Brazil

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Thy Will Be Done: Brasil’s Holy War
A fifty year foreign battle to combat Catholic Liberation Theology in Brazil promises rich rewards for the vested interests which initiated it, at great human cost.

A fifty year foreign battle to combat Catholic Liberation Theology in Brazil promises rich rewards for the vested interests which initiated it, at great human cost.

“Brazil is at the vanguard of the global trend of the Pentecostalization of Christianity,” as well as “the epicenter of world Christianity, with the largest Pentecostal population” says Andrew Chesnut, author of Born Again in Brazil.

From 9% in 1991 to 30% of the population in 2017, the rapid expansion of Neopentecostalism in Brazil since its arrival in the 1970s has caused unease amongst socially liberal sectors of society. Rarely spoken about is how the story began fifty years ago, and how the country is increasingly living with the repercussions of decisions made far away, all those years ago.

In 1969, then New York Governor, and soon to be Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller, was dispatched to Latin America in the capacity as special envoy for President Nixon. The visit was to assess what was seen as the failure of Kennedy’s so called “Alliance for Progress” initiative in the region.

In ‘United States Penetration of Brazil’, Jan K. Black writes “It is interesting to note that in 1969, the year when U.S. economic assistance was suspended for a few months in “cosmetic” protest against the dramatic tightening of the dictatorial noose signified by the dissolution of the Congress in December 1968 and the promulgation of the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5), the number of Brazilian policemen brought to the United States for training almost tripled that of the previous year. The number of Brazilian military trainees in the United States also increased that year and was, in fact, higher than at any other time in the post war period. The marked expansion of the training program also coincided with an increase in documented reports of the systematic torture of political prisoners and of the murders of petty criminals, as well as alleged subversives, carried out by the “Death Squads,” reportedly composed of off-duty policemen. (New York) Governor Nelson Rockefeller, as President Nixon’s special envoy in Brazil and other Latin American countries in 1969, was uninformed, unconvinced, or unconcerned about these reports. Rockefeller recommended that “the training program which brings military and police personnel from the other hemispheric nations to the United States and to training centers in Panama be continued and strengthened.”. The training program to which he referred was that of the notorious School of the Americas, which is now both re-branded and re-tooled as WHINSEC. This agency has been central to the re-configuration of Latin American militaries as glorified police forces, equipped for internal rather than hemispheric defence, since the 1960s.

On his tour, under robust military security, Rockefeller had been met with violent anti-imperialist protests in almost every city he visited, which were often subject to media blackout.



Following his southern trip, Nelson prepared the “Rockefeller Report on Latin America” which is an important document in many ways, not least that it identified Catholic Liberation Theology as a threat to the National Security of the United States.

Under the heading ‘The Church’, the report states that “Modern communications and increasing education have brought about a stirring among the people that has had a tremendous impact on the Church, making it a force dedicated to change – revolutionary change if necessary. Actually, the Church may be somewhat in the same situation as the young – with a profound idealism, but as a result, in some cases, vulnerable to subversive penetration; ready to undertake a revolution if necessary to end injustice but not clear either as to the ultimate nature of the revolution itself or as to the governmental system by which the justice it seeks can be realized.”

In a section ‘Changes in the Decade Ahead’ the report warns “Clearly, the opinion in the United States that Communism is no longer a serious factor in the Western Hemisphere is thoroughly wrong. We found almost universally that the other American republics are deeply concerned about the threat that it poses to them – and the United States must be alert to and concerned about the ultimate threat it poses to the United States and the hemisphere as a whole.”

It goes on to predict that “Growing nationalism, across the spectrum of political groupings, which will often find expression in terms of independence from U.S. domination and influence…”

To counter that threat to US interests, a recommendation was the export of a socially conservative counterpoint to left leaning Liberation Theology, with emphasis on the individual and economic liberalism or “prosperity theology”. This would take the form of US-style Evangelical churches, with which the spread of emancipatory politics through Catholicism could be halted and even reversed, less they jeopardise US strategic and corporate interests.


Igreja Universal, Rio de Janeiro 1977

Eight years later in 1977, the pioneering prosperity theology-based Universal Church of the Kingdom of God was founded by Brazilian Pastor Emir Macedo, who had recently converted to Evangelical faith, and lauded the philosophies of Nelson’s grandfather John D. Rockefeller. The church’s first service was held on July 9 that year, in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro to a congregation of 200. 40 years later its membership in Brazil stands at around 2 million, of a 8 million worldwide total.

In 1979, the first Santa Fe document advised the incoming Reagan administration that it had to do something decisive about the threat posed by Liberation Theology. The administration heeded the advice, and responded both militarily and ideologically. Reagan’s military strategy against liberation theology ushered in what Noam Chomsky describes as the first religious war of the 21st century. It was the war of the United States against the Catholic Church in Latin America whose bishops, as noted earlier, had together dared to affirm a “preferential option for the poor” as their official position.

It was at this time, with the return to a multi-party system in Brazil, the Workers Party, or PT was formed by a coalition of Trade Unionists such as future President Lula da Silva, Marxist Intellectuals, and key figures from Brazilian Liberation Theology like Leonardo Boff and Frei Betto. The PT initiated the Diretas Já movement which brought about the end of Military rule in 1985.


Brazilian Liberation Theologist Frei Betto with Cuba’s Fidel Castro

By 1987, the Latin American Military Chiefs of Staff meeting in conference in Mar del Plata, Argentina, devoted several pages of their final report to Liberation Theology and the threat it posed to regional stability. The targeting of Liberation Theologians led to thousands upon thousands of deaths across the continent. By the 1990s, with the southern cone re-democratised, and given a Neoliberal fever by the Bush Senior administration and IMF, these new Evangelical Churches and Missionaries had spread rapidly across the region, along with allegations of CIA connivance.

Thy will be done

The book by Gerard Colby & Charlotte Dennett ‘Thy will be done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil.’ is an exhaustive investigation relating the growth of Neopentacostalism in Brazil, and its relationship to Nelson Rockefeller and US Corporate interests in exploitation of the Amazon. It was triggered by the authors’ trip to Brazil in 1976 to investigate a missionary organization called the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), also known as the Wycliffe Bible Translators, a Rockefeller & USAID funded organisation which had been translating the Bible into hundreds of indigenous languages in Central and South America.

Wycliffe was founded by ultraconservative William Cameron Townsend who worked in tandem with Rockefeller and which the authors accuse of destroying indigenous peoples’ cultural values to abet penetration by U.S. businesses, employing a “virulent brand of Christian fundamentalism that used linguistics to undermine the social cohesion of indigenous communities and accelerate their assimilation into Western culture”. The authors discovered that SIL was effectively a scouting party that surveyed the Amazonian hinterlands for potential sources of opposition to natural resource exploitation such as cattle ranching, clear cutting and strip mining, among native populations. SIL had actively whitewashed massacres of Indigenous groups by Brazil’s Military Regime and even allowed its Jungle Aviation & Radio Service (JAARS) base in the Ecuadoran Amazon to be used by Green Berets who were combing the forest for signs of armed insurgency. Co-author Gerard Colby interviewed by Folha in 1996, in response to criticism of his book from ’64 Coup-conspirator and friend to the Rockefellers, former Ambassador Lincoln Gordon, said “After the coup, not only was Brazil’s destiny undergoing immense change, but the Amazon and The Indians were opened up to even greater genocide. And Nelson Rockefeller knew what was happening inside the country. What does he do? He travels to Brazil in 1969, meets directly with the military leadership, receives the National Intelligence Service report … and next you see Nelson asking for support for what he calls the “New Military” to be the vanguard of development. A Military that would promote things like the Transamazonica Highway. Not surprisingly, in 1972, you read in the New York Times Nelson’s cousin, Richard Aldrich, who was then the president of the Brazil-United States Chamber of Commerce, enthusiastically stating “This road is terribly important for the development of the interior. It is already bringing people and will make raw materials much more accessible to the outside world. “


Trans-Amazonian Highway (BR-230) 1970s

In Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano’s ‘The Open Veins of Latin America’, he talks about a US-Brazil agreement in 1964 which permitted US Air Force planes to fly over and photograph the Amazon rainforest: “They had used cintilometers to detect radioactive mineral deposits by the emission of light wavelengths of variable intensity, electromagnetometers to radiograph the topsoil rich in non-ferrous minerals, and magnetometers to discover and measure the iron. The reports and photographs acquired in the reconnaissance of the extension and depth of the secret riches of Amazonia were put in the hands of private firms interested in the matter, thanks to the good services of the United States Geological Survey. In the immense region was proven the existence of gold, silver, diamonds, gipsite, hematite, magnetite, tantalium, titanium, thorium, uranium, quartz, copper, manganese, lead, sulfates, potassium, bauxite, zinc, zirconium, chrome and mercury.”

War of the Saints

Some compare the expansion of Neopentecostalism in Brazil to other implanted religions elsewhere, such as the Saudi-sponsored spread of Wahabbism in the Middle East, and with it has grown a radical militancy. Those practicing popular Afro-Brazilian religions such as Candomble and Umbanda have found their places of worship attacked and burned around the country, and find now find little of the protection they once enjoyed from government & authorities. This situation has developed in parallel to the influence that tax-exempt, often extremely corrupt Evangelical churches have developed in Politics, with them now controlling City Hall in Rio de Janeiro, and on the brink of State Governance. In a context in which Rio de Janeiro’s evangelical churches have been accused of laundering money for the drug trafficking gangs, all elements of Afro-brazilian culture including caipoeira, Jango drumming, and participation in carnaval parades, have been banned by the traffickers in many favelas.

During preparations for the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Rockefeller Foundation created LEAD (Leadership in the Environment and Development). One of the Brazilian Politicians most closely associated with LEAD/ABDL would be Marina Silva. Former Workers Party and Environment minister under Lula’s first administration, Silva had been an adherent to Catholic Liberation Theology for almost two decades, converting to Evangelicalism in the mid 1990s after a period of illness.

According to their website LEAD have since then “been recruiting talented individuals from key sectors and professions all over the world to be part of a growing network now standing at over 2400 leaders, who are committed to changing the world. Every one of our leaders is a graduate of LEAD’s Fellows Training Program, an intensive and demanding program designed to enhance leadership ability, strengthen sustainable development knowledge and foster the relationships that will continue to support our Fellows in their work. This cross-sectoral, cross-cultural program has been at the heart of LEAD activities across the globe.” “Since 1992, more than 500 professionals have been trained in Brazil, Canada, China, Former Soviet Union, Europe, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa.” The Brazilian branch of LEAD (ABDL) was one of the first, founded in mid-1991 and according to Gazeta Mercantil (06/11/91), “The Rockefeller Foundation intends to invest US $5 million in the next five years in training environmental leaders, with The purpose of preparing opinion makers capable of having a broad view of environmental problems and their economic implications. ” All Binger, LEAD’s international director, said with surprising frankness: “We hope that in ten years many of the fellows will be acting as ministers of environment and development, university rectors and CEOs.”.

The growing Evangelical power base traded support for policy positions throughout the 1990s and 2000s, supporting Lula and Dilma Governments but it was not until 2010 that they had a potential Presidential candidate of their own – Marina Silva, her platform a marketable synthesis of evangelical christianity, environmental campaigning and Wall Street friendly liberalism.

Heiress to COA Member Itaú Bank, brother of Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission member Roberto, Neca Setubal, was responsible for 84% of funds to Marina Silva’s institute in 2013. Former president of Citibank Alvaro de Souza ran the fundraising for Silva’s 2010 election campaign. Ex-American Chamber of Commerce. Souza had previously served on the boards of such companies as Gol and AmBev, and was chairman of WWF Brazil. In 2008, the WWF, and its President Emeritus, Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, awarded Silva with a medal, championing her work on Amazon conservation.

In the lead up to the 2014 election, David Rockefeller’s corporate lobby for the Americas, AS/COA, which specialises in both propaganda and grooming future leaders in the region, hosted an event featuring opposition pair, PSB Presidential Candidate Eduardo Campos and his Vice Silva. Campos would go on to die in an air crash soon after and their subsequent focus on the candidacy of Silva reflected a belief that she was Wall Street and the Obama administration’s favoured candidate, not merely a spoiler candidate for Dilma Rousseff. Marina received an international campaign of media beatification to match, in which she was marketed as the “genuinely progressive” alternative to Rousseff, despite the social conservatism inherent in her evangelical faith.

But in 2018 critical mass for the religion’s once great hope for the Presidency has evaporated, with some of Marina’s base amongst evangelical sectors even transferring directly to a Neofascist with the major churches’ overt support, Jair Bolsonaro.

And those northern Neoliberals who once backed Marina Silva have also joined Neopentecostals in their support for Bolsonaro. The candidate has been holding off record meetings with AS/COA since 2017 at the latest, along with his “Chicago boy” economic advisor and potential Finance Minister, BTG Pactual/Millenium Institute’s Paulo Guedes. These meetings coincided with a road to Damascus style conversion to the rhetoric of free market and minimal state, to follow his switch to the Evangelical faith in 2016, with a show baptism in Israel’s River Jordan.

http://www.brasilwire.com/holy-war/

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In Brasil’s Semiotic War, Truth Was The First Casualty
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 23, 2018
Bruno De Oliveira


Fake news and its propagation via social media has created a suspension of critical thinking. We have people simply believing everything and nothing; accepting the absurd whilst disregarding factual information as fake news. In Brazil, this wave of fake news is creating a state of collective paranoia where ordinary people cannot distinguish between socio-economic, historical facts and lies.

The real danger is that the notion of truth no longer exists.

There are signs, we need to recognise them now, and we should pay attention. A charismatic politician playing into fears, anger, racism and a sense of lost opportunities is fair warning. With Lula not being allowed to run for the 2018 election, the populist Brazilian politician Jair Bolsanaro is increasingly likely to become Brazil’s next president.

Bolsonaro has exhibited the following:

powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism,
disdain for the importance of human rights,
identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause,
the supremacy of the military/avid militarism,
rampant sexism,
obsession with national security,
religion and ruling elite tied together,
power of workers suppressed or eliminated,
disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts,
obsession with crime and punishment,
rampant cronyism and corruption and continuing expressions of nationalism.
The truth is that Hitler sympathiser Bolsonaro shows clear fascist traits and there is nothing fake in pointing that out.

During an interview with journalist Mariana Godoy of RedeTV, Bolsonaro couldn’t articulate his views on how to administrate the country’s economy. He said: “Who will talk about economics for me is my economic team when formed in the future. Why do people require of me an understanding in economics? Then I would have to know medicine, but I will appoint the Minister of Health. Must you have an understanding of the Armed Forces? I will indicate the Minister of Defense and, what about understanding the issue of agriculture? I will indicate the Minister of Agriculture. So it’s an exaggeration in that part there. Can you see, of the five military presidents, which one was trained in economics? None”.

Congressman Bolsonaro is an open sympathiser of the Brazilian military coup of the 60s. He said that the Brazilian military dictatorship was a glorious period in Brazil’s history.

Bolsonaro noted that “violence is combated with violence,” rather than with human rights flags, such as those defended by Amnesty International, whom he called “idiots.” He was questioned about a survey about the Brazilian police which kills amongst the most in the world, “I think this Brazilian Military Police had to kill, more than half of those deaths are in combat, on a mission. Amnesty International is against what needs the public which is the safety of our country. ” Bolsonaro said.

Bolsonaro, long denounced as “dictatorship lover” ran with the idea, expressing the paranoiac fantasies of a time that was one of the darkest in Brazil’s history. Bolsonaro is developing a narrative towards normalising institutional structures of fascism.

In 2016, during a vote in the lower house, on the admissibility of the opening of the impeachment process of Dilma Rousseff, Bolsonaro, in a speech, dedicated his vote to the late Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, one of the most feared military of the Dictatorship. Brilhante Ustra, de facto head of army intelligence during Brazil’s two-decade military dictatorship, has been noted as “the master of life and death, the man who decided who was going to live and who was going to die.” Brilhante Ustra regarded as responsible for the illegal arrests and torture of more than 500 Brazilians from 1970-74. He was convicted – incurring no more than a fine for “human rights violations” – for ordering the arrest and torture of journalist and anti-military coup activist Luiz Eduardo da Rocha Merlino, who died in custody. Bolsanaro’s Vice president is himself a retired army general.

He pointed out that he does not think it fair that women and men receive the same salary because women get pregnant: “Wow, this woman has a ring on her finger, a while pregnant, six months of maternity leave… Who will pay the bill? The employer. When she returns, she will have another month’s holiday, meaning she worked five months in a year. That’s why the guy pays a woman less.” Bolsonaro was a defendant for the alleged practice of crimes to incite the crime of rape and libel against federal deputy Maria do Rosário. Also, he stated: “You can be sure that if I get there (became president), I will not have money for NGOs. If it depends on me, every citizen will have a firearm in the house.”

Bolsonaro also claimed that indigenous and quilombola (Brazilian hinterland settlement founded by people of African origin) reserves hamper the economy. “Where there is an indigenous land, there is wealth beneath it. We have to change that from there”.

To illustrate how divisive Bolsonaro is, we need to look at Franco. The Spanish general who ruled over Spain as a military dictator, implemented policies that were responsible for the repression and deaths of as many as 400,000 political opponents and dissenters through the use of forced labour and executions in the concentration camps his regime operated. Most country towns and rural areas were patrolled by pairs of Guardia Civil, military police for civilians. Spain’s student revolts were violently repressed by the heavily armed Armed Police. Bolsonaro holds these views.

Bolsonaro is a real danger to democracy, human rights and freedom. His political persona is based on demagoguery, vicious misogyny, racism, incitement of violence, actual violence, complete disregard for history, and threats to free speech.

Bolsonaro maybe is not thinking of concentration camps, but his rhetoric is forming the institutional structures of fascism. The media has been for years building public rage against the democratic institutions, aiming at mainly the disenfranchised working class, Pentecostal followers, the middle class and their traditional families. People have found refuge in a simplistic narrative.

History is clear and crude about the dangers of a charismatic leader with a fascistic views in times of uncertainty. Fellow Brazilians be warned, there is still time to stop this in the ballot.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2018/10/ ... -casualty/

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The turn has begun! The difference between Haddad and Bolsonaro drops 6 points in the Datafolha!



October 25, 2018
The wave of the turn follows in full steam throughout Brazil. In just one week, Haddad grew and has already reduced the gap to Jair Bolsonaro by six points .

You can check in the latest edition of the Datafolha survey: Lula's candidate and the truth is 44%, three more than the 41% of last survey, against 56% of his opponent - in the previous poll, he was 59%.

Whites or voters are 8% of the total voting intention, of which 22% are willing to change their minds until voting time. The time to turn is now!

The Datafolha only proves what the people already know: lie has short leg and politics is done with debates, dialogue and proposals. We are mobilized in the streets and social networks to fight fear, lies and hatred and present our proposals to bring Lula's Brazil back.

The signs of victory already appear everywhere. In the North region Haddad grew seven points. In the South they were 4. Among the young the growth was from 39% to 45% and among women the distance has narrowed to a draw: the match is 42% to 41% among women.

The institute interviewed 9,173 voters in 341 cities in the survey, commissioned by Folha and TV Globo and held on Wednesday (24) and Thursday (25). The margin of error is two percentage points more or less.

Every day, thousands of people mobilize to show Brazil that it can be better , it can be with Fernando Haddad. Dialogue is our tool and arguments, our only weapon. Nothing will stop us! Brazil is love, it's true, Brazil belongs to everyone!

We continue with the song that even Chico Buarque is already singing ! ♫ Turn, turn vow, turn, turn, turn! (I.e.

(video at limk)

https://lula.com.br/a-virada-comecou-di ... datafolha/

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Universities All Over Brazil Suffer Police Raids And Electoral Justice Operations
Public interest organizations and the academy disavowed the raids, which happened in several states for the last three days

Oct.26.2018 2:07AM

Police officers and electoral justice officials unleashed a full-scale operation in public universities all over Brazil, which brought a reaction from the academic community and public interest organizations.

The measures, related for the most part to political advertising control, have been happening in higher education institutions in several states. Critics are calling them censorship attempts.

In Rio de Janeiro, the court mandated that UFF's (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro State) Law School take out a flag that read "Law UFF - Antifascist." The flag was taken down on Tuesday (23th), without any warrant, but students later put it up again.

At Uerj (State University of Rio de Janeiro, a different institution), there was a warrant to take down banners honoring city councilwoman Marielle Franco (PSOL), murdered last March. There were other similar accounts at Unirio.


Front of the UFF Law School, with a banner written "censored" - João Pedro Boechat

The Rio de Janeiro chapter of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) released a statement with its "disavow" to "Electoral Justice Decisions that try to censor the freedom of speech of law students and professors."
The organization also said that "the free demonstration of opinion, with no alignment to candidates or political parties, can't be mistaken for political advertising."

In Rio Grande do Sul, the Electoral Justice barred an event called "Against Fascism. For Democracy", claiming it would be a campaign rally inside a government-funded institution, which is forbidden by Brazilian law.

On Thursday (25th), protesters held a demonstration against the decision. One of the protesters allegedly there, former governor Tarso Genro (PT), said he felt censored and claimed that even during the military dictatorship he held conferences and lectures.
​
In Paraiba, there were operations in three universities. On Thursday morning, federal police officers went to Professors Association's office in the Campina Grande Federal University. They had a search warrant for flyers called "Manifest In Defense Of Democracy And Public Universities," as well as other materials supposedly in favor of Fernando Haddad (PT).

The association denies that any action was favoring either presidential candidate and says the flyer was manifest defending democracy in general.


Translated by NATASHA MADOV

Read the article in the original language

https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internaci ... ions.shtml

Win or lose, fascism is returning to Brazil

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Brazil at the crossroads


Members of the Landless Rural Workers Movement create a human chain to open a path for Workers Party presidential candidate Fernando Haddad as he campaigns through downtown Rio de Janeiro on October 1

THE stakes could hardly be higher as Brazilians go to the polls this weekend. Despite a mammoth effort by Brazil’s democratic forces narrowing the gap, Jair Bolsonaro’s lead in the polls has not disappeared — and the threat he poses is difficult to exaggerate.

A far-right thug who calls Chilean butcher General Pinochet one of his heroes, claims that Brazil’s 1964-85 military dictatorship’s biggest flaw was failing to kill enough of its opponents and promises to permanently wipe out the country’s “reds” is a horrifying prospect for leadership of Latin America’s largest country.

Bolsonaro’s pledge to “drain the swamp” of political and corporate corruption is, like those of other far-right demagogues, entirely dishonest.

He proposes extensive privatisation of Brazil’s remaining state assets — a process that will, as elsewhere, line the pockets of the rich at the public’s expense — while his enthusiasm for tearing up restrictions on logging, mining and other extractive industries and ending protections and rights for indigenous peoples make him a straightforward candidate of Brazilian big business.

A refusal to acknowledge the reality of climate change — expressed in a proposal to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on limiting global warming, although he appeared to backtrack on that this week — carries particular risks in the country that is home to 60 per cent of the world’s largest rainforest.

Shocking as his prospectus is, Bolsonaro is far from unique. From Turkey’s Erdogan to India’s Modi, aggressive authoritarian nationalists willing to tear up the rules of the liberal political playbook and deploy the full machinery of state repression against their opponents are becoming increasingly common.

The surge in far-right violence in Brazil, with left-wing activists, women and journalists falling victim to lethal violence from Bolsonaro supporters, is familiar from other countries.

His likely international aggression — he has suggested setting up camps on Brazilian soil where enemies of Venezuela’s elected government could train to overthrow it — would be disastrous for the region, with echoes of the high-risk recklessness that characterises Turkey’s intervention in Syria or Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen.

And Bolsonaro emerges in the era of Donald Trump: the most powerful country of all is led by an arrogant, irresponsible gambler, whose contempt for international agreements and arms reduction treaties of decades’ standing has already made the world a much more dangerous place.

The blame for Bolsonaro lies at the feet of Brazil’s political Establishment.

The crooked elite that used constitutional trickery to oust elected president Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and instal a privatising, welfare-cutting, deforesting administration led by a convicted criminal has done much to undermine Brazilians’ trust in the political process.

The outrageous stitch-up that saw former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva thrown in jail and barred from standing in this year’s election, which all polling suggested he would have easily won, has more directly paved Bolsonaro’s path to the brink of power.

The launch this week of the Brazil Solidarity Initiative could not be more timely. The Morning Star sends its solidarity to Brazil’s Workers Party candidate Fernando Haddad and his communist running mate Manuela d’Avila: the mass mobilisation by the left has been of heroic proportions and if they win on Sunday a new chapter will open for Latin America.

But the fates of Lula and Rousseff show that a socialist-led Brazil will not be accepted by Brazilian or international capital and will need all our solidarity and support as it seeks to heal the country’s wounds.

And if Bolsonaro wins, our solidarity will be needed too: with a left that will be subject to intense, violent persecution; with women, black people and gay people whose government will treat their rights with contempt; with refugees forced to flee for their lives, and with progressive neighbours like Venezuela, which will face even graver attempts at destabilisation and counterrevolution. Whatever tomorrow’s vote brings, we must be ready.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article ... DU.twitter

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Why Bolsonaro won: beyond the cliches

If mind-stopping cliches of violence and corruption do not correspond with voting patterns or Bolsonaro’s governmental plan why did he win the election? It was not a free or fair process.

by Brian Mier

Why did the Brazilian people elect a neofascist? If you get your information from the newspapers, you might think that this happened because Brazilians are afraid of rising violence rates or fed up with corruption. These explanations sound great on paper because they function as what sociologist Pierre Bordieu called mind stopping cliches. When hearing something familiar and logical sounding, the brain stops and moves onto another subject.

Violence and corruption. Everyone hates that. What’s happening in sports? This is how the Anglo media wants people to process the issue of the arrival of fascism in Brazil, because if the public begins to scratch under the surface, it will find uncomfortable truths that implicate their own governments, think tanks, corporations and media institutions. That could lead to some difficult questions, so why not stick to the mind stopping cliches of violence and corruption? The problem is that, although both issues may have been used to manipulate the public, neither of them hold up to scrutiny.

Haddad had more support in the most violent regions

Like all countries that have to deal with the legacy of slavery and the fact that one segment of the population considers another segment to be sub-human, Brazil has always been a violent place. The image of Brazil as a land of violence has been burned into the minds of the Anglo public through films like Pixote, City of God and Elite Squad. Only 6% of Brazilians live in favelas, and many favelas have more middle class residents than poor, but in the minds of many casual northern observers, most Brazilians live in desolate slums full of child soldiers. Could fears of violence have been the deciding factor in electing a military man to the presidency? Brazil certainly sounds scary to many Americans.

While it is true that violence has risen in Brazil in recent years – especially after the start of the austerity policies that began mildly during the last year of Dilma Rousseff’s presidency and were greatly exacerbated by the coup government which took power in 2016 – violence patterns have been marked by a geographical shift which does not strongly correspond with electoral support for Bolsonaro. The case in point is São Paulo state, where Jair Bolsonaro received over ¼ of his total number of votes. Although Brasil witnessed a 14% rise in homicides between 2006 and 2016, São Paulo saw a 46% drop in the same period, with an even greater drop from 2000-2006. São Paulo city has seen its homicide rate of 60/100,000 in the year 2000 drop to 7.8 in 2017, which is significantly lower than most big American cities. Likewise, statewide homicide rates have dropped from 26/100,000 to 9.5/100,000 in the same period. Although there was a slight increase in the state wide murder rate during 2017, murders actually dropped by 15% in São Paulo city.

The case of Rio de Janeiro, where 67% of voters supported Bolsonaro, is also telling. In 2002, Rio de Janeiro had a homicide rate of 60/100,000. By 2010 it had dropped to 26/100,000. Murder rates began rising again after the mega-events, reaching around 37/100,000 in 2017 – a disturbing statistic, but not one that places Rio de Janeiro among the ten most violent states in Brazil. As I have argued before, however, Rio has a unique political and criminal environment. For example, a report by Amnesty International shows that 25% of all murders committed in Rio de Janeiro last year were done by police officers. Neighboring Minas Gerais has violence issues of its own, but it’s police killed around 10 times fewer people per capita in 2017 that the police in Rio de Janeiro. Furthermore, as Ben Anderson and I discovered while filming the HBO/Vice TV special, The Pacification of Rio, there is evidence that the Rio de Janeiro State government cooked the books, and shifted numbers between homicides, violent deaths of undetermined causes and disappearances to make crime rates appear lower during the lead up to the World Cup and Olympics. Therefore, although there is a recent rise in violence in Rio, the real numbers may be lower than they appear due to statistical manipulation by the government to build up support for the military occupation and, even if they are not, they don’t compare to the numbers from the early 2000s or rank Rio as one of the most violent places in Brazil.

If the homicide rate in Brazil has fallen so dramatically in the last 15 years in Rio and São Paulo, why did Brazil experience its highest murder toll ever last year? One reason is that the Brazilian northeast has been inundated with crack. Last year, 6 of the 10 most violent states in Brazil were located in the Northeast, the region where Fernando Haddad beat Bolsonaro in every state. In Ceará, for example, which has a homicide rate 8 times higher than that of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad received 71% of the vote.

Was fear of violence the reason people in São Paulo elected Bolsonaro, or was fear of violence the reason northeasterners elected Haddad? Let’s face it. Everyone is afraid of violence. But if 25% of the votes for an “anti-violence” candidate come from a region of Brazil that has crime rates comparable to places in Europe or Canada, one could come to the conclusion that the either electorate was manipulated or there were other, more important issues at stake.

It’s only corruption when communists do it

The other reason commonly cited for supporting Bolsonaro is Brazilians frustration with corruption, which, for the last 5 years has been nearly exclusively associated in the national and international media with the PT. Like the issue of violence, this does not hold up to a minimal level of scrutiny. President Dilma Rousseff was never involved in personal enrichment through corruption. In fact, she herself is a victim of corruption. Impeached for committing a non-impeachable offense, a budgetary infraction that was systematically committed by all leaders of all levels of Brazilian government and legalized one week after she was removed from office, it has subsequently come out that congressmen were bribed to vote in favor of her impeachment. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was the one man generally believed powerful enough to block the privatization of Brazil’s massive offshore petroleum reserves, was arrested on charges that he committed “indeterminate acts of corruption” related to an apartment the courts were unable to prove he ever owned and thrown in jail before his appeals process played out, in a move which Glen Greenwald says was obviously done to keep him for running for president this year. Likewise, Fernando Haddad was a victim of corruption when US-backed judge and prosecutor Sergio Moro illegally leaked plea bargain testimony to the press during election season, alleging that it implicates him in a corruption scandal despite the fact that the testimony had already been thrown out by the public prosecutor’s office.

Jair Bolsonaro, on the other hand, spent 25 years affiliated with the most corrupt political party in Brazil, the Partido Progressista (PP), led by the most corrupt politician in Brazilian history, Paulo Maluf, who is on Interpol’s most wanted list and can not leave Brazil or will be arrested. Furthermore Bolsonaro is already inviting corrupt politicians to help run his government. These names include:

1) Alberto Fraga, Congressman from the DEM party and gun industry pitchman who Bolsonaro invited to lead his bloc in Congress. Three weeks before the first round elections, in September, 2018, Fraga was sentenced to 4 years of semi-open imprisonment after being caught on tape charging and receiving bribes from a bus company;

2) Congressman Onyx Lazaroni, who has already confirmed as Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, who admitted to taking bribes from the JBS meat packing company to use in an illegal campaign slush fund in 2017;

3) Congressman Pauderny Avelino from the DEM party, who was convicted in 2016 of paying cronies millions of dollars above market rate in rents for buildings and used school furniture when he was education minister in Manaus; and

4) Paulo Guedes, a University of Chicago educated monetarist economist and former attache to Augusto Pinochet. Bolsonaro has invited him to be his Economic Minister, even though he is currently being investigated by the public prosecutors office, who want to know how he managed to pocket R$1 Billion in six years while managing pension funds.

If mind-stopping cliches of violence and corruption do not fully correspond with voting patterns and Bolsonaro’s governmental program, why did he win the election? My take is that the election was neither fair nor free. It was the result of a massive fraudulent campaign backed by the US government, Brazilian military and the judiciary to guarantee that the privatizations of the world’s largest offshore petroleum reserves implemented by the coup government of Michel Temer are not reversed, and that the US military has access to Brazilian bases for another possible future petroleum grab in Venezuela. The following events had a much bigger effect on Bolsonaro’s victory than violence and corruption:

1) A joint US/Brazil operation imprisoned leading candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who promised to reverse petroleum privatizations and re-allocate state oil profits to public health and education. He was jailed before his appeals process was finished on trumped up charges with no material evidence, based on a single plea bargain testimony made by a convicted criminal in exchange for sentence reduction and partial asset retention;

2) Lula announced he would run for President anyway, as was his right according to Brazilian and international law. The electoral court allowed 1400 candidates with similar legal issues to run, but they made an exception for Lula. Still leading in all election polls from behind bars, with more support than all other candidates combined and double the support of Bolsonaro, the one man easily capable of defeating fascism was barred from running;

3) The UN Human Rights Committee issued a ruling ordering the Brazilian government to allow Lula to run for office. Brazil is a signatory to the UN Protocol on Civil and Political Rights and, according to MP 311/2009, UNHRC rulings are legally binding. The Supreme Electoral Court broke Brazilian law and disobeyed the UN when it refused to let Lula run;

4) In a country where TV crews regularly enter prisons to interview drug traffickers and mass murderers, the courts bared Lula from speaking to Journalists, illegally prohibiting him for communicating to the public why they should vote against fascism in the elections;

5) 3.3 million voters, most of whom were poor and Northeastern – essentially the demographic that most supports the PT party – were purged from the voter rolls two weeks before the elections; and

6) After Bolsonaro support surged in the first round election, Folha de São Paulo revealed that his campaign was using an illegal slush fund created by hundreds of businessmen paying up to $4 Million USD each, to hire tech firms to illegally acquire personal data from users of the WhatsApp social media app. According to the article, this was used to create thousands of demographicly targeted groups of 256 uses each and bombard them with lies and slander against the PT party. These lies were not primarily based on fear mongering about violence and corruption, but on slander that the PT party is run by sexual perverts who want to make everyone’s children gay. After Supreme Electoral Court President Rosa Weber received death threats from Bolsonaro supporters and held a meeting with Bolsonaro supporter General Sergio Etchegoyen, she decided to hold off investigations until after the final round of the elections.

International capital and the US government now have exactly what they want in Brazil. All natural resources will be opened to exploitation from foreign capital. The US military will be able to use the Alcantara rocket launching base as a take off point for forays into Venezuela. Brazil’s participation in the BRICS is dead in the water and US Petroleum companies will be swimming in Brazilian oil. Regardless of the level of participation by the US and its institutions, these events fit a pattern of US interventions in Latin America over the past 100 years. If we are truly interested in defeating fascism it is important to move beyond cliches and work to identify the real actors at play, so that their power can be countered. In order to do this, we have to move beyond the idea that Brazil operates in a geopolitical vacuum and that the return to neofascism, which was previously installed with ample US government support from 1964-1985, can be explained by oversimplified generalizations on public opinion.

http://www.brasilwire.com/why-bolsonaro ... e-cliches/

All well & good but that outside money & expertise still had to effect voters and those targeted voters were the middle class. Don't ever, ever turn your back on the middle class, the knife is always ready.

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Brazil’s MST: We Will Resist!
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 29, 2018
MST Brazil
https://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/agroneg ... GFollowing the outcome of the presidential elections in Brazil, where extreme right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) was elected with a majority of the valid votes (55.1%), a broad process of resistance to hate speech propagandized and put in practice during election campaigns begins.

In a joint statement released on Sunday night (28), the Popular Front and Fearless People, where various movements, popular organizations and left-wing parties articulate, pointed out that the elections are over, but the struggle for democracy and social rights are just beginning.

The election is over, but the fight is just beginning: we hold our heads high and resist for Brazil!
We lived an entirely atypical electoral process. Since the end of the military period, we have not had the political imprisonment of a leader, such as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was unjustly convicted and whose candidacy was contested by the Superior Electoral Court. A process in which forces that had so far operated in the undergrounds, have emerged in the presidential dispute provoking a great wave of hatred and violence against the Brazilian people.

Our candidacy was a democratic response to arbitration that has contaminated the political scene since the parliamentary coup that overthrew President Dilma Rousseff in 2016. We faced abuses and scams practiced by networks committed to petty anti-popular, anti-democratic and anti-national interests.

The election of Bolsonaro represents a political rupture, whose signs are represented in the murder of Marielle, of Moa Katendê – black leader, capoeirista in Bahia, Charlione – a young man from Ceará who was taking part in an election parade in support to Haddad’s candidacy. They threaten our lives because we fight for an equal and just country.

Even under bullets, we have resisted defending national sovereignty, raped in so many ways in the last two years. Protected by sectors of the judicial system and the monopoly media, the candidate Mr Bolsonaro was left free to finance his lying machine with clandestine money, incite violence against his opponents, escape public debates and circumvent electoral rules.

These forces, through deception and truculence, with maneuvers still subject to investigations, arrived at the Presidency of the Republic.

Despite so many obstacles, our alliance organized a powerful resistance throughout the country, which led to the realization of the second round and a formidable movement in defense of civilization against barbarism, democracy against dictatorship, love against hate.

In this second round, which ended yesterday, men and women from all quarters have expressed their support for the constitutional pillars of our country. This journey would never have been possible, however, without the dedication and courage of the social movements and democratic sectors of society.

We will continue to defend the Constitution, social diversity, the rights of all, a Brazil for all and fight the danger of dictatorship, the elimination of social achievements, the sale of public assets, the delivery of national wealth, racism and misogyny, homophobia and the threat of institutionalized violence.

At the moment, it is essential to remain together and cohesive around democracy, national sovereignty and rights.

We must not let ourselves be overwhelmed by fear, for we have each other. Different from what they think, the Brazilian people will know how to resist.

October 28, 2018
People’s Brazil Front
People Without Fear Front

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2018/10/ ... ll-resist/

Good luck& all, folks, but I think you're gonna need some Red Guards before this is done.

[blindpig]

Brazil: Bolsonaro threatens genocide —openly
Submitted by WW4 Report on Sat, 11/03/2018 - 02:27

Brazil's far-right Jair Bolsonaro campaigned on a plan to privatize vast swaths of the Amazon rainforest, turning it over to agribusiness and mining. In addition, he would like to expand hydro-power and other energy mega-projects the region. Since his election in an Oct. 28 run-off vote, Bolsonaro's team has announced that his administration will merge the ministries of agriculture and the environment into a new "super ministry" to oversee the plan. Brazil now has some 720 indigenous reserves, ranging in size from a single hectare to nearly ten million hectares. Bolsonaro has said he wants to put all of those lands—13% of Brazil's territory—on the auction block. "Minorities have to adapt to the majority, or simply disappear," he said on the campaign trail, adding that under his administration, "not one square centimeter" of Brazil will be reserved for the country's indigenous peoples.

It seems clear that Bolsonaro will be able to push through his legislative agenda with the support of the three right-wing blocs in the National Congress, known as the Bancadas do Boi, do Bíblia e da Bala—the blocs of Beef (ranching and agribusiness), Bible (religious conservatives) and Bullet (the military). In addition, new seats were won in the election for his own misleadingly named Social Liberal Party (PSL), which brings these interests together. (BBC News, AsiaTimes, Oct. 31; Al Jazeera, Oct. 29; CBC, Oct. 27; WaPo, Oct. 28)

Brazil's indigenous peoples in recent years have been pressing for further demarcation of their ancestral lands. Thousands of indigenous protesters clashed with police outside the congress building in Brasilia last April, in a national protest to demand titling of their territories. Indigenous peoples and their supporters say the new push to open forested lands to development has genocidal implications, as well as posing a grave threat to efforts to address global climate change.

https://countervortex.org/node/16157

Andrew Jackson ain't dead, he was just sleepin'...

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Bolsonaro’s launches first wave of attacks: civil liberties, pensions and free press under threat
Fiona Edwards Brazil 5th November 2018 4 Minutes
Nacional

It has been a week since the election of Jair Bolsonaro and the new President-elect is wasting no time in pushing forward his extremist agenda. He is working closely with Brazil’s outgoing President Temer to fast-track radical attacks on pensions alongside a serious assault on civil liberties before he formally takes over the Presidency on 1 January 2019.

The mainstream press in Britain have presented Bolsonaro’s victory as a complete landslide, sweeping away a Brazilian left that is portrayed as having suffered a final, historic defeat. It is true that Bolsonaro’s support in this election was very substantial with over 57 million votes. But the left’s candidate for President, Fernando Haddad, secured 47 million votes, concentrated in the poorest sections of Brazilian society. This vote reflects the deep social roots that the left has in Brazil and indicates that it will continue to be a huge factor in Brazilian politics. In fact the left has already made clear its intention to resist Bolsonaro’s government, with the tens of thousands of people taking part in the first anti-Bolsonaro protest just two days after the election on Tuesday 30 October.

The leading force of Brazil’s left is the Workers Party, which works alongside a number of other left political parties, trade unions, social movements and progressive organisations. It is this left, in its vast numbers and variety that is facing immediate, physical threats to its existence from a President-elect who has promised to “banish”, “exile” and “jail” its leaders and supporters. He declared that Lula da Silva, who would have beaten Bolsonaro in the election had he not been falsely imprisoned by Brazil’s conservative courts, will “rot in prison” under his Presidency.

Brazil’s President-elect is a fascist. Whether Bolsonaro will be able to construct a fascist regime in Brazil is a different question however. Creating a fascist regime involves physically destroying democracy, the labour movement and all political opposition through violence. This would mean the elimination of the left’s 47 million voters as a factor in Brazilian politics. The level of resistance against Bolsonaro waged within Brazil and the amount of international solidarity such resistance receives will play a decisive role in preventing the catastrophe of a fascist regime taking hold of the world’s fifth largest country.

It is precisely because of the strength and deep roots of Brazil’s left that Bolsoanro’s first priority, in collusion with the coup-President Temer, is to attack civil liberties in order to weaken the capacity of resistance to his government.

In Bolsonaro’s first interview after the election he said that he intends to treat social movements as terrorists, singling out the Landless Workers Movement, and stating that he is not interested in having any sort of dialogue with civil society. New legislation is currently being debated in Brazil’s Congress which could allow for peaceful demonstrations against the government’s policies to be deemed a terrorist act as well as giving the police further powers to imprison and persecute people. There are also concerns that a decree issued by the current President Temer on 15 October 2018 to create an ‘Intelligence Task Force’ involving the army, Air Force, Navy, Federal Police and the government could be used against democratic peaceful demonstrations critical of the government by defining these actions as organised crime against the state.

The horrific wave of violence unleashed by Bolsonaro’s supporters during the election campaign saw left wing activists, women, LGBT people, black people and journalists physically assaulted and murdered. In his first interview following the election Bolsonaro said that new gun laws – to give citizens the right to carry weapons – would be a priority. An escalation of violence, including the formation of armed fascist death squads to target the left, is a real danger that threatens to further increase Brazil’s high rate of homicides, which last year stood at over 63,000.

Bolsonaro has also launched an attack on freedom of the press. He declared that mainstream newspaper Folha de S.Paulo is “over” and said that he will ensure public funding is withdrawn from the publication in a move which is being criticised as an exercise in censorship. Bolsonaro’s attack on the Folha is politically motivated – the paper exposed to the role international and Brazilian companies were playing to support of his election campaign by spending millions of dollars to send hundreds of millions of Whatsapp messages attacking the left’s Presidential candidate with slanderous and inaccurate material. This spread of “fake news” was a decisive factor in Bolsonaro’s last minute surge in the opinion polls throughout September and October. His support doubled during this period.

Alongside Bolsonaro’s aggressive attacks on civil liberties, he has already started to pursue his austerity offensive. He has declared his intention to work with the current President Michel Temer to approve a massive attack on the pensions of public sector employees before he takes office in order to, in his own words, “avoid problems for the future government.” The proposed attacks on pensions are very unpopular and the left intends to mount opposition within Congress and to mobilise people onto the streets in order to stop these attacks from being imposed. The attack on pensions is just the beginning. Bolsonaro’s economic plan is currently being drawn up by University of Chicago-trained economist Paulo Guedes, and it’s a plan which includes eliminating some of Brazil’s 23 ministries, the privatisation of dozens of state-controlled firms and sacking thousands of civil servants.

The left opposition in Brazil require immense international solidarity to support their resistance against Bolsonaro’s attacks on civil liberties, democracy and living standards and also in their campaign to free Lula da Silva from prison.

In Britain, the Unity Demonstration Against Fascism and Racism taking place on 17 November will be an opportunity to register opposition to Bolsonaro and the Brazil Solidarity Initiative’s launch meeting in Parliament on 20 November will be an important occasion to discuss building solidarity with progressive movements in Brazil defending equality, democratic rights and social progress.

This article was first published in the Morning Star on Saturday 3 November 2018.

https://eyesonlatinamerica.com/2018/11/ ... er-threat/

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Exclusive Interview: 'Lawfare' On Lula, the Sergio Moro Effect
Published 10 November 2018

teleSUR's exclusive interview with Valeska Martins of Lula's defense team, asks what repercussions could arise from Sergio Moro as Bolsonaro's Justice Minister.

Brazil is living in political turmoil with a new scandal rising. On Nov. 1, far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro appointed Judge Sergio Moro as his justice minister. This Saturday marks the 218th day since Judge Moro, who was overseeing the so-called "Operation Car Wash," imprisoned former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, on trumped-up corruption charges with no material evidence.

Lula was president for two terms (2003-2010), during which 50 million Brazilians were lifted out of poverty. With that going for him, he was the leading candidate for the 2018 presidential elections. Even while in prison, all the polls predicted victory for him, if he hadn't have been wrongfully prohibited from running.

His removal from the presidential election was based on a law called "ficha limpa" (clean tab) in which, candidates are required to have a clean criminal record.This opened the door for right-wing extremist Jair Bolsonaro to win the presidency. Lula was accused of allegedly receiving an apartment, but no proof of him owning it was given during the trial. The whole trial was surrounded by a dark halo. Lula's defense and supporters alleged, during the whole process, that the trial was a form of political persecution.

Brazilian Judge Humberto Martins has ordered Sergio Moro to offer a formal statement regarding his intentions as possible future Minister of Justice and Public Security. teleSUR exclusively interviewed Valeska Martins, from Lula's defense team, to ask what the repercussions of last week appointment of Sergio Moro as Bolsonaro's Justice Minister could be for Lula's case.

How #lawfare is being used to undemocratically block left wing leaders such as Lula in #Brazil pic.twitter.com/lXSO6lhfZv

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) 4 de septiembre de 2018
Jair Bolsonaro recently offered the position of Justice Minister to Sergio Moro, the judge who oversaw Operation Car Wash. How will this affect Lula's case?

Valeska Martins: It is a confirmation of what we said to the UN in 2016: this trial was conducted by a judge for political motives.

Now, with this flagrant politicization — a confession that a political entity has been handling the case — we hope that the Supreme Court throws it out and frees President Lula, not only in accordance with national law, but of international law as well. This will also restore the image of Operation Car Wash and the fight against corruption. Because the truth is that if you allow people to act politically under the cloak of the judiciary, the whole judiciary, the population, and democracy lose.

Can you explain, then, about the Habeas Corpus which you just filed?

Valeska Martins: We filed a motion of habeas corpus with the Supreme Court so that Lula can be released, and so that the court's second group can dismiss the case of the triplex apartment and the other two charges which were made by Judge Sergio Moro.

How do you think the Supreme Court will rule on this and what is the time frame?

Valeska Martins: We understand that any independent and impartial court would recognize the validity of our arguments. In other words, Moro's bias is so blatant that it cannot pass unnoticed. It does not only taint Operation Car Wash, it taints the entire judiciary. So we are very hopeful that this will now be recognized by the Federal Supreme Court.

Are there any international actions that could help free Lula from his condition as a political prisoner?

Valeska Martins: We have a case under review by the U.N. Human Rights Committee in which we have been arguing since 2016, that the motivation behind this entire operation is not the fight against corruption but a political battle to remove a political enemy from the national elections. And now this has been confirmed so we hope that in May when this case is judged on its merits, that the U.N. Human Rights Committee will rule to completely overturn the ruling on the triplex. Regarding the Brazilian Supreme Court, we hope that it will enter into the agenda of the next session and be ruled on by the president of the Supreme Court's second session, and we are anxiously waiting for this because ex-President Lula should not have to stay one more day unjustly incarcerated — this issue cries for justice.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Exc ... -0020.html

If this case 'taints the entire judiciary' one might expect their Supremes to close ranks, not bust it open. They haven't done shit for Brazilian Left, why start now when you might be implicated? The Brazilian struggle is going to have to go to the street, there is no legal recourse.