https://entitleblog.org/2018/10/23/bolsonaro-calls-for-carnage-and-envir...
An interesting article about Bolsonaro's deeply reactionary and violent project and "discreet" support from the Brazilian bourgeoisie.
Bolsonaro: ecocide, genocide and class violence in Brazil
Sat, 2018-10-27 07:09
#1
Bolsonaro: ecocide, genocide and class violence in Brazil
Evidently, he won as predicted.
I've heard it suggested that only by making an irrational or knowingly bad choice can we prove our free will. If that's true then I guess Brazil's relatively young democracy is working fine.
It'll be fascinating to see if the crowd that's Deeply Concerned™ about human rights in Venezuela manages to raise a peep or two about Brazil over the next few years. In particular, look to see who uses the word "dictatorship".
Well, before we all use that word, he'll need to actually DO some dictator-ish stuff, yes?
If he proceeds to stack the Supreme Court, or imprison political opponents, or merge the military into the government, or use state media for his own partisan purposes, or consolidate power under him, or appoint family and cronies to government positions, or forgo elections, or rule by decree, or ignore his own Constitution then I'm certain we'll all agree that he's a dictator.
Not everything is about Venezuela, Magoo. Please don't drag it into this.
Bolsonaro was a member of the security forces in Brazil-the institution which, a generation earlier, staged the 1964 military coup against Joao Goulart-the institution which maintained a brutal regime, massively more brutal than anything anyone here could be sanctimonious about regarding Venezuela, that lasted twenty-one years-which is WHY Brazil's democracy is relatively young, banned ALL dissent the whole time, and made Brazil a country run for the benefit of no one but Euro-Anglo-American corporations. Any mistakes made by Venezuela's current, elected government are trivial compared to that, and Bolsonaro is encouraging the police to open fire on "criminals"-which is nothing but South American code for "go ahead and kill any poor people you haven't killed yet." Nothing the PSUV has done comes anywhere close to the implications of that.
Nobody has to join your vendetta against Maduro-an extension of your previous vendetta against Chavez, to be entitled to be anti-Bolsonaro. In South America, it's only right-wing governments that end up soaking the streets with blood. Every person on this board who actually knows Latin American history(you've clearly never read a word of it, since you act like nothing but the present ever matters in those countries) is horrified that the candidate of the "Beef, Bullets and Bibles" caucus is now running Brazil.
Do you mean cco? He mentioned Venezuela; I didn't.
CBC: Bolsonaro Good For Business
https://twitter.com/CBCAlerts/status/1056692366470471682
"Brazil's new president elect Jair Bolsonaro is a right winger who leans towards more open markets. This could mean fresh opportunities for Canadian companies looking to invest in the resource rich country..."
Canadian state media much prefers Bolsonaro over Maduro
Bolsonaro's policies will have catastrophic implications not only in Brazil where his far right campaign cherished the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, where he exalted national pride, military discipline, a zero-tolerance, iron-fist stance against crime, and where he continually made inflammatory remarks about women and minorities. His victory will also encourage others would-be dictatirs to imitate him and Trump.
His environmental policies could well have the most devastating effects globally. Besides promising to pull out of the Paris Agreement, he has promised to champion agribusiness by opening up the Amazon, "the world’s largest tropical forest, sometimes known as the lungs of the Earth". Even if he does not pull out of the Paris Agreement, his promise to make the Amazon wid open to business, could have devastating consequences not simply for the Amazon, but the entire world.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/climate/brazil-election-amazon-enviro...
The widespread destruction of the Amazon would have a great impact on global weather as the following article explains.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/amazon-climate-change/20184965
CBC 1933: Hey this Hitler guy could be great for business.
Quotes from Jair Bolsonaro: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/10/jair-bolsonaro-quotes-brazil-election
What was the minimum age for membership in the security forces? Bolsonaro was nine when Goulart was ousted.
(EDIT: BURCH'S ORIGINAL POST HAS BEEN EDITED TO REFLECT THE CORRECT TIME-LINE)
Canada Congratulates Brazilians Following Presidential Election
https://twitter.com/mbueckert/status/1056945828617748481
"Here it is: Canada 'congratulates' Brazil on their election, looking forward to business opportunities..."
After our fervent support of coup plotters in Venezuela, fascists in Ukraine, head-chopping jihadists in Syria, murderous Zionists in Apartheid Israel, we should not be at all surprised to see Canada already buttering up Bolsonaro in Brazil.
Stuff "I think" happened?
It's not a matter of opinion, Ken.
I think my first post made clear that I think the Brazilian electorate made a bad choice. Beyond that, you're right, I'm not sitting here pulling my hair out in anguish. Am I supposed to or something? Or else what is it you expect I should be doing?? Should I be angry with the Brazilian electorate??
Glenn Greenwald on Bolsonaro: Brazil Has Elected “Most Extremist Leader in the Democratic World”
quote:
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I think it’s really important to put it into its proper context. For a long time, the Western media was referring to him as “Brazil’s Trump.” That’s how he was marketing himself. The reality is much different. He’s by far the most extremist leader now elected anywhere in the democratic world. He’s far closer, as we’ve discussed before, to Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, or even General Sisi, the dictator of Egypt. A journalist, Vincent Bevins, based for a long time in Brazil and now in Indonesia, has made the argument that he’s far more extreme than Duterte.
I think that the key thing to understand about Bolsonaro is that he really comes not from this modern “alt-right” movement of the type of Donald Trump or Nigel Farage or Marine Le Pen, but the Cold War far right that carried out enormous atrocities in the name of fighting domestic communism, which is what Bolsonaro believes his primary project to be. He recently vowed to cleanse the country of left-wing opposition, which he sees as a communist front.
And so, the threat and the ideology is far more extreme than anything in the democratic world. But the dynamics as far as why he won are quite similar, in that it was driven not by a sudden far-right ideology conversion on the part of this population in Brazil, but anger and desperation and hopelessness about the failures of the establishment class.
quote:
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, that’s why I say he’s a real throwback to the kind of far-right movements of, say, the '60s, ’70s and ’80s than he is this more updated, modernized version. So, if you look at far-right leaders throughout the West, you don't really see much of a focus on, say, abortion and LGBT issues. If anything, sometimes the far right in Europe coopts those issues as a way of inciting xenophobia against Muslims, saying Muslims are regressive and want to drag the country back thousands of years in terms of social issues. Whereas Bolsonaro is kind of this much more old-school fascist, where a major part of his campaign was depicting LGBTs as a direct threat to children, saying that the reason LGBTs want to infiltrate public schools is because they want to convert people’s children into being gay so that they can have sex with them—an obviously highly inflammatory claim to make about a marginalized population in a society that’s already pretty conservative on social issues.
But the much graver threat is the fact that he explicitly reveres and wants to replicate the worst elements of the military dictatorship. When he stood up, very recently, in 2016 on the floor of the Congress and voted to impeach Dilma Rousseff, he specifically said he was doing it in honor of the notorious colonel who tortured not only dissidents in general, but Dilma specifically. So this is the kind of regime he wants to reinstate. Whether he’ll be able to do that is a looming question, but that’s definitely his intention.
Justin Trudeau and his liberal regime don’t give a shit about human rights(or the western version of human rights)
Lula da Silva was not supposed to be jailed in the first place! If he was free to run in this election he would of won!
Democracy my fuckin ass! Corporate imperialism wants nothing to do with democracy and collective human rights.
If Jsir gets his way with the military and police, the communists socialists need to start arming themselves and consider recutting an armed force!
Yes, Canada basically said "congratulations on holding an election". No congrats to Bolsonaro. It's about as little as they could possibly say while still saying much.
ed'd to add: Canada issues terse statement after far-right candidate elected president of Brazil
Benjamin Netanyahu
https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/1056989327434137600
"I spoke this evening with the president-elect of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. I congratulated him on his victory. I told him I'm certain his election will lead to a great friendship between our peoples and a strengthening of Brazil-Israel ties. We are waiting for his visit to Israel!"
I acknowledge Greenwald's distinction between the current alt-right and the older Cold War right. However...
So, if you look at far-right leaders throughout the West, you don't really see much of a focus on, say, abortion and LGBT issues. If anything, sometimes the far right in Europe coopts those issues as a way of inciting xenophobia against Muslims, saying Muslims are regressive and want to drag the country back thousands of years in terms of social issues.
Yeah, not much focus on LGBQT-rights and abortion, IF you exclude the USA from "the west". In the US, the Republican Party is still very much obsessed with those issues, as anyone following American political news even casually can confirm.
And even in Europe, I seem to recall Marine Le Pen going back and forth on gay rights, and ending up finally opposed. Though it's probably the case that French society as a whole may regard that issue as more-or-less settled, thus rendering any National Front position on the issue moot.
And speaking of the NF, their former leader was a man who was indeed involved with torturing people during the Cold War, in Algeria, and if the Front has renounced that aspect of its history, I have yet to hear about it. (Admittedly, that particular conflict might have had more to do with France's colonial endgame than with anti-Communism per se.)
No, you shouldn't be angry with the Brazilian electorate. But you shouldn't be acting like this situation is somehow trivial and unimportant compared to anything in Venezuela, that, until Maduro is overthrown and replaced with whatever regime you want, nobody gets to talk about anything else-I don't particularly like how things have played out in VZ, but it's not as though the place is now the Hoxha's Albania of the Americas. It's not hell on earth. It's simply a country where a government under organized siege from without made the choices such a siege was designed to cause. And none of it can be made better through continued pressure to force the existing government out. Venezuela is simply one country which has made the choices a lot of countries have made. It's not a singular failure or a singular failure; and no government, facing a sudden, massive decline in oil prices could possibly have made any choices that would have made any significant difference. Things would be just as bad now if the MUD had taken over, since they have no policies for improvement; they simply had policies for greater inequality.
But this thread, as you refuse to accept for some reason, is about Brazil. If you knew any Latin American history, you'd know why a lot of people are terrified of what Bolsonaro will do; you'd know why this isn't trivial; instead, you're just sniffing down at us with the another "nothing matters more than how terrible Maduro is" thread. There was simply no reason to bring that into this thread. You don't have to denounce the Bolivarians to have the right to have a valid reaction to anything else.
We're talking about a situation in Brazil that can only end up echoing Chile under Pinochet here. Why
Brazil, Fascism and the Left Wing of Neoliberalism
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/10/29/brazil-fascism-and-the-left-wing...
"...Where were liberals when the Wall Street that Barack Obama saved was squeezing the people of Brazil, Spain, Greece and Portugal to repay debts incurred by the oligarchs? Liberalism is the link between capitalism and fascism, not its antithesis. The way to fight fascists is to end the threat of fascism. This means taking on Wall Street and the major institutions of western capitalism."
Magoo is correct that I'm the one who brought up Venezuela. It's partly on me. My apologies.
In the long run of course it is good for business. After all we are talking about fascism.
Thank you. I hope we can all agree to leave the discussion solely on Brazil in this thread from now on.
Does the stuff that happened just before the election not count or is freedom of expression not a democratic right? You posted a laundry list of either mostly unproven allegations or misinterpretations of their constitution made by our propaganda mills against a leftist government and refuse to see the real face of fascism when it actually again rears its ugly head.
If he were the incumbent then it totally would. But it's not clear how he had the authority to order this prior to the vote, and being sworn in.
Who commanded the military police prior to the election/inauguration?
..here's an 8 min video from greenwald at the intercept. it's an expanded version of the democracy now interview that i posted up thread. greenwald's notion of why bolsonaro was elected in the first place is not only important and worthy of greater discussion but much needed in order to counter this rising trend.
The Lessons for Western Democracies From the Stunning Victory of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro
Bogus? Im pretty sure there were almost no uncorrupt politicians there
He served in a paratrooper unit and two artillery units. The raids were carried out by police and electoral justice officials.
Now perhaps they were more than happy to help -- after all, 55% of the country seemed to like the guy -- but it's quite a stretch indeed to blame him for this, and then to say it's proof of his dictatoriness.
You may be right, though, that he'll probably do similar stuff when he's in office, and that's pretty clearly a different situation. But really, it's pretty hard to declare someone a dictator when they haven't taken office yet.
or maybe
Hard to tell which it is.
Why are you making such an effort to give the guy the benefit of the doubt? He's made it clear that his agenda is environmental plunder and letting the cops do whatever the hell they want. It's not as though anyone who comes in like that could possibly end up being some sort of moderate "pleasant surprise" once in office.
And it's not even clear that the people who voted for him "like the guy"(or even that all of them actually MEANT to cast their votes for him...his campaign did a lot of dirty tricks, like putting out fliers that looked like they were for Haddad that instructed the person reading them to vote the ballot number actually designated for Bolsonaro). And there's that "stabbing" he supposedly experienced mid-campaign, which was awfully damn suspicious for a guy who had heavily armed campaign security at all times and who was able to use the "stabbing" as a pretext to avoid pubilc appearances and debates in favor of staged "photo opportunities" in private locations which were totally under his campaign's control.
A lot of people who DID vote for the guy saw it as a protest vote, a vote to "shake things up", as a significant number of 2016 Trump voters claimed to have done.
It's nothing personal to him. It just seems to me that you can't be a dictator before you take office. Does that make sense? The way you can't be a bad police officer before you join the police academy? Can't be a crappy lawyer before you pass the bar? I thought that would make sense.
What have I said that makes you think I disagree? I'm sure we'll all get to call him a dictator soon enough, based on things he actually does while he's actually the President.
I read that a lot of them were fed up with corruption and felt he could stop it. Which, really, kind of reminds me of all the times Canadian voters get tired of Federal or Provincial Liberals having their hands in the cookie jar all the time, so to punish them we give ourselves Conservative governments.
Knowing full well while doing it that the hammering will for the most part come down hardest on an underclass they have become quite used to ignoring anyway. One day the worm may turn. A wise man once observed that the chief problem of the middle class is that it never realizes until it's too late, just what it's in the middle of.
President Lula of the Workers Party, was power from 2003 to 2011. Since the peak deforestation year of 2004, Lula oversaw "the rates of clearance [of the Amazon] fall by almost 75%" and the number of murders of environmentalists fall dramatically. (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/07/amazon-deforestation...)
However, land conflicts, environmental destruction and the murder of land protectors and environmentalists have increased greatly even before Michel Temer took over the Presidency from the Dilma Roussef of the Workers' Party in 2016 with the support of a caucus dominated by conservative agribusiness-supported legislators.
Rousseff's government was dependent on support from Vice President Temer's conservative party and started making compromises with it. This resulted in enviromental campaigners accusing "legislators and the president of bowing to the powerful agricultural lobby and putting export profits above Brazilian public opinion and global concerns for the environment. 'President Dilma Rousseff has broken her campaign promises and squandered an opportunity to be a global environmental leader.' said Kenzo Juca Ferreira, public policies specialist for WWF (World Wildlife Fund)-Brazil, said."
According to the Brazilian environmental watchdog Comissao Pastoral da Terra (CPT), the death toll among environmentalists is much worse than the official numbers, as indicated in the "at least 70" statement below because these killings occur in isolated parts of the country, often among indigenous groups of the Amazon, where they are unreported. Many of those killed were indigenous people trying to protect their land and the environment.
Bolsonaro plans to take this destruction of the Amazon, as well as the killing of small-scale farmers and environmentalists who oppose his policies, much further.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/brazil-2017-bloodiest-years-land-...
Bolsonaro's proposed environmental policies are much worse than what the previous government did.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43ejw3/jair-bolsonaros-brazil...
Venezuelan Opposition Invites Newly Elected Brazilian President to Intervene in Venezuela
https://t.co/VbnWPgee0t
Venezuela's opposition welcomed the victory of ultra-rightist Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil's elections, calling on him to intervene in Venezuela...
Freeland's chumminess with Ukrainian fascists will no doubt hold her in good stead with this Nazi as well.
I was familiar with some of these but not 10 and 11. How will the same companies behave with Fascism at home I wonder? In the case of both Canadian and US business they often want different things at home than is consistent with their behaviour abroad: it is part of the colonial mindset.
Many companies are extremely happy with a descent into Fascism, you can see this based on the politicians they buy.
Of course it is known here that the desires of business are against the interests of people, but many incorrectly think they have a common interest. Business can exist regulated and prosperous in a country that respects people so it is not a conflict of interet but one of greed versus interest. Business once in a while discovers that it actually works better with limits since unfettered competition is not as efficient or as safe as a more predictable environment.
Business in general does not have morality - it travels to the profits. I do not expect them to do anything else. I support the idea, as everyone, I think, does here, that not all actors in the economy have to do the same thing. Business is not there to provide equity, or to promote the public good - just to respect it. I do not expect business to be very good at anything other than accumulating money. That is why I support government restraining and regulating the impulses of business and being considerably active ensuring the public good is advanced and protected and that justice will prevail and that decency and respect for human rights exist. It is the right wing that expects business to be the powers in deciding what are our common morals and what rights ought to be respected and how resources ought to be shared. It is the right that considers business the source of wealth rather than those who do the work and creating, working people. Business is unqualified in structure, accountibility, motivation, or ability to assume the roles it has. It is not useless for its purpose but pretty much is for anything else.
When business controls govevernment the worse it gets the extreme in fascism but it is unhealthy long before it gets that far. This includes any hold it has over elections or policy.
Brazil's Bolsonaro Completes a US Sweep of South America
https://t.co/DsxFRUSS7E
"Taken together, the US will overnight find an enthusiastic international and regional partner..."
Galloway: Is Brazil's Bolsonaro a Pinochet or a Populist?
https://on.rt.com/9hjd
"The victory of the far right Bolsonaro in Brazil, Latin America's most populous country and co-founder of the BRICS bloc, has understandably caused much fluttering in the dovecoats of leftists and liberals around the globe. But what the Bolsonaro victory shows is not so much the strength of far-right ideas as the weakness of the left.
A left-wing movement which accepts neo-liberal orthodoxies of austerity and which fails to dramatically redistribute wealth to the masses, and in a country like Brazil which does not mobilize, even militarize, the advanced sections of the workers in defense of an actual (as opposed to a rhetorical) transformation will be over-thrown. And they have been..."
Are you listening NDP weak-tea people?
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1057976093318266880
Maybe Bolsonaro won't be seen as such a bad guy, especially if he buys a couple billion dollars worth of armoured vehicles from General Dynamics Land Systems in Ontario.
Hmm, are the Putinists supporting Bolsonaro?
George Galloway was forthright on the struggle against the Iraq war, but in many ways he is reactionary and extremely misogynist.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2015/11/jeremy-corbyn-does-not-...
I was in Brazil in 2002 just before Lula's election. My friend, who'd left Colombia, was afraid of a Lula vistory. Did the Workers' Party victory lead to Bolsonaro ? Such a unique and complex country of 200+millions is Brazil. I was at a World Esperanto Congress. E-o has a surprising following there.
Brazilian Invasion of Venezuela a 'Very Serious' Threat
https://youtu.be/iUKNg6X26x42
Anya Parampil dissects a recent speech made by senior Treasury official Marshall Billingslea at the Brookings institution in which he claims governments in Venezuela and Nicaragua 'threaten the integrity' of the international financial system. Gloria La Riva, an organizer with the ANSWER Coalition joins Anya to discuss the role think-tanks and NGOs play in supporting US regime-change goals in Latin America as well as disturbing reports suggest Brazil may take military action against Venezuela under the leadership of President elect Jair Bolsonaro."
Obviously Bolsonaro and Trump are closely aligned, but it is important not to neglect Brazil's own "sub-imperialism" in the broader South American context. Its ruler is NOT merely a tool of the US.
The Lesson of Brazil
https://socialistproject.ca/2018/11/lesson-of-brazil/#more-2401
"Brazil will experience some very dark days and we will have to support our comrades to the best of our ability - for example, by keeping a close watch on the actions of the Canadian state and Canadian businesses that will choose to collaborate with the fascists..."
Bolsonaro's Sons Drop a Little Hint About What To Expect
https://twitter.com/JohnOCAP/status/1059826953933357062
Like Brazil North, they 'Walk with Israel'.
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