webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

Lula da Silva

see brazil

see pink tide

see car wash moro

---

FLAVIO RUNNING 7 26

AN TC 7 26

We can see all of this at play in the rise of the global far right over recent decades. Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro declared at his first inauguration that Brazil’s flag would never be red. Colombia’s president-elect, Abelardo de la Espriella, denounced his reformist opponent as a “radical left Marxist”.

---

an 7 25

in 2024, the United States enjoyed a $7.4 billion trade surplus with Brazil, meaning the U.S. is importing a lot more goods to Brazil than Brazil is importing to the U.S. But U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening Brazil with a 50 percent tariff — not for economic reasons, but because he claims that far-right former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is being treated unfairly.

Bolsonaro is on trial for what Brazilian prosecutors are describing as a coup attempt. In 2022, Bolsonaro was voted out of office and lost to left-wing now-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but he tried to stay in office nonetheless — not unlike Trump after he lost the United States' 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden and made false, repeatedly debunked claims of widespread voter fraud.

If Trump follows through with his 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods, all the coffee that Brazil imports to the U.S. could become a lot more expensive (as Frank Sinatra famously sang, "they've got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil"). But according to The Guardian's Tom Phillips, Trump's threat is only making things worse — not better — for Bolsonaro.

READ MORE:'I'm done with this': Retiring GOP senator uses profanity in veiled threat to Trump

"Bolsonaro could face up to 43 years in prison if found guilty of masterminding a botched coup attempt after losing the 2022 presidential election," Phillips reports from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in an article published on July 16. "He is expected to be convicted and sentenced by the (Brazilian) Supreme Court in the coming weeks…. The U.S. president apparently expected his intervention to improve the outlook for Bolsonaro, 70, who is already banned from running in next year's election. Bolsonaro's senator son, Flávio, urged Lula's administration to immediately cave in to Trump's ultimatum by offering his father an amnesty from prosecution…. But a week after Trump's tariff announcement, the ploy seems to be backfiring badly."

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

Phillips continues, "The move has reinvigorated Bolsonaro's left-wing rivals, given Lula a bounce in the polls and prompted a wave of public anger, largely focused on the Bolsonaro clan who have spent years portraying themselves as flag-loving nationalists."

On Tuesday, July 15, Brazil's Estado de São Paulo — a conservative publication — slammed Bolsonaro as an opportunist, saying, "Jair Bolsonaro couldn't care less about Brazil. He's a phony patriot."

Lula is standing up to Trump. The photo published with Phillips' article shows him wearing a hat that reads, in all caps, "O BRASIL E DOS BRASILEIROS" — which, in Portuguese, means "Brazil is for Brazilians."

READ MORE:'Good evidence': New data shows the 'surest sign' Trump policies are making inflation rise

Silvana Marques, a Brazilian teacher and activist who is vehemently critical of Trump and Bolsonaro, is urging Brazilian officials not to cave in to "crazy" Trump and considers the Bolsonaros "a family of traitors."

Marques told The Guardian, "We cannot allow this to happen…. And the Americans must be thinking: Are we really going to have to pay 50 percent more for the things we import from Brazil just to defend this worn-out old horse?"

READ MORE:'Disgusting': Fox hosts pilloried for 'super racist' segment 'calling themselves Nazis'

*Read Tom Phillips' full article for The Guardian at this link.

---

9 24

After having its assets frozen, Elon Musk's Starlink is complying with a Brazilian court's order to block Musk's shrinking social network in Brazil "regardless" of the frozen assets.

Elon's screwing around with Twitter is impacting his other businesses. He may have to dump a bunch of Tesla to pay the piper when the time comes for X's bond payments; and now Starlink Brazil finds its assets frozen due to being a part of the same "economic group," i.e. Musk's ownership.

Starlink said in a statement posted on X that it will heed Justice Alexandre de Moraes' order despite him having frozen the company's assets. Previously, it informally told the telecommunications regulator that it would not comply until de Moraes reversed course.

"Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil," the company statement said. "We continue to pursue all legal avenues, as are others who agree that @alexandre's recent order violate the Brazilian constitution."

AP

===

seen as rebuke to lula

note globalist // commie

note revival of laffer supply side libtard chic boys BS

mma1123

Right-wing media lavish praise on Argentina’s newly elected far-right president | Media Matters for America

argentine President-elect Javier Milei is becoming a right-wing media darling in the U.S. due to his austere proposed economic policies and conservative ideology. Right-wing media figures have reacted to Milei’s electoral success by praising him, comparing him to former President Donald Trump, and attacking mainstream media for their critical reporting.}:

---

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/brazil/new-right-pretends-be-isolationist-their-rhetoric-brazil-shows-couldnt-be-further-truth

no lnx vid

The new right pretends to be isolationist. Their rhetoric on Brazil shows that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Right-wing pundits are increasingly embracing the Monroe Doctrine, one of the oldest expressions of US imperialism, and looking to manufacture a new cold war against China in the process

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

PUBLISHED 01/13/23

Right-wing media personalities are increasingly embracing a two-century-old expression of U.S. imperialism called the “Monroe Doctrine,” and exposing their own militaristic impulses in the process.

Fox News’ top star Tucker Carlson and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon have both recently endorsed the Monroe Doctrine as a guiding principle, undercutting their supposedly isolationist views on U.S. military policy. In both cases, the conservative pundits invoked the doctrine as a means of opposing what they see as China’s increasing political and economic importance in South America, specifically in Brazil.

Bannon and Carlson both position themselves as antagonists towards the neocons, a faction of the conservative movement that ascended during the presidency of George W. Bush and was a driving factor in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The so-called America First ideology that Bannon, Carlson, and others in the Trump-aligned wing of the conservative movement identify with is sometimes described, incorrectly, as isolationist. Their recent invocations of the Monroe Doctrine suggest that, far from being isolationists, these conservatives are increasingly interested in dominating China militarily, especially in the Western Hemisphere.

Carlson, Bannon, and their allies have adopted a new Cold Warrior posture, with China replacing the great boogeyman of the USSR, and Brazil — for now — taking the place of Vietnam, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and other countries where the U.S. waged proxy wars against the perceived communist threat. But whatever investments China has made in South America don’t, or shouldn’t, justify the recent insurrection in Brazil, which right-wing media in the United States celebrated.

A much better approach would be to support interstate partnerships following the “pink tide” that has surfaced across Latin America since 2018. Leftist leaders have been elected across the region in recent years, most recently in Colombia and Brazil. The ability of these left-of-center governments to fulfill their promises toward greater social equality remains in question, as their countries are still shackled with the conditions created and defined in many ways by the Monroe Doctrine.

“The United States deployed this doctrine [the Monroe Doctrine] to keep Latin America subordinate to U.S. interests, whether through direct interventions like coups, invasions, and assassinations or institutional arrangements like free-trade agreements and painful structural adjustment programs,” write David Adler and Guillaume Long in The American Prospect. “As a result, Latin American countries remain highly dependent on exporting raw materials to large powers like the U.S., and importing high-value products and sophisticated technology.”

The two argue that “Latin America must be free to build the independent institutions that it deems necessary to guarantee health, security, and a strong economy in an increasingly turbulent world.” The Biden administration could — but hasn’t — adopted this approach, which would likely have the added benefit of building regional resiliency against a potentially unwanted Chinese incursion. But because the Latin American leaders who could implement this policy are various stripes of socialists, they face strong headwinds from U.S liberals and overt hostility from conservatives.

Carlson, the Monroe Doctrine, and “our hemisphere”

Last year, Carlson’s team made a documentary-style film about Brazil that conspicuously avoided discussing whether then-President Jair Bolsonaro would respect the results of the upcoming election, or if he’d attempt to stay in power using extrajudicial means.

Carlson began the film by offering his definition of the Monroe Doctrine, and explicitly claiming U.S. imperial domain over the rest of the Western Hemisphere.

Video

CitationFrom the September 22, 2022, Tucker Carlson Original The China Takeover: Brazil

“In 1823, President James Monroe announced a policy that has been the center of American foreign policy for the last 200 years, called the Monroe Doctrine,” Carlson began.

“Great powers would not be allowed to control nations in the Western Hemisphere,” he continued. “That would be a direct threat to the interests of the United States. And for 200 years, we haven't allowed it.”

Carlson then accused President Joe Biden of changing that policy, saying the doctrine was “no longer enforced,” in part because the administration was overly focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The Biden administration has abdicated its responsibility and into the void left by the United States moves a new superpower,” he concluded. “We've come to Brazil to see for ourselves the rise of China and how the government of China is replacing the United States as the dominant power in our hemisphere.”

Carlson’s use of the first-person plural, possessive phrases here — “our hemisphere” — is key. The “our” clearly refers to the United States, not a broader collective of self-governed countries in the hemisphere. In Carlson’s rendering, the fight is between the United States and China for dominance over Brazil – not for Brazilian sovereignty in itself.

The rest of the movie is a series of fearmongering accusations leveled against China, all in support of Carlson’s primary thesis: that the Chinese Communist Party is attempting to turn Brazil into a de facto colony. Carlson appears more upset that China is supposedly taking on this role (instead of the United States) than that any country is engaged in this kind of imperial project in the first place. “There is one government left in South America that is sympathetic to the United States, and it's this one here in Brazil,” Carlson said to conclude his film. “But it's being ignored by the Biden administration for ideological reasons. When the smoke clears, China may control Brazil too.”

Carlson has casually asserted the United States’ rightful domain over Latin and South America before. In February, he reported that China had “announced a partnership with Argentina, in part on currency.”

“Argentina's president also said his nation would join China's Belt and Road Project,” he continued. “Again, it's in our hemisphere. Monroe Doctrine, anyone? But it's happening, and nobody is even mentioning it.”

Bannon’s New Cold War

:{:{}:

}:

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is almost monomaniacally obsessed with China’s rise and the threat he believes it poses to U.S. hegemony, both globally and specifically in the Western Hemisphere. As one small but telling example, his show’s bumper music is a rap song by Chinese dissident — and Bannon-backer — Miles Guo whose hook is: “Let’s take down the CCP.”

Shortly after pro-Bolsonaro forces staged an insurrection by storming multiple Brazilian governmental buildings, Bannon invoked the Monroe Doctrine to justify the rioters’ actions. Bannon falsely characterized President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, as nothing but a puppet of the Chinese government, and argued that China is attempting to seize power across the region.

:{:{}:

}:

The CCP aims to create “Latin America as a communist superstate backed by the Chinese Communist Party directly aimed at the United States,” Bannon said. “This is what the Monroe Doctrine is about.”

:{:{}:

}:

“Our founders, our framers warned us, ‘Don’t go searching for monsters to slay in Ukraine — watch what they do here in the Western Hemisphere,’” he continued.

“We’re not in a great position, and now we have it in our hemisphere,” his guest,Matthew Tyrmand,responded. “China, under Lula, will have control of the entire wealth, and power, and geopolitical strategic positioning of South America.”

South America “will be a Marxist superstate should the Brazilians accept Lula as their leader,” Tyrmand added.

Video

CitationFrom the January 9, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Bannon and Tyrmand had previously had almost the exact same discussion, including the invocation of the Monroe Doctrine, on the night of Bolsonaro’s loss in late October.

“The communists, the CCP foothold in this hemisphere has been growing already, and this would be very deleterious,” Tyrmand said. “And of course we’ve got corrupt, senile, comatose vegetable in the White House fiddling as our Rome-hemisphere burns.”

“And so, all of MAGA should understand, these are our allies in Brazil,” Bannon responded, referring to Bolsonaro and his supporters.

“Remember, this hemisphere was kept orderly because of the Monroe Doctrine,” Bannon continued. “We absolutely had a line in the sand from the beginning of this republic that there would be no foreign interference in this, in this — and by the way, for 200 years we've been adamant about that.”

He added that now “the CCP” is “deeply involved in a takeover” of “the most significant country in Latin America, South America.”

Video

CitationFrom Steve Bannon's Gettr account, streamed October 30, 2022

In the summer of 2021, Bannon spoke with conspiracy theorist and neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec at least twice about China’s role in the Western Hemisphere. As protesters took to the streets in Cuba, cheered on by right-wing U.S. media, Posobiec expressed his outrage that foreign countries would warn the United States not to meddle in the demonstrations. Like Carlson, he referred to “our hemisphere” in describing U.S. dominion over sovereign countries.

“Yesterday you had China, Iran and Russia — came out and they put out a statement jointly saying the United States needs to not interfere in Cuba,” Posobiec said. “I'm sorry. No, you don't get to tell us in our homes what happens in our hemisphere. This is the Monroe Doctrine."

“That was U.S. policy, bipartisan for generations in this country,” he continued. “Who are you to say that you were going to tell us what's going on in our backyard? No, I don't think so. Are we a great power or not?”

As in the more recent case with Brazil, Posobiec invoked the Monroe Doctrine explicitly as a justification to counter hypothetical Chinese expansionism. “What's Joe Biden going to do? What's [Secretary of State Tony] Blinken going to do when you've got Chinese subs off the coast of Havana?” Posobiec asked. “Because you know that's coming next. You know, what are you going to do? Are you going to stand up and defend our hemisphere, to defend our national interest or not?"

When they returned to the topic that October, the two were even more explicit in their comparisons to the Cold War. During the segment, Bannon’s producers showed a graphic that was reminiscent of anti-communist propaganda from the 1950s, lest the point get lost on any War Room viewers.

Video

CitationFrom the October 20, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic

Bannon asked Posobiec to “talk about the Chinese Communist Party, what they are doing in South America and the Caribbean, and the direct impact on the United States of America.”

“The United States has largely, you know, in the past been sort of seen as sort of the hegemon when it comes to the Western Hemisphere,” Posobiec replied. “This goes back to Monroe Doctrine.”

“This is classic U.S. policy,” he continued. “It's the idea of when the Soviet Union wanted to get a foothold in Cuba and plant their missiles.”

Posobiec then argued that “now you're seeing China come in to play that role,” before claiming that “of course they're going to Cuba; of course they're going to Venezuela, but they're doing everything they can to get into these countries like Colombia, like Brazil, like Bolivia, Argentina.”

He added that then-President Bolsonaro is “the guy that's fighting back against what China is doing” and that if China “can take over Brazil, they are going to be able to use that to control the entire South American continent.”

America First means MAGA empire

Carlson and Bannon both exert considerable influence over the shape of the Republican Party. They are not simply talk show hosts, but political operators whom Republican politicians often seek to curry favor with. Both played significant roles in the GOP’s approach to the midterms, for example. Carlson provided Republicans with messaging support, endorsed candidates in primaries, and then attempted to help those candidates win. The same is true for Bannon, who dedicated his show to pushing an unrelenting stream of election denialism prior to last November’s contests.

Both Carlson and Bannon — as well as the rest of the Republican Party — fared poorly in the midterms, but that doesn’t retroactively negate their influence. Indeed, the early days of the new House GOP majority suggest that hardliners in the Carlson and Bannon mold are as empowered within the caucus as they’ve ever been. When the two of them show their true colors as imperialist neo-Cold Warriors, they can be seen as a stand-in for a much larger element within the broader conservative movement.

For Carlson, Bannon, and their fellow travelers, America First isn’t a call for directing public policy to benefit people living in the United States, no matter their protestations. It is instead a rearticulation of a standard ideology based on U.S. dominance, both in the Western Hemisphere and in what they see as the larger geopolitical battle with China. In this way, their philosophy is not nearly as different from the neocons as they claim it is. 

Where the neocon project was largely justified under a flimsy pretext of spreading democracy, America Firsters are reimagining and recreating Cold War-style global power struggles. This context is key to understanding and deciphering conservative foreign policy goals and rhetoric in the coming election cycle. The Trump wing of the movement may pay lip service to opposing U.S. foreign wars, but their chauvinistic invocation of the Monroe Doctrine shows they believe in maintaining U.S. military and political hegemony, just like their factional rivals.

---

---

 Instituto Millenium

:{:{}:

}:

https://www.desmog.com/2022/11/04/to-save-the-amazon-lula-must-defeat-an-old-foe/

:{:{}:

}:

In  his first speech after staging a stunning political comeback at Brazil’s presidential elections, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva vowed to halt the Amazon deforestation that surged under outgoing rival Jair Bolsonaro.

In order to succeed, Lula won’t just need to face down farmers, loggers, and miners. He will also have to win a battle of ideas.

While libertarian think tanks have been a familiar feature of the North American and British political landscape for decades, Brazil’s homegrown equivalents have risen to prominence more recently.

Promoting a similar form of radical free-market economics to their English-speaking cousins, these groups provided the intellectual foundation for Bolsonaro’s dismantling of environmental protections. Their international allies range from climate science denying organisations to former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss.

None of Brazil’s think tanks has been more influential during Bolsonaro’s four-year presidency than Rio de Janeiro-based Instituto Millenium, or IMIL.

“They not only help shape the government’s economic policies, they also construct narratives to legitimise the environmental destruction occurring in Brazil’s main biomes – mainly in the Amazon,” Carlos Milani, a professor of international relations at Rio de Janeiro State University, told DeSmog.

“These anti-environment stances also have human rights implications: continuous violations of the rights of the original Indian peoples in the Amazon, who are threatened by the expansion of agribusiness and extractivism in the region,” Milani said.

IMIL’s chairman, Sebastião Ventura P. da Paixão Jr, has cast Bolsonaro’s defeat as a setback for the entire continent, writing that Latin America is “submerging into a dangerous regression to socialism, guided by wrong-headed, backward economic ideas that never worked anywhere.”

The think tank has regularly defended Bolsonaro’s moves to open up the Amazon, in line with its free-market philosophy. The former army captain argued that economic development would boost living standards for Indigenous communities, and said it was hypocritical of Western countries to criticise Brazil when they had cleared their own forests centuries ago.

Leading the Finance Ministry

IMIL figures have also played prominent roles in Bolsonaro’s administration. At least eight founders or members of the organisation have served in the right-wing populist’s government, most notably Paulo Guedes, his finance minister and a former student of the free-market economist Milton Friedman.

Other IMIL members have been given key roles in Guedes’ ministry, leading the drive to privatise state-owned companies such as oil giant Petrobras.

Ricardo Salles, who used his position as environment minister to weaken policies to protect the Amazon, has also worked with IMIL through his right-wing movement, Movimento Endireita Brasil. Despite being forced to resign last year after obstructing a police investigation into illegal logging, Salles was re-elected in September’s legislative elections.

IMIL has many supporters in the media, too, including João Roberto Marinho, executive president of Grupo Globo, Latin America’s largest media conglomerate; Antonio Carlos Pereira, a former director of O Estado de S.Paulo (Estadão), Brazil’s third largest newspaper, and columnists at other major newspapers.

Neither IMIL, nor any of its founders or members, responded to DeSmog’s requests for comment.

When DeSmog looked into IMIL’s funding, relying on a now-deleted page from its website, we found numerous donors linked to environmentally damaging industries. They include Daniel Feffer, the billionaire vice chairman of Suzano Papel e Celulose, a Brazilian pulp and paper company; Adriano Pires, chief executive of the Centro Brasileiro de Infraestrutura, a lobbying firm for the oil and gas sector; William Ling, who owns logging, plastics, and aluminium companies; and Jorge Gerdau, a steel magnate.

Suzano, the only one of these companies to respond to a request for comment, said it “does not maintain any relationship with Instituto Millenium”. A spokesperson said the company had a “strict zero deforestation policy” as well as “strong commitments to action on climate change”. A spokesperson for Feffer declined to comment.

Climate Denial

IMIL has been a prominent source of climate misinformation in Brazil, allowing it to downplay the vital role the Amazon plays as a carbon sink regulating the Earth’s climate. The group shares this stance with fellow members of the Atlas Network– a global free-market umbrella organisationwhose supporters have played a key role in promoting climate science denial, aided financially by the fossil fuel industry, with a particular presence in the United States.

Numerous IMIL figures have dismissed climate change – a stance for which Bolsonaro has faced international criticism during his presidency – both in articles on IMIL’s website and in other public arenas.

Helio Beltrão, a founder of IMIL, columnist at Folha de S.Paulo, board member of fuel distribution company Grupo Ultra, and president of theInstituto Mises Brasil – another libertarian think tank – has said there is “no consensus” about the link between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change.

Rodrigo Constantino, another founder, columnist at Gazeta do Povo, and president of the libertarian Instituto Liberal, has accused scientists of deceptively using the term “climate change”, rather than “global warming”, in order to blame all extreme weather events on the phenomenon[twt]

truss Visit

IMIL has a connection to the UK through Liz Truss, a darling of Britain’s radical pro-business think tanks who resigned as prime minister last month after a tumultuous 44 days in office. Truss’s downfall began shortly after her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced a “mini-budget” of unfunded tax cuts. The move, which triggered market turmoil, was widely blamed on the policy prescriptions of groups such as the Institute of Economic Affairs, a long-time ally of Truss and another Atlas Network member.

Truss met with IMIL in April 2018, while serving as chief secretary to the Treasury – six months before Bolsonaro was elected president. Minutes from the meeting, obtained by DeSmog through a freedom of information request to the British government, show they discussed the upcoming elections, strategies for getting young people involved in politics, and Brazil’s ambition to join the OECD. 

“It was noted that you don’t need to win everyone over, ideas gain momentum,” the minutes said.

Among the attendees was IMIL co-founder Marcos Troyjo, who went on to become Bolsonaro’s deputy economy minister and special secretary for foreign trade and international affairs. Troyjo is now president of the New Development Bank, a multilateral development bank set up by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

In the wake of the official visit, Truss praised IMIL as “free-thinkers” in an article headlined “Take heart from Latin American capitalists showing the way”.

Truss wrote of how the UK “stands to benefit from stable friends” and how Brazil was “working hard to keep control of their public finances”. There was a need to “work with like-minded allies to spread the message” of free markets, she said, crediting IMIL with helping to “change the culture” in the country.

Truss did not meet any other political groups during her trip.

Christian Poirer, programme director at the Amazon Watch advocacy group, told DeSmog it was “outrageous” for Truss to meet a think tank like IMIL. “The UK should have no role in promoting climate denial or the deregulation of the Amazon,” he said.

One other item on Truss’s itinerary was a trip to a multi-million pound research institute jointly-funded by Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell that promotes natural gas and biofuels as sustainable, followed by a visit to an oil rig “simulator” run by Petrobras.

UK oil companies Shell and BP have major interests in Brazil, particularly in the vast deepwater reserves off the country’s southeast coast. Their growing presence, facilitated in part by lobbying from the UK government, has been warmly welcomed by Paulo Guedes.

The UK has also supported Brazil’s Petrobras through its export credit agency – including two credits issued between 2018 and 2020 worth more than £300 million in total.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson declined to confirm whether Truss had had any contact with IMIL since her meeting or answer a series of other questions about the trip, saying that the government “remains fully committed to its transparency agenda and releases more proactive publications than ever before”.

[twt liz t]

old Foes

IMIL’s global links will come as little surprise to Lula, who has been squaring off against the think tank since his first stint as president from 2003-2011.

Originally called the Instituto de Estudos da Realidade Nacional, or the Institute of National Reality Studies, the organisation was launched in 2005 with the express intention of countering Lula’s popular embrace of left-wing policies.

In those days, there were only a handful of right-wing think tanks in Brazil. By the time Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached in 2016, there were more than 30, according to Camila Vidal, professor of international relations at the Federal University of Santa Catarina.

IMIL follows the model of many U.S. groups in advocating a mix of economic liberalism and social conservatism, while seeking academic backing and disseminating its ideas through magazines, newspapers, and increasingly social media, Vidal said.

Numerous publications from the group reviewed by DeSmog support environmentally damaging activities and criticise efforts to tackle them. Recent publications argue that agribusinesses have nothing to do with widely-reported fires across the Amazon; that Brazil is a leader in protecting the environment and that international green organisations give it an unwarranted level of attention; that Brazilian cattle ranching suffers intense “prejudice and misinformation”, including around its well-known contribution to climate change; and that greater investment is needed in fossil fuels.

By contrast, no articles critical of Amazon deforestation in recent years have come up in the course of Vidal’s research.

Pedro Allemand, a Ph.D. candidate at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro’s Institute of International Relations, saidIMIL provides “the discourse and the narratives to sweep environmental destruction under the carpet”.

“Their position as a think tank allows them to offer justifications for the dismantling of the environmental preservation apparatus, even if they are not directly involved in the activities,” he said.

While Lula’s victory has kindled hopes that the Amazon may yet be saved from irreversible damage, his government will have to contend with the influence of IMIL and other think tanks who have proved so influential in shaping Bolsonaro’s policies.

“We are not interested in a war for the environment,” Lula – whose time in office wasn’t without criticism in this area – said on Sunday night. “But we are ready to defend it from any threat.”

---

an 9 22

Former Brazilian President Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) runs about on stage at the Latin America Memorial in São Paulo. He was there on August 22, 2022, speaking at a book launch featuring photographs by Ricardo Stuckert about Lula’s trips around the world when he was the president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010. Lula is a man with a great deal of energy. He recounts the story of when he was in Iran with his Foreign Minister Celso Amorim in 2010, trying to mediate and end the conflict imposed by the United States over Iran’s nuclear energy policy.Lula managed to secure a nuclear deal in 2010 that would have prevented the ongoing pressure campaign that Washington is conducting against Tehran. There was relief in the air. Then, Lula said, “Obama pissed outside the pot.” According to Lula, then-U.S. President Barack Obama did not accept the deal and crushed the hard work of the Brazilian leadership in bringing all sides to an agreement.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.]

Lula’s story puts two important points on the table: he was able to build on Brazil’s role in Latin America by offering leadership in far-off Iran during his previous tenure as president, and he is not afraid of expressing his antipathy for the way the United States is scuttling the possibility of peace and progress across the world for its own narrow interests.

The book release took place during Lula’s campaign for president against the current incumbent—and deeply unpopular—President Jair Bolsonaro. Lula is now in the lead in the polls ahead of the first round of Brazil’s presidential election to be held on October 2.

Fernando Haddad, who ran against Bolsonaro in 2018 and lost after receiving less than 45 percent of the vote, told me that this election remains “risky.” The polls might show that Lula is in the lead, but Bolsonaro is known to play dirty politics to secure his victory. The far right in Brazil, like the far right in many other countries, is fierce in the way it contests for state power. Bolsonaro, Haddad said, is willing to lie openly, saying offensive things to the far-right media and then when challenged about it by the mainstream media, he tends to feign ignorance. 

“Fake news” seems to be Bolsonaro’s best defense each time he is attacked. The left is far more sincere in its political discourse; leftists are unwilling to lie and eager to bring the issues of hunger and unemployment, social despair and social advancement to the center of the political debate. But there is less interest in these issues and less noise about them in a media landscape that thrives on the theatrics of Bolsonaro and his followers. The old traditional right is as outflanked as the far right in Brazil, which is a space that is now commanded by Bolsonaro (the old traditional right, the men in dark suits who made decisions over cigars and cachaça, are unable to supplant Bolsonaro).

Both Bolsonaro and Lula face an electorate that either loves them or hates them. There is little room for ambiguity in this race. Bolsonaro represents not only the far right, whose opinions he openly champions, but he also represents large sections of the middle class, whose aspirations for wealth remain largely intact despite the reality that their economic situation has deteriorated over the past decade. The contrast between the behavior of Bolsonaro and Lula during their respective presidential campaigns has been stark: Bolsonaro has been boorish and vulgar, while Lula is refined and presidential. If the election goes to Lula, it is likely that he will get more votes from those who hate Bolsonaro than from those who love him.

Former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is reflective on the way forward. She told me that Lula will likely prevail in the election because the country is fed up with Bolsonaro. His horrible management of the COVID-19 pandemic and the deterioration of the economic situation in the country mark Bolsonaro as an inefficient manager of the Brazilian state. However, Rousseff pointed out that about a month before the election, Bolsonaro’s government—and the regional governments—have been rolling out policies that have started to lighten the burden on the middle class, such as the lifting of taxation on gasoline. These policies could sway some people to vote for Bolsonaro, but even that is not likely. The political situation in Brazil remains fragile for the left, with the main blocs on the right (agro-business, religion and the military) willing to use any means to maintain their hold on power; it was this right-wing coalition that conducted a “legislative coup” against Rousseff in 2016 and used “lawfare,” the use of law for political motives, against Lula in 2018 to prevent him from running against Bolsonaro. These phrases (legislative coup and lawfare) are now part of the vocabulary of the Brazilian left, which understands clearly that the right bloc (what is called centrão) will not stop pursuing their interests if they feel threatened.

João Paulo Rodrigues, a leader of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) is a close adviser to the Lula campaign. He told me that in the 2002 presidential election, Lula won against the incumbent Fernando Henrique Cardoso because of an immense hatred for the neoliberal policies that Cardoso had championed.The left was fragmented and demoralized at that time of the election. Lula’s time in office, however, helped the left mobilize and organize, although even during this period the focus of popular attention was more on Lula himself rather than the blocs that comprised the left. During Lula’s incarceration on corruption charges, which the left says are fraudulent, he became a figure that unified the left: Lula Livre, “Free Lula,” was the unifying slogan, and the letter L (for Lula) became a symbol (a symbol that continues to be used in the election campaign). While there are other candidates from Brazil’s left in the presidential race, there is no question for Rodrigues that Lula is the left’s standard-bearer and is the only hope for Brazil to oust the highly divisive and dangerous leadership of President Bolsonaro. One of the mechanisms to build the unity of popular forces around Lula’s campaign has been the creation of the Popular Committees (comités populares), which have been working to both unify the left and create an agenda for the Lula government (which will include agrarian reform and a more robust policy for the Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities).

The international conditions for a third Lula presidency are fortuitous, Rousseff told me. A wide range of center-left governments have come to power in Latin America (including in Chile and Colombia). While these are not socialist governments, they are nonetheless committed to building the sovereignty of their countries and to creating a dignified life for their citizens. Brazil, the third-largest country in the Americas (after Canada and the United States of America), can play a leadership role in guiding this new wave of left governments in the hemisphere, Rousseff said. Haddad told me that Brazil should lead a new regional project, which will include the creation of a regional currency (sur) that can not only be used for cross-border trade but also for holding reserves. Haddad is currently running to be the governor of São Paulo, whose main city is the financial capital of the country. Such a regional currency, Haddad believed, will settle conflicts in the hemisphere and build new trade linkages that need not rely on long supply chains that have been destabilized by the pandemic. “God willing, we will create a common currency in Latin America because we do not have to depend on the dollar,” said Lula in May 2022.

Rousseff is eager for Brazil to return to the world stage through the BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), and offer the kind of left leadership that Lula and she had given that platform a decade ago. The world, Rousseff said, needs such a platform to offer leadership that does not rely on threats, sanctions and war. Lula’s anecdote about the Iran deal is a telling one since it shows that a country like Brazil under the leadership of the left is more willing to settle conflicts rather than to exacerbate them, as the United States did. There is hope, Rousseff noted, for a Lula presidency to offer robust leadership for a world that seems to be crumbling due to the myriad challenges such as climate catastrophe, warfare and social toxicity.

Author Bio: Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

==

an 8 22

in Brazil, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has been a scathing critic of environmentalism — not unlike his American ally, former U.S. President Donald Trump, and other MAGA Republicans — while encouraging the use of fossil fuels, including coal, over green energy. Bolsonaro has made no secret of the fact that he believes climate change is a myth, and he doesn’t view deforestation in the Amazon as a problem.

But journalist Terrence McCoy, in an in-depth article published by the Washington Post on August 30, lays out some reasons why the destruction of the Amazon is an environmental disaster that Bolsonaro’s policies have encouraged.

“The violent and lawless erasure of the Amazon is perhaps the world’s greatest environmental crime story,” McCoy explains. “Scientists warn that the forest, seen as vital to averting catastrophic global warming, is at a tipping point. But in Brazil, home to about 60 percent of the Amazon, nearly one-fifth has already been destroyed. And virtually no one, law enforcement officials say, has been held accountable.”

READ MORE: Record deforestation pushing Amazon Rainforest toward 'the tipping point of no return': report

Bolsonaro, McCoy stresses, has treated deforesters in the Amazon “not as criminals, but as honest workers oppressed by authoritarian environmentalists.” And environmental inspector Ivan de Jesus Pereira de Araújo e Silva told the Post that under Bolsonaro, Brazil’s environmental agencies “have been shrunk so much.”

Bolsonaro is up for reelection in 2022, and his critics fear that his environmental policies will grow even worse if he wins a second term.

One of Bolsonaro’s left-wing critics in the United States is Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. In a column published on August 23, liberal Washington Post opinion writers Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman reported that Sanders had met with Brazilian activists who fear that even if he loses the 2022 presidential election in Brazil, Bolsonaro won’t accept defeat and will try to stage a coup d’état.

“Such fears have prompted Sanders and his staff to draft a resolution that would seek to get ahead of any such eventuality,” Sargent and Waldman reported. “It would express the view of the Senate that if Bolsonaro loses and refuses to step down, the United States will view it as an unacceptable outcome. The resolution — which we have viewed in draft form — declares that the United States will immediately recognize the election outcome that international monitors deem free and fair. And it warns that the United States will reevaluate its relationship with any government that assumes power through undemocratic means, including a military coup. It says this could imperil future U.S. aid.”

READ MORE:How Brazil’s military has played a role in the destruction of the Amazon

During an interview, Sanders told Sargent and Waldman, “It is absolutely imperative that the U.S. Senate make it clear, through a resolution, that we support democracy in Brazil. We look forward to a free and fair election.”

In mid-August, Brazilian pollster Datafolha found that Bolsonaro’s left-wing rival, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, had a 15 percent lead over him— and Sanders believes that Bolsonaro, like Trump and his MAGA allies in the U.S., is quite capable of trying to steal a presidential election.

Sanders told Sargent and Waldman, “What we are seeing all across the world are massive attacks and rollbacks to democracy…. where people are giving up on democracy and moving toward authoritarianism. We have groups that have done that right here in the United States.”

READ MORE:'The genocide of his people is complete': Last member of remote Brazilian tribe found dead

Activists and conservationists worldwide mourned Monday following news that a man believed to be the last of a remote Brazilian tribe was found dead after years of resisting all efforts by the outside world to contact or interfere with him.

Known by defenders of Indigenous rights as "Indian of the Hole" or "The Man of the Hole" (Índio do Buraco)—a name given due to pits he dug for shelter, concealment, and possibly hunting—he was the only inhabitant of Tanaru Indigenous Territory in Rondônia state, in the western Brazilian Amazon. First encountered 26 years ago, the man—believed to be approximately 60 years old at the time of his death—lived reclusively in the remote region after other members of his tribe were thought to have been poisoned by ranchers who wanted to develop the land where they lived.

OPI, the Observatory for the Human Rights of Uncontacted and Recently-Contacted Peoples, issued a statement (translated here into English) bemoaning that "another Indigenous person, the last representative of his people, has died."

"In the recent past," the group continued, "he was the victim of an atrocious extermination process, as a result of the installation of large state-sponsored farms. He witnessed the death of his people, lost his territory to pastures and was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a small portion of forest interdicted by justice, surrounded by large farms in the region of the Corumbiara River in Rondônia."

"For resisting with extreme determination to any endeavors of contact," OPI added, the man "died without letting know which ethnicity he belonged to, nor the motivations of the holes he dug inside his house."

As The Guardian reports, "Officials know very little about the man, but his determined independence and evident solace helped create a mystique around him that captured the attention of activists and media across Brazil and around the world."

Survival International, which advocates for Indigenous rights and autonomy in Brazil and elsewhere around the world, called the death of the man—whose remains were recently found in a state of decomposition in the Tanaru territory—a symbol of genocide against the Amazon's Indigenous peoples. The group called the region where he lived as "a small island of forest in a sea of vast cattle ranches, in one of the most violent regions in Brazil."

Fiona Watson, research and advocacy director for Survival International who visited the man's territory in 2004 with a government monitoring team, commented on the man's passing.

"No outsider knew this man's name, or even very much about his tribe—and with his death the genocide of his people is complete," said Watson. "For this was indeed a genocide—the deliberate wiping out of an entire people by cattle ranchers hungry for land and wealth."

[twt]

what the man symbolized, said Watson, was "both the appalling violence and cruelty inflicted on Indigenous peoples worldwide in the name of colonization and profit, but also their resistance. We can only imagine what horrors he had witnessed in his life, and the loneliness of his existence after the rest of his tribe were killed, but he determinedly resisted all attempts at contact, and made clear he just wanted to be left alone."

Watson also invoked the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who is notorious for his antagonism toward the Indigenous people of Brazil and his wanton destruction of the Amazon rainforest by backing the logging, cattle, and mining interests who have sought massive profits from the region's land and natural resources.

"If President Bolsonaro and his agribusiness allies get their way," warned Watson, "this story will be repeated over and over again until all the country's Indigenous peoples are wiped out. The Indigenous movement in Brazil, and Survival, will do everything possible to ensure that doesn't happen."

According to government officials with Funai, which monitored the man from a distance, it appeared the man had prepared for his death and that neither foul play nor a violent end was suggested. A forensic doctor with the nation's federal police is expected to carry out an autopsy and anthropologists and other researchers are expected to try to learn more about how he lived.

Following the man's death, OPI renewed its called for the Tanaru reserve where he lived his final years to be permanently protected as a memorial to Indigenous genocide.

---

==

1119 morales 1st indig leader out in mil coup; same time as big protests in chile; Lula released b/c of general release of 1st x offenders. goes to meet union

==

==

Brazilian Car Wash Prosecutors Secretly Plotted to Leak Testimony to Influence Venezuelan Politics at Suggestion of Sergio Moro

Andrew Fishman, Leandro Demori, Amanda Audi

An enemy of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro with close ties to Brazilian prosecutors published leaked videos of depositions on the eve of gubernatorial elections.

READ MORE →

==

619

This week, The Intercept and The Intercept Brasil published a series of articles that sent shockwaves through Brazil and the world. We revealed grossly unethical conduct by the prosecutors and judge behind the criminal conviction of Brazil’s former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. 

These immensely powerful figures who spent years insisting that they were apolitical anti-corruption crusaders had, in fact, secretly worked together to undermine Lula’s right to a fair trial and convict him so he could not run in last year’s presidential election. Their actions helped lay the path for Jair Bolsonaro, an extreme right-wing authoritarian, to become president. The judge went on to become Bolsonaro’s justice minister.  

Until The Intercept reported on this massive archive of leaked materials — private chats, audio recordings, videos, and other documentation provided by an anonymous source — this politicized abuse of prosecutorial and judicial power could not be proven. Now, Bolsonaro’s most popular minister is on the ropes, and influential voices are calling for him to be fired. 

==

---

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-archive-operation-car-wash

INTERCEPT BRASIL today published three explosive exposésshowing highly controversial, politicized, and legally dubious internal discussions and secret actions by the Operation Car Wash anti-corruption task force of prosecutors, led by the chief prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, along with then-Judge Sergio Moro, now the powerful and internationally celebrated justice minister for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

These stories are based on a massive archive of previously undisclosed materials — including private chats, audio recordings, videos, photos, court proceedings, and other documentation — provided to us by an anonymous source. They reveal serious wrongdoing, unethical behavior, and systematic deceit about which the public, both in Brazil and internationally, has the right to know.

Read Our Complete Coverage

Secret Brazil Archive

These three articles were published today in The Intercept Brasil in Portuguese, and we have synthesized them into two English-language articles for The Intercept. Given the size and global influence of Brazil under the new Bolsonaro government, these stories are of great significance to an international audience.

This is merely the beginning of what we intend to be an ongoing journalistic investigation, using this massive archive of material, into the Car Wash corruption probe; Moro’s actions when he was a judge and those of the prosecutor Dallagnol; and the conduct of numerous individuals who continue to wield great political and economic power both inside Brazil and in other countries.

Beyond the inherent political, economic, and environmental importance of Brazil under Bolsonaro, the significance of these revelations arises from the incomparably consequential actions of the yearslong Car Wash corruption probe. That sweeping scandal implicated numerous leading political figures, oligarchs, Bolsonaro’s predecessor as president, and even foreign leaders in corruption prosecutions.

Most importantly, Car Wash was the investigative saga that led to the imprisonment of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva last year. Lula’s conviction by Moro, once it was quickly affirmed by an appellate court, rendered him ineligible to run for president at a time when all polls showed that Lula — who was twice elected president by large margins in 2002 and in 2006 before being term-limited out of office in 2010 with an 87 percent approval rating — was the frontrunner in the 2018 presidential race. Lula’s exclusion from the election, based on Moro’s finding of guilt, was a key episode that paved the way for Bolsonaro’s election victory.

Perhaps most remarkably, after Bolsonaro won the presidency, he created a new position of unprecedented authority, referred to by Brazilians as “super justice minister,” to oversee an agency with consolidated powers over law enforcement, surveillance, and investigation previously interspersed among multiple ministries. Bolsonaro created that position for the benefit of the very judge who found Lula guilty, Sergio Moro, and it is the position Moro now occupies. In other words, Moro now wields immense police and surveillance powers in Brazil — courtesy of a president who was elected only after Moro, while he was a judge, rendered Bolsonaro’s key adversary ineligible to run against him.

The Car Wash prosecutors and Moro have been highly controversial in Brazil and internationally — heralded by many as anti-corruption heroes and accused by others of being clandestine right-wing ideologues masquerading as apolitical law enforcers. Their critics have insisted that they have abused and exploited their law enforcement powers with the politicized goal of preventing Lula from returning to the presidency and destroying his leftist Workers’ Party, or the PT. Moro and the prosecutors have, with equal vehemence, denied that they have any political allegiances or objectives and have said they are simply trying to cleanse Brazil of corruption.

But, until now, the Car Wash prosecutors and Moro have carried out their work largely in secret, preventing the public from evaluating the validity of the accusations against them and the truth of their denials. That’s what makes this new archive so journalistically valuable: For the first time, the public will learn what these judges and prosecutors were saying and doing when they thought nobody was listening.

Today’s articles show, among other things, that the Car Wash prosecutors spoke openly of their desire to prevent the PT from winning the election and took steps to carry out that agenda, and that Moro secretly and unethically collaborated with the Car Wash prosecutors to help design the case against Lula despite serious internal doubts about the evidence supporting the accusations, only for him to then pretend to be its neutral adjudicator.

...

==

==

overview / update:

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/you-cant-have-democracy-when-you-put-the-truth-in-prison/

---

https://www.alternet.org/world/theres-growing-international-alliance-right-wing-demagogues

no lnx few

There’s a Growing International Alliance of Right-Wing Demagogues

From Brazil’s Bolsonaro to the Philippines’ Duterte to the leader of them all, Trump.

By Vijay Prashad / Independent Media Institute October 23, 2018, 12:06 PM GMT

Lula in His Cell

Lula da Silva—Brazil’s former president—is sitting in his prison in Curitiba, a small town southwest of São Paulo. He should not be there. Evidence of corruption against him hangs on the words of a felon. Lula should have been on the ballot. But the oligarchy refused to allow this most popular man to run for the presidency. Lula is visited by Pastor Anete Roese of the Evangelical Lutheran Confessional Church of Brazil. The pastor steps outside the prison and makes a statement. She says that Lula is concerned about the escalation of violence in Brazil. People are being murdered when they express their political support for the Workers’ Party candidate for president—Fernando Haddad. “The gates of violence are opening,” said Pastor Roese. The election—on October 28—will signal an “unprecedented avalanche of violence,” warned the pastor. Lula, sitting in his cell, unjustly incarcerated, worried with her. It is the poor who will suffer. It is always the poor who suffer.

Bolsonaro’s Fraud

Jair Bolsonaro, the candidate of the far-right who is now the candidate of the oligarchy, leads in the polls. He is nostalgic for Brazil’s military dictatorship(1964-1985) and wants to use unconstitutional force against those whom he sees are a problem for Brazil. His targets are the poor and the social minorities—Afro-Brazilians, Gays, Leftists. The oligarchy flooded the Bolsonaro camp with money. Democracy needs lubrication, and money does the trick. Some corporations used their money to create WhatsApp groups that carried fraudulent messages about Haddad, who is running against Bolsonaro. This is illegal. The hashtag #Caixa2doBolsonaro zipped across the internet. The whiff of fraud should have triggered an immediate investigation. It did not happen. It is Lula in prison. Bolsonaro hides his fangs behind his smile.

Bannon’s Fascist International

Steve Bannon said as he left the White House that the shackles were off his hands. He was no longer imprisoned by propriety. He wanted to be in the trenches, building his white supremacist, fascist international. Bannon calls his group The Movement. One of Bolsonaro’s sons said that Bannon has advised his father’s campaign, that Bannon—in sum—has drawn Bolsonaro into The Movement. Bolsonaro hastily denied this claim. To be linked to Bannon is not an advantage. Nor to Bannon’s fascist international directly. Nothing Bolsonaro says is varnished. He called people from the African continent, from Haiti and from the Arab-speaking world the “scum of humanity.” Bolsonaro’s moral geography mirrors that of Donald Trump, who called many of these places “shithole countries.” Of Afro-Brazilians, Bolsonaro called them lazy and obese, saying, “I don’t think they’re even good for procreation anymore.” Another member of the fascist international—Marine Le Pen of France—said that Bolsonaro’s comments are “extremely unpleasant.” Bolsonaro distressed her. This is Bannon country. Precise and clearly articulated hatred and venom.

Gunmen

Bolsonaro has been proud to say that he is “Brazil’s Trump.” But this is not a good comparison. It is clearer to say that Bolsonaro is Brazil’s Duterte.Rodrigo Duterte is the president of the Philippines. He came to office with a gun in his hand.Duterte was the mayor of Davao, where he empowered death squads to kill anyone deemed to be a criminal. “Kill them all,” he said in 2015 in reference to criminals. “Kill a drug dealer and I’ll give you a medal,” he said. He likes to be photographed with a gun in his hand, preferably a machine gun. Duterte would like to give out 42,000 guns to deepen the civil war in his society. Violence is the antidote to social problems. No policy of economic and social reform is sufficient. Gunfire is Duterte’s solvent. It is the glue of the Bolsonaro family. Jair Bolsonaro’s son—Eduardo—won re-election to the Federal Assembly on October 7 with a massive margin. In a video from last year, Eduardo holds a 50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle and says of the school shootings in the United States, “Thanks to you who support gun-free zones and this initiative to disarm people—you are responsible for these massacres.” Duterte also likes high-caliber sniper rifles, the M-4 Armalite being a favorite. These are men with guns, men who believe that guns make good policy.

Money and Monsters

In August, Steve Bannon told New York magazine that the rise of Trump—and the other neo-fascists (or monsters)—can be directly linked to the financial crisis of 2008. “The legacy of the financial crisis is Donald J. Trump,” Bannon said. “You know why the deplorables are angry? They’re rational human beings. We took away the risk for the wealthy.” Wall Street dislikes this analysis. They would like to maintain a firewall between their shenanigans and the rise of what they like to call “populists.” Bannon is both right and wrong. He is right that the neoliberal “moderates” drove a policy from the 1980s onward that allowed the rich to avoid paying taxes and to avoid investment, while the working people failed to earn their share from the gains of productivity and technology. High inequality rates around the world drained the legitimacy of the neoliberal “moderates.”

The neo-fascists that emerged with acid on their lips did speak clearly about the fraud of the system, the theft from ordinary people by the oligarchy. But they did not point their fingers at the oligarchy or at high finance. Instead, true to form, the neo-fascists pointed their guns at migrants and refugees, at the urban poor and the rural distressed. For them, social marginality is the crime. Under cover of the monsters’ corrosive rhetoric, the oligarchy and the bankers have continued their plunder. None of these neo-fascists wants to implement Basel-III, a framework to regulate banking by increasing capital holdings. Nor do they want to make sure that corporations bear the downside of risks, rather than take the profits and burden taxpayers with losses. None of these elementary reforms are on the lips of the neo-fascists. They are too busy oiling their guns.

Hunger and Illiteracy

Hunger hangs heavily over the Brazilian poor. In 1960, the Afro-Brazilian writer Carolina Maria de Jesus wrote in her diary, “What a surprising effect food has on our organisms. Before I ate, I saw the sky, the trees, the birds—all as yellow. But after I ate, everything became normal to my eyes.” Hunger is blistering. It is what Lula’s government focused upon with its Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) program. According to the UN, hunger was almost eradicated by Lula’s government. Haddad was Lula’s education minister. They used public funds to expand Brazil’s public university system. Food and reading were at the heart of the Workers’ Party agenda. Poverty was reduced by 55 percent, while extreme poverty was reduced by 65 percent. No guns were needed. Lula’s agenda was to expand democracy. Bolsonaro’s agenda is to deepen neo-fascism.

No Neutrality

Five hundred people of good sense—from Bernie Sanders to Angela Davis, from Noam Chomsky to Pablo Iglesias—signed a short document, an international declaration against fascism in Brazil. The document calls upon the Brazilian population to reject Bolsonaro, whose presidency would be a “threat to any free, tolerant and just society.” Brazilians will have to choose between “liberty and pluralism” on one side and “retrograde authoritarianism” on the other. “There can be no neutrality,” the signatories write, “in the choice between democracy and fascism.” This is a document. It might have a small impact. But it will not be able to compete with fake news and with hatred. Hatred is a more powerful emotion than love. It is what so easily undermines democracy. If Bolsonaro wins, asks the Portuguese political theorist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, will Brazil still be a democracy?

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

==

==

brazil lost mod rt, went hard right

soft coup, hollow out norms and institutions?

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/4/20/dilma_rousseff_lulas_imprisonment_is_part

lgbt assasination?

==

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/8/7/headlines/brazils_workers_party_nominates_lula_as_presidential_candidate

==

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/4/6/brazils_popular_ex_president_lula_ordered

==

csm 2013

— For those with merely a passing interest in Latin American politics, just 10 years ago it was easy to see Brazil and Venezuela as identical tropical states with charismatic presidents leading their countries toward socialism.

The reality, however, is much different, and goes way beyond the rivalries of Portuguese vs. Spanish, samba vs. salsa, or soccer vs. baseball.

Both Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva in Brazil dramatically reshaped their societies, reducing inequality to its lowest level in decades. But to many observers, the differences in their approach may have long-lasting implications: While Chávez boosted the poor at the expense of the economy and the country’s democratic institutions, they argue, Lula took a more moderate and potentially sustainable route.

---