Brazil

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 25, 2022 3:13 pm

US State Department pressures Brazil to confront Russia

The US State Department has demanded that Brazil take a position against its BRICS ally Russia in relation to Ukraine.

In a January 10th phone call between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Brazilian Foreign Minister Carlos França, the former insisted that a “strong and united” response was needed against an alleged Moscow offensive against neighbouring Ukraine.

According to a statement released by the US State Department, the crisis in Eastern Europe was one of the priorities discussed during the conversation between the US and Brazil. The statement reads: “Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke today with Brazilian Foreign Minister Carlos França about shared priorities, including a need for a strong, united response against further Russian aggression against Ukraine. Secretary Blinken expressed appreciation for Brazil’s announcement that it will donate COVID-19 vaccines to Latin America, Caribbean, and African countries. The Secretary also welcomed the opportunity to work with Brazil during its United Nations Security Council membership, discussed plans for an upcoming high-level bilateral dialogue, and conferred on the dire security situation in Haiti.”

The US and Russia are currently negotiating in Geneva to try to defuse tensions over Ukraine. Russia has reiterated its own security demands, which involve a halt to NATO advancement into Ukraine. The US has threatened new sanctions if the approximately 100,000 troops are not withdrawn from the border between the countries.

Until the 2016 coup and subsequent election of US-aligned president Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil enjoyed close relations with Russia, a fellow member of the BRICS multipolar bloc alongside China, India and South Africa. Cooperation between the countries under Lula and Dilma included transfer of military technology from Russia to Brazil, such as the Mi-35 Helicopter Gunship. With an agreement already in place, the Rousseff government was also set to purchase the Pantsir S-1 surface to air missile and anti-aircraft artillery system, until her impeachment saw the deal deferred – an impasse which continues to this day. There have also been reports that the Brazilian Airforce’s 12 Russian Helicopters will now be sold, in a triangular operation involving the United Arab Emirates, which would result in the aircraft being sent to an anti-Islamist faction in Libya.

Analyst for the Workers Party in the Senate, Marcelo Zero, explains Washington’s impetus in realigning Brazil’s foreign policy to support its own interests requires opposition to its’ one time strategic and trading partners, Russia and China, and that a neutral foreign policy is not enough to satisfy the United States.

“Dilma Rousseff was deposed and Lula was arrested in an operation triggered by the US Department of Justice due, essentially, to Brazil’s independent foreign policy, which was not remotely hostile to Washington and its allies but placed emphasis on sovereign regional integration and strategic alliances with emerging powers, contrary to US interests.”

The analyst notes that this US imperative casts a shadow over the coming presidential election, “This has to be taken into consideration during Brazil’s 2022 election race. The debate on foreign policy has to be a central issue in the next presidential elections. The Brazilian population has to have a clear idea of who really places national interests above all others. And everyone has to know that those who betrayed the nation in the past will do it again.”

This became more apparent with reports of a visit to Brazil by CIA director William J. Burns where he met the Bolsonaro government and attended an audience with the director of the Institutional Security Office (GSI), General Augusto Heleno, in the presence of Alexandre Ramagem, director general of Brazilian Intelligence Agency ABIN, and General Walter Braga Netto, Minister of Defence. In the evening, the director of the CIA participated in a dinner with Heleno and with the Government Secretary, General Luiz Eduardo Ramos.

Just weeks later, President Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also visited the Bolsonaro regime, this time with an emphasis on halting China’s advance in the telecommunications sector. The delegation, headed by Sullivan, discussed this subject with Communications minister Fábio Faria, from Communications, and General Augusto Heleno, from the Institutional Security Office (GSI). The US has been campaigning worldwide against the use of Chinese equipment, yet the Brazilian telecommunications sector is said to be against the barring of Chinese companies.

Sullivan’s delegation doubled down on a Trump-era pledge to make Brazil a NATO ‘global partner’ member, on the condition that it rejects Chinese Huawei and adopts the US model for its 5G network. The promise of NATO partnership is thus also assumed to depend on foreign policy alignment with the United States over Russia-Ukraine.

https://www.brasilwire.com/united-state ... nt-russia/

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“Moro will soon be deactivated by his owners in the USA, because he is useless” says Senator

Senator Renan Calheiros, former president of the upper house, described the Operation Lava Jato judge turned presidential hopeful as ‘a first-generation robot, with no ability to learn’…

Carta Capital reports that senior Senator Renan Calheiros (MDB-AL), former president of the upper house, who more recently held the post of rapporteur to the Congressional Covid inquiry, has attacked presidential pre-candidate Sergio Moro.

Calheiros dismissed Moro as “a first-generation robot with no ability to learn.”

“It was created for Lava Jato and has not been adapted for any new function. Furthermore, it has no feeling or emotion, it is hollow. Any day now it will be deactivated by its owners in the USA because it became useless”, the Senator added.

Calheiros was referring to Moro’s well documented and extensive connections to U.S. government, intelligence, and corporate power, which are alleged to have been principal motivators behind his lawfare campaign against Lula and the Workers Party, which helped see president Dilma Rousseff removed from office, and prevent her predecessor Lula from returning to the presidency.

Hours earlier, former President Lula, in a collective interview with journalists from independent websites in Brasília, spoke of Operation Car Wash, and specifically Sergio Moro, the man responsible for the politically motivated judgement which saw the him jailed and eliminated from the 2018 election race he was on course to win.

“I was lucky that the Brazilian people helped me prove the farce mounted against me. I managed to dismantle the scoundrel Moro in the judgment of my cases… Dallagnol , the lie, the fake news, the gang’s PowerPoint. I managed to prove what a gang they were”, the former president remarked.

Minutes after the interview, Moro responded on social media: “The scoundrel is the one who stole from the Brazilian people for years and who used our money to finance dictatorships. And gang is the name of the group that did that, put there by you, Lula, in Petrobras. You will be defeated. It only offends you because there is no way to explain the corruption in your government”.

Despite once enjoying high popularity, prior to Operation Lava Jato’s spectacular fall from grace, and a degree of legacy name recognition stemming from the PR campaign that surrounded it, Moro has fared poorly since announcing his Podemos party ticket presidential bid in November. Moro’s exit from the Bolsonaro government in 2020 meant his rumoured ambition for a place on the Supreme Court came to nothing, and he is disliked by Bolsonaro supporters, with among the highest rejection rate of any candidate.

Presented as a “third way” candidate, and more acceptable face for continuation of Bolsonaro government policy, Moro currently trails Lula by 35% here have been reports that Moro will abandon his presidential candidacy if his polling has not reached 15% by March, and may possibly instead attempt a run for Senate, Congress, or abandon Brazil altogether for the United States.

https://www.brasilwire.com/moro-will-so ... s-senator/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Feb 07, 2022 3:05 pm

US-backed Moro Secretly Tried To Prevent Dilma’s 2014 Re-Election

New evidence shows how the U.S.-coached judge and presidential hopeful Sergio Moro fabricated a media scandal on the brink of the 2014 election designed to bring down the incumbent president Dilma Rousseff. It is yet further evidence that Operation Lava Jato, which he now admits he commanded, was a political weapon from the outset, and one which was working on behalf of the U.S. Government and its Corporate interests.

It was nothing less than U.S. interference in yet another foreign election. And it failed…but not for long.


Since its creation in September 2014, Brasil Wire has reported extensively, and often alone in the anglosphere, on U.S. support for the soft coup against Dilma Rousseff, imprisonment of Lula da Silva, and resulting election of Bolsonaro. Whilst the latter gained eventual (but limited) wider acknowledgement, the documented U.S. role in Brazil’s democratic collapse is still an absolute taboo amongst mainstream U.S. reporters in Brazil, even those purporting to be dissident investigative journalists.

Operation Lava Jato, assisted by the U.S. Department of Justice, FBI, and other U.S. Government agencies, was central to successive phases of an anti-democratic coup which resulted in a U.S.-aligned, far-right, military-dominated government controlling Brazil. These are incontrovertible facts.

Working backwards, we see Sergio Moro’s jailing of Lula, and overturning of his release which prevented him definitively from running and likely winning the 2018 election opened the door for a Bolsonaro victory. Moro was awarded with a ministerial position in Bolsonaro’s first government, and Lava Jato prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol notoriously called Lula’s imprisonment “a gift from the CIA“. In 2016 it was Moro’s illegally wiretapped and carefully edited conversations between then President Rousseff and Lula which created the media furore that consolidated support for her impeachment in Congress.

Swing the Election

But it is a crucial earlier episode, one which is often overlooked, that has now returned to the fore: Moro’s earlier interference in the 2014 election. it was an election that just over a year before had looked like a certain Rousseff victory.

Operation Lava Jato was then only six months old, was being hyped relentlessly in both Brazilian and anglophone media, and was already being conducted under the tutelage of U.S. agents.

Curitiba Judge Moro was being depicted as a hero, with his reputation as someone who would take down Lula and the Workers Party already dating back almost a decade. In 2006, conservative journalist and TV host Luiz Carlos Alborghetti predicted that Moro, then largely unknown, would be the man who would ultimately imprison them.

Moro’s coaching by U.S. DoJ, on how to “take down a King“, can also be traced back to that period, over a decade before Bolsonaro was elected. Names of U.S. agents working with Moro and the Lava Jato taskforce were reported by Agencia Publica and other outlets.

With Moro now attempting his own presidential run, the latest revelation centres around an already infamous cover of Veja magazine, published on October 23, 2014, three days before the second round runoff between Dilma Rousseff and U.S.-backed neoliberal Aécio Neves. That cover is emblematic of the coup attempt then already in motion.

As Brasil Wire reported in August 2015: “Last week, ex-president Lula filed a libel lawsuit against Veja for using hearsay to accuse him of taking bribes from Odebrecht construction company. The article was accompanied with a characteristic Veja cover photo of Lula frowning in the shadows. Last October, Veja was tried for electoral fraud and forced to immediately remove any online reference to a special edition released on the eve the Presidential elections that erroneously accused Dilma Rousseff and Lula of direct involvement in scandal involving the state Petroleum company.”

The timing of the Veja cover was already deeply suspicious, and the leaking of information to the press intended to impact the election result had seen Moro’s impartiality questioned since 2014.

But new evidence of how, coached by U.S. agents, and commanded by Moro, Lava Jato prosecutors and allies in the Public Prosecutor’s Office and Federal Police actually fabricated a scandal, designed to alter the course of the election, using a loyalist conservative media partner for maximum impact, right before the second round runoff.

Forged Testimony

Reporting in ConJur, journalist Márcio Chaer explains how the 2014 election episode transpired: “The second round fell on a Sunday. The day before, the bombshell news, spread on billboards erected throughout the country, reported that “money changer Alberto Youssef, cashier of the corruption scheme at Petrobras, revealed to the Federal Police and the Federal Public Ministry, last Tuesday (the 21st), that Lula and Dilma Rousseff were aware of the dark transactions in the state company”. “They knew everything,” insisted the explosive headline.”

It is now known that a few lines of the “testimony” — in fact, an “addition” of a denunciation that did not yet exist — were fabricated to make the report viable. The proof of this is in a video of Youssef’s testimony, with Federal Police Delegates, Lava Jato prosecutors and a regional judge, Moro, investigating a President of the Republic on the eve of her re-election.

Moro himself commanded the preliminary hearing, despite the case being already under jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

Moro then leaked Youssef’s doctored testimony to Veja, including the fabricated segment about Lula and Dilma, knowing that after the election the now deceased Supreme Court Minister and Lava Jato rapporteur Teori Zavascki would not include it in the final evidence.

It didn’t matter, the electoral damage to Dilma would be done, and such was the impact of the Veja story that it would be taken as fact. It was central to the defeated Neves’ call for his supporters to reject the election result, and persisted right through the campaign to impeach her, even to the present day.

The media spectacle was staged by Federal Police delegate Márcio Anselmo and by prosecutors Diogo Castor de Mattos and Roberto Pozzobom, under the direction of Sergio Moro. Conversations between the delegates celebrating the Veja cover were later leaked by hacker Walter Delgatti.

New clarity on the episode is key to understanding what happened both before and after, and the level of media complicity. Alberto Youssef, imprisoned for more than seven months, was in poor health. He was allowed to be hospitalised only after agreeing to the testimony against the PT. Veja magazine reproduced Moro’s “addition” to Youssef’s testimony:

“Asked about the level of commitment of authorities in the corruption scheme at Petrobras, the money changer was emphatic:
-The Planalto knew everything!
-But who at the Planalto? …
-Lula and Dilma, replied the money changer.”


Youssef had said no such thing, and Sérgio Moro had no authority to, but he was the one who articulated the testimony, in contact with lawyers, the police and the MPF. It was under pressure from Moro that the money changer was taken to testify. In the United States, this is called “corrupt legal practice.” Youssef was also prohibited from citing authorities with jurisdiction in Brasília so that the case would not “escape” Curitiba, which had been identified in a 2008 US State Department cable as one of several ideal host cities for what would become Operation Lava Jato.

Petrobras manager, Pedro Barusco, has always insisted that he has received bribes at the company since the 1990s. But, under instruction from attorneys, only declared bribes received from 2003 onwards, because he was advised that Lava Jato did not cover previous periods. In other words, the target was the PT governments of Lula and Dilma Rousseff.

This erasure of a corruption scheme’s origins, which long pre-dated Lula’s election, was reflected in Lava Jato loyalist media not just nationally, in Veja and Globo, but in the anglosphere. This was exposed in mid 2015, through Reuters ‘podemos tirar se achar melhor‘ (we can take this out if you think best) controversy. Then Brazil Reuters correspondent Brian Winter and bureau chief Todd Benson were implicated upon discovery that former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s admission, that the so called Petrolão corruption scheme already existed under his government, had been censored, as it contradicted the narrative being built that the PT was uniquely corrupt and responsible for the scandal. Winter had previously ghostwritten Cardoso’s autobiography, and following the incident, left Reuters to become vice president of policy at Council of the Americas, the lobby representing U.S. oil, banking and other business interests invested in Rousseff’s downfall, and the organisation began relentlessly promoting Sergio Moro and Operation Lava Jato. Benson left his post for Google Brazil, which itself helped foment the new right-wing political forces then already campaigning for Rousseff’s overthrow. An influential pair in international media circles, there was little anglophone coverage or investigation of the incident at all.

Márcio Chaer concludes: “Youssef never admitted to his lawyers knowing anything about the Planalto Palace. What he always reported was that the conversations about money with the PT took place through the former deputy José Janene, who, in turn, was related to Paulo Roberto da Costa. There is not a single record that Alberto Youssef has made any reference to Dilma or Lula, outside the testimony created by Sérgio Moro.”

Further exposure of Moro’s anti-democratic actions in Lava Jato’s first year kills off once and for all a persistent myth that the anti-corruption operation began with good intentions and “lost its way” and “over reached”, or the misleading narrative prevalent on the pro-Lava Jato left during Dilma’s impeachment, namely that her removal was actually designed to shut down Lava Jato, despite it being central to the plot against her on various fronts: economic, mediatic and judicial.

The 2014 episode was by and large forgotten in Brazil’s tumult since, but it integral to the story, no less important, and demonstrates how media spectacle and the whitewashing of Lava Jato, which continued until Bolsonaro was president, were central to its success in dismantling a successful, sovereign left-wing government, in what had been the world’s 6th largest economy.

https://www.brasilwire.com/us-backed-mo ... -election/

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Lula on the Gig Economy and Capitalist Alienation

From 1975 – 1981, Lula was President of the ABC Metalworkers Union in São Bernardo do Campo, the polluted, industrial satellite city of São Paulo where he still lives to this day. On Saturday, January 29, he returned to his former union to congratulate its new President, Moisés Selerges. The following is an excerpt from his speech in which he talks about the effects of the post-coup, 2017 labor reforms which rolled back labor rights by 70 years in Brazil, and the alienation caused by the Gig economy that was facilitated by these reforms.

What were us metalworkers when this labor category began? Moisés’ father remembers. Normally metalworkers were people who had moved in from the country – people who may have taken a trade course. They were people who were entering the world of the factory for the first time. They were people who often had moved here from the countryside to work in the auto industry, or they were people like me who had come from Northeastern Brazil to work. We didn’t have much education. We may have have finished grammar school, maybe high school and at the most, trade school. But these kids today have studied a lot more than we did. These kids have college degrees, Moisés . Your kids have college degrees and your grand-kids will get them. Wagner and Sergio Nobre (Ex-Metalworkers Union presidents who were at the event) – their kids have college degrees. These kids today have studied 3, 4 or 5 times more than we did.

But even though these kids studied more than us, what is their future? You economists, what future awaits these kids? What can the labor market offer for these youth who studied, who believed, who dreamed, that now realize that they can’t have the stability their parents had because they invented a bunch of lies about us. They even said that our rights like the 13th paycheck, vacation and profit sharing were all the “Brazil cost”. They said if they removed all of those rights that the working class achieved, we’d become a cheaper labor force and they’d pay less taxes and the businesses would grow and they’d take what they had been paying in taxes and it would go towards our salaries. This was a lie. They didn’t pay. They didn’t grow.

Today the newspapers are showing that we’ve had the largest fall in salaries since the IBGE started measuring them in this country, because work has become precarious. The kids today are getting jobs that pay half of what their parents earned. These kids have college diplomas that the companies often don’t even look at. There are people with college diplomas working at gas stations. There are people with college diplomas that the businessmen haven’t even asked to look at because they are offering a job that pays R$1500 or R$1600/month. They’ve even invented this idea that working with a signed labor card is too expensive. That the worker shouldn’t want this and that he should be, you know what? An individual micro-entrepreneur. Buy a bicycle and start delivering for Ifoods because you are an individual micro-entrepreneur. A small businessman. Who doesn’t want to be a businessman?

When I was working in the factory in 1972, you know what my dream was, Moisés ? We didn’t have the word “micro-entrepreneur” back then. It’s a new thing. During those days our dream was to leave the factory and either open a bar or buy a taxi. This was our grand aspiration. Either open a bar – and some of us really couldn’t do it because we’d drink it instead of selling it and we’d want to by a taxi. These days, no. These days they tell kids if they buy a car and start working for Uber they’ll be micro-entrepreneurs. And they just realize they aren’t when the car breaks down, when they get sick, when their spouse gets sick and they realize that they don’t have any rights. When they realize that they’re working much more to pay the app than they bring home to take care of the family. When the motorcycle crashes and they gets hurt they realize that they are worth nothing. They realize that they are an instrument of an app and they don’t know their own bosses.

Back in our day we knew our bosses. We’d go to the factory door and insult the Germans, we’d insult the Germans at the door of the Mercedes factory. We’d insult the colonel at Volkswagen, we’d insult the major at Ford. Now they don’t have them. The guy who grabs a bike to deliver pizza doesn’t have anyone to insult because the face of the app is invisible for him. He doesn’t have any rights, he doesn’t have a labor card, he doesn’t have vacation, he doesn’t have maternity support or a 13th check. We are going back to being pariahs in a capitalist system that is modernizing in technology but that doesn’t benefit the working class.

This excerpt was transcribed and translated by Brian Mier

https://www.brasilwire.com/lula-on-gig- ... lienation/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 09, 2022 2:29 pm

Moro’s U.S. Law Firm Received R$40 Million From His Lava Jato Targets, Says Federal Audit Court

Brazil’s Federal Audit Court has asked the Attorney General to freeze presidential pre-candidate Sergio Moro’s assets. The court (TCU) says that the law firm which until recently employed the disgraced ex-judge received more than R$40 million ($8 million USD) from companies he convicted in Operation Lava Jato, and with whom he negotiated leniency agreements.

A spiral of disgrace surrounding presidential pre-candidate Sergio Moro only accelerates. With the U.S.-trained former anti corruption hero’s poll numbers now stuck at single figures, and amid rumours he will abandon his presidential campaign altogether, the latest scandal puts even his backup plan for a Senate run into doubt. Having once waged a lawfare campaign against his potential election adversary Lula da Silva, which kept the former president out of the 2018 election, Moro has himself now tried to claim that he is a victim of “lawfare”.

CNN reports that the Federal Audit Court (TCU) has shared with the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) documents about money received by Sergio Moro during his stint at the U.S. based Alvarez & Marsal law firm. Brasil Wire reported on his appointment to the firm in december 2020. The TCU also asked the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) to rule on an immediate request for the blocking of Moro’s assets.

It is suspected that the former judge, who has extensive connections to U.S. government, intelligence and private sector, who was by then acting as lawyer after leaving the Bolsonaro government in 2020, received payments from companies that he had judged, condemned, and endorsed leniency agreements for, via Alvarez & Marsal. It is as yet unclear as yet how much of the R$40 million in payments from the Lava Jato convicted companies Moro received directly to his own accounts. It is not the first instance of kickbacks from the U.S. to those involved in Operation Lava Jato.

Federal Audit Court Minister Bruno Dantas has complained about efforts to impede investigation of payments Moro recieved: “I have no doubt that these are facts that need to be further investigated. And it is for this reason that I am surprised by a certain hasty action by any petitioner who intends to interrupt the natural flow of the process, even before the conclusion of the investigations. It is natural that those investigated want this outcome…”.

According to the Audit Court decision, Alvarez & Marsal “received around R$40 million from companies sentenced in Lava Jato, including R$1 million per month from Odebrecht e Ativos (former agro-industrial company), BRL 150,000 from Galvão Engenharia, BRL 97,000 from from OAS and R$ 115 thousand monthly from the Enseada Shipyard.”

Moro was hired by Alvarez & Marsal after leaving his post as Bolsonaro’s Justice Minister, having delivered the far right candidate Brazil’s presidency by his jailing of then frontrunner Lula. Upon moving to the United States and taking up the post as a managing partner in November 2020, Alvarez & Marsal announced that Moro would join an unusual team, made up of former US intelligence and security agency employees, including former DOJ prosecutor Steve Spiegelhalter, retired FBI agent Bill Waldie, and Roberto De Cicco, who had previously worked at the National Security Agency.

Moro’s intervention in the construction and energy sectors in early 2015, bankrupting several of the companies who would later seek the assistance of Alvarez & Marsal, amounted to a manufactured economic crisis which, along with his own anti-corruption narrative, underpinned both the coup against Dilma Rousseff and election of Jair Bolsonaro.

He remained at the company, which had been hired for assistance in restructuring Lava Jato’s target companies, until he decided to launch his own presidential bid. In April 2021 Brasil Wire had reported how Moro, while at Alvarez & Marsal was taking part in secret negotiations between the U.S. government, Brazilian representatives and private sector over the future of the Amazon, despite the lawyer holding no publicly declared position or remit to do so.

It is suspected that companies he tried as a judge went on to make payments to him, via Alvarez & Marsal, once he was out of government. Moro always claimed that there was no conflict of interest is that he never acted for the companies he judged. Invoices listed by the Audit Court, however, cast doubt on his denials.

On these grounds, the Minister Dantas shared the findings of the Audit Court and left the question of blocking Moro’s assets for the Attorney General to decide.

“I order the sending of a full copy of these records to the Attorney General of the Republic so that he can examine the matter and, if he deems this the case, determine the measures for its investigation, as well as regarding the pertinence of the eventual blocking of assets claimed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, of accounts”, said Dantas in the decision.

Moro’s press office has called for the investigation into the payments to be shelved.

https://www.brasilwire.com/alvarez-mars ... dit-court/

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Brazilian women seize farm in rejection of agrarian reform

Image
In the municipality of Lençóis Paulista, the protest action occurred in front of the main entrance of Bracell, a Singapore-based company. | Photo: @MST_Oficial
Published March 8, 2022

According to the female sector of the MST, the agrarian reform can affect the productive families of the country.

The women of the Movement of Rural Landless Workers (MST) occupied this Tuesday the Botafogo Farm, in the municipality of Jussari in Bahia, which consists of 313 hectares of productive land occupied by national companies for the Agrarian Reform.

According to the entity, at least 100 women protested under the slogan "Land, Work, Right to exist, Women in Struggle we will not succumb!", where they emphasized their position of solidarity after carrying out internal activities in the MST's Agrarian Reform areas.

Likewise, the female sector demonstrated in front of the multinational companies of Syngenta and Bracell, in Sao Paulo; and in the Bunge company, in Baixada Fluminense.


In this sense, the leader of the International Relations Collective of the MST, Cássia Bechara, the protests against the pesticide multinationals contributes to the calendar of demonstrations prepared by the day for Women's Day 2022, representing the position of the population against the approval of the Poison Pack.

“We women without land today, by denouncing companies like Syngenta and Bunge, are joining our voice to the voice of the entire Brazilian society to say; no more poison, no more poisoning, day after day, with so many prohibited pesticides”, pointed out the leader, Cássia Bechara.


Thus, the women of the MST denounced that the pressure of the company Bracell; as well as the application of the cellulose product, facilitated by its high relevance within the market that allows alliances of farmers in the region, can originate more areas for the Agrarian Reform; for which at least 500 families will be affected.

"In Brazil, the acquisition of land by foreigners is prohibited, but it seems that Bracell circumvented this rule, creating in 2018 Turvinho Participações Ltda, a Brazilian company based in the Bracell conglomerate in Lençois Paulista," said the leader, Cássia Bechara .

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/brasil-m ... -0038.html

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu Mar 17, 2022 2:40 pm

Image

Dossier no. 50: The military’s return to Brazilian politics
Posted Mar 16, 2022 by The Tricontinental

Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research (March 14, 2022 ) |

Throughout history, the Brazilian Armed Forces have looked inwards towards their own territory and peoples. They are centred around the construction of an ‘internal enemy’ to justify its tactics, strategies, and accumulation of forces. The art for this dossier highlights emblematic ‘internal enemies’ constructed throughout history. These portraits, placed alongside other historical artifacts, rekindle a collective memory. They are, in fact, portraits of ourselves–the people, the poor, and the dispossessed–in the act of resistance.

Introduction

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Brazil is in danger of becoming a country whose political economy is rooted in militarism, diverting precious social wealth to the military and police as it imposes a military ethic onto public life. To construct peace, on the other hand, would mean to eradicate hunger and illiteracy, to increase the social and productive capacity of the people, and to improve the infrastructure for social life and commerce–indicators that all saw tremendous improvements under the Workers’ Party (PT) government from 2003 until the 2016 coup against then President Dilma Rousseff. Since the 2016 coup, Brazil has experienced a rollback of these social gains as well as a military presence increased to the highest level since the 1964–1985 dictatorship.

The agenda of President Jair Bolsonaro (who is not affiliated with any political party) has been marked not only by his radical discourse, but also by his increased participation in military ceremonies–as was clear on 7 September 2021, Brazil’s Independence Day, when he called upon his supporters to take to the streets and protest Congress and the courts following weeks engulfed with tension and speculation over a possible coup. Proud of having emerged from the military’s ranks, the former captain knows that the armed forces have been decisive in his gaining and remaining in power.

Three years before the demonstrations invoked by Bolsonaro, his ascendance to power was challenged by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), who was leading in the opinion polls for the upcoming presidential election. However, Lula’s candidacy was put to an end when he was convicted on false fraud charges, prevented from taking part in the elections, and subsequently imprisoned for 580 days, only to be exonerated in March 2021. On the eve of the court’s judgement to rule on Lula’s appeal for habeus corpus in 2019–and minutes before the country’s main TV news programme went on the air–then-commander of the Brazilian army, General Eduardo Villas Bôas, posted a note on Twitter that had been drafted with the mutual consent of the Army High Command in which he subtly threatened the court, stating that the military “repudiates impunity”. The habeus corpus petition was denied by a narrow vote (6 to 5) and Lula was imprisoned a few days later. During the electoral campaign, two justices of that same Supreme Court were advised by the court’s president at the time not to take harsher measures against then-presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro’s campaign for its massive and illegal spreading of misinformation and fake news so as not to displease the military. During his certification ceremony as president-elect, Bolsonaro directly addressed General Villas Bôas, who was present at the event, and thanked him for having ‘influenced the fate of the nation’, commenting that he was ‘responsible’ for his election. Well before Bolsonaro’s election, the Brazilian Armed Forces were already acting as a genuine ‘Military Party’–a unified grouping representing the military’s interests and ideology in politics.

Today, Brazil has the second largest military force in the Americas ­– second only to the United States. The country has the most military personnel of any country in Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere, with 334,500 active forces–an average of 18 service members for every 10,000 Brazilians. Yet, Brazil is not a global military power, lacking nuclear capabilities and the ability to launch ballistic missiles.

The leading role that the Brazilian Armed Forces has played within the country in recent years is a key component to understanding the current neofascist wave as well as the setback in social rights that had been won in the 2000s. Sectors of the Brazilian military, which secretly conspired in the coup against President Dilma Rousseff (PT), are political and organisational pillars of the military-financial-neo-Pentecostal coalition that brought Jair Bolsonaro to power. The military’s increasing presence and interference in recent years marks an end to the period of almost three decades during which it was absent from the national political spotlight following the end of the military dictatorship (1964–1985). Three decades is a small passage of time for an entity that has otherwise had a permanent presence in Brazil’s political life.

The military and its current expression through the federal government are shaped by a conservative and liberal ideology which is characterised by five core components:

Corporatism, in which military personnel’s sense of belonging to the military apparatus surpasses any other, including even national sentiment. Soldiers perceive themselves to be superior to civilians, while the military apparatus considers itself to be the true essence of the nation; its ‘manifest destiny’ is its ‘mission to save the nation’.
A vision of a state apparatus that is weakened when it comes to private commercial interests, but which is strengthened when it comes to areas of the military and police.
Conservative Christian-humanist values, laden with notions of individualism, an ethic of success, and the idea that only the strong should prosper. The military considers identity-based struggles–such as combatting racism, sexism, and homophobia–to be divisive.
Conservative liberalism, which sees democracy as the business of elites, with the masses only responsible for voting–and not necessarily through a universal franchise.
Anti-communism, which sees communism as the military’s historic enemy in Brazil and as contrary to the Western order.


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Through these ideological frameworks, we can better understand the Brazilian Armed Forces’ behaviour. The military and its organisations–bureaucratic, political, and social–have risen to the surface of politics to openly contest the future of Brazilian society. This is visible across a number of areas, including the privatisation of public enterprises, the country’s subservience to the United States, the military’s political management of the pandemic and massive occupation of public offices, the increased privileges accorded to higher ranks and their material distance from the lower ranks, the reclaiming of the military’s political role, the reorganisation of the military’s instruments of hegemony in the state and their alignment with obscurantism, and the myth of ‘cultural Marxism’ (that growing cultural liberalism is a subversive leftist plot).

In this dossier, we analyse the composition of Brazil’s armed forces, their relationship to U.S. imperialism, and the militarisation of public sector. To understand current matters, we must first examine the historical development of the military and its functions.

A Brief Historical Overview

In terms of foreign relations, Brazil has historically been a peaceful nation guided by diplomacy and by political and commercial pragmatism. It has generally not involved itself in conventional conflicts with other countries, except as an auxiliary force to Britain and the United States during World Wars I and II.

In contrast to other South American countries, Brazil’s independence was not achieved through military conflicts but through negotiations with Portugal. It consolidated most of its territory through diplomatic accords, with the exceptions of the Cisplatine War (1825–1828), in which Brazil lost what is now Uruguay, and the Paraguayan War (1864–1870). It was in this latter conflict–which was responsible for the greatest number of war-related deaths of Brazilians in the country’s history and for practically decimating the entire adult male population of Paraguay–that Brazil sought to professionalise its military organisation and professionalise its military organisation and its armed forces for the first time.[1]

However, domestically, the history of Brazil’s military is one of continual political involvement with the explicit purpose of repressing conflicts between social classes and political organisations.[2] During the colonial period (1500–1815), there were over 30 armed conflicts that pitted native people, African slaves, Portuguese colonisers, Luso-Brazilian (mixed Brazilian/Portuguese) colonisers, and colonisers of other nationalities (particularly the Dutch and the French) against each other. During the imperial period (1822–1889), the armed forces worked to repress social movements and uphold the monarchical, oligarchic, and slave-owning regime, crushing dozens of popular revolts including the insurrections of Cabanada (1832–1835), Carrancas (1833), Cabanagem (1835–1840), Malês (1835), Sabinada (1837–1838), and Balaiada (1838–1841). At the same time, while lower-ranking soldiers were subjected to discipline–including torture as a form of punishment–high-ranking officers became part of the monarchical elite, occupying positions in the state and in parliament. The Republic itself was established through a military coup led by army generals allied with regional oligarchs, an alliance that was cemented through the repression of the liberal revolts and popular insurrections of Canudos (1896–1897) and Contestado (1912–1916).

After World War I, a diverse movement of lower-ranking officers known as tenentismo (from tenente, the word for lieutenant in Portuguese) allied itself with liberals and oligarchs from the opposition along with the incipient workers’ movement with the aim of taking down the oligarchic regime and modernising the nation. What is referred to as the Revolution of 1930, led by Getúlio Vargas and officers who had emerged from tenentismo, pushed forward the centralisation of state power, broad social reforms–notably workers’ rights and the organisation of labour unions–and the growing political repression of the regime’s opponents. Following the initial push for industrialisation and the opening up of the regime, the country went through a period of governments that were elected through limited popular participation.

After World War II, Vargas was deposed through popular pressure with the backing of the armed forces and was succeeded by the election of General Eurico Gaspar Dutra. Vargas returned to the presidency in 1950 in the context of the Cold War and a confrontation between two different projects. On the one hand, there was Vargas’s top-down national developmentalism, a state policy that prioritised the development of the country’s infrastructure over foreign interests. This stood in conflict with, on the other hand, the country’s unconditional political, military, and economic subordination to the United States, which was promoted by military officials and the business oligarchy. The confrontation between these two projects also suggested contrasting visions of how much popular participation there should be in the country. This conflict resulted not only in Vargas’s suicide in 1954, but also in a series of coup attempts against elected presidents in 1955, 1961, and finally, in the business-military coup of 1964, which was politically and materially supported by the U.S..

The dictatorship would be the model and source of support for other dictatorships that were subsequently installed in South and Central America, acting directly to install dictators in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Guatemala. During this period in Brazil, army generals in power led a series of state and societal reforms that aimed to neutralise labour organisations and decimate revolutionary organisations–focusing in particular on those guerrillas that resisted the dictatorship from 1965–1974. Additionally, the 1964 coup deepened Brazil’s dependence on the U.S.–especially ideologically and economically–and led to a monumental increase in external debt, severe wage repression, growing poverty, and hyperinflation.[3]

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The dictatorship came to an end after twenty-one years in power, spurred both by popular mobilisation demanding direct elections as well as by the economic crisis. However, the transition was overseen by the military, which guaranteed not only that their civilian ally José Sarney (1985–1989) would hold the presidency, but also that the army’s institutional autonomy would be preserved, notably in terms of the military’s budget and its legal, educational, and intelligence structures; its bureaucratic privileges; in the impunity of its leadership with respect to the state terrorism for which it had been responsible; and in its immunity to the democratic mechanisms of the new Constitution of 1988. The military continued to exercise permanent guardianship over political institutions by retaining its ability to intervene in domestic affairs–to guarantee law and order–and by preserving the military police, an auxiliary force of the army that is responsible for overt policing in each federal state. In moments of crisis–such as the impending threat of a coup in the lead up to demonstrations of Bolsonaro supporters on Brazil’s Independence Day in 2021–the behaviour of military police personnel can be decisive in determining how coup threats or attempts unfold. As we have seen, the Brazilian Armed Forces have always directed their interventions towards the domestic arena, considering popular organisations and forces to be internal enemies needing to being permanently ‘neutralised’ should they have the ability to execute political action.[4]

The 2016 Coup and the Military’s Return to the Political Scene

Civil-military relations saw a period of relative stability during the Workers’ Party government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2011). The armed forces restricted their political participation to only those areas that they deemed to be a threat to national security, such as public safety, the demarcation of indigenous lands, and defence policy. As part of a pact that aimed to achieve peaceful coexistence, Lula did not adopt any measures that might have threatened the military apparatus, nor did the armed forces challenge their subordination to civil authority.

Civil-military relations gradually deteriorated under the government of Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016). The mere fact of having a commander-in-chief, Dilma, who was not only a woman but also a former guerrilla who had fought against the 1964 dictatorship was understood as an affront to the military’s values. Beyond its commitment to machismo and anti-communism, the military was also motivated by its opposition to the government’s creation of the National Truth Commission, which sought to hold the armed forces accountable for the crimes committed they during the dictatorship. This process strengthened the military’s discursive coherence around a common enemy: the left. This was a decisive moment in shaping the political-cultural identity of the armed forces, as it represented an opportunity to hold it to account for a past that had been glorified for decades. Moreover, in many democracies, such truth commissions had been the prelude to organisational reforms to military institutions. Other factors also contributed to the armed forces’ political reorganisation and cohesion such as the military’s participation in MINUSTAH (the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, 2004–2017); the expansion of its military presence in Amazonia; the Guarantee of Law and Order operations;[5] and the role played in sporting megaevents in Brazil such as the World Cup and the Olympics.

The 2016 coup against Dilma Rousseff was led by a combination of business, parliamentary, and judicial forces. Publicly, the military was discreet, but behind the scenes it expressed support for the coup’s conspirators. The armed forces kept a watchful eye over the government of Michel Temer (2016–2018) that took power after President Dilma’s ousting, continually pressuring state institutions such as the judiciary, as noted at the outset. Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 was a product of the confluence of political, social, and economic crises that opened a window of opportunity for the far right. Sectors of the military ran Bolsonaro’s campaign and have had a visible presence from the start of the transition from the Temer to Bolsonaro administrations, presenting themselves as the government’s technocratic wing–in reality, the ‘military wing’–able to moderate the president’s outbursts.

From an ideological perspective, there are no substantial tensions between the military and neo-Pentecostal sectors that support the government: both consider themselves to be representatives of the so-called traditional Brazilian family as they have defined the term. The same holds for neoliberal sectors of the government. In contrast to the apparent belief of a section of the Brazilian left, which attributes a supposed economic nationalism to the military, there has been no military opposition whatsoever to the government’s privatisation efforts. Tensions with physiological groups [6] of the political centre about how to divvy up the spoils of the Brazilian state have been dealt with pragmatically, without any moral outcry.

Brazil today does not have a government made up of military officers, since the officers occupying political positions do not do so as individuals but rather as a part of a single apparatus, separate from the rest of society. Unlike during the 1964 dictatorship, the armed forces do not choose their civil representatives based on principles of efficiency and discipline. Rather, there is a hybrid: a militarised government, in which a ‘Military Party’–a political grouping rooted in former military officers and steeped in military culture–shapes the current bloc in power. This ‘party’ moulded Bolsonaro over the span of decades; it has a long-term project of power and intends to remain active on the Brazilian political scene.

The military’s political advance has led to the militarisation of both the Brazilian state and society, which takes place in multiple ways:[7]

*The military’s growing occupation of political offices, whether through elections or by appointment. This creates a channel through which military interests are transmitted to the entire political system. Most recently, Bolsonaro’s former minister of defence, Army General Azevedo e Silva–who is associated with a group of military officers who participated in the 2016 coup–was nominated to be director-general of the federal court responsible for overseeing the electoral process across the country. Additionally, the armed forces were assigned as election observers to enforce the integrity of electronic voting machines, despite the fact that Bolsonaro has repeatedly accused this technology of being fraudulent.
*The imposition of military doctrines drafted with war in mind onto other arenas through government policy. This has historically occurred in matters of public security, where doctrines aimed at combating the ‘internal enemy’ have guided the military police, who are responsible for overt and preventative policing; these doctrines have in turn been extended to civil public security institutions. A more punitive approach has been adopted toward the poor, resulting in increases in the prison population, electronic surveillance, summary executions, arbitrary arrests, and other serious violations of human rights that are extensions of war by other means inside the city.
*The transfer of military values onto public administration, such as through proposals to militarise schools by introducing conservative behaviours, customs, orders, and associated ideas as key values, prioritising hard sciences over the humanities and excluding those considered to be ‘less able’.
*The militarisation of any and all problems, such as the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is not a matter of war-making but rather of public health.
*The militarisation of the state budget. This not only involves funding defence industries and maintaining the working conditions of the armed forces (whose personnel received a wage increase during the pandemic while other public servants had their wages frozen);[8] the military also controls 16 of Brazil’s 46 state-owned enterprises including Petrobras and Electrobras, which, if one takes into account subsidiaries (49 and 69, respectively), means that the military controls 61% of companies directly or indirectly connected to the state, a rate ten times higher than during the preceding government of Michel Temer.[9]

It should be made clear that militarisation is not only taking place at the executive level but also in the legislature and the judiciary. Between 2010 and 2020 alone, over 25,000 military and police personnel ran for office; 87% of them belonged to right-wing parties, and 1,860 of them were elected.[10] The influx of military personnel into political offices led to the passing of the Anti-Terrorism Bill, which criminalises popular struggle, among other consequences.[11]

Militarisation is not only taking place within the structures of the state; Brazil is a shining example of a country that wages war at home while maintaining a peaceful attitude abroad. The country is home to 17 of the 50 most violent cities in the world, or 34%,[12] not to mention the historic violence inflicted upon rural areas and indigenous populations or the fact that violence, in the form of slavery, is the determining feature of Brazil’s social formation. Today, Brazil is the second most dangerous place in the world for human rights advocates.[13]

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Grafico (Source: Federal Senate[15])

The most visible aspect of militarisation is the intense physical presence of security forces in the streets, such as the armed forces, civil and military police, municipal guards, along with the enormous network of private security forces. The Bolsonaro government’s policies incentivising gun ownership have doubled the number of registered firearms in circulation from 637,000 in 2017 to 1.2 million in 2021, according to the federal police registry. Meanwhile, among clubs of collectors, sport shooters, and hunters (CACs), which are regulated by the Brazilian army, the number of registered firearms more than doubled from 225,000 in 2019 to 496,000 in 2020 nationwide. In Brasília, the nation’s capital, the total number of registered firearms in circulation increased by over 500%, from 25,000 in 2017 to 227,000 in 2020.[14]
In this context of heightened militarisation, there are strong links between President Bolsonaro and his family and paramilitary groups or milícias. These paramilitary groups are associated with death squads that are mostly made up of public security agents operating in criminal markets which dominate areas in the state of Rio de Janeiro–the Bolsonaro family’s political cradle. Sectors within Bolsonaro’s base are armed and eager to mount a coup d’état, even if they lack the conditions necessary to execute it.

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Another example of this subordination is the agreement between Brazil and the U.S. concerning the Alcântara Space Centre. Alcântara is a Brazilian military base close to the mouth of the Amazon that forced the removal of quilombolas in that region. The base is strategically located to carry out long-range rocket launches, potentially to space. Brazil does not yet have the capacity to launch satellites by itself, which limits the country’s sovereignty in controlling Brazilians’ information and communications, for example. The Alcântara agreement does not provide for any transfer of technology to Brazil (a common stipulation imposed in agreements with the U.S.); to the contrary, it sets limits on the countries that Brazil can negotiate with to use the Alcântara base. For example, China–which is not a signatory to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR)–is prohibited from signing an agreement with Brazil, which is a signatory to the MTCR, that would allow it to use the base. This prohibition also applies to any country sanctioned by any member of the UN Security Council (such as Iran). The Alcântara agreement also allows for the creation of restricted areas to be used exclusively by those authorised by the U.S., which would control the entry of both people and goods into these areas.[23] In some ways, the Alcântara base is an enclave of the United States on Brazilian soil.

Ramifications and Solutions in Brazil

The demonstrations by Bolsonaro’s social base on 7 September 2021 were large, though smaller than predicted. Importantly, and contrary to expectations, military personnel did not turn up at the demonstrations or speak out in support of them, forcing Bolsonaro to retreat from his intentions to mount a coup–for now. However, this does not mean that he was abandoned or betrayed by the military; it means that though he belongs to the Military Party, the Military Party does not belong to him, and that the military project is searching for alternatives to remain in power independently of whoever occupies the presidency.

Brazil’s increasing militarisation has a number of ramifications across different sectors of society. For one, armed violence–taking on an increasingly bellicose character and backed by popular support for the unfettered right to bear arms–has come to be seen as a normal way to resolve conflict. This normalisation, especially when backed by popular support, impacts both Brazil’s domestic and foreign affairs; the former because security forces are more likely to respond with repression when questioned, identifying fellow citizens as enemies, and the latter because it encourages the use of force.

Militarisation also reinforces patriarchy, and the bellicose nature of armed violence carries over to other arenas such as the increasing fatality of gender-based violence. A militarised society tends to support measures contrary to the international human rights agenda, such as policies aimed at racial or gender inclusion. Between 2009 and 2019, murders of indigenous people increased by 21.6%; since 2018, violence against homosexuals and bisexuals have increased by 9.8% and homicides of women inside the home have increased by 6.1%. This increased violence disproportionately impacts racial minorities; as of 2019, 77% of homicide victims in Brazil were black, 70% of which were committed with firearms.[24]

Culture is yet another arena shaped by militarisation. This takes place not only through large military parades or the commemoration of symbolic dates and figures, but rather in many arenas: literature and fashion, cinema and warlike games, daily life and colloquialisms. Social consent to militarisation is built through language, which serves as a vehicle for propaganda. In a world with so much information available and where social media predominates,[25] hegemony built on ideology is more efficient and cheaper than that based narrowly on force. At their core, military structures generate unified and totalising identities that leave no space for dissent and are defined by the identification of ‘the other’ as the enemy.

This process will be difficult to reverse, at least in the short to medium term, even if Bolsonaro and the military are removed from the country’s executive leadership. The military has clearly returned to power in Brazil, and there is no indication that the 2022 elections will put an end to that. In the context of the 2022 presidential elections, politicised military personnel are unified against Lula (PT) but divided between two right-wing candidacies–whether to support Bolsonaro’s re-election or the election of Sérgio Moro, the former judge responsible for Operation Car Wash that led to Lula’s unjust imprisonment.

The military is well positioned to issue assessments about the fairness of the elections–or to interfere in them–given that it is now among the parties responsible for overseeing the integrity of the elections. If armed sectors of the population were to provoke intense social destabilisation before or after the elections–which is a possible scenario if Bolsonaro loses–the military can act by simply doing nothing and then present themselves as the new guarantors of national stability, similar to what occurred in Bolivia following the 2019 coup.

Multilateralism has long oriented Brazil’s foreign policy, especially during the PT governments that deepened South-South cooperation, above all in Latin America. Even a part of Brazil’s elite sees China as the country’s main geopolitical partner and has for some time due to the economic benefits that this partnership offers. Counter to the global trend of increasing multipolarity, sectors of the military are deepening their dependence on the declining U.S. empire. At some point, these conflicting readings of the world will come home to roost with grave consequences.

In this context, popular movements face a number of challenges. Among them are electing Lula as the country’s president and then redefining Brazil’s position in the world, what defence policy is capable of sustaining this new national project, and only then what sort of armed forces are needed. The military police must be subordinated to a national project that is strictly under popular control. This national project must take into account how to engage Brazil in a programme that presents solutions to the crises we face today and that puts the benefit of humankind over the interests of profit, such as A Plan to Save the Planet, a roadmap drafted by an international network of research institutes to confront the dilemmas of our time.

In order to create this new national project, the people must have control over the state’s instruments of force. This includes control over the armed forces, the militarised police, and the firearms in circulation. Defence and security are part of an agenda of power, which must be part of a popular education programme and dialogue with the people in order to move forward.

Our past is also a key part of our future; without settling scores with a past marked by slavery and dictatorship, it will not be possible to build a democratic future in which the armed forces are wholly subordinated to the sovereignty of the people and their institutions and are exclusively destined for external defence and no longer used against their own people. This requires confronting the crimes committed during the 1964 dictatorship as well as its authoritarian legacy, which has shaped the state and the political culture up to the present day. Giving new meaning to patriotic symbols, such as the Brazilian flag, should be part of this process.

Lastly, we must resist the idea that preparing for war is necessary for building peace. To the contrary: in order to build peace, the priority must be placed on a programme that centres the wellbeing of humankind and the planet by eliminating hunger, guaranteeing safe and secure housing as well as universal, quality health care, and defending the right to a dignified quality of life.

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Endnotes:
[1] Leandro Gonçalves, ‘Tática do Exército Brasileiro na Guerra do Paraguai, entre 1866 e 1868’ (Master’s diss., Universidade Estadual Paulista, 2009).

[2] Nelson W. Sodré, História Militar do Brasil (São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2010).

[3] Mario Rapoport and Ruben Laufer, ‘Os Estados Unidos diante do Brasil e da Argentina: os golpes militares da década de 1960’, Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, 43, no.1, (June 2000).

[4] Lentz, Rodrigo, República de segurança nacional–militares e política no Brasil (São Paulo: Expressão Popular; Fundação Rosa Luxemburgo, 2022).

[5] Translator’s note: Guarantee of Law and Order operations are legal instruments that enable the armed forces to act in public security scenarios, such as when the Army intervened in Rio de Janeiro in 2018.

[7] Ana Penido and Suzeley Mathias Kalil, ‘O Partido Militar no Sistema Político Brasileiro’, Revista E-legis, (Câmara dos Deputados, 2021).

[8] Ana Penido and Suzeley Kalil Mathias, ‘A carreira militar em tempos de paz: vantagens e desvantagens’, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, 4 June 2021, https://thetricontinental.org/pt-pt/bra ... vantagens/

[9] This data from July 2020 was taken from information provided by the Ministry of Defence and presented at the Personnel Statistical Panel of the Secretariat for Personnel Management of the Economy Ministry following articles by Ranier Bragon and Camila Mattoso, Folha de S. Paulo (18 Jul 2020),Tânia Monteiro and Adriana Fernandes, Estadão (31 May 2020), Leonardo Cavalcanti and Nathan Victor, Poder360 (17 Jul 2020), Cátia Seabra, and Diego Garcia, Folha de S. Paulo (6 March 2021).

[10] All figures were extracted from the Brazilian Public Security Forum’s Brazilian Public Security Yearbook (2020).

[11] Ana Penido and Hector Saint-Pierre, ‘Quem é o Terrorista?’, Piauí, 14 April 2021, https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/quem-e-o-terrorista/

[12] 2018 data from Seguridad, Justicia y Paz, see: Martell, Carlos. ‘Estudio: Las 50 ciudades más violentas del mundo 2018’ [Study: the 50 most violent cities in the world, 2018]. Seguridad, Justicia y Paz, 12 March 2019. www.seguridadjusticiaypaz.org.mx.

[13] 2021 data compiled from the report ‘Começo do Fim?’, Terra de Direitos and Justicia Global, December 2021, https://terradedireitos.org.br/uploads/ ... do-Fim.pdf

[14] All figures were extracted from the Brazilian Public Security Forum’s Brazilian Public Security Yearbook (2020) according to data from the National Weapons System (Sinarm/Federal Police), Military Arms Management System (Sigma/Army), and the Superior Electoral Tribunal.

[15] Richard Westin, ‘Especialistas veem perigo em armar cidadãos. Atiradores esperam mais incentivos do governo’, Agência Senado, 18 March 2021, https://www12.senado.leg.br/noticias/in ... do-governo

[16] Ana Penido, Natalia Araújo, and Suzeley Kalil Mathias, ‘Notas exploratórias sobre as contribuições do marxismo para o pensamento em defesa brasileiro’, Revista de Estudos do Sul Global, vol.1, no.1 (2021).

[17] A. Wendt and M. Barnett, ‘Dependent state formation and Third World militarization’, Review of International Studies, no. 19, (1993), p. 321–347; Ana Penido and Miguel Stédile, Ninguém regula a América, (São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2021).

[18] Hector Saint-Pierre interviewed in João R. Martins Filho, Os militares e a crise brasileira, (São Paulo: Alameda, 2021).

[19] H. L. Saint-Pierre, ‘“Defesa” ou “Segurança”? Reflexões em torno de conceitos e ideologias’, Contexto Internacional, Brasília, vol. 33, no. 2 (2011), p. 407–433.

[20] Rodrigo Lentz, ‘Pensamento político dos militares no Brasil: mudanças e permanências na doutrina da ESG (1976–2016)’, (Doctoral thesis, UNB, 2021).

[21] This concept was adopted by the South American Defence Council, a multilateral organisation linked to the Union of South American Nations (USAN), without the United States’ participation.

[22] Hector Saint-Pierre, interviewed in João R. Martins Filho, Os militares e a crise brasileira, (São Paulo: Alameda, 2021).

[23] Frederico Samora, ‘Entrega da base de Alcântara destrói tecnologia aeroespacial brasileira’, Jornal Brasil de Fato. Special Edition–National Sovereignty, December 2019.

[24] Daniel Cerqueira, Atlas da violência no Brasil (2021), https://www.ipea.gov.br/atlasviolencia/ ... mpleto.pdf

[25] Research on the growth of militarism on TikTok was released last year and is available at: Sérgio Spagnuolo et al.,

‘Militarismo é nova onda no Tiktok’, Ponte, 13 August 2021, https://ponte.org/militarismo-e-nova-onda-no-tiktok/

https://mronline.org/2022/03/16/the-mil ... -politics/

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Protest for the earth in Brazilia, (Photo: Mídia Ninja)

Destruction of the Amazon Package approved with urgency
Originally published: Resumen Latinoamericano and the Third World by Elaine Tavares (March 15, 2022 ) - Posted Mar 17, 2022

Capitalism, Inequality, Political Economy, State RepressionBrazilNewswireIndigenous Issues, Indigenous Land, Indigenous people of Brazil
The Brazilian government remains firm in its objective of handing over indigenous lands, which make up 12% of Brazilian territory, to private hands, preferably agribusiness and mining. In other words: it is not enough to steal, it has to destroy. Since he took office, Jair Bolsonaro has accumulated a long history of attacks on indigenous peoples with the argument that they do not offer any benefit to society, so they have to be “integrated” to become workers. With that logic, the government dismantled the Funai (the body that should protect the indigenous people) and has turned a blind eye to all the attacks by grileiros (landowners thanks to false documents), jagunços (gunmen) and fazendeiros (landowners) on indigenous lands. Clandestine mining continues at full steam, in fact, it should not be called clandestine, since it is done shamelessly, in broad daylight. The number of attacks on communities is increasing, as are the records of murders and violence of all kinds against indigenous people, without any policy to stop them.

The presence of neo-Pentecostal churches in the villages and communities has been the government’s greatest asset in the process of desegregation of the indigenous peoples, since with “evangelization” the populations are abandoning their culture and beliefs. In many communities, sacred songs are no longer sung and healing practices are falling into oblivion. Last week, in Mato Grosso do Sul, in a Guarani village, a woman was kidnapped and accused by the community chief, Antônio, of sorcery. The scenes, recorded on video, show the man offending, accusing, cutting the woman’s hair and threatening to set her on fire, which he would have done if a group of people had not arrived to rescue the healer. A dramatic moment in our recent history that shows the bad treatment that these churches, loaded with intolerance, dispense to indigenous peoples.

However, the president is not alone in this exterminating task. The 513-member Chamber of Deputies is overwhelmingly in favor of carrying out this mission of annihilation of indigenous life. On March 9, 2022, for example, the Chamber approved, as a matter of urgency, PL 191, as proposed by the executive, which regulates mining on indigenous lands, including where isolated peoples live, without the native communities having the right to veto. With the urgency, the bill will not pass through commissions nor will it be debated, so it will be immediately taken to the plenary.

At the same time that a gigantic rally for the Earth and against the LP was being held in front of the National Congress, in the Three Powers Square, gathering indigenous people, social movements and artists, the proposal was approved without major surprises, with 279 votes in favor, 108 against and three abstentions. Only the Workers’ Party (PT) and the Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL) voted against the urgency. Other parties, such as PDT and Novo, divided, gave votes to the government.

The argument for the urgency could not be more hypocritical. The president says that now, with the war in Ukraine, Brazil needs to depend less on potassium imports, hence the need to allow potassium mining on indigenous lands. Yes, that is the argument. And it was uncritically accepted by 279 deputies. Now, the PL must be voted before April 14 and, considering the profile of the legislature, it will probably be approved.

The mobilization against PL 191, which brought thousands of people to Brasilia to participate in the “Act for the Earth against the Package of Destruction”, was peaceful and calm, but failed to touch the hearts of the deputies. This was nothing new, since it is not that–the heart–that moves them. It is the financial interests of the groups that elected them that determine the direction of their votes. And, in the National Congress, there is only one indigenous woman, out of a total of 513 members.

Deputy Joenia Wapichana spoke in plenary saying that the bill in question represents Bolsonaro’s dream, which is none other than the complete destruction of Brazil’s indigenous peoples. She also recalled that the communities are organized and will fight. This process is going to be developed with the opposition of the indigenous movement, as it has been doing since the first day of Jair Bolsonaro’s government, when one of his first measures was to transfer the Funai from the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Agriculture. Indigenous peoples have risen up in protest since that day and since that moment have held numerous marches, events and demonstrations, both in Brazil and abroad, asking for help from society to act in conjunction with the indigenous movement in defense of the communities that most protect biodiversity and forests. In a country as large as Brazil, it will not be the 12% of the territory in indigenous hands that will impoverish the nation, even if they are not engaged in producing soybeans or minerals. What research shows is that it is precisely that 12% of land in indigenous hands that has guaranteed the protection of nature, so necessary to avoid apparently “natural” tragedies.

Now, with the urgent processing of the approved bill, the indigenous peoples will have less than a month for new mobilizations. In this sense, coordination between non-indigenous entities, unions and social movements is more than necessary in this battle against mining on indigenous lands. Not in vain, mining not only destroys the place where it opens its quarries and wells, mining also destroys rivers, fauna and people. It may seem that mining is far away from the vast majority of us, but it is not. It is precisely this systematic destruction of the ecosystems of indigenous lands that causes so many disasters in the cities and in the countryside, such as floods and flooding of rivers, droughts and storms, so out of time. The rule is clear: do not touch the wing of a butterfly without shaking the entire planet.

Source: Rebelion, translation Resumen Latinoamericano–English

https://mronline.org/2022/03/17/destruc ... h-urgency/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 19, 2022 1:21 pm

"UKRAINIZATION" AND NEO-NAZISM IN BRAZIL UNDER THE MANTLE OF JAIR BOLSONARO
Mar 18, 2022 , 2:24 p.m.

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Bolsonarists use flags of the Ukrainian extreme right and of monarchical Brazil in a political rally (Photo: File)

On March 13, the Russian army destroyed the training centers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the Yavoriv training camp and the town of Starichi, where foreign mercenaries and volunteers were trained.

The attack targeting that military facility in the Lviv region was confirmed by the Russian Defense Ministry. According to the department, 180 mercenaries and a large batch of weapons were destroyed.

After this attack, some foreigners who were going to fight for Ukraine decided to urgently return home. The images and videos of their testimonies began to circulate on social networks, and among them were Brazilian mercenaries, such as Jefferson Kleidin, who after crossing the border into Poland uploaded a photo of his bandaged hand with the text: "Thank God for another day of life. Sad for the friends who lost their lives in the attack on our base."


The participation of foreigners so far geographically from Ukraine resonates quite a lot. However, regarding the strengthening of right-wing extremism and neo-Nazi groups, Brazil (especially with the government of Jair Bolsonaro at the head) had already visible and denounced connections with kyiv.

SHE TRAVELED TO UKRAINE AND BECAME FEMINAZI: THE STORY OF THE BRAZILIAN SARA WINTER

In an article for MintPress News , journalist Brian Mier makes a brief historical review that shows where the trend in Brazil to the formation of neo-Nazi movements starts.

During the 1930s, Brazil was home to the largest German Nazi party outside Europe and had a much larger indigenous fascist movement called the Integralistas, which attempted to enact a coup in 1938. The coup was crushed but the ideology endured for a long time. a country that already suffered from severe structural racism for being the last place in the Americas to eradicate slavery.

However, in recent history this phenomenon has been growing with greater force, especially with the rise to politics of the current president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. The data confirms it:

Since Bolsonaro became president in 2019, neo-Nazi groups in Brazil have increased by 270%.
Currently, there are 530 neo-Nazi cells operating in the country, according to anthropology professor and Nazi researcher Adriana Dias.
The article also reviews a contemporary episode that explains how Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups, such as the Azov Battalion, have established contacts in the Latin American country. Take the case of Sara Fernanda Giromini, alias "Sara Winter", a woman from Sao Paulo who, as a young teenager already associated with right-wing extremist groups in Brazil, met Ukrainian and Russian neo-Nazis through the VK social network. In 2011 she traveled to Ukraine, where she was received and trained by the FEMEN organization. Back in Brazil, she formed a cell of the organization in her country.

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Sara Fernanda Giromini, founder of FEMEN Brazil, called herself Sara Winter, in homage to the English fascist of the 1920s (Photo: Archive)

FEMEN Brazil closed after a series of allegations of sexism and corruption. FEMEN Ukraine said that it had nothing to do with the Brazilian organization or its founder, a clear contradiction with the facts, since in 2012 Giromini was arrested during a FEMEN protest in kyiv. She refers that she was paid 2 thousand dollars for protesting in the streets of the Ukrainian capital.

"UKRAINIZE BRAZIL"

The organization ended but Giromini did not give up his neo-Nazi contacts from the Azov Battalion and the Phoenix Battalion, and began inviting them to Brazil.

In 2016 it was discovered that the Azov Battalion was recruiting volunteers in seven cities in the southern state of Rio Grande do Soul (a place with a strong fascist tradition) to take them into combat in the Donbás region.

The Brazilian neo-Nazi campaigned for Bolsonaro's candidacy, and once he took office, she began pushing to "Ukrainize Brazil." Mier account:

Giromini, at the time a vocal member of the anti-abortion movement, campaigned heavily for Bolsonaro. After he took office in 2019, she launched a public call to "Ukrainize Brazil." Many of the most reactionary public figures associated with Bolsonaro, such as the openly fascist lawmaker from Rio de Janeiro, Daniel Silveira, joined the campaign. Professor Dias says: "Azov's tactic has always been to bring a group of 300 people into a city and, through training activities with the locals, start a far-right movement." Giromini moved to Brasilia and started an organization called the "group of 300" to help build support for the Ukrainization of Brazil.

In 2020, after Brazil's Supreme Court blocked one of Bolsonaro's attempts to circumvent the constitution, Giromini's group of 300 camped out on the national esplanade, held a series of tiki-torch protests in front of the court building, and fired shots. Fireworks. Posing for selfies with guns, he cited for violence against Supreme Court justices; on July 15, 2020, the Supreme Court ordered his arrest. After two weeks in jail, she was given an ankle bracelet, transferred to house arrest and ordered to stay off social media. She has been there ever since.


Meanwhile, the presence of flags and symbols of far-right ideologies of Ukrainian signature became more common in protests by Bolsonaro supporters.

In 2020, a former soldier and security consultant named Alex Silva, who has lived in kyiv since 2014 and claims to be a member of an "auxiliary volunteer police force" there, sparked a media controversy that led to an official disclaimer from the embassy. Ukrainian when he raised a red and black Pravy Sektor flag on a sound truck at a Bolsonaro rally and was photographed walking through the crowd wearing it as a cape.b]

Silva became an inspirational figure on the Internet for Brazilian right-wing groups. Back in kyiv, he has been uploading videos of the armed paramilitary gangs he leads.

The MintPress article quotes Leonel Radde, a Porto Alegre councilman who has researched neo-Nazi groups in Rio Grande do Sul. Radde points out that from the symbols these groups adopt to the tactics they use, they are copies of the movement. neo-Nazi in Ukraine, especially his actions in the 2014 coup.

What is being tried to determine is whether the Brazilian groups spontaneously copy this model from what they see on the Internet or whether there is Ukrainian or Western financing behind it. It should be noted that Giromini "spent time near Porto Alegre doing organizing work and she started this whole thing," says Radde.

One of the immediate consequences of this we are seeing today in kyiv. Dozens of Brazilians trained in neo-Nazi cells have enlisted in the Ukrainian embassy in Brasilia to support the foreign movement that influenced them.

Although the Brazilian reinforcements have not been helpful in stopping the "denazification" operation carried out by the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine, they do not lessen the threats that they may unleash within the Brazilian nation, by allowing (and in the case of Bolsonarism, promote) the spread of extremist ideologies and the consolidation of armed cells that defend them.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/uc ... -bolsonaro

Google Translator

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People’s movements take to the streets against evictions throughout Brazil

The Zero Evictions Campaign is calling for demonstrations in cities throughout the country in observance of the Housing for Life day of action

March 16, 2022 by Landless Rural Workers' Movement

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From a protest against evictions. Photo: Sérgio Maranhão/Acervo MST

Brazilians will be taking to the streets across of the country this Thursday March 17 to fight for the extension of the eviction moratorium, ADPF no. 828. The Housing for Life day of action was called for by the Campaign for Zero Evictions. The moratorium which they want extended has protected thousands of urban and rural families from removals and evictions.

Actions are being organized in several of Brazil’s major cities in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, Tocantins, Rio Grande do Sul, São Paulo and Brasília, and others.

The ADPF itself was the product of the struggle of people’s movements and coalitions. In June 2021 the Federal Supreme Court (STF) granted the moratorium, suspending evictions and removals for six months. The STF then extended the ADPF to March of this year.

According to Ana Moraes, from a national coordinator of the MST, Brazil is at a crossroads: “The eviction moratorium expires on March 31, 2022, but the most vulnerable Brazilians continue to suffer through multiple crises. The people of Brazil are experiencing rising inflation, unemployment, hunger, and unequal access to vaccines and the human right to health, “all this in a context of the total absence of public policies.”

“Although in December the STF demanded that the National Congress act on a need to extend the eviction moratorium, this did not happen, given the congressional recess and a conservative political environment linked to agribusiness interests. Therefore, the Zero Evictions Campaign pleads with the STF to extend the moratorium, to guarantee the human rights to health, life, and housing in urban and rural communities,” Moraes said.

MST for Zero Evictions

In rural areas, more than 200 Landless Workers Movement (MST) areas could face eviction if the moratorium expires, directly impacting the lives of 30,000 peasant families. In an interview with Página do Movimento, Kelli Mafort, also an MST coordinator, declared that evictions are an injustice, and that in the Bolsonaro government, evictions serve the interests of capital, agribusiness, mining, and real estate speculation.

In agreement with Mafort, Ana Moraes declares that for the MST, eviction at any time is a human rights violation. The MST tactic of directly occupying land only exists because living, planting, and eating is a privilege, not a right.

“For us, the occupation is a legitimate struggle of peoples and cannot be criminalized. However, eviction in the pandemic is an inhumane act, even more so with the deepening social crisis in the country. Tens of thousands of families will be affected in the countryside, with approximately 20,000 children up to 12 years old. This is very serious,” Moraes said.

For Moraes, it is also necessary to denounce the “true invaders”, who are “the agribusiness and mining corporations that are invading peasant, Indigenous and quilombola territories, through cooptation and violence, to normalize land grabbing, make environmental licensing more flexible, expand the use of agrotoxins and loosen regulations on mining.”

At least 132,000 Brazilian families are threatened with eviction

Since March 2020, when the World Health Organization (WHO) first announced the COVID-19 pandemic and social isolation measures, the threats of removals and evictions increased. These threats made it impossible to implement the health security measures prescribed by the WHO and emphasized by Brazil’s own Ministry of Health.

The political and social crisis in the country has deepened existing inequalities. Hunger, poverty and unemployment are the reality for the majority of the population and the instability and insecurity generated by the new coronavirus variants has worsened the living conditions of thousands of families.

According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) the total number of Brazilians who suffer from hunger has grown by three million in the last five years. Urban and social inequality has deepened. The organizations that make up the Zero Evictions Campaign point out that it is the duty of the public authorities to guarantee the life and safety of the population.

The new balance sheet released by the Zero Evictions Campaign reveals a shocking reality: more than 132,290 families are threatened with eviction in Brazil. This data represents a 602% increase in the number of families threatened with eviction since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.

As a result of crises, removals and evictions, the number of homeless people has skyrocketed in recent years. Many other Brazilians live precariously under the threat of homelessness. According to a survey by the State Movement of the Homeless in São Paulo, the most populous city in Brazil, it shows that the number of homeless people has grown almost three times from 2019 to the present day, to over 66,000 people.

*Edited by Lays Furtado

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/03/16/ ... ut-brazil/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 23, 2022 1:57 pm

Justice orders former Brazilian prosecutor to compensate Lula Da Silva

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The sentence of the SJT that affects the former prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol was taken by four votes in favor and one against. | Photo: EFE
Published March 23, 2022 (6 hours 50 minutes ago)

The person in charge of the Lavo Jato operation, Deltan Dallagnol, must pay 75,000 reais (15,000 dollars) to the former Brazilian president.

The Superior Court of Justice (STJ) of Brazil ruled on Tuesday that the former prosecutor in charge of the operation known as Lava Jato, Deltan Dallagnol, must compensate the former president and leader of the opposition Workers' Party (PT), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for moral damages.

According to the entity, the sentence - taken with four votes in favor and one against - establishes the monetary payment by former prosecutor Dallagnol to the former Brazilian president after sending him to jail for 580 days in trials that were later annulled due to problems of jurisdiction. .

During the Lava Jato operation, Lula Da Silva was investigated for suspicions of corruption, for which the defense of the social leader denounced that the plaintiffs carried out a political persecution against the former president, an argument accepted by the SJT last Tuesday.


"Dallagnol used expressions that affected the honor and image of Lula and used a Power Point graphic that was made up of several names, with that of the former president in the center, which is foreign to the typical nomenclature of criminal law," magistrate Luis Felipe Salomão specified.


The compensation established by the SJT is equivalent to an amount of 75,000 reais (15,000 dollars), before which, the lawyers of the PT leader indicated that it represents a symbol of historical reparation and a victory for the rule of law, in addition to an incentive for any citizen to combat the abuse of power.


The decision proclaimed by the judicial authority may be appealed by former prosecutor Dallagnol, as established by the Supreme Court, a legal institution with which then-judge Sergio Moro, responsible for the Lava Jato trials, was linked.

The SJT directed the annulment of the sentences against Lula Da Silva, who recovered his political rights.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/-exfisca ... -0038.html

Google Translator

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Brazilian Precandidate Sergio Moro’s Accounts Frozen Due to Bribery Charges
March 22, 2022

The assets of presidential precandidate Sergio Moro will be frozen by order of the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) of Brazil. The court requested that the general prosecutor freeze Moro’s resources because the law firm which employed Moros, a former judge, received more than R$40 million, or $8 million USD, from companies which were prosecuted during Operation Lavo Jato [Operation Car Wash] and with which he reached clemency agreements.

Moro, who was painted as an anti-corruption hero, has fallen into disgrace. According to Brasilwire, “in the polls Moro is stuck in the single digits, and there are rumors that he will abandon his presidential campaign. This last scandal has even cast doubts on his backup plan to run for the Senate.”

Paradoxically, Moro, the judge who kept Lula da Silva out of the 2018 presidential elections with an unfounded smear campaign, can now count himself as a victim of “defending the law.”

News outlets have reported that the TCU shared documents with the General Attorney of the Republic (PGR) which prove that Moro was indeed bribed during his time at US law firm Alvarez & Marsal.

The former judge would have to had been closely connected to the government, intelligence services, and private sector of the United States. It is not yet known how much of the R40 million reales went to him, and it is not the first time that this law firm is found guilty of receiving bribes.


Translation: Orinoco Tribune

https://orinocotribune.com/brazilian-pr ... y-charges/

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“Family agriculture has the capacity to feed our country,” says Lula during visit to MST

The event with the former president gathered 10 thousand people in the Eli Vive settlement of the MST in Paraná

March 21, 2022 by Brasil de Fato

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Former President Lula visiting Eli Vive, an MST settlement in Paraná - Ricardo Stuckert

Agrarian reform and agro-ecology were among the issues discussed during Lula’s visit on Saturday, March 19 to the Eli Vive settlement, of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). The settlement is located in Londrina, in the state of Paraná, and is Brazil’s largest agrarian reform area in a metropolitan region. The visit was part of the the event “Solidarity Day: Towards the Peoples Committees” and rallied around 10,000 people.

In his speech, presidential pre-candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) remarked that one of his priorities is to fight hunger in the country, encourage family-based agriculture, and regain national sovereignty.

“Hunger is one of the most barbaric things that society has allowed. This world does not need to be as unequal as it is. Family-based agriculture has the capacity to feed our country. We need to recover Brazilian sovereignty. A sovereign country cares for education, forests, waters, food, and people.”

Lula also evaluated the current makeup of the National Congress and spoke about the importance of electing candidates for the House, Senate, and state governments who are committed to the popular struggle.

“The Brazilian National Congress has never been so malformed and so anti-people as it is now. It has never been so deferential to anti-national interests as it is now. This is perhaps the Congress that is the most against Brazil. It is important to remember that it is not enough to elect Lula as president, if we don’t change the quality of the elected representatives and senators,” he affirmed.

Also present at the meeting were the president of the PT and the federal deputy of Paraná, Gleisi Hoffmann, former senator Roberto Requião, the national leaders of the MST João Pedro Stedile and João Paulo Rodrigues, and the chef Bela Gil, who gave one of the first speeches at the meeting and defended a popular agrarian reform.

“All Brazilians need to have the opportunity to choose the food they want to put on their plates. Popular agrarian reform and family-based agriculture are essential to democratizing access to land. This way, people will have healthy food on their plates,” she said.

Gleisi Hoffmann highlighted the actions of the MST, especially during the pandemic, and laid out the path that Lula’s campaign will follow in the electoral process.

“If there is one feature of the MST it is solidarity. In all the struggles of the people, the MST is present. Today Lula is free, innocent, ready to be president and we have to prepare for this journey. The Brazilian people are placing their hope in us. We have been discussing the way that we have to organize ourselves here in Paraná, but also in Brazil.”

Roberto Requião, the pre-candidate to the governorship of Paraná, emphasized the importance of movements that defend agrarian reform in building public policies for the country.

“Despite my indignation, I find hope in you all [MST]. We need a government that walks alongside the people. We will win this battle, which is a battle for identity. The identity of the people.”

Agroecology and the struggle for land were points highlighted in a speech by João Pedro Stédile, who stated that it is only “through popular unity that the people will be able to advance.”

“The true goal of agrarian reform is to produce healthy food for everyone. We need a big national agroecology program to build agrarian reform. The popular committees are the people telling Lula what they want to change in Brazil.”

Committees for Popular Struggle
During the visit, the Workers’ Party launched a project that intends to create, by April, 5,000 popular struggle committees throughout the country.

The idea is to strengthen the PT’s grassroots work through a network that involves social movements and the population. The strategy is part of the party’s two main objectives for 2022: the reduction of backwards policies promoted by the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PSL), and the election of Lula in the election in October.

This article was written by Nayá Tawane and originally published in Brasil de Fato.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/03/21/ ... it-to-mst/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 26, 2022 2:41 pm

In the World, There Are Many Traps, and It Is Necessary to Shatter Them: The Twelfth Newsletter (2022)

MARCH 24, 2022
Español Português

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Jaider Esbell (Brazil), The Intergalactic Entities Talk to Decide the Universal Future of Humanity, 2021.


Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On 31 March 1964, the Brazilian military initiated a coup d’état against the democratically-elected progressive government of President João Goulart. The next day, Goulart was deposed and, ten days later, the 295 members of the National Congress handed the state over to General Castello Branco and a military junta. The military ruled over Brazil for the next twenty-one years.

The Brazilian military is an institution with deep roots in society and constitutes the second largest military force in the Americas, after the United States. The 1964 coup was not the first time that the military left the barracks and seized power over the state. Along with its role in overthrowing the Brazilian Empire (1822–1889), the military entered to remove President Washington Luís in the Revolution of 1930, replacing him with Getúlio Vargas, and then intervening in 1945 to end Vargas’ Estado Novo, also known as the Third Brazilian Republic. The nine presidents that followed in Brazil’s civilian era included one general, Eurico Gaspar Dutra (1946–1951), and the return of Vargas, men in civilian clothes who upheld the interests of the elites and their close allies in the United States. Goulart attempted to break part of the old compact, driving a social democratic agenda to benefit the Brazilian masses; this irritated the US government which felt that Goulart would deliver Brazil to communism.

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A glance through the archives of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States shows its deep involvement in the 1964 coup. Less than a year after Goulart took office in September 1961, US President John F. Kennedy met with his advisor Richard Goodwin and US Ambassador to Brazil Lincoln Gordon in July 1962 to discuss their concerns about the Brazilian president. Gordon told Kennedy and Goodwin that Goulart was seeking to transform the military, having replaced several military commanders and threatening to replace others. ‘How far he goes on those changes depends a little bit on the resistance of the military. I think one of our important jobs is to strengthen the spine of the military. To make it clear, discreetly, that we are not necessarily hostile to any kind of military action’. Why should the United States act against Goulart? ‘He’s giving the damn country away to…’, Gordon started to say, when Kennedy interrupted him, ‘Communists’. ‘The military’, Ambassador Gordon said, ‘I can see that they are very friendly to us, very anti-Communist, very suspicious of Goulart’. The coup was part of what the US government called Operation Brother Sam, to ensure Brazil remained pliant to the aims of the multinational corporations.

The United States delivered aid to the Brazilian military, along with the clear message that Washington would support a military coup. When the Brazilian military left their barracks on 31 March, a telegram from the US embassy in Rio de Janeiro alerted the US navy to station a flotilla of warships off the Brazilian coastline. Declassified documents now show us the minute-by-minute coordination between the US President Lyndon B. Johnson, the CIA, and the Brazilian military in the execution of the coup.

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The army generals that ruled Brazil for the following twenty-one years drew their ‘geo-strategy’ from Brazil’s highest-ranking war college Escola Superior de Guerra (ESG), a perspective founded on the view that the United States and Brazil would jointly control the Americas. The generals opened the doors to the Brazilian economy, welcoming North American banks and mining companies to invest and repatriate their profits (in 1978, 20% of Citicorp’s profits were from Brazil, more than it made in the United States). Concessions to multinational corporations structured the rule of the generals, with wages kept below the growth of labour productivity and inflation climbing from 30% (1975) to 109% (1980). By 1980, Brazil had the highest level of debt ($55 billion) in the Global South; President João Figueiredo (1979–1985) said that there was ‘nothing left over for development’.

Mass struggles of workers, students, indigenous communities, religious communities, and a range of other sections of the population pressured the decadent military regime to hand over governmental authority in 1985. However, the transition was carefully managed by the military, which ensured that it did not see any meaningful attrition in its power. The democratic movement pushed back against the rigidities of the Brazilian class structure which had been strengthened by the military and made significant gains, led by the Workers’ Party (1980), the Movement of Landless Rural Workers or MST (1984), and others. The high point of this democratic movement in the electoral domain were the Workers’ Party presidencies of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff from 2003 to 2016. During this period, the state drove a massive wealth redistribution programme centred around the eradication of hunger and absolute poverty (through the family allowance programme Bolsa Família); the enhancement of social security programmes; the increase in the minimum wage; the reinvigoration of the health care system; and the democratisation of higher education. All of these advances began to be eroded with the US-supported lawfare coup against Dilma in 2016.

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At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, our researchers have been carefully examining the role of the Brazilian military in the post-2016 period and, in particular, during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro. Not only has Bolsonaro glorified the military dictatorship (1964–1985), but he has effectively built a ‘Military Party’ to govern the country. Our latest publication, The Military’s Return to Brazilian Politics (Dossier no. 50, March 2022), closely assesses the militarisation of Brazilian politics and society. The key argument of this dossier is that Brazil’s military has grown, not to confront any external threat, but to deepen the control of Brazil’s oligarchy – and its multinational allies – over society. The armed forces routinely use violence against ‘internal enemies’, groups which are deeply committed to democratising Brazil’s society, economy, and military.

The coup against Dilma and the lawfare against Lula are part of the gradual attrition of democracy in Brazil and the slide towards militarisation. In a few months, Brazil will face an important presidential election. Current polls show that Lula (40%) is ahead of Bolsonaro (30%), with the wind behind Lula’s sails. Our dossier attempts to understand the social ground that lies beneath the political debates currently taking place in the country; it is an invitation to a dialogue on the role of the military in public, both within Brazil and globally.

The art in the dossier and in this newsletter, reflects on the argument that Brazil’s armed forces are geared more to internal repression than defence at the country’s borders. That is why the images evoke the brave people who have fought to democratise their country and faced the wrath of the military.

Before he could return to Brazil from exile in Argentina, Goulart died in 1976. Later, high officials in Brazil said that Goulart had been assassinated as part of the US government’s Operation Condor. From our office in Buenos Aires, in collaboration with Editorial Batalla de Ideas, comes a new publication, The New Condor Plan: Geopolitics and Imperialism in Latin America and the Caribbean, a collection of articles on the latest manifestations of Operation Condor in Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Our dossier ends with the following paragraphs:

Our past is also a key part of our future; without settling scores with a past marked by slavery and dictatorship, it will not be possible to build a democratic future in which the armed forces are wholly subordinated to the sovereignty of the people and their institutions and are exclusively destined for external defence and no longer used against their own people. This requires confronting the crimes committed during the 1964 dictatorship as well as its authoritarian legacy, which has shaped the state and the political culture up to the present day. Giving new meaning to patriotic symbols, such as the Brazilian flag, should be part of this process.

Lastly, we must resist the idea that preparing for war is necessary for building peace. To the contrary: in order to build peace, the priority must be placed on a programme that centres the wellbeing of humankind and the planet by eliminating hunger, guaranteeing safe and secure housing as well as universal, quality health care, and defending the right to a dignified quality of life.

These words remind us of the words of writers such as the communist poet Ferreira Gullar (1930–2016), whose poetry dreams of a socialist Brazil. In his No mundo há muitas armadilhas (‘In the world, there are many traps’), published in 1975, Gullar writes,

In the world, there are many traps
and what is a trap could be a refuge
and what is a refuge could be a trap

….

The star lies
the sea is a sophist. In fact,
humans are tied to life and need to live
humans are hungry
and must eat
humans have children
and need to raise them
In the world, there are many traps and
it is necessary to shatter them.


Warmly,

Vijay

https://thetricontinental.org/newslette ... arisation/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu Mar 31, 2022 2:46 pm

Brazilian court initiates process against anti-environmental actions

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President Bolsonaro has been harshly criticized for promoting mining activity in the Amazon. | Photo: Sputnik
Published March 31, 2022 (6 hours 21 minutes ago)

The vote for the ruling will begin this Thursday after the Public Ministry presents a statement.

The Supreme Court of Brazil began on Wednesday a trial called "green agenda", in which it reviews various actions that the government of President Jair Bolsonaro has implemented against the environment.

One of the processes will be in charge of the so-called destruction package that includes decisions and omissions on deforestation, permits and management of environmental funds.

During the session, about a dozen parties and civil society organizations spoke in favor of an environmental policy and demanded action to reverse the measures of Bolsonaro's policy in this regard.


Local media revealed that the president of the Court, Luiz Fux, reported that the vote will begin this Thursday after the declarations of the Public Ministry.

If ruling against the Government, the Supreme Court will have to notify the National Congress, where official measures on mining extraction actions, relaxation of environmental licenses, among others, are processed.

The "green agenda" initiative of the Supreme Court had among its precedents the demonstrations and the massive recital called by the renowned Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso in the capital, Brasilia, where the government was singled out for the environmental damage caused by its policy.

Bolsonaro, for example, has been criticized for being one of the promoters of the use of areas of the Amazon for mining activities, including garimpo, or illegal mining that causes serious damage to ecosystems.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/corte-br ... -0030.html

Google Translator

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BRIAN MIER , MARCH 12, 2022[/b]
Lula Gains Access To US/Lava Jato Partnership Info

Lula has been exonerated from all Lava Jato charges, but the investigation into the US role in the greatest travesty of justice in Brazilian history continues.

By Brian Mier

This week Brazil’s Superior Justice Court ordered the Justice Ministry to grant former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his defense team access to previously sealed information on the existence of partnerships between the US Department of Justice and the Lava Jato investigation task force.

As US Attorney General William Barr pointed out in his response to a 2019 US congressional inquiry led by Hank Johnson, the fact that the Lava Jato investigation represented a partnership between the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Brazilian Justice Ministry has been public knowledge in the US, available on the DOJ’s own website, since 2016.

Lula’s defense attorneys have argued for years, however, that this partnership operated on the margins of the law, repeatedly violating both the terms and conditions of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and Brazilian national security law, which prohibits things like informal communications between Brazilian and foreign government officials.

In order to clarify this issue, Lula’s defense team requested that the Brazilian Federal Government’s Department of International Legal Cooperation (DRCI) pass over all information on the existence of written cooperation agreements with the US DOJ related to the Lava Jato case against Lula. According to Brazilian law, any partnership between Brazilian government officials and the officials of a foreign government has to be authorized by this Department. The defense team suspects that the Lava Jato task force may have illegally received advice from the US DOJ on establishing sentencing against Lula during the 2018 election year. After President Jair Bolsonaro’s Justice Minister refused to turn over the information, Lula’s defense team filed a motion with the Superior Justice Court.

This Wednesday, March 9, Superior Justice Court Sergio Kukina ordered the Ministry of Justice to turn over the requested information to Lula’s defense team. According to the Brazilian legal blog Conjur, this represents another victory for the defense, but it’s a narrow one. The Court order stipulates that the Justice Ministry is only required to share information on the existence of and subjects of any and all cooperation agreements struck between the US government and the Brazilian Ministry of Justice related to the Lava Jato investigation against Lula.

As Public Prosecutor Marcos Antonio da Silva Costa told Conjur, however, “the simple knowledge of a cooperation agreement can reveal an investigation strategy.”

https://www.brasilwire.com/lula-gains-a ... lava-jato/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Apr 18, 2022 2:40 pm

“Imagine being evicted in a pandemic with hunger and unemployment like in Brazil”
04/16/2022

The right regime is not an obstacle to the effective protection of rights and interests

Brazilian eviction injunction extended due to popular protests

As a result of widespread mass protests organized by the Union of Popular Movements, the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil extended the Fundamental Law for the Protection of Human Rights (ADPF) No. 828, which establishes a ban on forced evictions until June 2022.


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More than 500 people took part in a political rally in Brasilia to demand an extension of the suspension of evictions by the Supreme Court

As the moratorium on forced evictions during the pandemic expired on March 31, the No to Eviction movement mobilized many national groups across the country to draw attention to the plight of thousands of rural and urban families facing eviction.

The result of the united struggle of various movements in the city and in the countryside was the protests held on March 30 throughout Brazil under the slogan "Brazil without evictions: for land, housing and work", in which activists from both urban and rural public organizations from all over the country took part , the total number of which amounted to more than 500 thousand people. The actions resulted in the adoption by the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil of the decision to extend the validity of ADPF No. 828 on the suspension of evictions during the pandemic until June 2022.

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Various grassroots movements of the "No to Evictions" campaign took part in the public action "Brazil without evictions: for land, housing and work" in Brasilia

This decision was the second extension of ADPF No. 828, which became a reality thanks to the activities of the Party of Socialism and Freedom (PSOL) in cooperation with the No Eviction movement in 2021. This work brought to the attention of Judge Luis Roberto Barroso of the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil the problem of providing affordable housing and land to the population during a pandemic, and also helped to extend the ban on evictions until June 2022.

The court ruling was a grassroots movement guaranteeing protection for the 132,000 families, totaling more than 500,000 people, who were threatened with eviction during the pandemic and who could lose their homes and land in both rural and urban areas if the action of the ADPF No. 828 was not renewed by the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil.

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MST Families Protest in Brasilia and Various States to Extend ADPF 828

According to Kelly Mafort of the Landless Peasants' Movement (MST) national leadership, the extension of the injunction is historic and adds momentum to the fight against evictions in the country as a whole.

“This decision was very important, it is part of the historical struggle of popular movements in the countryside and in the city for the legal right to use the land. The right to dispose of land has a social function in our country because it includes the rights to housing, to live and to land, and all these rights are guaranteed by the [1988] Constitution, but if it were not for the people organizing, fighting, then we would got nothing. So this is of historic importance, but we need to continue the fight, strengthen our movement, because so far we have only received the opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief, ”Mafort said.

During the protests in the Brasilia capital, popular movements affiliated with No Eviction sent 5,000 letters to the Supreme Court demanding an extension of the ban on evictions during the pandemic.

For example, protesters in Brasilia demanded the protection of the rights of Brazilian workers to land and housing by extending the ADPF law No. 828, which suspended evictions during the Covid-19 pandemic, but only until the deadline of March 31 this year. The first injunction against evictions during the pandemic was issued last June by Chief Justice Barroso in favor of a stay of evictions, but only until December 2021.

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Dona Silveria, 108, resident of the settlement of Beira da Mata in Aparecida de Goiania

In addition to the rallies held in Brasilia, several families of the Landless Peasant Movement (MST) held mass events in several states of the country to demand an extension of the moratorium on evictions under ADPF 828. The families held symbolic actions such as public rallies, political-cultural and religious Christian actions, public hearings, actions in front of the courthouse, marches, protests and planting trees in the states of Alagoas, Ceara, Bahia, Pernambuco, Paraná, Mato Grosso, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Goiás, Para, Roraima, Rio Grande do Norte, Maranhao. There were even seizures of state institutions.

Among those who gathered - those who are threatened with eviction - was 108-year-old Dona Silveria , a member of the Workers' Rights Movement, who lives in Beira da Mata, Goiás state. She joined the protest in Brazil, calling for an extension of the Supreme Court's decision.

While the fight against evictions is gaining momentum, MST's Kelly Mafort explains that there isn't much time.

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Landless from the Mariel Vive camp in Sao Paulo intend to end the evictions in Brazil

She said the No to Evictions campaign will "knock on all the doors of Congress, demand an audience with House President Arthur Lear, and also demand that the House take a concrete position on the eviction bill to push back the time frame for decisions on eviction as far as possible." late date."

However, protesters continue to fear forced evictions because – even with the Supreme Court ruling suspending forced evictions during the pandemic – the No Evictions movement estimates that a total of 27,618 families were evicted during the Covid-19 pandemic from their homes and plots of land. Compared to the period of March and August 2020, the number of evicted families increased by 333%.

Tassi Barreto of the Local Office of the Movement of the Landless (MST) in the state of São Paulo draws attention to the illegal eviction of vulnerable families, especially during the pandemic.

“Eviction is a crime at any time, imagine being evicted in a pandemic with such hunger and unemployment as in Brazil,” Barreto rages.

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Actions of popular movements in Fortaleza

The No to Evictions movement began with numerous popular uprisings in defense of the right to life and housing and land; it required the Supreme Court to take action to protect thousands of rural and urban families under threat of eviction, including forced eviction.

Solange Engelmann
for the MST website

https://www.rotfront.su/predstavte-sebe ... -v-pandem/

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 20, 2022 1:44 pm

Lula Likely to Win Next Election in Brazil

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The launch of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's electoral campaign is scheduled for May 7. Apr. 19, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@TMT30_

Published 19 April 2022 (8 hours 45 minutes ago)

According to reports from the political risk analysis consulting Eurasia Group, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has a 70 percent chance of winning the next elections in Brazil.

The group said that Lula could win in the first round and in a possible second, he would beat all of his opponents, as shown by survey results.

A total of 12 institutes were surveyed on executive assessment as part of the study conducted by the Eurasia Group. The survey results were published between May 2020 and April of this year.

The agency maintains that President Lula has winning possibilities for the October elections, although the ultra-right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro's performance has improved in the government's evaluation polls.

Notwithstanding, Bolsonaro's re-election chances increased from 20 percent to 25 percent, projections of a 70 percent victory for the former Brazilian president remain unchanged, Eurasia said.


GOING TO PT: The world's largest political risk analysis consultancy, the Eurasia Group, evaluates that Lula (PT) is the favorite to win the October elections. According to the document, the PT has a 70% chance of victory.

According to journalist Lilian Venturini of the newspaper Valor Economico, the percentage for Lula remains the same because, in the Eurasia survey, the chances of a third-way candidate being elected fell from 10 percent to 5.0 percent.

Former judge Sérgio Moro was rejected to run in the presidential race by the Union Brazil party's leadership. Joao Doria, from the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, and Simone Tebet, from the Brazilian Democratic Movement, have also not made any progress in their pre-candidacy.

The consulting group said that only former governor Ciro Gomes who remains in third place but far from Lula and Bolsonaro, would have a chance of being reelected if his performance at the Planalto Palace, the seat of the executive branch of the Brazilian Federal Government, were approved by more than 40 percent of the electoral body.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lul ... -0019.html

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Transparency International: Brazil Court Opens Investigation Of Anti-Corruption NGO

By Brian Mier

Brazil’s Federal Auditing Court and Public Prosecutors Office have filed to open an investigation against Transparency International and the Brasília district Public Prosecutors Office over allegations of illegal collaboration with Brazil’s now-disgraced Operation Lava Jato, which illegally imprisoned Brazil’s leading presidential candidate, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, removing him from the 2018 presidential elections and opening the door for far right President Jair Bolsonaro.

According to the Prosecutors Office, the investigation is related to the destination of R$2.3 billion in funds from a leniency agreement negotiated between Lava Jato and Brazil’s largest private investment fund, J&F.

In 2019, the Brazilian Supreme Court blocked an attempt by the US DOJ to provide the Lava Jato taskforce, led by Delton Dallagnol, with a US$ 687 million kickback from fines levied against Brazil’s state petroleum company, Petrobras, to create a private “anti-corruption” foundation based in Curitiba. Federal Prosecutors now say that Dallagnol tried to negotiate a deal with J&F, through the Brasilia District Public Prosecutors Office, to secure R$2.3 billion in funds for Transparency International’s Brazil office to promote “social control over corruption” and “education campaigns”.

According to Brazilian journalist Reinaldo Avezedo, who broke the story, “The [Federal] Public Prosecutors Office and National Auditing Court are opening the investigation because funds coming from leniency agreements are public. Public Prosecutors do not have autonomy to negotiate any kinds of deals that don’t involve delivering funds to the National Treasury. Furthermore, they have no authority to hire NGOs or private sector organizations to provide guidance on the use of public funds.”

Transparency International, the 2016 coup and Lava Jato

In 2016, TI Brazil director Bruno Brandão made dozens of appearances in national and international media denying that a coup was taking place. After Dilma Rousseff was deposed for the widely-practiced budgetary infraction of fiscal peddling, which involved no personal enrichment and was legalized by the Brazilian Senate the week after she left office, Brazil began auctioning off its massive offshore oil reserves to foreign multinationals. Two of the biggest beneficiaries of this process, Shell and ExxonMobil, are historic donors to Transparency International.


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TI International Director José Carlos Ugaz and disgraced former Lava Jato Judge Sergio Moro in 2016

In 2020, Brazil’s Agencia Publica analyzed Telegram messages, forwarded by hacker Walter Delgatti to Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald, between Delton Dallagnol and Bruno Brandão, that revealed a close relationship between the two. Among the revelations were that Transparency International had access to the $682 million US DOJ agreement with the Lava Jato taskforce before it was signed by either party.

Dallagnol is now under numerous corruption investigations himself. Most recently, the Federal Auditing Court ordered he and former Attorney General Rodrigo Janot to pay back R$2.78 million spent on lavish business trips and vacations in 5 star hotels, in violation of government travel regulations.

https://www.brasilwire.com/brazils-audi ... rnational/

Fallen US-Asset Sergio Moro “To Abandon Presidential Bid”

It has been reported that US-trained Lava Jato Judge Sergio Moro, who is currently polling single figures for the forthcoming presidential election, will now leave the Podemos party to join to newly formed União Brasil – a merger of heirs to 1964-85 dictatorship government ARENA, DEM (formerly PFL), and Bolsonaro’s former home and base of his initial government in which Moro served, the far right PSL.[/i]

Update 1/4/2022: Following publication, G1 reported that Sergio Moro had told allies that he has not given up on the presidency, but will seek to build a candidature from União Brasil. To confuse matters further, União Brasil’s representatives in congress then publicly threatened Moro with expulsion from his new party unless he abandoned his intent to run for president, clarifying that his acceptance to the party was based on the condition that he would instead run for a congressional seat.

All articles on the joint US-Brazil anti-corruption operation Lava Jato, which underpinned the 2016 coup against the Rousseff government and jailed Lula, enabling Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to power. https://brasilwire.com/category/lava-jato

Journalist Igor Gadelha on the Metrópoles website, writes that “the expectation at União Brasil is that Moro will give up being a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic and run for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies”.

The former judge will join the party that united DEM and PSL, which formed the original base of the Bolsonaro government.

Beset by his own scandals, of judicial bias and financial conflicts of interest, disgraced former anti-corruption hero Moro, who was decorated by the military multiple times for his “services to Brazil” during the 2016 coup and 2018 election, had earlier attempted to interfere in the 2014 vote by leaking fabricated material to the press designed to prevent Dilma Rousseff’s victory. He would go on to be an important actor in the 2016 coup to remove her.

In 2019, Moro, whose connections to to US government were already known, shocked Brazil by visiting CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia with newly inaugurated president Bolsonaro.

In January 2022, former head of Senate Renan Calheiros predicted that Moro would soon be “deactivated” by his US owners, having ceased to be useful to them.

When his candidacy was launched in November 2021, despite earlier insistences that he would not enter electoral politics, Moro was seen as a realistic rival to the man he jailed, the Workers Party’s Lula da Silva, and the man he helped elect, far-right Jair Bolsonaro, under whom he served as Justice Minister. But Moro’s envisaged support has not materialised, and despite supportive media coverage he did not reach the threshold of 15% in the polls upon which his candidacy was said to depend.

Moro reportedly decided to leave Podemos after being pressured by the party to transfer his electoral base from the state of Paraná to São Paulo, where he would have a better chance of running for a congress if he abandoned the presidential race. Rosangela Moro, the former judge’s wife, had already responded to Podemos’s requests and joined the party in São Paulo, where she is also expected to run for a Congressional seat.

Moro’s exit from the race would strengthen incumbent far-right president Bolsonaro, and with the former judge out of the picture, PSDB’s São Paulo Governor João Doria, who was expected to abandon his own presidential run, will now continue in his attempt to capture a “third way” electorate, which has so far proven to be phantom.

https://www.brasilwire.com/fallen-us-as ... d-reports/
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