Brazil

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 18, 2019 7:36 pm

PT Manifesto: The institutional crisis is the result of the coup

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April 18, 2019
Six months after an absolutely out of court electoral process, in which the candidate for president of the majority of the population was arbitrarily excluded and the debate on proposals was banned, Brazil is currently experiencing a very serious political and institutional crisis.

The harmonious relationship between the Powers, established by the Constitution, gives way to force blows and institutional anarchy, amid an escalation of authoritarianism, reaffirmed on Wednesday (17) by the call of the National Security Force to Brasilia to repress legitimate manifestations of indigenous peoples in defense of their threatened rights.

Brazil is reverting to a past of repression, censorship and intolerance; to the times when the state, in the service of the ruling classes, denied freedoms rather than guaranteed them. The political, corporate and even personal differences in which the heads of the Executive, the Legislative, the Judiciary and the Public Prosecution are involved, occur under the interference and even under the tutelage of reactionary leaders of the Armed Forces, which is unacceptable in democracy.

Today there is no doubt that at the root of this great crisis is the coup movement that led to the impeachment of the crime of responsibility of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the conviction, also without crime, of former President Lula, to prevent him from being elected once again by the majority of the population in 2018. Defeated in the polls, for the fourth consecutive time, coup plotters attacked democracy, rebuilt in years of struggle, with sacrifice of many lives.

The same sectors that are now being confronted, whether by the Lava Jato, the STF, or coercion by the Public Prosecutor's Office or the Federal Police, were accomplices, complicity, omission or fainthearted when agents of the state faced the legitimate mandate of President Dilma, the rights and freedom of President Lula, practicing assaults and leaks in the press of lies against the PT, its leaders and even Lula's relatives.

In order to get the PT out of the government, the Constitution was torn by daylight, breaking the 1988 national pact that ended the dictatorship and restored democracy. To condemn Lula, the press and the institutions have sustained a judicial farce that no one convinces and is rejected by the most renowned jurists in Brazil and the world. To prevent their candidacy, they ignored the law, electoral jurisprudence and a UN decision that recognized their political rights.

Who pays the price for this succession of blows is Brazil, internally disordered and demoralized internationally; and our people, who have sustained in the democratic process the conquest of denied rights and opportunities for centuries.

In order to reach the PT, Lava Jato's mechanism was moved to the touch of arbitrariness - like the illegal staples and the coercive driving of Lula - and tenebrous negotiations with bandits who lied in exchange for money and reduced sentences. This was overshadowed by the recent revelation that OAS executives received millions to lie against Lula and the PT.

Sérgio Moro's partiality became undisputed when the former judge became a government minister who helped to elect him for having condemned Lula without evidence. Lava Jato's promiscuity with economic and geopolitical interests of the United States was proved in the agreement until another secret day, in which they delivered allegations and false evidence against our state to the Justice there, in exchange for $ 2.5 billion for personal gain and political of the prosecutors.

The institutional anarchy in which the country lives is not the exclusive work of Jair Bolsonaro, although he has contributed much to this for his dislike of democracy. The situation we are experiencing is the inevitable consequence of small and large attacks on the law and democracy that have been tolerated or encouraged in the name of a fight against corruption, which in fact was a failed campaign to extinguish the PT.

History has many examples of the tragedy in which we live, in Brazil in other countries where, at certain times, the rule of law has been subjugated by political persecution under any pretext. So it was with Terror in France, with the rise of fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany, McCarthyism in the United States, dictatorships in Latin America. Many who today mourn the institutional crisis are responsible for creating it. They struck the egg of this serpent.

The PT was born almost 40 years ago to defend the rights of the people and the fullness of democracy, always acting within the law, whether in political institutions, social movements, factories, schools or on the streets. There is no political party in Brazil with a trajectory - in opposition or in government - that gives it more authority to claim the defense of democracy and institutional normality.

Our party clearly understands that institutions should investigate, prosecute, and punish strictly within the law those who spread false news, state agents who illegally leaked classified, false or unconfirmed information to destroy reputations and practice blackmail.

Throughout the campaign of demoralization of Lula and the PT through the media, which was systematic in the last five years, we appeal to Justice for the right of response and punishment of those responsible. We were never attended to. Not even when the leak of the illegal clamp of conversation between former presidents Lula and Dilma had the official timbre of the then judge Sergio Moro, who until today did not respond for this crime committed more than three years ago.

At a time when so many voices are up against censorship of an electronic magazine that has never stood up for its credibility or editorial exemption, it must be remembered that, also by a monocratic decision by a STF minister, President Lula is prohibited from giving interviews since September of last year. Where were these voices when the country's greatest political leader was violently censored?

Where were they when independent journalists such as Luís Nassif, Marcelo Auler, Renato Rovai and others were persecuted and convicted for reporting serious allegations against state agents? Where were they when Veja published a false cover, accusing Lula and Dilma three days into the 2014 election? When Folha de S. Paul has developed the Bolsonaro lies industry paid by cash 2 up from foreigners on the eve of the election?

The PT has never defended, never practiced and will never defend censorship, not even against our most deceitful detractors. But it is clear that, in order to re-establish the rule of law and democracy, it is essential to investigate, prosecute and punish strictly within the law the agents of the state who rape her under any pretext - the alleged intention to do justice or the criminal blackmail .

If in recent years the institutions had simply defended the law, without personal fears or political constraints, the forces of agency and violence would not have arrived where they arrived. No one doubts that their crimes will be charged by history, but their errors are already being charged in the present, by the chaos in which they launched the country and by the suffering of our people.

The owners of fortune, the rentiers, landowners, representatives of foreign interests; the reactionary, prejudiced and fundamentalists who spread hatred, intolerance and authoritarianism are responsible for this national tragedy.

Their goal has always been clear: to deliver national sovereignty, our riches and potentialities; destroy our capacity for autonomous development; revoke the achievements of the people, the workers and citizenship; put an end to retirement and the rights of the elderly, rural and urban workers; to return absolute control of the state to the ruling classes, formed in three centuries of slavery that made Brazil one of the most unjust and unequal societies in the world.

The PT is ready to rebuild, together with the people and with all democratic forces, a better and fairer Brazil, as we have been doing since the redemocratization and especially since the Lula government in 2003. Our people have already shown that it is capable of surpassing major crises. And history proves that this is only possible when there is political freedom and full democracy.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, honorary president of PT
Gleisi Hoffmann, PT national president
Paulo Pimenta, PT leader in the Chamber of Deputies
Humberto Costa, PT leader in the Federal Senate

https://lula.com.br/manifesto-do-pt-a-c ... -golpismo/

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 25, 2019 1:26 pm

Bolsonaro shells out $millions for pension reform votes
DEMOCRACY POLITICS
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R$40 million in pork for every congressman who votes for deep austerity cuts to the pension system.

The right wing extremist government of Jair Bolsonaro has opened the pork barrel and is offering R$40 million to each congressman who votes in favor of privatizing the national pension system fund, lowering minimum benefits and raising the retirement age. According to Folha de São Paulo newspaper, Bolsonaro’s Chief of Staff, arms industry shill Onyx Lorenzoni (DEM) (who admitted to using an illegal corporate slush fund to finance his congressional campaign in 2017) offered an extra R$40 million for parliamentary amendments to each congressman who votes in favor of changing the constitution and ratifying the pension reform bill, which is based on a similar measure implemented during the bloody Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in Chile in 1980, during a period in which all opposition was brutally repressed. With starvation level retirement payments, Chile currently has one of the highest rates of suicide among senior citizens in the world.

Every Brazilian congressman currently receives an average of R$15 million per year for funding infrastructure projects and investments in their home state. Lazeroni’s offer would see funding increase by R$10 million a year for a period of 4 years only for congressmen who vote in favor of pension reform.

This announcement immediately provoked outrage among the Congressional opposition. Carlos Zarattini (PT-São Paulo) said, “This is the new politics that they said they would do, but its using old fashion methods.” Congressman Paulo Pimenta said, “only a fool would imagine that Onyx Lorenzoni and Jair Bolsonaro would be any different.”

http://www.brasilwire.com/bolsonaro-she ... orm-votes/

The forms and pretenses of bourgeois democracy are in the shitter
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri Apr 26, 2019 1:30 pm

Yanomami respond to Bolsonaro: "We are not poor and we do not want to garimpo"
Tuesday, April 23, 2019

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In letter and video, Yanomami leaders contest the president, who defended mining in the Yanomami Indigenous Land in live published on Facebook.

Last Wednesday (17/4), President Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) defended that the Indigenous Lands should be open to mining and extensive monoculture, claiming that the Indians are poor in rich territory.

On Friday (19/4), Yanomami and Yek'wana leaders responded to the video and letter attacks, signed by the main associations of these peoples. In their response, indigenous people reaffirm their position against mining and mining in their territory, and reinforce that, contrary to what Bolsonaro says, the Yanomami are not poor but have a rich life in the middle of the forest. "You say that the Yanomami are starving and suffering. We, Yanomami, no one is suffering. No one is going hungry, "says Davi Yanomami, the historic leadership of this people.

The leaders also disavow the statements of Timóteo Yanomami, an indigenous of the Yanomami people who participated in the live of Bolsonaro without, however, have the legitimacy to speak on behalf of its people. "Timóteo does not represent any organization that exists in the State of Roraima", affirms Eliseu, of the Texoli Association of Low Mucajaí.

In addition, Bolsonaro says that he defends a relationship with the Indians without intermediaries. But who took the Indians to the president was Senator Chico Rodrigues (DEM-RR), who appears in the live and has already been denounced by the Indians in the MPF for owning an airplane that supplies illegal mining in the Yanomami Indigenous Land.

Roberval, of Ayrca's board, Maturacá Yanomami Land reaffirms: "We Yanomami and Yekawna people, no one is poor. It is a people who do not need to sell their land, their wealth. We want to keep her alive and well, that's very important. "

And remember that to keep the earth alive, gold has to be underground. "The gold has to keep down there. We want income, but according to projects already planned. We do not want to sell our land to harm our life, our culture and our people. You have to observe the future of the Yanomami people, you have to be alive as it has always lived, "he says.

In the live, Bolsonaro defends the gold prospect, even saying that he himself was a gold prospector. His message sounds like music to the ears of the more than 7,000 prospectors who currently invade the Yanomami Indigenous Land, contaminating soil, fish and water with mercury. This is the largest invasion of the Yanomami Indigenous Land after the great gold rush in the 1980s and 1990s, when more than 40,000 gold miners invaded the Yanomami forest and 20% of the Yanomami population died as a result of epidemics and conflicts. Today the situation of the Uraricoera and Mucajaí Rivers is worrying. The turbidity (reduced transparency) of these rivers increased in the first quarter of 2019 when compared to the same period of previous years (see here ).

David responds: "We Yanomami want to talk about how you attacked us. Our people, our name. Can not use the name of the Yanomami People no. For lacking respect. We are respecting. You are president of the country. You are not showing the good way. The quality work. You're showing dirty work, mining, mining in the Indigenous Land. Dump cattle in our land. We do not have to raise ox. We already have our food. Usufruct of our mother. Usufruct of the forest, where we are born and live, "he says.

And concludes: "My group, we are warriors to defend our right, to protect our good lands. We do not want the authorities to spoil our forest. Let us think first before destroying and mistreating my Yanomami people. That's not how man says no. That's what I wanted to tell you. "

Already Floriza da Cruz, Maturaca's leadership responded to the statements of Bolsonaro about the National Foundation of the Indian (Funai). In live, Bolsonaro attacks Funai. "I'll be direct. President, today our Funai does not help us because the Brazilian government does not give Funai aid, and it does not appeal. It is an obligation of the Brazilian government to help FUNAI so that it will not be extinguished. I speak for the Yanomami, "she says.

Julio Yek'wana, leader of the Yek'wana people, clarifies: "We want the federal government to fulfill its duty regarding health, territory and education, according to the Federal Constitution of 1988," he said.

Read the full letter:
Positioning of the leaders, shamans, shamans and associations of the Yanomami Indigenous Land on a video posted on the official website of President Jair Bolsonaro.

Boa Vista, Roraima, April 18, 2019

On April 17, President Bolsonaro received indigenous people in Brasilia. We Yanomami and Ye'kwana watched the video posted on the official website of the president of social networks and came to answer what was said on behalf of the Yanomami people.

The Yanomami who appears to be speaking to the president does not represent the Yanomami people. We are gathered 06 associations of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, shamans, shamans and Yanomami and Ye'kwana leaderships. We do represent the Yanomami and Ye'kwana people, chosen by our communities to speak on their behalf. We are more than 26 thousand Yanomami and Ye'kwana, who live in the Yanomami Indigenous Land.

We here know our rights. We are not children, we are leaders and representatives of the people and we are not being manipulated by the NGOs, as has been said. We know who our partners are. Since before the land was demarcated they were on our side and continue to defend our rights.

The Federal Government must comply with its Constitutional obligations and guarantee the indigenous rights written in Article 231 of this Constitution: it is the duty of the State to take care of health, education and protect our territory. The Government must strengthen Funai so that it can work for the rights of indigenous peoples.

The Yanomami and Ye'kwana people do not live poor, as has also been said. Our wealth is not to be able to sell the land, to take the gold. Our wealth is to live well in our land, the forest, to have the rivers clean, the health of the people. We are against legalizing the mining in our territory. The gold for us must be under the earth. We want income that comes from our own projects that respect our forest, as we are doing in our communities. We are the legitimate Brazilians, originating from the land, where we are born and where we are going to die. We do not want to be equal to non-Indians. Speaking Portuguese, we can become a dentist, lawyer, but our blood continues Yanomami and Ye'kwana.

Hutukara Association Yanomami- HAY

Wanasseduume Ye'kwana Association - SEDUUME

Yanomami Association of the Rio Cauaburis and Tributaries - AYRCA

Association of Yanomami Women Kumirãyõma- AMYK

Kurikama Yanomami- KURIKAMA Association

Texoli Ninam Association of the State of Roraima- TANER

Watch the video: (at link)

https://www.socioambiental.org/pt-br/bl ... os-garimpo

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat May 04, 2019 9:08 pm

Workers Day 2013: Brasil’s Cancelled Future

Six years ago today, President of the Republic Dilma Rousseff made her customary televised Workers Day address to the Brazilian people.

With towering public approval, up to 79%, exceeding that of her predecessors Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula da Silva, Brazil’s first female President looked unassailable in her push for re-election in the coming year. Centre-right, U.S. favoured PSDB, who had lost the previous three polls did not yet have anyone who looked like a competitive candidate, whilst Rousseff rival, former Green Party Candidate and Environment Minister under Lula, Marina Silva, was still trying to establish her own political party.

At this point there was little doubt that Dilma Rousseff would be re-elected in October 2014, and the mood in the country was, whilst not at the giddy heights of 2011/2012, still extremely optimistic.

After all, despite underlying structural and societal problems, Brazil had never had it so good.

Rousseff came from Brazil’s developmentalist tradition, and in her TV address, she was unsurprisingly confident. In it she made perhaps the defining proposal of her political career – what she called Brazil’s “passport to the future”. Under this plan, hers and successive governments would invest 100% of the royalties – potentially trillions of Reais – from its enormous newly discovered offshore oil wealth, exclusively into Brazilian education. A proposal which could push the perennial country of the future the final distance towards a “first world”, sovereign developed status that its people sought.

This would, it was envisaged, transform the destiny of the country.

Highlighting progress in the reduction of inequality and poverty under her and her predecessor Lula da Silva, she was clear on her own government’s coming focus: “Brazil will continue to use effective instruments to increase employment, wages and the purchasing power of the worker, but from now on, it will prioritise as never before, an instrument that extends employment and wages further: education,” she said, and she pleaded with congress to support this vision, which she had just sent for its approval: “A government can only fulfill its role well if it has the political will and sufficient funds. That is why it is important that the National Congress approve our proposal to allocate oil resources to education.”



At this point one of the most common complaints you would hear from Brazilians was about a historic failure in education, thus as policy this ought to have been a home run. So what happened? It’s a story told many times before, but perhaps not quite in this context. To understand the Brazil of 2019, knowing how 2013 actually unfolded is essential.

The weeks that followed her Workers Day address were to be dramatic, both for President Rousseff, and for Brazil. Three parallel events, at the time unrelated, were when combined together the harbinger of what was to come.

On June 5, the first news of the NSA’s spying programme began to be published. Of particular focus was Brazil, where Glenn Greenwald, the principal journalist responsible for the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, resided. What the documents told us was that Brazil, its population, government, law enforcement, and its strategic companies such as Petrobras (slowly dismantled) and Embraer (now all but sold to Boeing), were surveilled by the United States to the extent expected of a hostile nation. Perhaps the United States was more uncomfortable with Brazil’s development into a global player than had been previously thought. Then a fringe congressman, Jair Bolsonaro and hard right ally Ronaldo Caiado of dictatorship-heir party Democratas, angrily rejected complaints about U.S. spying, claiming it was a manufactured distraction from Dilma’s domestic political problems.

A day later, on June 6, the yearly Passe Livre protests began in the city of São Paulo against rises to public transport fares. On June 13, Military Police controlled by PSDB State Governor and then likely candidate in the 2014 Presidential election, Geraldo Alckmin, fired on the protesters and journalists with rubber bullets. The effect of this was to within days turn thousands on the streets into hundreds of thousands indignant at police brutality, with images beamed around the world that were interpreted as anti-government protests – a Brazilian analogue to the “Arab Spring”. Then mayor of São Paulo and 2018 Presidential Candidate Fernando Haddad has said that “we will never know” if Governor Alckmin himself gave that order for his Police to shoot, thus if it was a tactical move. What was certain is that Brazil would never be the same again.

A range of grievances entered the demonstrations with the swelling of the numbers on the streets. These included demands for better funded public health, and education, as Dilma Rousseff had announced only weeks before. It was as if this had already been forgotten. This was mirrored across social media, and a shellshocked Workers Party tried to make sense of an unprecedented explosion in activity – an avalanche of material being shared globally, which attacked both the Rousseff government, and the reputation of Brazil itself. In 2018, Haddad remarked that at that time they simply didn’t know about Cambridge Analytica or the kind of political manipulation pioneered by its parent, British behavioural research and strategic communication company SCL. This episode is still yet to be properly explained. In addition, anti-corruption messages which began to take hold in the demonstrations, amplified by the media, encouraged Rousseff – who insisted she had nothing to hide, therefore nothing to fear – to sign off on legislation that would allow plea-bargain testimony to be used as evidence for the first time in Brazil. This move would inadvertently open the door to a lawfare-based coup d’état.

Finally, between June 15 and June 30th, Brazil hosted the FIFA Confederations Cup football tournament, the costs of which became both another totem of the burgeoning protests on the street, and in tandem, a rallying call to right-wing “green and yellow” nationalism. At the opening ceremony, with Brazil facing Japan, Dilma Rousseff was jeered by the predominantly upper middle class crowd whilst attempting to make her speech. Players expressed their support for the demonstrations, and in later matches, the Seleção‘s own rendition of the national anthem was extended to include its usually omitted second stanza:

“But if thou raises the strong mace of justice, see that a son of thine flees not from battle, nor do those who love thee fear their own death. Adored Land…”

In the weeks that followed, Rousseff doubled down on her pledge to revolutionise education in her first address in answer to the mass demonstrations, adding investment from pré-sal (sub-salt) oil for public health to the formula. Some opposition supporters even tried to claim that extraction of that pré-sal oil, which was to fund this revolution in education, was impossible. Her renewed proposal, as well as that for a referendum to establish a constituent assembly on constitutional reform, were dismissed a demagoguery by a conservative dominated media who had seen their opportunity, and whose original hostility to the protests when they were largely left in character, turned to support as their composition shifted rightwards, and the original protagonists went home in dismay.

Just two months after her by then forgotten May 1st 2013 TV address, Dilma Rousseff’s public approval had fallen by 30 points. She was for the first time politically vulnerable, and there were already opportunist calls for her impeachment, very similar to her eventual fate, 3 years later. She secured re-election in 2014 by three million votes in the face of an unprecedented international campaign. But the result was rejected immediately and what would become the coup that removed her was in motion with the ballots barely counted. Beyond the presidential vote, the net effect of what happened in 2013 was the arrival of Brazil’s most conservative congress since the 1960s, which opened the possibility of impeachment – enabled by the election of Eduardo Cunha as congressional president, who embarked on a campaign of sabotage from the first day of Dilma’s second mandate. The economic effect of this dovetailed with Operation Lava Jato’s freezing of the construction sector, which accounted for 2.5% GDP drop in 2015, turning a cyclical recession into what the media depicted as the worst economic crisis in history. The fatally-weakened Rousseff would then be swept away by the same telegenic “green and yellow nationalism” that was identified by the United States as a way in which to give the 1964 Coup against João Goulart, himself trying to implement developmentalist reform in agriculture, banking and education, the perception of unanimous public support – another cancelled future.

When her ceremonial Vice President Michel Temer (from “opposition within government” PMDB), took office following her suspension in May 2016, he quickly introduced a range of measures that ran counter to national development, including a massive tax-break and cut-price sale of the Pré-Sal Oil to foreign corporations – that they had long lobbied for, working with opposition politicians such as José Serra, whom Rousseff had defeated in 2010. One proposal in particular stood out: PEC55/241, the so called end of the world amendment. Part of the cruelly named “Bridge to the Future” policy platform, PEC55/241 introduced a 20 year constitutionally enforced freeze on investment in public health and education. In essence it made what Dilma Rousseff had proposed on May 1st 2013 impossible for the next five Brazilian Governments. Following her removal in September 2016, Temer admitted publicly at a meeting of investors in New York that she had been removed on account of her refusal to adopt the Bridge to the Future neoliberal programme. And who could blame her? The supposed “bridge to the future” delivered literally the opposite of what had been envisioned as a passport to the future, three years earlier.

Like Institutional Act 5, fifty years earlier, PEC55/241 was in essence designed to attack the future.

Emerging from that scorched earth, the first shoots of improvement to public education came during the final days of the 1964-85 Dictatorship, at state level, during the tenure of Rio de Janeiro governor Leonel Brizola. Under Brizola, anthropologist and author Darcy Ribeiro was tasked with creating the revolutionary CIEP’s (Integrated Centres for Public Instruction).

With the end of the dictatorship, Goulart government veteran Brizola’s programme in Rio de Janeiro also represented a prohibited future for the country, with the United States and Brazilian Military in pre-emptive discussions about a Coup d’état should he go on to win the 1989 Presidential Election.

During the creation of the CIEP programme, Ribeiro remarked that the crisis in Brazil’s education, “is not a crisis, it is a project”. And so it is today, as Brazil faces a decimation of its public education system, university funding and entire core studies such as Sociology and Philosophy being eradicated, as they were in 1971, in a gratuitous, ideological act of generational vandalism, which is being conducted with the tacit and explicit support of capital, hegemony and empire.

Brazil’s public education system needs to be defended at all costs.

To attack a country’s future you first attack its youth.

For Brazil to rediscover its future it needs to be able to visualise it.

http://www.brasilwire.com/workers-day-2 ... ed-future/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri May 10, 2019 2:12 pm

Paulo Guedes Promises Fire Sale Of Brasil’s Assets To U.S. Investors

By Defend Democracy in Brazil Committee – New York

The declaration of the Economy Minister, Paulo Guedes, during lunch with investors in New York, caused astonishment. “We’ve known each other for 30 years and you made a very intelligent decision, you flew out of Brazil. You were very smart to live outside Brazil,” Guedes told a Brazilian businessman who has lived in Miami for twenty-five years and wanted to know what the government will do if it cannot pass the pension reform bill in Congress. During lunch Guedes praised those who thought it best to make a living outside Brazil. Still, he assured the audience of potential buyers of the Brazilian assets that everything is running smoothly in the country.

“Democracy is just fine”, he said, more than once, as if to convince anyone who is thinking otherwise. And he insisted: “You should observe what is happening in Brazil as a natural result. You should not be shocked or desperate, thinking that it is an incomprehensible phenomenon or that something very serious is happening there.” And “let’s talk business”, since this was the reason for the lunch meeting, promoted by the company XP Investments, which had as its theme the first 100 days of the Bolsonaro government.

“We are selling,” announced Paulo Guedes. “We have already sold 12 airports, concessions, we are selling everything!”, he assured. And apparently, the Bolsonaro government is in a hurry: “We have to accelerate privatization. Brazil has been sleeping for 10 years,” Guedes said, explaining that the money from the sale of Brazilian companies and investments will be used to pay the domestic debt. But not everything … “Not all the money will be used to reduce the debt because when Banco do Brasil or Petrobras sells parts of their operations, a percentage of the money goes to the private investors.”

Guedes assured that the government is already secretly selling the national goods. “Our goal is to sell $ 20 billion dollars this year.” Silently, quietly, we’ve already sold $ 12 billion dollars. That’s more than half. We will beat our goal”. The Minister also made clear that when it comes to the current government, Brazil will soon no longer have a State oil company. In the clear words of Guedes:

– “Petrobras has to focus on its core business. Exploring oil, and that’s what it’s going to do. The rest will be sold. So you focus on what you have to do, you become more efficient, focused, easy to sell. “

He assured that the pension reform will be approved because politicians are cornered, pressured by public opinion. But a CUT / Vox populi poll, released as the minister spoke in New York, reveals that 65 percent reject the government’s proposed reform. The same survey indicates that the index of Brazilians dissatisfied with Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil rose to 70%.

Northeast voters would be even more dissatisfied if they had heard what the minister said about one of the most important Workers Party (PT ) governments’ jobs for the region. According to Guedes, one of the biggest problems in Brazil is the concentration of resources in the hands of the Union. With so much money, he said, the federal government does absurd projects. “It builds bridges to the moon, it even changes river courses. It’s a lot of money to do crazy things,” he said, mocking the important transposition of the São Francisco River.

Perhaps he will again rectify this declaration, as he did when he changed his March 12 statement, in which he first affirmed that the government knew that former President Lula never stole a penny, but which he evaded yesterday, in an interview to an extreme right-wing blog.

Guedes said that today he is a popular man. Wherever he goes, he assured, Brazilian fans want to take pictures with the Minister of Finance. But apparently he chose not to test all of this popularity in New York, where activists were expressive against the Ministers of the Temer government. He opted to escape by a side exit and avoid the press that was waiting for him at the door of the hall where he had just promised a large stock-burning of Brazilian companies in four years of government.

http://www.brasilwire.com/paulo-guedes- ... investors/

And who says that stoning is inappropriate?
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon May 27, 2019 8:49 pm

After the protests – It’s time to isolate fascism

Some media voices played off the calls for shutting down Congress and the Supreme Court as protests against old fashioned politics but the core of the demonstrations was antidemocratic. Under the excuse of fighting old fashioned politics and “corruption”, their goal was to abolish or starve all democratic institutions and establish a police state.

by Marcelo Zero

The important and unavoidable task for the powers that still have a minimal commitment to democracy is to politically isolate Brazilian neofascism.

The total absence of real democratic commitment from our traditional, politically conservative powers was what enabled the rise of an extremely dangerous scenario that threatens to end what little remains of our democracy after the 2016 coup and the political imprisonment of Lula.

The May 26th protests – despite only being medium sized at best even in the strongholds of Bolsonarism – were called by the Captain to shut down the democratic institutions, especially the National Congress which has shown independence in the face of the government’s unbelievable, absolute incompetence.

This came with no surprise whatsoever. Bolsonaro has always done everything, during his long political career as a congressman, to fiercely oppose democracy. He has always publically praised the dictatorship and torturers. He has always defended, without hesitation, the physical or political extermination of those who are different.

The press knew this, as did the conservative political parties, the “opinion former’s”, Sérgio Moro, his prosecutors and the courts. And more than anyone, the Capitalists knew this, perfectly well. Even the capivaras on Paranoá lake knew this.

Nevertheless, they all decided to support him with the goal of beating the university professor Fernando Haddad and implementing an ultra-neoliberal agenda of destruction of rights and sovereignty. The only innocents in this sordid tale are the poor capivaras and the progressive political forces which, isolated, bravely opposed this tragedy foretold.

What caused somewhat of a surprise, however, was the tacit support that a good part of the conservative and commercial press gave to the new demonstrations against democracy. In the name of “necessity” of approving the destruction of the Pension system, they broadcast yesterday’s protests live and tried to inflate the fascism on the streets. One more time, they showed that they have no effective commitment to democracy.

They tried to play off the calls for shutting down Congress and the Supreme Court as protests against “old fashioned politics” and tried to justify them by saying that this antidemocratic current only represented a minority of the protesters.

It did not. The core of the demonstrations was antidemocratic. Under the excuse of fighting “old fashioned politics” and “corruption”, their goal was to abolish or starve all democratic institutions and establish a police state.

In this sense, the demonstrations were as democratic as those promoted by the Nazi party in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. “People on the streets” is not always a sign of democracy. It could mean the contrary. During that time, the Nazi demonstrations were also presented as demonstrations against old fashioned politics and corruption. Nazism and fascism were the “new politics”.

Some are now arguing that the demonstrations, due to there modest size, were a failure, and that Bolsonaro committed a tactical error.

This is possible. Bolsonaro, due to his total mediocrity and incompetence, and for his clear ties to the militias, is losing popularity at blitzkrieg speed.

It would be a mistake, however, to write off his potential for destruction.

We are in an era of extremely grave and chronic crisis. In similar times in the past, political volatility was always immense.

During the 1928 elections, the Nazi party gained less than 3% of the vote. They said Hitler was finished. Bismark even revoked the ban on Hitler’s rallies in Prussia, thinking that danger had passed.

Four years later, however, Hitler made a triumphant comeback, gaining over a third of the votes. A few months later, he took power. All that was needed was a deepening of the economic crisis, which started in 1929, for the enemies of democracy to triumph.

The persistence of the economic and political impasse in Brazil may lead to authoritarian solutions. There is a serious risk that the people’s resentment and frustration will be directed not against the neo-fascist government but against what is left of democracy and its institutions. Under the excuse of putting an end to “old fashioned politics” you can end up destroying politics altogether.

The current military guardianship over civil power, the lack of democratic commitment of a large part of our oligarchies, the eagerness to approve the ultraneoliberal agenda, the persistent crisis and the criminalization of political activity promoted by the Lava Jato investigation constitute a propitious scenario for all kinds of adventures.

The last survey conducted by Latinobarómetro (2018) shows that popular support for democracy in Brazil is currently very tenuous. Only 34% of the people surveyed answered the question, “do you consider that democracy is preferable to any other form of government”affirmatively. In other words nearly two-thirds of Brazilians would support – or at least tolerate – an authoritarian regime if they think that democracy (or “old fashioned politics”) has failed.

Bolsonaro has shown that he is willing to turn the population against democratic institutions. This is now moving from rhetoric to action. As the crisis progresses and the government continues paralyzed, many are tempted to bet on an authoritarian solution.

In this context, there must be a firm reaction from the democratic powers. Time is running out for making a deal in Congress and in civil society and everywhere where there are still powers committed to democracy.

They say that the devil’s most cunning act was to convince the people that he does not exist.

Brazilian neo or proto-fascism exists. It is in power and showing that it is extremely dangerous.

Brazilian democracy still exists, partially. But what is left of it is running the risk of being wiped out of existence.



Translated by Brian Mier

http://www.brasilwire.com/after-the-pro ... e-fascism/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Wed May 29, 2019 1:32 pm

Brazil legalizes 197 pesticides in 2019

Bolsonaro administration Brazil fast tracks pesticide legalization, including products containing glyphosate

The use of 31 pesticides were approved by the Brazilian Agriculture Ministry on May 21. In all, the Federal Government has already approved use of 197 new pesticides since Jair Bolsonaro took office in January.

Among the 31 pesticides registered in May, 29 were approved based on technical equivalence, which means their active substances are the same as other chemicals already allowed in Brazil.

Three of them, however, are composed of glyphosate, a substance associated with cancer that has been the target of billion dollar lawsuits in the United States.

The number of pesticides approved in Brazil has steadily increased since the coup that ousted president Dilma Rousseff in 2016.

Whereas 139 new pesticides were registered during 2015, the number of approved substances grew to 450 in 2018. This year, Bolsonaro approved the use of 121 pesticides during his first two months in office.

Brazil is one of the world’s top pesticide consuming countries.

Nilto Tatto, a federal congressman and member of the Workers’ Party, told Brasil de Fato that connections between the powerful farm caucus [known in Brazil as the Ruralistas] and the lobby that worked to depose president Rousseff were established to meet the demands of the agribusiness industry including easier approval of new pesticides.

After Jair Bolsonaro was elected, that relationship became even closer as the new president appointed Tereza Cristina, known as the “poison muse,” as his Agriculture minister.

Before being legally registered with the Agriculture Ministry, a pesticide has to be approved by the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa) and the Brazilian environmental agency, Ibama.

Alan Tygel, from the Permanent Campaign Against Agrochemicals and for Life, says the cooperation between those agencies and between the agriculture and environment ministries and the agribusiness industry became stronger due to the Bolsonaro administration’s governmental restructuring.

Edition: Aline Carrijo | Translated by Aline Scátola

This article has been reprinted from Brasil do Fato, was slightly edited for style, and can be read in its original form here

http://www.brasilwire.com/brazil-legali ... s-in-2019/

So when Bayer has their poison kicked outta the US market they still got a market.
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu May 30, 2019 12:58 pm

Militiaman arrested in the Federal District for land grabbing is Michelle Bolsonaro's uncle
Published in 05/29/2019 - 9:04 Ana Viriato CB.Poder
Ana Viriato

Helena Mader

One of the seven military police arrested on Wednesday (May 29) for joining a militia operating in the region of Sol Nascente, in Ceilandia, is uncle of the first lady of Brazil, Michelle Bolsonaro. First Sergeant João Batista Firmo Ferreira was one of the targets of Operation Horus, which investigates PMs for crimes of irregular land subdivision, extortion and even homicide related to land grabbing. The retired military man is the brother of Maria das Graças, Michelle's mother. The family first lady lives in the Sunrise area .



The operation was carried out by the Special Action Group to Combat Organized Crime (Gaeco) of the Public Ministry of the Federal District, in partnership with the Special Coordination of Repression against Corruption, Organized Crime and Crimes against Public Administration and against the Tax Order of the Civil Police DF and with the Military District of the Federal District.



The seven sergeants arrested are either full or have already served in the 8th and 10th Battalion of the Military Police, units responsible for ostensible policing in the region of Sol Nascente. In addition to Jorge Firmo Ferreira, the sergeants Jorge Alves dos Santos, Agnaldo Figueiredo de Assis, Francisco Carlos da Silva Cardoso, José Deli Pereira da Gama, Paulo Henrique da Silva and Jair Dias were arrested and denounced by the Federal Public Ministry.



The investigations began in 2011, but progressed thanks to the participation of a collaborator, who integrated and led the gang, but decided to help in the investigation to receive the benefit of reducing the sentence. He sought the PCDF Organized Crime Repression Office and detailed the functioning of the criminal organization.



With judicial authorization, the telephone calls of the suspects were intercepted and the conversations revealed how the military police responsible for grilagem in the region of Sol Nascente. The complaint highlights that the data obtained with João Firmo's bank secrecy breach, authorized by Justice, reinforce the PM's link with the criminal organization. The agency identified two transfers from him to Francisco Cardoso, another member of the supposed gang of militiamen, on July 27, 2015, which totaled R $ 8 thousand.



The 1st sergeant entered the reserve of the Military Police on January 16, 2017. According to the Transparency Portal, his monthly compensation is R $ 8,227.68, out of benefits.



Other side

In a statement, the Military Police claimed to have collaborated with the investigations through the Corregedoria. The corporation added that it has instituted internal procedures to investigate the conduct of the police officers. "But all run under the secret of Justice. Therefore, we can not give more details, "he said.



The Planalto Palace has said it will not comment on the matter. The Courier was not able to contact the defense of João Firmo Ferreira and the other defendants in custody. The proceeding is a matter of secrecy.

They collaborated Alexandre de Paula and Roberta Belyse

http://blogs.correiobraziliense.com.br/ ... bolsonaro/

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu May 30, 2019 12:59 pm

May 30 Brazilian Education Strike: Meet the Organizers
DEMOCRACY EDUCATION POLITICS SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
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Hardly spontaneous, the May 30 National Education strike was planned through democratic people’s assemblies which have been taking place in towns and cities across Brazil. Meet some of the groups involved in the organization of this historic protest.

By Brian Mier

Wednesday’s national student and teacher strike has been democratically organized by a coalition of student associations and labor unions. It shows signs of being bigger than the May 15 event, which brought millions of people to the streets of dozens of Brazilian cities. Although various attempts have been made to try to hijack or fragment them (for example, an “anarchist” protest on May 23 which billed itself as the second wave of the strike but only brought hundreds to the streets of São Paulo) the protesters have remained unified and their demands – primarily that the proposed R$7.9 Billion cuts to the national education system are halted – have remained clear and coherent. The following are examples of some of the organizations behind the largest peoples’ mobilizations since the 2016 coup. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list. Brazil has thousands of local, regional and national social movements. But as the media and some 5th column actors try to hijack the meaning of the protests, some may begin to argue that they are “spontaneous” in an attempt to delegitimize or fragment the demands. The following list of groups that have been holding base level democratic assemblies to make decisions about every step of the organizing process for the education strikes, should be enough to demonstrate that this is not the case .

1) União Nacional dos Estudantes (National Students’ Union/UNE) – Founded in 1937 to fight Getulio Vargas’ New State, the UNE is the Brazilian national undergraduate university students’ association and was a major actor in the fight against the 1964-1985 military dictatorship. It is connected to the largest left and center left political parties in the country, such as PT, PC do B and PDT, and has served as a breeding ground for future political leaders from its outset, with former UNE leaders including last year’s Vice Presidential Candidate Manuela D´Ávila (PC do B) and PT Congressional leader Paulo Pimenta. Both two time presidential candidate PSDB party, José Serra, and former PT lead strategist José Dirceau were former national presidents of UNE.

“I was in Congress during a public hearing last week to try to convince the Education Minister to cancel the budget cuts, but he refused to hear us. So it will be on the streets that he finally understands. We brought over 2 million people to streets on May 15th and this May 30th we will repeat these numbers,” says UNE National President, Marianna Dias.

2. União Brasileira dos Estudantes Secundaristas (Brazilian High School Students Union/UBES). Founded in 1948, the UBES has hundreds of thousands of members nationwide and was an actor in the fight against the Brazilian dictatorship and in the Direitos Já movement. Essentially the UBES is an umbrella organization for hundreds of municipal and state level high school students unions, including UPES, the São Paulo High School Students Union, which was an actor in hundreds of school occupations in 2015. On the May 30 national education strike, UBES National President Pedro Gorki, 18, says that the cuts in the federal education budget, -initially announced as a form of punishment for students behavior – “are the drop of water which transformed into a Tsunami”.

3. Associação Nacional de Pós-graduandos (National Graduate Students Association/ANPG). Graduate students have been one of the groups hardest hit by the massive education cuts that took place after the 2016 coup. Michel Temer cut grad school stipends in half, killed the Science Without Borders program which funded years abroad at the world’s top universities hundreds of thousands of public university students during the 13 years of PT rule, and butchered research budgets across the country. The Bolsonaro government’s new budget cuts would cripple graduate study in Brazil, threatening to eliminate funding for the fields of Sociology and Philosopy altogether. UNPG Vice President Manuela Matias says that Brazil’s 200,000 public university graduate students will be out on the streets tomorrow to protest the government’s “scorched earth policy towards scientific research.”

4. Central Ùnica dos Trabalhadores (Unified Workers Central/CUT) and its affiliated Teachers Unions. The CUT is the legendary labor union confederation that was born out of the wildcat strikes in São Paulo’s ABC industrial suburbs during the late 1970s and helped bring down the military dictatorship, forming the core support base of the PT party. Although it has suffered membership loss, due primarily to automation and robotics, it is still the largest intersindical in Latin America, with nearly 8 million members, and has thousands of locally affiliated teachers unions. Together with the other union confederations such as the Força Sindical, the CTB and CONLUTAS, the CUT is currently organizing a national General Strike scheduled for June 14, in an attempt to block the proposed deep austerity cuts and capitalization of the national retirement system, as they blocked a similar initiative through general strikes after the 2016 coup. The teachers unions have been heavily involved in every step of the organizing process for the May 30 protests, but the CUT also views them as a way of upping the pressure in the lead up to the June 14 General Strike. This is why they promise to put hundreds of thousands of people on the streets tomorrow. “All entities should mobilize their bases to thicken the protests on May 30th, joining in the defense of education and all of the rallying cries that, today, pit the working class and growing sectors of society as a whole in motion against the policies of the Bolsonaro government,” says an official communication from the CUT dated May 22. In addition to putting people on the streets, the CUT is working nationwide to pressure local, state and national lawmakers, gathering petition signatures, holding community meetings and distributing pamphlets to spread information about the damage that the eduction and retirement cuts will cause to the Brazilian working class.

Will millions of Brazilians return to the streets on May 30, as they did on May 15? As of now, all signs indicate that the demonstrations will be even larger as protests have already been confirmed in hundreds of cities in 14 states. Regardless of the final turnout or the end results, a huge amount of organizing has gone to make both this and the May 15th protests happen. These types of actions are rarely mentioned, both in the hegemonic commercial media and among some sectors of the so called vanguard left. In both cases, presenting actions like these as “spontaneous” events is an insult to the intelligence of the Brazilian people that serves the interests of imperialist capital and local compradors.

http://www.brasilwire.com/may-30-brazil ... rganizers/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:24 pm

Savage Capitalism, Repackaged: Itau Bank’s “Partido Novo”

In late 2013 the formation of a new Brazilian Political Party was announced, called literally Partido Novo (New Party).

Initially and opportunistically presented as if emerging from the protests that had swept Brasil that June, its libertarian, minimal state messaging was in stark contrast to the demands of those on the streets. These youngsters were depicted as “the opposite side to the black blocs” and instead of improving, they proposed to abolish public health and education altogether, in one of the world’s most unequal countries.

There’s nothing remotely new about the ideology of Partido Novo, but in October it will field a Presidential Candidate for the first time, a former banker with a R$450m fortune, João Amoêdo, who insists that reducing inequality isn’t the way to fight poverty. Advocating long discredited trickle down economics, and echoing economic rhetoric of the Dictatorship era, he maintains that generating growth, and redistributing wealth are mutually exclusive. Currently polling at around 1-2%, Amoêdo also says that employers should have the right to discriminate against women over wage equality – “The state should not interfere”. Novo’s adherence to Neoliberal dogma would be almost comical, were it not for the tens of millions it would plunge into extreme poverty. It is unique in the field as being the party which openly advocates taking Michel Temer’s wildly unpopular post-coup reforms even further.

Novo’s candidate for Governor of São Paulo is Rogério Chequer, the US hedge funder turned activist who led the Vem Pra Rua campaign for Dilma Rousseff’s illegitimate ouster that, along with the less discreet MBL, provided the green and yellow appearance of majority public support for the Coup of 2016. Partido Novo has also attempted to prevent the Workers Party candidate Lula da Silva from being able to run for President in 2018.

Luis Felipe Miguel, UnB professor, coordinator of its Research Group on Democracy and Inequalities, gives his stark appraisal of “Novo”, whose modern presentation masks just the latest political vehicle for an age-old Brazilian reactionary right. Original version in Portuguese here.

The “New” Party is perhaps the worst of Brazilian politics, including Bolsonaro. By Luis Felipe Miguel

Partido “Novo” (sic) is an illustrative phenomenon. It allows us to evaluate how changed and enlightened our bourgeoisie is.

The party’s foundation seems to answer Itaú Unibanco’s desire not to pay any more tolls for the traditional political elite, and rule directly.

A party, let us say, that is militantly anti-Bonapartist. “All power to the bourgeoisie.”

With a glittering multimillionaire squad at its command, “Novo” wanted to be the herald of the ultraliberal creed, in its most decontaminated and uncompromising form. It would be a showcase of intellectual sophistication, managerial competence, and all-round honesty -as not tempted by the corrupt ethos of the political elite- of our capitalist class.

As a further demonstration of the seriousness of the Party-Company, a “selection process” for possible candidates was instituted. You only have the right to wear Novo’s orange shirt if approved by a bank, which evaluates your resume and applies a written test. (It is also necessary to pay a fee of 300 or 600 reais depending on the position, which is non refundable. “Novo” accepts cards.)

Now a presidential candidate, João Amoêdo, the inspiration, chief and principal shareholder of “Novo” gains more visibility – data indicates that he invested more than 4 million reais in the party, while none of the other associated bankers put more than 250 thousand. And who is he?

Instead of the sophisticated libertarian intellectual who was promised, we have a troglodyte in a suit and tie, who mechanically repeats his profession of faith in the virtues of the market, indifferent to human consequences, unable to see as people those who are thrown to the margins. The state can not intervene even to prevent the most glaring injustices, public services must be abolished, everything must be privatized. You can not tell the difference between Amoêdo and Flávio Rocha (Boss of Richuelo clothing chain, once lauded as potential Presidential candidate), for example. Both are reproducers of the same narrow rhetoric.

In fact, the market fundamentalism of Amoêdo and the Christian fundamentalism of Cabo Daciolo, however different they may appear, indicate the same inability for complex reasoning and the same adherence to dogmas invulnerable to the clash with reality. I feel more sympathy for Cabo, immersed in his own unreason, than the banker, who takes advantage of his own rhetoric and with whom we never know where fanaticism ends and calculus begins.

I said that Amoêdo is a troglodyte in a suit and tie, but it’s not like that anymore. On entering the campaign, he went on to wear a polo shirt and sweater. His website wants him to be called “João.” (Laughs.)

But it’s not just the image. The libertarian doctrinal rigidity did not resist realpolitik and today, “Novo” is ready to accept the defense of censorship, the limitation of individual rights, traditional conservatism. Their candidates, those who have paid all the fees and passed the rigorous selection process, seem to have come from the ranks of the Bolsonarian shock troops.

Ricardo Salles, one of the party’s main bets for the Chamber of Deputies in São Paulo, chose a candidate number that alludes to the caliber of rifle, and has distributed campaign material which suggests shooting leftists. Diego Dusol, candidate for Federal Deputy in Paraíba, promises to make abortion a “heinous crime” and completely liberate access to weapons: “More than a rifle, Farmers should be able to acquire a Tank” (literal citation of his campaign material).

This is “Novo”. Perhaps it is the worst thing that exists in Brazilian politics today. Even worse than Bolsonaro. Spoiled puppies of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, playing politics and finding themselves immensely superior to the rest of society. Unlike Bolsonaro, they do not even suspect how crude they are.

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