Saturday, November 23, 2019
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: I want to clear my name to help rebuild Brazil’s trust in government
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Washington Post. November 21, 2019
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is a former president of Brazil.
Leia este artigo em português: Quero limpar meu nome para que o brasileiro volte a confiar em seu governo
In April last year, my political opponents cheered when, after a highly partisan and biased legal process, I was sent to the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba to serve an illegitimate prison sentence.
They hoped to crush my spirit and erase me from the political map. But the experience only reinvigorated and strengthened my commitment — now I feel ready to tackle Brazil’s problems and to try to bring about a better world for the many, not just the privileged few.
The 580 days I spent in jail proved to be one of the most transformative in my political life. From my cell I was able to contemplate deeply the problems facing our society.
The toughest part of having to endure an illegal detention was being excluded from last year’s presidential election campaign. It must pain the current Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, to know that he would not have beaten me in that election without the collusion of a former judge, Sergio Moro, who now serves as his justice minister.
Jurists, lawyers and scholars from across the globe were astonished by my unfair trial. Brazil even chose to ignore the U.N. Human Rights Committee’s requested that I be allowed to run as a candidate until my "appeals before the courts have been completed in fair judicial proceedings.”
As Brazil’s president I introduced wide-ranging reforms to empower federal agencies to fight organized crime and corruption. But unfortunately for our country, individuals hijacked the legal system to try to weaken and remove political opponents. An investigation known as the Car Wash Operation — headed by the “crusading” Judge Moro — became the driving force behind an effort not to prosecute corruption but to manipulate our democratic process.
The politically motivated nature of my accusers and the legal abuses committed by prosecutors could not be overlooked, and in July 2016 my team and I communicated the serious violations of my fundamental rights to the Human Rights Committee.
Throughout the judicial farce, my attorneys proved I was not guilty through overwhelming exculpatory evidence. They also highlighted the coordinated “lawfare” against me — trying to use the law to delegitimize me. With a few honorable exceptions, most of the Brazilian media chose to ignore these facts. It was only in June, with the publication of an investigation that showed collusion between the prosecution and judges by the Intercept Brazil, that the truth finally began to emerge. These revelations have rocked Brazilians and the world because they showed that a once acclaimed anti-corruption effort had been politicized, tainted and illegal.
Bolsonaro rewarded Moro when he appointed him minister. The appointment was not a surprise to me: It simply proved what my legal team and I said throughout — that Moro was biased and abused the law for his own political purposes.
Moro’s actions while presiding in the Car Wash process have done Brazil a grave disservice. He and Bolsonaro must bear the ultimate political and legal accountability. Responsibility also lies in the United States, where questions have been raised about the Justice Department’s and other law enforcement agencies’ highly irregular cooperation with Moro and the wider Car Wash investigation. Indeed, members of Congress have raised concerns, yet have received no response from President Trump’s administration.
No one should be above the law, but the law must be applied equally. I’ve never asked for special treatment, only fair, impartial and independent treatment under the law. That is why I will continue to fight vigorously to clear my name from partisan legal attacks; my recent release from captivity isn’t the end of the legal fight — it is only the beginning.
Parallel to my legal fight, I will be setting out a positive political agenda for the future of Brazil. My role is to help bring people together, as I have always done, in our increasingly fractured and polarized society. Central to my vision is to help Brazilians rebuild their trust in our political and legal institutions.
In the Brazil I aspire to help rebuild, human and legal rights — including those of my political opponents — will be protected and strengthened. It is the sign of a strong democracy when every citizen is able to take pride in and trust the strength of its institutions.
Brazil's Bolsonaro Unveils Bill to Protect Police and Soldiers Who Kill
Reuters. November 21, 2019
BRASILIA — Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday sent a proposal to Congress that seeks to offer greater protection to police and soldiers who kill while on specific operations, known as Guarantee of Law and Order (GLO) missions.
The highly divisive bill, which comes amid a sharp rise in killings by police across Brazil, is likely to face stiff opposition from some lawmakers and human rights groups.
It would reduce sentences, or even provide full judicial protection to officers who kill in situations in which they face "unfair, current or imminent aggression," either to themselves or another person. Examples of "unfair aggression" would include terrorism, and any "conduct capable of causing death or personal injury," such as carrying a firearm.
The bill is similar to part of an earlier, broader crime-fighting proposal, pushed by Justice Minister Sergio Moro, that also sought to offer greater protection to officers who kill.
Nonetheless, Moro's proposal is currently languishing in Congress, where lawmakers stripped the section offering police more cover, arguing that it could incentivize them to kill more.
Speaking about his proposal on Thursday, Bolsonaro said it would represent a "shift" in the fight against violence in Brazil.
"We will now depend on lawmakers, congressmen and senators to approve this," the far-right president said in Brasilia.
GLO missions are temporary military operations, created by direct order of the president, to tackle sporadic cases of uncontrollable violence or high-risk situations, such as international summits.
So far this year, Brazil has used GLO missions to provide security at the BRICs Summit in Brasilia, in the fight against Amazon rainforest fires, and in the transfer of high-risk prisoners to federal prisons.
Bolsonaro, a longtime advocate of preemptive police violence, has said that he would consider ending GLOs if lawmakers do not pass his bill.
Advancing Propaganda For Evil Agendas Is The Same As Perpetrating Them Yourself
The Guardian has published an editorial titled "The Guardian view
on extraditing Julian Assange: don’t do it", subtitled "The US case
against the WikiLeaks founder is an assault on press freedom and the public’s
right to know". The publication's editorial board argues that
since the Swedish investigation has once again been dropped, the
time is now to oppose US extradition for the WikiLeaks founder.
"Sweden’s decision
to drop an investigation into a rape allegation against Julian
Assange has both illuminated the situation of the WikiLeaks founder and made it
more pressing," the editorial board writes.
Oh okay, now the
issue is illuminated and pressing. Not two months ago, when Assange's
ridiculous bail sentence ended and he was still kept in prison explicitly and exclusively because of the US extradition
request. Not six months ago, when the US government slammed Assange
with 17 charges under the Espionage Act for publishing the
Chelsea Manning leaks. Not seven months ago, when Assange was forcibly pried
from the Ecuadorian embassy and slapped with the US extradition request. Not any time
between his April arrest and his taking political asylum seven years ago, which
the Ecuadorian government explicitly granted him because it believed there was a
credible threat of US extradition. Not nine years ago when
WikiLeaks was warning that the US government was scheming to extradite
Assange and prosecute him under the Espionage Act.
Nope, no, any of those times
would have been far too early for The Guardian to begin opposing US
extradition for Assange with any degree of lucidity. They had to wait until
Assange was already locked up in Belmarsh Prison and limping into extradition
hearings supervised by looming US government officials. They had to
wait until years and years of virulent mass media smear campaigns had killed off
public support for Assange so he could be extradited with little or no
grassroots backlash. And they had to wait until they themselves had finished
participating in those smear campaigns.
There is, needless to say, no
hint or suggestion in the Mueller Report that Paul Manafort visited Julian
Assange ever in his life, let alone 3 times in the Ecuadorian Embassy during
the election. It would obviously be there if it happened. How can the @guardian not
retract this?? pic.twitter.com/5ory1w0mfj
— Glenn Greenwald
(@ggreenwald) April 18, 2019
This is after all the
same Guardian which published the transparently ridiculous and completely invalidated report that Trump lackey Paul
Manafort had met secretly with Assange at the embassy, not once but multiple
times. Not one shred of evidence has ever been produced to substantiate this
claim despite the embassy being one of the most heavily surveilled buildings on
the planet at the time, and the Robert Mueller investigation, whose expansive
scope would obviously have included such meetings, reported absolutely nothing
to corroborate it. It was a bogus story which all accused parties have forcefully denied.
This is the same Guardian which ran an article last year titled "The only barrier
to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride", arguing that
Assange looked ridiculous for remaining in the embassy because "The
WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US". The article
was authored by the odious James Ball, who deleted a tweet not
long ago complaining about the existence of UN special rapporteurs after one of
them concluded that Assange is a victim of psychological torture. Ball's
article begins, "According to Debrett’s, the arbiters of etiquette since
1769: 'Visitors, like fish, stink in three days.' Given this, it’s difficult to
imagine what Ecuador’s London embassy smells like, more than five-and-a-half years
after Julian Assange moved himself into the confines of the small
flat in Knightsbridge, just across the road from Harrods."
This is the same Guardian which published an article titled "Definition of
paranoia: supporters of Julian Assange", arguing that Assange defenders
are crazy conspiracy theorists for believing the US would try to extradite
Assange because "Britain has a notoriously lax extradition treaty with the
United States", because "why would they bother to imprison him when
he is making such a good job of discrediting himself?", and "because
there is no extradition request."
This is the same Guardian which published a ludicrous report about Assange potentially receiving
documents as part of a strange Nigel Farage/Donald Trump/Russia conspiracy, a
claim based primarily on vague analysis by a single anonymous source described
as a “highly placed contact with links to US intelligence”. The same Guardian which
just flushed standard journalistic protocol down the toilet by reporting on
Assange's "ties to the Kremlin" (not a thing) without even bothering to use the word
"alleged", not once, but twice. The same Guardian which has been advancing
many more virulent smears as documented in this article by The Canary titled "Guilty by
innuendo: the Guardian campaign against Julian Assange that breaks all the
rules".
A look at how sleazeball
journalists at the Guardian tried to 'Russiagate' Assange https://t.co/fzfDr4q02O
— Defend Assange Campaign
(@DefendAssange) March 25, 2019
You can see, then, how
ridiculous it is for an outlet like The Guardian to now attempt to
wash its hands of Assange's plight with a self-righteous denunciation of the
Trump administration's extradition request from its editorial board. This
outlet has actively and forcefully paved the road to the situation in which
Assange now finds himself by manufacturing consent for an agenda which the
public would otherwise have found appalling and ferociously
objectionable. Guardian editors don't get to pretend that they are in
some way separate from what's being done to Assange. They created what's
being done to Assange.
You see this dynamic at play
all too often from outlets, organizations and individuals who portray
themselves as liberal, progressive, or in some way oppositional to
authoritarianism. They happily advance propaganda narratives against governments
and individuals targeted by establishment power structures, whether that's
Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad, Maduro, Morales, Assange or whomever, but when
it comes time for that establishment to actually implement the evil agenda it's
been pushing for, they wash their hands of it and decry what's being done as
though they've always opposed it.
But they haven't opposed it.
They've actively facilitated it. If you help promote smears and propaganda
against a target of the empire, then you're just as culpable for what happens
to that target as the empire itself. Because you actively participated in
making it happen.
The deployment of a bomb or
missile doesn't begin when a pilot pushes a button, it begins when propaganda
narratives used to promote those operations start circulating in public
attention. If you help circulate war propaganda, you're as complicit as the one
who pushes the button. The imprisonment of a journalist for exposing US war
crimes doesn't begin when the Trump administration extradites him to America,
it begins when propagandistic smear campaigns begin circulating to kill public
opposition to his imprisonment. If you helped promote that smear campaign,
you're just as responsible for what happens to him as the goon squad in Trump's
Department of Justice.
Really great talk by @RonPaulInstitut's
Daniel McAdams titled "How Not To Be a CIA Propagandist" on the
importance of never facilitating propaganda narratives against governments
targeted for regime change, even if you disagree with their ideology.https://t.co/22W785ahh0
— Caitlin
Johnstone (@caitoz) November 11, 2019
Before they launch missiles,
they launch narratives. Before they drop bombs, they drop ideas. Before they
invade, they propagandize. Before the killing, there is manipulation. Before
the evil, there is propaganda. Narrative control is the front line of all
imperialist agendas, and it is therefore the front line of all anti-imperialist
efforts. When you forcefully oppose these agendas, that matters, because you're
keeping the public from being propagandized into consenting to them. When you
forcefully facilitate those agendas, that matters, because you're actively
paving the way for them.
Claiming you oppose an
imperialist agenda while helping to advance its propaganda and smear campaigns
in any way is a nonsensical and contradictory position. You cannot facilitate
imperialism and simultaneously claim to oppose it.
They work so hard to
manufacture our consent because they need that consent. If they
operate without the consent of the governed, the public will quickly lose trust
in their institutions, and at that point it's not long before revolution begins
to simmer. So don't give them your consent. And for God's sake don't do anything
that helps manufacture it in others.
Words matter. Work with them
responsibly.
Now That Assange Is Safely Locked Up, Sweden Drops Its “Investigation”
Now that WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange is safely locked up in Belmarsh prison awaiting a US extradition
hearing, Sweden has, for a third time, dropped its rape investigation.
“After conducting a
comprehensive assessment of what has emerged during the course of the
preliminary investigation I then make the assessment that the evidence is not
strong enough to form the basis for filing an indictment,” said deputy chief prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson at a
press conference in Stockholm on Tuesday.
This decision comes days after
the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer began making
noise about the Swedish government's refusal to answer
his questions about the many enormous, glaring plot holes in the investigation
which began in 2010. These plot holes include "proactive manipulation of
evidence" with the testimony of the alleged victim, a condom provided as
evidence that had neither the DNA of Assange nor of the alleged victim on it,
complete disregard for confidentiality rules and normal investigative protocol
from the earliest moments of the investigation onward, disregard for conflicts
of interest, Sweden's refusal to provide assurance that Assange would not be
extradited to the US if he went there to answer questions, statements made by
the alleged victims which contradict the allegations, unexplained
correspondence between Swedish prosecutors and the FBI, and many others.
#Sweden: FULL PIC of Govt's disappointing response to my
detailed & diligent inquiries of 12 Sept & 28 May, flatly refusing:
- to explain its handling of the #Assange case
- to provide the requested information
- to engage in a constructive dialogue with #SRT@SwedenUN
#Torture pic.twitter.com/iqhPKbWfFi
- to explain its handling of the #Assange case
- to provide the requested information
- to engage in a constructive dialogue with #SRT@SwedenUN
#Torture pic.twitter.com/iqhPKbWfFi
— Nils Melzer
(@NilsMelzer) November 11, 2019
None of which matters anymore.
He is caged, and public support for him has been deliberately demolished. The
Swedish parody of an "investigation" did its job. Assange took
political asylum with the government of Ecuador out of fear of US extradition
and was slowly squeezed off from the outside world, his own reputation, and his
own physical health while the empire prepared its case against him, keeping him
increasingly immobilized, silenced and smeared until he could be forcibly pried
from the embassy in April of this year.
Once this was accomplished,
all the feigned concern for alleged victims of sexual assault suddenly
vanished, lining up perfectly with a 2010 article authored in the early days of the
investigation by feminist writer Naomi Wolf who said, "How do I know that
Interpol, Britain and Sweden’s treatment of Julian Assange is a form of
theater? Because I know what happens in rape accusations against men that don’t
involve the embarrassing of powerful governments."
"In other words: Never in
twenty-three years of reporting on and supporting victims of sexual assault
around the world have I ever heard of a case of a man sought by two
nations, and held in solitary confinement without bail in advance of being
questioned — for any alleged rape, even the most brutal or easily
proven," Wolf wrote. "In terms of a case involving the kinds of
ambiguities and complexities of the alleged victims’ complaints — sex that
began consensually that allegedly became non-consensual when dispute arose
around a condom — please find me, anywhere in the world, another man in prison
today without bail on charges of anything comparable."
Everyone who was familiar with
sexual assault investigations knew that Assange's case was being treated wildly
different from any other, and anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty knew
that this was because his case was different from any other: it was
an investigation of a man who had embarrassed powerful governments. That
was always what this was about. It was never about
protecting women. The fact that the case is being flushed now that the
imperialists have gotten what they wanted makes this abundantly clear.
And now he's locked up for no other reason than a pending US extradition request,
exactly as he anticipated and rightly tried to avoid. The ridiculous bail
sentence he was serving has already expired, and the rape investigation
everyone pretended was so important has been tossed aside like an old gum
wrapper. As one reader put it on Twitter today, "So Julian Assange
continues to be detained in a high security prison, having completed an extreme
sentence for not meeting the bail conditions for a charge that wasn't and won't
be made. All on top of the rules of asylum being cast aside to net him. This is
rule of jackboot not law."
"Let's call this for what
it is: an outrage," the Defend Assange account tweeted after the news broke. "The road to Belmarsh
and 175-years in prison was paved in Stockholm--and so it will be remembered.
The damage done to Assange's and WikiLeaks' reputation-outing his name in an
'investigation' for which he was never charged-is monstrous."
Monstrous it is. And monstrous
the whole thing remains. They have maneuvered circumstances and narratives in
such a way that they are now able to literally imprison a journalist for
exposing US war crimes, right in front of us, while telling us we live in a
free society. It's like watching someone who's supposed to be your friend reach
down and start strangling your dog to death while looking you right in the eye
and saying "I'm not killing your dog. I would never do that. We're
friends."
While the world knows Julian's
name has been cleared in Sweden, he is sitting in a cell in Belmarsh prison,
probably unaware of the news. The Prison cancelled all visits today.
Don´t Extradite Assange! pic.twitter.com/WhhIEGZSyA
Don´t Extradite Assange! pic.twitter.com/WhhIEGZSyA
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 19, 2019
They've locked him up. They've
silenced him. They've broken his body. They've broken his mind. And now they're
trying to lock him out of sight forever, out of sight and out of mind, so we
can all forget all about the evil things they've revealed about themselves.
But all that means is that now
his fate is in our hands. Back when he was strong and bright-eyed and had a
voice, it was easy to kid ourselves and say "Eh, he'll find a way out of
this. He's the smartest guy around!" It was easy to lean on his strength
in order to abdicate our responsibility to defend him tooth and claw from a
globe-spanning oligarchic empire which seeks to criminalize holding power to
account.
We can't do that anymore. We
can't take comfort in Assange's power, because he doesn't have it anymore. His
frailty now means we need to be the strong ones. We need to
fight for him, because he can't do it himself. We need to win this battle if
we're ever to have any hope of overturning the status quo that is oppressing us
all and shoving us toward greater and greater peril. We can't afford to lose
this one. We need to fight for Assange like the world depends on it. Because,
in a very real sense, it does.
Morales proved in Bolivia that democratic socialism can work – but the people cannot be ignored
The country's citizens rose up
having been forced into becoming the silent majority, officials in
Bolivia are in danger of letting history repeat itself
4 days ago
Although I am for over a
decade a staunch supporter of Evo Morales, I must
admit that, after reading about the confusion after Morales’ disputed electoral
victory, I was beset by doubts: did he also succumb to the authoritarian
temptation, as it happened to so many radical Leftists in power? However, after
a day or two, things became clear.
Brandishing a giant
leather-bound bible and declaring herself Bolivia’s interim
president, Jeanine Añez, the second-vice president of the country’s Senate,
declared: “The Bible has returned to the government palace.” She added: “We
want to be a democratic tool of inclusion and unity” – and the transitional
cabinet sworn into office did not include a single indigenous person.
This tells it all: although
the majority of the population of Bolivia are indigenous or mixed, they were
till the rise of Morales de facto excluded from political life, reduced to the
silent majority. What happened with Morales was the political awakening of this
silent majority which did not fit in the network of capitalist relations.
They were not yet proletarian
in the modern sense, they remained locked into their premodern tribal
social identities – here is how Alvaro Garcia Linera, Morales’ vice-president,
described their lot: “In Bolivia, food was produced by Indigenous farmers,
buildings and houses were built by Indigenous workers, streets were cleaned by
Indigenous people, and the elite and the middle classes entrusted the care of
their children to them. Yet the traditional left seemed oblivious to this and
occupied itself only with workers in large-scale industry, paying no attention
to their ethnic identity.”
To understand them, we should
bring into picture the entire historical weight of their predicament: they are
the survivors of perhaps the greatest holocaust in the history of humanity, the
obliteration of the indigenous communities by the Spanish and English
colonisation of the Americas.
The religious expression of
their premodern status is the unique combination of Catholicism and belief in
the Pachamama or Mother Earth figure. This is why, although Morales stated that
he is a Catholic, in the current Bolivian Constitution (enacted in 2009) the
Roman Catholic church lost its official status – its article 4 states: “The
State respects and guarantees the freedom of religion and spiritual beliefs, in
accordance to every individual’s world view. The State is independent from
religion.”
And it is against this
affirmation of indigenous culture that Anez’s display of the bible is directed
– the message is clear: an open assertion of white religious supremacism, and a
no less open attempt to put the silent majority back to their proper
subordinate place. From his Mexican exile, Morales already appealed to Pope to
intervene, and the Pope’s reaction will tell us a lot. Will Francis react as a
true Christian and unambiguously reject the enforced re-Catholisation of
Bolivia as what it is, as a political power-play which betrays the emancipatory
core of Christianity?
If we leave aside
any possible role of lithium in the coup (Bolivia has big reserves of
lithium which is needed for batteries in electric cars and it has featured in a
number of theories about what brought down Morales), the big question is: why
is for overt a decade Bolivia such a thorn in the flesh of Western liberal
establishment? The reason is a very peculiar one: the surprising fact that the
political awakening of premodern tribalism in Bolivia did not result in a new
version of the Sendero Luminoso or Khmer Rouge horror show. The reign of
Morales was not the usual story of the radical Left in power which screws
things up, economically and politically, generating poverty and trying to
maintain its power through authoritarian measures. A proof of the
non-authoritarian character of the Morales reign is that he didn’t purge army
and police of his opponents (which is why they turned against him).
Morales and his followers
were, of course, not perfect, they made mistakes, there were conflicts of
interests in his movement. However, the overall balance is an outstanding one.
Morales not Chavez, he did not have not oil money to quell problems, so his
government has to engage in a hard and patient work of solving problems in the
poorest country in Latin America. The result was nothing short of a miracle:
economy thrived, poverty rate fell, healthcare improved, while all the
democratic institutions so dear to liberals continued to function. The Morales
government maintained a delicate balance between indigenous forms of communal
activity and modern politics, fighting simultaneously for tradition and women
rights,
To tell the entire story of
the coup – and I am in no doubt it is a coup – in Bolivia, we need a new
Assange who will bring out the relevant secret documents. What we can see now
is that Morales, Linera and their followers were such a thorn in the flesh of
the liberal establishment precisely because they succeeded: for over a decade
radical Left was in power and Bolivia did not turn into Cuba or Venezuela.
Democratic socialism is possible.
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