Brazil

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 28, 2022 3:17 pm

Lula To Implement Measures Against Coup Plotters in Brazil

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Brazil's President-elect Lula da Silva (C). | Photo: Twitter/ @CentralEleicoes

The first measures to neutralize far-right terrorist groups will be adopted by the Federal Police and other institutions linked to the Justice Ministry.

At his inauguration on January 1, Brazil's President-elect Lula da Silva will announce measures to neutralize groups that promote a coup and reject his electoral victory.

"We will even anticipate some measures because there can be no power vacuum. In the early hours of January 1, we will adopt measures so that an instability situation does not take place," said Flavio Dino, the next Justice Minister.

This announcement was made two days after a businessman who supports Jair Bolsonaro tried to carry out two terrorist attacks in Brasilia to create chaos, force the authorities to declare a state of siege, and prevent the inauguration of Lula.

On Sunday night, 40 kilos of explosives were also discovered near Brasilia. So far, authorities have not established whether those explosives are related to far-right protesters.

The businessman arrested on Saturday admitted that he planned the attacks with other Bolsonaristas who are camping in front of the Army headquarters in Brasilia.


The tweet reads, "While the camps sheltering terrorists continue plotting crazy coups with the approval of generals and the complicit silence of the outgoing president, a healthy and democratic Brazil persists in the hope of 2023. Right there!"

Dino affirmed that the first measures to neutralize these groups will be adopted by the Federal Police and other institutions linked to the Justice Ministry. He also hopes that the Armed Forces will dismantle the camps of far-right militants this week.

Lula's inauguration will be attended by authorities and delegations from countries such as Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, East Timor, Ecuador, Germany, Guyana, Guinea-Bissau, Paraguay, Portugal, Spain, Suriname, Uruguay, and Zimbabwe.

Some 300,000 people are also expected to participate in the music festival organized for Lula's inauguration.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lul ... -0001.html

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They reinforce security in Brasilia for the inauguration of Lula

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For the ceremony, the Congress will also have the participation of federal police, military and other forces of the Federal District. | Photo: Federal Police
Published 27 December 2022

The new government will begin work in the early hours of Sunday to avoid a power vacuum before the ceremony.

The future Minister of Justice of Brazil, Flávio Dino, confirmed on Tuesday that security will be reinforced in the capital, Brasilia, for the inauguration of President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, scheduled for next Sunday.

In the same direction, after the attempted bomb explosion near the Brasilia airport, the Legislative Police of the Senate and Chamber decided to reinforce the security of the National Congress, restricting access only to parliamentarians, employees and collaborators.

In this way, visits to the buildings were suspended, and even people who have a badge of free access have to go through metal detectors.


The measures must take place at least until January 1. For the ceremony, the Congress will also have the participation of federal police, military and other forces of the Federal District, who will act throughout the Esplanade of the Ministries.

In a television interview, Dino said that "we are facing new events that give rise to the reinforcement of security." However, he denied that there was an orientation for the militants to stop attending the events that will mark the beginning of Lula's third term.


The future minister said that “we reaffirm that the inauguration will take place with broad popular participation, both in the Esplanade of the Ministries and in the cultural area. However, obviously we are dealing with terrorists, who must receive the treatment that the law requires, and these preventive measures [related to security] at the same time," he stressed.

On the night of December 24, Brasília registered a bomb threat. At that time, the Brasilia International Airport suffered an attempted attack by a supporter of Jair Bolsonaro. The person responsible was George Washington de Oliveira Sousa, 54 years old, who participated in coup acts in front of the Army Headquarters, in the Federal District.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/brasil-r ... -0016.html

Delegations from 120 countries will attend the inauguration of Lula in Brazil

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After the inauguration ceremony of Lula da Silva, there will be an artistic festival at the Esplanade of the Ministries, in the capital Brasilia. | Photo: lula.com.br
Published 27 December 2022

The Brazilian president-elect called this Monday for peace and tranquility in the country after the terrorist threat by a Bolsonarista.

The inauguration ceremony of the president-elect of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, scheduled for next January 1, will be witnessed by delegations from some 120 countries, including 17 heads of state and government, a source reported Monday. official.

The press team of the incoming Brazilian president indicated that the presidential inauguration will bring to the country "almost three times more high-level foreign delegations than those seen in the last inauguration in 2019" of outgoing ruler Jair Bolsonaro.

At least 53 foreign delegations will be made up of heads of state and government, and ministers.


Taking into account confirmations from all levels, from ambassadors to presidents, around 120 countries will be represented at Lula's inauguration," the source added.

He specified that until now the heads of state and/or government of Germany, Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Guyana, Guinea-Bissau, Paraguay, Portugal, Suriname, Timor have confirmed their presence. Oriental, Uruguay and Zimbabwe.


The person in charge of the presidential inauguration ceremony, Ambassador Fernando Igreja, declared at a press conference at the beginning of December: "We see the reinsertion of Brazil, based on a new foreign policy in a new Lula government, on the world stage." .

“Naturally, the confirmations will arrive in the next few days. Most of the countries should keep in touch with President Lula soon so that relations can deepen in this new moment”, he pointed out.

After Lula da Silva's inauguration ceremony, there will be a festival at the Esplanade of the Ministries, in the capital Brasilia, which will host artists of different genres.

Lula calls for peace after terrorist threat
The Brazilian president-elect called on Monday for peace and tranquility in the country after the terrorist threat by a Bolsonaro who tried to detonate a tanker truck near the Brasilia international airport.


These statements came after a terrorist attempt at the hands of businessman George Washington de Oliveira Sousa, 54 years old and a supporter of Bolsonaro, who tried to explode a bomb in the vicinity of the air terminal.

The criminal, arrested last Saturday with military means, confessed that he intended to carry out the attack by exploding a fuel tanker truck during the inauguration of Lula da Silva.

https://telesurtv.net/news/brasil-comit ... -0001.html

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 29, 2022 3:51 pm

What Brazil will receive Lula da Silva from Jair Bolsonaro?

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Lula da Silva has to settle the debt for the food situation, in a context where hunger has once again become a reality for 33 million people. | Photo: EFE

With Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil registered an increase in the levels of poverty, social inequality, armed violence and deforestation.

Brazil was the first country in Latin America with the highest number of deaths from the Covid-19 disease, the second in the world behind the United States, and also registered a 94 percent increase in deforestation in the Amazon compared to previous years. All this during the Government of Jair Bolsonaro.

The words hunger, poverty, inequality, militarization, expropriation have been constant during the term of Jair Messias Bolsonaro, the thirty-eighth president of Brazil. So, how is Brazil after his government? What are the challenges of the new Brazilian presidency headed by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva?

What does Jair Bolsonaro leave behind from his mandate?
"Bolsonaro's government meant the greatest environmental setback of the century, with a 94 percent increase in deforestation compared to years prior to his administration"; according to the Socio-environmental Institute.


The same entity reported that on indigenous lands, the increase in deforestation reached 157 percent.

During the pandemic, Jair Bolsonaro disclosed false data on the use of a mask and vaccination against Covid-19 in a national broadcast in 2021. The pandemic left 40,830 children and adolescents orphaned in Brazil according to the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.


According to TV Globo, which pooled data from local governments, LGBTphobia crimes in Brazil increased 150 percent in one year. From 1,726 crimes registered in 2020 to 4,347 in 2021, even when there is an underreporting.

Jacarezinho Favela
On May 9, 2021, the President of Brazil congratulated the policemen who murdered 29 people in the Jacarezinho favela. “By treating traffickers who steal, kill and destroy families as victims, the media and the left equate them with ordinary, honest, law-abiding and other-abiding citizens. It is a serious offense for people who have long been held hostage to crime. Congratulations to the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro!"


Faced with this massacre, which lasted around 9 hours, the Black Coalition for Brazilian Rights denounced that this event is "one of the saddest chapters in our tragic trajectory of urban violence." “The murders were the result of an illegal police operation – since there was already a prohibition on carrying out this type of police action during the pandemic by the Federal Supreme Court (STF).”

Another of the operatives left on July 22, 2022, 18 also killed in Rio de Janeiro.

Other challenges
This violence, also encouraged by Jair Bolsonaro, is part of the context that Lula da Silva will receive. On December 25, they arrested George Washington de Oliveira Sousa, who tried to blow up a fuel truck in the area of ​​the Presidente Juscelino Kubitschek Federal District airport.

Lula da Silva has to settle the debt for the food situation, in a context where hunger has once again become a reality for 33 million people, while unemployment currently affects almost 12 million Brazilians. "No one should have to choose between eating or paying rent," said the Movement of Workers for Rights (MTD).

On the other hand, the eviction of indigenous people and militants of the Landless Movement (MST) was another of the actions taken by the Bolsonaro government. On the other hand, during his third year in office, 176 indigenous people were assassinated.

Likewise, the commitment to a political formation in Brazil that guarantees a structural transformation that accompanies all fields and sectors is another of the main challenges of the Lula da Silva government.

For her part, Human Rights lawyer and member of the Black Coalition for Brazilian Rights Sheila de Carvalho warned from her Twitter account that “the fight against racism must be on the agenda of the new government. Where are the quilombolas and the indigenous in the government transition? Blacks in the environmental debate? I don't see him in the transition, I hope to see him in the government”. And that is another of the challenges of the new Brazilian president.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/que-deja ... -0040.html

Police dismantle Bolsonaro camps in Brasilia

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The demonstrators demanded the intervention of the Armed Forces to prevent the inauguration of Lula. | Photo: Metropolis
Posted December 29, 2022 (1 hour 21 minutes ago)

The Army Social Communication Center reported that "many demonstrators have left the place spontaneously."

Brazilian military authorities announced this Thursday that the deactivation of the Bolsonaro camp in front of the Army headquarters in the capital continues, after spending two months in protest against the victory of the president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in the October elections.

According to the Army Social Communication Center, "many protesters have left the place spontaneously" while troops work to dismantle the abandoned structures.

In this sense, the military press pointed out that the actions have been carried out in coordination with the bodies of the Government of the Federal District (GDF), "with which it maintains permanent integration."


The demobilization occurs after the request of the GDF to the Army due to the proximity of the inauguration of the leader of the Workers' Party (PT) that will take place on January 1st.

The head of the Civil House of the Federal District, Gustavo Rocha, as interlocutor of the transition, highlighted the need for the demobilization of the Bolsonarists in the last instance for security reasons.


The demonstrators were in the vicinity of the General Headquarters since the publication of the results of the second round that confirmed the presidential candidate of the PT as elected president.

Although the supporters of the current head of state, Jair Bolsonaro, called for the intervention of the Armed Forces to prevent Lula's inauguration, they did not obtain considerable support from the military.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/ejercito ... -0013.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sun Jan 01, 2023 5:24 pm

Everything to know about Lula’s inauguration

The Workers’ Party leader will begin his third term with an official ceremony, artistic performances and representation of 120 countries

December 31, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

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Lula with his full cabinet of Ministers. Photo: Ricardo Stuckert

The presidential inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party of Brazil is expected to be a historic political, cultural, and international event. The government team organizing the ceremony expects over 300,000 people to be present on Sunday January 1 at the Esplanade of the Ministries in the capital Brasilia.

On Tuesday December 27, the National Congress held a simulation of the inauguration ceremony, to rehearse the steps of the teams that will perform that day. The schedule begins with the arrival of the authorities and other guests, scheduled between 1:30 pm and 2:30 pm on Sunday. From 1:45 pm onwards, the Heads of Government and State who will attend the event will begin to arrive.

The international guest list is also set to break records. In total, Lula will receive representatives from 120 countries. 53 of them with heads of state and ministers. 17 heads of state are confirmed from Germany, Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Guinea-Bissau, Paraguay, Portugal, Suriname, East Timor, Uruguay, Zimbabwe and Spain, whose representative will be King Felipe VI. In 2019, President Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) received 10 heads of state and 18 delegations in total during the inauguration.

Additionally, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro confirmed on Friday December 30 that he would attend the ceremony in Brasilia. The announcement was made after Jair Bolsonaro’s government revoked an ordinance banning his entry to Brazil, put in place in August 2019. The participation of Maduro marks a new chapter in the neighboring countries’ relationship which had been in a stalemate under the rule of Bolsonaro.

According to the day’s program, Lula and the vice-president elect, Geraldo Alckmin, will arrive at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Brasilia between 2:20 pm and 2:30 pm, and shortly after, their motorcade will head to the National Congress. It is not yet known if Lula will be in an open car. Lula’s security team favors an armored vehicle to increase protection against possible attacks, but Lula is reportedly against the idea and prefers to ride in an open car.

Lula and Alckmin will arrive at Congress at 2:40 pm, and will be officially received by the presidents of the Congress, Rodrigo Pacheco (Social Democratic Party), and of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (Progressive Party). At 3:00 pm, the session of presidential investiture begins, which takes place in the Plenary hall.

The ceremony ends at 3:50 pm, when Lula and Alckmin will go to the Hall of the Presidency of the Federal Senate, from where they will leave at 4:00 pm to the outside area of the Congress to attend the military honors ceremony. At 4:20 pm they will leave for the Planalto Palace, where Lula will receive the presidential sash.

As outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro has fled Brazil to Florida, and his vice-president, Hamilton Mourão, will also not participate in the ceremony, the sash will be given to Lula by someone else. Finally, after leaving the Planalto, the new president will be received by heads of state and representatives of other countries at the Itamaraty Palace (headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), located on the Esplanade of the Ministries.

Innovations
The inauguration has traditional characteristics, but this year will also feature some innovations. Coordinated by the future first lady, Rosângela da Silva [Janja], the ceremony will feature, for example, the presence of Lula and Janja’s dog Resistência [Resistance], adopted by the sociologist in Curitiba, when Lula was still incarcerated in the city’s Federal Police Superintendence.

Resistência will participate in the ceremony directly from the ramp of the Planalto Palace, as a symbol of Lula’s resistance during the period he was imprisoned. Other changes from recent years include the decision to not have fireworks with noise, in respect for animals and people with disabilities and autism.

The change responds to a request from representatives of these sectors, who also requested that the new government avoid the 21 cannon shots typical of the ceremony. Performed by the 32nd Field Artillery Group, the honor was created at the time of the proclamation of the Republic, but should be revised this year. Lula’s team is coordinating with the Senate to try to find an alternative to this rite.

Concerts
The official protocol program is not the only one on inauguration day. There will also be a series of concerts from 10 am to 1 pm, and they will resume at 6:30 pm, when the institutional rites are over. In total, 57 artists will perform in ten different shows.

The concert part of the day’s events, called Festival of the Future, will feature local and national names on two stages, baptized Gal Costa and Elza Soares in homage to the two Brazilian singers who passed away in 2022. The public attending the venue will be able to follow the official ceremony of Lula’s parade and the shows also on large screens distributed throughout the space.

Social movements
Caravans from all regions of the country have been arriving to Brasilia over the past several days to participate in the Popular Movements’ Camp for the inauguration. The delegations are staying in the Mané Garrincha Stadium, and an estimated 10,000 people are expected to arrive at the Camp.

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Members of the MST present at the Popular Movements Camp. Photo: Mykesio Max

With participation of diverse social organizations and movements of Brazil such as the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement, the World March of Women, Movement of People Affected by Dams, and others, the Popular Movements’ Camp materializes the collective work of thousands of workers from the countryside and the city that, in the last period, dedicated themselves to the campaign to elect Lula.

According to Tuira Tule, from the MST’s national direction, “Everything we have experienced in the last period since the coup we experienced in 2016, was a great process of preparation for this moment.”

The Camp will be inaugurated on the afternoon of December 31 with the Assembly of Popular Movements, reaffirming the position of the organizations to continue fighting and organizing in defense of social rights and public policies that transform the lives of the working class in the third mandate of Lula’s government. “It will be a space to debate about our political moment, but mainly to prepare ourselves for the inauguration day, in a collective way and with much hope and joy,” Tule stated.

Security
Due of the magnitude and importance of the event, the inauguration will have a super security scheme at the Ministries Esplanade and around the Three Branches. In total, 700 Federal Police agents will be deployed at the site, which will also have a bomb squad and an aerial barrier to prevent the presence of drones in the vicinity. The nearly 300,000 people expected at the Esplanade will need to go through a personal search to enter the site.

There will also be a massive contingent from the Public Security Secretariat of the Federal District. The Federal District government has not yet released the details of the operation, which should come to light in the coming days. It is already known, however, that agents from the administrative area of the police have been called to work in patrolling.

The future Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, met with the governor of the Federal District, Ibaneis, on Tuesday December 27, and said after the meeting that the inauguration “will occur as scheduled in all its dimensions…There will be full mobilization, 100% of the police forces of DF, both the Military Police, Civil Police, Fire Department, to ensure the safety not only of the president of the Republic, but of the foreign delegations and the people who will participate in the event,” said the future minister.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/12/31/ ... uguration/

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Lula Provides Hope for Latin America: Interview
December 31, 2022Bolivia, Brazil, Lula da Silva

Kawsachun News spoke exclusively to Bolivia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Freddy Mamani, about the regional implications of Lula taking office in Brazil. We also touched on Bolivia’s foreign policy regarding the coup against Pedro Castillo in Peru.

Lula takes office on January 1st, what does this mean for Bolivia and Latin America in general?

Bolivia sees with immense hope and optimism this new period for Brazil with Lula Da Silva. We consider this to be a victory for South American integration and for the strengthening of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). The government of Jair Bolsonaro has not participated in these processes of integration, they have not looked toward our region.

This is also important for economic integration, Mercosur, South-South cooperation, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, and the Intergovernmental Committee of Countries of La Plata Basin. These are mechanisms that strengthen Latin American integration.

On a bilateral level, Bolivia and Brazil need to rebuild our commercial relationship and focus on environmental cooperation. We share a large border across the Amazon where there are constant forest fires and threats to biodiversity. We also need to increase cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking on the border. These are the issues that Bolivia will raise with Brazil’s new government.

Bolivia’s far-right opposition in Santa Cruz has seen Brazil as a place to which they can escape justice. Jeanine Añez’s ex-Minister of Defense and Police Commander are currently being harbored there. Will this space for them now be cut off?

The extradition of these people is a judicial matter of course, but the Foreign Ministry is the channel between our two countries for official communications, so we’re awaiting an official response.

It is true that many former politicians of the previous government have sought refuge in Brazil, primarily because of their political affinity with the Bolsonaro government. They are all conservatives, and fundamentalists, and have an ideology steeped in the tradition of military coups in Latin America. We will seek to uphold national and international law by having them extradited and face justice here.

How was your relationship with Brazil’s Foreign Ministry? Are you expecting a more fluid relationship now?

These past four years under Bolsonaro, we haven’t had any relationship or shared agenda. We’re now working with Lula’s transition team to rebuild our political and economic relations, which is important because Brazil is our neighbor with which we have lots of trade, the issue of the export of Bolivian natural gas is also a key issue, also the issue of water resources and drug trafficking. We’re also hoping for better cooperation on fighting forest fires, Lula recently stated at COP27 that this will be a priority.

Now that Bolsonaro is leaving power, can we expect greater democratic stability in the region?

This is a critical issue for us, the relationship that some countries in our region have with developed countries who seek to intervene in our region. In contrast, as progressive governments have a shared vision on political and economic matters, we respect democracy and human rights, and we have a shared fight against capitalism and imperialism. This is what characterizes us as leftist parties and social movements in the region.

Regarding Peru, some right-wing legislators have called for the expulsion of Bolivia’s Ambassador. How do you see these declarations from the pro-coup forces?

Our position is very clear and was stated in the joint communiqué issued with the governments of Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico. We state our solidarity with the people of Peru who are struggling against this critical situation. Right-wing parties in Latin America have always violated human rights and international law.

By Kawsachun News

https://kawsachunnews.com/lula-provides ... -interview
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 02, 2023 2:17 pm

Democracy Forever! President Lula’s Inaugural Address to Parliament and the National Congress
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 1, 2023

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The complete speech made in the parliament hall after the presidential sash was conferred by the Brazilian people.

I want to begin by giving a special greeting to each and every one of you. A way to remember and to repay the affection and the strength that I received every day from the Brazilian people – represented by the Free Lula Vigil – in one of the most difficult moments of my life.

Today, on this, one of the happiest days of my life, the greeting I give you could not be any other, so simple and at the same time so full of meaning:

Good afternoon, Brazilian people!

My gratitude to you, who faced political violence before, during and after the electoral campaign. Who took to the social networks, and who took to the streets, under sun and rain, even if it was only to win a single precious vote.

Who had the courage to wear our shirt and, at the same time, wave the Brazilian flag – when a violent and anti-democratic minority tried to censor our colors and appropriate the green-yellow, which belongs to all Brazilian people.

To you, who came from all corners of this country – from near or far away, by plane, by bus, by car, or in the back of a truck. By motorcycle, bicycle, and even on foot, in a true caravan of hope, for this celebration of democracy.

But I also want to address those who opted for other candidates. I will govern for the 215 million Brazilians, and not only for those who voted for me.

I will govern for all of them, looking to our bright common future, and not through the rear view mirror of a past of division and intolerance.

Nobody is interested in a country on a permanent war footing, or a family living in disharmony. It is time to reconnect with friends and family, broken by hate speech and the dissemination of so many lies.

The Brazilian people reject the violence of a small radicalized minority that refuses to live in a democratic regime.

Enough of hate, fake news, guns and bombs. Our people want peace to work, study, take care of their families, and be happy.

The electoral dispute is over. I repeat what I said in my statement after the victory on October 30, about the need to unite our country.

“There are not two brasis. We are a single country, a single people, a great nation.”

We are all Brazilians, and we share the same virtue: we never give up.

Even if they pluck all our flowers, one by one, petal by petal, we know that it is always time to replant, and that spring will come. And spring has arrived.

Today, joy takes possession of Brazil, arm in arm with hope.

My dear friends.

I recently reread the speech I gave when I was first sworn in as President in 2003. And what I read made it even more evident how far Brazil has gone backwards.

On January 1st 2003, here in this very square, my dear vice-president José Alencar and I took on the commitment to recover the dignity and self-esteem of the Brazilian people – and we did. Of investing to improve the living conditions of those who need it most – and we did. To take great care of health and education – and we did.

But the main commitment we took on in 2003 was to fight inequality and extreme poverty, and to guarantee every person in this country the right to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day – and we fulfilled this commitment: we put an end to hunger and misery, and strongly reduced inequality.

Unfortunately today, 20 years later, we are returning to a past we thought was buried. Much of what we did was undone in an irresponsible and criminal way.

Inequality and extreme poverty are back on the rise. Hunger is back – and not by force of fate, not by the work of nature, nor by divine will.

The return of hunger is a crime, the most serious of all, committed against the Brazilian people.

Hunger is the daughter of inequality, which is the mother of the great evils that delay the development of Brazil. Inequality belittles this country of ours of continental dimensions, by dividing it into parts that do not recognize each other.

On one side, a small portion of the population that has everything. On the other, a multitude that lacks everything, and a middle class that has been growing poorer year after year.

Together, we are strong. Divided, we will always be the country of the future that never arrives, and that lives in permanent debt with its people.

If we want to build our future today, if we want to live in a fully developed country for everyone, there can be no room for so much inequality.

Brazil is great, but the real greatness of a country lies in the happiness of its people. And nobody is really happy in the midst of so much inequality.

My friends,

When I say “govern”, I mean “take care of”. More than governing, I will take care of this country and the Brazilian people with great affection.

In the last few years, Brazil has once again become one of the most unequal countries in the world. It has been a long time since we have seen such abandonment and discouragement in the streets.

Mothers digging through garbage, in search of food for their children.

Entire families sleeping outdoors, facing the cold, the rain and the fear.

Children selling candy or begging for money, when they should be in school, fully living the childhood to which they have a right.

Unemployed workers displaying, at the traffic lights, cardboard signs with the phrase that embarrasses us all: “Please help me”.

Queues at the door of butcher shops, in search of bones to alleviate hunger. And, at the same time, queues to buy imported cars and private jets.

Such a social abyss is an obstacle to the construction of a truly fair and democratic society, and a modern and prosperous economy.

For this reason, my vice-president Geraldo Alckmin and I assume today, before you and all the Brazilian people, the commitment to fight day and night against all forms of inequality.

Inequality of income, gender, and race. Inequality in the job market, in political representation, in State careers. Inequality in access to health, education, and other public services.

Inequality between the child who goes to the best private school and the child who shines shoes in the bus station, with no school and no future. Between the child who is happy with the toy he just got as a present, and the child who cries of hunger on Christmas Eve.

Inequality between those who throw food away and those who only eat leftovers.

It is unacceptable that the richest 5% of this country have the same share of income as the other 95%.

That six Brazilian billionaires have a wealth equivalent to the assets of the 100 million poorest people in the country.

That a worker who earns a minimum monthly wage takes 19 years to receive the equivalent of what a super rich person receives in a single month.

And there is no point in rolling up the windows of your luxury car to miss our brothers and sisters huddled under the overpasses, lacking everything – the reality is there on every corner.

My friends.

It is unacceptable that we continue to live with prejudice, discrimination, and racism. We are a people of many colors, and all should have the same rights and opportunities.

No one will be a second-class citizen, no one will have more or less support from the State, no one will be obliged to face more or less obstacles just because of the color of their skin.

That is why we are recreating the Ministry of Racial Equality, to bury the tragic legacy of our slaveholding past.

Indigenous peoples need to have their lands demarcated and free from the threats of illegal and predatory economic activities. They need to have their culture preserved, their dignity respected, and their sustainability guaranteed.

They are not obstacles to development – they are guardians of our rivers and forests, and a fundamental part of our greatness as a nation. That is why we are creating the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, to combat 500 years of inequality.

We cannot continue to live with the hateful oppression imposed on women, subjected daily to violence in the streets and in their own homes.

It is unacceptable that they continue to receive lower salaries than men, when performing the same function. Women need to have more and more space in the decision making bodies of this country – in politics, in the economy, in all strategic areas.

Women must be what they want to be, they must be where they want to be. That is why we are bringing back the Ministry of Women.

It was to fight inequality and its sequels that we won the election. And this will be the great mark of our government.

From this fundamental struggle a transformed country will emerge. A great, prosperous, strong, and fair country. A country of all, by all, and for all. A generous and solidary country that will leave no one behind.

My friends,

It is unacceptable that we continue to live with prejudice, discrimination, and racism. We are a people of many colors, and all of us should have the same rights and opportunities.

No one will be a second-class citizen, no one will have more or less support from the State, no one will be obliged to face more or less obstacles just because of the color of their skin.

That is why we are recreating the Ministry of Racial Equality, to bury the tragic legacy of our slaveholding past.

Indigenous peoples need to have their lands demarcated and free from the threats of illegal and predatory economic activities. They need to have their culture preserved, their dignity respected, and their sustainability guaranteed.

They are not obstacles to development – they are guardians of our rivers and forests, and a fundamental part of our greatness as a nation. That is why we are creating the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, to combat 500 years of inequality.

We cannot continue to live with the hateful oppression imposed on women, subjected daily to violence in the streets and in their own homes.

It is unacceptable that they continue to receive lower salaries than men, when performing the same function. Women need to have more and more space in the decision making bodies of this country – in politics, in the economy, in all strategic areas.

Women must be what they want to be, they must be where they want to be. That is why we are bringing back the Ministry of Women.

It was to fight inequality and its sequels that we won the election. And this will be the great mark of our government.

From this fundamental struggle a transformed country will emerge. A great, prosperous, strong, and fair country. A country of all, by all, and for all. A generous and solidary country that will leave no one behind.

My dear comrades, my dear companions.

I reaffirm my commitment to take care of all Brazilians, especially those who need it most. To end hunger in this country again. Of taking the poor out of the bone line to put them back in the Budget.

We have an immense legacy, still alive in the memory of each and every Brazilian, beneficiary or not of the public policies that have revolutionized this country.

But we are not interested in living in the past. Therefore, far from any nostalgia, our legacy will always be the mirror of the future we will build for this country.

Under our governments, Brazil has reconciled record economic growth with the greatest social inclusion in history. It became the sixth largest economy in the world, and at the same time 36 million Brazilians were lifted out of extreme poverty.

We generated more than 20 million jobs with signed work cards and all rights guaranteed. We readjusted the minimum wage always above inflation.

We broke records in investments in education – from kindergarten to university – to make Brazil an exporter of intelligence and knowledge as well, and not only of commodities and raw materials.

We more than doubled the number of students in higher education, and opened the doors of universities to the poor youth of this country. Young whites, blacks, and indigenous people, for whom a university degree was an unattainable dream, became doctors.

We fought one of the great focuses of inequality – access to health. Because the right to life cannot be hostage to the amount of money one has in the bank.

We created the Popular Pharmacy, which provided medicine to those who needed it most, and the More Doctors, which brought care to about 60 million Brazilians in the outskirts of the big cities and in the most remote parts of Brazil.

We created Smiling Brazil, to care for the oral health of all Brazilians.

We have strengthened our Single Health System. And I would like to take this opportunity to give a special thanks to the SUS professionals, for the greatness of their work during the pandemic. They bravely faced, at the same time, a lethal virus and an irresponsible and inhumane government.

In our governments we invested in family agriculture and in small and medium farmers, responsible for 70% of the food that reaches our tables. And we did this without neglecting agribusiness, which obtained investments and record harvests, year after year.

We have taken concrete measures to contain climate change, and we have reduced the deforestation of the Amazon by more than 80%.

Brazil has consolidated itself as a world reference in the fight against inequality and hunger, and has become internationally respected for its active and proud foreign policy.

We were able to accomplish all this while taking care of the country’s finances with total responsibility. We have never been irresponsible with public money.

We made fiscal surplus every year, eliminated the foreign debt, accumulated reserves of around $370 billion, and reduced the internal debt to almost half of what it was before.

In our administration, we invested in family agriculture and in small and medium farmers, who are responsible for 70% of the food that reaches our tables. And we did this without neglecting agribusiness, which obtained investments and record harvests, year after year.

We have taken concrete measures to contain climate change, and we have reduced the deforestation of the Amazon by more than 80%.

Brazil has consolidated itself as a world reference in the fight against inequality and hunger, and has become internationally respected for its active and proud foreign policy.

We were able to accomplish all this while taking care of the country’s finances with total responsibility. We have never been irresponsible with public money.

We made fiscal surplus every year, eliminated the foreign debt, accumulated reserves of around $370 billion, and reduced the internal debt to almost half of what it was before.

In our governments there has never been and never will be any spending. We have always invested, and will invest again, in our most precious asset: the Brazilian people.

Unfortunately, much of what we built in 13 years was destroyed in less than half of that time. First, by the coup of 2016 against President Dilma. And in the sequence, by the four years of a government of national destruction whose legacy History will never forgive:

700,000 Brazilians and Brazilians killed by Covid.

125 million suffering some degree of food insecurity, from moderate to very severe.

33 million going hungry.

These are just a few numbers. Which in fact are not just numbers, statistics, indicators – they are people. Men, women and children, victims of a misgovernment that was finally defeated by the people, on the historic October 30, 2022.

The Technical Groups of the Transition Cabinet, which for two months delved into the bowels of the previous government, have brought to light the real dimension of the tragedy.

What the Brazilian people have suffered in the last few years has been the slow and progressive construction of a genocide.

I want to quote, by way of example, a small excerpt from the 100 pages of this veritable chaos report produced by the Transition Cabinet. The report states:

“Brazil has broken feminicide records, racial equality policies have suffered severe setbacks, a dismantling of youth policies has taken place, and indigenous rights have never been so outraged in the country’s recent history.

The textbooks that will be used in the 2023 school year have not yet begun to be published; there is a shortage of medicine at the Farmácia Popular (Popular Pharmacy); there are no stocks of vaccines to deal with the new variants of COVID-19.

There is a lack of resources for the purchase of school lunches; universities run the risk of not completing the school year; there are no resources for Civil Defense and the prevention of accidents and disasters. Who is paying the bill for this blackout is the Brazilian people.”

My dear friends,

In these last few years we have lived through, without a doubt, one of the worst periods of our history. An era of shadows, uncertainties and much suffering. But this nightmare came to an end, through the sovereign vote, in the most important election since the re-democratization of the country.

An election that demonstrated the commitment of the Brazilian people to democracy and its institutions.

This extraordinary victory for democracy forces us to look forward and to forget our differences, which are much smaller than what unites us forever: the love for Brazil and the unbreakable faith in our people.

Now is the time to rekindle the flame of hope, solidarity, and love for our neighbor.

Now is the time to take care of Brazil and the Brazilian people again. Generate jobs, readjust the minimum wage above inflation, reduce the price of food.

Create even more vacancies in universities, invest heavily in health, education, science and culture.

Resume the infrastructure works and Minha Casa Minha Vida, abandoned by the neglect of the government that is now gone.

It is time to bring in investments and reindustrialize Brazil. Combat climate change again and stop once and for all the devastation of our biomes, especially the Amazon.

To break with international isolation and return to relations with all the countries of the world.

This is not the time for sterile resentments. Now is the time for Brazil to look forward and smile again.

Let us turn this page and write, together, a new and decisive chapter in our history.

Our common challenge is to create a fair, inclusive, sustainable, creative, democratic, and sovereign country for all Brazilians.

I have made a point of saying throughout the campaign: Brazil has ways. And I say it again with all my conviction, even in the face of the destruction revealed by the Transition Cabinet: Brazil is good. It depends on us, all of us.

In my four years in office, we will work every day for Brazil to overcome the backwardness of more than 350 years of slavery. To recover the time and opportunities lost in these last years. To regain its place of prominence in the world. And so that each and every Brazilian has the right to dream again, and the opportunities to realize what they dream of.

We need, all together, to rebuild and transform Brazil.
But we will only really rebuild and transform this country if we fight with all our strength against everything that makes it so unequal.

This task cannot be the responsibility of just one president or even one government. It is urgent and necessary to form a broad front against inequality, involving society as a whole:

workers, entrepreneurs, artists, intellectuals, governors, mayors, deputies, senators, unions, social movements, class associations, public servants, liberal professionals, religious leaders, ordinary citizens.

It is time for unity and reconstruction.

That is why I make this call to all Brazilians who want a more just, solidary, and democratic Brazil: join us in a great collective effort against inequality.

I want to end by asking each and every one of you: that the joy of today be the raw material of the fight of tomorrow and of all the days to come. May today’s hope leaven the bread that will be shared among all.

And may we always be ready to react, in peace and order, to any attacks by extremists who want to sabotage and destroy our democracy.

In the fight for the good of Brazil, we will use the weapons that our adversaries fear the most: truth, which has overcome lies; hope, which has overcome fear; and love, which has defeated hatred.

Long live Brazil. And long live the Brazilian people.


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President Lula’s inaugural Address to the National Congress on January 1, 2023

For the third time I appear before this National Congress to thank the Brazilian people for the vote of confidence that we received. I renew my oath of fidelity to the Constitution of the Republic, together with vice-president Geraldo Alckmin and the ministers that will work with us for Brazil.

If we are here today, it is thanks to the political conscience of the Brazilian society and to the democratic front that we formed throughout this historic electoral campaign.

Democracy was the great victor in this election, overcoming the largest mobilization of public and private resources ever seen; the most violent threats to the freedom of the vote, the most abject campaign of lies and hate plotted to manipulate and embarrass the electorate.

Never have the state’s resources been so misappropriated for the benefit of an authoritarian project of power. Never has the public machine been so derailed from republican controls. Never have voters been so constrained by economic power and by lies disseminated on an industrial scale.

In spite of everything, the decision of the ballot box prevailed, thanks to an electoral system internationally recognized for its efficiency in capturing and counting the votes. The courageous attitude of the Judiciary, especially the Superior Electoral Court, was fundamental in making the truth of the ballot box prevail over the violence of its detractors.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

As I return to this plenary of the Chamber of Deputies, where I participated in the Constituent Assembly of 1988, I recall with emotion the struggles we fought here, democratically, to inscribe in the Constitution the broadest set of social, individual, and collective rights, for the benefit of the population and of national sovereignty.

Twenty years ago, when I was elected president for the first time, together with the vice-president José Alencar, I started my inauguration speech with the word “change”. The change we intended was simply to materialize the constitutional precepts. Starting with the right to a dignified life, without hunger, with access to employment, health and education.

I said, on that occasion, that my life’s mission would be accomplished when every Brazilian man and woman could have three meals a day.

To have to repeat this commitment today – in the face of the advance of misery and the return of hunger, which we had overcome – is the most serious symptom of the devastation that has been imposed on the country in recent years.

Today, our message to Brazil is one of hope and reconstruction. The great edifice of rights, sovereignty, and development that this nation has built since 1988 has been systematically demolished in recent years. It is to rebuild this edifice of rights and national values that we will direct all our efforts.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

In 2002 we said that hope had conquered fear, in the sense of overcoming the fears in the face of the unprecedented election of a representative of the working class to preside over the destinies of the country. In eight years of government we made it clear that the fears were unfounded. Otherwise, we would not be here again.

It was shown that a representative of the working class could, yes, dialogue with society to promote economic growth in a sustainable way and to the benefit of all, especially the neediest. It was shown that it was possible, yes, to govern this country with the broadest social participation, including workers and the poorest in the budget and in government decisions.

Throughout this electoral campaign, I saw hope shine in the eyes of a people who had suffered as a result of the destruction of public policies that promoted citizenship, essential rights, health, and education. I saw the dream of a generous Homeland, one that offers opportunities to its sons and daughters, where active solidarity is stronger than blind individualism.

The diagnosis we received from the Government Transition Office is appalling. Health resources have been drained. They have dismantled Education, Culture, Science and Technology. They destroyed the protection of the Environment. They left no resources for school meals, vaccination, public security, forest protection, social assistance.

They disorganized the governance of the economy, of public funding, of support for companies, entrepreneurs and foreign trade. They dilapidated the state-owned companies and the public banks; they handed over the national patrimony. The country’s resources were abducted to satisfy the greed of rent-seekers and private shareholders of public companies.

It is over these terrible ruins that I assume the commitment, together with the Brazilian people, to rebuild the country and make once again a Brazil of all and for all.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

In the face of the budgetary disaster that we have received, I have presented proposals to the National Congress that will allow us to support the immense stratum of the population that needs the state in order to simply survive.

I thank the House and Senate for their sensitivity to the urgent needs of the Brazilian people. I register the extremely responsible attitude of the Federal Supreme Court and the Federal Audit Court when faced with situations that distorted the harmony of powers.

I did so because it would neither be fair nor correct to ask for patience from those who are hungry.

No nation has risen, nor can it rise, on the misery of its people.

The rights and interests of the population, the strengthening of democracy, and the resumption of national sovereignty will be the pillars of our government.

This commitment starts by guaranteeing a renewed, stronger and fairer Bolsa Família Program, to serve those who need it most. Our first actions are aimed at rescuing 33 million people from hunger and rescuing from poverty more than 100 million Brazilians, who have borne the heaviest burden of the project of national destruction that is ending today.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

This electoral process was also characterized by the contrast between different worldviews. Ours, centered on solidarity and political and social participation for the democratic definition of the country’s destiny. The other, individualism, the denial of politics, the destruction of the state in the name of supposed individual freedoms.

The freedom we have always defended is the freedom to live with dignity, with full rights of expression, demonstration and organization.

The freedom they preach is that of oppressing the vulnerable, massacring the opponent, and imposing the law of the strongest above the laws of civilization. The name of this is barbarism.

I understood, from the beginning of my journey, that I had to be a candidate for a broader front than the political camp in which I was formed, keeping a firm commitment to my origins. This front was consolidated to prevent the return of authoritarianism to the country.

As of today, the Access to Information Law will be enforced again, the Transparency Portal will resume its role, republican controls will be exercised to defend the public interest. We have no intention of revenge against those who tried to subjugate the Nation to their personal and ideological designs, but we will guarantee the rule of law. Those who made mistakes will answer for their errors, with the ample right of defense, within the due legal process. The mandate we received, in the face of opponents inspired by fascism, will be defended with the powers that the Constitution confers on democracy.

To hatred we will respond with love. To lies, with truth. To terror and violence we will respond with the Law and its harshest consequences.

Under the winds of redemocratization, we said: no more dictatorship! Today, after the terrible challenge we have overcome, we must say: democracy forever!

To confirm these words, we will have to rebuild democracy in our country on solid bases. Democracy will be defended by the people to the extent that it guarantees everyone the rights written in the Constitution.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

Today I am signing measures to reorganize the structures of the Executive Branch so that they once again allow the government to function in a rational, republican, and democratic manner. To rescue the role of state institutions, public banks and state-owned companies in the development of the country. To plan public and private investments in the direction of environmentally and socially sustainable economic growth.

In dialog with the 27 governors, we will define priorities to restart irresponsibly paralyzed construction projects, of which there are more than 14 thousand in the country. We will resume Minha Casa, Minha Vida and structure a new PAC to generate jobs at the speed that Brazil requires. We will seek financing and cooperation – national and international – for investment, to dynamize and expand the internal consumer market, to develop trade, exports, services, agriculture, and industry.

Public banks, especially the BNDES, and companies that induce growth and innovation, such as Petrobras, will play a fundamental role in this new cycle. At the same time, we will boost small and medium-sized companies, potentially the biggest generators of employment and income, entrepreneurship, cooperativism, and the creative economy.

The economic wheel will start turning again, and popular consumption will play a central role in this process.

We will resume the policy of permanent valuation of the minimum wage. And be sure that we will put an end, once more, to the shameful INSS queue, another injustice reestablished in these times of destruction. We are going to have a dialogue, in a tripartite way – government, union centrals, and business – about a new labor legislation. Guaranteeing freedom to undertake, together with social protection, is a great challenge in these times.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

Brazil is too big to renounce its productive potential. It makes no sense to import fuels, fertilizers, petroleum platforms, microprocessors, aircraft, and satellites. We have the technical capability, the capital, and the market to a sufficient degree to resume industrialization and the supply of services at a competitive level.

Brazil can and should be at the forefront of the global economy.

It will be up to the state to articulate the digital transition and bring Brazilian industry into the 21st century, with an industrial policy that supports innovation, stimulates public-private cooperation, strengthens science and technology, and guarantees access to financing at adequate costs.

The future will belong to those who invest in the knowledge industry, which will be the object of a national strategy, planned in dialogue with the productive sector, research centers, and universities, together with the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, the public and state banks, and research promotion agencies.

No other country has the conditions that Brazil has to become a great environmental power, based on the creativity of the bio-economy and the undertakings of socio-biodiversity. We will start the energy and ecological transition to sustainable farming and mining, stronger family agriculture, and greener industry.

Our goal is to achieve zero deforestation in the Amazon and zero emission of greenhouse gases in the electric matrix, besides stimulating the reuse of degraded pastures. Brazil does not need to deforest in order to maintain and expand its strategic agricultural frontier.

We will encourage prosperity on the land. Freedom and opportunity to create, plant and harvest will continue to be our objective. What we cannot admit is that it will be a lawless land. We will not tolerate violence against the little people, deforestation, and environmental degradation, which have already done so much harm to the country.

This is one of the reasons, but not the only one, for the creation of the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. Nobody knows our forests better or is more capable of defending them than those who have been here since time immemorial. Each demarcated land is a new area of environmental protection. To these Brazilians we owe respect and a historical debt.

Let us revoke all injustices committed against the indigenous peoples.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

A nation is not measured only by statistics, however impressive they may be. Just like a human being, a nation is truly expressed by the soul of its people. The soul of Brazil lies in the incomparable diversity of our people and our cultural manifestations.

We are re-founding the Ministry of Culture, with the ambition of resuming more intensively the policies of incentive and access to cultural goods, which have been interrupted by obscurantism in recent years.

A democratic cultural policy cannot fear criticism or elect favorites. Let all the flowers bloom and all the fruits of our creativity be harvested, that everyone can enjoy it, without censorship or discrimination.

It is unacceptable that black and brown people continue to be the poor and oppressed majority in a country built with the sweat and blood of their African ancestors. We have created the Ministry for the Promotion of Racial Equality to expand the policy of quotas in universities and public service, in addition to resuming policies for black and brown people in health, education, and culture.

It is unacceptable that women are paid less than men for the same work. That they are not recognized in a macho political world. That they are harassed with impunity in the streets and at work. That they are victims of violence inside and outside the home. We are also re-founding the Ministry of Women to demolish this centuries-old castle of inequality and prejudice.

There will be no true justice in a country where only one human being is wronged. The Ministry of Human Rights will be responsible for ensuring and acting so that every citizen has his or her rights respected, in the access to public and private services, in the protection from prejudice or from public authority. Citizenship is the other name of democracy.

The Ministry of Justice and Public Safety will act to harmonize the federated powers and entities in order to promote peace where it is most urgent: in poor communities, in the bosom of families vulnerable to organized crime, to militias and to violence, wherever it comes from.

We are revoking the criminal decrees expanding access to weapons and ammunition, which have caused so much insecurity and harm to Brazilian families. Brazil does not want more weapons; it wants peace and security for its people.

Under God’s protection, I inaugurate this mandate reaffirming that in Brazil faith can be present in every home, in the various temples, churches, and services. In this country everyone can freely exercise their religiosity.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

The period that is ending was marked by one of the greatest tragedies in history: the Covid-19 pandemic. In no other country was the number of fatal victims so high in proportion to the population as in Brazil, one of the most prepared countries to face health emergencies, thanks to the competence of our Single Health System.

This paradox can only be explained by the criminal attitude of a denialist government, obscurantist and insensitive to life. Responsibilities for this genocide must be ascertained and must not go unpunished.

What is up to us, at this moment, is to pay solidarity to the relatives, parents, orphans, brothers and sisters of almost 700 thousand victims of the pandemic.

SUS is probably the most democratic of the institutions created by the 1988 Constitution. This is certainly why it has been the most persecuted since then, and it was also the most damaged by a stupid thing called the Expenditure Ceiling, which we will have to revoke.

We are going to restore the Health budgets in order to guarantee basic care, the Popular Pharmacy, and promote access to specialized medicine. We will rebuild the Education budgets, invest in more universities, in technical education, in the universalization of internet access, in the expansion of day-care centers, and in full-time public education. This is the investment that will truly lead to the development of the country.

The model we propose, which was approved at the polls, does require a commitment to responsibility, credibility, and predictability, and we will not give that up. It was with budgetary, fiscal, and monetary realism, seeking stability, controlling inflation, and respecting contracts that we governed this country.

We cannot do it differently. We will have to do better.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

The eyes of the world were on Brazil in these elections. The world expects Brazil to once again become a leader in the fight against the climate crisis and an example of a socially and environmentally responsible country, capable of promoting economic growth with income distribution, fighting hunger and poverty, within the democratic process.

Our protagonism will be materialized through the resumption of South American integration, starting with the Mercosur, the revitalization of Unasur, and other instances of sovereign articulation in the region. On this basis, we will be able to rebuild a proud and active dialogue with the United States, the European Community, China, the countries of the East, and other global players; strengthening the BRICS, cooperation with African countries, and breaking the isolation to which the country has been relegated.

Brazil has to be its own master, the master of its destiny. It has to go back to being a sovereign country. We are responsible for most of the Amazon and for vast biomes, large aquifers, mineral deposits, petroleum and clean energy sources. With sovereignty and responsibility we will be respected to share this greatness with humanity – in solidarity, never in subordination.

The relevance of the election in Brazil refers, finally, to the threats that the democratic model has been facing. Around the planet, a wave of authoritarian extremism is articulating itself, spreading hatred and lies through technological means that are not subject to transparent controls.

We defend the full freedom of expression, aware that it is urgent to create democratic instances of access to reliable information and to hold accountable the means by which the poison of hate and lies is inoculated. This is a challenge for civilization, just like overcoming wars, the climate crisis, hunger, and inequality on the planet.

I reaffirm, for Brazil and for the world, the conviction that Politics, in its highest sense – and despite all its limitations – is the best way for dialogue between diverging interests, for the peaceful construction of consensus. To deny politics, to devalue and criminalize it, is the path of tyrannies.

My most important mission, as of today, will be to honor the trust I have received and to live up to the hopes of a suffering people, who have never lost faith in the future or in their capacity to overcome challenges. With the strength of the people and the blessings of God, we will rebuild this country.

Long live democracy!

Long live the Brazilian people!

Thank you very much.

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Translation by Internationalist 360°

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... -congress/

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Latin American presidents trust in a new era with Lula

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Lula Da Silva began his third four-year government this Sunday after his two-term administration from 2003-2010. | Photo: @LulaOficial
Posted 2 January 2023 (6 hours 11 minutes ago)

“Hope, democracy, justice and dignity for our peoples. With Lula, we go together”, said the head of State of Chile, Gabriel Boric.

Latin American leaders expressed the certainty that with the start of the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office this Sunday, a new era of cooperation in the region for the benefit of the population opens.

The ruler of Colombia, who participated in the inauguration ceremony of Lula da Silva, stated on his official Twitter account: "We are going for a fundamental alliance."

The Colombian presidency revealed that Petro will hold a meeting with his Brazilian counterpart, during which they will review transcendental issues on the common agenda, such as the rescue of the Amazon rainforest, economic integration and the analysis of a new anti-drug policy, among others.


The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, published on Twitter his congratulations "with joy" to "comrade Lula da Silva" for his inauguration.


“A new liberating wave runs through the Patria Grande, opening paths of geopolitical advancement for South American union projects. Our hug to Lula and the Brazilian people! ”, Said the Venezuelan president, who sent the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, to the inauguration ceremony on his behalf.


The Government of Honduras, after noting the participation of President Xiomara Castro in the inauguration of Lula, also indicated in the micromessaging network: "Our Great Homeland advances towards a future of progress and unity, the peoples are invincible."


“Hope, democracy, justice and dignity for our peoples. With Lula, we go together”, said, for his part, the head of State of Chile, Gabriel Boric, in a tweet.


The President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, also joined in the congratulations received by Lula Da Silva, who began a third government after his two-term term in office from 2003-2010.

“! Latin America united and fought. The dream came true. I wish you the best for this management, the future will be one of deep brotherhood. With a more just, free and equitable look, we will achieve the true development of our peoples”, mentioned Fernández.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/brasil-p ... -0002.html

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 06, 2023 2:41 pm

The Importance of Lula’s Presidency in an Increasingly Multipolar World
By Sean T. Mitchell
Post date January 5, 2023

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By Sean T. Mitchell for NACLA

Despite the Brazilian Amazon’s importance to the global climate, Brazil’s lame-duck president, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, was not one of the many heads-of-state to attend the United Nations Climate Conference COP27, which took place in November. Instead, Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil’s left-wing Workers’ Party (PT) attended and made headlines worldwide when he declared: “Brazil is back.”

Bolsonaro spent four years greenlighting the devastation of the Amazon—years in which deforestation shot up by 73 percent. After such destruction, the leadership of Lula, who oversaw a 67.6 percent reduction in deforestation during his previous two terms as president from 2003 to 2010, was welcome news to many at the event. Supporters punctuated his speech with gleeful chants of his phrase, “Brazil is back, Brazil is back.”

Yet Lula’s speech offered a more profound challenge to the assembled world leaders than merely an affirmation of Brazil’s renewed support of the COP27’s environmental goals. Such affirmations are par for the course, and usually insincere; Bolsonaro promised zero deforestation by 2030 at the COP26 in 2021, something few took seriously. Lula’s speech also critiqued the global order, and implicitly, the priorities of many of the world leaders present.

“We spend trillions of dollars on wars that only bring destruction and death,” he said, “while 900 million people in the world don’t have anything to eat.” Lula also spoke of working towards a “peaceful world order based on dialogue, multilateralism, and multipolarity.”

We live in an era of deepening perils, including, as Lula noted in his speech, the apocalyptic return of the “threat of nuclear war.” The geopolitical order is also becoming more multipolar. That multipolarity could be characterized by dialogue and cooperation, or, instead, by violent conflict. We should take these statements by Lula seriously, and those of us concerned with a livable and just world should welcome Brazil’s renewed ambition in world affairs and Lula’s bid to push the increasingly multipolar order in the direction of dialogue.

On January 1, Lula was inaugurated as the president of Brazil, and the world is watching. There is, perhaps, no other living leader in either the Global South or North with the stature and track record to effectively make the case for a renewed focus on human wellbeing and survival in a world that is cascading deeper into inequality, environmental destruction, and war.

During his two previous terms as president, Lula’s leftist government created social policies that, when continued by his PT successor Dilma Rousseff, brought tens of millions out of poverty and significantly expanded the opportunities and rights of Brazil’s most marginalized and exploited. The PT governments also forged a foreign policy that sought independence from the United States—alienating many in Washington, but winning many admirers on the global Left and in the Global South.

Historical Parallels

Beyond the enthusiasm about Lula’s victory among much of the worldwide Left, many commentators in the United States and broader Anglophone press expressed gloominess about Lula’s prospects for success in a turbulent global economy and a divided Brazil, along with wariness about Lula’s global protagonism.

Consider a few articles from The New York Times.

One article was titled, “Brazil May not Stay Upright on a Shaky Global Stage.” It mentioned unnamed “financial analysts” who worried “that Brazil’s currency needs to get stronger, its interest rates need to come down and its growth needs to accelerate [but that] many of these things are out of its hands.”

Another article expressed uncertainty about Lula’s ability to govern at all, noting that Lula “does not yet have the votes he needs to begin the transformation of Brazil that he has promised or to block efforts to erode his authority.”

And amid war and the looming possibility of deepening U.S. involvement in that conflict, another New York Times piece noted points of tension between Lula and the United States, including Lula’s indirect criticisms of the U.S. president, and his statement that current conflicts “should be resolved peacefully and through negotiations,” a sentiment out-of-step with that dominant in Washington.

Although the mainstream U.S. press made nearly identical predictions after Lula’s victory in 2022, these statements are actually from just after Lula’s second round electoral victory in 2002. Much of the U.S. press after Lula’s 2022 victory has focused on the forbidding economic context for Lula’s ambitious social agenda and the likelihood of obstruction by Brazil’s divided congress, as with the New York Times article that declared, “His second try [at the presidency] looks far more difficult.”

This pessimistic tone shouldn’t come as a surprise. Lula’s previous administrations thwarted Washington’s attempt to extend a NAFTA-style neoliberalism across the Americas; shelved a (since renewed) deal for U.S. control of Brazil’s Alcântara spaceport; defied the U.S. blockade of Iran; and, among other transgressions of U.S. dominance in Latin America, forged close ties with China, Russia, and South Africa by making the BRICS a functioning institution.

It is these ties to Russia and, especially, China that have most caused distress for the U.S. Right. But even mainstream, center-left U.S. media have been pessimistic about Lula’s prospects, despite their enthusiasm for the defeat of the Trump-allied Bolsonaro.

We don’t know what impediments and opportunities political and economic conditions will offer in the coming years any more than journalists did amid the gloom of 2002. But pessimism about challenges to global power relations that emanate from institutions close to the center of power should always be read critically.

The Perilous Present

Many skeptics point to Brazil’s divided Congress as a barrier to Lula’s success, as they did in 2002. However, using ideologically polarized U.S. politics as a model to understand Brazil obscures more than it reveals. Yes, the Brazilian far right is more powerful and vocal than they were in 2002, and this will pose many challenges for Lula’s presidency. However, much of Brazil’s Congress is not strongly committed to any political ideology and is willing to cut deals with the party in power, which is how Lula was able to successfully govern during his past two terms without a majority in Congress. This political flexibility is already on display. Even before coming to power, the president-elect and his team negotiated extensively with Congress to raise spending limits imposed in 2016 to allow for ambitious social spending.

On the topic of war, Lula has also proven critics wrong. At the beginning of this century, Lula was heavily criticized in the U.S. for his opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the disastrous results of those wars have largely vindicated his call for dialogue over violence. Most readers today will probably agree that Lula was right in 2002, despite the stifling pro-war unanimity of the U.S. press at that time. By estimates that are probably too conservative, those wars killed nearly a million people and left countless destroyed lives in their wake.

Lula’s comments on the Ukraine War in 2022 are similar to those he made about the War on Terror in 2002. In a pre-election interview, Lula stated: “Putin shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine. But it’s not just Putin who is guilty. The U.S. and the EU are also guilty.” Naming NATO expansion near Russia’s borders and the possible incorporation of Ukraine as causes of the war, Lula called for dialogue, saying: “We need to reach an agreement. But people are encouraging [the war].” This caused consternation in a Washington that is funneling billions to Ukraine and sanctioning Russia, and it fueled fear-mongering headlines in U.S. media, such as Newsweek’s, “Lula’s Victory in Brazil Is Great News for Putin,” despite Lula’s clear criticism of Putin’s decision to go to war.

Lula is hardly alone in his perspective on the war. Foreign policy analysts as varied as Henry Kissinger, John Mearsheimer, and Noam Chomsky have been warning for years that NATO’s expansion would provoke something like the Ukraine War. Their assertions can be challenged and should be the subject of debate. But such debate is nearly impossible in the United States today; if NATO expansion is mentioned at all in mainstream U.S. media as a possible causal factor in the war, it is only to be dismissed as “disinformation.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a terrible crime. However, the stakes of this conflict are too high to allow the propaganda of either side to drown out the dialogue that Lula is calling for. With species-threatening nuclear war today a greater possibility than at any point since the Cold War—from which humanity escaped only by luck—we cannot afford the cartoonish worldview that turns every U.S. opponent into Hitler and the United States into the eternal savior. And in a Latin America that has suffered frequent and brutal U.S.-sponsored coups, such a worldview cannot be seriously entertained.

In any case, much of the world has a view of the Ukraine War that is closer to Lula’s than to Biden’s. Despite frequent assertions that the United States has the support of the “international community,” almost 90 percent of the world’s population live in countries not following the United States’ lead on the war.

Yet many of those leaders who have prominently distanced themselves from U.S. strategy in Ukraine are hardly paragons of the kind of social and environmental justice that Lula spoke of at the COP27. They include the far-right Narendra Modi of India; the brutal Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia; and the autocratic Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of (NATO member) Turkey.

The dissension of those figures from U.S. policy suggests some loss of the global hegemony that the United States held during the post-Cold War period and the world’s deepening multipolarity. And, to some, the dissension of much of the Global South from the world’s consolidating power blocks signals the emergence of a new non-aligned movement. Lula’s global respect and prominence make it possible that this non-alignment could help push the multipolar world towards dialogue, justice for the poor, and protection of the biosphere.

Hopes for the Future

As Lula steps into his next term as president, the standing he has worldwide offers hope that the fight for a world not characterized by war, inequality, and environmental destruction will have persuasive and powerful leadership.

If he is to succeed at his ambitious domestic and international agendas in the face of what will be significant opposition in Brazil, he will have to rely on the pressure and support of social movements, unions, and citizens. And if we are to flourish as a species, we will need to mount such organization and pressure globally, as well.

In his speech at the COP 27 Lula declared: “Brazil is ready to again join forces in the construction of a healthier planet, of a more just world, capable of welcoming with dignity the totality of its inhabitants —and not just a privileged minority.”

We should all hope that he succeeds.

https://www.brasilwire.com/the-importan ... lar-world/

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Photo: Ricardo Stuckert

Brazil Announces ‘Immediate’ Return to CELAC
January 6, 2023



Brazil has announced its decision to rejoin, fully and immediately, all political and technical entities of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

President Lula will attend the 7th CELAC Summit, to be held in Buenos Aires on January 24th, at the invitation of Alberto Fernandez, President of Argentina, which holds the forum’s interim presidency. Brazil’s decision to rejoin CELAC is an essential step in restoring our diplomatic heritage and in repositioning Brazil in the international stage.

CELAC brings together all 33 countries of the Latin American and Caribbean region and does not include the United States and Canada. It’s a forum for the promotion of political dialogue, regional coordination and cooperation in themes including health, social inclusion, environment, food security and energy security. Leaders around the region have called for the strengthening of CELAC as an alternative to the discredited Organization of American States (OAS).

By Kawsachun News with information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil.

https://kawsachunnews.com/brazil-announ ... n-to-celac

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Lula’s Government To Resume the More Doctors Program in Brazil

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Cuba doctors in Brazil | Photo: La Demajagua

Published 4 January 2023

Nesio Fernandes, Secretary of Primary Health Care of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, affirmed that the More Doctors program, which was terminated during the administration of the defeated President Jair Bolsonaro, will be resumed, it was learned today.


"The agenda to resume More Doctors is immediate. We want to place doctors in all Brazilian municipalities in a short period of time," Fernandes revealed, as quoted by a local newspaper.

He explained that now the priority will be to hire Brazilians, with registration in the regional councils and to offer vacancies to nationals trained abroad. After that, he specified foreigners would fill other positions.

Established in 2013 during Dilma Rousseff's administration, More Doctors was intended to increase the number of professionals to provide care, mainly in cities in the interior of the country.

The doctors came from several nations, including Cuba, which revalidated on November 14, 2018, the solidary and humanistic vocation of its health professionals in dozens of countries, by announcing the departure of More Doctors from Brazil, in the face of conditionings and derogatory statements of the then elected ruler Bolsonaro about its specialists.

In 2019, the former military president replaced More Doctors with Doctors for Brazil.

However, according to Fernandes, until today, many of the vacancies of the Cuban doctors who left the South American giant "have not been filled."

As part of More Doctors, the Cuban Ministry of Public Health detailed in a communiqué that in the last five years, nearly 20,000 Cuban collaborators attended 113,359,000 patients in some 3,600 municipalities, "covering a universe of up to 60 million Brazilians".

Following the departure of the Caribbean doctors, current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Lula thanked the Cuban professionals who participated in the program and for Cuba helping other peoples of the world with their medicine.

"How good it would be if we had, like Cuba, doctors even to export to other countries," said the former trade unionist in a letter sent to the Cuban people following the termination of their participation in the program.

He assured that the bonds of fraternity between the peoples of Brazil and Cuba are much stronger than irrational hatred and the Cuban professionals "earned the affection and gratitude of millions of Brazilians."

"That is why I want to say to the people of Cuba: be very proud of your doctors and your medical schools. You have won millions of admirers, millions of grateful people in Brazil," the founder of the Workers' Party stressed on the occasion.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lul ... -0018.html
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sun Jan 08, 2023 11:23 pm

Pro-Bolsonaro Supporters Invade Congress and Supreme Court

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Hundreds of radical Bolsonaristas have been camped in front of the Army Headquarters, in Brasília, since the day after the elections of last October 30, in which Lula defeated Bolsonaro.

Published 8 January 2023

The Brazilian Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, affirmed this Sunday that "the will of the radical Bolsonaristas who have invaded the National Congress "will not prevail".


Supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro took this Sunday by force the National Congress, breaking the blockade carried out by the Military Police and the National Security Force at the Esplanade of the Ministries in Brasilia.

Brazil's Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, affirmed this Sunday that "the will of the radical Bolsonaristas who have invaded the National Congress "will not prevail".

Bolsonarista demonstrators do not accept the electoral result and invaded an area of the Congress and when they were heading towards the Government Palace they were dispersed with tear gas bombs by the police in Brasília.


Minister Dino authorized the use of the National Force in the security of the capital in the face of the threat of violent actions.

The extremists, mostly wearing yellow and green T-shirts and Brazilian flags, also attacked some vehicles of the Legislative Police, which provides security to the Congress.

They also destroyed protection barriers and armed with sticks confronted the agents who tried to contain, without success, the entrance of the demonstrators.


Hundreds of radical Bolsonaristas have been camped in front of the Army Headquarters, in Brasília, since the day after the elections of last October 30, in which Lula defeated Bolsonaro.

The camps of radical Bolsonaristas, which have multiplied in cities across the country, began to be dismantled on Friday in Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais, where some disturbances occurred.

On Saturday, the Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, authorized the deployment of the National Security Force, an elite group of police forces from all over the country, which is mobilized for special missions.


Bolsonaro protesters who do not accept the electoral result invaded an area of Congress and when they were heading towards the government palace, they were dispersed with tear gas canisters by the police in Brasília.

Since Lula's victory in the October 30 runoff election with 50.9% of the valid votes against Bolsonaro's 49.1%, Bolsonaro's supporters have gathered outside the Army barracks.

Before the invasion of Congress, Dino made a statement on social networks and said that opponents will have to wait until 2026, when the next presidential elections will be held, just as the current government waited between 2018 and 2022.

In a statement, Dino said that the Ministry of Justice convened an emergency meeting with security agencies to deal with the demonstrations.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Pro ... -0004.html

Latin American Leaders Reject Anti-democratic Coup in Brazil

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Rulers of several nations condemned the violent acts of a sector of society that does not accept the victory at the polls of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Jan. 08, 2023. | Photo: Twitter: @leticiadeCuba

Published 8 January 2023 (56 minutes ago)

They strongly reject the invasion of the headquarters of the three branches of government in the nation's capital, Brasilia.

Leaders and political organizations of Latin America and the Caribbean repudiated the attacks on democracy perpetrated this Sunday by supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who invaded the headquarters of the three branches of government in the nation's capital, Brasilia.

Rulers of several nations condemned the violent acts of a sector of society that does not accept the victory at the polls of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and during this day took over the Planalto Palace (seat of the Executive), the National Congress and the headquarters of the Federal Supreme Court.

Press reports indicate that security forces are now taking control of these institutions, after they were invaded and vandalized by violent groups encouraged by the extreme right-wing ex-president.


Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said through Twitter: "We strongly condemn the violent and anti-democratic acts occurring in Brazil, with the aim of generating chaos and disrespecting the popular will expressed with the election of President Lula. We express our full support and solidarity to Lula and his government".

The Venezuelan head of state, Nicolás Maduro, categorically opposed "the violence generated by Bolsonaro's neo-fascist groups that have assaulted Brazil's democratic institutions" and assured that the Brazilian people "will mobilize in defense of peace and their President".


The Argentinean President, Alberto Fernández, positioned himself "together with the Brazilian people to defend democracy and never again allow the return of the coup ghosts promoted by the right wing. Let us demonstrate with firmness and unity our total support to the government democratically elected by the Brazilian people headed by President Lula", he said.


Fernández also affirmed that, in his capacity as president of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) and of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), he alerted the member countries to unite against "this unacceptable anti-democratic reaction that is trying to be imposed in Brazil".

The government elected by the people of Brazil did not lack the support of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who assured that "Lula is not alone, he has the support of the progressive forces of his country, of Mexico, of the American continent and of the world".


The foreign ministers of Cuba, Argentina and Mexico, Bruno Rodriguez, Santiago Cafiero and Marcelo Ebrard, respectively, also joined in questioning these attacks by the Brazilian right wing.


Another regional leader, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, said that in Brazil "fascism decided to stage a coup. The right wing has not been able to keep the non-violence pact".

He also expressed his solidarity with the Brazilian government and people and stressed that "it is urgent time for a meeting of the OAS (Organization of American States) if it wants to remain alive as an institution and apply the democratic charter".

The President of Chile, Gabriel Boric, described what happened this Sunday as "an unpresentable attack on the three branches of the Brazilian State by bolsonaristas", who affirmed that "the Government of Brazil has our full support in the face of this cowardly and vile attack on democracy".

The same was done by the former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, who addressed "a call to the international community, multilateral organizations and democratic governments to form a single bloc in defense of democracy in Brazil. The coup will not pass", said Evo.


From his Twitter account, the executive secretary of ALBA-TCP, Félix Plasencia, urged the international community to oppose "neo-fascist groups that intend to carry out a coup d'état against Brazil's democracy and disregard the will of its people".

Internally, the reaction of the president of the Workers' Party (PT), Gleisi Hoffman, stands out, who reflected that "what is happening in Brasilia is not a mass movement, nor is it spontaneous. It is organized by bandits, who have very objective interests: illegal mining, land grabbing, weapons release, militias and other things, all blessed by Bolsonaro. They all despise democracy, institutions".

He also held the Government of the Federal District (DF) responsible "for the invasion of Brasilia and the National Congress. It is a crime announced against democracy, against the will of the ballot box and for other interests".


Finally, he accused the local Governor (Ibaneis Rocha) and his Secretary of Public Security (Anderson Torres), whom he labeled as bolsonarista, of being responsible for what happened.

The president of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco, repudiated the anti-democratic acts perpetrated in Brasília and affirmed that "the security forces of the Federal District, besides the Legislative Police of the Congress, are committed" to them.

For his part, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira, made it known, among other ideas, "that those responsible for promoting and instigating this attack on Brazilian democracy and its main symbols must be identified and punished in accordance with the law".

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lat ... -0005.html

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President Lula da Silva decrees intervention in the Federal District of Brazil after Bolsonaro attack

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Lula da Silva blamed former President Jair Bolsonaro for encouraging these attacks. | Photo: @LulaOficial
Posted 8 January 2023 (2 hours 4 minutes ago)

The decree, signed by the Brazilian president and which enters into force this Sunday, states that this intervention takes place until January 31, 2023.

The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, decreed this Sunday the federal intervention in the Federal District after the attack by Bolsonaro forces on the Congress of the Republic, the Planalto Palace and the headquarters of the Federal Supreme Court.

The decree, signed by the Brazilian president and which enters into force this Sunday, states that this intervention will take place until January 31, 2023, and the objective "is to put an end to the serious threat to public order in the State in which Federal District".

The executive secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Ricardo García Cappelli, was nominated for the responsibility of Controller, Lula da Silva announced. In addition, she stated that the people responsible for this act, which has generated a unanimous condemnation, will be punished.


In the same way, he blamed former president Jair Bolsonaro for encouraging these attacks. “Whoever did this will be found and punished. Democracy guarantees the right to free expression, but it also requires that people respect institutions. There is no precedent in the country's history of what they did today. That is why they must be punished ”, he reaffirmed.

Meanwhile, he noted that the responsibility of the Brasilia police forces will also be investigated, as well as the actions of the parties that supported them. "And we are going to find out who are the financiers of those who went to Brasilia today, and they will all pay with the force of law," said the Brazilian head of state.


After his visit to the municipality of Araraquara, in the state of São Paulo, the president specified that “they took advantage of the silence on Sunday, when we are still forming the Government, to do what they did. And you know that there are several speeches by the former president encouraging that. And that is also his responsibility and that of the parties that supported him,” he said.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/brasil-d ... -0024.html

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Can't trust the military or the cops, it's up to the people.
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 09, 2023 2:04 pm

Lula Restores Order After Rabid Bolsonaro Supporters Storm Brazil’s Capital
JANUARY 9, 2023

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Far-right Bolsonaro supporters, clad in green and yellow, storm symbolic buildings representing Brazilian democracy in Brasilia's Three Powers Plaza in an indisputable replication of the Trump-led Capitol Riots from January 6, 2021. Photo: Twitter/@kanekos69.

On Sunday, January 8, groups of supporters of the former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, forcibly seized several buildings in the capital, Brasilia, taking control of the Congress building, the Supreme Palace of the Federal Court (Supreme Court of Justice), and the Palace of Planalto, which houses both the president’s office and headquarters of the three branches of government. They demanded the nullification of the recent presidential election results, which gave the victory to Luis Inacio Lula Da Silva, and have been stationed for weeks in front of the military barracks. However, by 5:30 in the afternoon on Sunday, the situation was declared under control.

The assailants themselves have shared numerous videos on social media platforms of them carrying out acts of vandalism inside the aforementioned buildings. The videos have been appended to the end of this article.

Sunday’s attack has been compared to the one carried out by supporters of then US President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, against the Capitol Building in Washington, DC.


Ignacio Lemus, Telesur correspondent in Brazil, pointed out that President Lula Da Silva’s absence was due to his work in Sao Paulo, where he had been leading the emergency response for those affected by recent rains. Lemus also reports that the military forces are working to disperse the demonstrators.

Intervention of the Federal District
Around five in the afternoon, President Lula, from Sao Paulo, ordered the intervention of the Federal District government, which authorizes the mobilization of the military force in that area. The person in charge of leading the intervention is Ricardo García Capelli, current executive secretary of the Ministry of Justice.

Anderson Torres, secretary of security of the Federal District and responsible for public safety in Brasilia, who was a minister during the Bolsonaro administration, was dismissed by the Federal District governor, Ibaneis Rocha. According to press reports, Torres is in the United States on vacation and had recently traveled to Orlando, where Bolsonaro is currently based. In his place, Ricardo García Cappelli was appointed as the new head of security in the Brazilian capital.

150 people have been arrested, according to local media.

The facts
According to local media, on Sunday morning, three buses were within the vicinity, carrying members of the security forces, but they lacked the capacity required to restrain the protesters, who arrived at the National Congress wearing mostly green and yellow, colors representing the Brazilian flag and their support for Bolsonaro.

Those gathered were protesting against the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office on January 1. Some of them referred to an excerpt from the country’s constitution, which says that “all power originates from the people.”

The president of the senate, Rodrigo Pacheco, described the actions as “undemocratic” and reported that he had a conversation with the governor of the Federal District, Ibaneis Rocha, who reported “that he is coordinating the forces of the entire police apparatus to control the situation.”

“The security forces of the Federal District, in addition to the Legislative Police of Congress, are committed to taking action. I vehemently condemn these undemocratic acts, which must be urgently subjected to full weight of the law,” Pacheco wrote on his Twitter account.

Videos (at link)
Presidential palace:


Supreme Court


Congress


International condemnation
The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, published a tweet expressing his solidarity with Lula Da Silva and demanded that the Organization of American States (OAS) issue a statement. Similar posts on social media platforms condemning the attack were also published by the presidents of Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, and Cuba, and former Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Surprisingly, Spain and the US, via similar social media posts by President Pedro Sanchez and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, respectively, condemned the incident and expressed support for the government of President Lula.

Regional collaborative bodies such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America–Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA–TCP) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) also expressed their support for President Lula’s government and condemned the coup attempt.

https://orinocotribune.com/lula-restore ... s-capital/

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Lula Vows to Punish Perpetrators of Brasilia Attacks
January 8, 2023Brazil, Lula da Silva

President Lula has decreed federal intervention in the Federal District until January 31. The president, who was sworn in just one week ago, is in Araraquara, São Paulo and will now return to the capital to assess the situation and warns that those responsible for invading government buildings will be located and punished as well as those who financed these acts.

On Sunday afternoon, government buildings in Brazil’s capital were stormed by far-right cells loyal to ex-president Jair Bolsonaro who fled to Florida days before the presidential inauguration.

Just after 2pm, a large group was able to trespass the Praça dos Três Poderes and illegally enter the congress and the Supreme Federal Court (STF), with chants to overthrow the elected congress and government. Bolsonaro supporters had set out for the Esplanada dos Ministérios late morning from the Army headquarters, where a protest camp against the October 30th election result had been held in recent weeks.

On social media, videos showed destruction to the interior and exterior of the STF building.


Lula had spent the day in Araraquara, an interior city of São Paulo, assessing an emergency situation and damage caused by rain.

At a press conference, the president remarked on “a lack of security” and “incompetence” of Military Police of the Federal District and said that those responsible will be found and punished.

“It is necessary that these people are punished in an exemplary way, that these people are punished in such a way that nobody will ever again dare to wear the national flag on their back or the shirt of the Brazilian national team in order to pretend to be a nationalist,” adding that “all of this will be investigated very, very hard and very quickly.”

Lula also speculated that among those who supported the actions in Brasilia today are illegal miners, illegal loggers and agribusiness interests.

In a tweet from Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) national leader, João Paulo Rodrigues, called the situation in Brasilia “serious” and said that popular movements and unions will meet Monday to make an assessment and “take political directions on the crisis caused by the coup d’état.”

By Kawsachun News

https://kawsachunnews.com/wp-content/up ... 0x445.jpeg

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Lula Inspects Damage Caused by Bolsonarists in Brasilia

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Brazil's President Lula da Silva tours the seat of government in Brasilia, Jan. 8, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @pvillegas_tlSUR

He described the coup attempt promoted by "fascist vandals" as "barbaric" and accused Jair Bolsonaro of "stimulating" these anti-democratic acts with his attitude.

On Sunday night, President Lula da Silva arrived in Brasilia to inspect the damage that Jair Bolsonaro's supporters caused in the headquarters of the three powers during their attempted coup d'état.

The progressive leader verified the trail of destruction left by the far-right activists in the Planalto Palace, seat of the Brazilian government.

When the acts of violence broke out, Lula was in the state of Sao Paulo inspecting the municipality of Araraquara, which was heavily affected by the rains in recent days.

From there, in response to the chaos that Brasilia experienced for four hours, Lula decreed federal intervention in the security area of the Federal District until January 31.

Thousands of far-right militants, who have spent weeks asking at the gates of the barracks for an intervention by the Armed Forces to overthrow Lula and return Bolsonaro to power, invaded and destroyed the headquarters of Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court.


Lula described the coup attempt promoted by "fascist vandals" as "barbaric" and accused Bolsonaro of "stimulating" these anti-democratic acts with his attitude.

The events in Brasilia were condemned by the international community and occurred exactly one week after Lula assumed the Presidency. The episode recalled the invasion of the U.S. Capitol that took place on January 6, 2021 by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

On Sunday, former president Bolsonaro, who is living in the United States, sent messages through social networks tepidly rejecting the coup acts.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lul ... -0001.html

Brazilian government denounces the theft of weapons by Bolsoneristas

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The violent acts carried out by affections for Jair Bolsonaro were condemned by the international community. | Photo: EFE
Posted 9 January 2023 (5 hours 30 minutes ago)

Paulo Pimenta indicated that the stolen weapons were stored in the Institutional Security Cabinet, in the Planalto Palace.

The minister of the Social Communication Secretariat of the Brazilian Presidency, Paulo Pimenta, denounced on Sunday night the theft of weapons and ammunition by assailants sympathizing with Jair Bolsonaro.

According to the official, the weapons were stored in the Institutional Security Cabinet, in the Planalto Palace, headquarters of the Brazilian Presidency, one of the three targets of the violent demonstrations that occurred in Brasilia.

Pimienta showed in a video the empty boxes in which the weapons intended for the use of members of the presidential security were kept.


The Brazilian government official assured that all those responsible for the criminal action will be identified and punished with the rigor of the law so that democracy does not suffer this type of violence again. "Zero tolerance for terrorism," Pimenta said.

For his part, the secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Wadih Damous, who accompanied Pimienta on his tour, described the abduction as "very serious" and the fact that violent protesters possess lethal weapons, of which they were aware.

In his opinion, the assailants "had information" that weapons were kept there and knew "what they should take."

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

Brazilian Supreme Suspends Governor of Brasilia for 90 days

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The STF judge, Alexandre de Moraes, held the governor of Brasilia, Ibaneis Rocha, responsible for the violent acts. | Photo: EFE
Posted 9 January 2023 (6 hours 18 minutes ago)

Judge Moraes stressed that the organization of the coup acts was a notorious and well-known fact, which was disclosed by the hegemonic press in Brazil.

The magistrate of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) of Brazil, Alexandre de Moraes, decided to suspend on Sunday the governor of the Federal District of Brasilia, Ibaneis Rocha, for 90 days, after the violent events carried out by supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

According to Judge Moraes, Governor Ibaneis Rocha was aware of the preparations for the violent actions, since events of this nature could only occur with the consent and effective participation of the competent authorities in matters of public security in Brasilia.

"Absolutely nothing justifies the omission and conspiracy of the Secretary of Public Security and the Governor of the Federal District with criminals who previously announced that they would commit violent acts against the constituted powers," wrote the STF minister.


Judge Moraes, who also ordered the Brazilian federal security forces to act to free any type of road or public building occupied by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro throughout the country.

Alexandre de Moraes stressed that the organization of the coup acts was a notorious and well-known fact, which was disclosed by the hegemonic press in Brazil.


The judge held Governor Rocha responsible for the events, who hours before had apologized to President Lula and the leadership of the Legislative and Judicial branches for the serious events that occurred in the Brazilian capital.


Given the acts of violence in the capital of the South American country, President Lula da Silva decreed federal intervention in the security area of ​​Brasilia until January 31, with which the regional police will be under the control of the central government during that period.

According to various local media, around 300 people have been arrested for the acts of vandalism in Brasilia, which were widely condemned by all Brazilian institutions and by the international community.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/brasil-j ... -0004.html

Google Translator

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The Importance of Lula’s Presidency in an Increasingly Multipolar World
Post date January 5, 2023

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By Sean T. Mitchell for NACLA

Despite the Brazilian Amazon’s importance to the global climate, Brazil’s lame-duck president, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, was not one of the many heads-of-state to attend the United Nations Climate Conference COP27, which took place in November. Instead, Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil’s left-wing Workers’ Party (PT) attended and made headlines worldwide when he declared: “Brazil is back.”

Bolsonaro spent four years greenlighting the devastation of the Amazon—years in which deforestation shot up by 73 percent. After such destruction, the leadership of Lula, who oversaw a 67.6 percent reduction in deforestation during his previous two terms as president from 2003 to 2010, was welcome news to many at the event. Supporters punctuated his speech with gleeful chants of his phrase, “Brazil is back, Brazil is back.”

Yet Lula’s speech offered a more profound challenge to the assembled world leaders than merely an affirmation of Brazil’s renewed support of the COP27’s environmental goals. Such affirmations are par for the course, and usually insincere; Bolsonaro promised zero deforestation by 2030 at the COP26 in 2021, something few took seriously. Lula’s speech also critiqued the global order, and implicitly, the priorities of many of the world leaders present.

“We spend trillions of dollars on wars that only bring destruction and death,” he said, “while 900 million people in the world don’t have anything to eat.” Lula also spoke of working towards a “peaceful world order based on dialogue, multilateralism, and multipolarity.”

We live in an era of deepening perils, including, as Lula noted in his speech, the apocalyptic return of the “threat of nuclear war.” The geopolitical order is also becoming more multipolar. That multipolarity could be characterized by dialogue and cooperation, or, instead, by violent conflict. We should take these statements by Lula seriously, and those of us concerned with a livable and just world should welcome Brazil’s renewed ambition in world affairs and Lula’s bid to push the increasingly multipolar order in the direction of dialogue.

On January 1, Lula was inaugurated as the president of Brazil, and the world is watching. There is, perhaps, no other living leader in either the Global South or North with the stature and track record to effectively make the case for a renewed focus on human wellbeing and survival in a world that is cascading deeper into inequality, environmental destruction, and war.

During his two previous terms as president, Lula’s leftist government created social policies that, when continued by his PT successor Dilma Rousseff, brought tens of millions out of poverty and significantly expanded the opportunities and rights of Brazil’s most marginalized and exploited. The PT governments also forged a foreign policy that sought independence from the United States—alienating many in Washington, but winning many admirers on the global Left and in the Global South.

Historical Parallels

Beyond the enthusiasm about Lula’s victory among much of the worldwide Left, many commentators in the United States and broader Anglophone press expressed gloominess about Lula’s prospects for success in a turbulent global economy and a divided Brazil, along with wariness about Lula’s global protagonism.

Consider a few articles from The New York Times.

One article was titled, “Brazil May not Stay Upright on a Shaky Global Stage.” It mentioned unnamed “financial analysts” who worried “that Brazil’s currency needs to get stronger, its interest rates need to come down and its growth needs to accelerate [but that] many of these things are out of its hands.”

Another article expressed uncertainty about Lula’s ability to govern at all, noting that Lula “does not yet have the votes he needs to begin the transformation of Brazil that he has promised or to block efforts to erode his authority.”

And amid war and the looming possibility of deepening U.S. involvement in that conflict, another New York Times piece noted points of tension between Lula and the United States, including Lula’s indirect criticisms of the U.S. president, and his statement that current conflicts “should be resolved peacefully and through negotiations,” a sentiment out-of-step with that dominant in Washington.

Although the mainstream U.S. press made nearly identical predictions after Lula’s victory in 2022, these statements are actually from just after Lula’s second round electoral victory in 2002. Much of the U.S. press after Lula’s 2022 victory has focused on the forbidding economic context for Lula’s ambitious social agenda and the likelihood of obstruction by Brazil’s divided congress, as with the New York Times article that declared, “His second try [at the presidency] looks far more difficult.”

This pessimistic tone shouldn’t come as a surprise. Lula’s previous administrations thwarted Washington’s attempt to extend a NAFTA-style neoliberalism across the Americas; shelved a (since renewed) deal for U.S. control of Brazil’s Alcântara spaceport; defied the U.S. blockade of Iran; and, among other transgressions of U.S. dominance in Latin America, forged close ties with China, Russia, and South Africa by making the BRICS a functioning institution.

It is these ties to Russia and, especially, China that have most caused distress for the U.S. Right. But even mainstream, center-left U.S. media have been pessimistic about Lula’s prospects, despite their enthusiasm for the defeat of the Trump-allied Bolsonaro.

We don’t know what impediments and opportunities political and economic conditions will offer in the coming years any more than journalists did amid the gloom of 2002. But pessimism about challenges to global power relations that emanate from institutions close to the center of power should always be read critically.

The Perilous Present

Many skeptics point to Brazil’s divided Congress as a barrier to Lula’s success, as they did in 2002. However, using ideologically polarized U.S. politics as a model to understand Brazil obscures more than it reveals. Yes, the Brazilian far right is more powerful and vocal than they were in 2002, and this will pose many challenges for Lula’s presidency. However, much of Brazil’s Congress is not strongly committed to any political ideology and is willing to cut deals with the party in power, which is how Lula was able to successfully govern during his past two terms without a majority in Congress. This political flexibility is already on display. Even before coming to power, the president-elect and his team negotiated extensively with Congress to raise spending limits imposed in 2016 to allow for ambitious social spending.

On the topic of war, Lula has also proven critics wrong. At the beginning of this century, Lula was heavily criticized in the U.S. for his opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the disastrous results of those wars have largely vindicated his call for dialogue over violence. Most readers today will probably agree that Lula was right in 2002, despite the stifling pro-war unanimity of the U.S. press at that time. By estimates that are probably too conservative, those wars killed nearly a million people and left countless destroyed lives in their wake.

Lula’s comments on the Ukraine War in 2022 are similar to those he made about the War on Terror in 2002. In a pre-election interview, Lula stated: “Putin shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine. But it’s not just Putin who is guilty. The U.S. and the EU are also guilty.” Naming NATO expansion near Russia’s borders and the possible incorporation of Ukraine as causes of the war, Lula called for dialogue, saying: “We need to reach an agreement. But people are encouraging [the war].” This caused consternation in a Washington that is funneling billions to Ukraine and sanctioning Russia, and it fueled fear-mongering headlines in U.S. media, such as Newsweek’s, “Lula’s Victory in Brazil Is Great News for Putin,” despite Lula’s clear criticism of Putin’s decision to go to war.

Lula is hardly alone in his perspective on the war. Foreign policy analysts as varied as Henry Kissinger, John Mearsheimer, and Noam Chomsky have been warning for years that NATO’s expansion would provoke something like the Ukraine War. Their assertions can be challenged and should be the subject of debate. But such debate is nearly impossible in the United States today; if NATO expansion is mentioned at all in mainstream U.S. media as a possible causal factor in the war, it is only to be dismissed as “disinformation.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a terrible crime. However, the stakes of this conflict are too high to allow the propaganda of either side to drown out the dialogue that Lula is calling for. With species-threatening nuclear war today a greater possibility than at any point since the Cold War—from which humanity escaped only by luck—we cannot afford the cartoonish worldview that turns every U.S. opponent into Hitler and the United States into the eternal savior. And in a Latin America that has suffered frequent and brutal U.S.-sponsored coups, such a worldview cannot be seriously entertained.

In any case, much of the world has a view of the Ukraine War that is closer to Lula’s than to Biden’s. Despite frequent assertions that the United States has the support of the “international community,” almost 90 percent of the world’s population live in countries not following the United States’ lead on the war.

Yet many of those leaders who have prominently distanced themselves from U.S. strategy in Ukraine are hardly paragons of the kind of social and environmental justice that Lula spoke of at the COP27. They include the far-right Narendra Modi of India; the brutal Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia; and the autocratic Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of (NATO member) Turkey.

The dissension of those figures from U.S. policy suggests some loss of the global hegemony that the United States held during the post-Cold War period and the world’s deepening multipolarity. And, to some, the dissension of much of the Global South from the world’s consolidating power blocks signals the emergence of a new non-aligned movement. Lula’s global respect and prominence make it possible that this non-alignment could help push the multipolar world towards dialogue, justice for the poor, and protection of the biosphere.

Hopes for the Future

As Lula steps into his next term as president, the standing he has worldwide offers hope that the fight for a world not characterized by war, inequality, and environmental destruction will have persuasive and powerful leadership.

If he is to succeed at his ambitious domestic and international agendas in the face of what will be significant opposition in Brazil, he will have to rely on the pressure and support of social movements, unions, and citizens. And if we are to flourish as a species, we will need to mount such organization and pressure globally, as well.

In his speech at the COP 27 Lula declared: “Brazil is ready to again join forces in the construction of a healthier planet, of a more just world, capable of welcoming with dignity the totality of its inhabitants —and not just a privileged minority.”

We should all hope that he succeeds.

https://www.brasilwire.com/the-importan ... lar-world/

PSL statement: Far-right coup attempt vs. democracy in Brazil
Party for Socialism and LiberationJanuary 8, 2023 8 3 minutes read
Download PDF flyer https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... sts/110877

The Party for Socialism and Liberation joins with countless progressive people and organizations around the world in expressing our outrage over the coup attempt underway in Brazil by supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Today, a far right mob numbering in the thousands stormed the headquarters of the Supreme Court, Presidency, and Congress of Brazil in the capital and ransacked them. They are calling for military intervention against the government of president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva of the progressive Workers Party, who defeated Bolsonaro in democratic elections held last year.

Right now, Jair Bolsonaro is in the United States, having fled here right before Lula assumed office last Sunday. Anderson Torres, formerly Bolsonaro’s Justice Minister who was appointed the Minister of Public Security of the capital city Brasilia last week, is also in the United States. Torres appears to have played a key role facilitating today’s attack, and Bolsonaro has clearly been intentionally laying the political basis for such a coup attempt for months with his false claims of election fraud. Neither should be given safe haven by the government of the United States – they should face justice in Brazil for their crimes.

Brazil’s Congress, Presidential Palace, and Supreme Court headquarters are located in a single plaza in Brasilia, whose governor is a Bolsonaro supporter. A mob of thousands with the apparent assistance of some elements of the security forces gathered today and marched on the plaza. Gleisi Hoffmann, the head of the Workers Party, stated that, “The [Federal District] government was irresponsible in the face of the invasion of Brasília and the National Congress. It is a crime against democracy.”

Lula was out of the capital, assisting victims of flooding in the city of Araraquara. Several hours after the attack, he addressed the nation and announced that he was mobilizing federal security forces to reestablish order and defend democracy in the face of this outrageous assault. “Those people we call fascists, the most abominable thing in politics, invaded the [presidential] palace and Congress,” Lula said, and denounced the, “incompetence and bad faith of the people who take care of the security of [Brasilia]”. Earlier in the day, Minister of Justice Flávio Dino pledged that, “This absurd attempt to impose their will by force will not prevail.”

Bolsonaro appears to be isolated internationally, but not because he is an opponent of the United States and other imperial powers — even the Biden administration and other western governments know that openly supporting a Bolsonaro putsch, just after his electoral defeat, would only further destabilize and discredit imperialism in Latin America and worldwide.

This coup attempt comes as Brazilian politics is at a crossroads. From 2019 through the end of last year, Bolsonaro’s government has pursued policies that caused disaster after disaster in Brazil. He is responsible for criminal mismanagement of the Coronavirus pandemic, anti-worker economic policies, massive environmental destruction, and much more. He has promoted vicious, deadly racism targeting Afro-Brazilians and Indigenous Brazilians, and espouses disgustingly bigoted views against women and LGBTQ people.

Bolsonaro’s fascistic tendencies have deep roots in Brazilian politics – he is a supporter of the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985, which was an ally of the United States. Lula emerged as a national political figure as an opponent of this murderous regime, and the people’s movements of Brazil remain determined to defend hard-won democratic rights.

Bolsonaro’s rise to power was made possible by the parliamentary coup that removed the Workers Party from power in 2016. Then-president Dilma Rousseff was impeached from office on trumped-up charges by the right wing-controlled Congress. And in a plot that has now been exposed to the public, right-wing prosecutors and judges conspired to manufacture bogus corruption charges against Lula, the most popular political figure in the country who had led the first Workers Party administration from 2003 to 2010. In 2018, Lula was sent to prison on these completely baseless accusations. This prevented him from participating in that year’s presidential election, where all the polls predicted him prevailing over Bolsonaro.

But thanks to a mass movement of people in Brazil, joined by supporters the world over, Lula was freed from prison in 2019. He won last year’s presidential election, pledging to rebuild the country after the devastation of the Bolsonaro years, implement social programs to tackle hunger and poverty, and pursue an independent foreign policy that supports the unity of Latin America. The events of today are a desperate attempt by the far right to overturn the democratic will of the majority of Brazilians. We stand with the people of Brazil as they resist this attack.

https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-stat ... rationnews
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 10, 2023 4:04 pm

Brazilian Organizations Mobilize in Defense of Democracy

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Massive march in Avenida Paulista (Sao Paulo) against the attempted coup by Bolsonaro followers | Photo: Junior Lima @xuniorl

Published 9 January 2023 (13 hours 59 minutes ago)

The marches have occurred in several parts of the country, such as Manaus, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Avenida Paulista de Sao Paulo, and Brasilia.


Several social organizations in Brazil took to the streets on Monday to mobilize in defense of democracy and rejection of the attacks carried out the day before by pro-Bolsonaro groups.

The call was made by popular movements and unions from different areas, who shouted slogans such as "no amnesty for fascists" regarding the people who assaulted the headquarters of the Planalto Palace (seat of the Executive), the Congress and the Supreme Federal Court (STF) in Brasília (capital).

Through its account on the social network Twitter, the National Union of Students shared images of the marches in defense of democracy taking place in several parts of the country, such as Manaus, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paulista Avenue in Sao Paulo, Brasília, among others.

"No more attacks on democracy," expressed the National Union of Students.

For its part, the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) also shared and images of the acts carried out on this day to demand that the perpetrators of the attacks take responsibility.

"Day of struggle against terrorist acts that attack Brazilian democracy," it stated.

The day before, supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro assaulted the headquarters of public authorities, an act rejected globally.

Because of this, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva decreed the intervention in the Federal District until January 31, 2023.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bra ... -0017.html

I suspect the reason the cops/military did not commit to coup is fear of mass uprising. It sure ain't from a love for democracy.

Biden, AMLO and Trudeau Condemn Attack on Democracy in Brazil

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Flags of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. | Photo: Twitter/ @qtf

Published 9 January 2023

"Our governments support the free will of the people of Brazil. We look forward to working with President Lula on delivering for our countries, the Western Hemisphere, and beyond," they said.


On Monday, U.S. President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the attacks carried out by Jair Bolsonaro's supporters on the buildings of the three branches in Brasilia.

"Canada, Mexico, and the United States condemn the January 8 attacks on Brazil's democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power. We stand with Brazil as it safeguards its democratic institutions," the three presidents said in a joint statement on the eve of the North American Leaders Summit, which will begin in Mexico City on Tuesday.

"Our governments support the free will of the people of Brazil. We look forward to working with President Lula on delivering for our countries, the Western Hemisphere, and beyond," they said, thus expressing their support for the Brazilian leader.

On Sunday, the assault on the Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court in Brasília was resolved after several hours of bewilderment, when riot officers fired tear gas against the angry far-right militants who were inside and outside the buildings.


These radical groups are unaware of Lula da Silva's victory in the presidential elections and want a military "intervention" so that Jair Bolsonaro returns to the presidency.

On Sunday, Lula da Silva accused retired Army captain Bolsonaro of encouraging the assault on the buildings of the three branches, which lasted about four and a half hours until the security forces regained control of the facilities.

Bolsonaro, a far-right politician who is nostalgic for the Brazilian dictatorship (1964-1985), is currently living in Miami after he left his country one day before the end of his term.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bid ... -0009.html

Bet Biden choked on that.

Lula Resumes Work From the Presidential Palace in Brasilia

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President Lula da Silva (L), Brasilia, Brazil, Jan. 9, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @OnlineNordeste

Published 9 January 2023

So far, police have arrested some 1,500 far-right militants who were involved in the Brasilia attacks.


On Monday, Brazil's President Lula da Silva began holding meetings in his office, the only place that was spared from the destruction caused by the far-right Bolsonaristas who looted the Presidency on Sunday.

The Brazilian progressive leader chose to dispatch from the Planalto Palace to demonstrate that his administration will continue to function with absolute normality.

"We are not going to allow a minority group of terrorists and criminals, who despise democracy and Brazil, to do what they are doing and manage to paralyze the functioning of the institutions," Communication Minister Paulo Pimenta said.

Lula began the day with a meeting with the heads of the Supreme Court and Congress, who called for maintaining "serenity" and "defending democracy" in peace. Their institutions were also attacked by the Bolsonarists.


Pimenta said the presidential office could not be invaded by far-right radicals since it is protected by armored glass. Neither did the ministerial meeting room suffer any damage.

On Sunday afternoon, thousands of far-right fans of former President Jair Bolsonaro invaded the Supreme Court, Congress and the Planalto Palace in Brasilia. They were trying to generate a chaotic situation to promote a coup.

Although they did not achieve this purpose, they caused millions of dollars in damage to public assets since they destroyed furniture, computer equipment, and works of art. So far, police have arrested some 1,500 far-right militants who were involved in the Brasilia attacks.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lul ... -0006.html

Bolsonaro in US Hospital for Abdominal Pain

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Bolsonaro was admitted to the AdventHealth Celebration acute care hospital in the U.S., according to media reports. Jan. 9, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@IsaldoTorres

Published 9 January 2023 (15 hours 43 minutes ago)

The former President traveled to the U.S. on December 30, two days before Lula da Silva's inauguration.


Michelle Bolsonaro, the wife of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023), confirmed Monday on social networks that her husband is hospitalized in the U.S. with "abdominal pain."

"My dear ones, I come to inform you that my husband, Jair Bolsonaro, is under observation in the hospital due to abdominal pains," Bolsonaro's wife said.

The media, meanwhile, reported that Bolsonaro was admitted to the AdventHealth Celebration acute care hospital in the U.S. state of Florida.

According to Michelle, this comes as a "result of the stabbing he received in 2018" while campaigning for the presidency. The far-right former president has been hospitalized several times since that attack, having undergone six surgeries.


The former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, was admitted to a hospital in Orlando, USA, due to abdominal pains, announced Michelle Bolsonaro on Instagram. This is a sequel to the stabbing he received, in 2018, during an election rally.

The news of his admission comes just one day after extreme right-wing demonstrators invaded the presidential palace, the Congress and the Supreme Court in Brasília. This action called for military intervention to overthrow the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The leftist leader of the Workers' Party (PT) took office on January 1 after being democratically elected by the people of Brazil. The Brazilian president decreed the intervention in the Federal District until January 31, 2023.

The assault on the seat of public power has met with rejection from several sectors in Brazil itself and from leaders in the region and the world.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bol ... -0015.html

Totally coincidental that he was out of town during his fan riot.... "Musta bin sumthin' he et."

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Bolsonaro supporters’ flopped coup attempt in Brazil is still dangerous

Zoe Alexandra of Peoples Dispatch explains the failed coup attempt by supporters of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, the motivations of the right-wing mob, and the response by people’s movements in the country

January 09, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch



Zoe Alexandra of Peoples Dispatch explains the violence by the right-wing supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s capital, Brasilia. She talks about the storming of federal buildings by the mob and the inaction of the governor of the province. She also explains the demands and motivations of these right-wing sections, as well as the responses by progressive movements and the left.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/09/ ... dangerous/

Understand the complicity of the Federal District’s governor in the coup attempt in Brazil

Governor Ibaneis Rocha has been criticized for choosing a Bolsonarista for Public Security and for collusion with police forces

January 09, 2023 by Brasil de Fato

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Anderson Torres, Bolsonaro's former minister, next to governor Ibaneis Rocha, of the Federal District. Photo: LÚCIO BERNARDO JR/AGÊNCIA BRASÍLIA

The governor of the Federal District, Ibaneis Rocha (MDB) could be considered one of the people directly responsible for the scenes of vandalism in Brasilia (DF) on the afternoon of Sunday January 8. The position has been expressed by political leaders and leaders of people’s movements who have publicly rejected the invasion of the Supreme Federal Court, the National Congress, and of Planalto Palace.

Brasil de Fato explains the five key motives that make Ibaneis one of the key people behind what happened today in the federal capital. The first is because he designated Bolsonaro’s former Minister of Justice, Anderson Torres, as the secretary of Public Security of the Federal District.

The ex-minister of Bolsonaro was one of the members of the cabinet that was most radical and most loyal to the former president, even in the face of successive attacks to democracy and the Democratic Rule of Law. Before his role in the federal government, he had already worked in the government of the Federal District, also with Ibaneis.

1) Designated Bolsonaro’s Minister of Justice as secretary of security of DF

Governor Ibaneis Rocha named, last Monday January 2, Anderson Torres to lead the secretary of Public Security-DF. The designation was made official one day after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in.

The name of the close ally of Bolsonaro was not published in the first batch of nominations on Sunday January 1 because he did not help with the security scheme during Lula’s swearing in.

2) Military Police of DF escorted the terrorists towards the Plaza of the Three Powers

Among the innumerous images on social media of the Bolsonarista terrorists, one catches the eye: military police of the Federal District escorting and guiding the coup supporters towards the Plaza of the Three Powers.

3) Security Forces did not put up any resistance to the terrorists on the Esplanade

Coup supporters broke through the blockade of the Military Police on the Esplanade of Ministers at around 15h with a noted lack of resistance by the professional security force. There was a brief attempt to impede the invasion using pepper spray, but it was not sufficient, considering the small amount of police present.

The Bolsonaristas then knocked down the barrier protecting the area and walked towards National Congress. The response of the police was highly criticized on social media.

4) He authorized vacation for Anderson Torres and a trip to the United States in a key week

While Brasilia’s public buildings was being invaded by coup supporters, Anderson Torres, the minister of Public Security of the Federal District, is in the United States. According to the newspaper, O Estado de S. Paulo, Torres traveled to Orlando, the same place where Bolsonaro is. He accepted the position last week and already went on vacation.

5) Afternoon off on the eve of coup attempt

According to the information of the official agenda of the Buriti Palace, on Friday January 6, the last working day before the scenes of terrorism, Ibaneis Rocha took the afternoon off. He participated in only two meetings, the last one before midday. After this, he didn’t work.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/09/ ... in-brazil/

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

LULA HAS NOT ONLY RESISTED, HE HAS WON
Posted by MLToday | Jan 9, 2023

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BY MARINA MENÉNDEZ QUINTERO
December 31, 2022 Juventud Rebelde

LULA’S UNION EXPERIENCE IN THE METALLURGICAL SECTOR PROVIDED HIM WITH EXCEPTIONAL LEADERSHIP SKILLS IN HIS POLITICAL CAREER.

Not only because he is a native of there, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has his greatest sympathies in the northeast of Brazil. They love him where poverty is worst in the country, because he is another one like them: he represents them.

The man who for the third time assumes the presidency, however, wrote the first part of his story in another place: the southeast, specifically in the populous Sao Paulo, where as a child his mother moved with her eight children.

There, the young man from the Northeast soon demonstrated his qualities as an unrepentant fighter, a humble man who took up the battle for the poor not out of theoretical conviction, but out of an elemental sense of justice born of his own existence and of that love for his family that today he extends to the whole nation, with his call for reunification.

This President of Brazil understands and is understood by the disinherited because he too has been disinherited. And before passing a course as a metalworker, he had to help his family as best he could, even shining boots.

It is said that he was very young when, without being fully aware of the relevance of the union task, he embraced trade unionism motivated by an older brother who had already done so. But his certainty of the need for this struggle came when that brother was unjustly imprisoned.

“I was an ordinary union leader, I was afraid of going to jail, I was thinking of my family, I thought that to be a unionist it didn’t take much. It was after my brother’s arrest that I lost my fear. If fighting for what he fought for was a reason to be imprisoned and tortured, then many people should be arrested and tortured (…) It was very good because it awakened in me a very big class conscience”, he would narrate in 2003, according to reviews of other authors collected in the book Del sindicalismo a la reelección (2015), by the Brazilian Luciana Panke.

When evoking those times of the birth of his leadership among the workers, the marches in the streets and even when thinking about his forced choice of the trade of lathe operator at the age of 14 to survive, it can be better understood that capacity to impose himself to adversity that Lula, once again, has demonstrated.

His dedication and courage were proven in more than one strike as president of the Metalworkers Union of the municipalities of Santo André, Sao Bernardo and Sao Caetano do Sul (ABC), in Sao Paulo, a position to which he was elected for the first time at the age of 30 with more than 92 percent approval.

He would later be reelected by an equally overwhelming majority. The work of this union led to talk of a new form of trade unionism. Among those workers, the lineage of the man who would later become president three times was forged.

In its same facilities in Sao Bernardo, that union protected him in April 2018 when the then judge Sergio Moro, rightly called “the executioner” of the Brazilian left thanks to his machinations in the Lava Jato case, issued undeserved imprisonment against the man who since then was emerging as the winning candidate in the upcoming elections. He, who owed nothing, decided to turn himself in.

In 1980, Lula had led from that town one of the most resounding strikes against the dictatorship headed by General Joao Figueiredo. He was arrested at his home and taken to prison for 30 days. He would emerge stronger.

Some 40 years after those events, he has not only shown the same resistance as then: Lula has defeated the campaign to discredit him and bravely faced the manipulated judicial cases that tried to turn him into a political corpse, all of them annulled for lack of evidence incriminating him or for wrongdoing.

This time too, he would not be deterred by the undeserved imprisonment and even had to overcome, before, the death of his wife Marisa Leticia (2018), whom one imagines to be another victim, albeit fatal, of the tensions that surrounded the lives of both after the first false accusation of corruption.

It was not the only thing that hit him in the family sphere. Lula also had to bear the loss of Arthur, one of his six grandchildren, who died of meningitis at the age of seven when his grandfather was serving an unjust sentence. The satrapy of the perpetrators wanted to prevent him from leaving his prison in Curitiba, so that he would not attend, as he finally did, his burial.

Quite rightly, he would say in a press conference after his new election, last October 30: “I consider myself a citizen who has lived a process of resurrection. They tried to bury me alive and here I am”.

The Return

His return to the presidency, in fact, is considered historic and even amazing and is an argument for many to affirm that Lula is the most popular politician in Brazil.

Speaking to the BBC, John French, professor of history at a U.S. university and author of a biography about the Brazilian leader, called him a “political and electoral phenomenon that should be of great interest to the world.

“There is no reason to expect that a person of his background would get where he did. And every stage of his life has been a surprise.”

However, French is wrong about one thing. Whoever reviews Lula’s trajectory will see clearly the reasons that explain this other arrival of his to the head of state, coming as he did from metallurgy and, before that, from the remotest part of his native Caetés.

Lula is followed not because he is a phenomenon of popularity per se, not even because of his recognized ability to connect and communicate with the masses, but precisely for being one more among those who voted for him, and for having gained, step by step, a prestige that was not overwhelmed by lies, despite the fact that many of his fellow citizens may still be the target of the media and judicial maneuvers of the right wing to demonize him. Surely, not a few of them will believe in him again.

Although he has promised to govern for all and has thus reached out to 49 percent of the voters who voted for Jair Bolsonaro, Lula also acknowledged in his speech after the victory that his first efforts would be aimed at mitigating the suffering of the most marginalized and the hungry.

At this point in his life, Lula’s record of service to Brazil can be measured both during his time as a fighter in the streets and as President. No other Brazilian ruler has done so much for his people. And he will do it again.

The Zero Hunger program, which was his main promise fulfilled after his first election as Head of State in 2002, gave more than 30 million Brazilians the possibility of eating. Now he will have to reinstate it, because in this mandate he inherits the sad burden of 33 million new compatriots without the guarantee of eating.

He announced. “If we are able to export food to the whole world, we have to be able to make Brazilians eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. That is my biggest commitment,” he said in his first speech.

Other social programs, as part of the change he announced to Brazil since his first term, contributed to close the inequality gap that has reopened, and give him credit as president. Perhaps some of them could be re-edited; for example, the Bolsa Familia and Luz para Todos plans, which benefited millions of households and contributed to income redistribution.

It was not surprising that he was reelected in 2006 with more than 60 percent of the electorate, just as it is not surprising that he has been reelected now.

Lula’s first term as president of Brazil (2003-2011) strengthened the state sector of the South American giant’s economy.

In addition to narrowing social gaps, Lula had achieved a take-off that endorsed his economic policy: by the end of his first two terms (2003-2006, 2007-2010) Brazil had quadrupled its GDP, and inflation, which stood at 12.5 percent, had dropped to 3.14 percent, just to mention two indices.

What was called a new middle class emerged.

A man capable not only of social mobilization, but also of weaving alliances with other forces in the political arena, and doing so without delegitimizing himself, Luiz Inácio da Silva has once again demonstrated this potential to achieve consensus with the formation of the Brazil of Hope coalition, which brings together a dozen political forces headed by the Workers’ Party (PT).

The clearest example is the choice of its vice-president, former governor Geraldo Alckmin, coming from the Brazilian social democracy and who in 2006 was his rival in the elections.

This virtue to unite, and the conformation of a broad anti-Bolsonarist front, has also been important for the new triumph, and he will have to fertilize the path he is starting to follow in order to, as he has said, demonstrate that the country is one Brazil.

It will be a new success for the once-young metal worker who became president three times.


https://www.juventudrebelde.cu/internac ... ha-vencido

https://mltoday.com/lula-has-not-only-r ... e-has-won/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 12, 2023 3:12 pm

Bolsonaro Supporters Attack the Brazilian Government
Brian Mier, Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 11 Jan 2023

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Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro hold banner that reads in Portuguese, "Civil and military intervention" on January 8, 2023 as others storm Brazil's congress. (Photo: AP)

Supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro vandalized the supreme court, congress, and presidential palace. Brazilian based journalist Brian Mier explains.

On January 8, 2023 thousands of supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro attacked and vandalized that nation's Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace in the capital of Brasilia. Bolsonaro claims that election fraud was responsible for his defeat by Lula da Silva in the 2022 election. His supporters had demonstrated previously after the election and used social media to publicize their gathering in the preceding days and weeks. Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley spoke with Brazilian based journalist Brian Mier of Telesur English who provided analysis of these events.

Margaret Kimberley: Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro flew to Florida on December 30, two days before Lula da Silva was inaugurated. What does that tell us about how he was able to enter the U.S.?

Brian Mier: Bolsonaro left Brazil, on the presidential jet, without officially handing over power to his Vice President, leaving Brazil, technically speaking, 36 hours without an acting President. As he was still officially President when he arrived, his diplomatic status guaranteed his smooth entry into the US. I would assume he hasn't done any paperwork for change of status yet, but it would seem relatively easy for him to switch to a tourist visa in Orlando, Florida.

MK: Bolsonaro has condemned the rioters. But is it plausible that they acted without his involvement?

BM: Bolsonaro only condemned the fascists who attempted to provoke a military coup d'etat yesterday, after it looked like they had failed. He may not have been directly involved in the planning, but it's hard to imagine that his son Eduardo, who participated in the January 5, 2021 so called "War Council" meeting in Washington DC, was not in direct communication with the putschists. Bolsonaro is being accused of inciting the action, and there is a mountain of evidence that he was involved and this is also a crime in Brazil.

MK: Bolsonaro's presidency was partly the result of "lawfare" attacks against Lula and his successor Dilma Rousseff which were coordinated with forces in the U.S. But there are already calls for him to leave the U.S. in the wake of the riots. Does he believe that the U.S. will still protect him now that his supporters have attacked the sitting president?

BM: Lava Jato (Car Wash in English) started during the Obama administration and represented a partnership between the Curitiba District Attorney’s Office, the US Department of Justice and the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), which collected billions of dollars in fines from Brazilian companies during the course of the investigation. Three days after Dilma Rousseff was deposed without any legal justification in 2016, Vice President Joe Biden met with illegitimate coup President Michel Temer, at a moment when several South American governments refused to recognize his presidency, and told him that he had the full support of the Obama administration.

After Trump took office, the investigation continued, culminating in the arbitrary political imprisonment of Lula during the 2018 election season. At the time he was leading by over double the support of second place candidate Jair Bolsonaro in the polls. His arrest and illegal prohibition of running for office from behind bars, where he was still leading in the polls by a wide margin, directly led to the Bolsonaro presidency, and Bolsonaro immediately appointed US asset Sergio Moro, who, through a loophole in Brazilian law dating back to the inquisition, was able to rule on both the investigation and the trial (with no jury), as "Super Justice Minister". Together, Moro and Bolsonaro visited CIA headquarters almost immediately after taking office.

After Biden took office, his administration made a big effort to try to work with him. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan flew to Brazil to meet with Bolsonaro and his top generals, then CIA Director William Burns made a visit. However due to his own stupidity, Bolsonaro took sides in a dispute that he had nothing to do with, publicly buying into to Trump and Bannon's big lie narrative and being the last world leader of a big nation to (begrudgingly) acknowledge Biden's electoral victory, months after the fact. Due to this, and the ongoing close relationship between Bolsonaro's children with Steve Bannon and other actors on the billionaire-funded US far right like Jason Miller and Mathew Tyrmand, it became impossible for the DNC to sustain support for the Bolsonaro administration - if only out of their own opportunistic self-interest. On top of that, a group fluctuating in size between one and two dozen Democratic lawmakers led by Hank Johnson and including people like Raul Grijalva, Susan Wild and Danny Davis, have made repeated shows of solidarity to Lula and the Workers Party during the entire slow motion coup process, even starting a congressional inquiry into the US DOJ role in Lava Jato. All of these factors have led to the incredibly ironic situation of a political party apparatus that created and actively supported the lawfare investigation which resulted in the arbitrary impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and Lula's political imprisonment, to be publicly supporting the Lula administration now, as are the governments of Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela, among others. Due to these factors, the US may not end up protecting Bolsonaro as much as he thought they would. Even Trump apparently canceled his invitation for Bolsonaro to spend New Years with him in Mar-a-lago. Bolsonaro has become so toxic that even a large sector of the international far right seems to be rejecting him, despite the best PR efforts made by BBC/PBS with their "Rise of the Bolsonaros" election propaganda documentary series and constant international social media supporter from hybrid war operatives connected to the Mercers and Steve Bannon.

MK: Lula has promised to punish the rioters. Won't that be difficult?

BM: Lula, to his credit and occasionally in my opinion to his own detriment, has always been a firm believer in the democratic rule of law. What he means when he says this is that the Justice Department, now led by former Communist Party governor of Maranhao, Flavio Dino, will use all of its legal powers to investigate the crimes committed, and do everything it can to guarantee that everyone gets a fair trial and, if found guilty, are sentenced according to the gravity of their crimes. These statements should not be interpreted as warning signs of authoritarianism - after all, whenever a leftist takes power in Latin American they are either accused by Anglo progressives of being "complacent with neoliberalism" or "practicing authoritarianism."

MK: The Bolsonaro supporters publicly announced their intention to gather in Brasilia but officials seemed to have been unprepared. Will there be repercussions?

BM: There are already repercussions. Brasilia, the space age mid-century modernist city which sits deep in the hinterland surrounded by cow pastures and soy fields, is a very conservative place full of right wing, prosperity gospel Christians. Federal District Governor Ibaneis Rocha has been one of Bolsonaro's staunchest allies. So much so that he appointed Anderson Torres, Bolsonaro's former National Justice Minister/Security Chief, as his Security Secretary on January 2. In Brazil, civil and military police forces are controlled by the governor and his or her security secretary. It has now become apparent that the Brasilia Military police simply opened the gates for the putschists. There are dozens of videos circulating around showing them smiling, hugging and taking selfies with the fascists, while, in the distance, a few made a show by launching a few tear gas grenades far from any major concentration of people. As events unfolded, it turned out that Torres had already flown to Orlando, Florida. An arrest warrant was issued, and then the Supreme Court suspended Ibaneis Rocha from his position of governor for 90 days pending investigation. It is important to note here that, four hours into the coup attempt, when it was clear that the governor was doing very little to stop it, Lula issued a decree turning control of Brasilia's security over to the Federal Government until January 31. Twenty minutes later, all government buildings had been completely cleared of rioters by the Brasilia Civil Police and the Federal Police.

MK: Brazil has a large Black population. What is Lula's relationship with Black people? What role did they play in the election and the aftermath?

BM: Lula is from a region of Brazil, the Northeast, whose poor residents have traditionally been considered subhuman in the wealthy South and Southeast, and his mother was Black. Since we know, including from your book Prejudential , that having some African ancestry doesn't guarantee anything, I will focus on the Workers Party and its policies and why Lula's largest voter base in this year's election was Afro-Brazilian. Lula's largest support in descending order of significance, was Afro-Brazilian women, Afro-Brazilian men, people of all ethnicities making equal to or less than the minimum wage (around 70% of the population) and women of all social classes.

There are many complaints about the Workers Party from the Afro-Brazilian movements. A very clear one right now is that Lula did not appoint the number of Afro-Brazilian cabinet ministers proportionate to the roughly 52% representation in the population at large. On the other hand, the Workers Party achieved equity of race in terms of elected officials during the second to last election cycle. The major policy advancement in terms of human rights during the Workers Party years was implementation of a class and race based affirmative action system. The Workers Party system opened up 52% of all slots in the free public university system - which was expanded through the construction of 17 new public universities - to members of the working class, with a small differential for working class Black and indigenous students. This increased the percentage of Black students in the public university system from around 2% from when he first took office, to over 50% today. The Workers Party has been less successfully at halting the genocide of police killings underway against Black, primarily male youth on the urban peripheries. To its credit, Workers Party lawmakers have introduced constitutional amendments to the floor of Congress and the Senate three times to abolish the Military Police, which studies show is the main culprit. Each time, the bills were defeated by more conservative parties in the PT's governing coalition. Removing Brazil from the UN's World Hunger Map and removing 30 million people from below the poverty line are examples of policies which improved the lives of a large portion of Brazil's black population, which also explains their support for the Workers Party and Lula.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/bolso ... government


Why the CIA Attempted a ‘Maidan Uprising’ in Brazil
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 11, 2023
Pepe Escobar

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The failed coup in Brazil is the latest CIA stunt, just as the country is forging stronger ties with the east.

A former US intelligence official has confirmed that the shambolic Maidan remix staged in Brasilia on 8 January was a CIA operation, and linked it to the recent attempts at color revolution in Iran.

On Sunday, alleged supporters of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace, bypassing flimsy security barricades, climbing on roofs, smashing windows, destroying public property including precious paintings, while calling for a military coup as part of a regime change scheme targeting elected President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva.

According to the US source, the reason for staging the operation – which bears visible signs of hasty planning – now, is that Brazil is set to reassert itself in global geopolitics alongside fellow BRICS states Russia, India, and China.

That suggests CIA planners are avid readers of Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar, formerly of the New York Fed. In his ground-breaking 27 December report titled War and Commodity Encumbrance, Pozsar states that “the multipolar world order is being built not by G7 heads of state but by the ‘G7 of the East’ (the BRICS heads of state), which is a G5 really but because of ‘BRICSpansion’, I took the liberty to round up.”

He refers here to reports that Algeria, Argentina, Iran have already applied to join the BRICS – or rather its expanded version “BRICS+” – with further interest expressed by Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Indonesia.

The US source drew a parallel between the CIA’s Maidan in Brazil and a series of recent street demonstrations in Iran instrumentalized by the agency as part of a new color revolution drive:

“These CIA operations in Brazil and Iran parallel the operation in Venezuela in 2002 that was highly successful at the start as rioters managed to seize Hugo Chavez.”

Enter the “G7 of the East”

Straussian neo-cons placed at the top of the CIA, irrespective of their political affiliation, are livid that the “G7 of the East” – as in the BRICS+ configuration of the near future – are fast moving out of the US dollar orbit.

Straussian John Bolton – who has just publicized his interest in running for the US presidency – is now demanding the ouster of Turkey from NATO as the Global South realigns rapidly within new multipolar institutions.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his new Chinese counterpart Qin Gang have just announced the merging of the China-driven Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Russia-driven Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). This means that the largest 21st century trade/connectivity/development project – the Chinese New Silk Roads – is now even more complex, and keeps expanding.

That sets the stage for the introduction, already being designed at various levels, of a new international trading currency aimed at supplanting then replacing the US dollar. Apart from an internal debate among the BRICS, one of the key vectors is the discussion team set up between the EAEU and China. When concluded, these deliberations will be presented to BRI-EAEU partner nations and of course the expanded BRICS+.

Lula at the helm in Brazil, in what is now his third non-successive presidential term, will offer a tremendous boost to BRICS+, In the 2000s, side by side with Russian President Putin and former Chinese President Hu Jintao, Lula was a key conceptualizer of a deeper role for BRICS, including trade in their own currencies.

BRICS as “the new G7 of the East,” as defined by Pozsar, is beyond anathema – as much for Straussian neo-cons as for neoliberal.

The US is being slowly but surely expelled from wider Eurasia by concerted actions of the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Ukraine is a black hole – where NATO faces a humiliation that will make Afghanistan look like Alice in Wonderland. A feeble EU being forced by Washington to de-industrialize and buy US Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) at absurdly high cost has no essential resources for the Empire to plunder.

Geoeconomically, that leaves the US-denominated “Western Hemisphere,” especially immense energy-rich Venezuela as the key target. And geopolitically, the key regional actor is Brazil.

The Straussian neo-con play is to pull all stops to prevent Chinese and Russian trade expansion and political influence in Latin America, which Washington – irrespective of international law and the concept of sovereignty, continues to call “our backyard.” In times where neoliberalism is so “inclusive” that Zionists wear swastikas, the Monroe Doctrine is back, on steroids.

All about the ‘strategy of tension’

Clues for Maidan in Brazil can be obtained, for instance, at the US Army Cyber Command at Fort Gordon, where it’s no secret the CIA deployed hundreds of assets across Brazil ahead of the recent presidential election – faithful to the “strategy of tension” playbook.

CIA chatter was intercepted at Fort Gordon since mid-2022. The main theme then was the imposition of the widespread narrative that ‘Lula could only win by cheating.’

A key target of the CIA operation was to discredit by all means the Brazilian electoral process, paving the way for a prepackaged narrative that is now unraveling: a defeated Bolsonaro fleeing Brazil and seeking refuge at former US president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion. Bolsonaro, advised by Steve Bannon, did flee Brazil, skipping Lula’s inauguration, but because he’s terrified he may be facing the slammer sooner rather than later. And by the way, he is in Orlando, not Mar-a-Lago.

The icing on the stale Maidan cake was what happened this past Sunday: fabricating a 8 January in Brasilia mirroring the events of 6 January, 2021 in Washington, and of course imprinting the Bolsonaro-Trump link on people’s minds.

The amateurish nature of 8 January in Brasilia suggests CIA planners got lost in their own plot. The whole farce had to be anticipated because of Pozsar’s report, which everyone-who-matters has read across the New York-Beltway axis.

What is clear, is that for some factions of the powerful US establishment, getting rid of Trump at all costs is even more crucial than crippling Brazil’s role in BRICS+.

When it comes to the internal factors of Maidan in Brazil, borrowing from novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, everything walks and talks like the Chronicle of a Coup Foretold. It is impossible that the security apparatus around Lula could not have foreseen these events, especially considering the tsunami of signs on social networks.

So there must have been a concerted effort to act softly – without any preventive big sticks – while just emitting the usual neoliberal babble.

After all, Lula’s cabinet is a mess, with ministers constantly clashing and some members supporting Bolsonaro even a few months ago. Lula calls it a “national unity government,” but it is more like a tawdry patchwork job.

Brazilian analyst Quantum Bird, a globally respected physics scholar who has returned home after a long stint in NATO lands, notes how there are “too many actors in play and too many antagonistic interests. Among Lula’s ministers, we find Bolsonarists, neoliberal-rentiers, climate interventionism converts, identity politics practitioners and a vast fauna of political neophytes and social climbers, all well aligned with Washington’s imperial interests.”

CIA-stoked ‘militants’ on the prowl

One plausible scenario is that powerful sectors of the Brazilian military – at the service of the usual Straussian neo-con think tanks, plus global finance capital – could not really pull off a real coup, considering massive popular rejection, and had to settle at best for a “soft” farce. That illustrates just how much this self-aggrandizing and highly corrupt military faction is isolated from Brazilian society.

What is deeply worrying, as Quantum Bird notes, is that the unanimity in condemning 8 January from all quarters, while no one took responsibility, “shows how Lula navigates virtually alone in a shallow sea infested by sharpened corals and hungry sharks.”

Lula’s position, he adds, “decreeing a federal intervention all by himself, without strong faces of his own government or relevant authorities, shows an improvised, disorganized and amateurish reaction.”

And all that, once again, after CIA-stoked “militants” had been organizing the “protests” openly on social media for days.

The same old CIA playbook though remains at work. It still boggles the mind how easy it is to subvert Brazil, one of the natural leaders of the Global South. Attempted old school coups cum regime change/color revolution scripts will keep being played – remember Kazakhstan in early 2021, and Iran only a few months ago.

As much as the self-aggrandizing faction of the Brazilian military may believe they control the nation, if Lula’s significant masses hit the streets in full force against the 8 January farce, the army’s impotence will be graphically imprinted. And since this is a CIA operation, the handlers will order their tropical military vassals to behave like ostriches.

The future, unfortunately, is ominous. The US establishment will not allow Brazil, the BRICS economy with the best potential after China, to be back in business with full force and in synch with the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Straussian neo-cons and neoliberals, certified geopolitical jackals and hyenas, will get even more ferocious as the “G7 of the East,” Brazil included, moves to end the suzerainty of the US dollar as imperial control of the world vanishes.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... in-brazil/

The Managers of Brazil
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 10, 2023
Guido Melo

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In the wake of the insurrection in Brazil, an Afrobrazilian reflects personally on the entanglement of race and class in the country, and on what needs to be done to unravel it.

I remember arriving at the Banco do Brasil agency in Ilha do Governador, the working-class neighborhood where I grew up in Rio de Janeiro. I was 13 or 14—the age in Brazil when every Black boy ceases to be a child and, in the eyes of society, becomes a potential Emmett Till.

Holding my father’s big hands, we get stopped at the rolling door by the bank segurança. “Remove everything from your pockets, Sir,” the brown-skin segurança, .38 revolver in his hands, told us. That “Sir” means exactly the opposite of an honorific. Every Black person knows how it sounds: angry and imperative. My father released my hands and placed them in his tethered jeans pockets bringing out a black leather wallet, a metal key chain, and three coins. He also placed his myopia glasses on the check-in table, showing he did not intend to challenge the segurança’s authority. It was then my turn: “Remove everything from your pockets!” I was too young to earn myself the sir badge.

“I have nothing to remove,” I said, opening my arms wide, palms facing up.

He proceeded more harshly this time, speaking through his clenched jaw.

“Lift your t-shirt then.”

I obliged.

I already knew about those rituals of humiliation and how they were part of my Black family’s lives. I also knew that surviving such daily interactions required putting my head down and following the instructions received with no hesitation. Life was just like that.Racism is so ubiquitous in Brazil that I believed it was natural for years. This was my reality. My entire worldview is seen from that prism. Years later, living a somewhat comfortable life in Australia will not alter what I absorbed early in life.

I can only begin to conceive how it is for someone learning precisely the opposite lessons: that they deserve to live hassle-free; that they are destined to be lawyers, accountants, actors, or anything they want; that because they look the way they look, they will be part of the crème de la crème of society; believing that they are genetically and morally superior; most importantly, learning that the ‘other’ (Blacks, Indigenous and other non-whites) deserve their suffering because they (we) are “lazy” or “stupid”; that we placed ourselves in this condition, and believing that inequality is a myth.

In the country that historically kidnapped and forcefully trafficked the most significant number of enslaved peoples during colonialism. In the last country to abolish African slavery, in 1888. In the country, that kills one Black person every 23 minutes. A place where a Machiavellian plan of extermination and eugenics allowed the European population to grow and thrive. In this country, it is not surprising that today the Black population is on one side of the fence and the white on another.

And so it was in the recent national election that the vote was split racially. The majority of Black cities voted for Lula, as high as 90 per cent in some cases, whereas the majority of white cities voted seven-to-one for Bolsonaro. Mirroring the US where African Americans often are the last defense against tyranny, Afro-Brazilians are Brazil’s ultimate defenders of democracy.

Of course, it is not that simple. Nothing is. People make choices or are induced by external or circumstantial forces to make them. There are plenty of Afro-Brazilians voting for Bolsonaro and plenty of whites fighting side by side with me against fascism. However, without understanding the racial roots of Brazilian slavocrat society, it would be impossible to comprehend how we got here.

The Manager

As we entered the Banco do, Brasil, after the humiliating welcome, my father and I waited an hour for our turn to be served by the cashier. She was a typical federal employee type—well-dressed with her hair in a bun and with well-polished nails.

After a quick glance at the paper my father handed in, the cashier said:

“It is not this line, Sir.”

My father remained calm and asked her to please call the Manager. The Bank’s policy was that if a client called for it, they had to respond. It took a while, but the Manager, a middle-aged white man, arrived. Upon finding out that my father was a member of the Brazilian Air Force, he treated us incredibly well. Coffee for my father, an ashtray so he could smoke and even hot chocolate for me. We got what we needed and left the bank.

When this episode occurred, full democracy was slowly returning to Brazil after a long military junta dictatorship. Being part of the Air Force protected my father, but this was a tool he only used in an emergency. As I said, no one is wholly good or bad. More often than not, evil is circumstantial—the worse we see in our enemies also lives inside of us.

Later, my father explained something I carry to this day: “My son, never fight the cashier! It is always the Manager. Fight the Manager!”

This was Marxism and Ubuntu philosophy combined. Class warfare and racial resistance wisdom all in one. I knew I was learning something important. For preteen me, It was enlightening.

These moments Brazil faces are similar to those we met at that bank all those decades ago.

As two Afro-Brazilian men (well, boy and man) entered that bank, we recognized we were facing structural oppression. The foot soldiers of racism have many faces, genders, and social classes. Those that chose or got chosen to perform the tasks for the oppressors or to become the oppressors themselves, as Freire argues, come from many walks of life.

Still, we accepted our fate until we had to use our own set of evils. Until, after being pressured to fight back, we had to become the circumstantial oppressors.

Who voted for Bolsonaro?

About half of Brazilian voters(mostly white) voted for Bolsonaro, led by a selfish intellectual elite that sees race, gender and, most importantly, class as its main enemy. I am tempted to fight them; to entrench myself in a metaphorical urban guerrilla war; to combat the foot soldiers, the lost, the misguided, and the confused. I am tempted to attack the cashiers of fascism.

Is Bolsonaro the Manager? Yes, but he is not alone. The Brazilian oligarchs are destroying the Pantanal and the Amazon for soy and other profitable monocrops—caring nothing for climate change, fauna, and flora; the stockbrokers at the São Paulo stock exchange who care only about the dollar, even when thousands will not eat tonight; the unscrupulous business owners who underpay and overwork their employees, the rich women who shamelessly perpetuate the enslavement of modern maids; the academics who help support those ideas with fallacies and false dichotomies. All of them are the Managers—and as my father taught me, they are the ones I must keep an eye on.

We may have to unleash our evils to get to the Manager’s room. I hope not.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... of-brazil/

******

ORIGIN AND ACTUALITY OF "BOLSONARISMO"
Jan 11, 2023 , 9:36 p.m.

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The resemblance of Bolsonarismo with other expressions of conservatism and proto-fascism are eloquent (Photo: File)

Two days before having to hand over the presidency, Jair Messias Bolsonaro flew to the United States on the presidential plane of the Federative Republic of Brazil. The former president left but his footprint was left imprinted to the depths of the largest country in the Amazon basin, because he was always there. Six or seven years ago no one would have talked about Bolsonarismo as a phenomenon, however, today this is happening and it is opportune to review what created and sustains it.

THE OUTSIDER WHO IS NOT AN OUTSIDER

The cradle of Bolsonaro, and of his political rise, is in the dictatorship (called by conservative sectors as "democratic") that erupted in Brazil in 1964. This regime originated in a coup orchestrated against Joao Goulart and in that the government of United States, according to documents from the Brazilian Senate . Also the great national and international business community, the Armed Forces, a large part of the media, the Catholic Church and the bulk of the main political parties.

The former captain was transferred to the Army reserve in 1988 after defending the bombing of the main Brazilian highway during a salary campaign, however, he followed the linear trajectory of the Alianza Renovadora Nacional (ARENA) party, created in 1965 with the intention of to support the newly installed military government.

Later he supported variations of arenismo: he was elected federal deputy for the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) in 1990, and then went through the Reform Progressive Party (1993-1995), the Brazilian Progressive Party (1995-2003), the Brazilian Labor Party ( 2003-2005), the Liberal Front Party (2005), returns to integrate some parties where he had previously been a member until reaching the Social Christian Party (2016-2017), and since July 2017 he joined the National Ecological Party (PEN) and then the Social Liberal Party (2018-2019), always as a federal deputy, for seven consecutive terms (1991-2019). Adding the two years as councilor (1989-1991).

There are 30 years of parliamentary life and 15 in the Army (1973-1988), so that, despite his anti-system rhetoric incorporated by the Bolsonaristas, he is a by-product of Brazilian society and its political class. That is why Bolsonarismo is understood as a derivation of the polarized trajectory that shapes the historical evolution of the South American country.

Bolsonaro's appeal is particularly strong among the military and conservative Christians, this explains the more than 51 million votes in the first round of the last general elections and more than 58 million in the second round. He has forged a strong right-wing movement, combining Brazilian conservatism and nationalism with American-style culture war politics and battles waged on social media, some of which is expressed on the streets.

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Bolsonarismo is a combination of conservatism and Brazilian nationalism, incubated for longer than the rise of the former captain to the presidency (Photo: File)

His recently completed presidency was based on a platform of anti-communist hate speech and unleashed a flood of public support for fascism, which had been dormant since the end of the dictatorship that had five de facto presidents. As a congressman in 2004, Bolsonaro wrote a series of letters to neo-Nazi websites, saying things like "you are the reason I'm in politics."

Bolsonaro's ties to Donald Trump's former White House strategist Steve Bannon have been close until after the end of the presidential term. This has tried to spread electoral fraud based on fake news , in the style of what was done after Trump's defeat in 2020. Analysts say this played a key role in igniting conspiracy theories before the attacks on Sunday, the 8th. January to the headquarters of the three branches of the Brazilian State.

A POWER BLOC: THE CENTRÃO
The Centrão, or Great Center, is a group of political parties that came to be made up of 220 of the 513 federal legislators (deputies) during the Bolsonaro administration and whose origins also date back to the military dictatorship. In the late 1980s, parliamentarians rallied to support democratically elected weak presidents. Since then, that conglomerate has become entrenched in Brazilian politics by offering support to governments of the left or right, in exchange for high-level political posts and resources to support its electoral machinery in national constituencies.

They invariably shored up Bolsonaro's stay in power, fending off more than 100 impeachment petitions and pushing large government spending packages through Congress. On one occasion, the former president said:

"We have the prominent presence of the president of the [Cámara de Diputados], my longtime friend, Arthur Lira. He is the owner of the Chamber's agenda. If it weren't for Arthur Lira, we would not have reached this point."

In return, Lira and the Centrão became immensely powerful and appropriated vast amounts of public funds for their discretionary use in what is known as the " secret budget ".

Playing his role as an outsider , in the 2018 election campaign, Bolsonaro railed against the bloc's way of proceeding, but when corruption allegations surfaced against him and his family, he quickly forged an alliance with them and managed to save his government. In exchange for his support, the almost hegemonic political entity has demanded crucial government posts, in particular, that of presidential chief of staff that Ciro Nogueira came to occupy. This politician was a supporter of consecutive left-wing administrations before joining the Bolsonaro administration.

After dismissing Dilma Rousseff, this bloc blew itself up amid divisions and discredit of its leaders until it managed to reorganize itself around the figures of the federal deputy and former president of the Chamber Rodrigo Maia (DEM-RJ), Aguinaldo Ribeiro (PP- PB) and Lira (PP-AL).

Parliamentarians, who had always received money from the government for public works projects that were presented at election time, had budgets that were limited in size, but during the Bolsonaro administration the numbers tripled and the beneficiaries have been shrouded in mystery. Transparency watchdogs suggest that a quarter of Brazil's discretionary budget of 143 billion reais ($28 billion) is controlled by Congress. Only last June, the government disbursed 6.6 billion reais under the secret budget. The result was scandalous cases of money embezzlement,

AN ELECTORAL PHENOMENON
Part of his polarizing style is his crude, misogynistic language and "politically incorrect" comments that denote a kind of proto-fascism; this is outrageous in Europe or the United States but it does not affect much in Brazil, particularly among some low-income sectors.

In addition to fast-growing evangelical churches, the military and police, farmers and businesses, a new generation of musicians and socially conservative YouTube influencers also helped Bolsonaro in his quest to successfully maintain an anti-establishment message. Even while he was in office, criticizing institutions such as the Federal Supreme Court or the mainstream media that he accused of being biased against him and cultivating a "simple media man", that is, Lula . It should be noted that these same media outlets looted the image of the current Brazilian president as ex-president and ex-unionist, before and during his imprisonment.

The skilled working class and the lower-middle class, which expanded under Lula, constituted Bolsonaro's electoral advantage. It is about 100 million Brazilians that the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) defines as the largest social class, in general terms. This is how, on October 2, the candidates who supported Bolsonaro obtained great successes in the elections for Congress and governorships, which coincided with the first round of the presidential election.

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This is how the Chamber of Deputies was made up after the first presidential round in which Congress was elected, the rise of the parties allied to Bolsonaro was evident (Photo: Voz de Galicia)

In the congressional races, Bolsonaro's Liberal Party (PL) was the big winner . They jumped from seven to 13 seats in the 81-member Senate, where they will be the largest party, and from 76 to 99 seats in the 513-member lower house. The fragmentation of the party system in Brazil is notorious: there are 23 parties represented in the current legislature, which counts as a significant success for Bolsonarismo, which also won the powerful governorships of the three most populous states in Brazil. These represent 40% of the country's population: São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro.

FROM LIBERATION TO PROSPERITY
Bolsonaro, who was helped by better-than-expected economic performance in the aftermath of the global pandemic, managed with his neoliberal policies that Brazil's GDP grew by 2.8% in 2021, according to the IMF, not far behind China. Foreign direct investment soared to $74 billion in the year through September from $50 billion a year earlier, according to Brazil's central bank. The headline inflation rate peaked at more than 12% in April but fell to 7.2% in September with many business leaders maintaining strong support for him.

Other economic beneficiaries include evangelical churches, whose social and economic impact is high in Brazil due to their financing by the faithful through tithes and other contributions. After the decline of the Catholic Church, particularly many expressions of the so-called "liberation theology", conservatism was growing in the religious field and this was picked up by Catholic charismatic sectors and evangelical churches.

In Brazil, the evangelical population was close to 50 million (25%) in 2018, but the evangelical world is not homogeneous, neither religious nor politically moral. Hence the syncretism of both the former president in his interventions and those who follow him.

His election first attracted the evangelical vote and, later, the support of large churches such as Universal del Reino de Dios. Previously, a bishop from that church had taken over the mayor's office of Rio de Janeiro.

At rallies, his allies insisted on introducing him by his full name, Jair Messias Bolsonaro; His middle name means "Messiah", the anointed or savior. Although he was raised Catholic, he was rebaptized in the Jordan River by Everaldo Pereira, pastor of the evangelical Assembly of God church and president of the Social Christian Party (PSC), which Bolsonaro had just joined; this identified him with both communities.

On October 28, 2018, after his electoral victory, part of his speech was an evangelical prayer led by Pastor Magno Malta and Bolsonaro placed his mandate under God's supervision, recalling his campaign slogan: "Brazil above all else." God above all."

Brazil's religious transition is fast and particular for a nation of its size. In 1970, 92% of Brazilians declared themselves Catholic, while in 2010 the percentage dropped to 64.6%. Even when greater religious diversity is appreciated, this has benefited traditional Protestants, whose weight has not varied much among the population and, above all, the followers of the Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal churches. In 2010, they reached 22.2% of the population, according to the IBGE census.

The journalist Lamia Oualalou highlights how in the states where evangelicals have gained more presence in recent decades (Rondônia, Roraima, Acre and Rio de Janeiro) the former Army captain won "a spectacular victory."

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"Bolsonaro sided with Pentecostal evangelicalism, which has definitely been shaping the political map of one of the powers of Latin America in recent years," says journalist Lamia Oualalou (Photo: Getty Images)

What differentiates Neo-Pentecostals from classical Pentecostalism and other evangelical churches is "prosperity theology." Many evangelical churches in Brazil had adhered to the theology of liberation of Catholic origin and to the option for the poor; recently a new theology of the opposite sign, non-catholic, emerged.

This theology, which arrived from the United States to Latin America in the 1960s, teaches that the enjoyment of material goods and the pleasures of life is a good thing because it is collaborating in the work of God who wants us happy now in this world. This is achieved through financial sacrifice (tithes and offerings) to God, through the mediation of the Church; and that makes his faithful deserving of divine blessings. There is no talk of social justice or liberation from social oppression.

THE HEAVY ARM OF AGRIBUSINESS
It has also received vital financial and ideological support from powerful economic interests linked to agribusiness. This sector represented 33 of the 50 largest donors to the Bolsonaro campaign. Hence his attacks on environmentalists and staunch defense of Brazil's right to develop land in the Amazon rainforest are popular with Brazilians who resent foreigners telling them how to run their country.

As the highly industrialized sector in Brazil, agribusiness is responsible for more than a quarter of GDP and 48.3% of total exports in the first half of 2022. It broadly covers the country's geography, particularly a part north of São Paulo, a significant swath of southern states, two powerful central-western states, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, and Roraima in the north.

Much of the revenue gains in Brazil during the Bolsonaro presidency went to these regions, as agriculture benefited from a devalued national currency and high international prices for raw materials, positioning Brazil as the "breadbasket of the world."

The irony is that this was not the case for the rest of the country as consumer prices increased by 8.3% in 2021. This inflationary mark made more than half of the total population, 125.2 million Brazilians, alive today with some kind of insecurity and that 33 million of them face severe food insecurity.

Today Bolsonaro is gone, but the agribusiness hegemony will continue because he enjoys broad legislative representation. The powerful Agricultural Parliamentary Front (FPA), called "rural banks" owns 46% of the Chamber of Deputies and 48% of the Senate. 70% of the FPA deputies were re-elected while they will occupy more than 40 of the 81 seats in the Senate in 2023.

During both the Michel Temer and Bolsonaro administrations, they denigrated indigenous land rights to legitimize the use of native lands for agricultural production, while articulating proposals and amendments on a variety of regulatory issues such as workers' rights. , environmental licenses, regularization of land tenure and pesticides.

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Activists and politicians such as Marina Silva, the current minister of Lula Da Silva, have insisted that Jair Bolsonaro's environmental policies were turning Brazil into an "exterminator of the future" (Photo: Brazilian Army)

Bolsonarismo has propped up political figures such as Tereza Cristina, former president of the FPA, also called "Mrs. Deforestation" or "muse of poison" or Bolsonaro's former Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, who before taking office was sentenced in a first instance court for "administrative impropriety" while running an environmental agency in the state of São Paulo. Salles' tenure was correlated with increased deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and major cuts in environmental protection programs, before he was forced to resign last year over allegations of involvement in a timber trafficking scheme.

AND THE MILITARY PARTY
March 31 is an important day for Bolsonaro due to the coup carried out in 1964, the dictatorship that followed lasted 21 years and is praised by Bolsonaro as a model, even when they closed Congress, took away individual rights and imposed censorship and torture.

During the impeachment against Dilma Rousseff, Bolsonaro took advantage of the predominant circus atmosphere to shout excitedly: "In memory of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, Rousseff's terror, I vote yes." He was referring to the torturer of the former president during the military dictatorship.

The former captain won the support of most of the military by allowing them to hold positions in the central government alongside his military career. There came to be 11,000 soldiers within the central government in positions that, for the most part, have no specialties to occupy. Some earned up to $18,000 a month between salaries, benefits and privileges.

In Brazil, where crimes such as torture and murders perpetrated during the dictatorship from 1964 to 1985 were not investigated, the Constitution defines that the armed forces must operate away from party politics, taking care of defense, sovereignty at the service of its people. What has been described explains the choice of Walter Souza Braga Netto, a reserve army general, as Bolsonaro's running mate and how his candidacy was consolidated in the face of the political interface of the military sector.

Two events ended the 25 years of military silence, the first was the threatening tweet by General Eduardo Villas Bôas, then commander-in-chief of the army, addressed to the Supreme Court if it did not disqualify Lula for the presidency. Bôas affirmed "to the nation that the Brazilian army, like all good citizens, shares the rejection of impunity and respect for the Constitution, social peace and democracy, in accordance with its constitutional missions."


The second was the massive presence in the Bolsonaro government, from there this sector abandoned its alleged neutrality and let slip the suspicion that it would be the arbiter of the electoral process that ended on October 30.

The Workers' Party (PT) was born during and against the military dictatorship, coexistence with Lula's governments was notorious because the former president increased military budgets, deployed an international peacekeeping force in Haiti in 2004 and even inaugurated in 2010 the first campaign of military "pacification" of the favelas in the north of Rio de Janeiro.

His successor Dilma Rousseff aroused the hostility of the military towards the left by launching a National Truth Commission in 2011, in charge of shedding light on the crimes committed by the military junta between 1964 and 1985. From there there was a break with the left represented by Lula and he asked the army to return to being "the great mute" resuming the role that the Constitution attributed to it.

Bolsonarismo is not a recent phenomenon in Brazil: it is the concretion of a historical and political trend that is the product of a society that has experienced the death throes of intervention and the imperial narrative in Latin America. Its causes and effects are intact, so Lula will have to maneuver in the midst of this conservative wave and its ability to generate inequality and prostration in the poorest population.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/or ... lsonarismo

THE EVENTS THAT ANTICIPATED THE BOLSONARO ASSAULT ON THE SEATS OF POLITICAL POWER IN BRAZIL
Jan 10, 2023 , 11:37 a.m.

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Bolsonaro supporters break into the main seats of political power in Brasilia (Photo: AP)

This Sunday, July 8, supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro assaulted the Planalto Palace, Congress and the Federal Supreme Court (STF). This event that evokes the assault on the Washington Capitol in 2021, due to the date, place and nature of the riots, has its antecedents in the campaign for the hard-fought general elections in Brazil where Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was victorious.

Although the irruption in government facilities was surprising, this mass of more than a thousand people had already been congregating in camps in front of the Army Headquarters to claim an alleged fraud and ignore the results.

Why against a military institution? Since the middle of last year, the candidate Bolsonaro has questioned the transparency of the automated system of the electoral body. It has even always been projected that the Brazilian Armed Forces supported him and even prepared a massive fraud through a parallel vote count. "Military intervention" was one of the protesters' most frequent requests.

The narrow margin with which Lula won, the majority of Bolsonaro in Congress, as well as the silence of the losing candidate after the PT triumph and his ambiguous statements before and after his defeat, became a breeding ground for the sector of the most extremist right was amalgamated in the movement that took over the Brazilian institutions this Sunday, January 8.

Argentine journalist Juan Manuel Karg reviews some important events that were the breeding ground for violent events:

*July 18, 2022. Bolsonaro questioned the electoral system and the supposed vulnerability of electronic ballot boxes before a group of ambassadors.
*October 31, 2022. After Lula's victory, Bolsonarismo promotes the idea of ​​forcing a "third round." As a consequence, there were more than 500 cuts in roads and highways in 24 of the 27 states of the country.
*November 22, 2022. The Liberal Party (PL) requested before the Superior Electoral Court the annulment of the votes of the second round of 280,000 machines, 40% of the total used in the country.
*December 12, 2022. Lula received the diploma of president-elect in Brasilia. Bolsonarismo tried to take over a Federal Police building, burned dozens of cars and buses in the vicinity of the Brasilia Television Tower, approaching the hotel where Lula was staying.
*December 24, 2022. Bolsonaro businessman George Washington de Oliveira was arrested after trying to blow up a fuel truck at the Brasilia airport. In the raid they discovered an arsenal.

The excesses and thefts in the institutions, including firearms, reached that level, also, due to the passive and complicit attitude of the security organizations. That is why the secretary of public security, Anderson Torres, who served as Minister of Justice during the Bolsonaro government, was dismissed. Likewise, the STF decided to suspend the governor of the Federal District, Ibaneis Rocha, for 90 days.

Finally, the federal government took control of the situation and the extremists were arrested. However, the former Brazilian president from the United States condemned the revolt and removed any remote control responsibility, even though the movement was fueled for months by himself.

https://misionverdad.com/los-sucesos-qu ... -en-brasil

Google Translator

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The Brazilian hard right are already a political cliché

The slogans that pervaded Brasília on January 8 were less about Bolsonaro and more about the hatred felt for Lula and his pro-people government

January 10, 2023 by Vijay Prashad

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Workers clean up the mess left behind far-right protesters at the presidential palace in Brasília (Photo: Ana Pessoa/Mídia Ninja)

On January 8, 2023, large crowds of people—dressed in colors of the Brazilian flag—descended on the country’s capital, Brasília. They invaded the federal building and Supreme Court and vandalized public property. This attack by the rioters had been widely expected since the invaders had been planning “weekend demonstrations” for days on social media. On January 1, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) was formally sworn in as Brazil’s president, but during his inauguration there was no such melee. It was as if the vandals were waiting until the city was quiet and when Lula himself was out of town. For all the braggadocio of the attack, it was an act of extreme cowardice.

The man whom Lula defeated—former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro—was nowhere near Brasília. He was not even in Brazil. He fled before the inauguration—to escape prosecution, presumably—to Orlando, Florida, in the United States. But even if Bolsonaro was not in Brasília, Bolsonaristas—as his supporters are known—were everywhere in evidence. Before Bolsonaro lost the election to Lula in October 30, 2022, Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil suggested that Brazil was going to see “Bolsonarism without Bolsonaro.” The political party with the largest bloc in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate in Brazil is the far-right Liberal Party, which served as the political vehicle of Bolsonaro during his presidency. The toxic right-wing stain remains both in the elected bodies and on social media.

The two men responsible for public safety in Brasília—Anderson Torres, secretary of public security of the federal district, and Ibaneis Rocha, governor of the federal district—are close to Bolsonaro. Torres was a minister in Bolsonaro’s government and was on holiday in Orlando during the attack; Rocha took the afternoon off, a sign that he did not want to be at his desk during the attack. For their complicity in the attack, Torres was dismissed from his post, and Rocha has been suspended. The federal government has taken charge of security, and thousands of “fanatic Nazis,” as Lula called them, have been arrested.

The slogans and signs that pervaded Brasília were less about Bolsonaro and more about the hatred felt for Lula, and the potential of his pro-people government. Big business—mainly agribusiness—sectors are furious about the reforms proposed by Lula. This attack was partly the result of the built-up frustration felt by people who have been led to believe that Lula is a criminal—which the courts have shown is false—and partly is a warning from Brazil’s elites. The ragtag nature of the attack resembles the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by supporters of former US President Donald Trump. The illusions about the dangers of a communist US President Joe Biden or a communist Lula seem to have masked the animosity of the elites to even the mildest rollback of neoliberal austerity.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/10/ ... al-cliche/

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Brazil: Supreme Court temporarily dismisses Governor Rocha

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The distancing against Rocha is justified before the commission of crimes such as preparatory acts of terrorism, criminal association, damage and others | Photo: EFE
Posted 12 January 2023 (4 hours 12 minutes ago)

Mexico City security forces were unable to contain radical supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday.

The Supreme Federal Court (STF) of Brazil ratified on Wednesday by majority the 90-day suspension of the governor of the Federal District (DF), Ibaneis Rocha, for alleged omission in the face of invasions and acts of vandalism that occurred on Sunday, local sources reported.

The ministers of the superior court formed a majority to also maintain the preventive detention order against the former DF Security Secretary, Anderson Torres, and the former commander of the district's Military Police, Fabio Augusto Vieira, based on a decision made by the magistrate of the STF Alexandre de Moraes.

For magistrate De Moraes, "absolutely nothing justifies the omission and coexistence of the Secretary of Public Security and the Governor of the Federal District with criminals who, previously, announced that they would practice violent acts against the constituted powers."


The DF security forces were unable to contain on Sunday the radical supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro who invaded and looted the National Congress, the STF and the Planalto Palace, seat of the Executive Branch.

The actions "with depredation of public property, as widely reported by the national press, circumstances that could only occur with the consent, and even effective participation, of the competent authorities for public security and intelligence," the magistrate argued.

Moraes insisted that "the despicable terrorist attacks on democracy and republican institutions will be held accountable, as well as the financiers, instigators, and previous and current complicit and criminal public agents, who continue in the illegal conduct of the practice of anti-democratic acts."


The lawyer specified that the decision to remove Rocha is justified by the commission of crimes such as preparatory acts of terrorism, criminal association, damage, violent abolition of the Democratic State of Law and coup d'état. "Brazilian democracy will not be shaken, much less destroyed, by criminal terrorists," he assured.

The Brazilian Congress approved on Tuesday the decree of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that authorizes federal intervention in the Public Security of the DF until January 31, as a result of the invasions.

Such a measure is provided for in article 34 of the Federal Constitution to "put an end to a serious compromise of public order" and "guarantee the free exercise of any of the powers in the federation units."

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/brasil-t ... -0008.html

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

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 13, 2023 3:02 pm

Brazilians Point to Bolsonaro as Responsible for Attempted Coup

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Bolsonarists storm public buildings in Brasilia, Brazil, Jan. 8, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @mmadu

Published 12 January 2023 (20 hours 58 minutes ago)

On Sunday, far-right activists destroyed public facilities seeking to precipitate a chaotic situation that would allow the Armed Forces to carry out a coup d'état.

On Thursday, the Datafolha company published a survey showing that 55 percent of Brazilians believe that former President Jair Bolsonaro is responsible for the assaults against the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court, which took place in Brasilia on Sunday.

According to the survey, which interviewed 1,214 people nationwide and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, 38 percent of citizens believe that the far-right politician had "a lot of responsibility" in the attacks and 17 percent believe he had "some responsibility."

For 39 percent of the people, Bolsonaro had no responsibility for the violent events. Six percent did not know what to answer. Meanwhile, up to this day, Bolsonaro refuses to acknowledge the Lula da Silva's victory in the October presidential elections.

Regarding the events on Sunday, the former Capitan slightly criticized what happened because the assaults on the State's three branches were just "out of the ordinary" incidents. Video records and testimonials, however, claim otherwise.


Thousands of far-right activists destroyed public facilities seeking to precipitate a chaotic situation that would allow the armed forces to carry out a coup.

For more than a month, they had camped outside the Brasilia barracks, demanding that the Armed Forces prevent Lula's inauguration.

According to the Datafolha survey, 93 percent of Brazilians condemn anti-democratic acts, 3 percent of those interviewed were in favor of the Bolsonarist actions, 2 percent remain indifferent, and 1 percent did not know what to answer.

Eighty-two percent of those interviewed supported President Lula's decision to appoint a controller for the security of Brasilia, which the local authorities failed to guarantee.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bra ... -0010.html

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BOLSONARO SIGNED A LAW THAT HARSHLY PUNISHES HIS EXTREMIST SYMPATHIZERS
Jan 12, 2023 , 4:34 p.m.

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Last Monday, January 9, more than a thousand people who took over the government headquarters of the State of Brazil were arrested by the Army (Photo: Reuters)

Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro who took over government headquarters this Sunday, January 8, feel betrayed by their leader after the army handed them over to justice. And it is that ironically they could face criminal charges based on legal provisions that were implemented under the Bolsonaro administration.

When the protesters saw the army arrive, they were happy because they believed that they were going to support them, since since the campaign it had been projected that they were allies of the former president. Since the defeat they had been camping at the headquarters because they somehow felt supported by the military wing.

"Until an hour ago we trusted that the Army would protect us," said an insurgent through tears in a video recorded by himself, collects Mother Jones . "The Army handed us over."

The new law includes penalties of eight to twelve years in prison against those who try, through the use of violence or serious threats, "to abolish the Democratic State of Law, preventing or restricting the exercise of constitutional rights." Precisely what the Bolsoraristas tried.

Paradoxically, a law signed by Jair Bolsonaro is likely to be forcefully applied to his supporters, abandoned by their leader who is in the United States, even though at some point they were fueled by the actions and statements of the former president.

https://misionverdad.com/bolsonaro-firm ... xtremistas

Google Translator

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Biden Stoops to Conquer Brazil’s Lula
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 12, 2023
M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

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Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returns to power as left-leaning leaders are in control of six of the region’s seven largest economies

The tragicomic “insurrection” in Brasilia on Sunday was destined to meet a sudden death. The universal condemnation and, in particular, the brusqueness with which the Biden Administration distanced itself from the protestors, sealed their fate. Certainly, this revolt is no “civil war,” although it is difficult to make predictions about new protests in the country.

This is a cautionary tale for Latin America, as the “pink tide” is once again on the ascendance. As Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, returned to power last week, left-leaning leaders are in control of six of the region’s seven largest economies. Nonetheless, the pendulum has been swinging wildly and Lula won by a wafer-thin margin.

Political polarisation is undermining democracy in Latin America, making it harder for many to respect compromise. Since the 1980s, the global model of Keynesian policies gave way to the Washington consensus and the regional states took to borrowing in dollars and liberalising their capital accounts to attract foreign investors.

The genesis of the “pink tide” lies in these lost decades when the neoliberal turn in the region saw stagnation and widespread poverty, deepening social and economic divides in what is already the world’s most unequal region, emergence of a rentier class, coups and armed conflict. The region needs a new model of development and more equitable, sustainable growth involving state-led industrialisation and regional integration.

The Latin American economies are no longer bound to the US and are today in a position to recast their partnerships. But it is naïveté to assume Washington is no longer the self-interested neighbour it used to be historically. Geology and geography are intertwined in the destiny of Latin America.

A Guardian editorial recently noted that with Latin America accounting for 60% of the world’s lithium, the white gold of electric batteries, and the world’s largest oil reserves, the US carries a “big stick” — to borrow Teddy Roosevelt’s famous phrase “speak softly, and carry a big stick” to describe US foreign policy, in a 1901 speech.

However, Latin American situation has changed phenomenally. As a researcher at the Institute of Party History and Literature of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Jin Chengwei wrote in November, “In terms of geopolitics, the US views Latin America as its sphere of influence, and its influence on Latin America can be described as ubiquitous. In the 1980s, it used Latin America as a “testing ground” to promote neoliberalism. To be the alternative to neoliberalism was the driving force for the last round of wave of leftism in Latin America. They made significant achievements in promoting the integration process in Latin America and weakening the influence of the US, accumulating experience for resistance to US hegemony. The failure of neoliberalism and the negative consequences remain the fundamental motive for the formation of the current wave of leftism.”

No doubt, the crisis in US politics exposing the weaknesses of America’s liberal democracy spurred the Latin American countries to search for a non-western path. Also, the inefficient, insensitive response to Covid-19 exposed the flaws of the capitalist path of development. The Sao Paulo Forum and the World Social Forum have provided a new platform.

In his two previous terms as president, Lula encouraged people to participate in politics, reconciled economic growth with an increase in social spending and public investment in critical sectors of the economy, introduced regulations for the domestic workforce, providing them with social assistance and higher wages, promoted social justice by expanding employment and proactively participated in the formulation of international rules.

Lula’s biggest challenge today is the current divisions in Brazilian society between left and right and the confrontation between different social camps, apart from the need to push through reforms in a right-wing-majority Congress.

That said, he will lead the growing left-wing tide in Latin America toward a new peak, which will inevitably improve the international environment of leftist countries such as Cuba and Venezuela and enhance the autonomy of Latin American diplomacy. Lula wrote in the government plan:

“We advocate working toward the construction of a new global order committed to multilateralism, respect for the sovereignty of nations, peace, social inclusion and environmental sustainability, which takes into account the needs of developing countries.”

A fundamental change in the political landscape across the continent seems to be under way. Specifically, Lula’s first major foreign policy move — the decision to attend the Summit of Heads of State and Government of Celac in Buenos Aires on January 24 alongside the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua sends a message to Washington that it is going to be difficult to find a “fulcrum” for its “differentiation-cum- disintegration” strategy in Latin America.

Significantly, the tone of President Biden’s condemnation of the rioting in Brasilia was most aggressive. Three factors are at work here. First, the politician in Biden sees that the parallel with the January 6 “Capitol riots” in the US works to his advantage as he gears up for the 2024 election. The riots in both Brazil and the US can be traced back to Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual political conference attended by the world conservative activists and hosted by American Conservative Union. Clearly, whether Lula can contain the flames of the far right is not only crucial for Brazil and Latin America but also can be consequential for US politics.

Second, Lula targeted agribusinessmen for the rioting. According o environmentalist groups, those carrying out deforestation and illegal mining in the Amazon were behind the rioting, after Lula’s 180-degree turn in environmental policy with the appointment of Ministers Marina Silva and Sônia Guajajara, a world-renowned environmentalist and an aboriginal activist, respectively.

Lula accused agribusiness and illegal mining mafias of financing this coup. Biden’s climate programme and the Amazon River are joined at the hips.

Third, Lula is expected to make official trips to China and the US in his first three months in office. There is no question that under China’s “old friend” Lula, the economic and trade cooperation is set to deepen. The left-wing regimes usually “pull away” from the US and advocate a diversified and balanced diplomacy.

Actually, though, the deepening of China-Brazil relations follows the trend and has a strong internal driving force in terms of the complementarity between the two economies. The bilateral exchanges between China and Brazil have never been demarcated by ideology. Under Bolsonaro, China-Brazil trade still hit the record of about $164 billion in 2021 despite the pandemic.

Nonetheless, the US will be concerned because Brazil is a powerhouse and shares extensive common interests and responsibilities with China at a time when the left-wing wave highlights the weakening of US’s global leadership and the massive erosion in Washington’s control over Latin America. (Argentina is also seeking BRICS membership.)

Lula’s victory will significantly advance the process of Latin American cooperation to explore a new alternative world order. Against this backdrop, Biden’s best hope lies in encouraging Lula to pursue a moderate diplomatic line and adopt a strategy of balance between great powers. The US feels encouraged by Lula’s previous two terms in office and his record of a left-leaning moderate.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... zils-lula/

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Intellectual warns of plan to sabotage popular governments

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The intellectual Sousa Santos commented that the leaders of the Bolsonaro groups were people trained in actions of violence. | Photo: EFE
Published 12 January 2023

For Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the events last Sunday in the Brazilian capital were a clear example of an attempted coup.

The Portuguese intellectual, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, warned that the Latin American right wing maintains a plan to sabotage and block popular leftist governments in the region.

Throughout an interview offered to the official Argentine news agency Telam, Boaventura de Sousa Santos indicated that "democracy has to prepare itself to enter a period in which it must defend itself."

Referring to the coup attempt in Brazil, the 82-year-old intellectual affirmed that the acts of violence exposed the network that goes from the construction of meanings to the proliferation of hate speech promoted by President Bolsonaro , to the interests behind the fascist demonstrations of sectors linked to agribusiness, arms sales, among others, which will be affected by the Lula da Silva government.


For Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the events last Sunday in the Brazilian capital were a clear example of a well-organized coup attempt.

The doctor in Sociology of Law, pointed out that despite the events that took place in Brasilia, supporters of Jair Bosonaro arrived in the Brazilian capital in buses that were financed and organized to carry out a violent action.

Sousa Santos commented that the leaders of the Bolsonaro groups were people technically instructed in actions of violence and appealed to the strategy of installing in public opinion that it was simply a peaceful protest, that nothing was going to happen.


“In addition, Brazil's internal security intelligence agency warned the Brasilia authorities that something violent was taking place and there was no response to stop them. The police were not on the street and more like an escort of the demonstrators. What happened in Brasilia is very serious,” added the intellectual.

When asked about the model in which the right tries to achieve power through the ballot box, but is unaware of the mechanisms as soon as they exercise it or as opponents, the intellectual replied that the extreme right is currently dedicated to boycotting democracies from within. And it does so in various ways, for example, by financing and creating political parties.


Boaventura de Sousa Santos, described the response of the country's political leadership to the coup attack against Lula da Silva as positive.

“It is a moment in which all the democrats of the world must analyze very seriously what is happening in Brazil, because it can happen in each of our societies” warned the intellectual.

For Sousa Santos, President Lula da Silva emerged stronger from the coup attempt, showing that there is a very strong democratic power in Brazil.

According to the intellectual, support for the democratic process is due to the mistakes of Jair Bolsonaro mainly during the pandemic that left 700,000 deaths, half of which were preventable according to the World Health Organization.


“That meant that not even the right-wing people wanted to continue with Bolsonaro. And now, when they saw that they tried to destroy democracy itself, they all gathered around Lula” added the interviewee.

In the thinking of the intellectual, the Latin American right has always had a secret weapon: the coup. They have always served democracy and have not served democracy.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/brasil-i ... -0007.html.

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

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