David F. Ruccio — Class after the coup

That [rolling back the reforms of the past thirteen years under the WP], in the end, is what the coup was about: not eliminating corruption (which is how it’s been covered here in the United States) but changing the class content of the policies of the Brazilian government.

Ownership class "soft coup" against the 54 million people that elected Dilma Rouseff. See Here’s why some people think Brazil is in the middle of a ‘soft coup’ by Héctor Perla, Jr. Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz, at The Washington Post – Monkey Cage. Right-wing "soft coups" have a history in Latin America. It's a political tool that most Americans are not familiar with and easily duped by US media propaganda to the contrary.

Occasional Links & Commentary
Class after the coup
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Matias Vernengo — Brazilian coup and US misinformation

Not just about munnie, but rather relative wealth and social hierarchy.

See, for instance:

Nayara Justino thought her dreams had come true when she was selected as the Globeleza carnival queen in 2013 after a public vote on one of Brazil’s biggest TV shows. But some regarded her complexion to be too dark to be an acceptable queen. Nayara and her family wonder what this says about racial roles in modern Brazil.

The Guradian, Barney Lankester-Owen, Bruce Douglas, Charlie Phillips and Juliet Riddell

teleSur, Brazilian Carnival Queen Fired for Being 'Too Black'

Dilma was removed for being "too left," and the little people were getting "too uppity." Time to turn the clock back.

Naked Keynesianism
Brazilian coup and US misinformation
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University

Glenn Greenwald — Brazil’s Democracy to Suffer Grievous Blow Today as Unelectable, Corrupt Neoliberal is Installed

Sad story. Latin America seems to be a sewer, and the few bright spots are under neoliberal attack.

The Intercept
Brazil’s Democracy to Suffer Grievous Blow Today as Unelectable, Corrupt Neoliberal is Installed

Glenn Greenwald

James Petras — The Left: Business Accommodation and Social Debacle [Brazil]

Prologue: In 2004 I wrote Brazil and Lula: Year Zero (Edifurb: Blumenau, Sao Paolo 2005), in which I presented my analysis of the Lula-Workers Party (PT) regime in Brazil undergoing a Grand Transformation with the first stage represented by the PT’s incorporation into a government apparatus led by of bankers and exporters (the agro-mineral elite).

Two year earlier, my colleague, Henry Veltmeyer, and I had published Cardoso’s Brazil: A Land for Sale (Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham MD 2003) where we described how President Cardoso had sold off the major public resources, banks, petroleum and iron resources to foreign capital for rock bottom prices. The 2002 election of President Lula DaSilva of the Workers’ Party did not reverse Cardoso’s sell-out. Indeed, Lula accepted his predecessor’s neo-liberal policies - embellished them - and set about forging an alliance between the Workers’ Party and the economic elites, replacing Cardoso’s Party! For the next few years, we were attacked by the Left academic and pundit world for having dared to advance such a critique on their ‘worker president’! The consequences of what we had described as the PT’s pact with the Right are clear to everyone today: Brazil is enmeshed in swindles, scandals and coups.…

Excellent analysis of why and how the Left failed after taking power based on huge public support.

Conclusion:

The Left believed in the myth of democratic capitalism. They had faith that their negotiations with the business elites would increase social welfare. They operated on a platform of gradual accommodation of class interests leading to multi-class alliances and strategic conciliation between business and labor.

The historical lesson has proven otherwise - again. Business and the capitalist elite make clear, tactical short-term agreements in order to prepare a strategic counter-offensive. Their patient long-term strategy was to mobilize their class allies and overturn the electoral process - at the ripe moment.…

Victorious capital and empire neatly ended this charade of ‘market democracy’. The retreating Left parties begged for a reprieve via parliamentary vote and ended with a decisive defeat… bleating their last whimper as the door slammed shut…

Capitalists have never and will never recognize weak popular opposition. The capitalist political elite will always choose power and wealth over social democracy. The Left, in retreat, isolated and expelled from the corridors of power, now face retribution from the most corrupt and treacherous of their ‘former allies’.

They usher in a lost generation.

Never trust a snake not to bite you.

James Petras Website
The Left: Business Accommodation and Social Debacle
James Petras | Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

David Miranda — The real reason Dilma Rousseff’s enemies want her impeached

Regime change.

The country’s elite class and their media organs have failed, over and over, in their efforts to defeat the party at the ballot box. But plutocrats are not known for gently accepting defeat, nor for playing by the rules. What they have been unable to achieve democratically, they are now attempting to achieve anti-democratically: by having a bizarre mix of politicians – evangelical extremists, far-right supporters of a return to military rule, non-ideological backroom operatives – simply remove her from office.

What so-called liberals can't manage at the ballot box they seek to do with other means. The right wing in the US did the same with Bill Clinton almost from the get go and finally managed to impeach him but not remove him. Similarly, as soon as Barack Obama was elected, the leadership of the opposition announced that they would "break him."

The Guardian
The real reason Dilma Rousseff’s enemies want her impeached
David Miranda

Matias Vernengo — Some thoughts on the impeachment and the right wing turn in Brazil

Details. Here are some of the highlights.

On the strength of the social record of her policies, Dilma won a narrow reelection in 2014, with the promise to expand social spending, to promote economic growth and to stand against banks' greediness, reducing interest rates. After the reelection, however, the government did a 180-degree turn, appointed a Finance Minister, Joaquim Levy, who came from one of the largest banks in the country, and adopted austerity policies, fiscal adjustment and higher interest rates to control inflation. Growth, not surprisingly, collapsed with a decline of GDP of about 3.8% in 2015.…

Interestingly enough, while Aécio Neves, the PSDB candidate that lost the last election in 2014, has been named in the corruption scandal, president Rousseff seems to be completely untainted by accusations of corruption. More importantly, the central issues related to corruption are the structural ones. That is the elements that make corruption a necessary feature to manage the country, like the need to buy votes in congress to pass legislation, something that has made the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB in Portuguese) an essential element for governability. In fact, PMDB is at the center of all corruption scandals and the beneficiaries of the impeachment, including the Vice-President [who stands to become president], are members of that party.…

Clearly, the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff is not about corruption, and the actual process hinges on the delay in the payments to public banks (the so-called 'pedaladas'), which in the view of some imply the government is borrowing from public banks, which is against the Law of Fiscal Responsibility, but not on the corruption scandal per se. Note that this fiscal accounting devices were a common practice, even in previous governments, were never questioned, and can hardly be considered a crime that requires the impeachment of the president. Further, although her government is highly unpopular, since even left of center groups have been protesting, and more so since she embraced the austerity policies after reelection, it is not true that the impeachment was popular. Public manifestations against the impeachment have been as large, if not larger, than pro-impeachment protests, and the country remains essentially evenly divided, as it was during the 2014 election. In that sense, the impeachment is certainly not about the preservation of democratic institutions.

Socioeconomically speaking the poorer and the afro-descendants tend to be against impeachment, and that was reflected in the votes in Congress, to a great extent because these groups were the main beneficiaries of PT’s social policies, and real wage increases. On the other hand, the middle class and the business groups, as represented by Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (FIESP in Portuguese), have been decidedly in favor. There is a clear class, and that in Brazil means race too, component to the impeachment process. So there are good reasons to believe that the impeachment represents a modern type of coup, based on the utilization of media for the mobilization of public opinion, and for bringing down a government, that, even if moderately, has reduced inequality in one of the most unequal countries in the world. The impeachment is about social class and inequality, and the possibility of a left of center project.

Naked Keynesianism
Some thoughts on the impeachment and the right wing turn in Brazil
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University

Pepe Escobar — Hybrid War Hyenas Tear Brazil Apart

BRICS on the way to becoming RICS? Neoliberals win this round.

Russia Insider
Hybrid War Hyenas Tear Brazil Apart
Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar — Brazil’s Revolution Starting to Reveal its True Colors

As we approach High Noon in the savage Brazilian politico-economic western, here’s what is at stake following my previous piece on RT.

Call it white coup. Call it regime change. Call it the Brazilian color revolution. Without NATO. Without “humanitarian”imperialism. Without blood and zillions of US dollars lost, like in Iraq, Libya or Syria. So “clean”. So “lawful”. How come Empire of Chaos’s theoreticians never thought about this before?

“Humanitarian” imperialism is so old Hillary; at least the Masters of the Universe will have a new template to apply all over the developing world. Happy – regime change – days are here again.

And forget about reading any of this on Western corporate media.

Counterpunch

Brazil’s Revolution Starting to Reveal its True Colors

Pepe Escobar

Alfredo Saad Filho — Despair Brazil: This is a class war

Why is this a coup?

Because, despite aggressive scrutiny no Presidential crime warranting impeachment proceedings has emerged. Nevertheless, the political right has thrown the kitchen sink at Dilma Rousseff. They rejected the outcome of the 2014 elections and appealed against her alleged campaign finance violations, which would remove from power both Dilma and Vice-President Michel Temer, now the effective leader of the impeachment drive (and strangely enough, this case has been parked). The right simultaneously started impeachment procedures in Congress. The media has attacked the Government viciously, neoliberal economists ‘impartially’ beg for a new administration ‘to restore market confidence’, and the right will resort to street violence as necessary. Finally, the judicial charade against the PT has broken all the rules of legality, yet it is cheered on by the media, the right and even by the Supreme Court Justices.…

… large sections of capital want to restore the hegemony of neoliberalism; those who once supported the PT’s national development strategy have fallen into line; the media is howling so loudly it has become impossible to think clearly, and most of the upper-middle class has descended into a fascist odium for the PT, the left, the poor, and blacks. Their disorderly hatred has become so intense that even PSDB politicians are booed in anti-Government demonstrations. And, despite the relentless attack, the left remains reasonably strong, as was demonstrated on 18th March. The right and the elite are powerful and ruthless – but they are also afraid of the consequences of their own daring.

There is no simple resolution to the political, economic and social crises in Brazil.

Dilma Rousseff has lost political support and the confidence of capital, and she is likely to be removed from office in the coming days. However, attempts to imprison Lula could have unpredictable implications and, even if Dilma and Lula are struck off the political map, a renewed neoliberal hegemony cannot automatically restore political stability or economic growth, nor secure the social prominence that the upper-middle class craves. Despite strong media support for the impending coup, the PT, other left parties and many radical social movements remain strong. Further escalation is inevitable.

The BRICS Post
Despair Brazil: This is a class war 

Alfredo Saad Filho | Professor of Political Economy at the Department of Development Studies, SOAS University of London

See also

Buenos Aires Herald
Obama: 'Macri moved rapidly to reconnect Argentina with the global economy'

Pepe Escobar — ‘Prime Minister’ Lula: The Brazilian Game-Changer

Pepe Escobar analyzes the return of Luiz Ignácio Lula DaSilv, and what it implies for Brazil.

Russia Insider
‘Prime Minister’ Lula: The Brazilian Game-Changer

Pepe Escobar