Brazil - Another Coup ??

[rowan]

So for the first time in Brazil a president faces impeachment. Dilma Rousseff will have to stand down for 180 days while the process is crried out and her Workers Party will be replaced by a temporary centre-right government. One right wing deputy dedicated his vote to Colonel Carlos Brilhante Ulstra, who lead the military coup in 1964, with US-backing as part of the infamous Operation Condor, paving the way for 21 years of repressive dictatorship. Rousseff, an activist at the time, was among the many tortured by the new regime. Four years ago she became the nation's first female president with 92% public support. But the economy is in a mess, and corruption is rife (as usual). Politicians from all parties have been implicated, including many of Rousseff's opponents, along with wealthy business people, and even a few billionaires have been convicted (something you'd never see in the US). Now Rousseff has been accused of using Petrobas funds for her own party and appointing former president 'Lula' da Silva Chief of Staff simply to protect him from similar charges. When Lula stepped down in 2011 he was the world's most popular leader. But there have been huge protests against Rousseff's leadership, and there have also been demonstrations supporting her, claiming the impeachment amounts to another coup. It's a complicated issue, for sure, but it smells like a set-up to me.

[Lizard]

Inb4 UG blaming neocons or some shit...

[morepork]

The Olympics should be a right old hoot.

[UGagain]

It's the establishment right doing by quasi legal means what it has failed to do at the ballot box.

It's a coup.

[Zhivago]

It's the establishment right doing by quasi legal means what it has failed to do at the ballot box.

It's a coup.

I must have missed something, but doesn't the impeachment require a majority in both houses? How is that anti-democratic (as calling it a coup implies)?

[rowan]

With Macri in power next door and Argentina looking to borrow money on the international credit markets again it almost seems like another Operation Condor might be underway behind the scenes . . .

[Eugene Wrayburn]

It's the establishment right doing by quasi legal means what it has failed to do at the ballot box.

It's a coup.

I must have missed something, but doesn't the impeachment require a majority in both houses? How is that anti-democratic (as calling it a coup implies)?

Apparently impeachment according to the terms of the constitutionn is a coup and anti-democratic.

Only left wing presidential mandates matter to some.

[UGagain]

The credibility, the agenda and the foreign influence over the accusers is in question.

[UGagain]

With Macri in power next door and Argentina looking to borrow money on the international credit markets again it almost seems like another Operation Condor might be underway behind the scenes . . .

Indeed.

[UGagain]

Fiscal responsibility — not corruption — is currently the main legal argument used by the coalition of forces working to force Dilma Rousseff out of the presidency and the Workers’ Party out of government. The request to begin the impeachment process was accepted based on a petition accusing her of fiscal mismanagement.

This concerns a procedure referred to as “pedalas fiscais” — a procedure introduced in 2000 to regulate government expenditures in all levels of government.

Under the law, government administrations must predict the risk that they’ll go over budget, and have their accounts approved every fiscal year by an auditing authority. The policy was meant to promote transparency and to help to end impunity of bad managing practices in public administration.

But here’s the rub. To meet the new regulations, the Brazilian government (at all levels) borrows its own money (from a public bank or fund) to cover deficitary budget items for that year. Then, when the government money for the next fiscal year is cashed in, the government pays itself back and returns the borrowed money. This can also happen over a larger time span, as is the case now, when the deficit spans two or three years.

It’s a mundane accounting trick but it’s not a minor issue. The law is meant to provide economic stability and to help control inflation. When we consider that Brazil’s current development model is largely based on public expenditure (infrastructure, procurements, etc) and indebtedness, this predicted risk can become an important “instability” index for the economy as a whole.

This practice, and Dilma’s responsibility for what has been done at federal level, is the legal basis for the impeachment request. Whether Dilma’s administration has been “irresponsible” is what is going to be decided at the last stage of the process, in the Supreme Court. The judges will ultimately decide if her administration’s actions constitute a crime and whether she will lose her mandate.

But even if there is not a juridical fact that justifies it, there is a political fact that is pushing the entire process forward.

Parallel to the impeachment is the huge, and unprecedented, Lava Jato anti-corruption investigation, which is exposing the structural connections between economic and political power in the country. The consequences of the investigation are yet unknown.

But many on the Left share the hypothesis that the alliance — now clustered around Vice President Michel Temer — driving Dilma’s impeachment have a vested interest in the direction Lava Jato takes.

Impeaching Dilma can provide a sense of “justice served,” “page turned,” etc, while giving those who come to power in her place influence over the investigations. They can then can water them down and prevent much greater damage to the big tycoons and business interests involved. The media is a key player in selling this narrative: “PT out equals problem solved” — as if it were that simple.

In this context, the impeachment is a type of political subterfuge. It’s a silver bullet for what’s actually a much deeper political crisis. The case is embedded in an increasingly polarized social context shaped by massive media (and social media) campaigns against the PT, and against a background of economic slowdown, inflation, rising unemployment, devaluation of the Real, etc.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/04/dilm ... bras-moro/

[rowan]

Revenge of the Middle Class as well, I'd venture to suggest. All those anti-Dilma protestors I'm seeing on the TV news don't exactly look like they wandered out of the favelas...

[UGagain]

Revenge of the Middle Class as well, I'd venture to suggest. All those anti-Dilma protestors I'm seeing on the TV news don't exactly look like they wandered out of the favelas...

The compradore class's useful idiots.

[UKHamlet]

It's the establishment right doing by quasi legal means what it has failed to do at the ballot box.

It's a coup.

This ^^^

[rowan]

Meanwhile Brazilian opposition leader Aloysio Nunes is in Washington for closed-door meetings with American officials. He also attended a luncheon hosted by the Washington lobbying firm Albright Stonebridge Group, headed by former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Kellogg Company CEO Carlos Gutierrez. The plot thickens

[Zhivago]

It's the establishment right doing by quasi legal means what it has failed to do at the ballot box.

It's a coup.

This ^^^

Oh no, not you too??

[UGagain]

The decision delivered a major blow to a long-embattled leader who repeatedly argued that the push against her was a ‘coup’.

While Rousseff herself has not been personally charged with corruption, many of the lawmakers who decided her fate on Sunday have been.

Congresso em Foco, a prominent watchdog group in Brasilia, said more than 300 of the legislators who voted – well over half the chamber – are under investigation for corruption, fraud or electoral crimes.

As they cast their vote, some lawmakers said the next politician to be impeached should be the man leading the proceedings, Speaker Eduardo Cunha. He is charged with corruption and money laundering in the kickback scandal involving Petrobras, and he also faces an ethics inquiry over undeclared Swiss bank accounts.

‘God have pity on this nation,’ Cunha said as he cast his vote in favor of impeaching Rousseff.

One wonders if some people have even a rudimentary understanding of what the word democracy actually means.

[Lizard]

Brazil's political and constitutional arrangements seem to be fundamentally fucked from pretty much every angle. I'm not sure what could really be done about it.

Hosting the Olympic Games will probably fix everything.

[cashead]

I wouldn't put it past Rousseff to be corrupt. Maybe she is, maybe she isn't. The majority of her peers certainly are, and there is definitely a stench of cynicism about it, when IIRC, a fair few of those calling for impeachments have been fingered in the Operation Car Wash investigations.

Like, they're trying to get Michel Telmer in as President, who's been fingered in testimonies in ongoing corruption investigations as being corrupt as all fuck. Next in line is the House speaker, who got caught funnelling tax payer money into overseas bank accounts in Switzerland (like a proper cartoon villain).

A coup? Maybe, maybe not, but it's pretty fucking obvious what these pieces of shit are up to when they're trying to take control of the government during a civil investigation into massive political corruption. The Brazilian political process is apparently in dire need of an enema, and one would be spoilt for choice when it comes to placing the tube.


Also, give Greenwald's piece on it a read.
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/to- ... ce-chiefs/

[rowan]

Looks like Rousseff's impeachment has been anulled. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36248925

[UGagain]

They've done it anyway.

Dilma out: Brazilian plutocracy sets 54mn votes on fire
May 14, 2016
by Pepe Escobar

http://thesaker.is/dilma-out-brazilian- ... s-on-fire/

[UGagain]

n relation to recent developments in Latin America and the Middle East , it is worth recalling the history of US sponsored military coups and “soft coups” aka regime changes.

* * *

Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War. (* indicates successful ouster of a government)

China 1949 to early 1960s
Albania 1949-53
East Germany 1950s
Iran 1953 *
Guatemala 1954 *
Costa Rica mid-1950s
Syria 1956-7
Egypt 1957
Indonesia 1957-8
British Guiana 1953-64 *
Iraq 1963 *
North Vietnam 1945-73
Cambodia 1955-70 *
Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
Ecuador 1960-63 *
Congo 1960 *
France 1965
Brazil 1962-64 *
Dominican Republic 1963 *
Cuba 1959 to present
Bolivia 1964 *
Indonesia 1965 *
Ghana 1966 *
Chile 1964-73 *
Greece 1967 *
Costa Rica 1970-71
Bolivia 1971 *
Australia 1973-75 *
Angola 1975, 1980s
Zaire 1975
Portugal 1974-76 *
Jamaica 1976-80 *
Seychelles 1979-81
Chad 1981-82 *
Grenada 1983 *
South Yemen 1982-84
Suriname 1982-84
Fiji 1987 *
Libya 1980s
Nicaragua 1981-90 *
Panama 1989 *
Bulgaria 1990 *
Albania 1991 *
Iraq 1991
Afghanistan 1980s *
Somalia 1993
Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
Ecuador 2000 *
Afghanistan 2001 *
Venezuela 2002 *
Iraq 2003 *
Haiti 2004 *
Somalia 2007 to present
Libya 2011*
Syria 2012
Q: Why will there never be a coup d’état in Washington?

A: Because there’s no American embassy there.

Bill Blum

[rowan]

They've done it anyway.

Dilma out: Brazilian plutocracy sets 54mn votes on fire
May 14, 2016
by Pepe Escobar

http://thesaker.is/dilma-out-brazilian- ... s-on-fire/

Good article

[UGagain]

[Zhivago]

n relation to recent developments in Latin America and the Middle East , it is worth recalling the history of US sponsored military coups and “soft coups” aka regime changes.

* * *

Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War. (* indicates successful ouster of a government)

China 1949 to early 1960s
Albania 1949-53
East Germany 1950s
Iran 1953 *
Guatemala 1954 *
Costa Rica mid-1950s
Syria 1956-7
Egypt 1957
Indonesia 1957-8
British Guiana 1953-64 *
Iraq 1963 *
North Vietnam 1945-73
Cambodia 1955-70 *
Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
Ecuador 1960-63 *
Congo 1960 *
France 1965
Brazil 1962-64 *
Dominican Republic 1963 *
Cuba 1959 to present
Bolivia 1964 *
Indonesia 1965 *
Ghana 1966 *
Chile 1964-73 *
Greece 1967 *
Costa Rica 1970-71
Bolivia 1971 *
Australia 1973-75 *
Angola 1975, 1980s
Zaire 1975
Portugal 1974-76 *
Jamaica 1976-80 *
Seychelles 1979-81
Chad 1981-82 *
Grenada 1983 *
South Yemen 1982-84
Suriname 1982-84
Fiji 1987 *
Libya 1980s
Nicaragua 1981-90 *
Panama 1989 *
Bulgaria 1990 *
Albania 1991 *
Iraq 1991
Afghanistan 1980s *
Somalia 1993
Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
Ecuador 2000 *
Afghanistan 2001 *
Venezuela 2002 *
Iraq 2003 *
Haiti 2004 *
Somalia 2007 to present
Libya 2011*
Syria 2012
Q: Why will there never be a coup d’état in Washington?

A: Because there’s no American embassy there.

Bill Blum

hahahaha

[UGagain]

Ukraine 2014.

'The most blatant coup in history'.