Released Lula in for greatest fight of his life — Pepe Escobar

Lula detailed the current “terrible conditions” for Brazilian workers. He ripped to pieces the economic program – basically a monster sell-out – of Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Chicago boy and Pinochetist who’s applying the same failed hardcore neoliberal prescriptions now being denounced and scorned every day in the streets of Chile.

He detailed how the Brazilian right wing openly bet on neo-fascism, which is the form that neoliberalism recently took in Brazil. He blasted mainstream media, in the form of the so far all-powerful, ultra-reactionary Globo empire. In a stance of semiotic genius, Lula pointed to Globo’s helicopter hovering over the masses gathered for the speech, implying the organization is too cowardly to get close to him on ground level.

And, significantly, he got right into the heart of the Bolsonaro question: the militias. It’s no secret to informed Brazilians that the Bolsonaro clan, with its origins in the Veneto, is behaving as a sort of cheap, crude, eschatological carbon copy of the Sopranos, running a system heavy on militias and supported by the Brazilian military. Lula described the president of one of the top nations in the Global South as no less than a militia leader. That will stick – all around the world.

So much for “Lula peace and love,” which used to be one of his cherished mottos. No more conciliation. Bolsonaro now has to face real, fierce, solid opposition, and cannot run away from public debate any more....

The question is how [Lula] will be able to muster the organizational work, the method – and have enough time to change the dire conditions for democratic opposition in Brazil. The whole Global South is watching....

At least now the die is cast – and crystal clear: It’s social democracy against neo-fascism....

Asia Times
Released Lula in for greatest fight of his life

Pepe Escobar

Lula tells world he’s back in the game from jail — Pepe Escobar

Lula's recent interview with Pepe Escobar and others.

Asia Times
Lula tells world he’s back in the game from jail

Pepe Escobar

Noam Chomsky — I Just Visited Lula, the World’s Most Prominent Political Prisoner. A “Soft Coup” in Brazil’s Election Will Have Global Consequences.

Long and detailed.

The Intercept
I Just Visited Lula, the World’s Most Prominent Political Prisoner. A “Soft Coup” in Brazil’s Election Will Have Global Consequences.

Noam Chomsky

Leandro Demori — Lula Goes to Prison, Deepening Brazil’s Political Crisis — as Military Waits in the Wings

Meanwhile in Brazil meet Jair Bolsonaro.

The Intercept
Lula Goes to Prison, Deepening Brazil’s Political Crisis — as Military Waits in the Wings

Leandro Demori

Under Threat of Military Coup, Brazil's Supreme Court Sends Lula to Prison — Sharmini Peries interviews Brian Mier

Brazilian-style"justice" comparable to Brazilian-stlye jiu-jitsu?

According to Brazilian law if you have a conviction underway, that appeal process underway, you can't run for office. But if you're already in jail you can run for office. So Lula has announced that he is going to declare his candidacy anyway. And it's not unprecedented for political prisoners to win elections....

TRNN
Under Threat of Military Coup, Brazil's Supreme Court Sends Lula to Prison

Sharmini Peries interviews Brian Mier, an editor for the Web site of Brasil Wire and editor of the book "Voices of the Brazilian Left."

Matias Vernengo — Goodbye Lula?

Backgrounder on Brazil.

This is also a challenge for BRICS in addition to Brazil, since all of these countries have a significant and endemic corruption problem.

Naked Keynesianism
Goodbye Lula?
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University

Brazil's Corruption Scandals: No Winners, No End in Sight — Gregory Wilpert interviews Alex Hochuli

Brazil has become an international laughingstock and poster child of a banana republic, but this is no laughing matter for millions of people. Sadly, Brazil is becoming a failed state.

TRNN
Brazil's Corruption Scandals: No Winners, No End in Sight

Gregory Wilpert interviews Alex Hochuli

Matias Vernengo — On Venezuela, Democracy, Violence and Neoliberalism

The question then is how much of the push to limits to the power of the legislative assembly dominated by the opposition, and how much of the political repression (including the treatment of opposition leaders, but also the police violence) results from the very violent and anti-democratic push from the opposition itself, that has tried to bring down the government since the very beginning (including a failed coup attempt in 2002). And this is also a valid concern that many (almost all the mainstream media) on the left seem to forget. I can’t honestly respond. But I can provide a perspective, based on my understanding of the Argentine and Brazilian cases that are closer to my experience.

Naked Keynesianism
On Venezuela, Democracy, Violence and Neoliberalism

Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University

See also

Prof. George Ciccariello-Maher of Drexel University analyzes the latest developments in Venezuela, including a new UN human rights report, US sanctions, and the begrudging admission by President Maduro's foes that he still has popular support

TRNN
UN Human Rights Report on Venezuela Ignores Opposition Violence

Reuters — Ex-Brazil President Lula sentenced to nearly 10 years for corruption

From the swamps of Brazil.

Reuters
Ex-Brazil President Lula sentenced to nearly 10 years for corruption
Brad Brooks

James Petras — Brazil: The Billion Dollar Coup

Introduction: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was removed from office through a well-organized, carefully planned operation among the corrupt Brazilian political elite, closely linked to the stock-market, financial institutions and foreign energy companies.

This ‘legislative coup d’état ‘eliminated the democratically-elected ‘political intermediaries’ and installed a regime directly controlled by the CEO’s of leading multi-nationals. The corporate composition of the post-coup regime insured there would be a radical restructuring of the Brazilian economy, with a massive shift from wage support, social spending and public ownership toward profits, a foreign capital take-over of strategic sectors and foreign-domestic elite dominance over the entire economy. 

This paper will describe the socio-economic dynamics of the coup and its aftermath, as well as the strategy and program that Brazil’s new rulers will pursue. In the second half of the paper, we will discuss the Workers Party regimes’ policies (under Lulu and Rousseff) that prepared the political and economic ground-work for the right-wing seizure of power…

Probably more like a trillion than a billion. This is a grab of Brazil's resources that belong to the people of Brazil by a comprador government to turn over to transnational corporations (read "to the US elite").

The ‘coup’ was no ’secretive conspiracy’ - it was an overt, direct capitalist seizure of power. Once installed, it proceeded to dismantle the public sector economy and transfer the jewels of Brazil’s economy to foreign multi-nationals.

James Petras Website
Brazil: The Billion Dollar Coup
James Petras | Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

See also

Counterpunch
What is a Coup? Analysing the Brazilian Impeachment Process
Aline Piva and Frederick B. Mills

Brazil's New President Presents Neoliberal Economic Plan — Gregory Wilpert interviews Alfredo Saad-Filho

Inaptly titled. It's about the political crisis in Brazil.

TRNN
Brazil's New President Presents Neoliberal Economic Plan

Gregory Wilpert interviews Alfredo Saad-Filho. Professor of Political Economy at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London

Siobhan Saxena — A Coup is in the Air: The Plot to Unsettle Rousseff, Lula and Brazil

Neoliberal parties, the corporate media, a conservative judiciary, oil lobbyists, the white elite and right-wing groups, with generous help from outside, have ganged up to derail the country’s government. And it’s all being made to look like a popular uprising against a corrupt regime.

The Wire
A Coup is in the Air: The Plot to Unsettle Rousseff, Lula and Brazil
Siobhan Saxena

ht Don Quijones at Raging Bull-Shit

Pepe Escobar — Why the Coup in Brazil Should Fail

As a metaphor of the advanced state of putrefaction plaguing the entire political system of one of the Global South’s leading nations, nothing comes close to what is about to take place in Brazil.

The notoriously corrupt leader of the lower House in the Brazilian Parliament, Eduardo Cunha — holder of 11 illegal Swiss accounts, listed in the Panama Papers, and indicted at the Supreme Court — has scheduled a crucial plenary vote on the possibility of impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff for this coming Sunday. Sunday traditionally is the day when an overwhelming majority of Brazilians relax watching football on TV.

The crook in question also tried to defined the rules of the game; the roll call would start with the wealthier southern states, which are more favorable towards impeachment — a euphemism for coup/regime change, the culmination of the soft Hybrid War strategy deployed from the beginning by the usual suspects allied with the Brazilian oligarchy/comprador* elites.…

* comprador = native manger of a foreign firm

Latin America isn't quite the snake pit that MENA is, but it's darn close.

Sputnik

Why the Coup in Brazil Should Fail

Pepe Escobar

See also

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is now threatened with impeachment, but there is no evidence that she is linked to the “Lava Jato“ scandal, or any other corruption. Rather, she is accused of an accounting manipulation that somewhat misrepresented the fiscal position of the government — something that prior presidents have done. To borrow an analogy from the United States, when the Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling in the U.S. in 2013, the Obama administration used a number of accounting tricks to postpone the deadline at which the limit was reached. Nobody cared.

The impeachment campaign — which the government has correctly labelled a coup — is an effort by Brazil’s traditional elite to obtain by other means what they have not been able to win at the ballot box for the past 12 years.…

Economic analysis.

Counterpunch
Brazilian Coup Threatens Democracy and National Sovereignty
Mark Weisbrot

James Petras — Brazil: President Rousseff Declares War on the Working Class

Et tu, Dilma?

Whatever gains were made between 2003 – 2013 will be reversed. Brazilian workers face a ‘decade of infamy’. The Rousseff regime has embraced the politics of “savage capitalism” as personified in the appointment of two of the most extreme advocates of neo-liberal policies

Good analysis, but depressing outlook. Look for rising social unrest in Brazil and more brutal repression to administer shock therapy. Brazil faces more dark times.

The James Petras Website
Brazil: President Rousseff Declares War on the Working Class
James Petras | Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University

h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism