Brazil

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 23, 2022 2:13 pm

Investigation Opens Into Lula’s Libel Suit in Brazil

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PT requested an investigation for slander against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Apr. 22, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@MyNews_World

Published 22 April 2022 (9 hours 25 minutes ago)

An investigation has been opened into possible crimes against former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The Public Prosecutor's Office of the state of Mato Grosso, in the center-west region of Brazil, opened a police investigation regarding crimes of defamation, slander, threats and criminal conspiracy against the former president.

The action of the Prosecutor's Office came after the Workers' Party (PT) asked the Mato Grosso Civil Police for an investigation since, according to the lawsuit, Lula's honor is under national and even international denigration.

Workers' Party sources confirmed that the crimes were committed by Gilberto Cattani, a state deputy, and others through a billboard placed in Rondonópolis.

Lawyers representing the party, Cristiano Zanin and Eugênio Aragão, said that the commitment to conduct an investigation plays a vital role in halting abuses that occurred before the start of the election campaign, which is scheduled for August.


The Public Prosecutor's Office of Mato Grosso (MPMS) opened a police investigation to probe the practice of the crimes of defamation, insult, threat and criminal association against former president Lula.

They went on to say that opening the probe to investigate the possible crimes committed against the former president is a measure of utmost relevance, noting that they will wait for the Prosecutor's Office's final decision.

Last week, the PT presented three actions in the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) opposing a new defamation campaign against Lula.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Inv ... -0027.html

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Stop Pretending This Is A Normal Election.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even that assumes this is a normal election.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because this is not a normal election.

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

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Wed May 04, 2022 2:23 pm

Bolsonaro Ignored 97% Of Deforestation Warnings: MapBiomas

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Citizens take part in a demonstration to reject deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, Brasilia, Brasil, March 9, 2022. | Photo: EFE

Published 3 May 2022

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in 2021 was the largest in the last 15 years, with over 13,000 square kilometers of devastated native vegetation.

On Tuesday, the environmental platform MapBiomas revealed that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro had ignored 97 percent of the monthly deforestation warnings issued by the National Institute of Space Research (INPE) since he took office in 2019.

According to INPE measurements, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in 2021 was the largest in the last 15 years, with over 13,000 square kilometers of devastated native vegetation.

However, during the Bolsonaro administration, government environmental control actions in the Amazon have only been adopted in 13 percent of this rainforest’s affected zones.

According to the MapBiomas platform, Brazil’s deforestation record coincided with the year with the lowest number of monitoring operations by the Brazilian Environment Institute (IBAMA) in the last five years.


In three years of government, Bolsonaro has fully fulfilled his electoral promises of ending the demarcation of Indigenous lands and boosting economic exploitation of the Amazon rainforest.

Unsustainable industrial activities have increased significantly during this far-right president's administration, and the IBAMA has suffered budget cuts and lost officials.

“The news alerting about the pollution and the irreversible destruction of the Amazon is silly since they are spread by people who want to affect the image of my country,” Bolsonaro alleged.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bol ... -0022.html

Brazil: Silence and Omission in the Yanomami Community Case

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President of the Condisi-YYY denounced the crime committed in the Yanomami community. May. 3, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@Survival

Published 3 May 2022

Authorities claim to find no evidence of the rape and death of the girl; leaders denounce the purchase of silence with gold.

Last April 25, one of the cruelest chapters of the miners' attack on the Yanomami people in Roraima remains unresolved. A severe complaint in the Indigenous Territory triggered a series of inquiries and investigations by the Federal Police. Following the report of the death of a 12-year-old girl, a victim of rape.

During the diligence to the region, the community was found burned and no one was there; 24 indigenous people from the Aracaçá community are still missing. The case had national repercussions and has mobilized indigenous leaders, authorities, politicians, artists, and influencers who have shown their support for the cause by highlighting the situation with the hashtag: "CADÊ OS YANOMAMI."

The president of the District Council of Yanomami and Ye'kwana Indigenous Health (Condisi-YYY), Júnior Hekurari Yanomami, made the accusation last April 25. After the complaint, the Federal Police went to the Aracaçá community where the girl lived but found no evidence of the crime. However, the case is still under investigation.

The clarification of the case is hampered by the climate of tension and fear imposed by the miners, who allegedly bought the victims' silence with gold. Without a permanent Funai protection base, mining activity remains the main driver of violence in the region.

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Children were thrown into the river to die or raped to death. This is the practice of illegal criminal miners on Yanomami lands. We continue to demand justice: WHERE ARE THE YANOMAMI?

According to the Condisi-YYY president's complaint, another woman had been abducted and her three-year-old child had been thrown into the river.

The girl, according to Condisi-YYY, lived in the community of Aracaçá, in the Waikás region, where there is a strong presence of miners and which has registered the most significant advance of illegal exploitation, according to the report "Yanomami under attack," by the Hutukara Associação Yanomami (HAY).

In Aracaçá lived about 30 indigenous people. It is difficult to access; it takes approximately one hour and 15 minutes flight time from Boa Vista to Waikás. To reach the Aracaçá community takes another 30 minutes by helicopter or five hours by boat on the Uraricoera River.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bra ... -0023.html

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

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

By Nathalia Urban

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Russia, Ukraine and Brazil’s Energy Sector

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OECD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BRASIL WIRE , MAY 3, 2022
Bolsonaro Refuses EU Observers For October Election

With the 2022 election under a shadow of threats from far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and his military backers, a delegation of EU observers have had their invitation to follow the October election revoked, following a backlash from the Bolsonaro government itself.

Brazilian news site NEXO reports that the Bolsonaro government has pressured the Electoral Court to withdraw its invitation to the European Union to send a delegation of observers to assess conditions ahead of the October 2022 presidential vote, and later during the election itself.

The refusal of EU observers comes as Bolsonaro and his allies intensify a campaign of disinformation about the Brazilian electronic voting system. News of the withdrawal has broken just days after “high level dialogue” with a United States government delegation led by Victoria Nuland, and with US-allied Bolsonaro trailing former President Lula by a significant margin in all opinion polls.

The Superior Electoral Court withdrew an invitation it had made in March for European Union representatives to follow the October presidential elections in Brazil.The European Union’s communications service told Nexo, that a backlash from the Bolsonaro government was behind the U-turn. Itamaraty, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, even took a public stand against the presence of European observers.

The TSE (Brazilian Superior Electoral Court) asked the European Commission in March to send an exploratory mission to the country to verify conditions on the ground for the subsequent dispatch of an observation mission proper to the October 2022 presidential elections.

International election observers have the mission to verify that the race was clean, without fraud. In Brazil, several international organizations already carry out this monitoring, but this would be the first time that there would be observers from the European Union.

The invitation for EU observers was revealed by the Reuters news agency, on April 11. Two days later, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement in which it opposed the presence of representatives of the bloc in the elections.

Brazil’s foreign ministry argued that “it is not in Brazil’s tradition to be evaluated by an international organization of which it is not a part”. International organisations do regularly observe electoral processes in Brazil.

In a written response, the European Commission said that it “received an invitation letter, in early March, from the Superior Electoral Court to send an exploratory mission” to Brazil. The intention of this exploratory mission would be to “examine the usefulness, opportunity and feasibility of sending a European Union Election Observation Mission” for the October presidential election.

However, “the TSE informed the European Commission that it will not proceed with its request made in March, due to reservations expressed by the Brazilian government”. The note concludes: “under these circumstances, we will not send an exploratory mission to Brazil to evaluate a possible Electoral Observation Mission” in October.

https://www.brasilwire.com/bolsonaro-re ... -election/

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Lula Wants a Latin American Currency
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 3, 2022
Kawsachun News

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Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who’s once again in the running for the presidency, says that “God willing” he hopes to see the creation of a Latin American currency capable of overcoming the region’s dependence on the dollar.

Lula insists that Brazil ought to reestablish relationships in the region and overseas; “and let’s go back to reestablishing our relationship with Latin America and God willing, to create a new currency in Latin America, so that we don’t have to deal with being dependent on the dollar. We’re going to try to recuperate the BRICS.”


The PT candidate made the statements at an event held on Saturday by the PSOL, in which the party formally announced its support for the front runner.

Lula also expressed his intention to strengthen ties with Africa; “we’re going to prioritize our relationship with the African continent, because Brazil has a debt to pay to Africa, this Brazilian debt is not measured in money, it is measured in solidarity, in the transfer of technology. Brazil has an obligation at the end of day, it’s been 350 years of exploitation of Black people. We are who we are because we are African blood.”

Polls show the PT candidate poised to win the first round. A late April survey conducted by PoderData shows Lula receiving 41% and Jair Bolsonaro receiving 36% of voter intention. Lula’s 5% lead over Bolsonaro increases to 9% in the second round.

Lula’s Project to Create a Single Latin American Currency
Pagina12

The idea of a single Latin American currency was designed by economist Gabriel Galípolo, former president of Banco Fator, who has collaborated with Lula’s government program. The role of the Central South American Bank and how the exchange times between SUR and the local currency would work.

With less than six months to the elections, Brazil’s former president and pre-candidate for the Workers’ Party (PT), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, defended on Saturday the creation of a single currency in Latin America as part of the expansion of relations between countries in the region. “We do not have to depend on the dollar,” Lula said in a speech at the Electoral Congress of the Socialism and Liberty Party, in which the party declared its support for the former president for the October vote.

The idea of a single Latin American currency is defended by economist Gabriel Galípolo, former president of Banco Fator, who has collaborated with Lula’s government program. In a recent article published in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, signed by the economist and the former mayor of Sao Paulo, Fernando Haddad, both promote its implementation, in a model similar to the European euro, as a way of increasing regional integration and strengthening the monetary sovereignty of the region. Meanwhile, Lula ratified the project in case he is elected president: “We will reestablish our relationship with Latin America. And God willing, we will create a currency in Latin America”, he said, before thousands of militants.

SUR

The new South American digital currency would be called SUR and “would be issued by a South American Central Bank, with an initial capitalization made by the member countries, proportional to their respective shares in regional trade”, adds the text signed by Galípolo and Haddad.

For both leaders, the capitalization of SUR “would be made with the international reserves of the countries and/or with a tax on exports from countries outside the region. The new currency could be used for trade and financial flows between countries in the region”.

In addition, member countries “would receive an initial endowment of SUR, according to clear agreed rules, and would be free to adopt it domestically or maintain their currencies. Exchange rates between national currencies and SUR would be floating”.

Lula’s government plan is still under development and, according to those close to the leftist leader, should be finalized in the coming months. Although there is no definition of what will be included in the final text, his endorsement of the currency indicates approval of the idea.

Lula’s proposal is not new. In August 2021, current Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said that a single currency for Mercosur would allow for greater integration and a free trade zone, and would create a currency that could be one of the “five or six relevant currencies in the world.”

Lula’s proposal is not new. In August 2021, current Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said that a single currency for Mercosur would allow for greater integration and a free trade zone, and would create a currency that could be one of the “five or six relevant currencies in the world.”

Lula, who announced that he will confirm his candidacy on May 7, appears as a favorite in all polls ahead of the October elections, in which President Jair Bolsonaro will seek reelection.

Lula Proposes Single Currency to Accelerate Integration
Emir Sader

In his speech on May 1, in São Paulo, Lula proposed the adoption of a single currency to accelerate the integration process in Latin America. The former president’s proposal is based on an article published by Fernando Haddad – former PT candidate for the presidency of Brazil and current candidate for governor of Sao Paulo – and by Gabriel Galípolo – a young university economist – in Folha de S.Paulo.

The authors mention that, in the face of the slow process of progress in integration and, at times, even setbacks, the creation of a South American currency could boost this process, strengthening the monetary sovereignty of the countries of the region, which face economic limitations due to the international fragility of their currencies.

“If within each nation, the State and its currencies are sovereign, in international relations the logic is different,” say the authors. The hierarchy among national currencies in the international financial system, with the dollar occupying the top, confers on the United States the privilege of issuing international currency.

The use of currency in the international arena, an unavoidable issue with the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia, renews the debate on the sovereignty and self-determination capacity of peoples, especially for countries with non-convertible currencies. As in war threats, international reserves function as a defense of domestic currencies. But with emerging countries, all suffer economic limitations given the international fragility of their currencies.

The beginning of a monetary integration process in the region is capable of generating a new dynamic to the consolidation of the economic bloc, offering countries the advantages of access to and shared management of a more liquid currency. A currency issued by a South American Central Bank, with a large initial capitalization made by the member countries, proportional to their participation in regional trade. The new currency could be used for both trade and financial flows between countries in the region.

Member countries would be credited with an initial endowment of the SUR, being free to adopt it in their countries or maintain their currencies. Exchange rates between national currencies and the SUR would fluctuate.

The creation of a South American currency is the strategy to accelerate the process of regional integration, constituting a powerful instrument of political and economic coordination for the peoples of the region. It is a fundamental step in the direction of strengthening sovereignty and regional governance, which will surely prove decisive in a new world.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... -currency/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Tue May 10, 2022 2:28 pm

Folha de S.Paulo: Bolsonaro Has Coup Planned With Support From Military And Centrão
By BRASILWIRE
May 6, 2022

In August 2021 we reported how Brazil’s US-backed military regime (yes, regime) cast a shadow over hopes for the next presidential election. There was clearly a doubt whether it would go ahead peacefully, and if it did, if the Military government, fronted by Bolsonaro and backed by the United States, would accept the result and willingly relinquish power. After so long engineering itself back into government, why would the Military simply step aside?

Brasil Wire was accused of exaggerating the risk. “It’s not a military regime” insisted pundits who have since continued to pretend that the 2022 election is a normal one.

Now Brazil’s biggest newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reports that Bolsonaro, the Military and the so called Centrão (the centre-right to hard-right caucus) have already planned a coup if they do not get the result they want at the October poll.

The report comes a day after a CIA leak to Reuters news agency claimed that its director had warned off Bolsonaro and the Military top brass he represents from “messing” with the election. It was a transparent attempt from the US to distance itself from what may be coming. This came after a visit in recent weeks by US Undersecretary of State, Victoria Nuland, visited Brazil, heightening fears given her past involvement in coup plotting elsewhere in the world.

An article by Igor Gielow published on the morning of May 6 2022, is the gravest sign yet that the fears many have been expressing for the last four years are coming to pass.

Headlined “Bolsonaro designs coup with support from the center and the military: Generals still deny a coup and there are practical doubts about the plan, but it is there”, the article summarises Bolsonaro’s history of pro-coup statements since his arrival in congress in the early 90s as an obscure deputy. Brasil Wire reported his earliest coup threats before his election in 2018, and his open admiration for the 1964-85 military junta is well documented. Bolsonaro calls the 1964 US-orchestrated Military coup which ushered in the dictatorship, a “revolution”.

Gielow remarks that “The pandemic and its clash with states over sanitary management gave him fertile ground to exercise authoritarianism, albeit in a rhythmic way.” as a test-drive for what was to come, and that this was managed with concessions to the traditional elite forces which originally backed his presidency.

Last September 7th, independence day, where Bolsonaro called supporters to Brasilia to protest for the closure of the Supreme Court was feared to be a dry run for what was coming.

Hopeful notions of military “adults in the room” are long gone. The Armed Forces confrontation with the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) is de facto Military endorsement of Bolsonaro’s campaign to discredit the electoral system ahead of anticipated defeat, including talk of violence during the electoral campaign.

Folha continues: “To complicate the scenario, general officers of the three Armed Forces are disgusted with the now leader of the electoral race, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and have not seen a viable third way emerge. If an episode like the one in the 2018 tweet or a breakup seems distant, the ill will in uniform with the former president is not imaginary.” seeing a repeat of the jailing of Lula which kept him from likely victory four years ago.

Bolsonaro is now calling for an external organisation to audit the electronic voting machines. He is attempting to prove that he should’ve have won outright in the first round in 2018 but for spurious “fraud”.

Gielow finishes with a criticism of the clientelist “Centrão” and their complicity in such a coup plot:

“…the direct association with an arrangement that as an ultimate consequence can mean the impugning of the votes of its own members only insinuates two things: participation in a coup scheme or the belief that it is just innocuous electoral noise. Neither option is acceptable, institutionally. Using the script left by his idol Donald Trump in the 2021 Capitol invasion, Bolsonaro may not be able to succeed in a coup for lack of operational capacity, but the crisis is guaranteed.”

A coup whose opening act was the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, and whose second was the jailing of Lula da Silva, may be nearing its finale. What will remain of Brazil’s democracy when the curtain falls is unknown.

https://www.brasilwire.com/folha-de-s-p ... d-centrao/

“There Will Be A Coup”: Newspaper Editor Urges Journalists To Report Imminent Attempt To Sabotage Election
By BRASILWIRE
May 9, 2022

A veteran editor at Folha de S.Paulo, Brazil’s biggest newspaper, criticises colleagues for failing to adequately report and prepare the public for an imminent coup attempt by Bolsonaro and the Armed Forces.

“It can no longer be treated as a risk, but rather as a certainty of harm to institutions and the country.”

– José Henrique Mariante


In a chilling column in Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, quietly published at 11:15pm on 7th May 2022, José Henrique Mariante, a veteran journalist, editor and currently Folha ombudsman, urged fellow journalists, and his own newspaper, to acknowledge the dark moment Brazil faces.

The piece was headlined in stark terms: “There will be a Coup. Pass the information. Folha and the press should once and for all change presumption for certainty of the fact.”

Mariante compared the current situation to early 2020, when appeals for calm dovetailed with outright denial of the Coronavirus pandemic, and helped drastically worsen the public health crisis.

The journalist recalls that on March 2020, Folha ran a column urging for an immediate response Coronavirus pandemic: “The time to act against the coronavirus is now.” just as Bolsonaro, then in Miami meeting President Trump, publicly minimised the risk posed by Covid-19.

But Mariante recalls another article published in Folha that same day which frightened him equally: “Bolsonaro pressures Congress and returns to talk about electoral fraud.”. Two years later, repeated warnings from various authors have appeared over the past week in Folha, a newspaper which we should not forget supported the military backed “soft coup”, against Dilma Rousseff in 2016. The panic is palpable:

“In the last week, several Folha columnists raised the alarm in a similar tone. On page A2: “There will be a coup”, wrote Mariliz Pereira Jorge; “Bolsonaro’s coup is military”, according to Bruno Boghossian; “Dictatorship with Bolsonaro”, is what comes next, according to Ruy Castro; “The coup can go wrong”, projected Maria Hermínia Tavares, a ray of hope, as noted by readers, but which starts from the inevitable act rehearsed from day zero by Bolsonarismo.”

Mariante laments that the press is not informing the public of what is happening in the country and the reasons behind that silence: “Pessimism, feeling of powerlessness, press reach, considerations about journalism. Can’t we stop the coup? Well, at least you can tell the walls that the tables are turning, it will happen and that it is prudent for the citizen to prepare their soul and pocket for the upcoming tsunami.”

The effect of a disputed presidential result will reverberate through the gubernatorial, congressional and senatorial votes across Brazil, creating an institutional disaster, Mariante argues: “The vote is not just for the Presidency, but for the House, Senate, assemblies and state governments. Competitors should be asked about winning and not taking. Folha and UOL, for example, wasted the chance to ask the pre-candidates for the government of São Paulo what they will do in the face of the consummation of the coup and the fact that, who knows, they are elected but prevented from taking office by some corporal, or soldier.”

The journalist asks if the financial markets have already priced in such a coup: “…how far the dollar and interest rates can go after a breakdown of this magnitude. Could it be that an XP investments hasn’t projected the worst-case scenario yet? If any analyst says that the market does not work with such a hypothesis, just remember that Bolsonaro and his close generals flirt with the thesis on a daily basis.”

“It will also be important for the newspaper to hear from the country’s trade partners and international organizations about the much-hyped tropical version of the Capitol invasion. The US has even gotten ahead. In a week, the American consul in Rio until 2021, in an article in O Globo, foresees sanctions on Brazil if the elections are damaged. The following week, the Reuters agency appears with a report on the head of the CIA having told the Bolsonaro government that it is not convenient for the country to contest its own electoral system.” referring to a leak from the US Government which more skeptical foreign policy observers consider to be damage control and distancing from the imminent coup attempt.

“The reader may ponder that admitting the fear of a coup is precisely the game that Bolsonaro and allies want to play. The point, I believe, is that we are past that point.”

“Bolsonaro got lost on the field, but he drags a lot of people with him just because of the circumstances. It can no longer be treated as a risk, but rather as a certainty of harm to institutions and the country. It needs to be contained.”

“If someone doesn’t remember or doesn’t know what a coup is, civil or military, it’s time to lay out the scale of the problem very clearly. It will take work, it will hold Brazil back even more, it will cost us dearly.”

https://www.brasilwire.com/there-will-b ... -election/

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

Lula Launches Presidential Pre-candidacy
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 8, 2022

Image
Kawsachun NewsIn São Paulo, Lula da Silva launches his pre-candidacy for the presidency of Brazil. May 7, 2022. Photo: Ricardo Stuckert

“Defending our sovereignty is defending the integration of South America, Latin America and the Caribbean. It is to strengthen Mercosur, UNASUR, CELAC and the BRICS again.”

“Defending our sovereignty is defending Petrobras, Eletrobrás and public banks. Defending our sovereignty is defending the Amazon from devastation and guaranteeing indigenous peoples possession of their lands.”


The man who took 32 million people out of poverty between 2003 and 2010 is now an official pre-candidate of Brazil, in a country where almost 20 million are suffering from hunger.

On Saturday, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party – PT) and former governor of São Paulo Geraldo Alckmin (Brazilian Socialist Party – PSB) launched the slate in which the two will run for president and vice president in Brazil’s October election. Alckmin was diagnosed with coronavirus on Friday and therefore participated by video conference in the event that took place at Expo Center Norte, in São Paulo.

Under Brazilian electoral law, the actual candidacy can only be announced one month before the elections. The coalition announced includes the PT and six other parties. Lula has been fully exonerated from all convictions after being denied jailed to keep him out of the 2018 election.


Lula spoke on stage before a jubilant crowd of thousands of union workers and social movement activists. Below is a full transcription and quick translation of Lula’s speech at the launch of the Vamos Juntos pelo Brasil (‘Let’s go together for Brazil’) movement:

I want to start by talking about the most important lesson I have learned in 50 years of public life, eight of which I have presided over this country: Governing must be an act of love.

The main virtue that a good ruler must have is the ability to live in harmony with the aspirations and feelings of the people, especially those who need it most.

It is to rejoice with each achievement, with each improvement in the quality of life of the people he governs.

It’s sharing the happiness of the family that, thanks to Minha Casa, Minha Vida, takes the key to their long-awaited home for the first time, after a lifetime of renting in precarious conditions.

It’s getting emotional with that mother who lived years and years under the light of a lamp, and with the arrival of Luz para Todos, she can finally contemplate the serenity of her son sleeping at night.

It is to rejoice with the grandmother who, when she was young, was forced to break a single pencil into two pieces to give to her children. And that later, with Bolsa Família, she can buy complete school supplies for her granddaughter, even a pencil case of all colors.

It is to celebrate together with the children of workers who became doctors, thanks to ProUni, FIES and the quota policy at the public university.

But it is not enough for a good ruler to feel as if the conquests of the suffering people were his own.

To govern well, he must also have the sensitivity to suffer with each injustice, each individual and collective tragedy, each death that could be avoided.

Unfortunately, not every ruler is able to understand, feel and respect the pain of others.

The ruler incapable of shedding a single tear is not worthy of this title in front of human beings rummaging through garbage trucks in search of food, or the more than 660,000 Brazilians killed by Covid.

You can even call yourself a Christian, but you don’t have love for your neighbor.

In 2003, when I took office as President of the Republic, I said that if, at the end of my term, all Brazilians had at least the possibility to have breakfast, lunch and dinner, I would have fulfilled the mission of my life.

We fought the greatest of all battles against hunger, and we won. But today I know that I need to fulfill the same mission again.

Everything we did and the Brazilian people conquered is being destroyed by the current government. Brazil returned to the UN Hunger Map, where we had left in 2014, for the first time in history.

It is terrible, but we will not give up, neither I nor our people. Whoever has a cause can never give up the fight.

The cause for which we fight is what keeps us alive, it is what renews our strength and rejuvenates us.

Without a cause, life is meaningless.

I and all of us who are together at this time have a cause: to restore the sovereignty of Brazil and the Brazilian people.

My friends. The first article of our Constitution enumerates the foundations of the Democratic State of Law. And the first foundation is precisely sovereignty.

However, our sovereignty and our democracy have been constantly attacked by the irresponsible and criminal policy of the current government.

They threaten, dismantle, scrap, put up for sale our most strategic companies, our oil, our public banks, our environment.

They hand over all this extraordinary heritage that does not belong to them, but to the Brazilian people.

They destroy public policies that changed the lives of millions of Brazilians, and that were admired and adopted around the world.

It is more than urgent to restore Brazil’s sovereignty. But defending sovereignty is not limited to the all-important mission of safeguarding our land and sea borders and our airspace.

It is also defending our mineral wealth, our forests, our rivers, our seas, our biodiversity.

And it is, above all, to guarantee the sovereignty of the Brazilian people and the rights of a full democracy.

It is to defend the right to quality food, good employment, fair wages, labor rights, access to health care and education.

Defending our sovereignty is also to recover the haughty and active policy that elevated Brazil to the status of a protagonist on the international stage.

Brazil was a sovereign country, respected throughout the world, which spoke on equal terms with the richest and most powerful countries.

And that at the same time contributed to the development of poor countries, through cooperation, investment and technology transfer. That’s what we did in Latin America and also in Africa.

Defending our sovereignty is defending the integration of South America, Latin America and the Caribbean. It is to strengthen Mercosur, UNASUR, CELAC and the BRICS again.

It is to freely establish partnerships that are best for the country, without submission to anyone. It is fighting for a new global governance.

Brazil is too big to be relegated to this sad role of pariah in the world, due to submission, denialism, truculence and aggression against our most important trading partners, causing enormous economic damage to the country.

My friends. Defending our sovereignty is defending Petrobras, which is being dismantled day after day.

They put the pre-salt reserves up for sale, handed over the BR Distribuidora and the gas pipelines, interrupted the construction of some refineries and privatized others.

The result of this dismantling is that we are self-sufficient in oil, but we pay for one of the most expensive gasoline in the world, quoted in dollars, while Brazilians receive their salaries in reais.

Diesel oil also continues to rise, sacrificing truck drivers and making food prices soar.

A gas cylinder can cost as much as 150 reais, compromising the household budget of most Brazilian families.

We need to make Petrobras go back to being a big national company, one of the biggest in the world.

Put it back at the service of the Brazilian people and not of large foreign shareholders. Make the Pre-Salt our passport to the future again, funding health, education and science.

Defending our sovereignty is also defending Eletrobrás from those who want Brazil to be eternally submissive.

Eletrobrás is the largest power generation company in Latin America, responsible for almost 40% of the energy consumed in Brazil.

It was built over decades, with the sweat and intelligence of generations of Brazilians. But the current government does everything to deliver it at a bargain price.

The result of this crime against the homeland would be the loss of our energy sovereignty.

To lose Eletrobrás is to lose Chesf, Furnas, Eletronorte and Eletrosul, among other companies essential for the country’s development.

It is also losing part of the sovereignty over some of our main rivers, such as the Paraná and São Francisco rivers.

It’s saying goodbye to programs like Luz para Todos, responsible for bringing about 16 million Brazilians who used to live in darkness into the 21st century.

It is to increase even more the electricity bill, which today already weighs not only in the pocket of the worker, but also in the budget of the middle class.

Defending our sovereignty is defending public banks. Banco do Brasil, Caixa Econômica, BNDES, BNB and Basa were created to promote the country’s development.

To guarantee cheap credit to those who want to produce and generate jobs.

To finance sanitation works and the construction of apartments and houses for the low-income and middle-class population.

To support family farming and small and medium rural producers. Because no country will be sovereign if it doesn’t take care of those who produce 70% of the food that comes to our table.

Defending our sovereignty is defending universities and institutions supporting science and technology from attacks by the current government.

Because a country that does not produce knowledge, that persecutes its professors and researchers, that cuts research grants and reduces investments in science and technology is condemned to backwardness.

In our governments, we more than tripled the resources directed to CNPq, Capes and the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development.

They jumped from R$ 4 billion and 500 million in 2002 to R$ 13 billion and 970 million in 2015.

With the current government, these investments dropped to R$ 4 billion and 400 million, a value lower than that of 20 years ago.

Defending Brazil’s sovereignty means investing in infrastructure capable of transforming the country and the lives of its people, increasing the productivity of the economy and creating the foundations for progress and the future.

But the current government does not take care of the infrastructure that this country needs.

Important works that were in progress were paralyzed. They try to appropriate others that they received practically completed.

This is the case of the São Francisco River Transposition, a work dreamed of since the times of the empire, which we made a reality so that 12 million Brazilians could finally have water gushing from their taps.

Our governments not only planned and conceived the transposition, but also carried out 88% of the works. But they try to deceive the people by saying that they built it all.

Defending our sovereignty is defending the Amazon from the policy of devastation put in place by the current government

In our governments, we have reduced deforestation in the Amazon by 80%, helping to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

But care for the environment goes beyond defending the Amazon and other biomes.

It is necessary to reinvest in basic sanitation, as we have done in our governments.

Put an end to open sewage and take care of the disposal of garbage and the people who live by collecting recyclable materials.

Taking care of the environment is, above all, taking care of people. It is to seek peaceful coexistence between economic development and respect for flora, fauna and human beings.

The transition to a new model of sustainable development is a global challenge.

In this sense, too, we have much to learn from indigenous peoples, ancestral guardians of the environment.

Defending our sovereignty is guaranteeing the possession of their lands to indigenous peoples, who were here thousands of years before the arrival of the Portuguese, and who were able to take care of them better than anyone else.

And that are now seeing their territories illegally invaded by prospectors, land grabbers and loggers.

The result of this continued crime, which happens with the connivance of the current government, goes beyond the destruction of forests and rivers.

It also compromises the physical survival of indigenous peoples, and does not even spare children.

And it is the duty of the State to guarantee the safety and well-being of all its citizens, who deserve – and should – be treated with respect.

Never has a government like the one that is there stimulated so much prejudice, discrimination and violence.

No country will be sovereign as long as women continue to be murdered for being women.

As long as people continue to be beaten and killed because of their sexual orientation.

As long as the extermination of black youth and the structural racism that hurts, kills and denies rights and opportunities are not rigorously fought.

My friends. We are the world’s third largest food producer. We are the largest producer of animal protein in the world.

We produce more than enough food to ensure quality food for everyone. However, famine has returned to our country.

There will be no sovereignty while 116 million Brazilians suffer some type of food insecurity.

While 19 million men, women and children go to bed hungry every night, not knowing if they will have a piece of bread to eat the next day.

There will be no sovereignty while tens of millions of workers continue to be subjected to unemployment, precariousness and discouragement.

We were able to generate more than 20 million jobs with a formal contract and all rights guaranteed.

While they destroyed labor rights and generated more unemployment.

It is necessary to move forward with legislation that guarantees the rights of workers.

That encourages negotiation on a civilized and fair basis between employers and employees.

That contributes to creating better jobs, and turns the wheel of the economy.

It is not possible for the readjustment of most professional categories to be below inflation, contrary to what happened in our governments.

It is not possible for the minimum wage to continue to lose purchasing power year after year. In our governments it rose 74% above inflation, increasing consumption and heating up the economy.

If workers don’t have money to buy, entrepreneurs don’t have anyone to sell to. This leads to what we are witnessing today: the closing of factories in São Paulo, Bahia, the Manaus Free Trade Zone and other regions, and multinationals leaving Brazil.

We also need to create a fertile environment for entrepreneurship, so that the talent and creativity of the Brazilian people can flourish.

This country needs to create opportunities again, so that people can live well, improve their lives and make their dreams come true.

Today we live in a desolate situation. A country whose youthful desire is to go abroad in search of opportunities will never be sovereign.

We need to reinvest in quality education, from daycare to post-doctoral studies.

There will be no sovereignty as long as education continues to be treated as an unnecessary expense, and not as an essential investment to make Brazil a developed and independent country.

In our governments, we tripled investments in education, which jumped from BRL 49 billion in 2002 to BRL 151 billion in 2015.

But the current government has been reducing investments every year. The result is that the MEC budget for 2022 is the lowest in the last ten years.

As well as education, health has also been treated with contempt by the current government.

Today there is a lack of investments, health professionals and medicines. There are diseases and deaths that could have been avoided.

If it weren’t for the SUS and the brave health workers, the irresponsibility of the current government in this pandemic would have cost even more lives.

One of the greatest prides of our governments was to take great care of the health of the Brazilian people.

We created Samu, Farmácia Popular, the 24-hour UPAs. We created Mais Médicos, and we took health professionals to the outskirts of large cities and to the most remote regions of Brazil.

We practically doubled the health budget, which went from BRL 64 billion and BRL 800 million in 2003 to BRL 120 billion and BRL 400 million in 2015.

No country will be sovereign if its people do not have access to health, education, employment, security and quality food. But culture also needs to be treated as a basic necessity.

There will be no sovereignty as long as the current government continues to treat culture and artists as enemies to be slaughtered, and not as a generator of wealth for the country and one of the greatest assets of the Brazilian people.

We need music, cinema, theater, dance and visual arts. We need books instead of weapons.

Art fills our existence. She is both capable of portraying and reinventing reality. Life as it is, and as it could be.

Without art, life gets tougher, it loses one of its greatest charms.

My friends. During our governments, we promoted a democratic and peaceful revolution in this country. Brazil grew, and grew for everyone.

We combine economic growth with social inclusion. Brazil has become the sixth largest economy on the planet, and, at the same time, a world reference in the fight against extreme poverty and hunger.

We are no longer the eternal country of the future, to build our future day by day, in real time.

But the current government made Brazil plummet to the 12th position in the ranking of the largest economies. And the quality of life has also dropped frighteningly, and not just for those most in need.

Workers and the middle class were also hit hard by the uncontrolled increase in gasoline, food, health plans and school fees, among many other costs that continue to rise.

Living just got a lot more expensive.

In the first quarter of 2022, Brazilian family income dropped to the lowest level in the last ten years. The result is that 77.7% of families are in debt.

And the saddest thing is that most of these families are going into debt not to pay for the vacation trip with their children, or the renovation of their own house, or the purchase of a new television.

They are going into debt to eat.

In other words: Brazil returned to a dark past that we had overcome.

It is to lead Brazil back to the future, on the paths of sovereignty, development, justice and social inclusion, democracy and respect for the environment, that we need to govern this country again.

The serious moment that the country is going through, one of the most serious in our history, forces us to overcome possible differences in order to build together an alternative path to the incompetence and authoritarianism that govern us.

I never forget the words of the late Paulo Freire, the greatest Brazilian educator of all time, one of the main references of world pedagogy, whose centenary of birth we celebrate precisely in 2022.

Our dear Paulo Freire said:

“It is necessary to unite the divergent, to better face the antagonists”.

Yes, we want to unite Democrats of all origins and hues, of the most varied political backgrounds, of all social classes and of all religious creeds.

To face and overcome the totalitarian threat, hatred, violence, discrimination and exclusion that weigh on our country.

We want to build an ever-widening movement of all parties, organizations and people of good will that want peace and harmony to return to our country.

This is the meaning of the union of progressive and democratic forces formed by the PT, PC do B, PV, PSB, PSOL, Rede e Solidariedade.

All willing to work not only for the victory on October 2, but for the reconstruction and transformation of Brazil.

I am proud to count on my colleague Geraldo Alckmin in this new journey.

Alckmin was governor while I was president. We are from different parties, we were adversaries, but we also worked together and maintained institutional dialogue and respect for democracy.

I had a loyal adversary in Alckmin. And I am happy to have him now as an ally, a companion whose loyalty I know will never fail – neither to me nor to Brazil.

My friends. When we governed the country, dialogue was our hallmark.

We created important negotiation tables and councils for civil society participation in all ministries.

In addition, we held 74 conferences at the municipal, state and national levels, with the participation of millions of people, to discuss the most different topics: health, education, youth, racial equality, women’s rights, communication and public safety, among many others. .

From this extraordinary popular participation, several public policies were born that changed Brazil.

And now we need to change Brazil again.

For that, instead of promises, I present the immense legacy of our governments. We have done a lot, but I am aware that much more is still needed and possible.

We need to place Brazil again among the largest economies in the world.

Reverse the country’s accelerated de-industrialization process.

Create an environment of political, economic and institutional stability that encourages entrepreneurs to invest again in Brazil, with a guarantee of a safe and fair return, for them and for the country.

I was the victim of one of the greatest political and legal persecutions in the history of this country, a fact recognized by the Brazilian Supreme Court and the United Nations.

But don’t expect resentment, hurt or revenge from me.

First, because I wasn’t born to hate, not even those who hate me.

But also because the task of restoring democracy and rebuilding Brazil will require a full-time commitment from each of us.

We have no time to waste hating anyone.

We will never do like our adversary, who tries to mask his incompetence by fighting with everyone all the time and lying seven times a day. The truth sets you free, and Brazil needs peace to progress.

My friends. Next September, Brazil completes 200 years of Independence. But few times in history has our independence been so threatened.

Fortunately, we will celebrate September 7th less than a month before the October 2nd elections, when Brazil will have the opportunity to regain its sovereignty.

When Brazil will have the opportunity to decide which country it will be for the next few years, and for the next generations.

The Brazil of democracy or authoritarianism? The truth or the seven lies told a day? Of knowledge and tolerance or of obscurantism and violence? Of education and culture or of revolvers and rifles?

A country that strengthens and encourages its industry or watches its destruction? The exporter of value-added goods or the eternal exporter of raw materials?

The country of the Welfare State or the Minimum State, which denies the minimum to the majority of the population?

The country that defends its environment, or the one that opens the gate and lets the cattle through?

The Brazil that guarantees health, education and security for all Brazilians, or only for the richest who can afford them?

It’s never been so easy to choose. It has never been more necessary to make the right choice.

But it must be said clearly: in order to emerge from the crisis, grow and develop, Brazil needs to return to being a normal country, in the highest sense of the word.

We are not the land of the Wild West, where each one imposes its own law. No!

We have the highest law – the Constitution – that governs our collective existence, and no one, absolutely no one, is above it, no one has the right to ignore it or defy it.

Democratic normality is enshrined in the Constitution. It establishes the rights and obligations of each power, each institution, each of us.

It is imperative that everyone return to dealing with matters within their competence. Without exorbiting, without extrapolating, without interfering with other people’s attributions.

No more threats, no more absurd suspicions, no more verbal blackmail, no more artificial tensions.

The country needs calm and tranquility to work and overcome the current difficulties. And it will freely decide, at the moment the law determines, who should govern it.

We want to govern to bring back the model of economic growth with social inclusion that made Brazil progress so fast and lifted 36 million Brazilians out of extreme poverty.

We want to go back so that no one ever dares to challenge democracy again. And for fascism to be returned to the sewer of history, where it should never have come out.

We have a dream. We are moved by hope. And there is no greater force than the hope of a people who know they can be happy again.

The hope of a people who know they can eat well again, have a good job, a decent salary and labor rights. That they can improve their lives and see their children growing healthy until they reach university.

It takes more than governing – it takes care. And we will once again take great care of Brazil and the Brazilian people.

More than a political act, this is a call. To men and women of all generations, all classes, all religions, all races, all regions of the country. To regain democracy and regain sovereignty.

May God bless our country.


Why Does a Right Wing Government, Such as Bolsonaro’s in Brazil, Support Vladimir Putin?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 9, 2022
Yoselina Guevara

The answer to this question seems to lie in one product: fertilizers. Siding with the United States and its allies against Russia would mean bringing Brazilian agribusiness to its knees, dependent on the tons of fertilizers provided by the Russian Federation, an industry of which it is the world’s leading producer.

Brazil competes with the United States for the podium as the world’s leading producer of soybeans and is the world’s leading exporter of chicken meat and the second largest exporter of beef cattle. Without fertilizer chemicals, its production cycle risks being interrupted at a time when commodity prices are rising due to the conflict in Ukraine. For its part, Russia provides it with large quantities of three products that are key to soybean cultivation, wheat, corn and intensive livestock farming.

Rewarding support

Brazilian support, manifested not only in Bolsonaro’s repeated statements, but also in the UN Security Council, has been repaid by the Kremlin. Moscow has confirmed its intention to open a fertilizer factory in the agricultural state of Mato Grosso do Sul, while 24 Russian ships with 678 thousand tons of potassium chlorate are expected to arrive in Brazil between late May and early June. The ships departed from the ports of St. Petersburg and Murmansk, following the start of the conflict with Ukraine, and their cargoes are expected to ensure the production of fertilizers for the planting of the 2022-2023 Brazilian agricultural season. In a paradoxically strange scenario, this news was celebrated by the Brazilian right wing expressing its support for Putin’s Russia, it was not the left wing who participated in this conviviality on social networks.

Diplomatic position

Brazil is one of the countries that has a traditionally very strong diplomatic career structure that is also quite independent of the governments in power. So we find two positions in the South American colossus, on the one hand, Bolsonaro, acting president supporting Russia, and on the other hand the position of career diplomacy or Itamaraty (headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil), which strongly condemned the Russian special military operation in Ukraine which it unceremoniously called “invasion”. This has brought some discomfort at the internal governmental level to Bolsonaro. Let’s remember that Brazil is a faithful aspirant for permanent membership in the UN Security Council and this decision to be neutral in the conflict (with an open pro-Russian bias) would not be a point in his favor.

For now, Vladimir Putin, has an ally in Bolsonaro, something that greatly displeases Washington because of the specific weight of Brazil, one of the largest countries in Latin America and the main economy of the southern hemisphere. The Brazilian president cares little that Russia cleanses the Ukrainian territory of neo-Nazis. He is interested in the economy and agribusiness that provides jobs, growth and food. The rest is just carpentry. This is what Bolsonaro said at the beginning of the conflict “it is something minor”, but which is evidently being used by the United States to lead mainly the old continent through the gorge.

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu May 12, 2022 2:21 pm

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Brazil President Bolsonaro Does Not Plan to Attend Summit of the Americas
May 11, 2022

The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, is not planning to attend the Summit of the Americas, which will take place in Los Angeles, California, during June 6 – 10.

According to a press release by Reuters, Bolsonaro told his assistants that he would not attend the Summit of the Americas, without giving any reason for the decision. However, a spokesperson for the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that no decision has yet been made on the matter. “The assistance of the president is being discussed and has not been confirmed,” the spokesperson told Reuters.

The news agency also mentioned that a possible meeting between Bolsonaro and US president Joe Biden had been suspended since the Brazilian president has decided not to go to Los Angeles. So far, Bolsonaro and Biden have never spoken.

Bolsonaro, an ideological ally of former US President Donald Trump, was the last head of state of the Group of 20 (G20) countries to recognize Biden’s victory in the US presidential elections in November 2020.

The Summit of the Americas is set to bring together the heads of state of the countries that comprise the American continent and takes place every three or four years. The United States will host its ninth edition this year, scheduled to take place in Los Angeles, California. This particular Summit is to focus on “building a sustainable, resilient and equitable future” for the hemisphere. Washington has, however, declared that Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua will not be invited to the summit.

After this announcement of exclusion became public, the countries belonging to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), as well as the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, have declared that they will not participate in the event if Washington sticks to its decision. The President of Bolivia, Luis Arce, also made a similar announcement, adding that exclusion of American countries from the meeting will mean that it will no longer remain a full Summit of the Americas.

https://orinocotribune.com/brazil-presi ... -americas/

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

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

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

The coveted pre-sal offshore oil deposits were discovered by the state oil company during Lula’s second presidential term and was once called Brazil’s “passport to the future”, earmarked by Dilma Rousseff for investment in public education and health. The discoveries doubled Brazil’s proven oil reserves.

One of the first acts of the interim government of Michel Temer following Rousseff’s removal in 2016 was to break the so called “pre-sal law” which guaranteed Petrobras involvement in all exploitation of the oil and gas fields. Breaking the pre-sal law was a long term objective of the US State Department and International Petroleum interests, as represented by lobby Council of the Americas, home to Chevron and ExxonMobil. Disgraced US-Brazil anticorruption operation Lava Jato‘s primary target was Petrobras, which has been severely damaged and asset stripped since the operation began in 2014. Lava Jato worked to bring down Dilma Rousseff, and jailed 2018 election frontrunner Lula, opening the door to the Bolsonaro presidency.

Fast-track privatisation

Sachsida said that the final privatisation of Petrobras, one of Brazil’s economic engines and a symbol of its sovereignty, which was created by then president Getulio Vargas shortly before his death in the 1950s, will be his first act as minister. The minister insists he will immediately set studies in motion on how to achieve full privatisation of the state controlled mixed capital company as quickly as possible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is unclear if Petrobras privatisation was on the agenda.

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

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

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

At a rally in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Lula denounced the privatisation of Brazilian public companies: “I want to take advantage of the humanism that reigns in this room, the democratic warmth in this room, and say to the government and to businessmen: stop privatising public companies”.

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

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

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

Damage Control: CIA Told Bolsonaro “Not To Mess” With Brazil Election, US Government Sources Claim
By BRASILWIRE
May 5, 2022

Through a series of coordinated, limited statements, the United States appears to be distancing itself from Brazilian neofascist president Bolsonaro, the coup-threatened coming election, and its own involvement in the disgraced anti-corruption operation which brought Bolsonaro to power in the first place.

This article was updated on 10/5/22 with new relevant information.

As then reported in BRASILWIRE, US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns visited Bolsonaro and key Military allies in July 2021. It was one of several visits by members of the new Biden administration to reach out to the Bolsonaro government, triggering speculation that the US would continue in its support for the far right US-allied candidate, regardless of the change in president, and his Brazilian counterpart’s alliance with Donald Trump.

The visit came as Bolsonaro camp were intensifying pre-emptive attacks on Brazil’s electoral system and democratic institutions, centred around disinformation about the electronic voting machines, and a campaign to shut down the Supreme Court.

Biden administration discomfort with the perception that it supports Bolsonaro in this antidemocratic context has led to a series of statements by US government officials, including undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland, expressing confidence in Brazil’s electoral system, and denouncing Bolsonaro’s efforts to undermine it ahead of an election he is on course to lose, to leftist former president Lula. Frontrunner then as now, Lula was prevented from running in 2018 by the joint anti-corruption operation Lava Jato, which was conducted with both open and covert collaboration with the United States. Lava Jato prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol was caught in leaked conversations calling Lula’s prosecution “a gift from the CIA“, which enabled Bolsonaro to be elected.

The UN human rights committee recently found that US-Brazil operation Lava Jato was biased, and violated due process, Lula’s privacy and his political rights. In another example of the distancing and damage limitation taking place, just prior to the ruling US Government linked think tank the Wilson Center, which had championed Lava Jato (Carwash) and hosted its now disgraced crusading judge Sergio Moro, held an interview with Lula’s defence laywers, Valeska Martins and Cristiano Zanin. The interview with the lawyers was conducted by Nicholas Zimmerman, who sought to reduce documented US involvement in Operation Lava Jato, and thus Dilma’s removal and Lula’s imprisonment – the fates of two successive presidencies – to an “insinuation”. It is not made clear to the reader that Zimmerman was, while Lava Jato was collaborating openly and covertly with US agents, “Director for Brazil and Southern Cone Affairs at the White House National Security Council.“

Following his inauguration in early 2019, Bolsonaro visited CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He was the first Brazilian president ever to do so. Shortly before Burns’ visit to Brazil, a White House spokesperson openly admitted that the CIA and other agencies were involved in anti-corruption operations in Latin America of the type which jailed Lula.

Reuters now report that unnamed sources claim that Burns then “told senior Brazilian officials that President Jair Bolsonaro should stop casting doubt on his country’s voting system ahead of the October election”.

Reuters report that the “comments by CIA Director William Burns came in an intimate, closed-door meeting in July, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Burns was, and remains, the most senior U.S. official to meet in Brasilia with Bolsonaro’s right-wing government since the election of U.S. President Joe Biden.”

“A third person in Washington familiar with the matter confirmed that a delegation led by Burns had told top Bolsonaro aides the president should stop undermining confidence in Brazil’s voting system. That source was not certain whether the CIA director himself had voiced the message.”

Anglophone media has so far shied from talk of US involvement in Brazil’s democratic crisis since the 2014 election. Yet now, with a series of coordinated statements, the United States appears to be distancing itself from Brazilian president Bolsonaro, the coup-threatened coming election, and its involvement in the anti-corruption operation which brought Bolsonaro to power in the first place.

The Reuters report continues: “Two of the sources warned of a potential institutional crisis if Bolsonaro were to lose by a narrow margin, with scrutiny focused on the role of Brazil’s armed forces, which ruled the country during a 1964-85 military government that Bolsonaro celebrates.”

Reuters go on to reveal detail that BRASILWIRE reported last July: “During his unannounced trip, Burns, a career diplomat nominated by Biden last year, met at the presidential palace with Bolsonaro and two senior intelligence aides – national security adviser Augusto Heleno and Alexandre Ramagem, then-head of Brazilian intelligence agency Abin. Both were Bolsonaro appointees.Burns also dined at the U.S. ambassador’s residence with Heleno and Bolsonaro’s then-Chief of Staff Luiz Eduardo Ramos, both former generals. Brazil’s military has historically enjoyed close ties with the CIA and other U.S. intelligence services.”

The final line in particular is highly unusual to see in anglophone media coverage of Brazil, where US involvement is practically taboo, and it reinforces the impression that the Reuters report is a CIA-scripted effort at damage control. If the institutional crisis does come to a head in October, the United States will want to have pre-emptively distanced itself, even as some US government-aligned commentators exaggerate the chances of a legitimate Bolsonaro victory at the ballot box.

One of the Reuters sources claimed that Generals Heleno and Ramos sought to dismiss the significance of Bolsonaro’s repeated allegations of voter fraud. General Augusto Heleno is head of Institutional Security and said to be one of the originators of the long term military plot to remove the Workers Party from power. On May 1 he addressed a pro-Bolsonaro protest themed around “freedom of expression”, and again centred on attacks upon the Supreme Court, Electoral Court and electronic voting system.

Heleno, who the US government know all too well, has a history of past statements threatening Brazilian democracy. In May 2020 he issued an unprecedented open statement to the country. In the letter, he warned of “unpredictable consequences” should the Supreme Court not abandon its demand for President Bolsonaro to present his mobile phones as evidence in an ongoing investigation into a criminal fake news operation, which spread lies about Bolsonaro’s political opponents during the 2018 election campaign.

In response to Heleno’s denials, the source claims that “Burns told them that the democratic process was sacred, and that Bolsonaro should not be talking in that way.”

“Burns was making it clear that elections were not an issue that they should mess with,” said the unidentified source, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “It wasn’t a lecture, it was a conversation.”

As the leak reached Reuters, Heleno sat flanking Bolsonaro in his regular live broadcast on social media, where the far right president declared that the Armed Forces would not be “spectators” in the coming election.

“It is unusual for CIA directors to deliver political messages, the sources said. But Biden has empowered Burns, one of the most experienced U.S. diplomats, to be a low-profile mouthpiece for the White House.”

Again, this is far more intimate information than is usually made available, and the reliance on unidentified government sources raises suspicion about the intent and integrity of the story.

Following Burns’ visit, as reported by Brasil Wire at the time, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also went to meet Bolsonaro and, the Reuters report claims he “raised similar concerns about undermining trust in elections” but “Burns delegation’s message was stronger than Sullivan’s, the Washington-based source said, without elaborating.”

Reuters sought out the US State Department for comment (or indeed vice versa, Reuters has history -editors).

“It is important that Brazilians have confidence in their electoral systems,” said an unnamed official “adding that the United States is confident of Brazil’s institutions, including free, fair and transparent elections.”

Faith in Brazil’s institutions, or “Brazil’s institutions are working” was a consistent US State Department and commentariat mantra throughout Operation Lava Jato, the 2016 coup, and election of Bolsonaro.

Reuters then elaborate on a “fresh sign of disquiet among some of Washington’s foreign policy establishment” noting that former U.S. consul in Rio, Scott Hamilton, had written shortly prior in Brazilian newspaper O Globo that “the United States should make it clear to Bolsonaro that any effort to undermine elections would trigger multilateral sanctions.”

A subsequent article in conservative, anti-Workers Party Veja magazine by Biden family friend and Dilma Rousseff’s former spokesman Thomas Traumann. The regular Council of the Americas contributor reported how Hamilton’s article was endorsed by the State Department, and describes how “Copies of Hamilton’s article were distributed by US diplomats to executives of multinationals doing business in Brazil. One of these executives told me that he understood the gesture as implicit support for the warnings and that a challenge by Bolsonaro along the lines of what Donald Trump tried in 2020 could turn Brazil “into a new Russia, with investors hastily fleeing to avoid suffering sanctions”, referring to the sanctions imposed since the invasion of Ukraine.”

On May 10, Reuters reported that The US asked Brazil in March to increase its crude oil output to curb soaring prices amid international sanctions against Russia, but Brazil refused.

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

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

The same day the report on the Petrobras meeting was published, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland was back for an exclusive interview with BBC Brasil (effectively a soft propaganda instrument of main US ally the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office) in which she reiterated US desire to “free and fair elections” in Brazil, notwithstanding that the 2018 elections, with the leading candidate jailed in collusion with United States agencies can not be considered “free and fair”.

Crucially the BBC interviewer turns the narrative from denial of US intent to interfere in the election to the “threat” of Russian interference: “We will have presidential elections this year in Brazil. Does the US have any concerns or reason to believe that the Russians will try to interfere or meddle in the process?” the BBC asks.

Nuland riffs on the theme, without presenting evidence: “Obviously, we have concerns. We’ve seen Russia meddle in elections around the world, including in the United States and Latin America. Therefore, on my recent visit to Brazil, I urged the government to be extremely vigilant, and the opposition as well, to ensure that outside forces are not manipulating their electoral environment in any way. This needs to be an election by Brazilians for Brazilians, about their own future.”

Also key here is that the US Undersecretary of State claims to have communicated with “opposition”. It is so far unclear whom she is referring to. On her recent trip to Colombia, she reportedly met with all presidential candidates except leftist frontrunner Gustavo Petro.

Asked how the US would react interference in the electoral process, Nuland responds: “We want free and fair elections in countries around the world and particularly in democracies. We judge the legitimacy of those who claim to be elected based on if the election was free and fair and if the observers, internal and external, agree with that. So, we want to see, for the Brazilian people, free and fair elections in Brazil”.

This media-government back and forth completes what looks at the very least like a concerted public diplomacy exercise – an effort to ensure that, whatever happens in October, the United States can not be blamed for it.

That the CIA can casually release such information to a news agency about what it has permitted the Brazilian government can and cannot do during election should be a scandal in itself. It won’t be. It will however be a test of the tacit media embargo on mention of US intelligence relations with Brazil, its government and armed forces.

The question remains whether this orchestrated public diplomacy can be taken at face value, as many in the mainstream Brazilian media are doing, or if it masks genuine State Department objectives and involvement this October.

One thing is clear however: the Biden administration may not care for Bolsonaro’s public persona, but he has delivered for American interests, and just four years ago the US saw Lula jailed rather than allow him a return to the presidency – lest we forget – in a process set in motion while Joe Biden was vice president.

(Updated 10/5/22 with new relevant information)

https://www.brasilwire.com/damage-limit ... ces-claim/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat May 21, 2022 2:57 pm

The Neocolonial Game Behind Musk-Bolsonaro Rendezvous
By
NATHALIA URBAN
May 20, 2022

There was more to South African billionaire Elon Musk’s already bizarre meeting with Brazilian neofascist president Jair Bolsonaro than met the eye.
“We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

Elon Musk on Bolivia, 24/7/2020
By Nathalia Urban

A day after being implicated in a sexual harassment scandal with a Space X worker, the US-based South African billionaire Elon Musk landed in Brazil for a meeting with Jair Bolsonaro.

The visit of the world’s richest man to Bolsonaro’s Brazil in an election year is officially part of the launch of a project involving Starlink, the satellite network of the Space X company, which he owns, which promises high-speed internet access in remote locations. In a post on Twitter, Musk said the project will connect 19,000 schools in rural areas and monitor the Amazon, but he did not explain how he will do this, and left suspicions and fears about such a man possessing technological control over the largest forest reserve in the world, and everything in it (including its subsoil).

Lithium Coup Part 2?

In 2020, after being accused of having participated in the coup plans that ended with the removal of the government of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Musk tweeted “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”, reaffirming his interest in Bolivian reserves of lithium – a mineral used as a basis for the batteries that power his Tesla electric cars. But not only is lithium needed in the production of electric cars, the battery also needs nickel. As reported by the Observatório da Mineração “Vale S.A, which mines nickel within indigenous lands in Canada, profits from nickel in the Onça Puma project, in Pará, and contaminated the rivers of the Xikrin indigenous people, emerged as a recent partner of Musk. The long-term contract with Vale is a direct step towards securing the supply for Tesla vehicles and a planned 50% expansion in production. Additional details were not provided by either Vale or Musk.

The Brazilian mining company, privatised in the 1990s, will produce 190 tons of nickel in 2022. About 5% goes to the electric vehicle market, but the goal is to reach 40% in the medium term. According to Bloomberg, the mining giant confirmed the long-term agreement and said that the Tesla supply should cover 30% to 40% of ore sales.

The map of conflicts and environmental injustice in Brazil shows that Vale continues to seek new mining projects in the Amazon.

The Kayapó Xikrin do Cateté (self-styled Mebengôkre) denounced the destruction of the Cateté River in the State of Pará, an important economic, cultural and symbolic element for the life of that people – it was contaminated with heavy metals, harming the health of indigenous communities. The Xikrin have denounced the occurrence of conditions caused by excess nickel, such as lung and nasal cavity cancers, allergic skin lesions, eczema, dermatitis and dermatoses, rhinitis and sinusitis, allergic conjunctivitis, thyroid and adrenal disorders, increase in IgG, IgA and IgM immunoglobulins and decrease in IgE, nausea, vomiting, palpitation, weakness, vertigo, headache, epilepsy. Excess iron causes hemochromatosis by depositing this mineral in the liver, pancreas, causing cirrhosis and diabetes.

The mining companies, and Musk, do not seem worried about this indigenous health crisis, and yet it is on course to worsen: the market estimate is that the demand for nickel will grow 19 times until 2040, but analysts point to a scenario of scarcity from 2026.

Bolsonaro seems willing to let a Musk company take charge of monitoring a region rich in nickel and suffering historically from illegal mining. With his public endorsement of the coup in Bolivia that massacred at least 37 people (mostly indigenous) it appears that Musk has little or no concern for the destruction of native peoples.

Lithium is key to Musk’s interest in Brazil. Despite the majority of South America’s lithium being concentrated in Bolivia and Argentina, Brazil has 8% of international reserves, which makes his presence in the country even more potentially profitable.

Intentional Cuts To National Technology

Musk announced the launch in Brazil of a company capable of connecting 19,000 schools in rural areas and monitoring the Amazon. Brazil’s 5G auction had set digital inclusion targets for schools in remote locations. The management would be the Ministry of Education, but how Musk managed to do it so easily is a “mystery”, more importantly, why didn’t the Bolsonaro government open bids? Communications Minister Fábio Faria has been bragging since November 2021 about the contacts he has made with the South African billionaire, and during a visit to the United States that month, Faria toured the SpaceX factory in California, and met with the company’s director of operations, Gwynne Shotwell. The meeting with Musk took place in Texas. In January, Musk’s company was authorized by the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) to operate in Brazil. With this, the company will be able to offer its satellite service throughout Brazil. Musk’s contract will run until 2027.

This initial contact with Musk was so excitable that at dawn the Minister of Communications, Fábio Faria, announced on his Twitter account that he was looking for a partnership with South African billionaire Elon Musk. According to the minister, the aim was to connect rural schools and ‘”protect” the Amazon. However, this makes no sense, since the Bolsonaro government had been doing its best to weaken the existing mechanisms for monitoring the destruction of the Amazon. The current federal administration was responsible for the disruption of the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) and is a frequent target of criticism for its cuts in scientific research.

The dismantling of Inpe by the current administration began in 2019, when aerial images taken by the institute showed accelerated progress of deforestion in the Amazon. The then director, Ricardo Galvão, was fired in August of that year, for reacting to Bolsonaro’s accusations that Inpe was lying about deforestation in the Amazon.

In many ways, the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) reached the biggest stage of penury in its history in the Bolsonaro era. Successive cuts in funding in recent years have cut off a good part of the workforce, jeopardizing cutting-edge research and fundamental programs for the country, including satellite monitoring services for large biomes, such as the Amazon. Bolsonaro called the institute’s data “lies”, which indicated a rise of 88 % in deforestation. So in theory it would not make sense for Bolsonaro to say that he wants better monitoring done by the private sector in the Amazon, unless this monitoring is not to reflect the reality of environmental destruction, but for personal and corporate interests.

In many ways, the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) reached the biggest stage of penury in its history in the Bolsonaro era. The South African billionaire received a Medal of Honor, awarded by Defense Minister Paulo Sérgio and President Jair Bolsonaro. In a speech (made in English for a public of Brazilian businessmen and politicians) at the event, the Minister of Communications, explained the reason for the award. “Elon is here to do something concrete to help the Amazon, and for that he will receive a medal of honor.”

Faria also used his speech to praise the billionaire: “You are a visionary, brilliant. Everyone in Brazil loves you.” Musk, who is standing next to the minister, replied that he also loves Brazil.

But the irony is that technological innovation and vision are summarily punished by the current government. The research area has suffered a severe blow. The Ministry of Science and Technology had 87% of its budget cut, taking by surprise the thousands of researchers who lost the resources to continue their studies.

Freedom to Hate

During the meeting with Elon Musk, Bolsonaro said that his intent to purchase Twitter was a “fresh breath of hope”. In his speech, the president said he believes that, with Musk at the helm of the social network, Twitter will invest even more in freedom of expression – Bolsonaro and his supporters question some of the platform’s actions such as removing posts, adding “fake news” marks, or even banning users.

Spreading false information is one of Bolsonaro’s main hallmarks on social media, and one of the most notable moments was during the pandemic when Bolsonaro spread denialism about the virus and tried at all costs to push chloroquine as a treatment to COVID-19. Musk was one of the first people along with former US President Donald Trump, to do this. Furthermore, The businessman is admittedly averse to the current social media content moderation model. Both in the United States where Musk is based, and in Brazil, the platform is constantly accused of censoring political speech. Elon Musk’s response would be to reduce content moderation to the minimum required by law.

This perspective assumes that only judicially enforced freedom of speech is valid. The fact is that reducing freedom of speech to the legal “minimum” necessarily implies conflict with authorities around the world. Countries have different legal conceptions about freedom of speech, but for the far right, freedom of speech means being able to openly propagate persecutory content against specific individuals or groups in an offensive and even dangerous way. Which is clearly something they both want, and not only that, but to be able to use social networks to manipulate information, the market, and elections…

Bolsonaro, his cabinet, and his supporters, have been using social media to threaten the Brazilian electoral system, and place the legitimacy of Brazil’s future elections in check, despite several government agencies, and even foreigners assuring legitimacy of the democratic process in Brazil. His impending defeat is driving Bolsonaro toward coup tactics, and an attempt to replicate the strategy of his idol, Donald Trump, and the Capitol invasion. Although unsuccessful, Trump used social media to instigate and radicalize his supporters, and for this reason was banned from Twitter.

Musk’s approach to Bolsonaro in election year is worrying. He trails Workers Party (PT) candidate, former president Lula, in all polls, and Bolsonaro is desperately trying to regain support he once enjoyed from the wealthy sectors of Brazilian society. Associating himself with Musk is key to this. In this obscure meeting the South African met with Brazilian businessmen and multinational companies with activities in the country in the fields of telecommunications, agribusiness, mining, the financial sector, and even the pharmaceutical industry, all with very problematic histories.

With Jair Bolsonaro, who has already saluted the flag of the United States and talked about exploiting the resources of the Amazon in partnership with the Americans under the Trump administration, Musk benefits from the far right president’s servitude to foreign capital.

Bolsonaro claims to defend the Amazon, but travels to the hotel where the billionaire will stay in the interior of São Paulo to offer up the nation’s wealth, while the Brazilian people struggle with what Eduardo Galeano described in his classic ‘Open Veins of Latin America’:

“Those who won could only win because we lost: the history of underdevelopment of Latin America integrates the history of the development of world capitalism. Our defeat has always been implicit in the victory of others. Our wealth has always generated our poverty by nurturing the prosperity of others: the empires and their native agents.”

https://www.brasilwire.com/the-neocolon ... endezvous/

SUR: Lula Proposes Lat Am Currency To “End US Dollar Dependency”
By
BRASILWIRE
May 18, 2022

Lula’s announcement of plans for SUR, a new Latin American currency for bilateral trade, has excited proponents of regional integration, and will alarm Washington. The project, if successful, would mean twilight for US dollar hegemony, and it has clear implications for the 2022 election.

Less than six months ahead of Brazil’s most crucial elections since the 1980s, the former president and current frontrunner, Workers’ Party candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has announced a plan for the creation of a single currency as part of a wider expansion of regional relations.

Lula, who maintains a double digit lead in polls for likely runoff against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, told gathered militants at the electoral congress of coalition allies PSOL that Brazil, and Latin America as whole, don’t have to “depend on the dollar”.

Although not a brand new idea, the latest move toward ​​a single Latin American currency has been advanced by the economist Gabriel Galípolo, former president of Banco Fator, who has collaborated on the Lula government program. In a recent article published in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, signed by the economist and the former mayor of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad, both promote its implementation, in a model similar to the European euro, as a way to increase regional integration and strengthen the monetary sovereignty of the region.

Lula revealed that the currency would be called the SUR (“South” in Spanish), and has committed to ratifying the project if is elected president: “We are going to restore our relationship with Latin America. And God willing, we will create a currency in Latin America,” he told the event.

The former president stressed that it was not intended as a replacement for sovereign domestic currencies in Latin America, but that they could use SUR for bilateral trade rather than US dollars, and argued that it could be a useful tool to contain inflation, which is at its highest levels since the 1990s in Brazil.

Lula explained that the overall goal of SUR would be to deepen Latin American integration and strengthen the region’s economic sovereignty, reducing dependence on the United States.

US opposition to South American integration

The move toward a new regional currency is unlikely to have many fans in Washington. During his second mandate in 2009, following the inaugural Yekaterinburg BRIC summit, Lula took a telephone call from then US president Barack Obama, during which he demanded to know of plans for a rumoured new reserve currency to be created by the alliance with Russia, China, and India (plus later South Africa).

Lula has since recounted the call with Obama, regarding talk of a new BRICS currency: “The US was very afraid when I discussed a new currency and Obama called me: ‘Are you trying to create a new currency, a new euro?’. I said, ‘No, I’m just trying to get rid of the US dollar. I’m just trying not to be dependent.’”

A regional currency will cause similar alarm, especially in the context of Brazil’s BRICS partners already abandoning the US Dollar for bilateral trade in wake of the Ukraine invasion and resulting economic sanctions on Russia.

But the plans for a Latin American currency will also reignite long term US fear and hostility toward independent regional integration projects on the continent.

SUR is not the first attempt to create a single currency in Latin America. In 2009 Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez launched the Sucre currency for the ALBA regional bloc, and it was adopted by Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

Brazilian support for a similar, larger currency project would be a game changer, not least for the United States.

Former Ambassador to Brazil, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Thomas Shannon Jr, has openly admitted that the Lula and Dilma governments were obstacles to US plans for the region.

The proposed FTAA hemisphere wide free trade area, a “NAFTA on steroids”, was famously defeated by Lula, Chavez, and Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner, at the 2005 Summit of the Americas, infuriating the Bush administration.

Two months later, in January 2006, it was the same trio who announced the construction of an 8000 km north-south gas pipeline spanning their countries. What Lula, Kirchner and Chavez dubbed the “great gas pipeline of the south” was intended to stretch from Southern Venezuela, through Brazil, to a terminal in northern Argentina, and eventually expand into a network of pipelines spanning the continent, intended to achieve “energy independence” for South America.

It was one of many ambitious integration projects, and the Lula government’s protagonism on these and other issues marked a turning point in US-Brazil relations and accelerated impetus for the Workers Party’s eventual removal, which came to fruition with Operation Lava Jato from 2014-18.

Lula recalls how Brazil had become an international protagonist: “because we had removed the FTAA [Free Trade Agreement of the Americas] from the debate and had strengthened MercoSul. We had created UnaSul, which was the union of the countries of South America. We had created the BRICS, we had created IBAS, we had created a union between Africa and South America, we had created a union between countries in the Middle East and South America, we had created CELAC which was the only international summit which included Cuba but did not include the United States and Canada. We had created the BRICS bank, and the Bank of the South here in South America.”

In 2012 Al Jazeera reported on US wariness toward Brazil’s protagonism in integrating the South American continent, with Brookings institution remarking that the country “appears determined to position itself as the Latin American hegemon as it deepens its investment in various schemes of regional political and economic integration that pointedly exclude the United States”.

The prescient report continued : “In an unsettling development for Washington, Brazil has muscled in on the traditional sphere of influence of the US. In 2006, former Brazilian president Lula traveled to Lima to meet with his Peruvian counterpart, Alan García. The Brazilian leader stressed the need for greater physical integration between Peru and Brazil, and lobbied for a regional, military and political alliance between the two countries. Lest García get the wrong idea about Brazilian intentions, Lula declared that his country did not seek regional “hegemony” but merely sought to transform South America into “a global actor on a par with China and India”. Responding to Lula, García candidly admitted that he preferred Brazilian regional hegemony to that of the United States.”

If he returns to the presidency, Lula has pledged that Brazil will rebuild its relations with Latin America, following hostility towards neighbouring Venezuela and Bolivia under Bolsonaro, including assistance in plots against their respective governments.

The 2022 election

We do not know who the Biden administration prefers to win the 2022 election. Although it was naively assumed that he would be hostile toward Bolsonaro, on account of his allegiance with Donald Trump and Steve Bannon’s far right international, this has not been the case in practice, with continuing US support for Brazilian entry to the OECD, a partnership on the environment, approximation with SOUTHCOM, and status as major non-NATO ally.

Early in the Biden presidency, some extraordinary meetings took place which have recently come back under scrutiny. Whilst his secretary of State Anthony Blinken met with Brazilian foreign minister Carlos França in New York, Blinken avoided Brazil on his South American tour in late 2021. Yet, both the head of the CIA William Burns, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, both visited the Bolsonaro government within a month of each other.

While both visits were dismissed as routine at the time, they raised eyebrows, and Burns’ trip returned to the headlines almost a year later, amid a strange US government leak to Reuters which claimed he had warned off Bolsonaro and the Generals off threatened coup should Lula win the presidential election. General Heleno, head of institutional security, and one of those present, denies the conversation took place.

In April 2022, US Undersecretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland led a delegation for “high level dialogue” with the Bolsonaro administration, of a type not associated with a government faced with imminent defeat at the ballot box. The delegation followed a refusal from Petrobras to raise oil production at the US’ request, to compensate for loss of Russian supply. Weeks later Bolsonaro appointed a new minister of Mines and Energy, who immediately announced plans for the state oil giant’s privatisation.

Nuland’s documented speciality is engineered political outcomes. The Undersecretary of State claims to have talked with both the Government and with opposition about the sanctity of the electoral process, but it is unclear which opposition parties she is referring to. In Colombia she met with all presidential candidates except left wing frontrunner Gustavo Petro.

Biden has also, despite open threats to Brazil’s democracy, invited Bolsonaro to the Summit of the Americas, whilst barring the attendance of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba on grounds of commitment to democratic norms.

Although some analysts have gone with the early assumption of a Biden preference for Lula, this is in no way clear. In fact, Bolsonaro is far friendlier to broad US hegemonic interests in Brazil and the wider region than any Lula-led government would be, no matter how broad a church its makeup, with its inclusion of former opponents like Geraldo Alckmin, who once enjoyed support, albeit tepid, from the State Department.

Beyond the surface, it is certainly difficult to envisage the United States actively favouring a Lula government over a continuation of the Bolsonaro-Guedes project, guaranteed as it is by the military. Thus it is important to separate public diplomacy, and DNC distaste for the aesthetics of Bolsonaro, from the massive strategic advantages he brings through being the Brazilian president most subservient to the United States in history.

And that is before we consider what the US will see as the “threat” of SUR, although ultraliberal economy minister Paulo Guedes has himself also floated the idea of a regional currency, albeit to facilitate a US-friendly free trade area.

Plans for a Post-Bolsonaro future

Lula’s public remarks draw on more detailed plans earlier announced by Lula allies including his surrogate candidate at the 2018 election, Fernando Haddad, who is now frontrunner for São Paulo governor, and economist Gabriel Galípolo. The pair published an essay in Folha de S.Paulo newspaper advocating a new Latin American single currency, and arguing how it could accelerate regional integration and protect monetary sovereignty.

Haddad and Galípolo write: “The use of currency power at the international level renews the debate about its relationship with sovereignty and the capacity for self-determination of peoples…”

“If, within each nation, the State and its currency are sovereign, in international relations the logic is different. There is, in the international financial system, a hierarchy among national currencies, with the dollar at the top giving the United States the privilege of issuing the international currency.”

“The recent conflict between Russia and Ukraine has rekindled old fears that had cooled at the end of the Cold War. The possibility of a war involving nuclear powers continues to threaten human existence, and the disrespect for national sovereignty haunts States that do not have the same war power.”

“Faced with the impossibility (and insanity) of a military confrontation with another nuclear power, Biden and his allies look to the power of their currencies for ways to isolate and weaken the enemy.”

“Not that it is an unprecedented exercise of power. In 1979, the rise in interest rates in the US to reaffirm the dollar’s power as a global currency led several countries (including Brazil and much of Latin America) to a situation of insolvency. In the 2008 crisis, it was the strength of the dollar that allowed the FED (American Central Bank) to sustain prices in the financial market, offering liquidity and demanding assets.”

“During the 1990s, successive global crises led several Latin American countries to resort to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) in order to honor their payments in international currencies. IMF support was usually conditioned on adherence to the “suggested” economic prescription.”

“On March 25, the IMF approved a new agreement with Argentina, the 22nd since 1956. Other countries bet on dollarization as a form of macroeconomic stabilization, renouncing monetary sovereignty and autonomy in the execution of macroeconomic policies. As of 2003, Brazil accumulated international reserves and reverted its position from debtor to net international creditor.”

“As in war threats, international reserves function as a defense of domestic currencies, including to discourage attacks. However, as emerging or developing countries, to different degrees, we all still suffer from economic limitations stemming from the international fragility of our currencies.”

“An integration project that strengthens South America, increases trade and combined investment is capable of forming an economic bloc with greater relevance in the global economy and granting greater freedom to the democratic desire, to the definition of the economic destiny of the bloc’s participants and to the expansion of monetary sovereignty.”

“The Brazilian monetary experience, such as the successful implementation of the URV (Real Value Unit), can provide a paradigm for the creation of a new South American digital currency (SUR), capable of strengthening the region.”

“The currency would be issued by a South American Central Bank, with an initial capitalization made by member countries, proportionate to their respective shares in regional trade. Capitalization would be done with the countries’ international reserves and/or with a tax on exports.”

Member countries “would receive an initial endowment from SUR, according to clear agreed rules, and would be free to adopt it nationally or maintain their currencies. Exchange rates between national currencies and SUR would be floating.”

The Lula team’s plan for the currency is still under development.

https://www.brasilwire.com/lula-propose ... ependency/

Looks like the whole world is running away from the dollar. When they do get away look out, gonna be hard times for US workers. And perhaps that's what it will take for us to get off our asses. cause the Owners ain't gonna take much of the hurt but will pass it off to us, as usual. The super-profits of imperialism that they have bribed us with, to the detriment of fellow workers world-wide, will dwindle, we will be hung out to dry.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Wed May 25, 2022 2:25 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Brazil’s institutions are working” redux

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From “democratic decline” to “free and fair”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Business as usual

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

US preference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Military Plans Control Of Brazil’s “Manifest” Political Destiny Until 2035
By BRASILWIRE
May 23, 2022

Since the return of Brazil’s military to government in 2016, it’s objectives, and desire for permanence of its political project far beyond current frontman Bolsonaro, have become increasingly clear. The latest edition of a manifesto “Project of the Nation” which has circulated in military circles for several years, lays out how it foresees the next decade of Brazilian history, and a continuation of its ideological war on socialism, social democracy, and ideas of the wider left.

All articles on the Armed Forces. https://brasilwire.com/category/armed-forces

By Plinio Teodoro. Originally published at Revista Forum.

A 93-page document entitled “Project of the Nation” mobilized a portion of the military – among them the vice president, Hamilton Mourão, and the former commander of the Army, Eduardo Villas Bôas – last Thursday (19th May) in Brasília.

The “study” is under the tutelage of General Luiz Eduardo Rocha Paiva, former president of the Terrorism Never Again (Ternuma) group, the NGO of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, and is endorsed by the Sagres Institute, directed by him, and by the NGO of the former army commander, Instituto General Villas Bôas (IGVB) – the man who threatened the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in 2018 during the habeas corpus trial that would have given Lula his freedom. The so-called Federalist Institute completes the triad.

Surreally, the “study” begins with a “conjuncture report”, showing “political-strategic evolution” dated September 2035, when “so-called globalism prevails — an internationalist movement whose objective is to determine, direct and control relations between nations and among the citizens themselves, through positions, attitudes, interventions and impositions of an authoritarian character, but disguised as socially correct and necessary”.

The document, which is being distributed by the Sagres Institute – an NGO that brings together military and ultraconservatives to provide “consultancy” – and the IGVB, predicts that “Bolsonarismo” will triumph to date and lists 37 themes, divided into seven axes, for the implementation of the “nation project”.

Among the goals are the end of the obligation to free public health system SUS, and the collection of tuition fees at public universities by 2025.

“It is worth noting the efforts undertaken by successive governments, from the beginning of the 2020s, with a view to improving the management and control system of public resources allocated to the SUS. In addition, from 2025, the Public Power began to collect compensation for services rendered”, says the text with a futuristic air.

“As for Higher Education, the picture was not very different. Large sectors of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) – mainly public ones – became centers of ideological struggle and political-party indoctrination”, says the “study” in another passage, emphasizing that “an important milestone for improving the performance of public universities, but which faced strong resistance to take hold, was the decision to charge tuition/annual fees”.

Generals Villas Bôas and Mourão, stars of the event

The launch event of the “nation project” took place in the auditorium of the Army Housing Foundation (FHE), an entity that manages the Savings and Loan Association (Poupex) of the military, and had Villas Bôas and Mourão as stars.

“Certainly, here is an important part of Brazil’s strategic thinking,” said the former army commander in a speech read by the President of the IGVB, Maria Aparecida Villas Bôas, the soldier’s wife.

In his speech, Mourão, who is a pre-candidate for the Senate for the Republicans in Rio Grande do Sul, thanked the “work of giants”.

“I leave here tonight extremely rewarded for everything I have seen and for, once again, believing that the cornerstone is being laid here for what I consider to be the Manifest Destiny of our Country: to be the largest and most prosperous liberal democracy south of the equator,” said the vice president.

Read the Brazilian Military’s full PROJETO DE NAÇÃO: O BRASIL EM 2035 document. https://revistaforum.com.br/u/archivos/ ... ai2022.pdf

https://www.brasilwire.com/military-pla ... ntil-2035/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 01, 2022 2:49 pm

The Bolsonaro Campaign’s New Weapon: Ciro
By BRASILWIRE
May 26, 2022

Estadão newspaper reports that Bolsonaro’s campaign has decided to use PDT candidate Ciro Gomes’ relentless attacks on former president Lula as a means to prevent his victory in October’s presidential election.

Members of President Jair Bolsonaro’s election campaign team “want to increase the visibility of Ciro Gomes’ (PDT) criticism of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT)”, report journalists Mariana Carneiro, Julia Lindner and Gustavo Côrtes, in Estado de S.Paulo newspaper, where they explain that the Bolsonaro campaign “believe that, by highlighting Ciro’s attacks against the PT, they are able to neutralize a potential tactical vote movement for Lula in the 1st round – which could lead to a victory for the PT”.

The argument goes that a first round victory would remove the need for a potentially tumultuous runoff between Lula and military-backed Bolsonaro, which would take place under the shadow of a threatened coup should Lula win. An emphatic first round victory is therefore viewed by many as a way to avert the opportunity for a military rejection of the result, and some high profile former Ciro voters, such as comedian Gregorio Duvivier, have declared their intent to vote for Lula in 2022 as a guaranteed way of removing neofascist Bolsonaro from power.

The report explains that “In the last Ipespe poll, Lula scored 44% of voting intentions and Ciro, 8%, which added together would exceed 50%.” Lula has already exceeded the required 50%+ valid votes (minus abstentions) for a first round victory in some polls

As an example of how the strategy was already visible, the Estadão journalists explained that Bolsonaro allies, congresswoman Bia Kicis, and director of Brazilian intelligence agency ABIN, Alexandre Ramagem, had both shared a video on social networks in which Ciro falsely claimed that former president Lula had not been cleared of the charges which kept him out of the 2018 election, which were instigated by the now disgraced Sergio Moro and the Lava Jato taskforce, and enabled Bolsonaro’s election.

The video clip in question was taken from a debate to which Gomes had invited comedian Gregorio Duvivier after being upset by a sequence about him on his satirical HBO show Greg News (pictured). The resulting confrontation on Gomes’ own YouTube channel generated a flurry of negative publicity for the former Minister and Ceará Governor.

https://www.brasilwire.com/the-bolsonar ... apon-ciro/

Brazilian Armed Forces Sign Deal With Israeli Cybersecurity Firm To Help “Supervise Election”
By BRASILWIRE
May 8, 2022

By Paulo Motoryn. Originally published by Brasil de Fato.

General Héber Garcia Portella, Commander of Cyber ​​Defense of the Brazilian Army (ComDCiber), was responsible for signing a cooperation agreement with the Israeli cybersecurity company CySource, in March of this year. Portella was nominated by the Armed Forces, in September of last year, to participate in a commission created by the TSE (Electoral Court) to supervise the electoral process. In the post, he has insisted on pointing out supposed risks and weaknesses of the Brazilian voting system. The Israeli firm hired by Portella’s sector in the Army has as one of its executives the systems analyst Hélio Cabral Sant’ana, former director of Information Technology at the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic in the government of Jair Bolsonaro.

In the same month that he left the federal government, in March of this year, Sant’ana acted as one of CySource’s representatives in the celebration of the company’s cooperation agreement with the Brazilian Army for the training of military personnel in cyber defense.

The agreement was signed in person on March 25 in Tel Aviv. The meeting brought together Colonel Jaques Flório Simplício, the Brazilian Defense Attaché in Israel, the Brazilian Ambassador to Israel, Gerson Menandro Garcia de Freitas, and Shai Alfasi, an executive at CySource.

So far, the details of the cooperation agreement are not public. The Transparency Portal does not contain any documents relating to the negotiation. The company also does not appear as a supplier or service provider to the government.

“We are going to train the Brazilian Army with a complete range of training, adapting all content to meet the needs that have been identified”, said Sant’ana, in a statement released by both parties after the meeting.

According to the company’s statement, among the concepts covered in the training are: malware analysis, network fundamentals, cyber incident response, red team, digital forensics and intrusion testing of critical systems.

Brazilian Military and Bolsonaristas at Israeli Company

In addition to heading information technology policies in the Presidency of the Republic during the Bolsonaro government, Hélio Cabral Sant’ana was first lieutenant in the Army, from January 2009 to March 2013. To leave the Executive and assume the position at CySource , he had authorization from the Presidency’s Public Ethics Commission.

The former IT director of the Presidency is not the only representative of the company with a stint in the Armed Forces. Like him, CySource’s global sales director, Luiz Katzap, was a lieutenant in the Army from February 2008 to August 2016.

CySource was founded by veterans of Israel’s military defense forces. After years of working in cybersecurity for military organizations, the company claims to have “the best AI-based cybersecurity education and training platform in the world”.

CySource CEO Amir Bar-El, like the other founders of the company, has experience in the Israeli defense sector. He served in the intelligence units of the Mossad, Israel’s secret service. Then he made a career in the private sector.

“Over the past few years, we have established cybersecurity academies for various military organizations and security units around the world, which has allowed us to consolidate strategic knowledge in cyber defense,” said Bar-EI in the statement on the partnership with the Brazilian Army.

Héber Garcia Portella’s visit to the United States

Inducted into the position of the Cyber ​​Defense Command in May 2021 by the then Minister of Defense, Fernando Azevedo, Héber Garcia Portella was once an instructor at the Agulhas Negras Military Academy and the Chilean Army War Academy.

Portella also held the position of Commander of the 28th Light Infantry Battalion in Campinas, São Paulo. As a general, he was head of the Northeast Military Command (CMNE), based in Recife (PE).

In 2020, as Army Chief of Human Resources, he paid a visit to the United States, where he met with Commanding General Joseph Calloway, who held a similar position in the United States Army.

“Following a traditional gift exchange between Calloway and Lieutenant General Heber Garcia Portella, director of the Brazilian Army’s Directorate of Human Resources Management, the two leaders discussed programs, policies, management and development of US Army soldiers, with a focus on in the Army Talent Alignment Process,” reads a statement released by the U.S. Army Southern Command.

https://www.brasilwire.com/brazilian-ar ... -election/

Fearing Violence, International Bodies “Already Monitoring” Brazil Election
By BRASILWIRE
May 27, 2022

“October may be too late”, international monitors told.

UOL report that “International bodies will not wait until October to monitor Brazil’s electoral process, considered by foreign observers to be one of the most tense in decades in the country”.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, OAS (Organisation of American States) and the regional office of the UN High Commissioner (United Nations) for Human Rights have already begun holding meetings with civil society to monitor and accompany the risks to the electoral process.

Progressive International has also been planning its own election observation mission for some time.

“For human rights activists, political groups and even foreign bodies, threats and political violence are already a reality in the country. Arriving only in October to assess the functioning of the polls, according to observers, may be too late.” writes Jamil Chade.

Last week, UN rapporteurs were alertted to an “unprecedented authoritarian risk” to the 2022 election, in which former president Lula currently leads far-right incumbent Bolsonaro by 21% according to latest polls. Bolsonaro’s government is dominated by the Military.

On Thursday 26th May, Brazilian activists met the president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and asked her to ensure that their representatives are included the delegation of observers that the OAS intends to send to monitor human rights violations that occur during the elections.

The Organisation of American States (OAS) however, has an inconsistent record on election monitoring. Erroneous reports published by the OAS cast into doubt the 2019 election result in Bolivia, which was used as justification for the subsequent coup against Evo Morales.

Conversely, the OAS found no issue with Brazil’s 2018 election, in which the leading candidate had been jailed.

The entities also requested that there be collaboration with UN bodies for monitoring the election.

The meeting ended with the commitment made by the Inter-American Commission to hold a meeting every two months so that it can be updated on the Brazilian scenario.

During the meeting, the president of the Inter-American Commission, Julissa Mantilla Falcón, reported that she is already in dialogue with the OAS and the UN High Commissioner to carry out observation of the Brazilian elections by foreign bodies.

Falcón heard reports from the participants pointing out that the threats to the electoral system go far beyond the polls, with stories of intimidation, harassment, physical violence and death threats.

U.S. president Joe Biden is scheduled for a special meeting with Jair Bolsonaro during the Summit of the Americas, which will take place from 6-10 June in California.

https://www.brasilwire.com/fearing-viol ... -election/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 07, 2022 2:24 pm

Biden Recruits Bolsonaro To Save Summit Of The Americas
By BRASILWIRE
June 6, 2022

Biden’s one-on-one meeting with Brazil’s beleaguered far-right president Bolsonaro is now the awkward centrepiece of a collapsing Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.

Little more than a month after United States’ Government sources leaked details of CIA warnings to Bolsonaro and the Military dominated government he fronts about the sanctity of October’s election, US President Joe Biden holds his first ever meeting with Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro. It will take place during the Summit of the Americas, which runs from the 6th to the 10th of June, in Los Angeles, California.

With just four months until that election, the meeting follows cooling of language from U.S. officials, which has gone from explicit warnings to Bolsonaro and the Military to leave the democratic process alone, and insinuations of “foreign election meddling”, to insistences that the October vote will be “free and fair”, and a reiteration of U.S. faith in the strength of Brazil’s institutions. There has also been a succession of U.S. delegations to Brazil, one for “high level dialogue” with the Bolsonaro government, led by Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, and another 70 strong party of business executives, headed by Assistant Secretary of Commerce Don Graves.

The White House said that the Biden-Bolsonaro meeting will include discussion of “food insecurity, climate change and pandemic recovery”.

But when asked if Biden would query Bolsonaro’s questioning of Brazil’s voting system, his top Latin America advisor, Juan Gonzalez, would only say that the U.S. has “confidence in Brazil’s electoral institutions which have proven robust.”

New U.S. Ambassador Elizabeth Bagley has praised ultraliberal Bolsonaro Economy Minister Paulo Guedes as a “moderate”, and sought to publicly separate dealings with him from the military-dominated regime as a whole. Bolsonaro’s double act with Guedes was key to why the neofascist candidate was so attractive to U.S. Government, Business and Banking four years ago. In international strategic terms, for the Biden government there is no contest – Bolsonaro wins, no matter how much distaste they may have for the candidate and his far-right aesthetics.

In comparison, with little or no effort by the U.S. government to meet with his campaign, Lula dispatched a special emissary to Washington, the former governor of Bahia State, Jacques Wagner, to reassure the Biden administration that an incoming – and seemingly inevitable – Lula presidency, posed no threat to U.S. interests. This however sits uncomfortably with Lula’s public criticisms of Biden, and the role of the U.S. in the prosecution which removed him from the 2018 race when he led by 20 points. The Wagner trip is rumoured to have not been particularly productive.

The question therefore remains what, in a range of possible outcomes, does the Biden administration actually prefer to come to pass in October, and what effect the Biden-Bolsonaro meeting may or may not have on those preferences. For example, beyond Brazil’s heightened integration with Southcom and a range of other strategic advantages his government has brought for the U.S., the Stars and Stripes saluting Bolsonaro government’s late pushes to privatise State controlled Petrobras and Eletrobras will be music to Washington ears.

The kicker for Democrats is that Bolsonaro is is Steve Bannon’s candidate, and was one of the last world leaders to acknowledge his ally Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, thus any contact whatsoever with Biden will be awkward at best, especially given his own attempt to pre-emptively allege election fraud in the coming election.

Yet Gonzalez told the news conference to preview the Summit of the Americas that “The issue of the Brazilian elections is really up for the Brazilians to decide,” appearing to dismiss ethical concerns about Biden’s meeting with someone who is actively threatening Brazil’s democratic institutions.

The special invitation to Bolsonaro is especially contradictory in this context, given that Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela have been arbitrarily excluded from the Summit on the basis of complaints about their democratic processes, leading to other Latin American leaders such as those of Honduras, Bolivia, Guatamala and Mexico, to declare their non-participation in solidarity.

Bolsonaro’s attendance was secured via an extraordinary visit by Biden’s advisor and special envoy, former senator Chris Dodd, who offered the one on one with Biden as an incentive, in an effort to save the conference from a widening threatened boycott, which included Mexican President Lopez Obrador.

The Summit of the Americas was first held in Miami in 1994, and this year in Los Angeles is the first time the United States has hosted since. Like the Organisation of American States which initiated the Summit, it is considered imperialist in nature, and distrusted by the Latin American left.

One of the most impactful was 2005 in Mar del Plata, Argentina, where the proposed Free Trade Area of all the Americas (FTAA) was defeated by a combined front of Brazil’s Lula, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, and Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner. That rejection later prompted former Ambassador Thomas Shannon Jr to describe the governments of Lula and Dilma as having disrupted US plans for the hemisphere.

At the 2009 Summit of the Americas, in Trinidad & Tobago, the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez gave Barack Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.”

In 2018, only 17 of 35 heads of state attended in Peru, and the U.S. president wasn’t one of them, amid predictions that there was no future for the Summit at all.

https://www.brasilwire.com/biden-recrui ... -americas/

Folha de S.Paulo: Bolsonaro Has Coup Planned With Support From Military And Centrão
By BRASILWIRE
May 6, 2022

In August 2021 we reported how Brazil’s US-backed military regime (yes, regime) cast a shadow over hopes for the next presidential election. There was clearly a doubt whether it would go ahead peacefully, and if it did, if the Military government, fronted by Bolsonaro and backed by the United States, would accept the result and willingly relinquish power. After so long engineering itself back into government, why would the Military simply step aside?

Brasil Wire was accused of exaggerating the risk. “It’s not a military regime” insisted pundits who have since continued to pretend that the 2022 election is a normal one.

Now Brazil’s biggest newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reports that Bolsonaro, the Military and the so called Centrão (the centre-right to hard-right caucus) have already planned a coup if they do not get the result they want at the October poll.

The report comes a day after a CIA leak to Reuters news agency claimed that its director had warned off Bolsonaro and the Military top brass he represents from “messing” with the election. It was a transparent attempt from the US to distance itself from what may be coming. This came after a visit in recent weeks by US Undersecretary of State, Victoria Nuland, visited Brazil, heightening fears given her past involvement in coup plotting elsewhere in the world.

An article by Igor Gielow published on the morning of May 6 2022, is the gravest sign yet that the fears many have been expressing for the last four years are coming to pass.

Headlined “Bolsonaro designs coup with support from the center and the military: Generals still deny a coup and there are practical doubts about the plan, but it is there”, the article summarises Bolsonaro’s history of pro-coup statements since his arrival in congress in the early 90s as an obscure deputy. Brasil Wire reported his earliest coup threats before his election in 2018, and his open admiration for the 1964-85 military junta is well documented. Bolsonaro calls the 1964 US-orchestrated Military coup which ushered in the dictatorship, a “revolution”.

Gielow remarks that “The pandemic and its clash with states over sanitary management gave him fertile ground to exercise authoritarianism, albeit in a rhythmic way.” as a test-drive for what was to come, and that this was managed with concessions to the traditional elite forces which originally backed his presidency.

Last September 7th, independence day, where Bolsonaro called supporters to Brasilia to protest for the closure of the Supreme Court was feared to be a dry run for what was coming.

Hopeful notions of military “adults in the room” are long gone. The Armed Forces confrontation with the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) is de facto Military endorsement of Bolsonaro’s campaign to discredit the electoral system ahead of anticipated defeat, including talk of violence during the electoral campaign.

Folha continues: “To complicate the scenario, general officers of the three Armed Forces are disgusted with the now leader of the electoral race, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and have not seen a viable third way emerge. If an episode like the one in the 2018 tweet or a breakup seems distant, the ill will in uniform with the former president is not imaginary.” seeing a repeat of the jailing of Lula which kept him from likely victory four years ago.

Bolsonaro is now calling for an external organisation to audit the electronic voting machines. He is attempting to prove that he should’ve have won outright in the first round in 2018 but for spurious “fraud”.

Gielow finishes with a criticism of the clientelist “Centrão” and their complicity in such a coup plot:

“…the direct association with an arrangement that as an ultimate consequence can mean the impugning of the votes of its own members only insinuates two things: participation in a coup scheme or the belief that it is just innocuous electoral noise. Neither option is acceptable, institutionally. Using the script left by his idol Donald Trump in the 2021 Capitol invasion, Bolsonaro may not be able to succeed in a coup for lack of operational capacity, but the crisis is guaranteed.”

A coup whose opening act was the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, and whose second was the jailing of Lula da Silva, may be nearing its finale. What will remain of Brazil’s democracy when the curtain falls is unknown.

https://www.brasilwire.com/folha-de-s-p ... d-centrao/

Lula Hits 53% In Polls, On Course For Presidency
By BRASILWIRE
June 3, 2022

With four months until Brazil’s 2022 presidential election, the latest study by Marcos Coimbra of Vox Populi, taking the average of major election polls, shows Lula on 53% of valid votes and on course to take the presidency in first round.

Another election poll aggregator by Estadão newspaper similarly showed Lula on 52%, 19 points ahead of Bolsonaro and set for an outright victory. There is so far no serious statistical corroboration for the “Bolsonaro comeback win” scenario that some Anglophone outlets, such as Americas Quarterly, Washington Post, and the Guardian, have all reported in the past 8 weeks.

By Plinio Teodoro. Originally published at Revista Forum.

A new compilation of data from electoral polls by sociologist Marcos Coimbr, from Vox Populi, shows that Lula (PT) continues to grow in the average of polls and has reached 53% of valid votes in face-to-face surveys until the end of May. The percentage shows an increase of 2 points compared to the April average .

On the other hand, Jair Bolsonaro (PL) dropped two points and has 31% of the valid votes . Ciro Gomes (PDT) won one point and has 8% , the same percentage as the sum of the other candidates, which fluctuated one point down.

Image

In the total votes – with 10% of white, null and undecided votes – Lula grew 3 points and reached 47%. Bolsonaro kept the 28%, Ciro went from 6% to 7% and the sum of the other candidates from 8% to 7%.

In the average of remote polls, conducted by telephone, Lula has 47% of valid votes – one point more than in April – and Bolsonaro maintains 37%. Ciro and the other candidates fluctuated from 9% to 8%.

In the total votes in this type of poll, Lula remained on 42% and Bolsonaro on 33% in April. Ciro and the other candidates fluctuated from 8% to 7%. White, null and undecided rose from 8% to 11%.


Image
Second round

In second round simulations, Lula totals 61% of valid votes against 39% for Bolsonaro in the average of in-person polls. In total votes, Lula has 54% against 34% of the current president, with 11% abstentions.

In telephone polls, the PT candidate scores 58% of valid votes against 42% for Bolsonaro. In total, Lula has 51% against 37% of the current president, with 12% abstentions.

Read the survey in full. https://revistaforum.com.br/u/archivos/ ... 202605.pdf

https://www.brasilwire.com/lula-hits-53 ... residency/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 13, 2022 2:09 pm

Supreme Court Reveals International Funding Behind Attacks On Brazil’s Democracy
By BRASILWIRE
February 22, 2021

Minister Dias Toffoli has revealed the Supreme Court is investigating international funding behind the far-right “hate office”, a network engaged in an ongoing campaign against Brazil’s democratic institutions. The network were active in the campaigns to elect Jair Bolsonaro, for the imprisonment of Lula da Silva, and in support of the 2016 coup to remove Dilma Rousseff, and thus the discovery of their foreign funding raises far wider questions.

Brazilian Supreme Court inquiries into anti-democratic protests and social media campaigns, propagated by far-right hate groups allied with President Jair Bolsonaro, have revealed they are sustained by international funding, just like their counterparts in Europe and North America.

Organisations and individuals running such campaigns have targeted Brazil’s democratic institutions, such as the Supreme Court itself, and advocate the restoration of military dictatorship-like conditions.

The foreign funding has been identified through the opening up of confidential bank records of those under investigation.

The new information was revealed by Supreme Court Minister Dias Toffoli in an interview with the Band TV network. Dias Toffoli explained “This investigation that combats fake news and anti-democratic acts has already identified international foreign funding for actors who use social networks to campaign against institutions, especially the Federal Supreme Court and the National Congress,” he said.

Dias Toffoli described the discovery as “very serious” and without giving specific details about the financiers he said the Supreme Court investigations are now deepening.

“The country’s history has shown what this has led to in the past. Funding for radical groups, whether from the extreme right or from the extreme left, to create chaos and destabilize democracy in our country,” Dias Toffoli remarked.

The inquiry was opened in 2019 in response to attacks on the Supreme Court spread through social networks. The targets of the STF investigation are members of congress, businessmen and bloggers linked or allied to President Jair Bolsonaro. Deeper investigation began after a sequence of protests in Brasília attended by Bolsonaro himself, who has made repeated remarks invoking the idea of an ‘auto-coup’, and closure of democratic institutions, since long before his election in 2018. His latest moves to allow the population (read: his supporters) greater access to firearm ownership has caused alarm, and there is fear that something akin to the storming of United States congress by supporters of his ally Donald Trump will be repeated in Brazil, should he face impeachment or defeat at the 2022 election.

Bolsonaro came to power with the support of the banking and business community, which had backed anti-corruption operation Lava Jato, which delivered him the presidency via the jailing of frontrunner Lula da Silva. These sectors had no qualms about international support for operation Lava Jato, which jailed the former president, or foreign funding behind the campaign to impeach Dilma Rousseff, but with the far right president’s support plummeting, in particular over his government’s abject handling of the pandemic, the coalitions that once backed him, including allies of convenience within the judiciary, are splintering. These splits leave behind only his military support and isolated loyalist base, which is where the so called ‘hate office’ aims its messaging.

The hate office is the core to a far-right network of Bolsonaro aides, influencers, members of congress and businessmen. It includes Filipe Martins, a 31 year old follower of U.S.-based far-right “guru” Olavo de Carvalho and a former U.S. Embassy employee turned Bolsonaro special advisor, who has been an influence on the foreign policy of the Bolsonaro government, working alongside the President’s sons, Carlos and congressman Eduardo, who is the most high profile Brazilian representative in Steve Bannon’s international far right organisation ‘The Movement’.

The far-right network were active in the campaigns to elect Jair Bolsonaro, for the imprisonment of Lula da Silva, and in support of the 2016 coup to remove Dilma Rousseff, and thus their foreign funding raises wider questions.

For Dias Toffoli, the revelations of international funding for that far-right base shows that those who attack democratic institutions are not merely a “group of crazy people”, “There is an organization behind this”, he reiterated.

Without naming names, the Minister also observed that some of the individuals under investigation, members of the ‘hate office’ network, had left Brazil. Toffoli remarked that their ability to remain in other countries, seemingly indefinitely, was unusual.

Until recently the Supreme Court’s president, Dias Toffoli called the investigations a safeguard for Brazilian democracy and reiterated that, despite criticism from Bolsonaro supporters, the inquiry has widespread support from political leaders and society as a whole.

https://www.brasilwire.com/supreme-cour ... democracy/

Bolsonaro Asked Biden For Help Against Lula Who “Threatens US Interests”
By BRASILWIRE
June 11, 2022

Bloomberg reported late on Saturday 11th June, two days after their meeting at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, that far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro asked Joe Biden for help against former president Lula da Silva for the October election.

Bolsonaro trails Lula by around 20 points in the polls, and as it stands is considered to have only a very slim chance of re-election.

The request came in a private meeting following a public press event where the two leaders were photographed together to promote the summit, which has been seen as a failure due to the non participation of various regional leaders. Bolsonaro’s participation was secured when Biden sent a special envoy to convince the Trump ally to attend.

According to unnamed people “familiar” with the matter, Bolsonaro portrayed his leftist opponent Lula as a “danger to US interests”.

The anonymous sources claimed that Biden had emphasised the sanctity of Brazil’s electoral process, as numerous administration officials have been over the past two months.

When Bolsonaro asked for U.S. help to defeat Lula, Biden tried to change the subject, one of the sources claimed.

Following the meeting, Bolsonaro expressed a surprising level of satisfaction with Biden, describing their meeting as “fantastic”.

Despite assurances from Bolsonaro and U.S. officials about the security of Brazil’s democratic institutions, the next day his defence minister, General Oliveira, launched the military’s most explicit threat to the October election yet, with a letter to president of the electoral court complaining that the Army was not being allowed to alter the voting process.

The Brazilian President’s office did not respond to a request for comment, and the White House press office declined to comment at this time.

If the reports of the meeting are accurate, Bolsonaro portrayed himself as a protector of U.S. interests over those of Brazil, which could present further difficulties for the beleaguered far-right president.

https://www.brasilwire.com/bolsonaro-as ... inst-lula/

One Day After Biden Meeting, Military’s Explicit Threat To Election
By BRASILWIRE
June 11, 2022

Brazil’s progressive media has repeatedly warned of the Military threat hanging over the 2022 election for several years. Such fears were, until recently, met with complacency in mainstream circles. There is now every sign that, as feared, the Military will not willingly vacate government.

One day after Jair Bolsonaro’s meeting with Joe Biden in Los Angeles, after which the far-right president expressed his satisfaction, the Brazilian Armed Forces issued their gravest and most explicit threat yet to the 2022 Presidential Election, and the warning came from the heart of his military-dominated government: Defense Minister General Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira.

It is the latest in a series of military interventions in Brazil’s judiciary since the coup of 2016.

Missed by the international press, in the public segment of his meeting with Biden, Bolsonaro used a coded message, the word “auditable”, in his assurances on the legitimacy of the coming election. This was a dogwhistle reference to his and the Armed Forces attacks on the electronic voting system.

One day later Defense Minister General Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira sent a letter to Electorial Court (TSE) President Edson Fachin, expressing the Armed Forces’ dissatisfaction with the Court’s responses to “technical” issues raised by the military in the context of the Electoral Transparency Commission, a new body they were invited onto following the threatened coup on September 7 2021.

The General’s letter, loaded with threat and insinuation, leaves no doubt that the objective of Military top brass is open confrontation with electoral authorities, ahead of a vote in which their candidates hopes of re-election look slim.

The letter ends with a direct threat:

“Finally, I close by saying that it is not in our interest to conclude the election under the shadow of the voters’ distrust. Transparent elections are matters of national sovereignty and respect for voters”.

Nogueira de Oliveira uses the same conspiratorial concepts and language as Bolsonaro and the Generals have repeated for the past year, and highlighted in bold are several threatening passages. It makes clear that, despite the constitution, the Military, see themselves as guardians of the electoral system and democracy, as the “fourth power of the Republic”:

“Without this dedicated, zealous and efficient work of the Armed Forces, it becomes very difficult for the Brazilian State to carry out elections in part of the country.”

The General follows on this theme:

“the work of the Armed Forces is always democratic, seeking to contribute to the country having fair, democratic and transparent elections.”, “the Armed Forces developed plausible proposals, at various levels, from technical to governance”, “I reiterate that the suggestions proposed by the Armed Forces need to be debated by the technicians.”, “It should be noted that a fundamental premise is that the exercise of the vote is secret, not its verification.”, “In summary, what is sought with the proposals of the Armed Forces is to improve the security and transparency of the electoral process”.

“it is established that parties and coalitions will be able to inspect all the phases of the voting process and the counting of elections and the electronic processing of the aggregation of the results”, referring to previous demands for auditing via printed vote and parallel count conducted by the Armed Forces themselves.

To justify all this, he argues that “the Armed Forces were invited by this Court” and “listed as supervisory entities”. The general then complains that the “TSE has signalled that it does not intend to deepen the discussion”.

In a chilling passage which made the headlines, Bolsonaro’s Defence Minister complains that “the Armed Forces do not feel properly honored” by the Electoral Court.

The General also queries the Electoral Court’s decision to expand observation and international monitoring of the elections: “the participation of ‘visual observers’, national and foreign, in the electoral process is not enough”.
Nogueira de Oliveira also asserts that among “missions established by the People for the Armed Forces” is “the defense of the Fatherland and the guarantee of constitutional powers, law and order”.

This statement is not found in the 1988 Brazilian Constitution.

The threatening letter to the Electoral Court president came just one day after the meeting between Bolsonaro and US President Joe Biden, and amid assurances on both Bolsonaro and the U.S. government’s part that Brazil’s imminent elections will be “free and fair“.

https://www.brasilwire.com/one-day-afte ... -election/

Brazilian Army Resumes Election Threats
By BRIAN MIER
June 11, 2022

One day after Brazil’s President Bolsonaro assures US President Biden he won’t tamper with electoral system, Defense Minister Gen. Paulo Oliveira attacks electoral courts for refusing to let military tamper with elections.

by Brian Mier

On June 10th, the day after Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s historic first ever meeting with US President Joe Biden at the Summit of the Americas, his government has resumed it’s ongoing attempt to preemptively undermine this year’s Presidential elections, in a scenario in which the incumbent is trailing opposition leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva by 21 points in the polls.

Last month, Superior Electoral Court Justice Edson Fachin wrote a response to an official complaint casting doubt on the electoral system written by Army General and Defense Minister Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira. In it, he emphasized that while the 7 suggestions in the complaint are welcome, some of them – for example, guaranteeing that a team of cyber security specialists monitor the elections – refer to mechanisms that are already in place, and all of them are based on faulty premises. Furthermore, Fachin wrote, although the military has the right to express its opinions, the Court has the final word on any changes to the electoral system.

On Friday, Defense Minister Oliveira released a 29-point statement reiterating his demands, repudiating Fachin’s response and making a machista threat that the Court is not respecting the “prestige” of the armed forces. Fachin immediately answered, emphasizing that according to Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, it is illegal to change the voting system this close to a presidential election.

Brazilian journalist Denise Assis compares the letter from the Defense Minister to throwing gasoline on a burning coal within a context of ongoing, Trump-like statements by Jair Bolsonaro and members of his government designed to undermine this year’s presidential elections, with the apparent aim of normalizing a possible January 6–style riot and ensuing anti-democratic clampdown reminiscent of the dictatorship era so beloved by the far-right President.

One example is the threatening message to Congress delivered by Oliveira’s predecessor in the Defense Ministry, General Walter Braga Neto in June, 2021, warning that elections would not take place unless Brazil switched back to a paper ballot system, which drew shocked reactions from lawmakers across the political spectrum.

On May 5 of this year, Reuters ran a story claiming that during a July, 2021 meeting between CIA director William Burns and top officials of the Bolsonaro administration, he had asked them to stop trying to undermine this year’s presidential elections. General Augusto Heleno, who was at the meeting, immediately denied that this had happened.

Last month, a group of 80 legal experts delivered a petition to the United Nations warning that the Bolsonaro government was trying to undermine Brazil’s democratic election system. “The courts face an unprecedented campaign of distrust and public threats to judges who decide against the government’s agenda,“ they wrote. “[…]without any evidence, Bolsonaro publicly claims that the Brazilian electoral system can be and has been rigged, and has even claimed that the Superior Electoral Court judges are behind such alleged frauds.”

Coming on the heels of Bolsonaro’s first ever one on one meeting with US President Biden at the Summit of the Americas, which he claims to have wildly exceeded his expectations, the timing of the Minister Oliveira’s letter seems, despite speculaton in US media that Biden may have warned Bolsonaro not to tamper with the electoral process, to deliberately frame the situation as if the Biden administration has given them a green light to continue.

https://www.brasilwire.com/brazilian-ar ... n-threats/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 16, 2022 1:30 pm

Man Admits Murder of Journalist and Activist in Brazil’s Amazon

Image
An indigenous woman accompanied by several people marches today during a protest against the disappearance of the indigenous activist Bruno Pereira and the English journalist Dom Phillips in Manaus, Amazonas. | Photo: EFE/ Raphael Alves

Published 15 June 2022

A man arrested by the Brazilian police confessed on Wednesday to the murders of English journalist Dom Phillips and local indigenist Bruno Pereira, missing in the Amazon since the beginning of the month, informed the superintendent of the Federal Police in the state of Amazonas, Amarildo da Costa Oliveira.

"The first detainee decided voluntarily at the end of the afternoon to confess to a crime, during the confession he gave details of where he buried the bodies (...) and where he hid the boat" in which the two men were traveling, the official explained at a press conference.

Amarildo da Costa Oliveira said he killed Phillips, 57, a contributor to the British newspaper The Guardian, and Pereira, 41, with bullets.

At the site indicated by the detainee, police found human remains that will be analyzed for identification, Da Costa said.

The remains were found 3.1 kilometers from where the personal belongings of the two men who disappeared days earlier were found.

A brother of Da Costa, Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, is also in custody, but he did not confess to participating in the crime.

The superintendent said that a third person identified by Amarildo da Costa Oliveira is under investigation.

Hours earlier, the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Anderson Torres, had reported the discovery of remains.

"I have just been informed by the Federal Police that 'human remains were found at the site where excavations were being carried out. They will be analyzed," the official said on Twitter.

Phillips and Pereira disappeared on June 5 in the Javari Valley region of northern Brazil, near the border with Peru, when they were on their way to visit an indigenous monitoring team so the journalist could do some interviews.

On Wednesday, the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, assured that Phillips was "frowned upon" in the area due to his reports, and that is why he should have been more careful.

"That Englishman was frowned upon in that region because he did many reports against "garimpeiro," environmental issues; in that region, quite isolated, there were many people who did not like him; he should have redoubled the attention with himself, and decided to make an excursion," he criticized in an interview on a YouTube channel, as reported by the portal G1.

Bolsonaro added that in the area where the two disappeared, there are "river pirates, everything you can imagine" and that it is "very reckless" to walk there without being properly prepared physically and armed with authorization from the National Indian Foundation (Funai).

Days before, the president had already indirectly blamed the missing people for their situation, saying that they were in the Amazon on an "adventure," discrediting the work of the British journalist, collaborator of "The Guardian."

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Man ... -0021.html

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What Made Bruno And Dom Targets?
By BRASILWIRE
June 15, 2022

When the monsters that govern Brazil today thought they had put an end to resistance against the invasion of indigenous lands after transforming Funai into a militarized anti-indigenous foundation, Bruno reinvented himself and continued the fight

By Laura Capriglione

The disappearances of indigenous rights advocate Bruno Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips echo like a tragic cry for help from the Amazon rain forest and its original inhabitants. Today, everyone knows that there, in that pile of leaves that you can see on Google Maps, where the Vale do Javari Indigenous Reserve is located (the second largest in Brazil), two heroes gave up their individual lives to defend the collective lives which are destroyed daily by mining, gold, agribusiness, drug trafficking, predatory fishing and even by religious missionaries – unscrupulous defenders of a god of death.

Bruno Pereira was not supposed to be there. He had already been depicted by genocide agents on t-shirts designed with 3 targets: one in the front, one in the back and a third stamped on his forehead. He was marked for death.

The study of National Indigenous Foundation (Funai) service bulletins provides eloquent evidence of Bruno’s commitment to the defense of isolated and recently contacted peoples. On January 2, 2020, for example, the bulletin shows that Bruno helda “meeting with authorities in reference to the the confidential document, Official Letter 219/Office of the Prosecutor/PRM/Tabatinga, of 06/17/2019, which deals with promoting actions to combat illicit acts in lands in the Alto Solimões region where isolated indigenous peoples reside.”

The next day, Bruno took part in protection, monitoring and surveillance actions with the goal of solidifying strategic partnerships to prepare for an inspection in Jutai together with local public security forces and setting up an operation with public security forces to apprehend perpetrators of environmental crimes and illegal mining on indigenous reserves.

In August 2014, Bruno participated in a meeting at the Federal Public Ministry on Indigenous Health about the illegal entry of evangelical missionaries into the Vale do Javari Indigenous Reserve.

In early 2019, Bruno joined the “partnership for strategic and institutional alignment” with the Military Command of the Amazon, Amazonas State Public Security Secretary, Tabatinga Federal Police Station, and the Army’s 8th Infantry Jungle Battalion. The purpose of the partnership was to guarantee safety of the Ethno-environmental Protection Front’s operational teams in the Vale do Javari during the roll out of a Contingency Plan for Contact Situations. That month he also worked to establish strategic and institutional partnerships with the Federal and Amazonas State Attorney General’s Offices.

Bruno was the director of FUNAI’s Department of Isolated and Recently Contacted Indigenous Peoples (CGIIRC) until October 2019. Shortly after coordinating an operation that expelled hundreds of miners from the Yanomami indigenous reserve in Roraima, however, he was transferred without any type of internal justification.

His transfer, which occurred during the first year of the Bolsonaro administration, was ordered by Justice Minister/ disgraced former Lava Jato judge Sergio Moro’s executive secretary, Luiz Pontel de Souza, who is a former Federal Police agent. In Bruno’s place, Moro’s Justice Ministry appointed an evangelical Christian missionary named Ricardo Lopes Dias, who had worked for a decade (1997–2007) for the New Tribes of Brazil Mission (MNTB), an organization with origins in the US that has worked to convert Brazilian indigenous people to US-style evangelical Christianity since the 1950s. These missionaries believe that the hearts of indigenous people have to be ripped out to impose the vengeful and cruel God of the prosperity gospel churches on them.

Analysis of Funai’s service bulletins show that Bruno’s activities were known to the law enforcement and regulatory agencies that are supposed to guarantee security of indigenous territories. He regularly met with the directors of all of the enforcement agencies including the Army, Police, Navy, Attorney General’s Office and Funai. He was not an irresponsible adventurer, a narrative that Bolsonaro tried to push during the first hours of his disappearance.

The fact is that after Bruno was forced out of his position as Director of CGIIRC, he refused the comfort of an early retirement. Dissatisfied, he asked for a 2 year, unpaid leave of absence from FUNAI and returned to Vale do Javari, to work as adviser to UNIVAJA, the Vale do Javari Indigenous Peoples Union, providing support on defending the indigenous reserve against the intrusion of miners, drug smugglers and illegal fishermen.

Aware that the preservation of the indigenous lands could only be done with worldwide exposure of the humanitarian and environmental crimes underway, Bruno made an existential pact with Dom Phillips, a white English journalist and contributor to some of the World’s most prestigious publications like the Guardian and the New York Times. It was an ideal partnership: an indigenous rights expert and a journalist, a Brazilian and an Englishman. Now, it is because of their disappearance that the world knows that there, in the western corner of Brazil, there is a struggle underway of life and death, of preservation vs. destruction, of respect for the original cultures vs. a tribute to a market god made with gold and precious metals because no one knows how long the dollar will hold up.

Of course we have to mourn the probable murder of these two heroes. But we must also honor their sacrifice. When the monsters that govern Brazil today thought they had put an end to resistance against the invasion of indigenous lands after transforming Funai into a militarized anti-indigenous foundation, Bruno refused to abandon his reason for living. He reinvented himself and continued the fight.

There are people like this all over Brazil who continue to resist despite their persecution, risk of being murdered, ostracism and criminalization.

Honoring these lives now means demanding not only the punishment of those who interrupted their heroic trajectories. We will not accept that everything remains the same and that the blame falls only on an impoverished, disposable, half white, half black, half indigenous suspect. If so, it will only be a matter of time before another wretch is hired kill a new indigenous leader, a journalist, a human rights worker and there will be another media circus and hurried investigation to capture another scapegoat.

The war machine installed in Vale do Javari against the environment and native peoples has to be shut down.

Who is paying for the speedboats, the tractors and plows, the huge dredgers, and the planes to transport all of the minerals?

How is it possible that, in a heavily militarized region with a civil police station, a federal police station, a military police battalion, a state prison, a national police force, the Tabatinga Airspace Control unit, an army border patrol battalion, a Brazilian naval base and a firefighter brigade , the main local economic activities continue to be smuggling, illegal mining and drug trafficking? Why don’t all these armed forces do their jobs? Why does the western border of Brazil continues to be a net for opportunists to invade indigenous lands, as has been happening in Brazil since 1500?

How does drug trafficking connect to the mining industry, provide resources, exploit prostitution, corrupt the military, maintain the labor flow needed for mining and sustain an army of hired assassins?

How is illegal and predatory fishing on the Solimões River and its tributaries connected to drug trafficking? How was the fishing industry hijacked by organized crime in order to provide boats and motorized canoes for the transport of drugs?

How does the gold trade work in Tabatinga and neighboring towns? Who buys and who sells the gold in the small shops scattered around the towns of Alto Solimões and Vale do Javari? It’s weird that these little shops even exist and are as banal and seemingly harmless as the illegal animal lottery stands in Rio and São Paulo. But these little stores are only harmless in appearance, due to the fortune they have enabled for a single company that resells nearly all the gold extracted from the indigenous reserve to international speculators.

FD Gold is owned by Dirceu Frederico Sobrinho, who is also president of the Brazilian National Gold Association (Anoro). In August 2021 the Federal Police accused him of feeding 1,370 kilograms of illegal gold into the international market between 2019 and 2021. An important detail is that Dirceu is very close to Vice President, General Hamilton Mourão, who is the former military commander of the Amazon, as well as other top-level officials in the Bolsonaro administration.

FD Gold’s headquarters are located on Avenida Paulista, the financial heart of São Paulo. In May, FD Gold declared itself as the owner of 77 kg of gold apprehended on a private plane in Sorocaba. The cargo, valued at R$23 million was being escorted by Lieutenant Colonel Augusto Tasso who is responsible for the security detail for São Paulo Governor Rodrigo Garcia (PSDB). Is this just a coincidence? It’s not the only proven connection between Brazilian public security forces and the predatory exploitation of the Amazon.

It’s not enough for the investigation into the disappearance of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips to stop at the arrest and conviction of a poor guy with the suggestive nickname of Pelado (Naked). This guy is naked in every way. He has no money, no prestige, no freedom, nothing. At some point Pelado will turn up dead and we’ll all say, “He deserved it.” But he is weakest link in this chain of evil, greed and horror.

We have to follow the money and avenge our heroes. We have to chase down and condemn the sharks who are financing the death of indigenous people and the destruction of the rain forest. They are cowards who use miserable poor people as cannon fodder while they remain hidden behind the walls of expensive, air-conditioned buildings on Avenida Paulista as they tread on the carpeted floors of economic power.

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, we will follow your examples of love and solidarity.

For the immediate end of the exploitation of gold and other riches in Indigenous Lands.

Down with Bolsonaro and his genocidal government!

https://www.brasilwire.com/what-made-br ... m-targets/

“Amazon Mafia”: Bolsonaro Loyalists Named By Police Agent
By BRASILWIRE
June 14, 2022

By Rede Brasil Atual

Federal Police agent Alexandre Saraiva has made serious allegations about the involvement of Bolsonarista politicians with what he called the “Crime Lobby” in the Amazon. Among those mentioned are senators Jorginho Mello (PL-SC) and Telmário Mota (Pros-RR), in addition to federal deputy Carla Zambelli (PL-SP). “We have a crime scene. A lobby, in my opinion, of thieves”, said Saraiva, in an interview with GloboNews. The policeman served for more than a decade in forest investigations.

“Thieves, even in the way they behaved on a day when I was invited to attend the hearing in the Chamber of Deputies, at the Participatory Legislation Commission. I, who have been to so many criminal hearings, with lawyers and criminals sitting in front of me, have never been so disrespected by criminals there, in the Chamber”, he added. In addition to the parliamentarians, Saraiva mentioned former Environment Minister Ricardo Salles.

“I will name names: Zequinha Marinho, Telmário Mota, Mecias de Jesus, Jorginho Mello (from Santa Catarina) sent a letter. Carla Zambelli went there too, defending a logger along with Ricardo Salles”.

Repercussions

The Federal Police officer’s complaint has had repercussions among politicians and journalists, and quickly spread through social networks. “Federal Police agent Alexandre Saraiva reveals the neglect and criminal relationships of the Bolsonaro government and its allies with illegal activities in the Amazon,” said Senator Humberto Costa (PT-PE). Federal deputy Helder Salomão (PT-ES) added: “Delegate Saraiva denounces the Bolsonaro government’s ‘Amazon mafia’ and cites names”.

GloboNews journalist Leilane Neubarth said she was “appalled” and “mesmerized by the clarity of Federal Police Agent Alexandre Saraiva about the ills, crimes, wrongdoings and irregular political support in the Amazon”.

In a recent interview with journalist Marcos Uchôa, Saraiva pointed out that there are solutions to crime in the Amazon, but a lack of political will. “From an operational point of view, it is not difficult. In six months it is possible to end illegal mining and logging. Overcoming bureaucratic limitations and achieving the political will is another story (…) Seeing where the problem lies is easy (…) The trafficking of wood is not like cocaine, it takes up a lot of space. Documentary falsity is easily observed from the administrative process”.

Uchôa commented on Saraiva’s accusations: “It’s the indignation of a police officer shocked by politicians who defend criminals. That’s a lot of money stolen and embezzled on the Amazon! Who benefits? Just go back and find out. Deputy Saraiva was doing so. Federal government removed him. Why?”.

Convergent crimes

Saraiva’s accusations deepen widespread outrage over the disappearance of indigenist Bruno Pereira and English journalist Dom Phillips in the Amazon. Both worked to denounce such crimes in the forest.

Regarding the case, Saraiva said that Bruno helped in an operation that destroyed 60 rafts belonging to illegal miners in the Amazon, when he was working at the National Indian Foundation (Funai). Soon after, he was removed from his duties by Bolsonaro’s office, following orders from former Justice Minister Sergio Moro, in coordination with then Environment Minister Ricardo Salles.

Alexandre Saraiva stands out in the fight against the Jair Bolsonaro government disrespect for environmental issues and the “official” defense of groups that operate illegally in the Amazon: loggers, prospectors, real estate speculators, among others. Saraiva commanded the largest seizure of illegal wood in the country’s history in 2021.

In an unprecedented reaction by the Brazilian government, he was then removed from his position after denouncing Environment Minister Salles for obstructing investigations. His complaint reached the Federal Supreme Court.

https://www.brasilwire.com/amazon-mafia ... sts-named/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.brasilwire.com/lula-bolsona ... miliation/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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