Monday, February 10, 2020
Argentina won't repay IMF debt till recession over, VP Fernandez says
Reuters. February 9, 2020
HAVANA (Reuters) - Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said on Saturday that the government will not pay “even half a cent” of its debt back to the International Monetary Fund before the country has exited recession.
“The first thing we have to do in order to be able to pay is to exit the recession,” Fernandez de Kirchner said at a presentation of her book “Sinceramente” (Sincerely) at Havana’s international book fair.
“If there is a recession no-one will pay even half a cent and the way you exit recession is through a lot of state investment.”
Argentina needs to restructure $100 billion in sovereign debt with creditors, including part of a $57 billion credit facility that the IMF extended the country in 2018.
Dealings with the IMF are key as Argentina hopes to avoid a default amid a currency crash, steep inflation and a contracting economy. An IMF technical mission is expected in Buenos Aires next week to discuss obligations owed to the fund.
Fernandez de Kirchner said Argentina should get a “substantial haircut” on its IMF debt.
A leftist and militant Peronist, she has traveled frequently to Communist-run Cuba over the past year to visit her daughter Florencia Kirchner who is undergoing medical treatment there.
Her book presentation was attended by Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and a raft of other officials.
The Argentine ex-president launched Sincerely, a compilation of personal anecdotes and reflections, in Argentina last year.
His master's voice? Jair Bolsonaro posts video of himself watching Trump rant
Tom Phillips. The Guardian. February 8, 2020
But in recent weeks Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has taken his fixation with the US leader to new heights, livestreaming himself on Facebook as he watched his political idol in action.
The latest such appearance came on Thursday as Trump celebrated his acquittal by the Senate in his impeachment trial with a vitriolic and vulgar address to the nation.
More than 4,000 miles to the south, at the heart of Brazil’s very own political swamp, Bolsonaro sat down to watch – filming himself viewing Trump’s entire hour-long address and offering the occasional aside to the camera, hailing his North American hero or berating foes in politics and the press.
“We’re not the only ones with backstabbers in politics,” Bolsonaro sniped of Mitt Romney’s decision to vote against Trump in the impeachment trial. “They’ve found a Republican rat too.”
Critics have derided Bolsonaro’s Trumpian transmissions – the latest of which lasted 73 minutes – as an obsequious waste of presidential time.
“It’s pitiful,” complained Lobão, a Brazilian rock star who voted for Bolsonaro in 2018 but has since become one of his harshest critics.
Lobão said he was perplexed by Bolsonaro’s “amorous incontinence” towards Trump. How, the musician wondered, could Brazil’s president express such “snivelling, doormat like adoration” of a US leader while simultaneously being a hardline nationalist?
The leftwing senator Humberto Costa warned Brazilians would pay a high price for Bolsonaro’s fandom. “It’s not enough to be a doormat. One must show oneself to be a doormat,” Costa tweeted.
But Brian Winter, the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, saw method in what many call kowtowing.
“I actually think this is serious and effective political messaging. Listening to Trump sends a strong symbolic message to Bolsonaro’s base that he is also leading the country away from socialism.
“A lot of Brazilians look at it and see boot-licking and betrayal of national sovereignty. But at least a third of the country looks at it and understands what he means and is pretty happy with it,” Winter added.
“In the minds of Bolsonaro followers, the US means capitalism, prosperity and public safety – the ability to have a gun, a growing economy. I think it’s really effective with his base.”
In Thursday’s broadcast, Bolsonaro berated those who accuse him of brown-nosing.
“Some people criticize me: ‘Look at him, licking Trump’s boots,’” he said, adding: “Look, you idiot, when they were sucking up to Maduro, Chávez and Fidel Castro you didn’t say anything, did you?
“I’m not worried about this,” the rightwing populist added. “If people want to criticize, that’s their right. But make it thoughtful, constructive criticism. Don’t just try to do the US president and me down.”
Winter said many senior military figures were uncomfortable with Bolsonaro’s courtship of Trump.
“I know for a fact the armed forces don’t like this symbolism because they are loyal to Brazil first, and Bolsonaro second. I’ve spoken with many generals who hate the fact that he’s out there saluting the American flag.”
But Winter suspected the live streams – which many believe are the brainchild of Bolsonaro’s politician son Eduardo, Steve Bannon’s representative in South America – would continue and that Trump would approve.
“I know … from people in the administration that Trump loves having an acolyte in any part of the world – but especially in a large, relevant country like Brazil. It appeals to his ego – and we know how important that is.”
Hitman linked to Marielle Franco's murder killed by police
Dom Phillips and Sam Cowie. The Guardian. February 9, 2020
Friends and relatives of the murdered Brazilian politician Marielle Franco are demanding answers after Adriano da Nóbrega – a notorious hitman, whose gang of contract killers is suspected of involvement in her assassination – was gunned down by police in the north-east of the country.
Nóbrega, an ex-special forces police captain, also had close links to the family of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. Nóbrega was killed by police on Sunday in Bahia state where he had been on the run.
“Who gained from the death of ex-special forces captain Adriano Nóbrega,” tweeted Franco’s widow, Monica Benicio.
Franco’s leftist PSOL party said Nóbrega was a “key piece” in discovering who ordered Franco’s killing and called for a full investigation. “Witness elimination? Another attempt at obstruction of justice? Who ordered our companion killed? We demand answers,” tweeted Sâmia Bonfim, a PSOL congresswoman.
Police insisted that was not the case, claiming Nóbrega had opened fire on officers when they attempted to apprehend him in Esplanada – a small town 1,700km north of Rio.
Maurício Teles Barbosa, the security chief in Bahia state, said: “We attempted to carry out the arrest but the target preferred to respond by shooting.”
Nóbrega was hiding in a country property owned by a local councillor for the PSL party for which Bolsonaro was elected, but has since left. Gilsinho de Dedé told the G1 news site he had no idea Nóbrega was hiding there, had never met him, and suspected the fugitive had broken in.
Franco was killed in March 2018 and paramilitary gangs – mafias made up of serving and former police officers who control vast swathes of Rio state – are widely believed to have been involved in her murder.
Two former police officers are imprisoned, accused of killing her but deny the accusations. The suspected shooter, Ronny Lessa, lived in the same Rio condominium as Bolsonaro and his son Carlos – both have denied the accusations. Lessa had allegedly been a member of Nóbrega’s gang, called the Crime Bureau. As well as contract killings, it ran construction rackets in west Rio.
“The question we have to ask is: in whose interest does it serve that Adriano has been killed?” said José Alves, a professor of social science at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro who has studied the state’s paramilitary gangs. “He could have taken the investigation of the death of Marielle to a new level.”
Marcelo Friexo, a leftist congressman who was very close to Franco, said: “Adriano was a very violent person and it is possible he did not want to give himself up alive, just as it is also possible he was executed… He had a lot of involvement with the Bolsonaro family.”
Nóbrega, his wife and his mother are named in a criminal investigation into allegations of embezzlement, money laundering and racketeering involving Bolsonaro’s son Flávio, ex-police officer Fabrício Queiroz and others. Nóbrega and Queiroz had previously served in the same police battalion.
Prosecutors believe that Queiroz collected some of the salaries of staff employed in Flávio Bolsonaro’s cabinet when he was a representative at Rio’s state legislature and paid the money back to him which he laundered through a chocolate shop and properties.
Flávio Bolsonaro and Queiroz have denied the allegations. “I always did everything correctly within the law,” Flávio said in December, arguing he is being persecuted. In written testimony last year, Queiroz said he chose cabinet aides and “managed” their salaries to “intensify political performance” without telling his superiors, the O Globo newspaper reported.
Nóbrega’s wife, Danielle Costa, and mother, Raimunda Magalhães, were both employed in Flávio Bolsonaro’s office. Prosecutors described them as “‘ghost employees’… who transferred resources back to the operator Fabrício Queiroz.” Nóbrega “was also benefited by some of the resources,” prosecutors said in court documents seen by the Guardian.
In December a Rio court authorised searches of properties – including the chocolate shop. But this month, a separate investigation by federal police concluded there was no evidence of money laundering in Flávio Bolsonaro’s property deals.
As a state deputy, the president’s son was instrumental in Nóbrega being given a medal by the assembly while he was imprisoned under suspicion of homicide. Nóbrega was later cleared.
The Myth Of Incompetence: DNC Scandals Are A Feature, Not A Bug
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/02/06/the-myth-of-incompetence-dnc-scandals-are-a-feature-not-a-bug/
The system for Democratic Party elites isn’t broken, says Caitlin Johnstone. It’s working exactly the way it’s intended to work. It ain’t a bug, it’s a feature.
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
The Iowa caucus scandal has continued to get more egregious by the hour, with new revelations routinely pouring in about extremely suspicious manipulations taking place which all just so happen to disadvantage the campaign of Bernie Sanders in the first Democratic electoral contest of 2020. By the time you read this article, there will likely have been more.Following the failure of an extremely shady app developed by vocally anti-Sanders establishment insiders which reportedly was literally altering vote count numbers after they were entered, Black Hawk County supervisor Chris Schwartz shared the election results in his county on Facebook so the public could have some idea of what’s going on as the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) slowly trickles out the results of the caucuses.
Sanders supporters quickly highlighted the fact that the IDP’s reported numbers for Black Hawk County were wildly different from those reported by Schwartz, with votes taken from Sanders and given to minor fringe candidates Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer. The IDP then announced that it would be making “a minor correction to the last batch of results”, which just so happened to be in Black Hawk County and just so happened to give Sanders back some votes (but still remains different from that reported by Schwartz).
It’s probable that this only happened as a result of one Black Hawk County supervisor taking to social media to report the vote tallies for this one particular county. What about all the Iowa locations where this did not happen and local Democratic Party officials didn’t report their numbers on social media? Does anyone actually believe that the one instance where the IDP got caught is the one instance in which such vote tampering occurred?
That would be a very silly belief to hold, in my opinion. It would be like a store clerk discovering that a can of beans is completely rotten, then going ahead and putting the rest of the pallet on the shelf under the assumption that the other cans are fine.
Another of the countless revelations hemorrhaging from this fustercluck is a report from CNN and The New York Post that the DNC, not the IDP, is “running the show” in managing the Iowa caucus scandal. This means that this Democratic presidential primary scandal is being managed by the same committee which orchestrated the last Democratic presidential primary scandal, and that the campaign being victimized by this scandal, that of Bernie Sanders, is the same in both cases.
This would be the same DNC whose chairperson, Tom Perez, recently stacked its nominating committee with dozens of odious alt-centrist establishment insiders who are ideologically opposed to Sanders in every meaningful way.
“Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez has nominated dozens of lobbyists, corporate consultants, think tank board members, and former officials linked to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton to serve on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) nominating committee this July,” Kevin Gosztola reported for Grayzone last month. “Many of Perez’s nominees are vocal opponents of Senator Bernie Sanders and spoke out against his campaign when he challenged Hillary Clinton for the nomination in 2016.”
As these scandalous revelations continue to emerge I don’t see anyone online expressing surprise that the Democratic establishment is once again stacking the deck against Sanders, but I do see some people expressing surprise that they are being so brazen about it. Which is perfectly understandable; if this party wants to screw over progressive voters, you’d expect that they’d at least try to hide it a little bit so they don’t alienate their progressive base before November.
The flaw in this expectation is its premise that Democratic Party elites care if their party wins in November. They do not.
Put yourself in the shoes of one of the leading movers and shakers within the Democratic Party for a minute. Pretend you’re getting a nice paycheck, pretend you’re getting great healthcare benefits, pretend you get plenty of prestige and exclusive access and invitations to classy parties. And pretend you’re the type of person who’s willing to manipulate and deceive and kiss up and kick down and do whatever it takes to get to the top of such a structure.
Now ask yourself, if you were such a person in such a situation, would you care if voters pick Donald Trump or Pete Buttigeig in November? Would it affect your cushy lifestyle in any way whatsoever? Would you lose your job, your prestige or your influence? No party elites lost those things in 2016. Why would you expect this time to be any different?
But you might be at risk of losing your cushy lifestyle if a forcefully anti-elitist progressive movement gets off the ground and takes control of your party. So you’d stand everything to gain by doing everything you can to prevent that from happening, and, because you don’t care if Trump gets re-elected, you’d stand absolutely nothing to lose.
These people do not care if Trump gets re-elected, because they lose nothing if he does. The only people who stand anything to lose are the ordinary citizens who are suffering under a corrupt status quo of soul-crushing neoliberalism and increasing authoritarianism, many of whom currently support Sanders. Democratic Party elites are perfectly happy to keep shrieking about Russia for another four years while making sure that the status quo which rewards their manipulative behavior remains intact, and ensuring that they never wind up like those poor suckers out there who are suffering from poverty and lack of healthcare.
And everything I just said is equally true of the media class who are currently working in conjunction with the DNC’s shenanigans to spin Buttigeig as the clear winner of the party’s first presidential electoral contest. They enjoy all the same perks, and move in many of the same circles, as Democratic Party elites, and it’s all conditioned on their protection of the status quo.
I keep seeing the word “incompetence” thrown around. “Gosh these Democratic Party leaders are so incompetent!”, they say. “How can anyone be so bad at their job?”
Well, they are not bad at their job. They are very, very good at their job. It’s just that their job isn’t what most people assume it is.
Their job is not to win elections and garner public support, their job is to ensure the perpetuation of the status quo which rewards them so handsomely for their malignant behavior. Toward this end they are not incompetent at all. They know exactly what they’re doing, and they’re doing it well.
They are extremely competent. Depraved, certainly. Sociopathic, possibly. But not incompetent.
They’re happy to make their nefariousness look like incompetence though, whenever they can get away with it. Any manipulator worth their salt always will be. If they can make their planned, deliberate acts of sabotage look like innocent little oopsies, they’ll gladly do so. But you learn in life that whenever you see someone making a lot of “mistakes” which just so happen to benefit them every time, you’re dealing with manipulation, not incompetence.
What do the bad guys say in the movies when they order someone’s murder? They say “Make it look like an accident.” If it’s an accident you’ve got no trouble. You won’t be seen for what you are.
But of course it’s no accident, and anyone with clear eyes and good intentions sees this. If you see someone working hard to make you believe that it’s incompetence, you are dealing with someone who is invested in maintaining the status quo in some way. You are being manipulated.
The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly the way it’s intended to work. It ain’t a bug, it’s a feature. And that feature will remain in operation until the entire sick system is torn down and replaced with something healthy.
German TV Exposes the Lies That Entrapped Julian Assange
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/02/06/ray-mcgovern-german-tv-exposes-the-lies-that-entrapped-julian-assange/
A major German TV network has aired an interview with the UN rapporteur on torture that reveals the invention of the Swedish “rape” case against Julian Assange.
By Ray McGovern
Special to Consortium News
Truth has broken through for those confused about how a publisher ended up in a maximum security prison in London with a one-way extradition ticket to court in the U.S. and the rest of his life behind bars.One of the main German TV channels (ZDF) ran two prime-time segments on Wednesday night exposing authorities in Sweden for having “made up” the story about Julian Assange being a rapist.
Until last night most Germans, as well as other consumers of “major media” in Europe, had no idea of the trickery that enmeshed Assange in a spider-web almost certainly designed by the U.S. and woven by accomplices in vassal states like Sweden, Britain and, eventually, Ecuador.
ZDF punctured that web by interviewing UN Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer. One ZDF “Heute Sendung” segment (in German) is especially telling from minute 13:00 to 15:30 . The second is ZDF “Heute Journal” (minute 25:49 to 30:19.)
Both ZDF programs show Melzer being interviewed, with minimal interruption or commentary, letting his findings speak for themselves about how allegations against Assange were “made up” and manipulated to hold him captive.
The particularly scurrilous allegation that led many, including initially Melzer, to believe Assange was a rapist — a tried and tested smear technique of covert action — was especially effective. The Swedes never formally charged him with rape — or with any crime, for that matter. ZDF exhibited some of the documents Melzer uncovered that show the sexual allegations were just as “invented” as the evidence for WMD before the attack on Iraq.
Melzer had previously admitted to having been so misled by media portrayals of Assange that he was initially reluctant to investigate Assange’s case. Here is what Melzer wrote last year in an op-ed marking the International Day in Support of Torture Victims, June 26.
No major media would print or post it. Medium.com posted it under the title “Demasking the Torture of Julian Assange.”
Excerpts:
“But surely, I found myself pleading, Assange must be a selfish narcissist, skateboarding through the Ecuadorian Embassy and smearing feces on the walls? Well, all I heard from Embassy staff is that the inevitable inconveniences of his accommodation at their offices were handled with mutual respect and consideration.
This changed only after the election of President Moreno, when they were suddenly instructed to find smears against Assange and, when they didn’t, they were soon replaced. The President even took it upon himself to bless the world with his gossip, and to personally strip Assange of his asylum and citizenship without any due process of law.
In the end it finally dawned on me that I had been blinded by propaganda, and that Assange had been systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed.” (Emphasis added.)
Melzer ended his op-ed with this somber warning:
“… This is not only about protecting Assange, but about preventing a precedent likely to seal the fate of Western democracy. For once telling the truth has become a crime, while the powerful enjoy impunity, it will be too late to correct the course. We will have surrendered our voice to censorship and our fate to unrestrained tyranny.” (Emphasis added.)
Melzer’s indefatigable efforts to expose what Assange has gone through, including “psychological torture,” met with some modest success in the days before the German ZDF aired their stories. Embedded in the linked article is by far the best interview of Melzer on Assange.
Opposition to extraditing Assange to the U.S. is becoming more widespread. Another straw in an Assange-favorable wind came last week when the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) called for Assange’s immediate release, ending years of silence by such European institutions.
It remains, nonetheless, an uphill struggle to prompt the British to think back 800 years to the courage of the nobles who wrested the Magna Carta from King John.
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