{"id":120328,"date":"2018-10-15T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T11:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=120328"},"modified":"2018-10-22T11:17:58","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T10:17:58","slug":"pinochet-via-fujimori-wall-streets-new-man-in-brazil-jair-bolsonaro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/10\/pinochet-via-fujimori-wall-streets-new-man-in-brazil-jair-bolsonaro\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cPinochet via Fujimori\u201d: Wall Street\u2019s New Man in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u201cNo room for feelings\u201d say Wall Street insiders as they back another Neofascist to deliver Neoliberalism, at the point of a gun, in the most resource-rich nation on earth.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

New York Times, July 1993. In an article called \u201cConversations\/Jair Bolsonaro; A Soldier Turned Politician Wants To Give Brazil Back to Army Rule<\/a>\u201c, Journalist James Brooke interviewed a 38 year old\u00a0congressman. Brazil was struggling, a President gone, in the third year of directly elected Government since the coup of 1964, and the already infamous\u00a0former Army Captain Bolsonaro<\/a> was proposing a return to Military Rule.<\/p>\n

This may have sounded outlandish, but just 4 years previously, declassified documents reveal that if the 1989 election had not gone the right way, Brazil\u2019s Military establishment and the United States already had contingency plans for another Coup to set things right<\/a>.\u00a0It is safe to assume that a Latin American politician featured in the New York Times is already\u00a0on the US Government\u2019s radar.<\/p>\n

Brooke wrote: Applying\u00a0to politics the boldness he once displayed as an army parachutist, Congressman Jair Bolsonaro plunged into uncharted territory a few weeks ago when he strode to the podium of Brazil\u2019s Chamber of Deputies and called for the closing of Congress.\u00a0\u201cI am in favor of a dictatorship,\u201d he bellowed in a speech that rattled a country that only left military rule behind in 1985. \u201cWe will never resolve serious national problems with this irresponsible democracy.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cEverywhere I go, people embrace me and treat me like a national hero,\u201d Mr. Bolsonaro asserted. \u201cThe people in the streets are asking for the return of the military. They ask, \u2018When are you coming back?\u2019 \u201c<\/em><\/p>\n

But to many defenders of Brazilian democracy, the Bolsonaro phenomenon represents a flashing yellow light \u2014 a sign that people are growing impatient with democracy\u2019s failure to curb inflation and deliver a better style of life, and a warning that politicians on the authoritarian right are eager to take advantage of this mood, and to cultivate it. The Fujimori Model.\u00a0Today a new and less odious model for Latin American authoritarianism has emerged in Peru\u2019s President, Alberto K. Fujimori.\u00a0Faced with congressional deadlock last year, Mr. Fujimori, a civilian, ordered the Peruvian Army to close the country\u2019s Congress and its courts. One year later, Mr. Fujimori rules with a compliant, one-chamber Congress.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

During\u00a0the interview, Bolsonaro was enthusiastic about the strategy\u00a0of Fujimori, and even then, 25 years ago, was lauding political corruption as the element that would enable a return to military rule:<\/p>\n

\u201cI sympathize with Fujimori,\u201d the Brazilian congressman continued. \u201cFujimorization is the way out for Brazil. I am making these warnings because the population is in favor of surgery.\u201d\u00a0Political surgery, Mr. Bolsonaro continued, would involve closing Congress for a defined period of time and allowing Brazil\u2019s President to rule by decree.\u00a0The justification for a such a constitutional break, he said, would be \u201cpolitical corruption\u201d and Brazil\u2019s inflation, which is now running at 30 percent a month.\u00a0With Congress often deadlocked in battles among its 21 parties, Brazil\u2019s press has displayed an increasing fascination with the Fujimori model. In the last month, Brazilian newspapers, magazines and television news programs have carried long interviews with the Peruvian leader.\u00a0\u201cFujimori put 400,000 civil servants in the street,\u201d Mr. Bolsonaro asserted. \u201cHow could we ever do that here?\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Alberto Fujimori\u2019s 1992 TV announcement of his \u201cAuto-Coup\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

The congressman was equally enthusiastic about the wave of Neoliberal Privatisations then sweeping the region and the world:<\/p>\n

When it held power in the 1960\u2019s and 1970\u2019s, the Brazilian military vastly expanded Brazil\u2019s state sector, implanting a welter of state-run companies and monopolies. Today, Mr. Bolsonaro said, the leaders of the armed forces favor bringing the state back to basics: defense, education and health.\u00a0\u201cI vote for every privatization bill that I can,\u201d Mr. Bolsonaro said. \u201cIt is the left that opposes privatization. They just want to preserve their government jobs.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

25 years later, Jair Bolsonaro is second placed in the Presidential polls. He lies in a hospital bed, connected to all manner of tubes and devices, after suffering an apparent assassination attempt.<\/p>\n

New Normal<\/strong><\/p>\n

The weather vane for gauging opinion in the corridors of power is\u00a0anglo corporate media. In 2017 came the first public signs that Jair Bolsonaro was becoming acceptable to investors, and what followed was a\u00a0concerted attempt to normalise his candidacy.<\/p>\n

For a long time he looked like an anti-establishment outlier, yet has been part of their\u00a0armoury for years \u2013 break glass in case of emergency.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro has never been \u201cBrazil\u2019s Trump\u201d as some foreign media have depicted over the past year. Despite he and his supporters\u2019 protestations he is an actual fascist, former Military\u00a0and unlike the US President, is far from being\u00a0a billionaire, nor reality TV host.<\/p>\n

It should be emphasised however that the depiction of the Bolsonaros as \u201coutsiders\u201d is wide of the mark.\u00a0Jair has been a federal deputy for 27 years, his sons Eduardo, a federal deputy since 2015, Fl\u00e1vio, a state deputy since 2010, and Carlos, a city councillor since 2000. The family has 13 apartments worth R$15 million, and a summer house in Angra dos Reis. Jair and Eduardo pocketed over R$ 700,000 in housing allowance\u00a0despite having two apartments in Brasilia. Jair\u2019s\u00a0estate alone is\u00a0worth\u00a0R$2.3 million. Eduardo\u2019s personal estate\u00a0grew\u00a0by 432% between 2014-2018.<\/p>\n

In articles such as this one in Rupert\u00a0Murdoch\u2019s\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/a>\u00a0and this one on the\u00a0BBC<\/a>, his normalisation\u00a0accelerated through 2018.\u00a0\u201cOutspoken comments\u201d,\u00a0\u201cArch-Conservative\u201d,\u00a0\u201cLaw and Order campaigner\u201d,\u00a0\u201cHardline candidate\u201d have been the kind of euphemisms used for Bolsonaro\u2019s Neofascist politics.<\/p>\n

Human Rights dominate narratives on foreign governments when it suits, but Israel and Saudi Arabia are clear examples of how easily such rhetoric is disregarded when it is in North Atlantic interests to turn a blind eye.\u00a0His public remarks from anyone else, god forbid a leader like Venezuela\u2019s Maduro, would draw unanimous condemnation. Somehow they\u2019re now acceptable coming from a politician who promises to let capital run free.<\/p>\n

In the 1990s US Oil giant UNOCOL\u00a0(Now Chevron) decided after negotiations to back the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Girls being banned from school was something they\u00a0could live with<\/a>.\u00a0More recently the US and its allies\u00a0had no qualms whatsoever about backing Neo-Nazis in Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And throughout Pinochet\u2019s reign of terror in Chile, and since, horrific crimes were relativised, diminished and ignored<\/a> on account of his economic policy<\/a> \u2013 the creation of a Neoliberal laboratory in the country, a glorious experiment in which thousands were disappeared, tortured and killed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Never\u00a0underestimate the levels of human suffering that \u201cWall Street\u201d, and those whom blithely serve its interests, are prepared to\u00a0accept.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet<\/p><\/div>\n

Blood Waltz<\/strong><\/p>\n

On September 4, speaking at a campaign rally in Acre, an excited Bolsonaro called for the machine gunning of Workers Party members<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brazilian Prosecutor\u00a0General Raquel Dodge deemed that no crime had been committed, and that no harm had been done.<\/p>\n

Two days later, whilst being carried on the shoulders of supporters through the city of Juiz da Fora in the state of Minas Gerais, an assailant approached the Presidential Candidate and plunged a knife into his abdomen.\u00a0Although initially reported as a surface wound and not a threat to his life, he arrived at hospital with, according to his son, \u201c40% blood loss\u201d and multiple injuries to his intestines, liver and other organs. Some of these claims were later debunked.<\/p>\n

His attacker\u00a0Adelio Bispo de Oliveira was immediately depicted by Bolsonaro allies as a Worker\u2019s Party militant. The rumour spread quickly, and\u00a0risked sparking retaliatory attacks. Coup loyalist newspaper Estad\u00e3o emphased that he described himself as \u201cmoderate left\u201d, effectively a euphemism for the PT. It was also reported that between 2007-2014 he had been affiliated to the PSOL party, who immediately denounced the attack as did all the other candidates and parties.<\/p>\n

Dilma Rousseff was less sympathetic\u00a0in her response, remarking \u201cWhen you plant hatred, you harvest the storm\u201d. Given that in 2015 he publicly expressed hope that she die of an heart attack or cancer, and dedicated his vote for her impeachment to her torturer, it was surprising that her response generated any controversy at all.<\/p>\n

The attack amplified fears of a wider demonisation of the left in general, which always spikes at election time.\u00a0In 1989, just prior to the election, businessman Albinio Diniz was kidnapped<\/a>, which was blamed on Lula\u2019s Workers Party. The timing of the kidnapping so soon before the election meant that the PT could not respond to the accusation through the media, due to a compulsory ban on campaigning for the final 24 hours ahead of voting. Lula would lose the election to Fernando Collor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro\u2019s vice, General Mour\u00e3o,\u00a0reacted to the attack with a chilling: \u201cIf you want to use violence, we are the professionals of violence.\u201d while Gustavo Bebianno, leader\u00a0of the PSL, the \u201cSocial Liberal Party\u201d to which Bolsonaro belongs, said simply\u00a0\u201cnow it is war\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Jair Bolsonaro in hospital following attack<\/p><\/div>\n

In a video from his hospital bed Bolsonaro whimpered,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve never hurt anyone\u201d. In the first photo of the Presidential candidate conscious since arriving for treatment at S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s Albert Einstein Hospital he made his trademark \u201cTwo Gun\u201d hand gesture.<\/p>\n

His son Flavi\u00f3\u00a0posted on social media: \u201cA message for these thugs who tried to ruin the life of a guy who is the father of a family, who is the hope for all Brazilians: you just elected the president, it will be in the first round\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a country where candidates and top government officials have been known to die in plane crashes at key moments in the political conjuncture, where a President elect suddenly died before taking office, and where the leading candidate has been jailed with no material evidence, people do not necessarily believe what they see on the news. The fact that Bolsonaro met with the owner of Globo, the largest media conglomerate in Latin America, 2 days before the knife attack, and that the video footage shows no blood, has led a large percentage of the Brazilian population to conclude that the incident was simulated or exaggerated to some extent. Regardless of whether this is the case or not, and we may never know, the fact is that Globo has used the incident to alter\u00a0its portrayal\u00a0of Bolsonaro from an right wing fringe outlier to a hero \u2013 even a martyr, during the 15 minutes of airtime they gave to the knife attack.<\/p>\n

Wall Street was watching, and there was a sharp rise in the Real against the Dollar as news broke of an attack which was immediately interpreted\u00a0as increasing his chances of election. On September 10, White House\u00a0spokeswoman Sarah Sanders confirmed that\u00a0members of the Trump administration had \u201creached out\u201d to Bolsonaro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Plain Sight<\/strong><\/p>\n

A watershed moment for Bolsonaro came just one day before his stabbing, on September 5 2018, and was quickly forgotten in its wake.<\/p>\n

It was a column for Folha do S\u00e3o Paulo by Brian Winter, editor of Americas Quaterly<\/a>, the magazine of Wall Street lobby and think tank AS\/COA (Americas Society\/Council of the Americas)<\/a>.\u00a0COA\u2019s main patron is Chevron, but the corporate membership is a who\u2019s who of US Corporations, Banks and Investment funds. A bridge between corporate, government power, intelligence, regional\u00a0leaders and business, its purpose is to influence the Latin American politics\u00a0in the interests of its members.\u00a0In 2016, at an AS\/COA event, post-coup President Michel Temer admitted that Dilma Rousseff had been impeached because she refused to implement their extreme Neoliberal programme \u201cBridge to the future\u201d.\u00a0The document<\/a> was odd in that it appeared to have been translated from English, with social media users remarking on its unusual wording<\/a>. Economist Marcio Pochmann noted similarities between \u201cBridge to the Future\u201d and the \u201cGovernment Economic Action Plan\u201d (PAEG)<\/a> which followed the Coup of 1964. One such similarity, he says, is the strong international influence.<\/p>\n

The column in Folha do S\u00e3o Paulo openly admitted for the first time, for a wealthy Paulista readership, that Wall Street now supported the Presidential Candidacy of Jair Bolsonaro. And this was from the horses mouth, as \u201cWall Street\u201d in effect equals the membership of the Council of the Americas, the actual organisation for which the author works.<\/p>\n

Winter wrote: \u201cThere is, finally, the moral element. How can investors support a candidate with positions such as those of Bolsonaro on women, minorities and human rights?\u00a0That\u2019s the easy question. I know many honest people on Wall Street who feel repulsed by Bolsonaro. But they admit in private conversations that there is no room for feeling. As one told me, \u201cmy job is to make sure the bonds get paid on time. As for the rest-it\u2019s up to the Brazilians to decide.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For those familiar with the history of AS\/COA<\/a>, the handwringing tone of the column should have come as no surprise. Pulitzer winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote about it in his book \u201cPrice of Power<\/a>\u201c, detailing its role in the build up to the 1973 Chilean coup which left Salvador Allende dead and brought Augusto Pinochet to power.<\/p>\n

\u201cMillions of dollars in (US)AID and CIA funds were allocated, with the full knowledge of the Chilean and United States governments, to Roman Catholic organizations throughout the country whose objective was to oppose Protestantism and communism. Frei won handily, with 56 percent of the vote. Frei, who was fully aware of the source of his funding, also received covert help from a group of American corporations known as the Business Group for Latin America<\/strong>. The Group had been organized in 1963 by David Rockefeller, president of the Chase Manhattan Bank, at the express request of President Kennedy, who was directing his administration\u2019s fight against Castro and the spread of communism in Latin America. It included on its executive committee such prominent corporation executives as C. Jay Parkinson, board chairman of Anaconda; Harold S. Geneen, head of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, which owned and operated the telephone facilities in Chile; and Donald M. Kendall, chairman of PepsiCo, the softdrink company, which had extensive business activities in Latin America.<\/em><\/p>\n

The principal contact in Chile for the CIA as well as for the American corporations was the organization of Agust\u00edn Edwards, a close friend of Kendall\u2019s, who was the owner of the conservative El Mercurio newspaper chain in Chile and a focal point for the opposition to Allende and the left. The CIA and the Business Group, which by 1970 had been reorganized into the Council of the Americas, relied heavily on Edwards to use his organization and his contacts to channel their moneys into the 1964 political campaign. Many of the ties between the Business Group and the CIA in 1964 remained in place long after the election. For example, Enno Hobbing, a CIA official who had initially been assigned as liaison to the Business Group, eventually left the CIA and became the principal operations officer for the Council.<\/strong>\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

David Rockefeller remained at its head until his death in 2017<\/a>. Other notable staff include former Deputy US Secretary of State, first Director of National Intelligence, key plotter in Venezuela\u2019s failed 2002 Coup<\/a>\u00a0and overseer of war crimes in Central America<\/a>, John D. Negroponte,\u00a0and Juliana Barbassa, who now works at the New York Times Latin America desk.<\/p>\n

Interference in Brazil\u2019s election, and fomenting support for the subsequent coup of 1964 were amongst the nascent COA\u2019s first tasks. Rockefeller told a meeting at West Point in late 1964 that \u201cthe banking community had decided early on that Jo\u00e3o Goulart was not acceptable and that he had to go\u201d. It had funded Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IBAD) and a related organisation called Democratic Action (ADEP) spending between 12-20 million dollars (2018: up to\u00a0$165m) financing anti-Goulart\/anti-Communist candidates during the 1962 electoral campaign.<\/p>\n

In 2005 a new think tank\u00a0was formed drawing together Neoliberals from Brazil and outside, including \u00a0journalists, economists and politicians, that was called a successor organisation to\u00a0IBAD. Over the next decade its alumni would come to dominate the economic media narrative in Brazil.\u00a0It was called Instituto Millenium, and\u00a0its founder a Brazilian Banker called Paulo Guedes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Bolsonaro, Trump brasileiro. Planeta Folha<\/p><\/div>\n

Bolsonaro\u2019s \u201cBrain\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

AS\/COA held at least one off record meeting with Bolsonaro and his advisors in 2017. What followed was a road to Damascus style conversion to the public rhetoric of free markets and the minimal state. Yet, whereas prior he had been depicted as a some kind of economic nationalist, it was clear as early as the 1993 New York Times interview, that he was always staunchly pro-privatisation.<\/p>\n

Despite this long held commitment to free-markets, he\u00a0admitted publicly in a TV Interview with Mariana Godoy that he doesn\u2019t understand anything about economics, and that\u2019s where his \u201cguru\u201d Paulo Guedes comes in.<\/p>\n

Wall Street investors see the Bolsonaro\/Guedes combination like Pinochet and the Chicago Boys<\/a>. Neoliberalism at the point of a gun.<\/p>\n

Guedes was a founder of what became BTG Pactual bank, and actually worked in Chile under Pinochet. He describes his genocidal dictatorship as \u201can intellectual point of view\u201d. Wall Street Journal and others have openly defended Pinochet<\/a>, and in 2015,\u00a0Winter himself described the Dictator as a \u201cRevolutionary\u201d and equated him with Che Guevara<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since becoming part of Bolsonaro\u2019s team in 2017, named as his prospective Finance Minister Guedes has described the former Soldier as the representative of an abandoned Brazilian middle class, and they have worked to consolidate support amongst the Bullet, Bible\u00a0& Bull congressional caucus, with a promise of carte blanche for the farming industry\u2019s violence against Indigenous communities and Social Movements. With a nod to extractive multinationals he said \u201cwhere there is indigenous land, there is wealth beneath it<\/a>\u201c.<\/p>\n

In 2017\u00a0Guedes embarked on an international mission to improve Bolsonaro\u2019s image with investors and foreign media. It appeared to have some effect, as this April 2018 Bloomberg article shows<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He openly supports torture and his congressional vote for Dilma Rousseff\u2019s impeachment was marked by a demented eulogy to the man, Carlos Brilhante Ustra, responsible for her brutal and sexual torture in the early 1970s.\u00a0He has twice made rape-related threats and remarks to PT Congresswoman Maria do Rosario, for which he was convicted.\u00a0He has made racist remarks at public events for which he has been convicted.\u00a0He is an outspoken homophobe, denier and apologist for violence and murder of LGBTQ Brazilians.\u00a0He has said that \u201c30,000 Brazilians needed to be killed for the country to function\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet in the eyes of Wall Street, he is preferable to a Social Democrat.<\/p>\n

At the point of a gun<\/strong><\/p>\n

Early in 2018 it was was reported that, at an event of Guedes\u2019 BTG Pactual Bank, Bolsonaro proposed a solution to organised crime in Brazil\u2019s favelas, such as Rio de Janeiro\u2019s Rocinha, home to around 70,000 inhabitants. It was to drop leaflets from helicopter, warning citizens to evacuate and the gangs that they had four hours to surrender. After some\u00a0hours the favelas should be machine gunned. He was also reportedly applauded by the audience, made up of the banking and business community.<\/p>\n

Previously the candidate\u00a0has said on television that Chile\u2019s Augusto Pinochet did what he had to do, but \u201cdidn\u2019t go far enough\u201d and in early September 2018, his son and fellow congressman Eduardo tweeted (then deleted) that \u201cWe will change Brazil with or without bullets\u201d. He was recently photographed with new advisor, white supremacist Steve Bannon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Back in 2014, from a sound truck shared with Koch Brothers-linked pro-coup group MBL<\/a>, son Eduardo addressed the small crowd at one of the first protests following the re-election of Dilma Rousseff,\u00a0with a pistol in his belt, demonised \u201ccommunists\u201d and eulogised the Military Police. He has since proposed a law that would make \u201capologia for communism\u201d a criminal offence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

General Mour\u00e3o at a Military ceremony in Curitiba, December 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

His father Jair once said that he \u201cwould call a military coup on the day he was elected\u201d, and doubled down on this by appointing General Mour\u00e3o, as his Presidential running mate.\u00a0With Bolsonaro in hospital, it is Mour\u00e3o, who openly expresses his belief in Brazil\u2019s return to military rule, who now takes centre stage in the campaign.<\/p>\n

During a interview before a panel of journalists on Globo News, Mour\u00e3o remarked \u201cHeroes kill\u201d when asked about the actions of Carlos Brilhante Ustra, head of the feared internal intelligence agency DOI-CODI during\u00a0the military regime, the man personally responsible for the torture of Dilma Rousseff.<\/p>\n

With Mourao\u2019s rhetoric people are yet more afraid their campaign\u00a0could be an attempt to induce military rule through a charade at the ballot box, with the clear leader in jail and prevented from running.\u00a0The unearthing of Bolsonaro\u2019s 1993 quotes in the NYT raised the spectre of a \u201cFujimorian Auto-Coup\u201d and Mour\u00e3o comes from the school of thought that the Dictatorship should have never ended.<\/p>\n

Authoritarian Coup-loyalist<\/a> and Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who was appointed following the controversial death of Judge Teori Zavascki<\/a> in early 2017, is overseeing Bolsonaro\u2019s conviction for racism, and by not acting to sentence him before the election is accused of maintaining Bolsonaro\u2019s freedom and\u00a0election prospects \u2013 effectively kept as an establishment \u201cplan B\u201d in case his former boss Geraldo Alckmin didn\u2019t progress to the second round<\/a>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0which now looks highly unlikely.<\/p>\n

Patriots<\/strong><\/p>\n

Filmed on a trip to Miami in 2017 saluting the United States flag<\/a>, it was not the first time that Bolsonaro\u2019s \u201cnationalist\u201d credentials had been\u00a0tested.<\/p>\n

On July 9\u00a02013, the\u00a0country was still gripped by mass protests that appeared to spring from nowhere. Just prior to the explosion on the streets, whistleblower Edward Snowden\u00a0released documents showing United States\u00a0surveillance\u00a0of Brazilian Government, Law Enforcement and Strategic Companies<\/a>. In congress that day, Bolsonaro all but dismissed the revelations. He was joined\u00a0by PSDB\u2019s Nilson Leit\u00e3o, Ronaldo Caiado, of key 2016 coup player and Dictatorship-heir party Democratas, and their future Congressional President Rodrigo Maia.<\/p>\n

The minutes of that Congressional session in Bras\u00edlia<\/a> report that:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Plenary approved, by 292 votes to 86 and 12 abstentions, a motion proposed by the PT and signed by the leaders of the PMDB, the PV, the PSOL and the PCdoB to repudiate the US government for\u00a0the espionage of US intelligence agencies on companies and people.<\/em><\/p>\n

Deputies\u00a0stressed that the motion is a response to the gravity of the allegations made by former CIA technician Edward Snowden, that the National Security Agency (NSA) maintained offices in Brazil to monitor the communication of companies and Brazilians.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a manifestation of the Legislature, which can not be omitted, it is not a diversionary maneuver, but the position of Parliament,\u201d said the leader of the PV, Deputy Sarney Filho (Maranh\u00e3o). This was reinforced by the leader of PSOL, Deputy Ivan Valente (S\u00e3o Paulo).<\/em><\/p>\n

The proposal for a motion of repudiation led to divergences in the Plenary. Deputy Jair Bolsonaro (PP-RJ) said the attitude is premature and stressed that the US is a major trading partner. The leaders of the minority, Nilson Leit\u00e3o (PSDB-Mato Grosso); Ronaldo Caiado (DEM-Goiania); and\u00a0deputy Rodrigo Maia (DEM-Rio de Janeiro), denounced that the motion aims to divert the focus of the problems in the country.\u201c<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is a historical curiosity that such a\u00a0staggering and unprecedented level of US spying on Brazil \u2013 a friendly nation \u2013\u00a0as written about here by Glenn Greenwald<\/a>, and quickly identified as a fundamental sovereignty issue on the left, was dismissed entirely by far right politicians\u00a0such as Bolsonaro and Caiado.<\/p>\n

God & Brazil above all<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bolsonaro\u2019s 2018 campaign manifesto, created in conjunction with Paulo Guedes, is called \u201cProject Phoenix\u201d. Public security and liberalisation of Gun ownership take centre stage, but it is also explicitly in favour of the process which has seen privatisation of Brazil\u2019s state owned companies and resources further opened to foreign\u00a0ownership. He also proposes military style schooling, and censorship of \u201cleftist\u201d ideology from classrooms.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in contradiction of\u00a0the beliefs held by his core support, the\u00a0manifesto also reaches out to Brazil\u2019s poorest by insisting it will retain key social programme Bolsa Familia.<\/p>\n

It also\u00a0contains dozens of\u00a0references to God. His support amongst Neopentecostal, Evangelical congregations is strong. (The early growth of such groups as a powerful, imported, socially conservative force in Brazilian society is documented in William Colby and Catherine Dennett\u2019s \u2018Thy Will Be Done\u2019<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The same voices\u00a0who normalise Bolsonaro now have breathlessly promoted the \u201cpro-market\u201d Car Wash anti-corruption operation<\/a>\u00a0for the past 4 years, which has drawn an official UNHRC\u00a0rebuke\u00a0for its imprisonment of the leading candidate in October\u2019s elections, former President Lula da Silva. The Human Rights committee issued an order, under a\u00a0treaty that is binding under Brazilian law, that Lula must be allowed to run for President, and have access to his party and media<\/a>. All of these requests were denied, putting Brazil in breach of its international human rights commitments.<\/p>\n

For Bolsonaro and his supporters, the very notion of Human Rights is \u201ccommunist\u201d. He has promised to withdraw Brazil from the UN, if elected and abandon Brazil\u2019s\u00a0Human Rights ministry.<\/p>\n

It had long been clear that the Military would not accept a Lula candidacy<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0and 9th September this was made all but official by head of the armed forces General Villas-Boas, which brought instant condemnation from the Workers Party<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jair Bolsonaro is a case-study in the relationship between Fascism and Neoliberalism.<\/p>\n

It is critical for the outside world to understand that this new-look, market-friendly Bolsonaro is only in a position where victory is even theoretically possible because, and only because, of former President Lula\u2019s contested imprisonment. That imprisonment has been\u00a0aided\u00a0through informal (and illegal) collaboration between the US Department of Justice and Brazilian Federal Police<\/a>, discussion of which is an Anglo media taboo.<\/p>\n

The first polls\u00a0conducted after his\u00a0attack showed only a very slight increase in voting intention, but he has steadily grown since. Thankfully he has massive public rejection, and there will be an enormous mobilisation to stop him.<\/p>\n

If investors truly believe that a Fascist\u2019s victory in such an obvious sham of an election would protect their assets, they massively underestimate the Brazilian people, and should think again.\u00a0If, somehow Jair Bolsonaro is elected President of Brazil, we should be under no illusion \u2013 there will be blood.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 brasilwire.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNo room for feelings\u201d say Wall Street insiders as they back another Neofascist to deliver Neoliberalism, at the point of a gun, in the most resource-rich nation on earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":120334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,55,180,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","category-capitalism","category-brics","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}