Brazil

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Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri Jul 28, 2017 7:24 pm

More on the continuing crisis in Brazil here: http://www.thebellforum.net/Bell2/www.t ... l?t=149097

Brazil’s MST Campesinos Occupy Farm Belonging to Temer
Posted by CO-ADMIN on JULY 25, 2017
About 800 landless people took control of the land at 6 a.m. as part of the movement’s National Day of Struggle.

Image
A sign outside the farm reads, “Lands of the corrupt for the agrarian reform,” in Sao Paulo. | Photo: MST

The Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil occupied a farm Wednesday that appears to belong to senate-imposed president Michel Temer to protest right-wing agrarian reforms.
The campesinos occupied the Esmeralda farm, located between the cities of Lucianopolis and Duartina, in western Sao Paulo to denounce the implementation of land reforms under the austerity measures taken by the government.
About 800 landless people took control of the land at 6 a.m. as part of the movement’s National Day of Struggle, under the slogan “Corrupt (Elements) Give Us Back Our Land.”
According to teleSUR correspondent in Sao Paulo, Nacho Lemus, the campesinos denounced that Temer extended his US$5 million farm over to public land. They also protested that the owners are currently accused of corruption and that the government has been responsible for the death of hundreds of MST members since 2016.
In addition to this, the MST organized 10 other simultaneous land occupations throughout the country. The movement also opposes land reform that eases restrictions on foreigners to own land in Brazil at the expense of poor families in irregular settlements.
“The objective of this action is to denounce the attack on the Brazilian Constitution promoted by the coup government of Michel Temer, both with the absurd provisional measures that have been destroying the rights of Brazilians, and their corrupt practices together with its allies,” Mercedes Zuliane, a national leader of the MST said.
Las ocupaciones son la respuesta al asesinato de 61 campesinos, indígenas y quilombolas en 2016; y 48 en 2017. #AgroCorrupto@teleSURtv pic.twitter.com/4Pe0mLPzRb
— Nacho Lemus (@LemusteleSUR) July 25, 2017
“The occupations are the response to the murder of 61 Indigenous campesinos in 2016; And 48 in 2017.”
#AgroCorrupto | Temer es citado por enriquecimiento ilícito y dinero de campaña desviado por empresa de su testaferro. Esa es su hacienda: pic.twitter.com/KgdUudgG4w
— Nacho Lemus (@LemusteleSUR) July 25, 2017
“Temer is summoned for illicit enrichment and campaign money diverted by his front man’s company. This is his property”
Las tierras de Temer están valuadas en más de U$5millones. Las gestiona el Cnel. Lima, su testaferro (también denunciado por corrupción). pic.twitter.com/f2QhMDGfPs
— Nacho Lemus (@LemusteleSUR) July 25, 2017
“Temer’s lands are valued at more than US$ 5 million. They are managed by Cnel. Lima, his front man (also denounced for corruption).”
The property, about 1,500 hectares with a luxurious swimming pool, landscaping and a large eucalyptus production, belong in paper to a company called Argeplan, under the name of Joao Batista Lima Filho, known as Coronel Lima.
Batista Lima is an advisor and personal friend of Temer, who is also one of the partners of Argeplan. Residents of Esmeralda claim the farm is actually owned by Temer, who covered up any possible irregularities by using his aide’s name.
This is the second time the MST occupies the Esmeralda farm, after its first action in May 2016, when the campesinos found a written letter addressed to Temer more than 20 years ago and campaign materials for his political party, the PMDB in legislative elections in 2006.
Campesinos alleged the place is a “headquarters, used by the PMDB leader for private meetings of their party.”
At the time, Lima said Temer did use the premises during the 2014 campaign, while he was still vice president under the presidency of Dilma Rousseff, who he helped bring down in a move dubbed a parliamentary coup by her followers.
“The economic and political growth of both happened simultaneously, evidencing the partnership between Temer and Coronel Lima in the long term,” Zuliane said.
Argeplan is also being investigated for paying bribes to receive contracts and giving money to Temer’s campaign according to a report by Epoca, in the trial involving Temer and JBS — the largest meat packing company — in the country’s largest corruption scheme.
During the investigations, police found documents related to Temer’s election campaign in 2002, and papers detailing a reform in the house of the president’s daughter Maristela Temer.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2017/07/ ... -to-temer/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Mon Aug 14, 2017 8:31 pm

The Coup, Phase II: An interview with Dr. Ivana Bentes
DEMOCRACY ELECTION 2018 MEDIA POLITICS
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By Brian Mier.

The political situation in Brazil is getting confusing, even for people who study it. To summarise recent events, in April the organized left held the largest general strike in Latin America this Century, demanding for a halt to the austerity reforms and for illegitimate president Michel Temer’s immediate resignation. On May 24, it held largest street protest in Brasilia’s history. In June, a second general strike shut down Belo Horizonte and Brasilia, but did not effect the transportation systems in Rio or São Paulo after the 5 million strong, conservative union federation, the Força Sindical, pulled out at the last minute. In July, ex president Lula was sentenced to 9.5 years in jail, pending appeal, with no concrete evidence. As Lula’s lawyers began appealing the sentence in a process that will certainly be delayed until after next year’s presidential elections, for which he is still leading in the polls, current president Michel Temer faced the beginning of an impeachment process in Congress in a scandal involving tens of millions of dollars in bribes and hush money found in Swiss bank accounts and video and audio proof of his involvement. Globo TV network, which was a key actor in last year’s illegal impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, turned on the man it helped put in power but was ignored by the Congress and the public. As a Congress, which has 30% of its members involved in corruption scandals, received R$13 billion in pork and declared Temer innocent, the streets were silent. The middle-class, white, anti-corruption crusaders from last years impeachment era, including the Koch Brothers funded Movimento Brasil Livre, stayed home. Aside from a few road closures, the organized left who were out on the streets in record numbers asking for Temer’s resignation only a few months earlier, stayed home as well. Meanwhile, the major Brazilian media corporations seem to have started a campaign to cancel next years direct presidential elections. In order to make some kind of sense out of these confusing recent events, Brasil Wire called in one of Brasil’s leading authorities on the media. Dr. Ivana Bentes is a communications professor from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, author of 7 books and dozens of academic articles and a long time collaborator with and adviser to Media Ninja, a nation-wide voluntary collective of young activist journalists that has millions of followers on social media.

What is Media Ninja?

Media Ninja is one of the World’s biggest free journalism experiments. It took off during the 2013 public transportation protests, which was an important moment for Brazil. It is a collective, spread across the entire nation, with members living communally, 30-40 to a house, creating alternative and new forms of sustainability where nobody has a job and the people dedicate themselves entirely to the group project which is called Fora do Eixo (Off the Axis). They are very young people acting in networks within the digital culture who are producing this innovative experience in Brazil and they have nearly 2 million followers on Facebook. They acted as protagonists during the 2013 transportation protests through streaming broadcasts and renewed the language of citizen journalism in an interesting way, which has produced what they call a Ninja effect, with thousands of young people throughout the entire nation using their smartphones to express their points of view through an understanding that the media should be activist and should not pretend to be impartial. Ninja played a fundamental role in the reaction against the impeachment and is acting as one of the protagonists for resistance on the streets and in the social networks. Ninja is aligned with one of the important social movements in Brazil the MTST, and is connected with the most important leftist congressmen and women in Brazil from the PT, PSOL and REDES parties. It is a group that is non-partisan or post-partisan or trans-partisan and it’s created a team of columnists who come from the most diverse social backgrounds. There is a columnist who is a progressive Evangelical pastor, there is a columnist who is a prostitute who defends sex workers rights, there are columnists who defend GLBT rights, so I understand that it is an important group in Brazil at the moment because it suggests a new form of political movement that is not just based on politics but on the media and on behavior.

Brasil Wire: The media played an important role during last year’s illegal impeachment process against Dilma Rousseff. Now we see that Michel Temer was accused accepting and paying out millions of dollars in bribes and hush money, based on the solid evidence of audio and video which proves his guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. But Congress recently rejected attempts to initiate impeachment proceedings against him. How has the media reacted to this and how did its reaction differ from the way it treated Rousseff’s impeachment last year?

Ivana Bentes: First of all if you look at the role of the media during the impeachment it is very clear that it was a Judicial/Mediatic coup. A media group aligned with the financial elites to disqualify the political caste. If you compare the campaign that the media, the judiciary and the financial elites set up for the impeachment to events today it becomes clear that it had nothing to do with corruption and this is absolutely scandalous. It wasn’t about political corruption, it was about removing the PT party from power. Because what happened the other day – the victory of Michel Temer who was able to block the investigation against him over clearly proven cases of corruption – made it very clear that we are now in the second moment of this coup. The first moment was to remove this group from power and this second phase is the consolidation of Congress’ management, in close collaboration with the financial sector, of this 1.5 year period before the next presidential elections. This is being done without the people, without democratic representation and apparently with no reaction on the street. Now it is more clear than ever that Dilma was not removed for corruption, because Temer is a corrupt president involved in a proven scandal and he will continue in power. The difference from last year’s impeachment process is that the campaign against Michel Temer is now being carried out without big protests because there is a deep mistrust among the people that replacing Temer with one of his cronies, Rodrigo Maia, will change anything. So there is a deep disbelief- it is shocking that the streets were empty on the day of the Congressional vote on Temer’s corruption charges. People are no longer disputing the presidency – they seem to have lost all belief in the process. So it is a very difficult time. We are stagnating in a swamp where we no longer see the people, revolted, taking to the streets against Michel Temer because it doesn’t matter whether he leaves office or not if he would be substituted by Rodrigo Maia, who is also tangled up with corruption allegations from the Lava Jato investigation. It is a dramatic moment, this second Coup that we are suffering from in Brasil. And look at this, unlike the unanimous media posture in favor of Dilma’s impeachment we actually have a part of the big media turning against Temer. Globo, for example, ran a campaign against Temer. But we are at a moment when this political class, that is deeply ingrained in the cronyist system that depends on public money with a purchased Congress, has won the battle against these media forces.

Why do you think the most powerful media conglomerate in the country, Rede Globo, turned on Temer a few weeks ago, since it was one of the main parties responsible for his rise to the presidency?

My hypothesis is that they did not believe that Temer had the political power to push through the deep austerity reforms to things like the retirement system. But he just proved otherwise. Now that there was an explosion that proves his explicit relationship with corruption, that proves that he is corrupt, it is scandalous to defend him. At this moment, the polls show that 95% of the Brasilian population is against Temer and wants him gone. There is a strong public opinion against him and it is very difficult, even for a media group as powerful as Globo, to sustain a figure like Michel Temer. They had a second possibility for a manager- Rodrigo Maia. I think that for the media groups and judiciary the weaker that the presidency becomes, the better. Because the weaker it is, the easier it is to manipulate and the more it sits in the hands of these power brokers. So Temer is performing the role of manager in the first phase of the coup but nothing has improved. The economy hasn’t improved. It is hard to sustain the idea that he was the solution for the nation’s problems. His image is completely exhausted in all ways imaginable. At the same time, he controls power in Congress. He proved that this political caste that is embedded in Congress still has power. He survived this first set of accusations but there are more on the way. There are two more corruption cases building against him. So I think that this campaign for him to leave over ethical questions related to corruption will continue. It seems to me that he cannot be accepted by the media because if they support him now it will become even more obvious that Dilma Rousseff was not removed from power because of corruption. So it seems like the call, “Out Temer” is nearly unanimous in Brasil outside of the Congress, which is fighting for him to stay in power and protect their political appointments independently of popular disapproval. It is a terrible moment. Michel Temer is presenting what could turn out to be Brasilian parlamentarianism. Brazilian parlamentarianism, which would be a political extreme without the people and without democratic representation, is being tested in Brasil. In fact, we are experiencing parlamentarianism right now, under our unelected leader. And even the media is powerless to remove Michel Temer. So it is a confusing and delicate situation.

In your opinion does the Brasilian hegemonic mediaa support the idea of indirect elections next year as opposed to the direct elections we have had since 1989? Do you think they are preparing the public to accept this idea? If so, how?

I think this is exactly what is happening. The campaign that began in Globo and other big newspapers against Temer was started by the same people who helped remove Dilma Rousseff from power. They made a bet that politics could be conducted indirectly between the Congress, the media and the Judiciary. This arrangement is being tested at the moment in Brasil. It is a new form of Brazilian parlamentarianism which depends on the media and the Judiciary, and without a doubt, they bet everything on the idea that Temer was just an instrument in this transition towards an indirect government. But we are seeing that the political context and the correlation of power between these groups, the media, Judiciary and Congress, is more confusing and fragile than we imagined. So in a certain manner I think that the coup government has been installed in power, but that it has weakened because these groups are fighting among themselves and this is causing the big media groups to flip-flop. Globo turned on Temer but Estado de São Paulo ran a recent editorial supporting him, saying that it is preferable that Temer continues until the end of his mandate next year so that there isn’t any more instability. I don’t see that these power players have distinct positions, but they are all disputing with a weakened presidency that is not hostage to these media conglomerates and a judiciary which tries to manipulate these forces as much as possible. But as you said, they are all betting on an indirectly elected government.

Can you give me an example of how Globo is preparing the public to accept the idea of indirect elections?

The discourse is being transmitted through repetition and they relate it to stability, coming out of the crisis, creating a climate for things to get back to normal. The whole argument is built around the idea of instability and rebuilding the economy. This was also the most common justification that Congressmen used the other day when they voted in favor of Temer. They used the most absurd arguments imaginable to vote in favor of Dilma’s impeachment: for God, for the family, against corruption. This time around, the Congressmen who supported Temer’s continuance in power substituted God and family for economic stability and for the recuperation of the economy. And this is the same argument Globo is using to sustain the current economic strategy, either through Temer’s illegitimate presidency or through indirect elections. ‘Let’s continue banishing one segment of the political caste in the name of the economy’. This argument is being used constantly in a very repetitive form on television at the moment, as if there were only one thing important for Brazil. There could be an impeachment, Temer could be substituted for Rodrigo Maia, the legitimacy of Brazilian democracy is unimportant as long as we save the economy and maintain economic stability. It is a fallacy because the country is in terrible shape with skyrocketing unemployment and economic instability that has caused entire states, like Rio de Janeiro, to declare bankruptcy. So once again a fragile, fallacious argument is being built through fear-mongering to maintain this corrupt group in power.

Lula says that over the past year, Globo TV’s news show, Jornal Nacional, dedicated 16 hours of negative coverage associating him with reforms of a triplex apartment in Guaruja, owned by OAS construction company, that he never set foot in. In an unusual legal arrangment, judge and prosecuter Sergio Moro ruled his own prosecution succesful and condemned Lula to 9.5 years in prison but there is no credible evidence. It is a much weaker case than than, for example, the bank account info, video and audio files that show 2014 presidential candidate and PSDB party chief Aécio Neves receiving of millions of dollars in bribes and threatening to murder a witness. Why did Globo spend so much time talking about allegations against Lula?

It hasn’t abandoned its campaign against PT and Lula. Even though Globo started criticizing Michel Temer due to the corruption scandal it continues with its demolition project against the PT party and Lula in an attempt to ruin his 2018 presidential candidacy. This process has not eased up. We see it daily, fomented on the social media and the Jornal Nacional news program. The fact that Globo opted to talk about Temer and corruption at the current moment is because it feels it is a good time to challenge the PMDB and DEM parties who control Congress. But the persecution of Lula continues very strongly in all of the big media companies in Brazil. The campaign to tire out his image continues. The Brazilian media’s main goal now is the demonization and disqualification of a leftist political group that is connected to the PT and Lula’s leadership.

http://www.brasilwire.com/the-coup-phas ... na-bentes/

Saw somebody say that Social Democrats in Latin America are different than those in US & Europe. While we might disagree in theory I believe there is something to that
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri Aug 18, 2017 1:21 pm

The Coup, one year on & how Anglo media failed Brasil
Ignorance, incompetence, bad faith, and a mixture of all three.

At this time of crisis in the media industry, essential criticism and holding the press to account pushes against a newfound martyrdom for Journalists. They are threatened from two directions (guilt and competition) by the old concepts of post-truth (Public Relations) & fake news (Sensationalism), which are now presented as novel. In the United States they’re under fire from President Donald Trump, and in general, they are limited by the financial precariousness of the profession. With all that in mind It is with regret that an article like this even needs to be published, but analysis of the failure of Anglo media on Brazil, the world’s 5th most populous country, from 2012-2016 is important not only for the historical record, but for other countries facing similar internal and external attacks. This is not the first time we have needed to critique media coverage of Brazil during this process.

Firstly it is important to define Brazil’s (Soft, Parliamentary, Institutional/Mediatic) Coup of 2016 in a way that accounts for all its components. This subversion of Brazil’s Democracy wasn’t limited to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and the insistence that “impeachment isn’t a Coup” remains a common rhetorical device amongst supporters of her overthrow.

In reality there was a range of standpoints, from outright denial, to support with caveats, through to a fear that if the situation was defined as a “Coup” it would be bad for the country’s image and interests. This echoes depiction of the 1964 Military Coup as Democratic and a “Revolution“, used to this day by some supporters, including defeated Presidential candidate Aecio Neves in 2014. (Conversely Rousseff opponents tried to define Coup to mean “Military Coup” so as to exclude the term from usage to describe her fate).

Many of these views have evolved or altered in the year since, in light of new events and information. For the purposes of this article we can define the Coup as these main elements:

Precursor of destabilisation: June 2013’s “spontaneous” street protests grew as a left movement against right-wing Governors such as Rio de Janeiro’s Cabral and São Paulo’s Alckmin. This coincided with a Social Media storm of indignation across a range of frustrations with services, and Police brutality against protesters, which turned protests of a few thousand into hundreds of thousands. The rightward shift of this amorphous group significantly weakened Dilma Rousseff’s Government, which just a month previously enjoyed record approval ratings. In response to the protests, Rousseff proposed a plebiscite on Political Reform, and that all royalties from the massive subsalt oil and gas fields be invested in education & health for the coming decades, as a “Passport to the future”. These measures were opposed by her then Vice President, Michel Temer.

Media as political actor: TV Globo, Grupo Abril, Folha, & Estadão‘s systematic anti-left bias, misrepresentation of economic data, propagation of Anti-Corruption pretext, active promotion of synthesised Anti-Dilma street movements.

Lawfare: Lava Jato’s selective prosecution of PT, up to and including prevention of Lula da Silva’s 2018 Presidential candidacy. Complicity of some Judiciary. Supply of Anti-Corruption pretext to media.

Economic self-sabotage: Effects of Lava Jato exacerbated cyclical recession and crystallised public discontent, accounting for a 2.5% contraction in GDP in 2015 and hundreds of thousands of lost jobs as construction and energy, plus their dependent sectors were paralysed by the investigation.

Illegal Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff: Commenced following her 2014 election victory, with defeated opponent refusing to accept result. Eduardo Cunha was elected head of Congress amidst vote buying allegations. Cunha then paralysed the Rousseff Government and engineered her impeachment. She was voted out by both houses of congress despite being found innocent of any impeachable offence, nor was she cited in any testimony from the Lava Jato investigations. Congresspeople were threatened of consequences should they vote against impeachment, and as of February 2017 a scheme in which around 140 votes were “bought” has come to light. Some have depicted her impeachment as simply the “Opening Ceremony” of the Coup.

Post-Impeachment installation of defeated opposition in Government: The result of Rousseff’s removal was the installation of a Government very similar in personnel & policy to the one that lost the 2014 election, with PSDB and DEM parties, who had not themselves won a national election since 1997, taking power with the PMDB under Vice President Michel Temer. No members of Rousseff’s administration survived and in his first 24 hours, and Temer moved quickly to erase traces of the Worker’s Party progressive legacy, axing the ministries responsible for Women’s rights, for Racial Equality, for Agrarian reform and the Ministry of Culture. It was the first all-white, all-male cabinet since the dictatorship of Geisel in the 1970s.

Post-Impeachment implementation of extreme neoliberal policies which had been rejected by voters in previous 4 elections: It was not simply a caretaker administration – this was a sea change: an economically neoliberal policy platform being implemented in hours, by an administration which theoretically may only have had 6 months in power – the “Bridge to the Future” policy document and PEC241/55 austerity proposal to freeze public investment in health & education for 20 years.

Appointment of hardline authoritarian, PSDB-affiliated Temer ally, Alexandre de Moraes to the Supreme Court following unexplained air-crash which killed Judge Teori Zavascki, until 2043.

It must also be explained that there were not simply two sides, or good & evil to this crisis – there were at times ostensibly conflicting interests that sometimes aligned opportunistically for a common objective – like Lava Jato and the old Right Wing “Udenista” bloc – spread across PSDB, DEM, PMDB parties and others, and former PT allies, many of whom faced their own threats from the investigation.

A widely held belief on the left was that the objective of Lava Jato was to remove PT from Brazil’s political landscape and prevent Lula’s return to the presidency in 2018. With that, the extreme liberalisation of Brazil’s economy could begin in earnest, unimpeded – foreign actors and local elites alike would enjoy the rewards, as the Country’s enormous Public Sector was turned into low-hanging fruit for private investors. This process began literally hours after Rousseff’s suspension. The ‘Bridge to the future’ policy document was PMDB’s articulation of PSDB’s own core neoliberal programme which was defeated at the ballot box in 2014. It also appeared to have been translated from English, featuring phrases not found anywhere in Portuguese. Michel Temer admitted in September 2016 following Rousseff’s permanent removal that her refusal to accept that policy document, given its extreme nature and inherent threats to worker’s rights, was the actual reason that they pursued her removal. He made this admission at a New York event organised by Rockefeller’s Americas Society & Council of Americas (AS/COA) (a Latin America equivalent of the Atlantic Council) where he was asked what security plans he had to deal with public opposition unrest to this radical economic programme.

A Chevron funded lobby whose membership is a dizzying list of the most powerful corporations in North America and beyond, Council of the Americas (Formerly Business Group for Latin America) was set up by David Rockefeller in 1962 on the instruction of President Kennedy, expressly to interfere in elections & prevent left wing Governments coming to power in the region. As well as the overthrow of Allende in Chile from 69-73, It was active in Brazil’s 1962 election & the Coup of 1964, which removed President João Goulart against a similar backdrop to that which Rousseff faced.

Only zealots, the disingenuous or politically naive still maintain that Operation Lava Jato is pure of both conception and execution. Its roots can be traced to a 2004 document written by prosecuting judge Sergio Moro, in which he bases a hypothetical future operation on Italy’s 1990s Mani Pulite or Clean Hands, an anti-corruption purge which enabled the political rise of Silvio Berlusconi, the most corrupt political leader Italy had ever had. Moro’s plan continued to develop with the blessing and apparent cooperation of the U.S. State Department, who in this cable detail what would become Lava Jato under the banner of a project called “Bridges”. None of this was acknowledged by mainstream Anglo media, who instead repeated the mantra “Brazil’s institutions are working” whenever news from Lava Jato broke.

In the months and years prior to the Coup, foreign coverage often had the appearance of an orchestrated PR campaign, and in a sense that’s what it became – in that it included tacit editorial understanding not to use the word Coup and insofar as it was possible, to depict constitutional and democratic business as usual.

There was a large intake of new U.S. journalists between 2010 and 2012, including several belonging to the Inter-American Press Association, who have long stood accused of manipulating news coming from the Americas. The narrative shift on Brazil can be considered to have begun in earnest from 2012, with depiction changing from a brave country, economically, culturally and politically vibrant, which was finally emerging from its permanent status as the “country of the future”, to that of permanent catastrophe and failed state. Young Journalists were sent to São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, often with U.S. NGO/Think Tank funding and a remit to critique Dilma Rousseff and PT from right and left, breaking the halo-effect which had made Lula da Silva the most popular politician on Earth, and amplifying U.S.-friendly opposition figures such as Marina Silva and Aecio Neves. In addition, keystones of Brazilian culture and national integrity were critiqued and deconstructed, feeding the so called Vira Lata, or Stray Dog complex, helping fuel identity crisis and collapse in national self-esteem, just years after the country held its head high on the international stage for the first time in its history.

The core of anglophone commentary came from a small clique of journalists and commentators circled loosely round Council of the Americas Corporate members Bloomberg, CNN (Time Warner/Turner), plus colleagues at Reuters, NYT, Washington Post, NPR, and AS/COA’s own magazine Americas Quarterly. There was also regular liason between AS/COA – which is home to former State Department officials – and Journalists, some of whom were given sponsorships and expenses paid trips to the US where they would participate in special journalistic programmes in the years prior to Rousseff’s impeachment.

Reuters Brazil were at the time facing their own accusations of partiality, around the “podemos tirar se achar melhor” scandal, which appeared to censor damaging information about politicians from centre-right opposition PSDB. This situation pre-empted the departure of bureau chief Brian Winter to the position of Vice President at AS/COA & editor of Americas Quarterly (AS/COA’s in-house magazine). Winter had previously ghostwritten English language biographies for PSDB’s Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe – both neoliberal figures whose administrations were aligned to the United States. Reuters advertised for Winter’s replacement in a politicised manner, emphasising a continuation of the narrative established over the preceding years, that of tacit opposition to Dilma Rousseff.

Also of note is the promoted/sponsored commentariat, and how they interacted with established Journalists to shape narratives on social media. Usually connected to Washington DC think tanks, these individuals often have a current book release which validates perception as expert consultant. These included a Cato-associated former Bloomberg writer who, to the bewilderment of many followers, maintained that there was no Coup taking place, post 2014 election, throughout Rousseff’s impeachment and subsequent revelations, even at one point refuting the extensively documented role of the United States in the 1964 Military Coup.

An easy place to observe this echo chamber in motion is Twitter news aggregator, Scharlab, where there is little or nothing in the way of counterpoint to “economically orthodox” centre-right positions, which is occasionally dressed in the weaponised language of human rights and anti-corruption. Most of this coverage reflects the positions of Brazil’s own oligarchic media, such as Veja, Folha & Estadão, who all backed Dilma Rousseff’s illegal impeachment.

Watching how Latin America is reported in general is informative – Venezuela being the current extreme, where US commentators depict Venezuelans wanting further US Sanctions or Military intervention. These kind of talking points are often echoed by the same individuals who supported Rousseff’s impeachment. Then there is the polar disparity between the attitude towards Democracy in Venezuela and Brazil, both in the State Department itself, as illustrated in this video, and amongst think-tanks such as AS/COA.



AS/COA is not the only example but has an important function – like an interface between State (U.S.) & Corporate Power, Neoliberal Politicians in Latin America and everyday English-language media from the region, such as Reuters & Bloomberg in particular. Similarly, Ford Foundation’s traditional focus has been on the funding of journalists, scholarly research, and cultural projects, with a fundamental remit to promote a “Non-Marxist left”. It has been said that such NGO’s & Think Tanks now perform many of the tasks the CIA used to handle in-house.

There has also been a marked shift in the opposite direction on Argentina following the election of Macri, despite economic shocks that have followed. Long depicted as a basket case under Cristina Kirchner, now with agreement to establish US bases there it is almost as if Argentina is being groomed for a new leadership position in the southern cone, taking on Brazil’s mantle. Macri has stated that Venezuela is not a Democracy, and seeks its expulsion from Mercosur – a long held US objective. He also talks about expanding Mercosur all the way to Mexico. Yet any Macri-led Mercosur would most likely be in a Neoliberal form more similar to the continent-wide FTAA, the brainchild of David Rockefeller, which was roundly rejected by Lula and Nestor Kirchner when pushed by George W. Bush in the early 2000s.

With those longer term objectives in mind, you know exactly what to expect from the finance press, especially the “Watchtower” of the Neoliberal faith, the Economist. But it is the other areas of the Liberal media which really demonstrate the premise of this article and the trend of attacking a progressive government from an ostensibly left position, is worthy of particular attention. During the Impeachment, one Rio-based North American Journalist lamented that they couldn’t find any non-leftist history professors to corroborate their narrative.

Following its sister paper, the Observer, joining The Economist and Washington Post in calling for Rousseff’s resignation, there was also the strange case of the UK’s Guardian Newspaper. It altered a Pro-Temer headline, suggesting he had Brazilian’s support, to something framed entirely differently – the new headline suggesting the possibility of a Coup. This followed an angry response from the public. A Guardian contributor in Brazil complained off-record that they did not know who was writing/framing this material.

Coup denial

Master narratives, near identical talking points and statements on social media, obfuscation & self censorship – it was no surprise to see most falling into line when the Coup finally came. Those who didn’t comply could be observed on social media being slapped down by their editors for the use of the word Coup – in particular those at international news agencies. When the word Coup was used it was usually within scare quotes, dripping with innuendo. One British freelance journalist told Brasil Wire that they had to consciously stop sharing material which depicted the Soft Coup taking place out of fear of being blacklisted from possible future work from organisations such as Reuters.

In a precarious industry much of the self-censorship can be put down to professional self-preservation. However, this can and very often does dovetail with bad faith, and that too is strategic.

With absolute denial already implausible the “smart line” became how it was an “unfortunate” or “unfair” situation but “could not be called a Coup”. This position too became quickly untenable with the release of conversations between Senator Romero Juca and businessman Machado which detailed a “grand national agreement” including the legislature, judiciary and military. The plan was to put Temer in the presidency to “stop the bleeding” of Lava Jato before it reached them – with PT decapitated it would have served its purpose.

In addition, key figures such as President Michel Temer, Ministers Romero Juca & Jose Serra & Lava Jato prosecutor Sergio Moro had various documented involvements with State Department, dating back over a decade, which were ignored.

Public resistance to the Coup, large street demonstrations that had been occurring in parallel to, and at some points eclipsing those against Dilma Rousseff, were almost entirely ignored by international media, and still are. Such oppposition to the extreme enforced austerity policies of Temer’s Government underlines how the Brazilian left see the Coup – not merely a reference to Rousseff’s impeachment – with some respected commentators calling it the “Systematic dismantling of an emerging power“.

Closing Ceremony

So what was the answer to this shredding of the Coup denial narrative? Say nothing. Only a small core of Bloomberg, Reuters & AS/COA associated personnel continued to outright deny that a Coup had taken place, while most professional commentators simply avoided mention for fear of controversy. The Economist kept the faith, its notoriously insensitive Brazil editor glibly dismissing “Coup Rhetoric” as late as October 2016. Thankfully there were other independent platforms who published more accurate depictions of the situation.

With the Olympic closing ceremony filling the news cycle, pivotal acts of the Coup complete, and with most of the key writers quiet, many left the country entirely within days and weeks of Dilma’s final removal on 31st August. They followed an exodus of rich foreigners trying to unpick their interests from Brazil since 2015, many fearing catastrophe & collapse, some even civil war.

This story should and likely will someday be a case study in how oligarchic international media can combine to create a false narrative about a sovereign nation, a narrative which just so happens to serve local Comprador Elite interests and North Atlantic Economic & Foreign Policy objectives.

Ignorance, incompetence, bad faith? In all likelihood it was a mixture of the three.

After helping to enable the Coup by muting international outrage and opposition to it, it is ironic that so few of those responsible remain in the country to live with the societal consequences.

http://www.brasilwire.com/the-coup-one- ... ed-brazil/

'Bad faith'? Ya think? Too kind by half, how about naked class interests?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri Aug 18, 2017 8:31 pm

BRASIL WIRE , SEPTEMBER 29, 2015
The Right’s New Clothes
A network of Conservative Think-tanks & Foundations from the United States, such as Koch, Cato & Templeton, are financing young Latin Americans to fight Left Governments and defend old positions with a new language


“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” – John Kenneth Galbraith.

Original version in Portuguese at Agência Pública. English Translation for Brasil Wire by Angela Milanese. Republished under Creative Commons license.

By Marina Amaral, June 2015.

“Our body is the first private property we have. It is up to each of us to decide what to do with it,” says a young blonde woman in Spanish with a firm voice while moving gracefully across the stage at the Liberty Forum, which is adorned with the logos of the event’s official sponsors: Tobacco company Souza Cruz, Gerdau Group, Petróleo Ipiranga and the RBS Group (a local Globo TV affiliate). A sold out crowd at the 2000-seat auditorium of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre (PUC-RS) bursts into laughter and applause for Gloria Álvarez, a 30-year-old Guatemalan daughter of a Cuban father and a mother descended from Hungarian immigrants.

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Glória Álvarez, a star of the Latin American youth. Photo: Fernando Conrado

Gloria, or @crazyglorita (55,000 followers on Twitter and 120,000 on Facebook) rose to stardom among Latin American rightwing youth at the end of last year, when a video shot at the Ibero-American Youth Parliament held in Zaragoza (Spain), in which she attacks Latin American “populism,” went viral. At the Liberty Forum, the most high profile event promoted by Brazil’s rightwing, Gloria and the former Republican governor of South Carolina, David Bensley, are the only two people – among the 22 Brazilian and foreign speakers – scheduled to deliver keynote speeches at the three-day event, called “Roads to Freedom.”

A radio broadcaster for 10 years, now hosting her own TV show, Gloria is a captivating showoman. She addresses the audience with ease, which is mostly made up of PUC-RS students, one of the best and most expensive universities in southern Brazil. “Who here calls themselves conservative or libertarian, raise their hands,” she asks the audience. When she sees a roomful of raised hands, she relaxes. “Ah, ok,” she replies. Alvarez is the young leader of the National Civic Movement (MCN), a small Guatemalan organization that sprung up in 2009 in the wake of movements that unsuccessfully demanded the impeachment of the social democrat President Álvaro Colom. Her mission, she explains, is to teach her ideological peers how to “charm and seduce people on the left and how to defeat the bearded and beret-cladded Che Guevara crowd.”

The first lesson is to use “#PopulismovsRepública,” a hashtag she created to overcome the “obsolete division between right and left.”

“An intellectually honest leftist must recognize that the only way out is employment and a modern, 21st century rightwinger must recognize that sexuality, morality and drugs are individual problems. He is not the moral authority of the universe,” she continues, amid thunderous applause.

There should be no guilt, neither moral nor social, she teaches. The message is individual freedom, youth “empowerment,” low taxes and a minimal state – the agenda of the neoliberal right (in economic terms) across the world. “Wealth is not transferred, ladies and gentlemen. Wealth is created, starting in each one of your little heads,” she says. In the same vein, Gloria also criticizes social welfare programs for the poor, affirmative action programs for women, blacks, people with disabilities, even the very concept of minorities. “There are no minorities. The smallest minority is the individual and he is best served in a meritocracy.”

“There is a truth that every human being must reach to find peace, if they don’t want to live as a hypocrite. All of us, seven-and-a-half billion human beings inhabiting this planet, are selfish. This is the truth, my dear friends in Brazil. We are all selfish. Is this bad? Is this good? No, it’s just the reality,” she says categorically. “There are people who don’t accept this truth and come up with this wonderful idea: ‘No! [Gloria shouts, imitating a man’s voice] I will build the first unselfish society!’ Be careful, Brazilians, be careful, Latin America! Those wise guys are like Stalin in the Soviet Union, or Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un in North Korea, Fidel Castro in Cuba or Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Why do we keep following those hypocrites like sheep? Because [Gloria grimaces and imitates a frail woman elderly voice] they teach us that it’s wrong to be selfish and that to think of ourselves is a sin. How many of you haven’t heard someone say we need a good man who doesn’t care only for himself,” she says, bending as she speaks, and then standing up to regain her proud upright posture.

“Look, gentlemen, unless it’s a Martian, this man does not exist, never existed and never will exist.”

Frantic applause.

But, she explains, the “champions of freedom” also bear their share of responsibility. They do not know how to communicate their ideas, or how to use technology to “empower citizens” and “liberate” Latin America. If you keep discussing macro-economics, GDP and so on, “we will lose the battle. We need to learn with the populists and talk in a way that people understand, make them identify with what we’re saying,” she explains. “And let me give you another piece of advice. Since they say that us, conservatives are damned exploiters,” she quips ironically. “I’ve found a wonderful way to define the concept of private property, which makes the leftists go like ‘wow!’”

“Private property is what we amass in our lifetime, starting with our first properties: body and mind.” The past, she explains, isn’t the same to everyone, so this amassing is personal. She continues, “This humanizes us, gives us, disgraceful conservatives, a bit of a heart.” Laughter. Applause.

“There are people who want the right to health care, education, work, housing. The UN even wants to establish a human right to internet access,” she scoffs disdainfully, even though she had just declared that technology is the key to changing the world. “Imagine that, in this auditorium, some of you want the right to education, others the right to health care, and others want the right to housing. So if I give you education, everyone here will pay for it, and you will be VIPs, while they will be second-class citizens. If I give them health care, everyone in this auditorium will pay for their health, and they will be VIPs. If I give them houses, I will take from you to provide houses for them, and they will be the VIPs. This isn’t social justice, this is inequality before the law,” she concludes, again amid laughter and applause.

“If everyone in Latin America is entitled to life, liberty and private property, then everyone goes after education, health care and the house they want, without the need of a super-Chávez, super-Morales and super-Correa.” Ovation. Whistles. Before closing her 40-minute speech, Gloria invites the public to challenge the “victimization of Latin-Americans” and “blaming the Yankees” worldview, which undermines self-esteem and the courage to take risks, required by the entrepreneurial spirit. The audience gives her a standing ovation.

Neoliberals and Libertarians

Gloria Álvarez does not really represent anything new. The main difference is the language she uses. The MCN movement receives “funding from some of the largest companies in the traditional business elite,” according to investigative journalist Martín Rodríguez Pellecer, who is the director of the Guatemalan online media site Nómada (an Agência Pública partner). “I came to know, from sources close to them, that one of the companies that support their public campaigns and congress lobbying is Azúcar de Guatemala, an extremely powerful cartel of 13 companies. (Guatemala is the world’s fourth largest sugar exporter). Guatemalan companies, by the way, have investments in Brazilian plants.”

The same can be said about her ideas. Despite their seductive title, libertarians are “a minority segment among the schools of thought that gained influence in the post-war era, in opposition to the Keynesian-inspired interventionist policies,” explains the economist Luiz Carlos Prado, from the Rio de Janeiro Federal University.

After the 1970s oil crisis, pro-market economists such as Friedrich Hayek (Nobel Prize 1974), monetarists from the Chicago school of economics led by Milton Friedman (Nobel Prize 1976) and neoclassicists associated with Robert Lucas, Jr. (Nobel Prize 1995) came to dominate global economic thought, and became known to the public under the single label “neoliberal.” Their concepts were brought to Latin America by the most conservative sectors of American society, represented mainly by think thanks with ties to Ronald Reagan. After losing Republican primaries in 1968 and 1976, Reagan was finally elected president in 1980, with Friedman as a major adviser. The same ideas also dominated the government of Margaret Thatcher (1979-1991) in the United Kingdom.

“The supporters of classical liberalism also supported political freedom, but this school of economic thought called ‘neoliberalism’ advocates non-intervention of the state in the economy, without demonstrating a particular concern for political freedom. In some cases, and without any shame, they allied themselves with dictatorships, such as the military regime of Pinochet in Chile,” says Prado.

Gloria Álvarez’s Guatemala is a good example of how libertarian ideas came to fruition in Latin America. In 1971, “a significant part of the Guatemalan economic elite embraced neoliberalism and adopted it as its political project. That was when they founded the Francisco Marroquin University (UFM),” explains Rodríguez.

“The University was founded by Manuel Ayau, known as El Muso, in allusion to Mussolini. Ayau adopted the fascist, anti-communist platform of the National Liberation Movement [MLN, a Guatemalan political party]. Since then, the UFM has been preparing political and academic cadres trained to discredit the very concepts of government and social justice.”

As a result, Guatemala was transformed into the Latin American country that collects the least in taxes (11% to GDP) and the one that least redistributes them,” he says.

Álvarez studied at UFM and “became a libertarian, but she is a little less conservative than her professors, who are a mix of neoliberalism and Opus Dei [a conservative religious institution]. She declares herself to be an atheist and a supporter of abortion rights. Although she has become a star on the Latin American right, she is a minor figure on the Guatemalan right. She has no political base and is not a political candidate for elected office. I see her more as a libertarian enfant terrible,” concludes Rodríguez.

Libertarians resurfaced with full force in the United States after the 2008 financial crisis (and the subsequent clamor for market regulation) and as a reaction to the election of Barack Obama.

Libertarians preach the supremacy of the individual over the state, absolute market freedom and the unfettered defence of private property. Libertarians claim that the economic crisis, which threw 50 million people into poverty, was not caused by the lack of financial market regulation, but rather by government protectionist policies towards certain sectors of the economy. They also emphatically reject the social policies promoted by the Obama administration. However, a significant portion of libertarians distance themselves from traditional rightwing positions on social issues. In the name of individual freedom, they defend positions usually associated with the left, such as the legalization of drugs and a more tolerant approach towards homosexuals. GOP Senator Rand Paul, a presidential hopeful, is one of the best known faces of the libertarian movement.

“Libertarians that are Tea Party supporters (a radical rightwing faction of the Republican Party) are also associated with think thanks such as the Cato Institute. They make up the post-modern right, represented, for example, by David Cameron in the UK, who modernized the ‘rolling back’ of the welfare state agenda,” says Prado.

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“Who is John Galt?”, “Less Marx More Mises”. Photo: Instituto Liberal do Nordeste

Prado looks amused when I mention Brazilian libertarians, followers of the Austrian school of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. “The Austrian school is a very minor strain, even in academia,” he declares. “Who are those libertarians? In Brazil, we have sophisticated economists who follow schools of economic thought, such as the neoclassical school of Nobel Prize winner Robert Lucas and other similar approaches. Rightwing politicians lacking depth, such as Ronaldo Caiado [a senator from the centre-western state of Goiás, affiliated with the Democratic Party (DEM)], and a conservative middle class that reads [popular rightwing columnist] Rodrigo Constantino of Veja magazine,” he concludes.

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Senator Ronaldo Caiado. Photo: Fernando Conrado

Caiado and Constantino are veteran participants of the Liberty Forum in Porto Alegre. The novelty is that the Tea Party’s libertarians are at last able to present themselves, to Brazilian youth, as an attractive new face for the right.

Come to the Street, Citizen

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On April 12, the eve of the Forum, Gloria Álvarez made a speech at the second round of nationwide demonstrations against President Dilma Rousseff. Dressed in a sequin shirt featuring the design of the Brazilian flag, in front of about 100,000 people at Paulista Avenue in São Paulo, Álvarez railed against “cursed populism.” (see video of Gloria’s speech here). From atop a truck, the leader of the Come to the Street movement (VPR), Rogério Chequer, introduced Álvarez as “one of the greatest representatives of the battle against the populism of the São Paulo Forum.” [The Sao Paulo Forum (Foro de São Paulo) is an annual conference of leftist political parties, social movements and organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean.]

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Among those who led the anti-government protests in March and April, Chequer’s movement was one of the last to take up the cause of impeachment. That delay earned him a public rebuke from the elderly Olavo de Carvalho, a polemical rightwing pundit, who accused him of “toucan wimpiness.” Toucan is the symbol of Brazil’s main opposition party, the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB).

The Free Brazil Movement (MBL), mostly known through the figure of its leader, Kim Kataguiri, which adopted the cause of impeachment from the get-go, broke up with Chequer publicly, publishing pictures of him standing next to PSDB Senator José Serra at the Aécio Neves presidential campaign. PSDB Senator Neves was dubbed a “traitor” for his hesitation in demanding the impeachment of the elected president. They reconciled after a delegation led by Neves and Caiado made a controversial visit to Caracas, Venezuela.

Incidentally, Caiado participated in the opening night of the Liberty Forum. Lacking Glorita’s irreverent grace, the conservative rural senator drew applause from the audience with sound bites against government corruption and references to the São Paulo Forum (video). Caiado also demanded the resignation of President Dilma Rousseff and attacked the Brazilian State Development Bank (BNDES).

Interestingly, his accusations were made under logos of the Gerdau Group and Ipiranga Petróleo (from the Ultra group), which are two of the largest borrowers of BNDES loans, according to data collected by one of Brazil’s largest newspapers, Folha de São Paulo. Between 2008 and 2010, both companies individually obtained more than R$1 billion worth of bank loans.

The southern entrepreneur Jorge Gerdau is one of the creators of the Liberty Forum, established in 1988 with the aim of promoting a debate between various schools of thought. The most important conservative gathering in the country, it nevertheless included, in its first incarnations, guest speakers such as former President Lula of the Workers Party (PT), former Minister José Dirceu, a minister in the Lula administration, and the late Rio de Janeiro state governor and leftist Leonel Brizola.

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It was there that, in 2006, the most prominent rightwing think tank in Brazil – the Millennium Institute – was officially launched. Armínio Fraga (who would have been finance minister if Aécio Neves had been elected) is its best-known figure in the field of economics. Its backers are the Gerdau Group, publishing company Editora Abril and Pottencial Insurance, which belongs to Salim Mattar, who also owns Localiza Rent a Car. Suzano Papel e Celulose [paper and cellulose], Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and the Évora group (from the Ling brothers) are also supporters. In 1984, William Ling helped create the Institute of Business Studies (IEE). Comprised of young business leaders, the IEE organized the Forum from the start. His brother Winston Ling founded the Liberty Institute in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, while William Ling’s son Anthony Ling has ties to the group Students for Liberty [Estudantes Pela Liberdade (EPL)], which created the Free Brazil Movement. Hélio Beltrão of the Ultra Group is one of the founders of the Millennium Institute, though he has his own institute as well, the Mises Brazil.

Brazil’s network of neoliberal and libertarian think tanks includes two more entities: The Open Order Institute, which holds youth seminars; and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Ethics and Human Economics (CIEEP) in Rio de Janeiro, linked to Opus Dei. The jurist Ives Gandra, who wrote a controversial opinion piece stating that there is legal basis for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, is a member of its board of advisers.

Like the Millennium Institute, the majority of these organizations have been created recently. The original seed was the Liberal Institute, established in 1983 by Donald Stewart Jr., a civil engineer from Rio de Janeiro, who passed away in 1999. According to “The dictatorship of contractors: (1964-1985),” a doctoral thesis written by the historian Pedro Henrique Pedreira Campos, from the Fluminense Federal University (UFF), Donald Stewart Jr.’s company, Ecisa (Engineering, Commerce and Industry S.A.), was one of Brazil’s largest construction firms during the military dictatorship. Stewart partnered with Leo A. Daly Company, a US construction business, to build schools in the northeast region of the country, funded by a regional government development agency, known as SUDENE. The participation of an American company in the project was a requirement to get financing from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which operated as a front for the CIA during the cold war era of Latin American dictatorships.

Donald Stewart was also an old friend of a crucial character in this story, Alejandro Chafuen, a 61-year-old Argentinian living in the US. Stewart and Chafuen are members of the exclusive Mont Pelèrin Society, founded by no other than the Guatemalan Hayek. Launched in 1947 in Switzerland, with headquarters in the US, the organization comprises the most committed libertarians. El Muso, the founder of Gloria Álvarez’s alma mater, the Francisco Marroquín University, was the first Latin American to chair the Mont Pelèrin Society, while the University’s current rector, Gabriel Calzada, is a board member, along with the Brazilian Margaret Tsé, the CEO of the Liberty Institute, which is the ideological backer of the Institute of Business Studies.

Meanwhile, the president of the Mont Pelèrin Society, the Spaniard Pedro Schwartz Girón, also actively fosters think tanks associated with the Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies (FAES), a foundation with ties to the Spanish Partido Popular (PP).

FAES, which is chaired by former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, promoted the Ibero-American Youth Parliament, the event that catapulted Álvarez into fame. Pedro Schwartz, Alejandro Chafuen and the Colombian Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, who co-authored the book “The Perfect Latin American Idiot, ” a hit with rightwing youth, attended the Latin America’ panel at the Liberty Forum. Chafuen also took part, discreetly, in the April 12 protests in Porto Alegre. He posted a photograph of the demonstration on his Facebook page. The photo shows Chafuen, dressed in the Brazilian national team shirt, hugging the young Brazilian political scientist Fábio Ostermann. Ostermann is the coordinator of the Free Brazil Moment, which is how the Students for Liberty (EPL) decided to call their anti-government movement.


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Alejandro Chafuen & Fábio Ostermann

The southerners Fábio Ostermann and Anthony Ling, and the southeasterner Juliano Torres are the founders of the local chapter of Students for Liberty, an organization that plays a crucial role in the network between American conservative think tanks – especially those that define themselves as libertarians – and “anti-populist’’ Latin American youth. Mr. Chafuen, who leads the Atlas Network since 1991, is their mentor.

The Atlas Network (the trade name for the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, adopted in 2013) is a type of meta think tank that specializes in promoting the establishment of libertarian organizations throughout the world. It receives funds from its partner libertarian foundations in the US, or from local entrepreneurial think tanks that are geared toward the fostering of young leaders, especially in Latin American and Eastern Europe. According to its Form 990, which all non-profit entities must file with the IRS, Atlas Network’s revenue in 2013 totalled $ 11,459,000. Resources allocated to programs outside the US were US$6.1 million, of which US$2.8 million were directed to Central America and US$595,000 to South America.

With the exception of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Institute, all the organizations mentioned in this article are part of the Atlas Network in Brazil, along with Gloria Álvarez’s MCN, the Francisco Marroquin University and Students for Liberty (which was founded inside the Atlas Network in 2012). Furthermore, in addition to the aforementioned resources, there are much more sizeable programs operated by the Atlas Network, which are funded by other foundations.

The discreet charm of Mr. Chafuen

Sitting in the VIP room of the Liberty Forum, Mr. Chafuen rose to his feet to greet Kim Kataguiri, who made a surprise visit. The undisguised glee from this demure gentleman, a libertarian with ties to Opus Dei, was my cue to ask for an interview. The main parts are transcribed below.

Q: How did you get close to Brazil?

A: I started to work with my Brazilian friends of liberty in 1998 with Donald Stewart, and I always remember how lonely he felt in his quest for freedom. To arrive in Porto Alegre on the same day of the protest and see all these people, not all libertarians, but people from different social strata of Brazilian society, arguing things that are very consistent with the essence of a free society, it reminded me of these pioneers. Because, yes, there were so many people on the street, so many souls, it left me pleasantly surprised and wondering what will happen next, and how can we harness the enthusiasm of so many young people to produce lasting change in Brazil.”

Q: What kind of changes?

A: Coming from the outside, it’s difficult to say, it’s unique to each country. Look at Spain today, in which political parties lost ground to new movements, such as Podemos from the left, or their opposite in Catalonia, the Ciudadanos. In the United States, for instance, we have the Tea Party, a spontaneous movement that instead of founding a new party, opted to become a trend within a party, and now all but one of the major Republican presidential candidates identify themselves with the Tea Party and seek its support. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, they all come from the Tea Party and are pretty much opposed to the traditional republicans. So this is not an answer that a foreigner can give, especially in Brazil, which is a world unto itself, with so many diverse cultures. We can offer some ideas, but it’s up to them, the ones I saw on the streets, the young and the not so young, to attract more members of civil society, and to institutionalize all this.”

I mention to him that, at the Forum, people speak a lot about freedom – without basis in reality – and that they actually compare Brazil to Venezuela.

A: Yes, the situation here is very different from Venezuela, but you must be vigilant. Freedom isn’t lost just like that, from one day to another. Venezuela was one of the most prosperous countries and look what happened. Populism in Latin American weakens institutions. They let entrepreneurs feel free to invest for some time, allow freedom of expression, and then sooner or later they change the rules of the game. Chávez’s first nationalizations and expropriations happened years after he took power. Yes, you have considerable freedom here. But there are some things that pervert freedom, which is the non-compliance with laws, privilege, corruption, and crony capitalism. It’s a false freedom. It’s like putting a fox in the chicken coop and telling them, ‘you are free now.’ Then the problems start [bribery allegations], business owners are required to enter the game, and they end up taking the blame. It takes two to dance a tango, as they say in Argentina.

Q: Are the guys from the Free Brazil Movement strong enough to promote social change?

A: I developed a model to explain how things happen, which has four elements: first – ideas, since human beings think before acting, or at least we should; second – motivation, because economy is motivation; third – action, because ideas without action are just ideas; the fourth is providence or, depending on what your beliefs are, luck. So you get to work with ideas, some leaders emerge, laws change, and that affects society’s motivation…a typical change doesn’t happen overnight. This pressure builds up and suddenly something happens. And then there is a scandal, another scandal, a magazine with courage, some young men from São Paulo decide, “I’ll leave college and fight against it.” [Kim Kataguiri and Renan Haas, from the MBL, recently announced the decision to leave college to devote themselves to the movement.] And then the movement is out there in the streets. It’s a combination of factors that we have seen at other times in history.

Mr. William Waack [a Globo TV journalist], who got an award here, said to us at a luncheon, before the opening of the Forum, that the only movement he covered that was like this was the fall of the Berlin Wall. He exaggerated a bit, but we don’t know yet what will happen with this movement.

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Globo TV Journalist William Waack receiving award

Q: After the first anti-government protest in March of this year, the Atlas Network published a piece on its site celebrating the crucial role of its partner, Students for Liberty, in the protests against President Dilma Rousseff and the Workers Party in Brazil. Do you feel responsible for this movement?

A: Our role [in regard to Students for Liberty] is the power of nurturing. These human beings, we call them intellectual entrepreneurs, people with new ideas who see solutions and decide to invest their capital in them. It’s like in business. So we offer them training programs, try to support them financially, encourage them to be committed, to not be too much of a partygoer. But Atlas does not support political parties. We withdraw our support if there is any partisan interest. We don’t accept resources from the government but we can offer some guidelines, new ideas about a free society, from classical liberalism to libertarianism, from religious to atheists, but it’s up to each person to choose. Many of us in our organization have a very negative view about the top-down approach. So we try to encourage people, help them meet each other. Now, for example, all over the world, people might be asking, ‘can we emulate the Brazilians?’ So we celebrate, but we’re careful not to take credit for the results, for what happens locally.

Q: In Venezuela, an Atlas partner organization, the CEDICE Libertad, and the Cato Institute, which funds Atlas programs for students, allied with local businessmen. They were accused by the Chávez government of fomenting opposition among students.

A: I am vice president of CEDICE, and this is not true. Every so often, some CEDICE members might have engaged in some political activity. But one thing is political life, the polis; another is to work exclusively with one political party. We have worked with-and received at CEDICE-Leopoldo López [who is in jail] and his party, the Internacional Socialista; María Corina Machado [a former congresswoman] and Antonio Ledezma [the mayor of Caracas, arrested in March amid accusations that he was involved in a coup plot]. The answer is that we cannot give up the fight for freedom and some people get into politics. But the Atlas Network doesn’t get involved in local politics. The battle is not between left and right but between right and wrong. And now if you excuse me, I have to go and get ready for my speech.

Q: One last question, please, to dispel rumours. The ties between the Koch foundation and Students for Liberty, through direct funding as well as funding from other foundations associated with the Koch brothers have aroused suspicions, since the Kochs own oil industries that could have interests in this country.

A: The Atlas Network receives 0.5% in funding from the Kochs. The Students for Liberty, I don’t know. Goodbye.

Students for Liberty and the Free Brazil Movement

The executive director of Students for Liberty (EPL), Juliano Torres, was more forthcoming about the link between the EPL and the Free Brazil Movement, a brand name created by the EPL to participate in street demonstrations without compromising US organizations that are prevented, by IRS rules, from donating funds to political activists. He told me in a phone interview that “several members of the EPL wanted to participate in the 2013 ‘Free Pass’ protests in Brazil but we receive funding from organizations such as the Atlas Networks and Students for Liberty, which are forbidden by IRS rules to get involved in political activities. So we said, ‘members of the EPL can participate as individuals, but not as an organization, to avoid problems.’ So we decided to create a brand name. It wasn’t an organization, just a brand that we could use in the streets, called the Free Brazil Movement. Me, Fábio [Ostermann] and Felipe França, who are from Recife and São Paulo, plus four, five people – we created the logo and the Facebook campaign. Then the demonstrations ended and so did the project. So we were looking for someone to take over; we had more than 10,000 likes on our Facebook page, pamphlets. Then we found Kim [Kataguiri] and Renan [Haas], who made this incredible shift in the movement, with the marches against Dilma and things like that. Incidentally, Kim is a member of the EPL, so he was also trained by the EPL. Many of the local organizers are members of the EPL. They act as members of the Free Brazil Movement, but they were trained by us, through leadership courses. Kim, by the way, will participate in a charity poker tournament that Students for Liberty will organize in New York to raise funds. He’ll be a speaker. He’ll also be a speaker at the international conference in February.”

Torres, who is paid by the EPL, tells me that he has two online meetings per week with American headquarters and that he and other Brazilians take part every year in an international conference, with expenses paid, and in a leadership meeting in Washington. The budget of the Students for Liberty for this year in Brazil should reach R$300,000.

“In the first year, we had approximately R$8,000. In the second year we had about R$20,000, and from 2014 to 2015 it grew considerably. We receive funding from other external organizations too, such as the Atlas Network. The Atlas, along with Students for Liberty, are our main donors. In Brazil, one of our major donors is the Friederich Naumann Institute, which is a German organization. They are not allowed to give money but they pay for our expenses. So there were meetings in the south, in Porto Alegre, and in the southeast, in Belo Horizonte. They rented the hotel, paid for the meeting room, lunch and dinner. There are also some individual donors who make donations to us.”

The launching of the EPL in Brazil took place after Torres participated in a 2012 summer workshop for thirty students in Petropolis, sponsored by the Atlas Network. “Right there, we made a draft, a plan, and then we contacted Students for Liberty to officially join the network,” he says.

After that, Torres went through several training programs at Atlas. “There is one they call MBA, there is a program in New York, and also online training. We recommend to all people who work in positions of a certain responsibility to also go through the Atlas Network training programs.”

The US headquarters was impressed by the results obtained by Brazilians. “In 2004 and 2005, there were about 10 people in Brazil who identify themselves with the libertarian movement. Today, the results we have, within the global network of Students for Liberty, are very good. One way to measure the performance of a region is to look at the number of local coordinators. We have more coordinators than any region, including North America, Africa and Europe, individually. The organization has existed, in the United States, for eight years; in Europe, for four years; here, for three years. So we are getting better results in less time, which provides us with a greater influence in the organization.”

There are two Brazilians (out of ten members) at the International Board of Students for Liberty. This year’s report devotes a page to the protests from the MBL in Brazil. A Brazilian, Elisa Martins, who has a degree in economics from the Santa Maria University, is responsible for international scholarships and young leadership training programs at the Atlas Network.

The programs are carried out in partnership with other foundations, especially the Cato Institute, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the Institute of Human Studies, all organizations linked with the Koch family, one of the richest in the world. In the last two decades, the 11 foundations tied with the Kochs poured US$800 million into the American network of conservative foundations. Another important partner is the John Templeton Foundation, another American billionaire. With considerably larger budgets than the Atlas Network, these organizations develop fellowship programs, funded by them and executed by Atlas. An example of these projects is the expansion of the Students for Liberty Network, financed by the John Templeton Foundation, which closed 2014 with over $ 1 million budget.

top10-doadores3-01

Thus, even though it appears in third place among the backers of Students for Liberty, the Atlas Network, through its partner, raises a considerably larger volume of funds. All major donors of Students for Liberty are also Atlas donors. It is not always possible to know the origin of the money, despite the legal obligation to fill the IRS 990 form. American conservative organizations distribute money through several different channels, making it impossible to know the original source of the money that reaches each the recipient.

Rightwing foundations have been under scrutiny by the media and groups such as Conservative Transparency.

These investigations have exposed questionable use of resources for lobbying in Congress and state governments, and financing controversial causes such as opposition to climate change legislation. In response, in 1999 the foundations created two philanthropic investment funds, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Management. These investment funds do not require donors to disclose their names in the IRS 990 forms. Thus, the Donors Trust is the largest backer of Donors Capital Management (and vice versa). The Koch foundations are the main suspect of pouring money into these funds.

The 2014-2015 Students for Liberty report shows an impressive amount of fundraising: US$3.1 million, compared with only US$35,768 raised when the organization was launched in 2008. US$1.7 million came from foundations, according to the report, which does not detail the amount donated by each institution.

The Charles Koch Institute is listed but according to the report, it provides grants to American students only, while the Charles Koch Foundation, which distributes grants to students through a number of foundations, is not mentioned in the report.

Another Koch family foundation, the Institute of Human Studies (IHS), is a major contributor to student fellowship programs. Only in 2012, it distributed US$900,000 in grants, according to a form submitted to the IRS.

The Atlas Network is one of the IHS’ major partners. The MBL coordinator, Fabio Ostermann, for example, mentions in his résumé that he was a Koch Summer Fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Ostermann is an aid of Representative Marcel van Hattem, a politician from Rio Grande do Sul, affiliated with the Progressive Party (PP) and pointed out by Kim Kataguiri as the only Brazilian politician who fully embraces the MBL’s ideas. The young representative was elected with the financial backing of the Gerdau and Évora groups, the latter belonging to the father of Anthony Ling, who is a founder of the EPL. Van Hattem also took courses at the Acton Institute University, the most religious of the organizations that are part of the Atlas and Koch Foundation fellowship network.

Acton lists combatting “sin” as one of its core principles, stating that the ubiquity of sin requires the limitation of the state.

Maté Party

The Liberty Forum ended in the same way the street demonstrations that preceded it did, with a chanting of “Dilma out,” “PT out.” [PT -Partido dos Trabalhadores, or Workers Party].

Representative van Hattem in a passionate speech, thanked the Forum for his election.

“If I am a representative today, I also owe it to the Liberty Forum,” he said. He then made an interesting distinction between the 2013 demonstrations, which were spontaneous, disorganized and comprised multiple parties; and the 2015 protests, in which “we have an agenda.”

Image

The program was modified to include Kim Kataguiri, who was not initially listed as a speaker. Kataguiri was embraced by sponsors such as Jorge Gerdau and Hélio Beltrão, posed for pictures with several fans, as well as his friend Bene Barbosa, who was promoting a book defending the freedom to bear arms. He then went to the auditorium, once again full of students.

Sitting on the couch, Kataguiri waited for van Hattem to list the usual litany of accusations against the São Paulo Forum, the totalitarian power of the Workers Party and “the biggest corruption scandal of the universe.” Every soundbite and rhetorical red meat was greeted with rousing applause. Van Hattem stirred up the audience, displaying the bond he had established with them, telling them “the avant-garde today isn’t leftist, it’s libertarian. Well-informed youth go to the streets and ask for less Marx and more Mises. They like Hayek not Lenin. They carry signs with the hashtag #Olavoisright,” [referring to the aforementioned rightwing pundit Olavo de Carvalho].

Van Hattem then left the podium and, walking across the stage, walked towards Kataguiri. “The next step is up to you, but it’s hard. The Brazilian system is averse to new ideas. Today, Kim, the communist congressman Juliano Roso called you a fascist,” he said. And finally, “I just want to conclude by saying that the streets are saying: ‘PT out!’” Applause, screams. The crowd sung in chorus, “‘Ole, ole, ole, ole, we are on the street just to overthrow the PT’.”

It was the cue for Kataguiri’s entrance. Wearing sneakers and walking around the stage, Kataguiri urged the “neoliberal institutions” to get out of “our neoliberal bubble, our libertarian bubble, our conservative bubble and take the country,” and asserted, “It is time for us to break the monopoly of the leftist youth. We have to change this image of the defender of the free market as an old uncle wearing boots who supports the military regime. We are the opposition. We want to privatize Petrobras. We want a minimal state. Brasília will not dictate the people; the people will dictate Brasília.”

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Kim Kataguiri, public figurehead of MBL

Three days after the Forum, Kim Kataguiri left for his March for Freedom toward Brasília, attracting a meager turnout of people, while Gloria Álvarez embarked on a tour that took her from Argentina to Venezuela, effusively reported on her social network. In Argentina, she visited Buenos Aires and Azul, after an invitation by the Argentina Rural Society. Her speeches at the National University in Tucumán were organized by the Federalism and Liberty Foundation, which includes on its international board, the Atlas Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the CEDICE Libertad, and the Ecuadorian Institute of Political Economy.

These organizations are all part of the Atlas Network, as are the other organizations that organized Álvarez’s trip – Students for Liberty (Bolivia and Ecuador), the CEDICE (Venezuela), and the Foundation for Progress (Chile).

The most interesting thing about Álvarez’s trip, however, was not mentioned on her social network, or even in Chilean newspapers. On April 23, she and dissident Cuban blogger Yaoni Sánchez met with the conservative former President Sebastián Piñera after they delivered speeches at the Adolfo Ibañez University in Viña del Mar.

The meeting with the ex-president was reported on twitter by a former minister of the Piñera administration, the economist Cristián Larroulet. He posted a photo – the only photo in which Álvarez and Sánchez appear together – with the caption, “President Piñera with Yoani Sánchez and Gloria Álvarez, two examples of Latin American women fighting for freedom.” Larroulet is the founder of the think tank Liberty and Development, a natural partner of the Atlas Network.

http://www.brasilwire.com/the-rights-new-clothes/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu Aug 24, 2017 5:59 pm

Brazil scraps Amazon reserve to allow mining

Brazil's President Temer says the move will stimulate economic activity and will abide by environment protection laws.

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The large natural reserve straddles the northern states of Amapa and Para and is home to resources such as manganese, iron, and gold [Al Jazeera]

The government of Brazil has abolished a vast national reserve bigger than the size of Denmark to open the area to commercial mineral exploration, drawing sharp criticism from environmentalists and political opponents.

The area, which straddles the northern states of Amapa and Para, is thought to contain rich deposits of gold, iron, manganese and other minerals.

A decree from President Michel Temer published in the official government gazette on Wednesday dissolved the protected area, known as the National Reserve of Copper and Associates (Renca).

Established in 1984 under the then military dictatorship, the protected status of the reserve, which covered roughly 4.6m hectares (17,800 square miles), restricted mining activities to state companies.

Temer has been seeking to stimulate economic activity as Latin America's top economy emerges from the worst economic crisis in more than a century.

READ MORE: Amazon - The final frontier?

Wednesday's decree stressed that it does not override other existing environmental protection laws, such as protections for native vegetation and nature conservation areas.

But campaign groups such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have expressed concern about the environmental threat to the reserve from potential mining projects.

Brazilian newspaper O Globo quoted Michel de Souza, the public policy coordinator of WWF-Brazil, as saying that the decree is a "catastrophe".

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"The Amazon Forest is our biggest asset. In this moment of despair and crisis, they are putting at risk the protected areas that are within the reserve," de Souza said.

Last month, the executive director of WWF-Brazil Mauricio Voivodic warned of the damages that mining would bring to the reserve.


Brazil Amazon destruction rises 28 per cent
"Despite the strong economic appeal, the development of mining activity may bring undesirable impacts to the Renca protected areas, such as deforestation, threats to indigenous people and populations, water resource loss, loss of biodiversity, and aggravation of land conflicts," Voivodic said.

More than two-thirds of the Renca area that lies in Amapa state are subject to conservation controls or protections for indigenous areas that would limit mining, leaving only 31 percent open to research and exploration after the area's abolition, according to a 2010 government report.

In April, a report by the mining ministry said that lifting the protected status could provide "access to minerals potentially existing in the region" by letting private companies operate there.

Yet, some politicians criticised the decree as an act of devastation to the Amazon.

According to O Globo newspaper, opposition Senator Randolfe Rodrigues decried the move as "the biggest attack on the Amazon of the last 50 years".

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/b ... 32855.html
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Sat Aug 26, 2017 1:32 pm

Canadian mining companies learned of the extinction of reserve in the Amazon 5 months before the official announcement
AFP
Federal government reopened the area in the Amazon for mineral exploration
Federal government reopened the area in the Amazon for mineral exploration
RICARDO SENRA
OF THE BBC BRAZIL

8/26/2017 08h04
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Published in the Official Gazette last Thursday without fuss, the extinction of the National Reserve of Copper and Associates (Renca) in the Amazon, surprised many people and won machetes alarmed in Brazil and the main newspapers in the world.

This was not the case with Canadian investors and mining companies. In March, five months before the official announcement of the government, Minister of Mines and Energy Fernando Coelho Filho announced to the businessmen of the country that the Amazon preservation area would be extinguished, and that its exploration would be auctioned between private companies.

The end of Renca was presented by the Temer government during the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) in Toronto, along with a package of measures to reformulate the Brazilian mineral sector, which includes the creation of a National Mining Agency and other initiatives To stimulate the sector.

According to the briefing, this was the first time in 15 years that a Brazilian Minister of Mines and Energy participated in the event, described by the Brazilian government as an opportunity to "address the improvement in Brazilian legislation and also demonstrate the government's plans to encourage Investment in the sector. " On the other hand, social movements, environmentalists and research centers say they had not been informed about Renca's extinction until the announcement last Thursday.

Canada is an important explorer of mineral resources in Brazil and has been increasing this interest since the beginning of the year. Today, approximately 30 companies in the country already exploit ores in Brazil - especially gold, which would have attracted gold miners to the Renca area in recent years.

In June, two months before the official extinction of the Amazon reserve, the Brazil-Canada Chamber of Commerce announced a new Mining Commission, specific to business in Brazil, which brings together representatives of these 30 companies.

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He said that "there is no race" to explore the Renca region, but that "it thinks it is very healthy. "The provision of the region for mineral exploration.

The Ministry of Mines and Energy has vowed to respond to the questions sent by BBC Brazil throughout Friday. At the end of the day, however, he reported that he would not give a return due to an emergency press conference convened by the minister Fernando Coelho Filho.

In the interview, the minister said that the extinction of the Amazon reserve area, with an area slightly larger than Denmark, will not have environmental impacts. According to Coelho Filho, the beginning of exploration activities in the region should still take 10 years.

'NO ONE CAN JUDGE CANADA'

Coordinator of the newly created Mining Committee of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, entrepreneur Paulo Misk participated in the seminars held in March in Canada and sees no problems in the early disclosure of the end of the reserve.

"We have to do a job of divulging, promoting and attracting investment over the medium or long term," he says.

"We do not have any projects ready to be installed there," continues the Canadian representative. "For now we are in the field of perspectives, promises and initiating the process. The answer is not so quick."

Misk says that Canada is the country that invests the most in research in the world and that "environmentalists should rethink our position: mining is extremely beneficial."

About Renca, he says the release will allow "a large area to be preserved."

"If I have the opportunity to have a well-established and legalized mining (in the Renca region), look, I'm going to be very happy because it's going to be for the good of Brazil and for the good of Brazilian society, especially in Pará and Amapá." Says.

Misk also states that the occupation of the region by mining companies should inhibit the presence of garimpeiros, whose irregular performance in the region already results in contamination of rivers by mercury.

President of the Brazilian Association of Mineral Research Companies (ABPM), geologist Luiz Azevedo was also in Toronto and agrees.

"To say that the government is opening up for deforestation is ridiculous, it is something that does not know the matter," he says.

"I do not dare talk about music, I'm amazed how artists now dare to talk about mining and conservation units," he says, quoting model Gisele Bündchen, who criticized the ad on its social networks.

On the anticipated announcement of the extinction of the preservation area in the Amazon, Azevedo says that the minister disclosed that "a very large area that would be released for mineral research".

"It was said by the minister as part of a package of measures aimed at showing the investor that the idea of ​​the stateless Dilma was over."

"What they want is new areas for research and new possibilities, no one can judge Canada, they have a more cosmopolitan mentality, 70% of the population is immigrants, so they think of others.

'WE ARE FOR THE PRESS'

Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, geographer Luiz Jardim investigates the relationship between Canadian mining companies and the Brazilian government.

He explains that the March event in Toronto, when the end of Renca was announced by the minister, was essentially made up of smaller companies specializing in mineral research and venture capital investments.

"There is a pattern in these companies, so-called 'juniors.' 'They come in, do research, and over that time post results on reports on the Toronto Stock Exchange, indicating what they found. A significant deposit, the company asks for an environmental license and gains even more value.With the license in hand, they advertise on the stock exchange again that they are close to the beginning of the project.In a down market period, as now, they usually sell the operation Or the mine for a larger company interested and thus make its investors profit, "he explains.

Jardim disagrees with the thesis that large mining companies can inhibit illegal mining in the region.

"The experience in the Tapajós river in Pará shows the opposite: the prospector is interested in superficial mines, the miner reaches deeper veins, they coexist and formal exploration may even encourage the arrival of more prospectors."

According to engineer Bruno Milanez, a professor at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora and a member of the National Committee for the Defense of Territories Facing Mining, which brings together 110 academic research bodies, trade unions and social movements, there was no communication on Renca for researchers from Area or communities - different from what has occurred with entrepreneurs.

"Everything we followed was in the press," he says.

On this approach between government and businessmen, Milanez says that the movement is "part of a historical process that has been deepening" in the Temer government.

"This is a reflection of a larger occupation of the corporate sector in government. Today, the top tier of mining in government is made up of people who have held positions of management in companies," he says.

"But they are in government temporarily on positions of trust, and when they leave, they are going to take up positions in companies again.

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ambiente/2 ... cial.shtml

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 29, 2017 5:49 pm

Brasil’s US-Funded “Libertarians” & the Far-Right
BLOG DEMOCRACY FOREIGN POLICY MEDIA

On August 18, Vice Brasil journalist and occasional Brasil Wire contributor Marie Declerq, broke the news that the Instituto Mises Brasil think tank, which receives funding from US libertarians, has published articles by Christopher Cantwell, the American Nazi who helped organize the Charlottesville Virginia protests. Cantwell made the news recently when he was filmed in a Vice documentary threatening to kill Jews and blacks, and later appeared in a YouTube video sobbing in fear of being arrested.

News that Mises Institute, founded in 2007 and part of the Libertarian Atlas Network, has published material by Augusto Pinochet fanboy Cantwell shouldn’t actually be that surprising. In 1927, Mises himself argued that Fascism had saved European Civilisation, and “The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history”. Meanwhile, Atlas, which has been built over decades to distort Latin American politics, is funded by the Koch Brothers (a family with their own distinguished Nazi history).

Following Charlottesville, Cantwell sparked outrage among South Americans by appearing in his own T-Shirt design depicting the murder of leftists in helicopter “death flights” – a common practice in Chile, Argentina and elsewhere during Operation Condor in the 1970s – a US supported cross-border campaign which assassinated thousands of labor union members, opposition activists and intellectuals.

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Cantwell appeared in Vice Documentary on Charlottesville wearing his “Death Flight” Shirt, his colleague wears another adorned with slogan “Training to throw Communists out of Helicopters”.

Although this is a macabre extreme, the interchange of ideas and individuals on the conservative spectrum, between self-defined libertarian groups and the overt Far-Right, is relatively common. Politically, it follows that Libertarians idolise Augusto Pinochet. After the 1973 US- sponsored economic sabotage and coup in Chile put neofascist dictator Pinochet in power, he was visited by libertarian heroes Milton Friedman and Fredrich Hayek. In a Chilean newspaper interview at the time, Hayek expressed an opinion which still seems to be held by many neoliberals and libertarians to this day – that freedom for corporations in developing nations is more important than freedom for individuals – when he said, “Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism”.

Neoliberal/corporate think tank Council of the Americas tried to broker a deal with the CIA to prevent socialist Salvador Allende from being democratically elected in Chile in 1970. Today known as AS/COA, it’s Vice President, former Reuters Brasil bureau chief Brian Winter, has called Pinochet a “Revolutionary“.

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Libertarian/Neoliberal Idols Margaret Thatcher & Augusto Pinochet

US Neo-Nazi obsession with confederate statues finds its parallel in Brazil with Pro-Gun Ownership, Anti-Womens, Racial & Worker’s Rights campaign group Movimento Brasil Livre, which is associated with Mises Institute and Koch’s Students for Liberty. Citing Margaret Thatcher as inspiration, MBL have also openly declared their reverence for the Bandeirantes – the colonial militia who went out to secure the vast interior of the country, committing genocide against indigenous populations, and are celebrated with an enormous monument in São Paulo’s Ibirapuera.

MBL is notable that it is fronted not by its original founders, but by ethnically mixed, telegenic young men, some of whom were reportedly media/leadership-trained in the United States. It is accused of doing this to avoid the perception of being a white elite organisation in a country with majority black population. Their opposition to racial quotas and black consciousness day are usually voiced by these frontmen, and their rhetoric has even included a bizarre comparison between Hitler and the historic leader of Afro-Brazilian Quilombos, Zumbi dos Palmares. Some its members also mimic an Anti-Refugee/Muslim xenophobia, which is imported wholesale, without context, from the Far-Right in Europe and the US.

One of the groups most visible leaders, Arthur Moledo do Vai, known for his video blogs in which he visits left wing protests and lectures people about free market economic dogma, was recently photographed by Antifa trying to disrupt a labor union protest with two neo-nazi skinhead bodyguards.

MBL, which was/is also funded by Atlas Network, plus the main parties which make up Temer’s Post-Coup Government, operates as an infantile sub-Breitbart fake news site, with a loyal audience who act as an online and offline far-right hate-mob. These predominantly white young men, radicalised by sites such as MBL and similar, gained notoriety by harassing left-wing politicians at their homes, before going on to physically threaten recent high-school occupations for better quality public education – with some supporters even promoting the rape of female protesters on social media. Meanwhile MBL was promoting a McCarthyite campaign against “Communist Indoctrination” by teachers. Elsewhere they talked chillingly of a “Ukrainian” scenario awaiting Brasil should Dilma Rousseff not fall peacefully.

Another campaign spread the outright lie that Hitler was a leftist, and Brasil is still gripped by an idiotic debate over this fallacy – not helped by a recent BBC Brasil article which concluded that the Nazis were neither right nor left, because they were “totalitarian”.

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Miguel Reale, Integralist (Fascist) and author of Institutional Act 5 (AI-5) which cemented Military Rule in 1968. His son Miguel Reale Jr co-authored the petition for Rousseff’s illegitimate impeachment – delivered to Brasilia by MBL and other conservatives.

It was a curious feature of the period leading up to Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment that MBL received more coverage abroad during its campaign than any Brazilian political party or social movement. It was given free-reign in advertorials published by a range of magazines and newspapers such as the Economist, Time and the Guardian, in which they declared that Brazil needed to “get over” the 64-85 Neofascist Dictatorship. One of the group’s front men is now a city councillor in São Paulo for the ‘Democratas’ party (Formerly Liberal Front), which is the principal descendent of ARENA – the Dictatorship-era’s Government.

Far-Right elements at São Paulo’s Anti-Dilma protests of 2015 & 2016, organised in part by these “grassroots” free-market organisations, were distinct and visible, with their flags and banners, calling for Military Intervention, adorning a fleet of 20 sound trucks alongside those of MBL and parallel corporate-funded Pro-Impeachment group VemPraRua.

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São Paulo, April 2015: A convoy of 20 sound trucks, bearing banners of Libertarian and Far-Right pro-military factions side by side, heads to the protest calling for Dilma Rousseff’s overthrow.

For the most part, the demonstrations evident proto-fascist tendencies – which went against the narrative of a youthful, grassroots organisation demanding economic liberalism and an end to corruption – were overlooked. Media at that time also failed the basic test of scrutinising the money behind MBL’s campaign, with the Guardian allowing them to state unopposed that they were funded by the sales of “t-shirts and stickers” despite the money trail to Pro-Impeachment groups from US Libertarian Think-Tanks being already well documented in 2015.

As the connections between the US “Alt-right”, corporate-funded think tanks and fascism in Brasil become clearer, the anglo media & business groups who blindly supported its rise will have some important questions to answer.

http://www.brasilwire.com/brasils-us-fu ... far-right/

Even the Mises morons are better at taking power than the Trots.....

but it'll be difficult to throw us out of helicopters when yer in a uranium mine.
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Thu Aug 31, 2017 5:06 pm

Why is Michel Temer Still President? A Brazilian Perspective
DEMOCRACY OPINION POLITICS
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By Amauri Gonzo.

It is always hard to explain Brazilian politics to foreigners. There is a lot of history and many characters and there are 25 political parties represented in Congress alone. It is even harder to explain how illegitimate president Michel Temer, with an approval rating that fluctuates between 2 and 7% and with polls showing that 81% of the population thinks he should be subject of a criminal investigation, has held on to the presidency and just beat an impeachment attempt by a wide margin of votes in Congress.

Temer is caught in a tangle resulting from the last decade of political history. Elevated to the position of Congressional President then Vice President of the Republic Temer was a key actor in the coalition between Lula’s PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores/Workers’ Party) and the PMDB (Partido do Movimento Democratico do Brasil/ Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), a centre-right party- one of the country’s largest- that was created at the end of the military dictatorship.

After the so-called “mensalão” scandal, which brought down historic leaders of the PT, Lula chose to bet on names outside of traditional party politics to guarantee continuity of the PT’s development project within the Federal Government. This is one of the reasons he chose Dilma Rousseff, his Chief of Staff and a relative political unknown, to be his successor to the presidency. Although she had never run for any political office before, she was able to decisively beat José Serra from the PSDB (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira/Brazilian Social Democratic Party) in 2010.

The mensalão scandal of 2005 forced Lula to solidify an alliance with the PMDB party. During the early 1980s, the PMDB rose from the ashes of the MDB (Movimento Democratico do Brasil/Brazilian Democratic Movement), a party created during the military dictatorship to house the official government opposition in order to create a two-party system and give a semblance of democracy . As the dictatorship ended, however, the PMDB showed that it wasn’t such an opposition after-all as it welcomed important names from the official dictatorship party ARENA (Aliança Renovadora Nacional/National Renovating Alliance) like José Sarney. Sarney became president for 5 years after Tancredo Neves, the first civilian indirectly elected after the dictatorship ended in 1985, died before taking office. The PMDB absorbed a large part of the political structure of Corolnelismo, the old tradition of regional political machines run by plantation owners and ranchers, as well as a strong block of senators and congressmen.

As Lula lost support from a patchwork of smaller, centrist parties during the mensalão and with the dissolution of his Vice President and business community intermediary José Alencar’s PL (Partido Liberal/Liberal Party), he decided to reach out to the PMDB. At the time, the PMDB was a key member of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s PSDB coalition, having provided the Vice Presidential candidate for José Serra in 2002.

The Lava Jato investigations now show that the PMDB was the primary beneficiary and often the creator of the corruption schemes within Petrobras petroleum company and other paratstatal corporations. Michel Temer and now imprisoned former Congressional leader Eduardo Cunha tried to take everything they could, and everything went well for awhile. Brasilia’s political establishment never liked Dilma Rousseff, and her ascension to the presidency bothered them. They viewed her as an incorruptable centralizer and she ended several corruption schemes, firing all of the ministers who she thought were involved in any type of scandal during her first term.

A recession hit in early 2014, caused by factors including massive corporate tax breaks, an overvalued exchange rate, a fall in commodities prices and, importantly, paralyzation of a large part of the construction and petroleum sector directly caused by the Lava Jato investigation and the resulting hundreds of thousands of lay-offs. The opposition took advantage of the moment and, led by Eduardo Cunha, generated a political crisis that was supported by the most conservative Congress Brasil had seen since 1964. As the president’s popularity fell together with economic indicators, an idea developed that her impeachment would be the solution for the country’s problems. Despite the trouble brewing, Dilma continued to depend on on the PMDB to secure the ropes. It was a sweet illusion.

Many things contributed to Rousseff’s fall, but one of the most essential was the way her Vice President pulled the rug out from under her. PMDB leaders who are now in Temer’s cabinet such as Moreira Franco and Eliseu Padilha created a neoliberal policy paper for the country and presented it to the national business community. The paper, Bridge to the Future, called for massive privatizations, deep austerity reforms and a gradual dismantling of the PT’s social welfare system. An enthusiastic business community poured money into the protests against the President. The powerful São Paulo Industrial Federation (Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo/FIESP) created a huge anti-tax campaign using a giant inflatable duck, which it brought to all anti-Rousseff protests, often distributing champagne. Conservative political parties also poured money into what the media called “new social movements” and conservative Congressman and union leader Paulinho da Força was recorded saying, “many people want to finance the impeachment”.

If it weren’t for Temer’s promise of stability it would have been hard for Dilma to fall- she probably would have politically bled out for four years, as the PSDB originally wanted. But it wasn’t all a bed of roses for the national Coup movement. After taking power, Temer saw the economy collapse and unemployment sky-rocket. His promise of rapid economic recovery failed to pan out, while he ignored his promise of “fiscal responsibility” to the markets. One of the possible causes for this disconnect between promises and reality could be related to the US government. Under the brokerage of José Serra, Temer’s ex-minister of foreign relations who made several trips to Washington, the coup had the tacit approval of the Obama administration. The expectation was that when Hilary Clinton was elected American investment dollars would flood Brasil. Serra went as far as to say that Trump’s election would be impossible on national TV. Apparently, he forgot to consult with the Russians.

As political events developed, the Lava Jato corruption investigation moved forwards. Immediately after Temer took office, audio leaked to the media showed PMDB power broker, senator and Cabinet Minister Romero Juca, saying that the impeachment took place to “stop the bleeding” from the Lava Jato investigation in a “giant national deal” that included members of the Supreme Court. Despite this and with support from the big media companies the Lava Jato investigation began to look at other parties besides the PT in an attempt to shake the perception that it was being undertaken selectively. While prosecutor and judge Sergio Moro tried to prove that Lula was guilty for conflict of interest related to reforms on an apartment that he never owned or visited, the massive scandals involving the PMDB party picked up steam.

It is important to understand that, beyond politicians, Lava Jato devastated many companies and caused hundreds of thousands of lay-offs, and that it was not the only corruption investigation underway. During the end of Dilma Rousseff’s government and the beginning of Temer’s, new investigations started up based on evidence raised in Lava Jato, including Operation Greenfields, which is investigating bribe payments during a Trump Group hotel construction project in Rio de Janeiro. When JBS, one of the World’s largest meat packing companies, discovered that they were a focus of these investigations, their director ran to the public prosecutors office and offered a beautiful plea bargain. It is important to note that these kinds of plea bargains, which make up the basis of the entire Lava Jato investigation, were only legalized as admissible evidence due to an anti-organized crime law that was sanctioned by Dilma Rousseff during her first term in office.

The JBS testimony included audio recordings of a conversation between Michel Temer and company president Joesley Batista in which they negotiated millions of dollars in monthly payments to silence Eduardo Cunha, who is currently in jail in Curitiba for corruption with millions of dollars frozen in Swiss bank accounts and is trying to set up his own plea bargain in exchange for his freedom. In addition to the audio recording, the JBS testimony included video of Temer’s employee, Rodrigo Rocha Loures, receiving a suitcase with R$500,000 in it in a pizzeria in São Paulo.

The scandal, which was widely publicized by the powerful Rede Globo TV network, sunk Temer’s popularity to record lows. For the first time in the history of the country a president was accused of a common crime (Dilma was impeached over nebulous infraction charges of fiscal peddling- essentially manipulating budget figures to make the economy appear healthier than it was- but to date has not been accused of any type of corruption). For weeks, it looked like Temer’s fall was imminent, but there was a big problem: if Temer went, who would be the new president?

The Brazilian constitution stipulates that, in case the President and Vice President leave office within two years of the beginning of their term, a new President should be elected by Congress. The Brazilian left has called for for direct elections since Dilma fell because, with the most conservative Congress since 1964 in office, it would be hard to imagine any type of progressive leader coming out of an indirect election. After a lot of speculation Rodrigo Maia’s name rose to the top. President of Congress, Maia was elected in a stop-gap measure after Eduardo Cunha was deposed and arrested.

Maia began to manoeuvre to occupy Temer’s position, promising the Market that he would make more extreme austerity reforms that Temer couldn’t pull off because of his inpopularity, especially a highly unpopular pension reform that would raise the retirement age as high as 74. But, labelled as a traitor and probably worried about the political and criminal future of Moreira Franco, his stepfather and one of Temer’s ministers under investigation in Lava Jato, he ended up retreating.

Temer took advantage of the confusion to distribute jobs and parliamentary amendments to help save his neck. He replaced the Minister of Justice, cut funding to the Federal Police in an attempt to slow down Lava Jato, sewed together support in Congress and took advantage of a fight within the PSDB which had its president Aécio Neves implicated in the same JBS plea bargain (his leaked audio conversations remind you of a crude version of Anthony Scaramucci). In order for Temer to go under investigation as a first step towards impeachment, the opposition needed 342 votes out of a total of 531 Congressmen- a difficult task.

Despite his tremendous unpopularity there were no major street protests. Left resistance began to falter. After a successful general strike on April 28th, the Força Sindical labour union federation (the nations second largest with around 5 million members) heard Temer’s call and pulled out of the second strike that was scheduled for June 30. The PT party seems to believe it is better leaving Temer bleeding in office than to change him for someone farther to the right (Maia is from the DEM party, which is enthusiastically neoliberal). The PT also had more urgent priorities, including how to defend Lula, who suffered an absurd, politically motivated conviction without any proof. Despite this, the ex-president continues to widely lead all polls for the 2018 presidential elections and remains the PT party’s biggest political asset. The so-called social movements that brought thousands of people to the streets against Dilma Rousseff did not receive any money to protest against Temer for their sound cars, inflatable ducks and thousands of Indian social media bots.

When it entered the Congressional Plenary session on Wednesday, August 2, the opposition already knew it would not be able to take Temer down, but it wanted to make as much noise as possible. Unlike the impeachment hearings against Dilma, which took place on a Sunday, the accusations against Temer were voted on during a weekday afternoon when most Brazilians were at work, far from their television screens, due to a manoeuvre from a now friendly Rodrigo Maia. The opposition unsuccessfully tried to buy time by delaying the process, but did not have the numbers to pull it off and was forced into a vote. The results were a bitter tie that favoured Temer.

Temer, who needed 172 votes to stay in office, received 263. If the Congress took on a circus-like atmosphere during the impeachment process against Dilma Rousseff, full of self-righteous speeches about love of God, country and family, the voting against Temer was nearly a conspiracy of silence. Many of the congressmen who voted in favour of Temer tried to justify the unjustifiable by affirming that he should only be investigated after finishing his mandate or appealing to a supposed “stability” of a country that currently has dozens of millions of unemployed. Most of them tried to vote as quickly as possible to avoid being recorded on TV supporting the unpopular president. Maia guaranteed that everything moved quickly, allocating 15 seconds for each Congressman and turning off the microphone when they went over time, in a style completely different from the impeachment hearings Eduardo Cunha conducted against Dilma Rousseff.

Temer survived, but the final result revealed bitter divisions. PSDB appeared completely torn, with its votes divided nearly in half. Many of the parties making up Temer’s base suffered from defections- PMDB itself, with the largest voting block in Congress, had three votes against the president. Aside from a few tiny parties only the opposition of the PT, PC do B and PSOL voted unanimously against Temer. The streets remained empty in the big capital cities and the country awoke the next morning to see neoliberal Minister of the Economy Henrique Meirelles demanding that the pension reforms pass before October. Globo TV, which ran a strong campaign against Temer and was the only network to broadcast the entire voting session, came out of it all politically weakened. Rodrigo Janot, the national Attorney General, promised to send another accusation against the President to Congress , this time for obstruction of justice. If there was one certainty by the end of the voting it was that this political crisis is far from over.

Amauri Gonzo is a Brazilian jornalist who lives in São Paulo. He has written about politics and music since 2006, working for media outlets like G1, +Soma and Editora Conrad. He currently writes for Vice Brasil and Caros Amigos.

http://www.brasilwire.com/why-is-michel ... rspective/

ViceBrazil is certainly a red flag but the reportage seems straightforward. Am I missing something here?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Fri Sep 01, 2017 3:42 pm

BRASIL WIRE , AUGUST 31, 2017
Dilma Rousseff has been acquitted 5 times since her Impeachment
The 'punishment looking for a crime' never found one
DEMOCRACY LAVA JATO
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By Katia Guimarães.

In the past year, elected President Dilma Rousseff has been acquitted at least five times of the charges that led Congress to withdraw her from the post for which she had been re-elected in 2014. The most recent of these was today, with the news that the TCU (Court of Audit of the Union) absolved Dilma of having committed “any irregular act” in the purchase of the Pasadena refinery by Petrobras in 2006, as well as the other members of the company’s Board of Directors – at the time chaired by her. The episode of Pasadena was emblematic and inaugurated the beginning of Operation Lava-Jato, in 2014.

In December 2015, in the face of the impossibility of claiming that such “fiscal pedalling” was a crime of responsibility, the only reason laid down in the Constitution for impeachment, lawyers Janaína Paschoal, Hélio Bicudo and Miguel Reale Jr. came to associate the purchase of Pasadena to a supposed “omission” of Dilma in relation to the “violations” at Petrobras. Since she was not President of the Republic at this time, the rapporteur Jovair Arantes opted to remove the refinery from the impeachment request in the Chamber and left only the pedaladas. Meanwhile, in the Senate, Zezé Perrella (“Helicoca”) used the refinery episode to justify Dilma’s departure. “I vote for Pasadena, for Petrobras, for our hard-earned money that went to Cuba, Africa and Venezuela. That’s why I vote ‘yes’, ” said the friend of Rousseff’s defeated opponent, Aécio Neves.

During the vote on the cassation of the Dilma-Temer ticket by the Supreme Electoral Court, lawyer Janaina Paschoal returned to the charge against the President citing the Pasadena negotiation. But the very acquittal of their ticket by the court points in opposite direction to that alleged by the professor at USP.

By including Pasadena, Janaina and her partners in the venture acted as if they were unaware that the TCU had exonerated Dilma in the year prior to the impeachment request in 2014. They were certainly based on the depositions of Nestor Cerveró, who led the business, and the former senator Delcídio do Amaral, who said that the PT knew about the existence of “a scheme”. Folha de São Paulo newspaper reveals however, that the report of TCU analysts and the Public Prosecutor’s Office indicates that the version of the informers is a lie. (The case is to be considered by the court floor on August 30).

Last week, Dilma was cleared of another accusation, that she tried to stop the Lava-Jato investigations. Final report of the Federal Police on a judicial investigation in the Federal Supreme Court (STF) concluded that there was no crime of obstruction of justice in the appointment of the minister Marcelo Ribeiro Navarro Dantas to the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) by the president In 2015. The false accusation was also made by Delcídio in the indictment. To try to reduce his sentence, the former senator said that Navarro would have been chosen for the STJ with the commitment to grant habeas corpus and favorable resources to contractors arrested in the operation.

It is also worth mentioning that recently, in an interview with O Estado de São Paulo newspaper, the Federal District Attorney in the Brasilia, Ivan Cláudio Marx, said there was no evidence that Dilma and former President Lula were overseas account holders to the sum of 150 million dollars, where they received bribes. The false accusation was made by businessman Joesley Batista, owner of JBS, but nothing was proven. “It’s a rather absurd story from the beginning,” said the prosecutor. “He has nothing. This story has no head. There’s no way to prove it. “

In July 2016, even before the vote in the Senate, the same prosecutor, Ivan Marx, had discovered that Dilma was innocent in another investigation. He called for the filing of an open investigation to ascertain possible criminal infraction of Dilma in relation to so-called fiscal pedalalas. He pointed out that there were no credit operations and that, in addition, the “pedaladas” do not constitute a crime.

The fiscal pedaladas were nothing more than the delay of National Treasury pass-throughs for public banks to pay government bonds for social programs and subsidized loans, a practice that had occurred since 1994. The prosecutor analyzed six types of operations, he heard members of the economic team, analyzed TCU audits and the documents of each of them. According to the prosecutor, the maneuvers do not fit into the legal concept of a credit or loan operation. Therefore, it would not be necessary to ask Congressional authorization.

That is, the main reason for Dilma’s impeachment did not exist and it was not even a crime. An expert hired by the president’s defense during the process had come to the conclusion that Dilma had not even participated in the meetings which decided on the “pedaladas”, that, incidentally, were legalised two days after Temer took power.

If we lived in a democracy, the process of impeachment would have been summarily shelved. And if the commercial media did journalism instead of partisan politics, it would have stressed that the president, who had been re-elected by 54 million voters did not commit the crimes that were imputed to her by opponents. At the time, Brazilian newspapers, radio and television were unable, unlike the international press, to even raise doubts whether Dilma was being torn out of office justly or unjustly.

The successive acquittals of the President-in-Office of Justice have proven more and more that the real purpose of impeachment was to remove her from office to “stop the bloodshed” of Lava-Jato, “put Michel in with a great national agreement”, “with the Supreme Court, with everything” and save face for the PMDB. While Dilma is being cleared, every day someone from the Coup government is being denounced or becoming a defendant.

Original version at Socialista Morena. Translated by Brasil Wire.

http://www.brasilwire.com/dilma-roussef ... peachment/
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Re: Brazil

Post by blindpig » Tue Sep 05, 2017 5:02 pm

According to the PF, this money can be from Geddel Vieira Lima

by Editorial Staff - published 05/09/2017 11h42, last modified 05/09/2017 12h21
Boxes and money bags were in an apartment in Salvador that would be the former minister's bunker

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Research found a "bunker" in the capital of Bahia


The Federal Police launched Operation Treasure Perpetual, the third phase of Operation Cui Bono, which investigates deviations from the Federal Savings Bank, and found a huge amount of cash in an apartment in Salvador that, according to PF, may have liaison with former minister Geddel Vieira Lima .

Member of the PMDB, Geddel is one of the main allies of President Michel Temer, of whom he was minister. During the Lula administration, Geddel was Minister of National Integration and, in management Dilma Rousseff, was Vice President of Corporate Law of Caixa.

According to the PF, the investigation reached an address in Salvador "that would supposedly be used by Geddel Vieira Lima as a 'bunker' for the storage of cash in kind."

According to the Federal Police, the money in cash will be transported to a bank where it will be accounted for and deposited in a court account.

Image
The PF says that all this money would have a connection with Geddel

https://www.cartacapital.com.br/politic ... ieira-lima

Google Translator

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

Amid scandal, Geddel abandons the Temer government

by Copywriting - posted 11/25/2016 11:17 AM, last modified 11/25/2016 11:32 AM

Temer's right-hand man resigns after being accused of pressuring former Culture Minister on personal interest


Image
Geddel: the accusations against him came to Temer

Geddel Vieira Lima is no longer the minister of the Secretariat of Government of Michel Temer. The Batista politician resigned on Friday 25, after being the pivot of the biggest scandal of the six months of PMDB administration, in which he was accused of abuse of power by former Culture Minister Marcelo Calero.

"It is time to go out," Geddel wrote in a letter to Temer. "It is time to go out," Geddel wrote in a letter sent to Temer.

The now ex-minister affirms that "Brazil is greater than all of this" and that it will continue as "ardent supporter of our government". "I have made my deepest reflection and fruit of it here I present my request for exemption from the honorable position that I have been dedicating with dedication," he said.

The case involving Geddel surfaced on November 19 and, on Thursday 24, reached Michel Temer. Calero said he was summoned by Temer to Planalto Palace on November 17 and was "framed" by the president , eager to resolve a dispute between Calero and Geddel.

As Calero told the Federal Police, Temer said that the dispute had created "operational difficulties" in his office because "Minister Geddel was very angry." Thus, Temer asked Calero to send the case to the Attorney General's Office (AGU) "because Minister Grace Mendonça would have a solution."

The two ministers disagreed over the construction of the luxury resort La Vue Ladeira da Barra in Salvador . Located amidst the historic sites of the capital, the building was designed to have 30 floors, a height that would deface the rest of the region and would de-characterize the place. As a result, in 2014 the project received an opposing opinion from the Technical Office of Licensing and Supervision of Salvador (Etelf).

The superintendence of the Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage (Iphan) of Bahia, meanwhile, gave a favorable opinion to the work, and extinguished Etelf. The construction was then authorized by the capital's prefecture, led by ACM Neto , ally of Geddel Vieira Lima.

It occurs that the national Iphan, subordinate to the Ministry of Culture, rescinded the favorable opinion of the work granted by the Iphan Bahiano, determining that the construction was suspended and the project, re-adapted to have 13 floors and not 30.

https://www.cartacapital.com.br/politic ... erno-temer

Google Translator

One look at that guy begs the question, "Could the banality of evil ever get more banal?"

Here's the thing about the ruling class: at heart they're all just a bunch of cheap jack hustlers, if they didn't have accountants and hustlers to advise them on the best way to exploit they'd be robbing children of candy & shooting seeing eye dogs for their meat.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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