Last Call For The Darkest History, Rhyming

Looks like Brazil is getting its own version of January 6th today on the 8th.

Thousands of radical backers of Brazil’s far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro breached and vandalized the presidential office building, congress and the Supreme Court on Sunday, and sought to enter other halls of power, in scenes that hauntingly evoked the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump.

The attack came a week after the inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in a runoff election in October.

Images on Globo TV showed protesters roaming the halls and standing near smashed glass cases in the Planalto Palace, the office of the president. Thousands of others wearing the national soccer shirt — now a symbol of the far right — and waving the Brazilian flag milled about the massive square outside in a part of the Brasilia capital that is similar to Washington’s National Mall.

“This absurd attempt to impose the will by force will not prevail,” Lula’s justice minister Flavio Dino tweeted shortly after the invasion began around 2:30 p.m. local time. “The Government of the Federal District claims that there will be reinforcements. And the forces at our disposal are at work. I’m at the headquarters of the Ministry of Justice.”

The incident captured the uncanny parallels between Bolsonaro and his political lodestar, Trump, and came after months in which pundits have feared a Jan. 6 style copycat action here.

In a manner similar to Trump, Bolsonaro has fueled discontent among his base since his loss to the newly-inaugurated leftist, stepping down while refusing to officially concede.

Thousands of Bolsonaristas have camped out at military headquarters across Latin America’s largest country, demanding military intervention to reinstate Bolsonaro, who last week flew to Florida instead of attending a ceremony in the capital of Brasilia where outgoing presidents traditionally hand over the sash of power.

Military police officers attempted to stop the demonstrators with tear gas and other weapons but appeared far outnumbered. The group is inside the Palácio do Planalto, the official building where the president works.

The Congress and Supreme Court are both in recess, so lawmakers and judges are not there.

Lula was not in Brasília today, as he was in a São Paulo countryside. He had planned to return to Brasília by the end of afternoon.

 

The good news is that President Lula de Silva, Brazil's Congress, and Brazil's Supreme Court are not in the capital of Brasilia today. That's also the bad news. Bolsonaro has fled to Orlando to avoid prosecution and needs to be kindly returned. Meanwhile, Lula has called in the national army to deal with the protesters.

We'll see where this goes, but this is a scary moment for South America's largest democracy...and it echoes too closely our own failures in dealing with our own "Bolsonaristas" like, you know, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, who have been trying to foment this kind of terrorism in Brazil for months now, and it looks like they have succeeded.

Last Call For Brazil, Nuts Con't

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been defeated in today's national elections, and Luiz Lula de Silva will once again claim the country's highest office. Maybe.

 

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is set to become the next president of Brazil, after defeating his rightwing rival, incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, by a razor-thin margin.

The leftist former leader, widely known as “Lula,” won 50.83% of the votes, with over 98% of the votes counted in a fiercely contested run-off election on Sunday.

Bolsonaro, who mustered 49.17% votes, will be denied a second term.

The two candidates had previously gone head to head in a first round of voting on October 2, but neither gained more than half of the votes, forcing Sunday’s runoff vote, which has become a referendum on two starkly different visions for Brazil.

Lula da Silva supporters thronged São Paulo Avenida Paulista on Sunday evening after polls closed. The mood was celebratory even before the results were called, with people setting off flares when he was declared winner by the country’s election authority.

Many had tears in their eyes, telling CNN that they were hopeful for the country, which has been struggling with high inflation, limited growth and rising poverty.

But others on Avenida Paulista expressed fears. Lula da Silva’s razor thin margin comes as fears mount that Bolsonaro will not accept defeat, having repeatedly claimed that Brazil’s electronic ballot system is susceptible to fraud. The entirely unfounded allegation has drawn comparisons to the false election claims of former US President Donald Trump. 

 

Bolsanro has not conceded as of this post, and he's not exactly the type of person who loses gracefully.  He's warned that he will not accept a loss due to "fraud".

Things could go very bad in Brazil this week.

Americans in particular should be paying very close attention.

 

 

Brazil, Nuts, Con't

Brazil's presidential election between current right-wing fascism-curious President Jair Bolsonaro and former President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva just got a whole lot more interesting as Bolsonaro, trailing by double digits, has suddenly found new life and new hope as he has forced a runoff in Sunday's first round.

Brazil's top two presidential candidates will face each other in a runoff vote after neither got enough support to win outright Sunday in an election to decide if the country returns a leftist to the helm of the world's fourth-largest democracy or keeps the far-right incumbent in office.

With 99.5% of he votes tallied on Sunday's election, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had 48.3% support and President Jair Bolsonaro had 43.3% support. Nine other candidates were also competing, but their support pales to that for Bolsonaro and da Silva.

The tightness of the result came as a surprise, since pre-election polls had given da Silva a commanding lead. The last Datafolha survey published Saturday found a 50% to 36% advantage for da Silva. It interviewed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

"This tight difference between Lula and Bolsonaro wasn't predicted," said Nara Pavão, who teaches political science at the Federal University of Pernambuco.

Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo, said: "It is too soon to go too deep, but this election shows Bolsonaro's victory in 2018 was not a hiccup."

Bolsonaro outperformed in Brazil's southeast region, which includes populous Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais states, according to Rafael Cortez, who oversees political risk at consultancy Tendencias Consultoria.

"The polls didn't capture that growth," Cortez said.

Bolsonaro's administration has been marked by incendiary speech, his testing of democratic institutions, his widely criticized handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in 15 years.

But he has built a devoted base by defending conservative values, rebuffing political correctness and presenting himself as protecting the nation from leftist policies that he says infringe on personal liberties and produce economic turmoil.

While voting earlier Sunday, Marley Melo, a 53-year-old trader in capital Brasilia, sported the yellow of the Brazilian flag, which Bolsonaro and his supporters have coopted for demonstrations. Melo said he is once again voting for Bolsonaro, who met his expectations, and he doesn't believe the surveys that show him trailing.

"Polls can be manipulated. They all belong to companies with interests," he said.

 

To recap, Brazil's version of Trump managed to avoid a blowout in the last week or so, with his popularity in the shitter, constantly questioning the accuracy of the polls and the integrity of the election itself for more than a year now., claiming his assured victory would be stolen by rigged voting machines.

But astonishingly, the election results find him able to force a runoff election when a total loss was expected, against the skyrocketing fortunes of Lula, whose conviction for corruption was thrown out by the country's Supreme Court as biased and political.

Imagine if Trump ran against Hillary Clinton again after having her locked up, and then her conviction overturned by SCOTUS, and you get the idea.

The runoff election will be held in 4 weeks on October 30.

It's a runoff that many folks, including myself, think should not be necessary, but here we are.

Last Call For Brazil Nuts, Con't

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is going down the Trump "stolen election"route as he faces a vote later this year, but unlike Trump, it looks like Bolsonaro may actually get his military coup plan should he lose.

President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has for months consistently trailed in the polls ahead of the country’s crucial presidential race. And for months, he has consistently questioned its voting systems, warning that if he loses October’s election, it will most likely be thanks to a stolen vote.

Those claims were largely regarded as talk. But now, Mr. Bolsonaro has enlisted a new ally in his fight against the electoral process: the nation’s military.

The leaders of Brazil’s armed forces have suddenly begun raising similar doubts about the integrity of the elections, despite little evidence of past fraud, ratcheting up already high tensions over the stability of Latin America’s largest democracy and rattling a nation that suffered under a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.

Military leaders have identified for election officials what they say are a number of vulnerabilities in the voting systems. They were given a spot on a transparency committee that election officials created to ease fears that Mr. Bolsonaro had stirred up about the vote. And Mr. Bolsonaro, a former army captain who filled his cabinet with generals, has suggested that on Election Day, the military should conduct its own parallel count.

Mr. Bolsonaro, who has spoken fondly about the dictatorship, has also sought to make clear that the military answers to him.

Election officials “invited the armed forces to participate in the electoral process,” Mr. Bolsonaro said recently, referring to the transparency committee. “Did they forget that the supreme chief of the armed forces is named Jair Messias Bolsonaro?”

Almir Garnier Santos, the commander of the Brazilian Navy, told reporters last month that he backed Mr. Bolsonaro’s view. “The president of the republic is my boss, he is my commander, he has the right to say whatever he wants,” Mr. Garnier Santos said.

With just over four months until one of the most consequential votes in Latin America in years, a high-stakes clash is forming. On one side, the president, some military leaders and many right-wing voters argue that the election is open to fraud. On the other, politicians, judges, foreign diplomats and journalists are ringing the alarm that Mr. Bolsonaro is setting the stage for an attempted coup.

Mr. Bolsonaro has added to the tension, saying that his concerns about the election’s integrity may lead him to dispute the outcome. “A new class of thieves has emerged who want to steal our freedom,” he said in a speech this month. “If necessary, we will go to war.”

 

Unlike America, Brazil has been under a military dictatorship before for a couple of decades, and seems to be heading right back for another round. 

Republicans are absolutely paying attention here.

Ukraine In The Membrane Two: Going Brazil Nuts

The Trump regime continues to be very, very bad at crime, because it basically no longer matters if, say, the US Ambassador to Brazil gets caught red-handed in a quid pro quo with the Bolsonaro regime.

Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Friday they were “extremely alarmed” by assertions that the American ambassador in Brazil had signaled to Brazilian officials they could help get President Trump re-elected by changing their trade policies. 

In a letter sent Friday afternoon, Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel demanded that the ambassador, Todd Chapman, produce “any and all documents referring or related to any discussions” he has held with Brazilian officials in recent weeks about their nation’s tariffs on ethanol, an important agricultural export for Iowa, a potential swing state in the American presidential election. 

The committee’s letter was sent in response to reports in the Brazilian news media this week saying that Mr. Chapman, a career diplomat, made it clear to Brazilian officials they could bolster Mr. Trump’s electoral chances in Iowa if Brazil lifted its ethanol tariffs. 

Eliminating tariffs would give the Trump administration a welcome trade victory to present to struggling ethanol producers in Iowa, where the president is in a close race with his Democratic rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The House committee said it was opening an inquiry into the matter. 

The State Department said Friday afternoon in an emailed statement that “allegations suggesting that Ambassador Chapman has asked Brazilians to support a specific U.S. candidate are false.” 

The statement added: “The United States has long been focused on reducing tariff barriers and will continue do so.”

The O Globo newspaper published a story on Thursday saying Mr. Chapman had underscored “the importance to the Brazilian government of keeping Donald Trump” in office. Mr. Bolsonaro, a far-right leader, has made closer alignment with the Trump administration his top foreign policy priority. 

A competing newspaper, Estadão, published an article Friday saying its reporters independently confirmed that the ambassador framed his argument against tariffs in partisan terms. The article said the Brazilian officials who met with Mr. Chapman rejected the appeal, declining to be drawn into the American presidential battle. 

Neither article named its sources. But Alceu Moreira, a Brazilian congressman who heads the agricultural caucus, told The New York Times in an interview that Mr. Chapman had made repeated references to the electoral calendar during a recent meeting the two had about ethanol. 

He said that Mr. Chapman did not explicitly urge him to help the Trump campaign or bring up the contest in Iowa — but that the American ambassador did tie the ethanol issue to the election.

So Ambassador Chapman suggests Bolsonaro lifts ethanol tariffs and Trump gets to claim he's helping Iowa farmers, and of course our ambassador to Brazil is such an undiplomatic lunkhead that his brilliant idea explodes in the Brazilian press.

This regime can't help itself from offering quid pro quo deals to foreign leaders to help Trump. The whole point of doing this is not to get caught but t this point it's clear Trump could go on national TV and say he wants foreign help and he'd get it.

Oh wait.  He's actually done that.  Several times.

Last Call For Yankees Go Home, Con't

The European Union is considering a travel ban on Russia, Brazil, and the US, all countries that have failed to contain COVID-19. But Henry Farrell at the Monkey Cage reminds us that fractious and messy EU politics almost certainly means the travel bans will never happen, especially for Americans.

The reason the E.U. might want to coordinate is that its current border policy is a mess. When coronavirus hit, the E.U. effectively stood aside as its member states introduced individual policies, including bans on travel from other E.U. countries. Now it wants to have some kind of common policy on borders within the E.U., which perhaps implies a shared policy on travelers from outside the bloc, to prevent people from entering a European country that has laxer controls and then being able to travel wherever they wanted.

However, the problem is that the E.U. doesn’t have much power to coordinate over health emergencies. A key proviso toward the end of the Times article says that “[t]he E.U. can’t force members to adopt it, but European officials warn that failure of any of the 27 members to stick to it could lead to the reintroduction of borders within the bloc.” What that means is that the list is a political set of recommendations rather than a legally binding decision that E.U. member states have to implement. Such recommendations can be politically important, since they set a standard that states can then be assessed by. But they can’t make states do anything that they don’t want to do.

Some U.S. commentators will read the U.S. exclusion from the list as a specific and deliberate political snub. That is almost certainly not true. While the negotiating officials are surely aware of how outside countries might respond, they appear to be more worried about creating unity among Europe’s member states.

As the Times describes the negotiations, they are focused on two lists of countries from which travel might be allowed. One list has countries that have a lower or the same rate of infection as the E.U. The other includes countries with slightly worse infection rates. This implies that the E.U. is basing the list on reasonably objective measures of the risks associated with allowing travelers to enter from different countries. The upside for U.S. travelers, again, is that the list is not binding. The downside is that the United States is in a bad position to press for an exception, as long as its rate of coronavirus infection is high.

Even apart from the problems described above, the list is unlikely to shape European border control policy. Member states such as Spain want to reopen their borders to international tourism as quickly as possible, for economic reasons. Spain recently opened its borders to tourists from most of Europe, including Britain, where the coronavirus is still quite widespread, and is unlikely to want to be constrained by a nonbinding E.U. document. The Spanish government appears to be pinning its hopes on temperature testing and contact tracing to prevent the virus from becoming reestablished. Spain and other tourism-dependent economies may press for more openness.

There are bigger disagreements about travel within the E.U. The reason for continued border controls is that different countries have different rates of infection. In particular, Sweden has a much higher rate of infection than its neighbors, including another E.U. member state, Denmark. That is why Denmark has kept its border with Sweden closed while opening up its border with Norway, which is not a member of the E.U. This may mean that Sweden would like a list that could allow the reopening of borders but that its neighbors, which have been skeptical about Sweden’s unorthodox policy approach to the epidemic (it has placed only minimal controls on public interaction) will want to push back.

Finally, there might interesting politics in the relationship with Britain, which is still negotiating its departure from the E.U. The United Kingdom has relatively high rates of infection, and much closer ties to other member states than the United States does. It shares a border with one member state, the Republic of Ireland. British politicians might react badly if their country is blacklisted, leading to greater frictions in the negotiations over common border areas. In addition, the Republic of Ireland wants continued travel arrangements with Britain, because of political sensitivities over the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Closing that border could hurt peace in Northern Ireland.

So no, not only will the US not be put on the EU travel ban list, the travel ban list won't happen at all, most likely.  Much like the fight playing out in US states, getting the entire EU to agree on openings and travel bans is impossible.  (Well, it would be if we had an executive branch that actually gave a damn.)

The EU doesn't have that at all, so while individual countries may want Americans, Brazilians, and Russians to go away, the rest of the EU will take them in for summer holiday.
 

Pressed The Meat, Con't

My issues with The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald are legendary, his role in helping Dudebro Defector damage the US and allowing Russia to steal the US crown intelligence jewels can't be underestimated.  Without the information Russia undoubtedly got from Snowden, would they have been able to compromise the US as much during the 2016 election cycle?  There are  lot of hard question that I think Greenwald has to answer.

However in his current home of Brazil, he has gotten under the skin of autocratic and homophobic President Jair Bolsonaro once too often, and now Greenwald faces what are certainly trumped-up criminal conspiracy charges against him for his reporting on Bolsonaro's corrupt regime.

Federal prosecutors in Brazil on Tuesday charged the American journalist Glenn Greenwald with cybercrimes for his role in the spreading of cellphone messages that have embarrassed prosecutors and tarnished the image of an anti-corruption task force.

In a criminal complaint made public on Tuesday, prosecutors in the capital, Brasília, accused Mr. Greenwald of being part of a “criminal organization” that hacked into the cellphones of several prosecutors and other public officials last year.

Mr. Greenwald could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Intercept Brasil, a news organization Mr. Greenwald co-founded, has published several articles based on a trove of leaked messages he said he received last year.

In a 95-page criminal complaint, prosecutors say Mr. Greenwald did more than merely receive the hacked messages and oversee the publication of newsworthy information.

Citing intercepted messages between Mr. Greenwald and the hackers, prosecutors say the journalist played a “clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime.”

For instance, prosecutors contend that Mr. Greenwald encouraged the hackers to delete archives that had already been shared with The Intercept Brasil, in order to cover their tracks.

Prosecutors also say that Mr. Greenwald was communicating with the hackers while they were actively monitoring private chats on Telegram, a messaging app.

Mr. Greenwald moved to Brazil in 2005 after meeting David Miranda, a Brazilian man he later married and who became a federal congressman last year.

It's a terrible situation that Greenwald discovered too late that there are far worse people in reality than the villainous version of Barack Obama that lived inside his head.  Practically everything he accused Obama of doing, Bolsanaro is doing right now, including throwing journalists like Greenwald in jail.

Greenwald also looked the other way on the kinds of abuses Russia did to journalists, including imprisonment and hey, outright murder.  But you know what? Not even Greenwald deserves this.  No journalist does.

There's a certain amount of irony here, considering Greenwald does things like "Go on Tucker Carlson's White Power Hour and trash the Democrats as fascists" but it's also a journalist being jailed for telling the truth.

Last Call For Farming It Out

The Trump regime continues to wreck the the US economy, and once again it continues to do it in a way that hurts both his most ardent supporters while helping Russia.

A wave of bankruptcies is sweeping the U.S. Farm Belt as trade disputes add pain to the low commodity prices that have been grinding down American farmers for years.

Throughout much of the Midwest, U.S. farmers are filing for chapter 12 bankruptcy protection at levels not seen for at least a decade, a Wall Street Journal review of federal data shows.

Bankruptcies in three regions covering major farm states last year rose to the highest level in at least 10 years. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, had double the bankruptcies in 2018 compared with 2008. In the Eighth Circuit, which includes states from North Dakota to Arkansas, bankruptcies swelled 96%. The 10th Circuit, which covers Kansas and other states, last year had 59% more bankruptcies than a decade earlier.

States in those circuits accounted for nearly half of all sales of U.S. farm products in 2017, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

The rise in farm bankruptcies represents a reckoning for rural America, which has suffered a multiyear slump in prices for corn, soybeans and other farm commodities touched off by a world-wide glut, made worse by growing competition from agriculture powerhouses such as Russia and Brazil.

Trade disputes under the Trump administration with major buyers of U.S. farm goods, such as China and Mexico, have further roiled agricultural markets and pressured farmers’ incomes. Prices for soybeans and hogs plummeted after those countries retaliated against U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs by imposing duties on U.S. products like oilseeds and pork, slashing shipments to big buyers.

Low milk prices are driving dairy farmers out of business in a market that’s also struggling with retaliatory tariffs on U.S. cheese from Mexico and China. Tariffs on U.S. pork have helped contribute to a record buildup in U.S. meat supplies, leading to lower prices for beef and chicken.

Trump has done everything he can to wreck US commodity prices with his idiotic tariffs, and nobody's buying American farm products.  Increasingly they are turning to Brazil and more importantly Russia for food, and the US can no longer compete.

Farms are going under at a record pace now, and it really won't be long until the rest of the economy catches the Trump cancer.  When that happens, it'll make 2008 look like a picnic.

But of course, Trump's base will be told to blame everyone but Trump, and that only "the Businessman President" can fix it with a second term...

...And they will vote for him anyway, because Trump isn't the problem with America.  His base is.

President Trump and his political team plan to make his years-long quest for a border wall one of the driving themes of his reelection effort — attempting to turn his failure to build such a project into a combative sales pitch that pits him against the political establishment on immigration.

Trump has declared a national emergency to secure the funds Congress has repeatedly denied him despite his own admission that the move is likely to get tied up in court. This move has galvanized many of his supporters even as others on the right remain dubious and disappointed.

His campaign is fundraising off his showdown with congressional Democrats over the border — portraying the opposition party as more interested in political games than the public’s safety.

And faced with the fact that he has yet to build an inch of the concrete or steel wall he promised, Trump and his campaign have started relying on a rhetorical sleight of hand: speaking the wall into existence.

“Now, you really mean, ‘Finish that wall,’ because we’ve built a lot of it,” Trump falsely claimed at a campaign rally Monday in El Paso after supporters broke out in chants of “Build that wall!”

As he spoke, giant placards with the words “Finish the Wall” hung from the rafters, an unmistakable signal Trump’s aides say reflects the campaign’s growing push to convince the president’s supporters that the border barrier they imagined him building is already real.

These endeavors underscore the extent to which Trump and his allies are attempting to make 2020 a repeat of 2016 — centered on a portrayal of the nation as under siege from criminal immigrants and other dark forces, and reliant upon a die-hard base of older whites in rural areas. 

The wall will never be finished, and the national emergency Trump declared over the wall this weekend will never end, and it will be the winding road that will lead us to autocracy.  We're only a few years away at most from Trump rounding up "illegals" anyway.

We had a good run, I guess.

Last Call For Brazil Nuts, Con't

And on his first day on the job, Brazil's new leader Jair Bolsonaro goes straight to step seven on the Genocide Watch chart and begins singling out Brazil's indigenous, Afro-Brazilians, and the LGBTQ community for persecution.

Newly installed President Jair Bolsonaro issued executive orders targeting Brazil’s indigenous groups, descendants of slaves and the LGBT community in the first hours of his administration, moving quickly after a campaign in which the far-right leader said he would radically overhaul many aspects of life in Latin America’s largest nation.

One of the orders issued late Tuesday, hours after his inauguration, likely will make it all but impossible for new lands to be identified and demarcated for indigenous communities. Areas set aside for “Quilombolas,” as descendants of former slaves are known, are also affected by the decision.

Another order removed the concerns of the LGBT community from consideration by the new human rights ministry.

In a move favorable to his allies in agribusiness, which have criticized giving large swaths of lands to the indigenous, Bolsonaro transferred the responsibilities for delineating indigenous territories from the Justice Ministry to the Agriculture Ministry. The new agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina, is part of the agribusiness caucus in Brazil’s lower house and has opposed requests from native communities.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain and longtime congressman, said during his presidential campaign that he would stop making what he calls concessions to native Brazilians and quilombolas.

“Less than one million people live in those places isolated from the real Brazil,” Bolsonaro tweeted Wednesday. “They are explored and manipulated by nonprofits. Together we will integrate those citizens and give value to all Brazilians.”

The Justice Ministry previously handled demarcation of indigenous lands through the FUNAI agency, which also oversees other initiatives for indigenous communities such as health care, housing and language preservation. Bolsonaro’s order is raising uncertainties about FUNAI by shifting it to a new ministry for family, women and human rights that is headed by an ultraconservative evangelical pastor.

Observatorio do Clima, a network of 45 Brazilian civil society groups, said in a statement to The Associated Press that the executive orders “are only the first step on meeting Bolsonaro’s campaign promises of dismantling environmental governance, stripping indigenous peoples of their rights and opening up indigenous lands for business.”

“The attack on FUNAI goes beyond the wildest dreams of the rural caucus, who had tried for years to pass a constitutional amendment transferring the demarcation of indigenous lands from the president to Congress,” the nonprofit said. “Bolsonaro solved the problem by transferring them directly to farmers. Not even the military dictatorship, whose treatment of indigenous peoples was ghastly, went that far.”

So these groups are about to lose their rights and their lands, and the next step, history tells us, will be losing their lives.  It's something Donald Trump will be paying very close attention to.

Brazil Nuts, Con't

If you want to know where Trump's America is headed, pay close attention to where Brazil's new President Jair Bolsonaro is going as he takes office today.

Brazilians signaled a desire for a radical shift in the country’s course when they elected the far-right lawmaker Jair Bolsonaro as their next president in October.

It didn’t take long for profound changes to start taking hold.

In the weeks leading up to Mr. Bolsonaro’s swearing-in on Tuesday, his embrace of a conservative movement that rejects discussion of gender or sexual orientation in schools thrust classrooms to the front lines of culture wars.

Under his direction, Brazil pulled out of hosting the 2019 United Nations summit meeting on climate change and began backtracking from its role as a global exemplar of environmentally sustainable development.

And on the foreign policy front, Mr. Bolsonaro courted the United States and picked a fight with Cuba, which responded by rescinding a program that had sent Cuban doctors to remote corners of Brazil since 2013.

There is considerable uncertainty about how closely President Bolsonaro will resemble the gruff, indignant and uncompromising candidate who ran as a political outsider and pulled off a long-shot victory by promising to dismantle a culture of corruption and use draconian means to restore security.

All of this should sound very familiar.

“I would rather they murder 200,000 thugs,” the future president is seen saying about the police in a clip that is part of the expletive-laden video.

Over the weekend, Mr. Bolsonaro announced he would issue an executive order allowing civilians without a criminal record to purchase weapons to keep at home or work for self-protection.

The policy would mark a significant departure from Brazil’s onerous rules for gun ownership, and experts said it would probably exacerbate carnage in the country, which last year had a record 63,880 killings. A poll released on Sunday by the research firm Datafolha found that 61 percent of Brazilians were opposed to relaxing gun ownership rules.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s promises to ease weapons regulations have already meant brisk business for gun ranges as aficionados sign up for practice. They also boosted the stock price of Taurus Armas, Brazil’s main gun manufacturer.

Very familiar.

The image captured the high hopes Mr. Bolsonaro and his team have for closer ties with the United States: After Mr. Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo Bolsonaro wrapped up meetings at the White House during a November trip designed to lay the groundwork for a relationship, the president’s son wore a “Trump 2020” campaign hat.

The Trump administration has returned the praise, calling Mr. Bolsonaro a “like-minded” leader on whom Washington hopes to rely as it tries to curb China’s growing influence in the region and put more pressure on Venezuela’s authoritarian government.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will lead the American delegation at Mr. Bolsonaro’s swearing-in ceremony in Brasília.

That should tell you everything you need to know right there.  Trump showed Bolsonaro how to get to the top, now Bolsonaro will show Trump how to bring his enemies to the bottom.   Fascism is on the rise across the world, and America is on the wrong side of history.

So is Brazil.

Last Call For Brazil Nuts

Brazil has elected its Trump today in Jair Bolsonaro, and the number of democracies in the West falls by one as the country's new president has made it abundantly clear that his word is now the only law.

Brazil on Sunday became the latest country to drift toward the far right, electing a strident populist as president in the nation’s most radical political change since democracy was restored more than 30 years ago. 

The new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has exalted the country’s military dictatorship, advocated torture and threatened to destroy, jail or drive into exile his political opponents. 

He won by tapping into a deep well of resentment at the status quo in Brazil — a country whiplashed by rising crime and two years of political and economic turmoil — and by presenting himself as the alternative. 

“We have everything need to become a great nation,” Mr. Bolsonaro said Sunday night shortly after the race was called in a video broadcast on his Facebook account. “Together we will change the destiny of Brazil.”

If all these seems depressingly familiar, it's because it's 100% Trump's playbook.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s victory caps a bitter contest that divided families, tore friendships apart and ignited concerns about the resilience of Brazil’s young democracy. 

Many Brazilians see authoritarian tendencies in Mr. Bolsonaro, who plans to appoint military leaders to top posts and said he would not accept the result if he were to lose. He has threatened to stack the Supreme Court by increasing the number of judges to 21 from 11 and to deal with political foes by giving them the choice of extermination or exile. 

Mr. Bolsonaro, 63, a former Army captain who has been a member of Congress for nearly three decades, beat a crowded field of presidential contenders, several of whom entered the race with bigger war chests, less baggage, and the backing of powerful political parties. 

Part of the reason for his victory was the collapse of the left. Many cried foul after former President Luiz Inácio da Silva, the longtime front-runner in the race, was ruled ineligible to run after he was imprisoned in April to start serving a 12-year sentence for corruption and money laundering.

Bolsonaro's battle cry was "lock them up" and he did.  Now, the bloody purge of his enemies will soon begin.  There's no question how we got here, Bolsonaro's takeover is just one more domino in the end of democracy 

It's only going to get exponentially worse over the coming years unless we begin the turn back to sanity in 9 days.

Israeli Serious Charges For Bibi

With all the news this week on the Mueller grand jury, it's important to remember there's a lot going on in the realm of political scandal outside the US as well.  In Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro will today convene the first meeting of his 545-member constituent assembly on the way to what will almost assuredly be a full dictatorship.  In Brazil, President Michel Temer has narrowly escaped impeachment on corruption charges but his presidency is in tatters.  But the big one is in Israel, where PM Benjamin Netanyahu is now facing a major bribery and fraud scandal as his former chief of staff has turned state's evidence against him.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's former chief of staff Ari Harow has reached an agreement with the prosecution to turn state's witness in two corruption cases against Netanyahu.

Under the deal, Harow will be convicted of fraud and breach of trust in a separate case, but will avoid jail time. Instead, he will do community service as pay a 700,000-shekel ($193,000) fine. 

The Israel Police confirmed on Thursday that the prime minister is suspected of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Netanyahu's bureau rejected the allegations on Thursday, calling them "unfounded claims." 

Harow served for two terms in key positions in the Prime Minister’s Office. In 2009 he was appointed bureau chief, but left after a year to pursue private business interests before coming back in 2014, this time as chief of staff. In between he maintained “friendly contact” with the prime minister, as he attested in the past in an official document. 

In 2015, Harow was arrested by the national fraud squad, on suspicions he was continuing to secretly operate a private lobbying and consulting business while he was the premier’s chief of staff. Last year, when the police began to examine matters pertaining to the prime minister, Harow landed in Israel and was immediately taken for questioning under warning, which meant he might be accused of a crime. The moves toward a state’s witness deal began at that time.

And those bribery charges are pretty serious.  Netanyahu is in a lot of trouble because Harow was nailed dead to rights on some pretty nasty stuff, and he has flipped on his boss as a result:

The two cases mentioned in the police request are known as Case 1000, which involves Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, who was asked to purchase luxury items for Netanyahu and his wife; and Case 2000, in which Netanyahu tried to concoct a deal with Arnon Mozes, the publisher of the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

Harow, who is suspected of bribery, fraud, breach of trust, aggravated fraud and money laundering, was also a key figure in a case that the police did not pursue. He headed the American Friends of Likud, which allegedly paid the salary of Odelia Karmon, an adviser to Netanyahu when the prime minister, who heads the Likud party, was opposition leader.

During the investigation of Harow, police confiscated his cell phone, and found recordings documenting the Netanyahu-Mozes conversations that are the basis of the Case 2000 probe. In the Karmon case, the attorney general did not believe that investigators would be able to produce evidence justifying a criminal indictment for alleged offenses that are subject in any event to a 10-year statute of limitations. Senior law enforcement officials believed, however, that the investigation should have been pursued, especially in light of recordings of Karmon that were obtained by police in which she described the sequence of events after she received her salary. 

“Bibi became insanely hysterical, all of a sudden. I don’t know who whispered to him, after all, you can light him up like a flame ... and then he said to me: Odelia, give back the money.” In the recording, Karmon also mentioned Harow: “He plied Netanyahu with many things. Flight tickets or whenever Netanyahu was in a bind. But not in exchange for anything. He was honest and sweet. He was simply helpless.”

Harow in other words had the evidence on him to burn Bibi and cashed it in for immunity.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Bye bye Bibi?  We'll see, but it definitely doesn't look good for him.

Getting The Full Brazilian Done

After nearly 12 hours of testimony and hours of deliberations, the Brazilian Senate has voted 61-20 to impeach suspended president Dilma Rousseff and remove her from office.

Brazil's Senate removed President Dilma Rousseff from office on Wednesday for breaking budgetary laws, ending an impeachment process that has polarized the scandal-plagued country and paralyzed its politics for nine months. 

Senators voted 61-20 to convict Rousseff for illegally using money from state banks to boost public spending, putting an end to 13 years of leftist Workers Party rule in Latin America's largest economy.

Conservative Michel Temer, the former vice president who has run Brazil since Rousseff's suspension in May, will be sworn in on Wednesday to serve out the remainder of the presidential term through 2018.

In a separate vote, the Brazilian Senate decided not to bar Rousseff from public office.

Brazil's Senate decided that former President Dilma Rousseff, who was removed from office earlier on Wednesday, should not be barred from holding public office.

Senators voted 42-36 to allow Rousseff to maintain her political rights, short of the two-thirds needed to bar her. Under Brazilian law, a dismissed president is prevented from holding any government job, even teaching posts at state universities.

Regardless, I would think her political career is over, you don't really come back from impeachment to be President of Brazil again.

Well, mostly.

We'll see.

The Long Rhode To Gunmerica

Kim Rhode is an Olympic legend that most of us haven't heard of, and last week in Rio she became the first woman in history to win medals in six consecutive Olympic summer games.  That's a massive accomplishment for sure, a testament to her skill and longevity in the world of sport.

The issue is that Rhode's sport is skeet shooting, and her views on gun control are not very accommodating to say the least.

US Olympic Gold Medal shooter Kim Rhode is wading into the gun control debate and defended the Second Amendment ahead of her competition in Brazil. 

"We should have the right to keep and bear arms, to protect ourselves and our family," the skeet shooter said in an interview Wednesday with Time Magazine in Rio de Janeiro. "The Second Amendment was put in there not just so we can go shoot skeet or go shoot trap. It was put in so we could defend our First Amendment, the freedom of speech, and also to defend ourselves against our own government."

It's weird to see any Olympic athlete admit that her sport should be used to kill people, but sure.

The California native said that she hopes to pass shooting along to her three-year-old son "when he becomes of age." 

"I started when I was like 7 or 8 years old, and it was something that was a big deal in my family, to gain that rite of passage," she said. 

The skeet shooter also criticized gun control measures that were passed in California following the December 2015 San Bernardino terror attack that left 14 dead.

And if you're wondering why Rhode sounds like a walking billboard for the NRA and the firearms industry, it's because she is one.

Yet if the best form of compensation is colored green, there’s no need to feel sorry for Rhode. On her webpage—“Kim Rhode, just a girl shooting guns and stuff”—she provides a list of sponsors that include a firearms retailer, a hunters’ conservation group, and manufacturers of guns, ammunition and gun-cleaning equipment. A wife and mother, she is her family’s primary breadwinner, she says. “Compared with other sports, we have a massive industry behind us,” says Rhode, a 37-year-old skeet shooter.

An estimated 20 million Americans hunt, and more yet compete at shooting ranges, so Olympic medalists can serve as compelling faces of the firearms industry. After winning a gold medal in London, Rhode made an appearance at a hunting trade show on behalf of a sponsor, Otis Technology, a maker of gun-cleaning kits based in Lyons Falls, N.Y. “The line stretched way down the hallway with people wanting her autograph,” says Heather Bennett, marketing manager for Otis, which also sponsors sharpshooting biathletes in the Winter Games. 

TruckVault, a maker of secure in-vehicle storage lockers, began sponsoring Rhode after she became a customer, following the theft of a shotgun from her vehicle. “Part of the responsibility of owning a gun is securing your weapons,” said Don Fenton, sales marketing director for TruckVault, based in Sedro-Woolley, Wash. He calls Rhode “a great young athlete deserving of manufacturers’ dollars.”

Safari Club International, a hunters’ conservation group based in Tucson, Ariz., sponsors Rhode and two other female U.S. Olympic shooters because it “strongly supports women in the shooting sports,” says Phil DeLone, chief executive officer, adding that the Olympians are a big hit at the organization’s annual convention.

So yeah, Kim Rhode is certainly one hell of an athlete, setting a record for consistency and skill that spans two decades and five continents, an achievement that definitely puts Usain Bolt's track accomplishments and Michael Phelps's mastery of the water in perspective.

Rhode also is paid very well by the gun industry for doing what she does.  It's one thing to pitch Nike or Gatorade or Wheaties as an Olympian.  It's another to sell guns.

The Rio Hunger Games

While world records are being smashed and medals awarded in Rio, it's time to check in with the more lasting political story in Brazil as the country's Senate has overwhelmingly voted to proceed with the impeachment trial of suspended President Dilma Rousseff over corruption charges, charges almost certainly related to financing the construction of the very Olympic venues being celebrated this month.

The Brazilian Senate has voted to hold an impeachment trial of suspended President Dilma Rousseff, who is accused of breaking the budget law. 

The senate voted 59 to 21 in favour of going ahead with the trial against Ms Rousseff, which is likely to be held at the end of this month. 

The Senate suspended Ms Rousseff in May over alleged illegal accounting practices.
She says they were common practice under previous administrations. 

Following a marathon debate that ended early on Wednesday, the senate easily surpassed the required simple majority needed to decide on whether to try Ms Rousseff. 

A two-thirds majority is needed in the final vote following the trial, which is due in the week after the Olympics closing ceremony. 

As the debate got under way on Tuesday, Supreme Court President Ricardo Lewandowski told senators that they were about to "exercise one of the most serious tasks under the constitution".

Current replacement Michel Temer isn't exactly popular these days either, being roundly booed by Brazilians at the Olympic opening ceremony last weekend. As a reminder, Olympic games are usually financial disasters for the countries that host them too.

Both these events will have a long-term impact on Brazil, and not a very good one.

Gaming Out Rio

It's starting to look like the 2016 Summer Games in Rio may be an even bigger disaster than the 2014 Sochi winter version with the opening ceremonies just a few days away.

The Olympic Village has been declared “uninhabitable” by some, a private security firm has been sacked due to incompetence, and some competition venues are filled with shit, while others are simply collapsing. 

The Australian team has had it the worst. Last week, the team refused to stay in the Village when, upon arrival, the athletes were faced with “blocked toilets, leaking pipes, exposed wiring, darkened stairwells where no lighting has been installed and dirty floors in need of a massive clean,” said Australian Olympic Committee Chef De Mission Kitty Chiller, in addition to “large puddles on the floor around cabling and wiring” in operations areas. 

The team stayed in nearby hotels until the accommodations were complete, and moved in last Wednesday. The honeymoon phase didn’t last long, though. On Friday, a small fire in their building led to an evacuation, and while the team was gone from their rooms a laptop and team shirts were stolen.

Oh, but it gets worse:

Other athletes have had security concerns too. Shortly after arriving to Rio, Chinese hurdler Shi Dongpeng checked into his hotel with a cameraman in tow when a drunk local approached him and vomited all over Shi. The cameraman chased the drunk man away while Shi went to clean up, and when they returned, all of their camera equipment and luggage had been stolen. 

According to Inside the Games, when the two men went to the police station to report the crime, they had to wait for over two hours in line because there were so many other mugging victims there. An Argentinian official actually believed his team’s rooms had been sabotaged they were so subpar. 

With only four days until the Opening Ceremonies, Rio and the International Olympic Games are frantically working to beef up security and upgrade accommodations for athletes and members of the media. On Saturday, the Ministry of Justice fired a private security firm that had been in charge of venue security because of “incompetence and irresponsibility.” As of last Monday, only 12 of the 31 buildings in the Olympic Athlete’s Village had passed safety inspection.

Let's not forget Sochi ended up a ghost town, with a light rail system that nobody uses, a classic example of Putin-era cronyism and mismanagement.  Brazil isn't doing much better with suspended President Dilma Rousseff facing calls for her formal removal before the Games begin.

Luckily the 2018 winter games in Pyeongchang, South Korea and the 2020 Tokyo summer games seem to be on track for a much better performance, for now.

That's little help for Rio, however.

Brazil Nuts

OK, things just got seriously complicated in the ongoing impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff, as the new acting Speaker of Brazil's House has suddenly trashed last month's impeachment vote as invalid.

The acting speaker of the lower house of Brazil's Congress annulled the impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff on Monday and called for a new vote in the chamber. 

Waldir Maranhao, who took over as acting speaker last week, said there were procedural flaws in the April 17 vote in the chamber that accepted impeachment charges against Rousseff. 

After last month's lower house vote, the impeachment process was passed to the Senate, where a Senate committee recommended on Friday that the leftist president be put on trial by the full chamber for breaking budget laws. 

In a news release, Maranhao said the impeachment process should be returned by the Senate so that the lower house can vote again. 

It remained unclear whether his decision could be overruled by the Supreme Court, the Senate or a majority in the house. 

Brazilian markets fell sharply after the surprising decision was announced. 

Rousseff, who denies wrongdoing, has been fighting for her political survival for several months as opposition congressmen push aggressively for her ouster.

The full Senate had been expected to vote to put Rousseff on trial on Wednesday, which would immediately suspend her for the duration of a trial that could last six months. During that period, Vice President Michel Temer would replace her as acting president.

Umm...so...this is kinda looking like a "major constitutional crisis" brewing here, or am I overreacting here to what would be another vote that would still end up with impeachment and a Senate trial?

But that was yesterday.  Today is a different story.

The drive to oust President Dilma Rousseff is back on track after the head of the lower house reversed a decision that had earlier threatened to throw the entire impeachment process into chaos. 

Lawmaker Waldir Maranhao released a statement in the dead of night revoking his own call to annul impeachment sessions in the lower house. That puts the Senate back in the spotlight, with a vote on whether to put the unpopular president on trial still slated for Wednesday. If successful, it would temporarily remove her from office. Rousseff is charged with illegally using state banks to plug a hole in the budget. 

Yesterday’s wrangling jolted investors and underscored the intensity of a power struggle that is sure to heat up even further in coming days. Since proceedings began in Congress late last year, legislators have engaged in shoving matches over procedural debates and Rousseff has accused her vice president of plotting a coup against her. The Supreme Court has also been forced to step in on several occasions to clarify legal questions and further involvement by the highest court can’t be ruled out.

TV footage showed anti-impeachment protesters burning tires to stop the traffic in some of Sao Paulo’s main roads, including that leading to the international airport. Government supporters have scheduled more protests for the next few days. 

"Even the best laws aren’t good enough for the scale of this battle," said Carlos Pio, a professor of politics at the University of Brasilia. "The impeachment process will continue and with it the noise, challenges and uncertainty that we’ve been seeing."

I don't know enough about Brazilian politics to know the answer to what's going on here, but I want to.  Things are getting crazy in Brazil and the Rio Summer Games are just weeks away.  Hell, the country may not have a government by then.

We'll see.

Last Call For Dilma's Brazil

There were massive protests across Brazil's major cities on Sunday calling for the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff. Things just got real in Rio.

Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians gathered on Sunday to protest political corruption, a weak economy, and to call for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff on a day that could build momentum for efforts to oust her.

Demonstrators wearing shirts with the green and yellow colors of Brazil’s flag and carrying banners calling for Rousseff’s ouster filled the streets of cities across the country. They marched beside Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach, toward Congress in the capital Brasilia, and down Sao Paulo’s Avenida Paulista. The atmosphere in most cities was festive, though, and free of the violence that some feared if there were confrontations between opposing political groups.

Initial estimates indicated turnout was higher than in similar demonstrations in December, when about 100,000 took to the streets nationwide. On Sunday, about 100,000 people marched in Brasilia alone, according to the Military Police, with several thousand participating in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

Ronaldo Cappellesso, a 45-year-old store owner in Brasilia, said it feels like the country has reached a tipping point, with many of his friends protesting for the first time. “Finally I feel that impeachment is actually going to happen,” he said. “Anything is better than what we have now.”

Many Brazilians say they have had enough after enduring the worst recession in decades and a rolling corruption scandal known as Lava Jato, or Carwash in English, that has ensnared multiple politicians and business executives. The outpouring of public sentiment may be decisive for legislators debating whether to remain loyal to the president or join a swelling opposition seeking her ouster, as former allies begin to discuss political solutions for a post-Rousseff Brazil.

The political spectacle is playing out less than five months before the 2016 Olympic Games, the first awarded to a South American country, are due to start in Rio de Janeiro.

I honestly don't know if the Games will go on and I don't think they should, but that's another matter. Rouseff's government is thoroughly corrupt, Brazil's economy is in freefall and the cries for her ouster will only get louder.  Several administration officials are turning states' evidence and it looks like Rouseff will be gone sooner rather than later.

We'll see where this goes.

The Canarinho In The Coal Mine

Brazil's economy is falling apart at this point, President Dilma Rouseff is barely holding on, unemployment is rising quickly along with inflation and the country is now facing its worst recession in a century.

Brazil's economy shrank by 3.8 percent in 2015, the government said Thursday, with the biggest contraction in 25 years set to push the Latin American giant into its worst recession for more than a century.

The latest gloomy news from Brazil was no surprise, but the severity underlined the depth of problems facing President Dilma Rousseff's government as it battles both declining economic output and 10.67 percent inflation.

The state statistics office said 2015 registered the worst single annual fall in GDP since 1990, a year when the economy dipped 4.3 percent.

With the International Monetary Fund predicting a further 3.5 percent shrinkage this year, Brazil appears to be well into a recession that would be worse than any on government record going back to 1901.

The GDP results shove Brazil into the bottom bracket for performance in Latin America, where it is easily the biggest economy. Only Venezuela, with what the IMF estimates was a 10 percent plummet in GDP, is worse off.

Leading Brazil's slide was the industrial sector, which was down 6.2 percent in 2015. In the last quarter of 2015 the all-important mining sector was down 6.6 percent, reflecting the worldwide slump in commodity prices and demand for Brazil's iron ore and other raw materials.

When times were good, Brazil's natural resource bounty was a good source of income for the country as China grabbed everything it could in order to build, build, build. Now that China's economic engine has blown a gasket and is sputtering, Brazil's financial picture has turned very dark.

The slump has made Brazil increasingly toxic on the investor landscape. Last week, Moody's became the third big credit rating agency to downgrade Brazil to junk status, warning of slow recovery and political uncertainty.

A Markit Brazil Services survey of the private sector released Thursday found a record contraction in economic activity in February, as "companies continued to link the adverse operating environment to the ongoing economic, financial and political crises."

"The Brazilian economic downturn took a real turn for the worse in February, as the financial and political difficulties in the country drove down output and led to reduced order intakes," said Rob Dobson, author of the report.

"The domestic market is especially weak" and "the labor market also appears to be in dire straits."

Brazilian economists warn that 2016 could turn out to be worse than the IMF's prediction, with the economy shrinking even more than in 2015.

"Brazil has never had such a high level of uncertainty and this is freezing everything up. There is no consumption or investment or credit with this historic level of uncertainty," Daniel Cunha, an analyst at XP Investimentos in Sao Paulo, said.

Brazil used to be the leader of the BRIC nations, emerging markets in Brazil, Russia, India and China were powering the global economy.  Now?  The BRIC is broke, and Brazil has definitely fallen the hardest.  And most of that can be pinned on Rouseff and Brazil's ruling party, and her predecessor, former President Lula who has just been detained in the state's ongoing national oil company bribery scandal.

Brazil's in real trouble, folks.  It's not going to get better anytime soon.