent on state and governmental structures. We decided to learn from the mistakes of the past and not to compromise that autonomy to fight. This gave rise to ALBA-TCP as a state and commercial articulation, while the popular organizations formed ALBA Movimientos: it was a sort of necessary divorce, mutually beneficial.

Furthermore, Chávez wanted to conform a fifth International. But in those conversations we insisted that different sectors, the communist parties, the Third International, the Trotskyists, the Stalinists, everyone would revolt. Finally Chavez was convinced to drop the name and the movements continued the talks to create what today is the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA). This was born from the confluence of many rivers and the collective wisdom of building a map. Until then we had a complete x-ray of the Americas and a good part of Europe, but it was still very closed: unions meeting unions, parties meeting parties, young people meeting young people, and so on.

The same came from the relations of La Via Campesina, from its international secretariat, which knew many organizations and had many contacts. There was also, as a platform, a personal knowledge of the leaders, which has a great influence; you have to have a personal trust, to know if the other leader is representative of his bases, if he is not a charlatan, if he is serious. It was never about articulation of letterheads, of acronyms. It was necessary to build a common identity: the platform is important, but it is not enough by itself.

The other path was the experience of the World Social Forum (WSF). Among the eight organizations that promoted it were the MST, the Central Única de Trabajadores de Brasil, the NGOs, the Europeans, etc. We promoted a world assembly of the World Social Forum (WSF). We promoted a world assembly of popular movements and launched the call within the Forum, but it did not take off because many people were not militants, they had an NGO logic, and because the assemblies, without delegation criteria or a defined agenda, turned out to be somewhat anarchic, especially after 2009. Nevertheless, the WSF was an important precedent that broadened our map and established certain political trust. Also important were the conferences on the Dilemmas of Humanity, organized as a space for sharing visions and strategic proposals for the future.

The paths that converged in the IPA were multiple, and through them we forged alliances that led us to Asia and especially to regions of Africa of which we knew almost nothing, except in the case of some Portuguese-speaking countries. Throughout this process, a political identity, a programmatic unity and, above all, a human trust was forged.

A matter of principle

Peasants are equal all over the world, and so are workers. Didn’t the Communist Manifesto already say that we should unite? Internationalism is not for us charity, nor is it propaganda. It is a principle, and all the practical actions of the MST are framed in it. Thus emerged the campaigns of solidarity with what are perhaps the two most resistant peoples in the world: the Cuban and the Palestinian. Then came the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and we tried to practice with these countries a two-way internationalism, of giving and receiving, of learning and teaching. We then inserted these concerns in our publications, in the training of our militants and in the creation of an International Relations Collective that could give organicity to these ideas.

In general, in the leftist tradition, a guy who spent his whole life flying from one country to another was appointed secretary of international relations. I remember a leader whose passport only lasted a year, because at that time he filled all its pages with stamps. Only he was an “internationalist”. From those mistakes we learned and promoted the strict division of tasks, the rotation of militants and leaders in international tasks, gender parity, and generational diversity: without delay and without excuses. All this nourishes the movement with the practice and experience of internationalism, and not just two or three chosen ones.

We also gave an international character to the Florestan Fernandes National School (ENFF). We have always said that the MST is only its guardian, who holds the key. But the programs, the students, the teachers, everything is the patrimony of the international working class. The ENFF followed the same path: at the beginning only peasants came and other articulations and numerous countries joined, in courses in Spanish, Portuguese, English and, before the pandemic, with an international course in French for the training of trainers.

Then the experiences of the international brigades also arose, something that of course was not our invention. We only took up a historical experience and multiplied it at the request of various countries and organizations. We always try to remind the militants we prepare for these experiences that they should open their eyes and ears, that they are not going to teach anything but to learn a lot. Besides the fact that the physical presence and the development of tasks is already a demonstration of concrete solidarity, the brigades are an intensive course of formation of cadres. Anyone who spends years in Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, South Africa or Zambia will never be the same again. They will now have the experience of another language, another culture, a more pluralistic vision of reality. On his return, he will be more committed, more flexible, more reflective, and less sectarian.

We even had a brigade in East Timor, a country on the other side of the world that few could point out on the map, sharing an adult literacy methodology. We could also mention the experience of our publisher Expressão Popular, which has always had a collection of international issues. And how could

we not mention the Cuban experience of the Latin American School of Medicine and Operation Miracle, encouraging legacies of Fidel Castro that have always illuminated the way.

The important thing is that in all these processes, which are already part of the long history of internationalism, we always maintained the political will to meet, to weave alliances, to practice a concrete, fraternal, supportive, militant internationalism, without illuminations or sectarianism. Our motto has always been to play, not to be afraid to create and, above all, never to stop conspiring.

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This text is a preview of the book Internacionalistas, coordinated by Gonzalo Armúa and Lautaro Rivara and published in 2022 by Batalla de Ideas and the Tricontinental Institute of Social Research.

João Pedro Stedile is a member of the national leadership of the largest social movement in Latin America – The Landless Workers Movement, MST

Translation by Resumen Latinoamericano


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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Wed Jul 20, 2022 2:05 pm

Bolsonaro “Announces Coup” To Foreign Ambassadors
By BRASILWIRE July 19, 2022

Jair Bolsonaro has been accused of “announcing the coup” to summoned foreign Ambassadors. The extraordinary meeting at Alvorada palace was reportedly convened at the request of the Military core in his government, which is increasingly seen as the genuine power running Brazil, is demanding the right to run its own parallel vote count, and has been a central actor in the breakdown of Brazil’s democracy since the 2014 election. The attacks on Brazil’s electoral process amount to a third phase of the coup which was initiated with the removal of president Dilma Rousseff in 2016.

Bolsonaro told Ambassadors that, if electoral legislation was not changed, he was powerless to prevent the consequences, and that the October election, in which he trails former president Lula by up to 20%, may not go ahead.

According to Political scientist Luiz Eduardo Soares the far right president should be deposed and arrested for his latest public remarks. Others say that they leave him ineligible for the presidency.

By Ivan Longo for Revista Forum

Anthropologist and political scientist Luiz Eduardo Soares, in a text which viralised on social media this Monday (18), considers that the meeting of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) with foreign ambassadors constitutes an announcement of a coup to the world.

In the presentation to diplomatic representatives, the president repeated conspiracy theories, already debunked, about fraud at the polls, attacked ministers of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) and Superior Electoral Court (TSE), and made putschist statements regarding threats to the holding of elections this year.

“The coup was officially announced today and to the world. The situation has never been so serious. In the US, Trump announced in advance that he would not accept the election result (if he lost). Bolsonaro has just declared that if the electoral legislation in force is maintained, there will be no elections. He spoke in the first person plural, referring to the Armed Forces. This declaration of war against the TSE and the Law, the Constitution, took place inside the Palace, with official transmission live, in front of the summoned Ambassadors”, wrote Soares.

According to the anthropologist, “Bolsonaro should be deposed and arrested.” “This is not going to happen, which demonstrates that we no longer live under the democratic rule of law. If society were mobilized and fully aware of what is happening, tomorrow there would be a general strike and millions of people would take to the streets across the country. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.”

“So all we can do is mobilize what we can, bring together the opposition and civil society organizations. All of them. The universities must stop. Anyone who can stop, must stop. Now. Not one more step back or the triumph of the coup, already imminent, will be certain and irreversible”, he concludes.

Opposition reaction

Opposition to the Bolsonaro government in Congress will file an action against the president on account of lies spread about the Brazilian electoral system in the meeting with foreign ambassadors.

Senator Randolfe Rodrigues (Rede-AP) is one of the parliamentarians who announced the action against Bolsonaro. A coordinator of Lula’s pre-campaign (PT) for the presidency, Randolfe announced that he will appeal to the TSE, pointing out irregular electoral propaganda by Bolsonaro and requesting the condemnation of the PL, the president’s party, so that an erratum is made to deny “the terms of the statements by their candidate on public TV”.

“Furthermore, we are going to ask for the PL’s Condemnation to waste the time of its electoral propaganda equivalent to that spent by the pre-candidate in spreading attacks and untrue information about electronic voting machines! Enough of letting Bolsonaro mess up our democracy!” wrote the senator.

Minority leader in the Chamber of Deputies, Alencar Santana Braga (PT-SP), in turn, announced that opposition parties will denounce Bolsonaro to the Supreme Court for discrediting the electoral system and also using public TV to spread lies about it.

Bolsonaro ineligible?

By using TV Brasil, a public broadcaster, to disseminate false information about the Brazilian electoral system, during the meeting with foreign ambassadors, Bolsonaro commited an electoral crime and may be impeached if reelected, or even become ineligible to run.

This assessment comes from Renato Ribeiro de Almeida, a lawyer specializing in electoral law. To Fórum, Almeida explained that Bolsonaro’s attitude in questioning the reliability of electronic voting machines, attacking STF and TSE ministers and his main opponent, former president Lula (PT), in a meeting with ambassadors broadcast by a media outlet social media, is similar to the case of former state deputy Fernando Francischini, who had his mandate revoked for spreading the same types of lies through social networks.

“There is a possibility [in Bolsonaro’s meeting with ambassadors broadcast on TV Brasil] of abuse of the media. through social networks”, says the lawyer.

According to Almeida, there is an “aggravating factor” in Bolsonaro’s case because “it is a public TV, therefore public resources, which were used to spread lies, attacks on opponents, especially Lula, the electoral system, ministers, promoting, especially in the face of ambassadors, fake news and promoting disorder in the country”.

“We have a situation that, as unusual as it may be, can have consequences, including cancellation of an eventual second term and also ineligibility
for 8 years”.



https://www.brasilwire.com/bolsonaro-an ... bassadors/

Lula Mocks “Humiliating” Bolsonaro Request For Biden’s Electoral Help
By BRASILWIRE June 14, 2022

Presidential pre-candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has mocked the request made by Jair Bolsonaro to the President of the United States, Joe Biden, to help him defeat the Workers Party candidate at the forthcoming elections, to be held on October 2.

Bolsonaro reportedly warned Biden that Lula is a “threat to US interests”.

“[Bolsonaro] went there to ask Biden to help him not let me win the elections? Is it true? I saw it in the American press.” Lula said in an interview with Radio Vitoriosa, from Uberlândia (MG).

The former president repeated as similar comment on his social media accounts:

“Is it true what the American press said, that Bolsonaro asked Biden for help against me in the elections? I don’t believe this can be true, because it would be too humiliating.” – Lula, June 14 2022

According to information received anonymously by Bloomberg, Bolsonaro made the request during a private meeting with Biden on Thursday 9th June. The meeting took place during the Brazilian president’s trip to the US to participate in the Summit of the Americas, in Los Angeles.

Bolsonaro later denied the claim, and complained that the report “does not cite sources: ‘according to such a person’. What I said to Biden does not come from me or Carlos França. It is speculation”.

However, Brazilian journalist Jamil Chade confirmed with two sources in diplomatic circles that the request was indeed made by Bolsonaro to Biden. When contacted, both the Brazilian and American governments did not comment on the report. The request for help comes amid threats from Bolsonaro and his military dominated government that they will not recognise October’s result unless changes are made to the system.

Lula also asked Bolsonaro to come clean with what was discussed at the meeting with the US president.

“When you say that the conversation was extraordinary, fantastic, say what you talked about. Say what the agreement was”, Lula remarked, after deeming the Summit of the Americas a failure due to the widespread absences of Latin American leaders, such as Mexico’s Lopez Abrador. Bolsonaro was invited personally by Biden via special envoy in an attempt to rescue the summit’s credibility.

Lula leads all election polls, with recent aggregations putting him on 53% of valid votes, and on course for taking the presidency in the first round. Bolsonaro trails by up to 20%.

https://www.brasilwire.com/lula-bolsona ... miliation/

US Coup Specialist Victoria Nuland Visits Brazil
By NATHALIA URBAN May 1, 2022

With an election six months away which promises to be far from business as usual, the notorious US official Victoria Nuland’s arrival in Brazil has aroused understandable suspicion.

By Nathalia Urban

The US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, arrived in Brazil last week for a “Meeting with Young Entrepreneurs from Brazil” and “High-Level Brazil-United States of America Dialogue”.

In an official statement, the visit was called a “diplomatic mission” that aims to bring Brazil closer to US foreign policy.

The arrival of the coup specialist in the midst of Bolsonaro’s attacks on the Federal Supreme Court and the Electoral Court (TSE) may also mean that the pressure may be accompanied by promises of American support for Bolsonaro’s current coup intentions, despite public statements suggesting the opposite. For example Nuland has expressed confidence in Brazil’s electoral system.

Nuland became known in the recent history of US imperialism for being one of the main organizers of the 2014 coup d’etat in Ukraine that toppled President-elect Viktor Yanukovych. In a leaked conversation with then US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, she appears determining who should assume power after the coup. In the conversation, she indicates a name and the ambassador says that the European Union would not accept that nomination. Nuland’s response was: “Fuck the EU”.

Victoria has a worrying track record. In the Bill Clinton administration (1993-2001) she was chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, responsible for the affairs of the former Soviet Union. Under George Bush (2001-09), she worked with Dick Cheney and was an advisor during the Iraq War.

With that background, George W. Bush appointed her to the post of US ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels.

Nuland left the US administration with the victory of Republican Donald Trump, and from January 2018 she spent twelve months as CEO of think-tank the Center for a New American Security, which “performs groundbreaking research and analysis to shape and elevate the national security and foreign policy debate in Washington and beyond” and whose “dynamic research agenda is designed to shape the choices of leaders in the U.S. government, the private sector, and society to advance U.S. interests and strategy”. CNAS top donors include Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, U.S. Department of Defense, Secretary of the Air Force Concepts Development and Management (SAF/CDM), Office of Commercial and Economic Analysis (OCEA), U.S. National Intelligence Council, U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Charles Koch Institute, Democracy Fund, Luminate Foundation, Inc, Palantir Technologies, Facebook, Open Society Foundations, Airbus Group, The Boeing Company, Chevron Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Raytheon Company, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, United Kingdom Ministry of Defense, BAE Systems, BP America and Exxon Mobil Corporation.

With the election of Joe Biden, she reassumed her post as “expert on Eastern Europe”. She is currently the right-hand of Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State in the Biden administration.

Victoria Nuland has recently turned her attention to Latin America. In February she visited Colombia, meeting with all major candidates in the imminent Presidential election, conspicuously except for the frontrunner, leftist Gustavo Petro, of the Historic Pact coalition. Then just days after a the Biden administration issued a statement of intent to designate Colombia as “major non-NATO ally”, commander of the Army, General Eduardo Enrique Zapateiro launched a shocking attack on presidential favourite Petro.

On her Brazil visit, Nuland posted photos on social media of her meeting with “young entrepreneurs”. However, some Brazilians observed that none of the young people in the photos are known for working on the themes referred to by Nuland. There was also no mention of whether they are part of any university, NGO or organized group.

Russia, Ukraine and Brazil’s Energy Sector

While Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has not condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Victoria Nuland thanked Brazilian diplomats for voting with the United States at the United Nations Security Council.

“In a time when the world is in turmoil, the United States and Brazil need each other,” she told reporters, saying that Russia was “undermining the principles that the U.S. and Brazil stand for.”

Bolsonaro said that Brazil will “adopt a neutral stance” in relation to the invasion of Ukraine and justified his decision because the country is heavily dependent on Russian fertilizers and that the imposition of sanctions could “cause serious damage to agriculture in Brazil.”

The Brazil-USA meeting, which included the Undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment, José Fernández, aims to pressure Brazil to increase oil production and exports since European countries have not readily adopted sanctions, nor given up on Russian oil and gas, as the US desires. Russia exports 8 million barrels a day. Brazil currently exports 1 million.

The Brazilian Minister of Mines and Energy, Almirante Bento, an advocate of the privatization of Petrobrás (oil) and Eletrobrás (electricity), has already made clear the existence of an “orientation” by the White House for Brazil to radically increase its oil exports, especially to the European countries that are being pressured by the United States to reduce imports from Russia.

Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the frontrunner for the coming presidential elections, said that if he is elected, he will not allow the privatization of state-owned companies such as Petrobras, Eletrobras, Correios and Banco do Brasil.

At an event organized by the Homeless Workers Movement, in Santo André (SP), Lula stated that he wants to be elected because “we need to take back Petrobras, we need to not let Eletrobras, Correios, Banco do Brasil be privatized”. Eletrobras already has the authorization process for privatization ready, but it is stalled in Congress, which needs to approve it for the sale of shares to proceed.

OECD

On behalf of the US government, Fernandes stated their support for the inclusion of Brazil at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Jose Fernandez highlighted the importance of trade relations between the United States and Brazil, as well as the importance of the South American country aligning its actions with OECD values ​​and standards, which it claims will attract more investors, generate more direct and indirect jobs in various sectors.,and improve international trade relations, including with the North American country itself.

Brazil has been trying to get closer to the OECD since the 1990s and applied to be a candidate for the group in 2017 during the post-coup government of Michel Temer. The organization’s board formally began access discussions in January 2022. To be accepted into the group, the country needs to adapt to the organization’s standards, a process that takes time. Of the 245 instruments, Brazil has already adhered to almost half of them.

“We know that Brazil wants to join the OECD and we are supporters. We believe that joining the OECD makes the country more competitive, because it attracts more investment, it creates more jobs. And other countries, including the United States, see an OECD country as a better place to invest. We support Brazil joining the organization, but we know that it takes time to meet the required criteria”.

Brazil joining the OECD would force constitutional changes to economic policy that would negatively impact the economy. Brazil is currently a key partner of the OECD and thus has access to its bodies, participates in reviews on specific sectors, maintains high-level contacts, in addition to the prerogative to voluntarily adhere to instruments of interest. Full membership would withdraw economic protections and loss of advantages that are guaranteed to them by their status as a developing country, in addition to the abandonment of autonomy to define their policies and encourage deindustrialization.

The Workers’ Party (PT), whose candidate Lula da Silva is frontrunner for the coming presidential election, opposes Brazil’s entry into the OECD, saying that: We oppose this abandonment of our sovereignty and subordination to the interests of multinational companies and Northern governments.”

Despite leading polls, Lula was prevented running in the 2018 election due to his imprisonment by US-Brazil anticorruption operation Lava Jato, which enabled staunch US-ally Jair Bolsonaro to be elected. The charges against Lula have since been dropped and his prosecution judged to be politically biased by the Brazilian Supreme Court, and United Nations Human Rights committee.

https://www.brasilwire.com/us-coup-spec ... ts-brazil/

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

Gramsci in the Midst of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST): An Interview with MST Militante Neuri Rossetto
JULY 19, 2022

Dossier no. 54 (July 2022)

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Photograph by Mídia Ninja
The photographs featured in this dossier – edited by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research’s art department – are portraits of living culture expressed through the art, education, agricultural cultivation, popular communication, and mass mobilisations of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). Each photograph contains a portrait of those who struggled before us, who continue to feed our struggles today: Rosa Luxemburg on a banner, Carlos Marighella on a samba drum, Carolina Maria de Jesus on a flag, Zumbi dos Palmares on a wall, Frida Kahlo on a canvass, Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips on a stage, Che Guevara on a shed in the countryside, and, of course, Antonio Gramsci himself overlooking a mística in progress. The images, just as the text of the dossier, share the concrete experiences of a movement fed by Gramsci’s ideas as it sows the seeds for the creation of a new human being and the transformation of society.
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Photograph by Coletivo de Comunicação do MST no Norte do Paraná (‘Communication Collective of the MST in North Paraná’)

Introduction

Despite the persistent hegemony of capitalism and its ruling neoliberal ideology, various forms of resistance, social struggle, and proposals for an emancipated future continue to emerge. This is taking place in the face of economic, political, social, and environmental crises as well as a continuing lack of vision of how to overcome the health crisis. Our intellectuals must put their hearts and souls precisely into this orientation toward the future, one based on the possibility of change and hope for human emancipation, as we argued in Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research dossier no. 13, The New Intellectual. We must create innovative proposals on how to use our social wealth to resolve the immediate problems faced by humanity, such as hunger, poverty, disease, and climate catastrophes, and study and familiarise ourselves with the resistance and struggles that emerge in all corners of the world; such proposals, in a draft form, are available in dossier no. 48, A Plan to Save the Planet (developed with the Network of Research Institutes). We must also challenge ourselves to be creative in developing possibilities for cooperation, solidarity, and social and cultural enrichment among peoples.

The Italian communist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) was already aware of the role of new intellectuals who, in actively participating in political organisations, dedicated themselves to developing popular consciousness and creating space for popular struggles to thrive. It is in this context that we want to revisit the work of Gramsci and the relevance of his legacy for our struggles today, reinforcing the Battle of Ideas, and – as Fidel Castro and José Martí said – recognising that the struggles within the various cultural and intellectual institutions are as important as the struggles in the streets, which go hand in hand and feed off of one another. That is why it is important to bring to the fore contemporary social experiences that are inspired by this legacy and that dialogue with Gramsci’s ideas: so that we might build the seeds of hope for this new world in real life. We use hope not only in the sense of orientation toward the future, but also in the sense that Paulo Freire taught us, of ‘giving hope’ (esperançar). This means to lift oneself up, to pursue and take forward, to join with others to build new social forms. Faced with the current social reality, it is in the enactment of this phrase that humanity’s alternative path lies.

Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) – the largest militant, popular movement in Latin America – works to create this hope every day. The MST emerged at the start of the 1980s, rapidly transforming the peasant struggle into a tool to challenge authoritarianism in the midst of the military dictatorship which ruled Brazil at the time. Its actions, which go well beyond the struggle for land, include the pursuit of agrarian reform in order to democratise access to land and produce healthy foods as well as the fight for social justice. Today, approximately 500,000 households in the countryside are members of the MST. Some live on encampments (acampamentos) – land occupations in the throes of demanding access to fallow land – while other are live on settlements (assentamentos) – meaning that they have already won land ownership through struggle. These families continue to organise themselves in a participatory, democratic, and inclusive structure on local, regional, state, and national levels.

With this in mind, and in order to better understand the importance of Gramsci and his legacy for the construction of this popular movement, our dossier no. 54, Gramsci Amidst Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), features an interview with Neuri Rossetto, a member of the national coordination of MST. Rossetto made a point of highlighting, firstly, that he does not consider himself to be an expert in Gramsci’s thought; he is merely a militante – a cadre of the MST – and an admirer of Gramsci who aims to bring to popular movements some of the tremendous and invaluable contributions that this Italian thinker made to working-class revolutionary movements.

Reflecting on Gramsci’s legacy and its contemporary contributions, Rossetto believes that there are three main challenges ahead of us: to precisely identify the adversaries who impede efforts to address the dilemmas of humanity (such as agrarian reform), to establish an ongoing dialogue with the working class to build a political project for each country, and to strengthen the political and organisational capacity of the main forces who advance our struggles.

As the motto of L’Ordine Nuovo, a magazine led by Gramsci, Angelo Tasca, Palmiro Togliatti, and Umberto Terracini, put it in 1919: ‘Educate yourselves because we will need all your intelligence. Rouse yourselves because we will need all your enthusiasm. Organise yourselves because we will need all your strength’.

Renata Porto Bugni, the deputy director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, interviewed Rossetto in 2021. An earlier version of this dossier was published in Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power, a journal supported by Gramsci Lab. For this dossier, we are grateful to the partnership of GramsciLab and the Centro per la Riforma dello Stato (CRS), both of which are members of the Network of Research Institutes.

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Photograph by Mídia Ninja

How important was Gramsci’s legacy in shaping the MST’s struggle? Do you believe that Gramscian thought is still useful today for building social and political organisations to transform society?

For us in the MST, a mass social movement formed by rural workers who advance the struggle for agrarian reform in Brazil, Antonio Gramsci’s contribution is invaluable and extremely necessary for understanding the current moment and the complexity of bourgeois society. From a socialist perspective, overcoming the bourgeoisie requires an ever clearer and more contemporary understanding of bourgeois society’s functioning and reproduction. In addition, paths to political action for subaltern classes must be uncovered based on an understanding of bourgeois society’s own contradictions.

The MST has always been clear in its understanding that the success of the struggle for agrarian reform in Brazil will not only come from the strength and political actions of rural workers and peasants. Democratising ownership and access to arable land requires mobilising wider sections of society in defence of this idea and placing agrarian reform – and the question of the Brazilian agricultural development model as a whole – at the heart of a political-economic project that meets the needs and interests of the majority of the Brazilian people, not those of the capitalist class. In this sense, Gramsci’s contributions alert us to the daily struggle for hegemony and the pressing need for a societal project to be built around the centrality of workers’ struggles. This is the path we are trying to create.

With these objectives in mind, we have a triple challenge:

1.to identify and define the main enemies of agrarian reform, just as Gramsci did with the forces of fascism;
2.to establish a permanent dialogue with the working-class forces of civil society in order to build a consensus around a political project for the country; and
3.to raise the level of organisation and politicisation of our social base.

Consequently, we can cite three examples of how Gramsci’s vast and invaluable political-theoretical contributions are both relevant and critical for popular movements to shape themselves into protagonists in the class struggle today:

1.to understand how the state works, in the wider sense, as well as its attempts to gain control of the conflicts provoked by a society divided into classes;
2.to look to civil society, which offers potential for subaltern classes to open new and varied lines of struggle against the domination of a minority over the majority; and
3.to continuously challenge ourselves to be a political force, holding the Gramscian concept of hegemony as a reference point.


According to Gramsci, civil society is composed of what he calls private hegemonic apparatuses, which are institutions for legitimising power such as schools, the Church, trade unions, and the media, among others. How is the performance of civil society, faced with the government of Jair Bolsonaro in the midst of the pandemic, being evaluated? How is the movement interacting or dialoguing with these institutions on the frontline and strengthening civil society?

Unfortunately, society still remains inert in the face of the humanitarian tragedy sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerated by the genocidal policy of President Jair Bolsonaro’s government. There is an impression that society has normalised the thousands of deaths that occurred – and, on a smaller scale, still occur – every day because of the pandemic, though it should be noted that this immobility of the population precedes the pandemic period. Brazil is one of the most socially and economically unequal countries in the world. Thousands and thousands of poor people – especially among the Black population – are killed every year by police forces. The state’s public policies have become increasingly absent in the growing agglomerations of favelas in urban centres. So, social immobility in the face of the pandemic and of this genocidal government must be seen in this context: one which structurally makes martyrs of the poor.

However, there have been encouraging and growing signs that this social lethargy is starting to be overcome as social mobilisations take place in urban centres. As to our activities, the MST adopted ‘saving lives’ as its main objective in early 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began in Brazil. We have organised ourselves around that banner along four lines of struggle:

1.Taking precautions during the pandemic by: a) adopting the guidelines and preventive care measures recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) within our social base; b) demanding that the vaccine be a universal right for all people; c) calling on the Brazilian government to provide emergency economic aid so that the population would have the conditions to stay at home for the duration of the pandemic; d) defending and valuing public health through Brazil’s Unified Health System (SUS).
2.The solidarity brigades, which distribute food donated by rural settlements fighting for agrarian reform and, together with other progressive organisations in society, organise community kitchens to distribute at least one meal per day to the unhoused population in large urban centres. In the state of Pernambuco alone, more than 720 tonnes of food and 600,000 meals were distributed from 2020–2021. There has been no indication that agribusiness, which monopolises land, public funding, and technical assistance for agro-export production, has made any food donations to the poor. In some states, principally in Northeast Brazil, brigades were formed to visit, assist, distribute food, and provide care to poor families on the outskirts of cities.
3.The Fora Bolsonaro (‘Get Out, Bolsonaro’), a Genocidal Government! campaign: We have a militarised government that, since the beginning of the pandemic, has systematically positioned itself against science, against WHO guidelines and against access to vaccines, thereby becoming principally responsible for the more than 650,000 deaths caused by COVID-19 in the country. In 2021, the Saving Lives Campaign demanded the removal of the genocidal President of the Republic, Bolsonaro, from office and that he be held criminally responsible for the thousands of deaths that took place.
4.The tree planting campaign began months before the pandemic but has taken on even greater importance during this exceptional period, one which has prevented us from carrying out actions that involve large gatherings of people. Our goal is to plant 100 million trees around the country over 10 years, starting in early 2020. In the first two years of the plan alone, we managed to plant two million trees and build 100 units of the Popular Nurseries Network around the country. The objective is to make progress in environmental recovery and preservation within our communities.

It is common knowledge that irrational capitalist development threatens life and the planet because it promotes environmental destruction in pursuit of maximising profit rates. Thus, these four lines of struggle allow us, on a daily basis, to dialogue and promote political exchange with civil society as well as to oppose the prejudices dictated by the private apparatus of hegemony against rural workers and their struggles.

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Photograph by Wellington Lenon / MST-Paraná

During the pandemic, we have seen that health, economic, and political crises can create openings for popular protest and mobilisation to build an alternative hegemony. What is the movement’s analysis of these crises in the country, and what are the possible consequences and alternatives being created?

We are living in a structural crisis of capitalism that precedes the pandemic. Structural crises are periods of change in which new forms of capitalist accumulation emerge – unlike cyclical crises, which result from capitalist overproduction, or the final crisis, which is characterised by the collapse of capitalism. They are periods of great and profound change which generate political, economic, social, and environmental crises. These crises accelerate the concentration of income and wealth, consequently increasing social exclusion and poverty across all continents. To add to this, the insane and frenzied capitalist exploitation of natural resources causes environmental destruction that threatens life on the planet. In other words, capitalism is showing itself, socially, to be increasingly inhuman, unjust, and incapable of promoting an egalitarian, solidaristic, and democratic society.

We are living in a period of global instability, foreshadowing the changing of eras. These crises open up historic possibilities for the subaltern classes to challenge bourgeois society and to consolidate victories from the perspective of a socialist society.

The MST, along with the Via Campesina – a global movement of peasants, indigenous people, and migrant and rural workers – is already marching forward in a struggle that is vehemently anti-capitalist. They are doing this by insisting that natural resources must be excluded from the logic of the market and that they be controlled socially, and that food must cease to be a commodity and instead become a universal right. They wave the food sovereignty banner of all peoples. They defend seeds as humanity’s heritage and demand pesticide-free food production. These struggles, while emerging in opposition to capitalism, also represent, in an embryonic form, a new society, or a new hegemony.

In this scenario of global instability, there is also a dispute for world hegemony between the United States and China. Even though it maintains unquestionable military superiority, the US is in decline, while China is rising as a world power. We believe that historic breaches are opening up here as well for the emergence of a new world order. Through the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA), we are fighting for a world free of imperialist countries, free of wars and hunger, which promotes environmentally sustainable, socially just, egalitarian, and democratic economic development. We are fighting for a socialist humanity.

Consequently, the IPA is promoting its 3rd Seminar on the Dilemmas of Humanity – Dialogues between Civilisations with the aim of discussing post-pandemic emergency measures and defining struggles that point toward a post-capitalist world. The activities carried out will culminate in a large-scale internationalist event held on the African continent in 2023, where the peoples of all continents will be represented.

Lastly, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the failure of neoliberal policies worldwide, in particular in the area of health, with the glaring inability of commercial medicine to cope with a pandemic. Meanwhile, governments that adopted policies in defence of life and instituted emergency economic measures to ensure decent living conditions for their people not only had greater success in confronting the pandemic, but they are also emerging faster and stronger from the economic crisis generated by COVID-19. The pandemic, at an immeasurable cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, gave us the possibility to strengthen our struggle in defence of public policies on health, housing, basic sanitation, education, gender rights, caring for nature, and so on – in short, of public policies that promote human dignity.

To synthesise, the structural crisis of capitalism and the global crisis generated by the pandemic have opened up historic possibilities both for struggles that meet immediate emergency demands and for those that reclaim socialist utopia as an ideal of future society. Time will tell how much the subaltern classes have been able to take advantage of the breaches that are opening up today in the history of humanity.

Gramsci stresses the important task that political parties have in modern society, namely to create the grounds for intellectual and moral reform so that a new national-popular collective will can be developed. Has the MST taken on this role in Brazil?

The MST is a popular movement composed of rural workers and peasants whose immediate agenda is the struggle for agrarian reform in Brazil and to guarantee dignified living conditions for those who are already living on settlements. Throughout our existence, we have become increasingly convinced that this struggle cannot be carried out in isolation in the countryside, nor is it limited to the bourgeois order. As such, the movement has expanded its network of social and political relations, seeking allies in this task both in the countryside and in the city, thereby becoming an ally in many other struggles which are necessary to confront bourgeois society.

Neoliberal economic globalisation and the international division of capitalist production have subordinated Brazil’s economic development to an export-oriented platform for raw materials. This has made it unviable for there to be agrarian reform in the country which would also attend to the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie and would, at a minimum, distribute land to peasants to produce raw materials for industry and to strengthen the internal market. But not even that happened. The bourgeoisie, which monopolises land, is only concerned with the interests of the external market.

So, the MST tasked itself with reworking its proposal for agrarian reform, systematised in its programme for popular agrarian reform, in which it argues for an agricultural model centred on the production of healthy food for the Brazilian population alongside the struggle to democratise land ownership. This current complexity of the struggle for agrarian reform, both in terms of popular demands and its political scope, has required the development of new proposals for agriculture, organisational upskilling, and a broad range of national and international allies.

We are aware of the responsibilities and the need to improve our political forces, both in their organisational and ideological senses, in order to have a greater influence in the class struggle. However, we do not claim to assume the role of a political party in its strict sense, as we believe that this political instrument is beyond our scope. This does not mean to say that we have a supra-partisan or non-partisan stance. We believe that the articulation of working-class movements, trade unions, and political parties is fundamental in the construction of another sociability which is alternative and contrary to the bourgeois order.

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Photograph by Matheus Alves

Gramsci was not an ivory tower intellectual. He was very politically active before his imprisonment, and his intellectual output was a product of the consensus and dissensus he encountered in his life. It is notable that a broad social movement such as the MST has been able to develop this intrinsic connection between practice and theory. Tell us more about the importance of this praxis today.

This is a permanent and dynamic challenge, as with any other dialectical relation. A friend of the MST, Professor José Paulo Netto, carefully explained the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, which are two sides of the same coin. For theory, the acquisition of knowledge is an end; for practice, it is a means of improving political action. The criterion for theory is truth; for political action, it is the correlation of forces. The time for theory is indefinite and the time for political action is in the moment.

So, how is it possible to think of one or the other separately? Or, even how to think of one being prioritised over the other? We need theory and knowledge in order to improve our political action. But knowledge alone, isolated from political action, becomes a dead force. At the other extreme, Lenin’s warning is fitting: ‘Without revolutionary theory, there is no revolutionary movement in the true sense of the word’. Here, the warning given by Palmiro Togliatti, Gramsci’s comrade and a leader of the PCI (Italian Communist Party), also holds true: whoever makes a mistake in analysis makes a mistake in political action.

Based on the legacy of the great thinkers of the working class and popular struggles, we always seek to consolidate the knowledge acquired with practical action at any time or place. It would be useless for us to adopt the liberating knowledge of the educator Paulo Freire if we did not implement it in the schools in our settlement and encampment areas. The same goes for knowledge in agroecology: this knowledge is only realised when it is put into practice in the cultivation of food. It would be of little use to memorise Lenin’s extraordinary What Is to Be Done? if we did not have the ability to understand its message for political action in accordance with our times and our reality.

So, in all our areas of activity, we seek to achieve a complementary relationship between theory and practice in a permanent way – I emphasise again – with its dynamic character in mind. This duality-unity demands permanent vigilance and persistence on the part of the organisation.

Lastly, we do not underestimate the importance and strength of political action and popular mobilisations as an educating element for the subaltern classes. The popular masses learn and educate themselves in popular mobilisations. There, in the mass movement, lies the political strength of the organisation; this is where the political-ideological level of the masses is raised.

Could you tell us more about the formative processes of raising consciousness through the practices of the movement? How is Gramsci’s idea of the organic intellectual understood and practised by militants?
The answer to this question is found, initially, in the wording of the previous question: Gramsci was not an ivory tower intellectual. But I believe that the first example of an organic intellectual was Karl Marx. The German philosopher, with his complex and brilliant work, was constantly concerned with how to adapt the method by which he explained his research to the working class. At least three central concerns guided the way in which he presented his work: 1) to be better understood by workers; 2) the certainty that only the working class could transform scientific knowledge into a tool for class struggle; and 3) the need to promote a synthesis between theory and political practice.

Regarding Lenin, it is enough to recall that Gramsci considered him, together with Marx and Engels, to be one of the founders of the philosophy of praxis. But, certainly, besides his historic trajectory as a party leader, the triumph of the 1917 Revolution under his leadership gave Lenin the unquestionable merit of being a philosopher of praxis.

The Marxist thinker Michael Löwy tells us that the intellectuals that the working class needs are those who take up the responsibility of transmitting the heritage of critical and revolutionary thought. These intellectuals must also have the ability to analyse the dynamic structures of bourgeois society and the functioning and capacity of capitalism to renew itself, as well as the ability to propose alternatives. They must also have the ability to learn from popular movements.

For the Gramscian Guido Liguori, in Gramsci’s work one never finds an exaltation of the people or of subaltern subjects as they currently are; if subaltern subjects are as they are, Liguori contends, but also want to become hegemonic, they must first transform themselves and acquire class consciousness. How to turn the subaltern strata into a class or a class alliance? Liguori replies: a group of conscious leaders must educate the masses, otherwise they will remain stationed at the level of spontaneous common sense – a limited, insufficient, and intrinsically subaltern level.

We, of the MST, draw on all this knowledge bequeathed to us through struggles for human and social emancipation and by those who have developed critical and revolutionary thought. Drawing on this legacy, we systematise our understanding of the organic intellectual and their role in the class struggle. For us, the working class itself must shape its own intellectuals through formal education, political training, and popular and class struggles. This intellectual has the task of contributing to educating and organising the class around a political project and the construction of hegemony, and, furthermore – to cite Liguori again – of helping subaltern social strata to acquire a critical sense and class consciousness and to overcome common sense. Finally, the dynamism of the ever more complex class struggle will, over time, impose the need to renew and adapt the attributes and profile of the organic intellectuals that the working class needs.

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Photograph by Juliana Adriano

Gramsci wrote his Prison Notebooks during a moment of defeat. He wanted to figure out why the working class defected from the hegemony of unions and left parties in favour of fascist organisations. Could you reflect on Gramsci’s observations on this drift?

It is true that the working class was living through a period of defeat when Gramsci was writing in prison. However, in Gramsci’s analysis, the dominant social segments were also fragmented during this historical period in relation to the subaltern classes. There were contradictions and differences between the dominant segments that were so profound and complex that they threatened these segments’ hegemony over society.

There was, therefore, a need for the political unification of bourgeois domination. For Gramsci to become aware of this need was an acute discovery on his part of the dominant hegemony’s fragility in that moment. The complexity and richness of Gramsci’s perspective on his historical moment and on the role that fascism played in re-establishing the command and hegemony of the dominant class, which had been weakened after World War I (1914–1918), emerges from this political relation. The extraordinary Cuban Marxist thinker Fernando Heredia always reminded us that the key to domination is the moment of consensus and not of coercion. By resorting to fascism, which is a historical construction, the bourgeoisie sought to restore the centrality of its interests over Italian society.

In this historic moment, segments of the dominant class, with the support of the big landowners and big industrial capital, sought to obtain the consent of the petite bourgeoisie for its project of fascist domination. These dominant segments, with their fascist project, promoted reactionary subversion – something that aligns well with the Gramscian concept of passive revolution, a process that appears to be revolutionary but simply does not change the structure of society and the state. Faced with a fragmented and weakened bourgeois order, it is not difficult to understand the building of consent toward a political project that carries a message of transformation and that opens a possibility for the future which attends to the anxieties of a people – even if this project is of a reactionary and coercive nature. Thus, the petite bourgeoisie, orchestrated by the state and capitalist associations, felt itself to be the protagonist of political, fascist events.

From this line of thought, Gramsci develops his entire theory about the sphere of politics and the relations that are built in this sphere through the struggle for hegemony. He also finds that this hegemony is inhered through ideological-cultural elements and describes the ways that fascism uses these elements in the process of domination.

Therefore, for Gramsci, the struggle for human and social emancipation demands that the most excluded and oppressed disadvantaged subjects organise collectively and push for a rupture with the dominant consensus. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator, added to this task by saying that subaltern classes must acquire the ability to carry out a critical unveiling of reality by recreating their way of ‘reading’ the world, becoming protagonists of their own history and the subjects of transforming their reality.

Finally, one of Gramsci’s most beautiful reflections is that hegemony is a process that expresses organised consciousness and values around a political project.

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Photograph by Igor de Nadai

One of Gramsci’s principle strategic concepts is that of the ‘historic bloc’, Gramsci’s strategy for hegemony. Could you reflect on the process of constructing such a historic bloc in the Brazilian context?

This question allows me to add to the Gramscian concept of hegemony, as I emphasised in the last answer. For Gramsci, the conquest of hegemony was never abstract, limited merely to the field of ideas, consciousness, or idealised values. Anchored in the historical materialist method that was so well elaborated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Gramsci highlights that the process of attaining hegemony occurs within society’s infrastructure – in other words, in its economic structure, or, more precisely, in the relations of production.

That is what happened with fascism in that historic moment. It achieved hegemony because it sought to respond to various economic, cultural, ideological, and political processes. And that is how, through the petite bourgeoisie, the state and capitalist associations achieved the consent as well as the ability to steer the dominated classes. It should be emphasised that this was never a total hegemony; there was significant resistance from parts of the working class.

Nothing is more elucidating than the Gramscian formulation that the hegemony of the working class begins on the factory floor. This is where the working class acquires the consciousness of an ethical-political moment and develops a consciousness of itself, a class consciousness, through its economic and corporative struggles. So, hegemony is the capability that a given political force has to build consensus around a political project. It is this political project that demonstrates the need for a historic bloc so that the working class can achieve hegemony.

In Brazil, we are living through a long period of dissensus within the working class, a period that began in the 1990s and continues today. On the other hand, the structural crisis of capitalism has made clear the Brazilian bourgeoisie’s inability to feed the popular imagination in order to guarantee itself electoral victories and maintain command of the country. The four consecutive victories of the Workers’ Party (PT) did not shake the foundations of the dominant hegemony, but they did frighten the bourgeoisie; this was enough for the bourgeoisie to launch a coup d’état in 2016 to remove Dilma Rousseff, who had been legitimately re-elected in 2014, from the presidency. Subsequently, and as yet another reflection of the fragility of its hegemony, the bourgeoisie did not hesitate to support a candidate who was known to be deranged when faced with the possibility of another victory of a PT candidate.

In recompense for the massive support he received from the bourgeoisie, the unnameable winner (Jair Bolsonaro), tried to implement an ultra-neoliberal political-economic plan and to use his presidential mandate to form a government that flirts with fascism, in the eyes of some, or that has Bonapartist characteristics, in the eyes of others. And so, among progressive sectors, there is the almost unanimous understanding that we will have a long journey to defeat the Bolsonarismo that has flourished in Brazilian society, even if Bolsonaro himself is defeated in the October 2022 elections.

In his book What Is Revolution?, the Marxist sociologist Florestan Fernandes asked what the role of the working class is in defensive periods and when the proletariat lacks its own means of organisation and class autonomy. He replied to his own question by saying that this is the time for the working class to advance struggles for structural reforms, for a revolution within the current order. He emphasised that the working class’s political involvement in advancing the revolution within the current order produces strategically important socialising consequences.

Through its struggle for popular agrarian reform – one of the structural reforms that the dominant class within urban-industrial society never carried out – the MST seeks to raise the level of organisation and politicisation of its social base in support of a politically emancipatory, socialist project. On another front, the MST is a protagonist in the construction of the Popular Project for Brazil (Projeto Brasil Popular). This project aims to consolidate a historic bloc that promotes anti-capitalist, emancipatory struggles and immediate economic gains that meet the needs and interests of the working class. It is organised around seven paradigms:

1.Ensuring a good life for all;
2.Defending nature as a common good;
3.Engaging in the permanent construction of social equality;
4.Valuing and respecting social and cultural diversity;
5.Defending democracy and popular participation in the management of the state;
P6.rotecting sovereignty and people’s development; and
7.Practicing humanist values.

We hope that both the political project for popular agrarian reform and the Popular Project for Brazil help us to incorporate more social and popular actors that take up positions to contest the capitalist system, that revive an ethical-political-cultural approach that allows for the integration of all emancipatory demands, and that promote the social and political articulation of subaltern subjects as the protagonists of emancipatory anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist alternatives. We hope that the consolidation of this historic bloc around these two projects allows us to advance in the process of achieving working-class hegemony.



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Photograph by Mídia Ninja

Acknowledgments:
This interview would not be the same if it had not been for the significant and solidaristic contribution of Professor Cristina Bezerra of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF) in Minas Gerais, Brazil.


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