Yep, you’ve likely guessed by the title that the author’s Pepé Escobar, and whoo-eee, he’s on fire with indignant condemnation of the most recent soft-coup in the global south, this one of course, aimed at the ‘easiest target’ of the BRICS nations. Please let me just paste in some of; weekends are crazy with chores here, and you can read the rest if you’ve a mind to (I’m betting you will).
“Forget about hanging chads, as in Florida 2000. This is a day that will live in infamy all across the Global South – when what was one of its most dynamic democracies veered into a plutocratic regime, under a flimsy parliamentary/judicial veneer, with legal and constitutional guarantees now at the mercy of lowly comprador elites.
After the proverbial marathon, the Brazilian Senate voted 55-22 to put President Dilma Rousseff on trial for “crimes of responsibility” – related to alleged window dressing of the government’s budget.
This is the culmination of a drawn-out process that started even before Rousseff won re-election in late 2014 with over 54 million votes. I have described the bunch of perpetrators of what Brazilian creativity has termed ‘golpeachment’ (a mix of coup – “golpe” in Portuguese – and impeachment) as Hybrid War hyenas.
Sophisticated golpeachment – supported by what amounts to an Electoral Inquisition College – has propelled Hybrid War to whole new levels.
Hybrid War as applied to Brazil exhibited classic elements of a color revolution. Of course there was no need for no-fly zones or humanitarian imperialism to “protect human rights” – not to mention provoking a civil war. But considering the high resistance level of the victim state, where civil society is very dynamic, Hybrid War designers in this case bet on a mix of capitulation – and betrayal – of local elites, mixed with “peaceful protests” and a relentless mainstream media campaign. Call it ‘Civil War Light.’
That carried with it a fabulous cost-benefit ratio. Now the (immensely corrupt) Brazilian political system and the current executive/legislative/judiciary/mainstream media alignment can be used by the usual suspects for their geopolitical agenda.
Welcome to regime change light – politics, in a nutshell – as war by other means on the BRICS. A new software, a new operating system. Carrying a pathetic corollary; if the US is the Empire of Chaos, Brazil has now gloriously reached the status of Sub-Empire of Scoundrels.”
Next comes his section on: Scoundrels galore, and oh, yes they are. Followed by Meet the three Banana Republic amigos (Brutus 1 (Temer), Brutus 2 (Brazil’s number one crook, former speaker of the lower house Eduardo Cunha, facing charges of bribery and perjury, holder of illegal Swiss accounts, and now finally sidelined by the Supreme Court), Calheiros (the president of the Senate – who oversaw today’s impeachment vote – is the target of no fewer than nine separate money laundering/corruption Car Wash lines of investigation, plus another two criminal probes). He finishes with ‘All hail the neoliberal restoration’, as in: Wall Street, London, and a neoliberal feast. (again, more here)
From telesurenglish, ‘In Just One Day, Brazil’s Post-Coup President Sent the Country Back Decades’, Michel Temer has waged an all out attack on the country’s most progressive social and political achievements.
Key Ministries Eliminated
“Temer reduced the size of the cabinet to only 22 ministries, ostensibly in the name of austrity (sic). However, his choice of what ministries to cut or to fold into other ministries is telling of the interim president’s right-wing priorities.
- The Ministry of Culture has been eliminated
- The Ministry of Agrarian Development has been eliminated
- The Ministry of Science and Technology has been eliminated (it is now part of a much larger dysfunctional ministry, together with telecommunications)
- The Ministry of Women has been eliminated
- The Ministry of Racial Equality has been eliminated
- The Ministry of Human Rights has been eliminated
The Comptroller General, which once enjoyed independent status, has now become the Ministry of Supervision, Transparency and Control, which could affect its ability to investigate alleged corruption.
Questionable Choices for Ministers
The new minister of justice, Alexandre de Moraes, is a person well-known to social movements in the state of Sao Paulo. He previously served as secretary for security for the right-wing government of the state and in that capacity oversaw several brutal crackdowns on social protest, including an incident on Jan. 13, 2016, that was widely condemned for its excessive use of police force.
Furthermore, O Estado de S. Paulo said de Moraes served as a lawyer for Transcooper, a company accused of running a money laundering operation on behalf of PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital), the largest criminal organization in Brazil.
Other ministries are now being led by right-wing politicians such as Jose Sarney, who lost the presidential election to Rousseff in 2010.
The seven ministers facing corruption allegations also now enjoy a form of immunity, as only the Supreme Court can try them if they are sitting government ministers. When Rousseff attempted to appoint her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to the post of cabinet chief, she was accused of trying to shelter him from criminal charges and he was ultimately not allowed to assume the post.”
‘Brazil Coup: The First of Many Blows Against the People’; ‘Dilma is gone and it is very unlikely that she will ever return to power. The question that everybody is asking now is: what is going to happen to Brazil in the near future?’ by: João Feres Júnior, (I haven’t read it yet, but it includes several short videos.)
I know the Intercept’s done a number of articles/exposés on Dilma’s ‘impeachment’, but as I’m rather Intercept-averse, I’m sure you can google or duck, duck, go them on your own. ;-)
Dunno if there’s really any there here, but FWIW:
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
adios BRICS? supposedly Mr. Pay Pal intervened in the India election to get the fascist Modi into office so Modi would pry open india’s digital commerce to foreign investment & actors. and side w/the US against China. but they haven’t left BRICS…
now Brazil. i forget the guy in S Africa, but he’s a gigantic neo-lib turd too isn’t he? so you’ve got shills &, per wikileaks, foreign intelligence assets in 3 of the 5 BRICS countries. coincidence that war is in the works against R & C?
ooof; if i’d known that about Sir Odyous and modi, i’d forgotten. but i do remember his micro-loan philanthropy in india was said to have caused many borrowers to commit hara kiri. but oh, my, i peeked at his account, and so many noble-sounding ventures! i almost wished i hadn’t clicked into the #NSVFSummit account, full of friendly charter educators including the zuckerbergs, roland whazzit, arne duncan, google glasses (srsly), TFA, and fuck them on the ‘discipline’ discussions.
when i get my wits about me (ho, ha ha) i’ll fetch a diary from NC about the major innovations hedge funders are making to get into the charter school bidness. 2L2R for real, but ya get the git even scanning. last frontier for pillage, and all that rot.
oh, my, they are all so high on themselves: education reform triumphalists! even a few Negroes there for verisimilitude.
but yes, komprador zuma, for cryin’ in a bucket.
on edit, wits or no: ‘Democrat Hedge Fund Investors Underwrite Political Networks to Privatize K-12 Public Education’
doggone it; i don’t seem to be able to stick to the subject. sorry. what was the subject again?
it was disgusting to read so many ngo types praising the micro-loan program in india and elsewhere. I didn’t realize P.O. had his filthy fingers in that one too. it’s all related. multi-front operation to dominate the globe.
apparently not long after mark ames’ hit piece (yeah, some called it yellow journalism, mebbe so)…pierre took it off his whatever-page. i forget what it’s called. ‘ philanthropic investment’, mebbe? but dangit, as far as the public knows, thee are The Good Guys. look at them all congratulate each other for being on the A Team, fighting poverty in africa, equal-education eradicating poverty, yada yada. i swear they believe their own branding.
oh: the subject was ‘dilma’s gone, wth?’
i saw at RT a few statements from mark weisbrot of cepr, one of the actual good guy analysts and reporters of the various Imperial coups in the global south. especially VZ. i’d forgotten to add his: ‘Washington’s Dog-Whistle Diplomacy Supports Attempted Coup in Brazil’ as in, and echoing escobar:
““The day after the impeachment vote in the lower house of Brazil’s congress, one of the leaders of the effort, Senator Aloysio Nunes, traveled to Washington, D.C. He had scheduled meetings with a number of U.S. officials, including Thomas Shannon at the State Department.
Shannon has a relatively low profile in the media, but he is the number three official in the U.S. State Department. Even more significantly in this case, he is the most influential person in the State Department on U.S. policy in Latin America. He will be the one recommending to Secretary of State John Kerry what the U.S. should do as the ongoing efforts to remove President Dilma Rousseff proceed.
Shannon’s willingness to meet with Nunes just days after the impeachment vote sends a powerful signal that Washington is on board with the opposition in this venture. How do we know this? Very simply, Shannon did not have to have this meeting. If he wanted to show that Washington was neutral in this fierce and deeply polarizing political conflict, he would not have a meeting with high-profile protagonists on either side, especially at this particular moment.” and so on…
interesting…RT also reporting “thousands” protesting the new regime.
Well done. It helped me catch up and pass Pepe’s analysis to my FB friends.
good-o, amigo. pepé was on fire, but wrote in such an organized fashion, as well. i loved the chapter headings. cool you have facebook friends who will like his report. it did pretty much accord with mark weisbrot’s analysis, but was was way more fun to read.
‘what next?’ will be mighty interesting. the scribes to the western hegemon have been trying not to be giddy at her ousting. thought i’d check telesur as i was writing this, and yeppers, guaranteed to piss off the empire:
‘Russia Offers a Hand to Latin American States Under US Attack; “Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela are only the most obvious examples,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Serguei Ryabkov Monday.”
They don’t necessarily like it, but they are given the opportunity and context to read it–Pepe’s home country and all.
good on you for offering it, then. exposure to alternative views is rather rare, i’ve found, monitoring the plethora of msm sources at a couple ‘liberal’ websites.
on-line, NYT has been positively gloating for two days about all the babies dying in Venezuelan hospitals. no doubt chavez will rise from the dead to toss some babies out of incubators & give some (generic-brand, natch) viagra to his rape brigades.
zombie chavez: i like it. but this will do for now, eh? from yesterday:
“Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday told a crowd of supporters that in order to increase productivity and help alleviate basic products scarcity al businesses and factories closed down by their owners would be given to the workers so production could be restarted.
“A stopped factory (is) a factory turned over to the people, the moment to do it has come, I’m ready to do it to radicalize the Revolution,” said Maduro.
Maduro has accused the factory owners of deliberately sabotaging production in order to cause harm to the government.” (more here) ;-)
that is really awesome.
tempting to go w/ comrade axe’s HA HA HA, but instead i’ll go with: Lord luv a duck; gimme my soma as an antidote to epic cynicism.
“Documents leaked by whistle-blower Edward Snowden show the United States was training spies to influence events in the Americas.
The latest batch of National Security Agency documents revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden on Monday show that the NSA offered tailored training to staff on national security issues in Latin America in an effort to steer the region toward U.S. interests.
RELATED: New Snowden Leak Reveals Key NSA Role in Guantanamo Torture
A June 2003 edition of the SIDtoday newsletter, an internal publication run by the Signals Intelligence Directorate, the electronic eavesdropping division that The Intercept describes as “arguably the NSA’s most important,” announced a training opportunity for NSA staffers on Latin American strategic intelligence issues.”, yada, yada, telesur english
day late, three dollahs short? so important but…3 years later? okey-dokey. the world won’t care, amirite? but there’s a new snowden movie comin’ out soon. drip, drip….
but chelsea, bless her heart: