Meanwhile, fires rage in the Amazon and Brazilian President Bolsonaro has become a target of global indignation.
By Pepe Escobar from Brazil – posted with permission
Former president Lula speaks with reporters from a prison room in Curitiba in southern Brazil. Photo: Editora Brasil 247
Brazil has always been a land of superlatives. Yet nothing beats the current, perverse configuration: a world statesman lingers in jail while a clownish thug is in power, his antics now considered a threat to the whole planet.
In a wide-ranging, two-hour, world exclusive interview out of a prison room at the Federal Police building in Curitiba, southern Brazil, former president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva not only made the case to global public opinion for his innocence in the whole Car Wash corruption saga, confirmed by the bombshell leaks revealed by The Intercept, but also repositioned himself to resume his status as a global leader. Arguably sooner rather than later – depending on a fateful, upcoming decision by the Brazilian Supreme Court, for which Justice is not exactly blind.
The request for the interview was entered five months ago. Lula talked to journalists Mauro Lopes, Paulo Moreira Leite and myself, representing in all three cases the website Brasil247 and in my case Asia Times. A rough cut, with only one camera focusing on Lula, was released this past Thursday, the day of the interview. A full, edited version, with English subtitles, targeting global public opinion, should be released by the end of the week.
Lula is a visible embodiment of Nietzsche’s maxim: whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Fully fit (he hits the treadmill at least two hours a day), sharp, with plenty of time to read (his most recent was an essay on Alexander von Humboldt), he exhibited his trademark breadth, reach and command of multiple issues – sometimes rolled out as if part of a Garcia Marquez fantastic realism narrative.
The former president lives in a three-by-three-meter cell, with no bars, with the door open but always two Federal policemen outside, with no access to the internet or cable TV. One of his aides dutifully brings him a pen drive every day crammed with political news, and departs with myriad messages and letters.
The interview is even more astonishing when placed in the literally incendiary context of current Brazilian politics, actively flirting with a hybrid form of semi-dictatorship. While Lula talks essentials and is clearly recovering his voice, even in jail, President Jair Bolsonaro has framed himself as a target of global indignation, widely regarded as a threat to humanity that must be contained.
It’s all about the Day of Fire
Cut to the G7 in Biarritz: at best a sideshow, a talk-shop where the presumably liberal West basks in its lavish impotence to deal with serious global issues without the presence of leaders from the Global South.
And that brings us to the literally burning issue of Amazon forest fires. In our interview, Lula went straight to the point: by noting the absolute responsibility of Bolsonaro’s voter base.
The G7 did nothing but echo Lula’s words, with French President Emmanuel Macron stressing how NGOs and multiple judicial actors, for years, have been raising the question of defining an international statute for the Amazon – which Bolsonaro’s policies, single-handedly, have propelled to the top of the global agenda.
Yet the G7’s offer of an immediate $20 million aid package to help Amazon nations to fight wildfires and then launch a global initiative to protect the giant forest barely amounts to a raindrop.
[Brazil, after this article was written, rejected the proffered aid from G7 countries, with a top official telling France’s President Macron on Monday to take care of “his home and his colonies,” AFP reported. “Maybe those resources are more relevant to reforest Europe,” Onyx Lorenzoni, Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, told the G1 news website. “Macron cannot even avoid a foreseeable fire in a church that is a World Heritage site. What does he intend to teach our country?” He was referring to the fire in April that devastated the Notre-Dame Cathedral. “Brazil is a democratic, free nation that never had colonialist and imperialist practices, as perhaps is the objective of the Frenchman Macron,” Lorenzoni said. -eds.]
Significantly, US President Donald Trump did not even attend the G7 session that covered climate change, attacks on the biodiversity and oceans – and Amazon deforestation. No wonder Paris simply gave up issuing a joint statement at the end of the summit.
In our interview, Lula stressed his landmark role at the Conference of Parties (COP-15) climate change summit in Copenhagen in 2009. Not only that, he told the inside story of how the negotiations proceeded, and how he intervened to defend China from US accusations of being the world’s largest polluter.
At the time Lula said: “It’s not necessary to fell a single tree in the Amazon to grow soybeans or for cattle grazing. If anyone is doing it, that is a crime – and a crime against the Brazilian economy.”
COP-15 was supposed to advance the targets established by the Kyoto Protocol, which were expiring in 2010. But the summit failed after the US – and the EU – refused to raise their projections of CO2 reduction while blaming Global South actors.
In a sharp contrast with Lula, Bolsonaro’s project actually amounts to a non-creative destruction of Brazilian assets such as the Amazon for the interests he represents.
Now the Bolsonaro clan is blaming the government’s own Cabinet of Institutional Security (GSI, in Portuguese) – the equivalent of the National Security Council – led by General Augusto Heleno, for failing to evaluate the scope and gravity of the current Amazon forest fires.
Heleno, incidentally, is on record defending a life sentence for Lula.
Still, that does not tell the whole story – even as Bolsonaro himself also kept blaming “NGOs” for the fires.
The real story confirms what Lula said in the interview. On August 10, a group of 70 wealthy farmers, all Bolsonaro voters, organized on WhatsApp a “Day of Fire” in the Altamira region in the vast state of Pará.
This happens to be the region with the highest number of wildfires in Brazil – infested with aggressive rural developers who are devoted to massive, hardcore deforestation; they’re invested in land occupation and a no-quarter war against landless peasants and small agricultural producers. “Day of Fire” was supposed to support Bolsonaro’s drive to finish off with official monitoring and erase fines over one of the “Bs” of the BBB lobby that elected him (Beef, Bullet, Bible).
Lula was evidently well informed: “You just need to look at the satellite photos, know who’s the landowner and go after him to know who’s burning. If the landowner did not complain, did not go to the police to tell them his land was burning, that’s because he’s responsible.”
On the road with the Pope
A vicious, post-truth, hybrid-war strategy may be at play in Brazil. Two days after the Lula interview, a fateful paella took place in Brasilia at the vice-presidential palace, with Bolsonaro meeting all the top generals including Vice President Hamilton Mourao. Independent analysts are seriously considering a working hypothesis of the sell-out of Brazil using global concern about the Amazon, the whole process veiled by fake nationalist rhetoric.
That would fit the recent pattern of selling the national aviation champion Embraer, privatizing large blocks of pre-salt reserves and leasing the Alcantara satellite-launching base to the United States. Brazilian sovereignty over the Amazon is definitely hanging in the balance.
Considering the wealth of information in Lula’s interview, not to mention his storytelling of how the corridors of power really work, Asia Times will publish further specific stories featuring Pope Francis, the BRICS, Bush and Obama, Iran, the UN and global governance. This was Lula’s first interview in jail where he has felt relaxed enough to relish telling stories about international relations.
What was clear is that Lula is Brazil’s only possible factor of stability. He’s ready, has an agenda not only for the nation but the world. He said that as soon as he leaves, he’ll hit the streets – and cash in frequent flyer miles: he wants to embark alongside Pope Francis on a global campaign against hunger, neoliberal destruction and the rise of neo-fascism.
Now compare a true statesman in jail with an incendiary thug roaming his own labyrinth.
Let’s celebrate! Lula’s back in town.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rgtt_8DbKE
I dont see an issue with Brazil destroying their! rainforest. It is their country and their choice. If they do it smart and well (what I doubt) it could be a huge boost to their country and economy. Sure, the Amazon produces around 20% of the oxygene we all use but why would they care? They get paid nothing for letting it be as it is while many countries (including mine) totally destroyed the natural enviroment and profited big time from it. Would I prefer my countries nature like it was? No way! Would all other countries that mostly destroyed all of their enviroment for (economic) progress? No way, so crocodile tears if you ask me.
Lula offering to keep his country backwards seems to me a ploy to get back into favor with the west mostly. They will profit for free. Imagine China (and Russia) being kept as Brazil. No way we would be heading towards a multi polar world.
More proof to me that is that Lula is up to no good is that he wants to team up with the pope. The head of an institution that is corrupt to the core for millenia. Summarised by this ”you keep them dumb (the people) we keep them poor (the elites)
Usually I agree with Pepe but I think in this case that Brazil has an issue. Lulu no good for the people, just as the current president. I feel sorry for the Brazillians.
Regards,
Hugo
Destroy the living world and you destroy humanity. How is it possible to believe that humanity can survive, alone, when all other Life on Earth has been extirpated? As the Native American chief observed, try eating your money then.
I partly agree with your comment, especially regarding the country’s sovereignty over what should be done on its territory.
To illustrate this, just do a quick web search to find out that Norsk Hydro (a Norwegian state-owned company) is a mining company that operates within the Amazon rainforest and there are several reports of river water pollution around the mining company. that comes to criticize the country as Brazil withdrawing funds from the Amazon fund, this is hypocrisy.
Sorry guys, but climate has always changed. It was warmer during a part of the middle ages than it is now – long before petroleum and coal were exploited. It was also warmer when the Romans were in England. They had vineyards as far north as Yorkshire.
What is really going on here is that Macron is trying to divert attention from his own protests that have been going on for many months. The reference to Notre Dame is perfectly correct. It is one of a great many churches that have been burn in France. Government and media complicity is obvious. We all know who controls the media in France and the main political parties. Those who promoted Macron out of thin air to the post of president.
Of course the climate changes, but NOT as rapidly and extensively as now. We are now hotter than at any time for 800,000 years or so, and accelerating. Micron is a piece of excrement, but that doesn’t change the facts of the ecological Holocaust.
yes the climate changes but problem is we are 7.6 billion people. and even a small change in the climate will render our ability to grow food impossible. And how will we feed 7.6 billion people then?
Many on the Right plainly see climate destabilisation as a means to exterminate billions of ‘useless eaters’ that they fear and hate, in the non-Western world. They are so stupid and so long soaked in blood and gore, (and lovin’ it!)that they imagine that they will be spared, somehow.
I was in a Univesity in the 1980s, and what do you think was one of the biggest problems at the time? You guessed it, “Amazon deforestation!”
According to NASA’s satellite data, Amazon fires are below their 15-year average. The left loses all their credibility when they pursue their climate agenda. It’s sad, the world needs a “progress”ive left.
How does the Left lose credibility when they assert the pre-eminence of the greatest threat to human existence ever? It does not make sense. Should we just ignore it all, and pray that The Invisible Hand makes it all go away, or should we just be silent, consume and die?
Lula poderia ser o melhor presidente do mundo, mas roubou o seu povo assaltando os cofres públicos. Ele amou a a corrupção mais que os outros e está em pé de igualdade com o famigerado Bolsonaro. Não, Lula não é da esquerda, nem a sua ex presidente Dilma ( que era contra os bombardeios da Russia na Síria contra o Estado Islâmico) que ele conseguiu eleger. Ele está no lugar certo.
—————-
Google-Translation – from the Mod:
“Lula could be the best president in the world, but he robbed his people by robbing the public coffers. He loved corruption more than others and is on a par with the infamous Bolsonaro. No, Lula is not from the left, nor is his former president Dilma (who was against Russia’s bombing of Syria against the Islamic State) that he managed to elect. He is in the right place.”
Trabalho com Direito.
Fui aprovado em concursos públicos para o Banco Central do Brasil, Fazenda Nacional, Ministério Público do Estado de Goiás e Ministério Público do Distrito Federal e Territórios.
Com base na Constituição brasileira, que prevê garantias processuais clássicas, posso afirmar que o Presidente Lula é até o presente momento absolutamente inocente, uma vez que os processos movidos contra ele são completamente imprestáveis.
Apenas para exemplificar: em algum lugar do mundo uma condenação seria válida se o juiz do caso mandasse grampear todas as conversas de todos os advogados do escritório encarregado da defesa do réu?
Esse é apenas uma falha das inúmeras existentes.
Translation – Mod:
I work with law.
I was approved in public tenders for the Central Bank of Brazil, Fazenda Nacional, Public Ministry of the state of Goiás and Public Ministry of the Federal District and territories.
On the basis of the Brazilian Constitution, which provides classic procedural guarantees, I can say that President Lula is so far absolutely innocent, since the proceedings against him are completely useless.
Just to give you an example: somewhere in the world would a conviction be valid if the judge in the case had all the conversations of all the lawyers in the defendant’s defense office clamped?
That is just one flaw in the countless existing ones.
“According to NASA’s satellite data, Amazon fires are below their 15-year average. The left loses all their credibility when they pursue their climate agenda. It’s sad, the world needs a “progressive left.”
I have seen this info, in an article at Off-Guardian, by Catte Black.
https://off-guardian.org/2019/08/23/amazon-burning-well-maybe-not-so-much/
This is an update.
https://off-guardian.org/2019/08/28/blowing-smoke-over-the-amazon-a-strange-story/
Well worth reading for a dissection of the “messaging” and agendas being sent here.
In the first article Black also questions the 20% figure.
I am an extreme environmentalist. And I am persudaed from teh data that the earth is warming. It doens’t really matter what ther eason is. The world must deal with the consequences. Such as acute water shortages already in India’s cities. That is, no meltwater coming from the Himalayas to replenish water supplies. For example, in Bangalore.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/06/28/major-indian-city-runs-out-water-million-people-pray-rain/?noredirect=on
“CHENNAI, India — The wait for water begins in the dark at 4 a.m. By the time A. Vani reaches the public pump, a dozen women are already in line.
The taps in Vani’s home in a working-class suburb of this South Indian city ran dry a month ago. ”
Of course I don’t want any forests burning.
But we need to remain cognizant of the fact that First World concerns are never evenhanded. There is always a political agenda. For example, the NYT heavily plays stories about protesters in Hong Kong but suppresses news about the Gilets Jaunes. Just sayin’.
Hate Bolsanaro.
Love Pepe.
Love Lula.
Hate Macron.
But . . . Cui bono here with the current sudden hysteria timed to coincide with the G7?
Seems like the G7 obsessing on the Amazon, without the presence of Bolsanaro or any other Global South leaders present at the meeting, is a bit much. Definitely high-handed and ham-fisted. Hard to think of a better way of alienating other leaders and countries of the Global South.
Lula’s idea of teaming up with the Pope doesn’t really appeal to me, but may be a canny political move. I don’t know enough to form an opinion.
The idea of Macron leading any kind of charge on this topic is ridiculous. Because Macron, child of Rothschild, is a ridiculous vainglorious nincompoop who is not credible as a leader who can galvanize the world on climate issues. Pretty much anything he touches can be assumed to be in the interest of EM, not Earth or any of its inhabitants. If i could I would order him,and his wife, to do community service fighting fires for the rest of his life.
As for Brazil turning down $20 million for fight fires, remember Hurricane Katrina, when I think it was Castro or may Chavez who offered to send was it doctors? Or fresh water? Something to help the citizens of NOLA. This aid was turned down by the huffy USA. Why would the almighty USA put itself in a positoin of owing gratitude to a Global South nation?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/07/venezuela.hurricanekatrina
Of course the whole world owes a debt of gratitude to the Amazon for providing the earth with oxygen and biological diversity and continuing to provide a home for its indigenous inhabitants.
Regarding the 20% figiure it is being repeated a lot kind of liek the “established” info regarding Russiagate “facts.” Yet I see this:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/why-amazon-doesnt-produce-20-percent-worlds-oxygen/
So, what is really going on with the sudden media fire storm?
Katherine
Lula joining the Pope for tours IS a canny move Brazil is majority Catholic.
The problem here is that the question “Is the Pope a Catholic?” is no longer merely a rhetorical one (i.e. one which does not need an answer). How many Brazilian Catholics would agree, I wonder?
Kat, it’s called Matrix. When one Globalist fake invention dies (global warming) you start inventing something else to promote Global Government (Global EU). The key is to scare the cattle (peasants – we the people) to go along with the plan. Matrix never stops.
How can global warming have ‘died’ when the evidence that it is occurring and accelerating is overwhelming? Wishful thinking and closing your eyes while sticking your fingers in your ears is no way to face reality.
Mulga, your tenacity nears obsession. It’s all Sun’s doing as well as constant changes in the Earths movement around the Sun. Do some real research of the subject and stop obsessing.
Small addition, unfortunately it will be all Greek to most of you. Giorgos Pasxalidis, who believe it or not is a scientist at Academy of Science in Moscow, he specializes in effects of magnetic and other radio energy on human brain.
Anyway, he was invited to Radio Parapolitika 90.1 for discussion where he talks about three types of humans:
A – the ones who see everything and make appropriate decisions.
B – the ones who see only what they want to see.
C – the ones who see everything but accept only what they like.
I will leave it at that.
The video is titled: 14-01-2016 Γιώργος Πασχαλίδης – Οι τρείς τύποι ανθρώπου
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D6ZGM5jOis
The video will be of high interest to people who understand Greek. My reaction is wow!
And, I’m sure, each of us believes ourselves to be of type A, whereas those with whom we disagree are types B and C (but mostly type B).
Climate change deniers are quick to speak up. Some are paid, the rest are misinformed. None of them have a scrap of real evidence to support their claims. Instead they vaguely suspect a vast conspiracy among thousands of scientists to lie to the public. On the contrary, many of these dedicated scientists risk their jobs to tell the truth.
On the one hand I have doubts about climate change, as see it as another bankers scam. However, taking measures to reduce pollution and rape of the planet is very important even if for the wrong reasons. Likewise we should be tackling plastics, GMO poison, nuclear weapons and pesticides. It wouldn’t hurt to take a long hard look at Big Pharma either. Climate change is largely about coal but ignores most other issues as no money to be made out of it.
A thing can be true and be a banker’s scam at the same time. Nothing works better than the truth in a good scam.
Anthropogenic climate destabilisation is established science. That capitalist parasites are attempting to find ways to profit from it, as they profit gigantically from its causes, particularly the fossil fuel industry, does not negate the science and the observable facts.
I don’t I lived in southern Europe for 10 years and I grew up there and I had NEVER experienced such heat. So I dont have ANY doubts, i experienced it first hand. I dont see how people can have “doubts” unless they want to look the other way or just want to argue
Lula ” wants to embark alongside Pope Francis on a global campaign against hunger, neoliberal destruction and the rise of neo-fascism”
I have respect for what Lula achieved in Brazil while he was in power (although he did get lucky with an unprecedented commidities boom) but this sentence sent shudders down my spine.
After Trotsky’s permanent revolution against fascism, the neocons “humanitarian wars” against all sorts of modern day Hitlers, now we have Lula’s global crusade against neofascism (with a Pope, no less).
Plus ca change…
Climate change is real but human responsibility for causing it has yet to be proven.
What is far more likely is that Climate Change is caused by Solar Activity and there is nary a thing we can do about it except plan our response to minimize consequences. Globalists have constructed a vast conspiracy to milk the planet of wealth using Climate Change as a cudgel with which to beat the masses into economic servitude and submission. All the usual suspects are involved in a campaign to blame and especially tax humanity for our supposed sins which we are forever being told are due to the rapaciousness and greed of little people – whilst the proceeds from such taxation are never used to ameliorate conditions which cause our suffering and always end up in the hands of Globalist Financiers.
According to Valentina Zharkova, a Russian Scientist whose models are said to be 93% accurate, we are entering a Grand Solar Minimum, which will cover roughly the period from 2020 to 2055. It is not mentioned in the article but a previous GSM cycle just happens to coincide with the period around which most of the Earth’s great civilizations collapsed for apparently unknown reasons, including an era of vast migrations of so-called Sea Peoples, primarily to Ancient Egypt and also the Trojan Wars in which Greeks attacked and destroyed their hated competitors not far from the present day City of Istanbul/Constantinople, which was then as it is today a location of immense strategic importance controlling the flow people and goods from thew Black Sea region to the Mediterranean.
Based on this information concerning Solar Cycles, which is apparently gaining traction with the Scientific Community worldwide, I want everyone to set aside their prejudices and imagine a scenario in which Genocidal Globalists indeed understand what is occurring and are using it to advance their goals while simultaneously setting up everything from seed banks to underground cities so as to escape the potential catastrophe that awaits us all.
https://nextgrandminimum.com/2018/11/22/professor-valentina-zharkova-breaks-her-silence-and-confirms-super-grand-solar-minimum/
If the Sun does enter a grand minimum in activity, it will do nothing but slow down the rise in global temperatures caused by the greatest and most rapid forcing of atmospheric greenhouse gases known in the last billion years or so. And the positive feed-backs are already kicking it, such as the melting permafrost releasing organic matter that is turned into CO2 and methane by micro-organism metabolism, the warming seas and soils becoming carbon sources, not sinks, albedo flips etc, and the two degrees Celsius or so if ‘global dimming’ from particulate smogs is cleaned up by the use of renewable energy and EVs etc. In any case our civilization is vastly over-extended and climate destabilisation of any sort threatens agriculture and civil peace and geopolitical quiet (more or less).
Although described as “Russian” Dr Zharkova’s early work was in Kiev making her likely Ukrainian. She is also currently an employee of the British government through her position at Northumbria University. Are we supposed to believe that a British government employee would actually be allowed to publish results that challenge their “global warming” narrative? It gets worse. Her most recent publication was not from a believable, objective source such as Youtube but was in, wait for it …. the British “journal” Nature a “global warming” paper mill if there ever was one. This is the scientific equivalent of the New York Times. The whole thing stinks and I’m not buying into it for a second. So what is this all about, really? I smell a possible intellectual honeypot psyop “a la Epstein”. Could it be that her role is to lure out possible scientists of actual integrity that might question the Al Gore narrative? Perhaps for later targeted dismissal and purging?
Actually since the above is satire although not factually incorrect, likely the answer is no.
Lula (and Kirchner) aided and abetted the USA/Canadian/French coup/invasion/occupation of Haiti. See Kevin Pina’s “Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits”
Brazilian “peacekeepers” supported the former (recently reinstated, but not at the time Lula did his bit) pedophile “Haitian National Army,” whom the RCMP was training as senior Haitian police (Aristide kept his election promise, and disbanded and prosecuted them—they were particularly rapey under Cedras). Pina also has some nice scenery (at least in Haiti the untold story) of a Brazilian general telling Haitian civilians, “you thieves want to make heads role,” while said general’s soldiers were doing B&E artistry in Cite Sole.
“Lula was evidently well informed: “You just need to look at the satellite photos, know who’s the landowner and go after him to know who’s burning. If the landowner did not complain, did not go to the police to tell them his land was burning, that’s because he’s responsible.”
Yup.
The zionazi-gay talking point about there being “less fires this year than last year” is one of their deflection tactics. IE: zionazi-gay psywar to bolster support for their quisling bolsonaro.
The recent hostility towards the quisling may be due to his backing off on opening a full embassy in Jerusalem, Palestine, as previously pledged. Or he may already be seen as a dead end, like diem in Vietnam was. They want a zionazi who is more effective.
Regarding the exploitive criminal freakshow bolonaro represents in Brazil, in Amazonia, the film “Emerald Forest” showed them rather well.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0089087/
Summer of ’85: What We Have Forgotten: The Emerald Forest
https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/summer-of-85-what-we-have-forgotten-the-emerald-forest/
What the reviewer describes here, quite well with regard to Boorman and his work, about what we lost spiritually by artificially isolating ourselves from our environment nails it. What bolsonaro represents is that isolation taken to extremes.
Very nice essay.
How true: We must save ourselves, not the planet.
Well, ourselves and many of the organisms currently inhabiting this planet.
With our current belligerent and money-hungry leaders living, literally, in glass houses and our cultural circumstances, the odds do not look very good.
Katherine
Vot Tak:
Can you comment on the NASA data?
I can believe that someone has decided to go after Bolsonaro for a bad, not a good reason.
Like, to replace him with someone even worse.
But are you saying that the NASA data also referenced in the OffGuardian article is not genuine, or is being massaged?
The idea of the G7 handing down pronunciamentos or orders to Brazil or the Philippines about environment dangers just seems off the wall to me, from a political and even diplomatic point of view.
Are reparations on the table for the US rape of the Philippines (where I believe waterboarding was first used on Philippine rebels, guerrillas, freedom fighters)?
I recall The Emerald Forest and I loved it when I saw it back in the eighties. Yes, the fate of the Amazon was already topical then, of course.. I just watched the trailer. I can’t recall all the plot details. I do recall that it succeeded at communicating the possibility of an out-of-body spirit vision/journey.
Katherine
Lula will never get out of gaol alive. He’s too dangerous to The Empire. A heart attack, I imagine.
if they disposed of Lula so easily pre election of Bolsonaro why should they be afraid of him now?
are you sure?
I tend to agree with Roberto below. Lula will fail again in power. he is far from as nasty enough to succeed.
they will let him go. I don’t think they are afraid of him. if they were they would have killed him already.
according to Roberto…if I could I would wave my magic wand giving Bolsonaro Lula smarts, maintain his nastiness, even increase it… and turn him around to our side, wind him up and let him go.
pheww! we would be on our way
Maybe Lula can become a kind of Nelson Mandela figure.
That is, proceed directly to elder statesman and moral conscience of the country. And the Global South?
Katherine
Prezado Pepe Escobar,
I went through the interview with Lula… a fine and decent person indeed, so let’s cut to the chase: let him cleanse his honor in court, but let’s not let him come back to politics.
The simple reason: Lula de Silva is too decent for the game of politics, he will be used and abused again. To kick the Anglo-Zionists out of Latin America and of Eurasia we need folks with the fighting profile of Putin, of the late Fidel, or of the finest case for women in politics, one Indira Ghandi!
Lula doesn’t cut it…. because he is too clean a person for such a filthy line of business…
At one stage of the interview I had like a moment of epiphany… I thought I was listening to the translation into Portuguese of a speech on “the moral question” in politics by the late Enrico Berlinguer, the last prestigious leader of the Italian Communist Party… another one who must have mistaken political combat for some kind of charitable organization of say… the Franciscan order. We know how all that talk on “Euro-communism” and “Historical compromise” ended don’t we. Lula tried to adapt to Brazilian circumstances what Enrico wanted to do for Italy a generation earlier. This do-goodery stuff doesn’t help against Anglo domination. Time to face up to that.
Parabens.
PS Wanted to write this stuff in porto-ñol, mas nosso camarada Saker vive en un Anglo-stan chamado en ruso seshà asi que me parece claro que me toca el (palabrota) inglés.
“Brazil is a democratic, free nation that never had colonialist and imperialist practices”…
Bullshit! That land started as a freaking plantation, with the majority of inhabitants actually being slaves. To eat up lands under dispute against the Spanish Empire, the Portuguese royalty invented the Bandeirantes, who went inland to appropriate lands for them and the Portuguese crown. Later, when Brazil became a republic, its foreign policy has been, all the time, to invade and misappropriate chunks of land belonging to the bananized republics of Hispanic America. That’s how Brazil became so big.
So in reality, they have been the epitome of colonialism and imperialism, so much that it has pervaded and perverted any normal functioning as a purported democratic republic. So Brazil actually is a dysfunctional “democracy”, with oligopolies dominating all the critical assets, and a huge mass of the population living in poverty in favelas (Brazilian version of Sowetos).
I would be more inclined to believe the whole anthropogenic climate destabilization meme if the powers that are pushing the meme (and trying to tax and oppress the little people via this scaremongering) would stop suppressing technology like cars that run on water aka hydrogen. Or combustion engines that get 300 miles a gallon and all kinds of other tech that would free the common man from a good portion of his energy bondage to the overlords. Until that happens I don’t believe a word of it. I don’t deny climate change is occuring. It obviously is. And it will probably get way worse. I just don’t believe the anthropogenic part. After all from what I understand it is happening throughout the entire solar system. It is most likely a cyclical thing. And the rulers see it as a good opportunity to further tax and regulate and increase their power over us serfs. If they were really worried they would release the aforementioned technologies.
The science of anthropogenic climate destabilisation is being ‘pushed’ by scientists and those opposed to Near Term Human Extinction. The powers that control the world ie the capitalist elite, have VASTLY more invested in fossil fuels than in their replacement. And they are the creators and financiers of the denial industry. Water is not hydrogen, but hydrogen is a constituent of water along with oxygen. Any sort of combustion engine is now unnecessary with the rise of electric vehicles, but if you insist, hydrogen would be less destructive than petrol. Climate change is not occurring throughout the solar system, and, in any case, our atmosphere and planetary conditions are unlike any other planet. The anthropogenic cause of the current, extremely rapid, climate destabilisation is agreed with by ALL the Academies of Science and scientific societies on Earth.
Macron is not against Bolsonaro, he must be super happy with him for improving his image after the “gilets jaunes”,… Now Bolsonaro plays a theater saying that he is nationalist and that the other countries are trying to intrude on the Brazilian Amazon ( sovereign territory of Brazil) passing a nationalist image to a part of the population, because if you look at the plan of government for the region there is none other than surrender of national heritage …… but how will you do that? without causing a monumental disturbance in the Brazilian population?
Easy, it ends the national institutions that fight environmental crimes in the region, then there is a big burning in the region, encouraged by social networks (there are signs of using whatzap groups), it reminded me of that mr. Bannon !!!
Afterwards images of environmental degradation in the burned forest are poured into social networks and people around the world are moved and protest against it, to defend themselves Bolsonaro begins to talk many nonsense, mixed with some truths (to keep his audience) and then he resigned backs down and accepts the intervention of other countries (global finance) in the region to “combat” deforestation of the forest, thus decreeing the Brazilian Amazon territory of humanity, as it will say that there is no condition for Brazil to combat deforestation alone … … Global Finance together takes over another Brazilian asset and the idiots thinking Macron and Bolsonaro are enemies …. all theater, more friends can’t be