Brazil

Bear in mind that even with Lula’s victory, he is not yet President.  He will take over from 1 January 2023.

We had some discussion and I would like to post it here.  First a piece by Colin Maxwell on his fairly new Substack and then an attempt to answer from the Valdai Club.  Finally my short comment.

Following is Colin:

RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE… LULA, BOLSANARO, AND A VERITABLE MAZE OF CONUNDRUMS

Who do these men really carry water for, and is this just another example of kabuki theatre for the hoi polloi where they are simply illusionary left/right “choices” that ultimately work for Klaus Slob and his NWO agendas?

There is an awful lot of talk around about Lula being incompetent, crooked, and having mucked up the economy in his past tenure as President. In fact, just a few hours of researching the background and history of events revealed to me precisely the opposite scenario.

FIRST A LITTLE BIT OF BACKGROUND ON RECENT PRESIDENTS

LULA…  my sentimental favourite, as he does come across as much more trustworthy than Bolsanaro who by contrast every time I see or listen to him, all my intuitive alarm signals go off like screaming fire alarms. Admittedly there is nothing substantial here to make any case with, but nevertheless still very difficult to discount this very strong intuitive feeling. Quote…  “All in all the Brazilian currency flourished and the economy grew rapidly during the Lula years (he was re-elected in 2006). The GDP grew by 5.7% in 2004 and 3.2% in 2005, 4% in 2006, 6.1% in 2007 and 5.1% in 2008. From 2008 to 2010 during the global financial crisis, the Brazilian economy continued to grow until 2010 with a figure of 7.5%, contrary to what one would expect!” [1]

DILMA ROUSSEFF... economist and former Chief of staff for Lula 2005-2010. An upper-middle-class Brazilian with a background in socialism and working with a Marxist urban guerilla group that fought against the military dictatorship class. She was captured, tortured, and jailed from 1970 to 1972. Rousseff eventually was elected President and took up office in 2011. Impeachment proceedings were filed in 2015 and Temer assumed her duties as acting President until August 2016 when the Senate voted 61-20 to convict for breaking budgetary rules. Under Rousseff, the Brazilian real had fallen from 1.55 against the US dollar to 4.0 reals. In 2014, Brazil experienced a severe economic crisis which wasn’t helped by the country’s serious political mess.

MICHEL TEMER [Lawyer/Writer] and a son of Lebanese immigrants had been the VP since 2011 and acting President since 12 May 2016. He became the 37th  President of Brazil and served from 31 August 2016-31 December 2018. He took office after the impeachment and removal of Rousseff… he served out the remainder of her 2nd term. In 2018 with very poor popular support Temer didn’t stand for re-election and was succeeded by Jair Bolsonaro.

JAIR BOLSANARO [born in Sao Paulo in 1955] became a captain in the Brazilian Army and took up office as President in 2019. He was elected as a member of the Social Liberty Party but in 2021 he joined the Liberal Party. During his 27-year tenure as a congressman, he became known for his conservatism. In foreign policy, he has advocated closer relations with the United States and Israel.

THE CONUNDRUMS

– Is Lula a genuine native left-wing or is he more under the wing of international neoliberal agendas as some claim? Just the fact that he has been a major proponent for a blend of Eurozone/Colonel Gaddafi-inspired Central/South American currency [usually referred to as the “South”] and a South American central bank model that would enable separation from the hegemonic western financial system seemingly rules out that possibility. This divorce, particularly from the US reserve currency, would suggest that this was very much conceived as an initiative for the benefit of his country and not for feathering the nest of the global private banking cabal. Whether or not these concepts were bad ideas is beside the point if you are looking at whom Lula carries water for. Not only would this have been a financial nightmare for the western financial kleptocrats but it could also have been exceedingly hazardous to Lula’s health too.

– Quoted… “The presidential elections in 2002 had a significant effect on the newly floating Brazilian currency. Leading the polls from the beginning was Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, a left-wing candidate who advocated the protection of workers, and was opposed to capitalist “exploitation.” Having this ex–metalworker favourite winning the election caused the real to tumble against the dollar from R$2.50 to R$4.00 in November 2002 when Lula was elected  President. [1]

– Quoted… “Much to the surprise of economists, supporters and opposition to Lula, when Lula took office in 2003 he did not overhaul the economy as many expected he would. In fact, Lula continued many of the policies of the previous government in that he targeted the control of inflation and maintained the floating currency. He even made sure to appoint conservative ministers to certain positions such as the Ministry of Finance and the Revenue Service. Some of Lula’s critics accused him of going back on his word as he increased the minimum wage a lot less than he promised during his presidential candidacy.’ [1]

– Quote…  “All in all the Brazilian currency flourished and the economy grew rapidly during the Lula years (he was re-elected in 2006). The GDP grew by 5.7% in 2004 and 3.2% in 2005, 4% in 2006, 6.1% in 2007 and 5.1% in 2008. From 2008 to 2010 during the global financial crisis, the Brazilian economy continued to grow until 2010 with a figure of 7.5%, contrary to what one would expect!” [1]

– Quote… “From 2011-2015 under the new President Dilma Rousseff,  the real had fallen from 1.55 against the dollar to 4.0  and by 2014 the country was in an economic crisis. She was impeached as a result of “Operation Car Wash” and Lula was arrested and imprisoned. ” [1]

– It would be logical to think that lefty Sleepy Joe and Lula would be comrades in arms if you were naive enough to think that they would both work for their rank and file. We know that is laughable in Biden’s case and at the very least slightly debatable in Lula’s case.

– Lula is extremely popular and respected by leaders of the BRICS which is completely counterintuitive to what you expect if he is the prefered victor for the Biden bunch… the absolute global BRICS arch-rival. Also, Lula’s name lit up on a huge neon sign on the Chrysler building in the Big Apple on the eve of the election. All of this is utterly confusing and counterintuitive. [2]

– Jair Bolsonaro appears to be desperately trying, with the support of the military establishment, to privatize the largest state-owned companies before the end of his government, among them the oil company Petrobras.

– By contrast, Lula da Silva said that if he is elected, he will not allow the privatization of state-owned companies such as Petrobras, Eletrobras, Correios and Banco do Brasil.  At an event organized by the Homeless Workers Movement, in Santo André (SP), Lula stated that he wants to be elected because “we need to take back Petrobras, we need to not let Eletrobras, Correios, Banco do Brasil be privatized”. Eletrobras already has the authorization process for privatization ready, but it is stalled in Congress, which needs to approve it for the sale of shares to proceed. This does not gel with Mr Global agendas either.

– The Workers’ Party (PT), whose candidate Lula da Silva is the frontrunner for the coming presidential election also opposes Brazil’s entry to the OECD, saying that: “We oppose this abandonment of our sovereignty and subordination to the interests of multinational companies and Northern governments.”

– Little Mr Blinkey the unbelievably incompetent US Secretary of State sent his even more incompetent right-hand rep and Coup specialist/WEF hack Victoria Nuland to Brazil in April 2022… if ever anyone could cock things up it would be this dangerous gormless cow. Infamous for being a key instigator of the 2014 Ukraine Coup which has led to the US proxy war against Russia it simply beggars belief that anything positive could come out of this state visit. Everything this creature touches ends up in bloodshed.

– Quoted… “The arrival of this rabid coup specialist in the midst of Bolsonaro’s attacks on the Federal Supreme Court and the Electoral Court (TSE) may also mean that the pressure may be accompanied by promises of American support for Bolsonaro’s current coup intentions, despite public statements suggesting the opposite.”  [3]

– Quoted… “Nuland left the US administration with the victory of Republican Donald Trump, and from January 2018 she spent twelve months as CEO of the think-tank Center for a New American Security, which “performs groundbreaking research and analysis to shape and elevate the national security and foreign policy debate in Washington and beyond” and whose “dynamic research agenda is designed to shape the choices of leaders in the U.S. government, the private sector, and society to advance U.S. interests and strategy”. [3]

As I mentioned earlier if I went solely on my intuition and judged Bolsanaro on this alone I would write him off completely without even bothering to research him… to me this man simply reeks of untrustworthiness.

Thankfully my most trusted global geopolitical commentator Pepe Escobar, who just happens to be Brazilian, absolutely confirms my suspicions. It seems that many Westerners were impressed by JB’s denouncement of the Covid shots and face masks etc and, along with admiring him for this stance, assumed that he was firmly in the camp challenging Mr Global’s agendas and dutifully looking after his country’s interests… not so fast!

Pepe wrote this expose at the time of JB’s election and called it “Welcome To The Jungle”.
I hardly need to add my 2 cents worth as he has more than confirmed my many multiple suspicions.

… quoted from the link… [4]

“Jean Baudrillard once defined Brazil as “the chlorophyll of our planet”. And yet a land vastly associated worldwide with the soft power of creative joie de vivre has elected a fascist for president.

Brazil is a land torn apart. Former paratrooper Jair Bolsonaro was elected with 55.63 per cent of votes. Yet a record 31 million votes were ruled absent or null and void. No less than 46 million Brazilians voted for the Workers’ Party’s candidate, Fernando Haddad; a professor and former mayor of Sao Paulo, one of the crucial megalopolises of the Global South. The key startling fact is that over 76 million Brazilians did not vote for Bolsonaro.

His first speech as president exuded the feeling of a trashy jihad by a fundamentalist sect laced with omnipresent vulgarity and the exhortation of a God-given dictatorship as the path towards a new Brazilian Golden Age.

French-Brazilian sociologist Michael Lowy has described the Bolsonaro phenomenon as “pathological politics on a large scale”.

His ascension was facilitated by an unprecedented conjunction of toxic factors such as the massive social impact of crime in Brazil, leading to a widespread belief in violent repression as the only solution; the concerted rejection of the Workers’ Party, catalyzed by financial capital, rentiers, agribusiness and oligarchic interests; an evangelical tsunami; a “justice” system historically favouring the upper classes and embedded in State Department-funded “training” of judges and prosecutors, including the notorious Sergio Moro, whose single-minded goal during the alleged anti-corruption Car Wash investigation was to send Lula to prison; and the absolute aversion to democracy by vast sectors of the Brazilian ruling classes.

The Reign of BBBB

It’s impossible to understand the rise of Bolsonarism without the background of the extremely sophisticated Hybrid War unleashed on Brazil by the usual suspects. NSA spying – ranging from the Petrobras energy giant all the way to then President Dilma Rousseff’s mobile phone – was known since mid-2013 after Edward Snowden showed how Brazil was the most spied upon Latin American nation in the 2000s.

The Pentagon-supplicant Superior War College in Rio has always been in favour of a gradual – but surefire – militarization of Brazilian politics aligned with U.S. national security interests. The curriculum of top U.S. military academies was uncritically adopted by the Superior War College.

The managers of Brazil’s industrial-military-technological complex largely survived the 1964-1985 dictatorship. They learned everything about psyops from the French in Algeria and the Americans in Vietnam. Over the years they evolved their conception of the enemy within; not only the proverbial “communists” but also the Left as a whole as well as the vast masses of dispossessed Brazilians.

This led to the recent situation of generals threatening judges if they ever set Lula free. Bolsonaro’s running mate, the crude Generalito Hamilton Mourao, even threatened a military coup if the ticket did not win. Bolsonaro himself said he would never “accept” defeat.

This evolving militarization of politics perfectly meshed with the cartoonish BBBB (Bullet, Beef, Bible, Bank) Brazilian Congress.
Congress is virtually controlled by military, police and paramilitary forces; the powerful agribusiness and mining lobby, with their supreme goal of totally plundering the Amazon rainforest; evangelical factions; and banking/financial capital. Compare it with the fact that more than half of senators and one-third of Congress are facing criminal investigations.

The Bolsonaro campaign used every trick in the book to flee any possibility of a TV debate, faithful to the notion that political dialogue is for suckers, especially when there’s nothing to debate.

After all, Bolsonaro’s top economic advisor, Chicago Boy Paulo Guedes – currently under investigation for securities fraud – had already promised to “cure” Brazil by bearing the usual gifts: privatize everything; destroy social spending; get rid of all labour laws as well as the minimum wage; let the beef lobby plunder the Amazon, and increase the weaponizing of all citizens to uber-NRA levels.

No wonder The Wall Street Journal normalized Bolsonaro as a “conservative populist” and the “Brazilian swamp-drainer”; this fact-free endorsement ignores that Bolsonaro is a lowly politico who has only passed two pieces of legislation in his 27 lacklustre years in Congress.”

…end quote…

So there we have it. I will go with a combination of my own personal gut feeling combined with Pepe’s extensive knowledge. I wouldn’t trust JB as far as I could kick him. Having said that I really do hope that Lula is not also just another WEF ring-in… only time will tell now.

[1] https://www.travel-brazil-selection.com/essential-information/brazilian-currency/

[2] https://worldnewsinpictures.com/lula

[3] https://www.brasilwire.com/us-coup-specialist-victoria-nuland-visits-brazil/

[4] https://kboo.org/media/68893-welcome-jungle-pepe-escobar

And now, let us see what my favorite think tank, the Valdai Club, has to say.

Brazil and Russia: What Can Russia Expect from the New Government of Lula da Silva?

The Brazilian presidential elections were the most highly anticipated and closely watched in recent times, and were described as the “most important in decades”. In a close contest, former Brazilian President Lula da Silva (PT – Workers’ Party), defeated his opponent, current President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro (PL – Liberal Party). Never before in the history of Brazil has the country faced such striking political polarisation and violence. These features could be a reflection of a country that has lost relevance in recent years and now needs to seek international insertion in an increasingly challenging and unstable world. 

Relations between Brazil and Russia have historically been marked by periods of estrangement and rapprochement. The US and its influence in Latin America has been a constant element in the relationship between the two countries. Hence, the nature of the relationship (rapprochement or distancing) between Moscow and Brasilia is a direct reflection of the political and ideological changes in the diplomatic landscape.

The current government of Jair Bolsonaro illustrates this trend. During the first years of Bolsonaro’s administration, it leaned towards the United States; an automatic alignment with Washington’s policymakers during Trump’s tenure. During this period, Brazil became a major non-NATO US ally and dismantled the main regional integration projects of previous governments, submitting Brazilian regional leadership to the Organisation of American States (OAS). In addition, Brazil shed its character as a developing country when it decided to apply to join the OECD. Another feature that characterises this alignment with the West, during the first years of Bolsonaro’s tenure was its support for a Mercosur-European Union free trade agreement. In this sense, the initial years of Bolsonaro’s term were characterised by a readjustment to the Euro-Atlantic system, which clashes with the very reformist and contestatory nature of the BRICS countries. In this aspect, during the PT governments, the BRICS group was seen as a catalyst for achieving greater international insertion, championing Brazil in the search for changes in the Western structures of global governance. Paradoxically, in the first term of Bolsonaro’s government, the BRICS lost importance in the Brazilian foreign policy agenda and were relegated to a platform for bilateral trade.

Brazil and BRICS: Changing Priorities

Dmitry Razumovsky

The victory of Jair Bolsonaro, a pro-US right-wing reactionary politician in Brazil’s late-2018 presidential elections, caused certain concerns among many experts about the country’s future participation in the BRICS and the future of the association in general. However, in making such predictions, it would not be entirely correct to rely on existing stereotypes about the left-right dichotomy or the new Bolsonaro administration in particular when considering the role of Brazil in the world and in BRICS.

Expert Opinions

Russian diplomacy was quite professional in dealing with the shift in Brazil’s foreign policy posture, and sought to draw Bolsonaro into bilateral partnerships with Russia. Such rapprochement was contextualised by the relative isolation of the Brazilian President when Trump was defeated in the US elections. The Kremlin recognises Brazil as an important partner of Russia in Latin America that cannot be lost to external or internal intemperateness, and seeks to give Brazil a position as an indispensable ally in the design of the multipolar world.Brazil’s pragmatism and regional leadership during the Lula administration were responsible for laying the foundations for a strategic relationship between Brazil and Russia. Moscow’s position becomes even more relevant in the current context of Western sanctions against Russia, and Brazil must play an important role that can benefit both countries. For these reasons, Russia is not interested in a weakened Brazil, subordinated to the US.

In this sense, it is important to note that the Lula administration is recognised for initiating a range of South American integration projects that limited and/or diminished North American influence in the South American decision-making process. These factors were viewed favourably by the Russians.

However, the world in which Lula ruled Brazil, in 2003 to 2011, no longer exists; the once and future president of Brazil will have to make even more concessions if he wants to ensure governability.

These circumstances stand in the way of a resumption of a Brazilian regional leadership role in a period in which Lula will have to focus more attention on domestic affairs.  The economic challenges that Brazil faces and the election of a majority congress opposed to Lula will force him to seek external support and investment. This reality may lead to greater interference by the United States and the EU in Brazil’s international policy agenda, thus curbing Brazil’s participation in an order that challenges neoliberal and Western structures of global governance.

Brazil’s official position on the conflict in Ukraine will remain pragmatic under  Lula’s presidential administration. This fact is attested to by the way Brazil voted in the UN and the PT government’s positions during the unfolding of the 2014 Maidan crisis. Brazil’s ministry of foreign affairs is unlikely to take a more assertive position in supporting either of the parties involved in the conflict, because Brazil needs fertilizer imports from Russia and, at the same time, is very dependent on trade with the US and the EU. The possibility of  interlocution between Zelensky and Lula das Silva is also quite unlikely. The elected President of Brazil is considered “persona non grata” in the Ukrainian government for pointing out Ukraine’s responsibility in the current situation, and Bolsonaro has been criticized for Brazil’s neutrality. At this point, Zelensky and the West have managed to unite opponents as antagonistic as Lula and Bolsonaro, forcing a cohesion among Brazilian political elites that is not favourable to a signalling of a change in the stance toward Ukraine.

In this sense, the future of Brazil-Russia relations is also conditional upon the Russian ability to deal with the Western pressure that the new term of Lula da Silva will be subjected to, in addition to the Western diplomatic inability in building fruitful interlocution with Brasilia.

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These are comments from myself.

There are two very important concepts from the Valdai Club.  This first one explains why people are confused.  Here it is:  ” … the world in which Lula ruled Brazil, in 2003 to 2011, no longer exists; the once and future president of Brazil will have to make even more concessions if he wants to ensure governability …”

The second most important comment from the Valdai Club:  “…Russia is not interested in a weakened Brazil, subordinated to the US.”

That is then the most important requirement, that Brazil under Lula does not again subordinate itself to the US.

If Lula can accomplish those external objectives, and again create an economic miracle for Brazilians, that is all we need.

(Please ignore all the US’Aians that are trying desperately to find Trump/Bolsonaro equivalents on the basis of Bolsonaro’s stance on Covid – it is just the same story, elections were stolen and Trump & Bolsonaro are the archangels of our world, yes?  You’ve seen the message?  Well it is garbage).