Brazil - have you been there?

Yup, Brazil is big.

It's not much like America.

If you seek out some of the weirder concoctions, e.g. pau do Indio [Indian's dick], you can get smashed for next to nothing.

That fuel thing - cars over there run on alcohol, which, as Tracer says, gives the air a really cloying feel.

Street crime is an absolute pain in the arse. I got mugged three times when I was over there, and it does colour your view of what is essentially a wonderful country.

i am even envious of people who have been to the restaurant of the same name on Oxford St

I suspect its quite americanized, in a sense that it would've absorbed US culture through its proximity to it but also its a young country, in a way that the US is. The point abt violence is something that prob repeats itself in other cities that have these very pronounced contrasts such as johannesburg (that's what i get from reading abt it, never been there). Its very obvious what the areas to avoid at all costs are (or the ones where you just drive by and not walk) if you live there long enough but naturally not so if you're a tourist. but this could apply to certain US cities, i dunno...

The soaps are great, btw: they last 9 months each and there's 3 of them broadcast one after the other -1 episode broadcast every working day, lasting an hour each - the beeb wouldn't get away with that...all of them are like a very big movie, and it all ends happily in the end. The concept of growing with a set of characters like you have here was a bit alien to me at first. also, unlike the US, many of these actors will star in Brazilian movies too.

I guess you might try cachaca , its the drink made from sugar cane (if i'm not wrong, its sold in europe as caiprinha, I'm sure you know but its my only drink related bit of knowledge you see!).

this should be some music stuff here...I think david tudor and john cage played a show in the late 60s and its prob the inspiration for tudor's 'rainforest' piece. not sure abt nam june paik tho'.

Violence: being mugged is a terrible downer, but it's not as bad as being beaten up, which is always a possibility on a drunken Friday night in England. I was mugged over there 3 times, as I said above, but was never harmed. The muggers want your watch and that's it.

But that really is the only downer of living in Brazil.

On the positive side, there's music, football, beaches, climate, lively / lovely people etc etc

The soaps are indeed extraordinary. I heard a stat when i was over there that the highest ever TV audience figure was for the final episode of a soap and not for a football match, which I find incredible.

Waxyjax, I'd say give yourself time in SP and Rio and don't spread yourself too thin. Foz do Iguacu is a fair distance from SP and Rio. An alternative would be a tour of the Northeast, including Salvador and Recife, which are sizzlingly exciting.

The airlines all do airpasses - flat fee for five internal flights - which works out incredibly cheap given the distances involved.

Brazil didn't feel it was too Americanised to me. It's a fascinating culture, half Western, half something else altogether. Food and beer are dirt cheap. All in all, my experiences of Brazil have been nothing less than fantastic.

Well, I am next month. What should I do? Where should I go? I've got about 10 days and am thinking about just slowly taking in Rio, but if there's one day (or two day) trip I should make, what should it be?

when i was eleven i thought it was awesome, it could possibly be a bit "touristy" but i don't know because i didn't notice things like that at that age, i just remember the waves being the biggest i'd ever seen, and green lush little inlets and etc

http://www.welcomeargentina.com/paseos/cataratas_iguazu/4.jpg

I'll be back by 4/15.

Not always. My uncle's colleague was robbed then beaten severely. Right on Ipanema Beach.

Spencer, make sure you try Acai but served really cold with crushed ice and granola. You'll need it to keep you going all day and all night.

I recommend a juice bar (you find them on evry corner) called Baby Lanches, but I can't remember the exact address. Its like 3 minutes from the beachfront and on a road off Rua Domingos Ferreira which is in Copacabana.

have fun, spencer!!!!

a 20 minutes walk is not far!

www.discoteca-help.com

note: i haven't actually been there or to even rio myself, but i hear it's way on the mark if you wanna like bargain and pick up a mulatta cutie for under 60 euros. why the f do i know this?

is what i meant to say

http://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/Canon-S400-190.jpg

http://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/Canon-S400-192.jpg

http://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/Canon-S400-196.jpg

it was really hot (I was happy on the inside)
http://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/Canon-S400-204.jpg

inside the Niemeyer Museum again
http://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/Canon-S400-225.jpg

from Sugar Loaf
http://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/Canon-S400-241.jpg

Jesus is coming
ihttp://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/Canon-S400-247.jpg

http://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/Canon-S400-249.jpg

With sometime ilxor Jacky and Brazilian friends at a penthouse in Leblon
http://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/crewatizzes.jpg

http://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/Canon-S400-207.jpg

http://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/Canon-S400-214.jpg

Mr. Catra!!!
ihttp://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/Canon-S400-217.jpg

#177 just amazes me.

The one that's my "favorite" is from the tram leading to Sugar Loaf. It was shrouded in cloud and it of course seemed heavenly - especially because once there, you were actually above the cloud and could still look down from it!

Ipanema
http://www.favelabreaks.com/fpics2005/images/image04.jpg

http://www.favelabreaks.com/fpics2005/images/image15.jpg

http://www.favelabreaks.com/fpics2005/images/image24.jpg

http://www.favelabreaks.com/fpics2005/images/image29.jpg

http://www.favelabreaks.com/fpics2005/images/image27.jpg

http://www.favelabreaks.com/fpics2005/images/image43.jpg

http://www.favelabreaks.com/fpics2005/images/image44.jpg

tips for Brazil: where to stay, where to go, what to avoid, etc...

http://www.rotovibe.com/images/rio/Canon-S400-221.jpg

check out diplo's new site http://www.formdiplo.com
there's a pics page which has some video and photos from the favela party we went to. check out the guy with the bleached hair in pic #11--that same guy was gyrating his firm booty right in my crotch later that night...i totally got a boner from that. then i attempted to have a conversation in portugese with him--cross cultural hilarity ensued.

Bruce Sterling on Brazil

Similarly in Brazil President Lula da Silva who this year completes the fourth year of his second mandate and will be leaving office next January first 2011, has an approval rating of 81%, according to the latest release from consultants Sensus. (((That is a crazily high rating for a guy in power eight years, but then again, Lula did transform his rambling wreck of a country into a global major power.)))

“The popularity of the president and his government continues strong and rising because of the good numbers of the economy, the positive results of social policies and the high employment index”, according to Ricardo Guedes, head of Census. (((It probably helped that Lula didn’t brusquely round up any Tropicalista pop stars or chase them off to London, but, rather, made the cool people into major political figures.)))

(((More. Lula’s opposition: “Yeah, okay, things are going great around here, but it was all the doing of us eight years ago, actually”)))

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8451472.stm

(…)

Brazil’s profile has never been higher on the international stage where some say it appears no world summit on key issues such as climate change or energy is complete without President Lula.

The country has also secured the rights to stage both the Olympics and the World Cup in the near future, putting it in the limelight as never before.
Marta Suplicy, the former tourism minister in the Lula government and ex-Mayor of Sao Paulo, is clear about his achievements.

“Besides the minimum wage increases, the 12 million new jobs, and inflation controlled, I would say self-esteem,” she told BBC News.

“Twenty one million Brazilians getting out of poverty is something. People being able to eat much better, to live in better conditions and have hope.
“I would say one of the most important things is the hope and self-esteem that President Lula brought to the Brazilian people.”

(((I dunno why people would think that a national government ought to do something helpful about the daily lives of the majority demographic within its borders. What is the point of all that? Was there no one else to be helped? What about the suffering bankers, the beleaguered oil companies, the needy defense contractors, and the free speech rights of major multinational corporations? We can hope to see Brazil get its priorities in better order in the next administration.)))

Just booked my ticket motherfuckers! Rio carnival!

awesome

http://cdn2.wi.gcs.trstatic.net/AmfgAY3e8ZTee6ys3yT0JIWQUFBqGHVmhMmicf76Y1GxG8waSxBcc_8xRsf7Ou0Icg5rT9cQjUkRUdGZANy3-4nkEFgqpfRsaGpitB3TFwYkZAhsLQJ-Hmy2qNQIKK1J
http://cdn2.wi.gcs.trstatic.net/dX-7h4A2tDcTPCgddOJQ1MdnNUy4E3STGUTqVy_9hn8xZAceSzjeW0mO_GCpuOAEQv6qCErAgh7gpd1Dr72jtw
http://cdn3.wi.gcs.trstatic.net/dX-7h4A2tDcTPCgddOJQ1JvzcpaVqHg-ArXGgNCunGwfeRQiRi88midj4-i1y3ZnivnfAzcRvc7NS3o8dJ8iaQ

I don't want to go do illegal logging in the Amazon in Brazil, I want to go to Rio and to Salvador, Bahia around carnival time and hear samba groups in the streets. But it seems expensive to go at that time of year (February). But can I find lots of samba in like April or May?

Consider contraception during your next visit.

Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage, possibly due to mosquito-borne virus

Brazil is investigating more than more than 2,400 suspected cases of microcephaly and 29 deaths of infants that occurred this year. Last year the country saw only 147 cases of microcephaly.

The situation in Brazil is so overwhelming that Angela Rocha, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist in Pernambuco, one of the hardest hit states, said in an interview with CNN that women may want to hold off on getting pregnant.

Used plenty of bug spray too.

Posted this over on ILM--

Just got back from an incredible trip to Brazil (Rio and Salvador, Bahia). Alas, a connecting flight got cancelled and then our luggage got misplaced on the way there, so We missed a free Romulo Froes gig. But we did hear that MC Joao cut "Baile de favela" everywhere (that Rob mentioned upthread). Mostly a remixed version (the light remix I think its called). Thousands were chanting the words to that in a Carnival bloco parade we attended at Copocabana beach. The song certainly got stuck in our heads.

We saw a late-night Maria Rita gig, a number of bands playing Carnival gigs on various streets, the 2nd night of the Sambadrome event with samba schools composed of 1,000 or so folks, plus the amazing Salvador Campo Grande Carnaval circuit with afro-blocos like Olodum and Ilie Aiye.

― curmudgeon, Saturday, February 13, 2016 5:49 PM (0 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Had great food, saw lots of impressive neighborhoods, and made it to beaches too.

Such a fun holiday/vacation

Loved stumbling onto small mult-culti parade down those steps in Lapa not far from the Santa Teresa neighborhood in Rio. Great Amazonian influenced meal in Santa Teresa, with a dj there playing classic samba and bossa nova. Massive outdoor Carnival event in Lapa was great too.

The Pelourinho area in Salvador may be aimed at tourists but its still a great place to go. On a street where afro-blocos like Ile Aiye and Dido and Muzuenza (sp?) have headquarters, we came across a great band and its bloco followers dancing and hanging out (a day after Carnival). The Afro Bahia Museum there though could use an infusion of funds.

Briefly spoke with some folks re the fraud investigations but not too much, when I was there.

Here's the W. Post take. Democracy Now has been offering coverage from a more left view

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/how-brazil-the-darling-of-the-developing-world-came-undone/2016/04/14/40ee9356-fab4-11e5-813a-90ab563f0dde_story.html?tid=pm_pop_b

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/18/dilma-rousseff-congress-impeach-brazilian-president

On a dark night, arguably the lowest point was when Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right deputy from Rio de Janeiro, dedicated his yes vote to Carlos Brilhante Ustra, the colonel who headed the Doi-Codi torture unit during the dictatorship era. Rousseff, a former guerrilla, was among those tortured. Bolsonaro’s move prompted left-wing deputy Jean Wyllys to spit towards him.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, his son and also a deputy, used his time at the microphone to honour the general responsible for the military coup in 1964.

Greenwald was on this all weekend, of course

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n08/perry-anderson/crisis-in-brazil

Such a great piece.

Skimmed it and it looks fascinating. Will read it all later. Neither clichéd leftist nor mainstream nor right-wing, it appears

I have been looking for something credible on the current Brazil crisis, sadly that one is pay-walled :(

Solution is buy the LRB :)

I was angling more for "here is paste bank link I have done for you comrade" but never mind :p

Weird - it's not paywalled for me.

Not for me either

I only have the opening paragraph, maybe I have used up all my LRB freebie privileges.

without reading that lrb piece and at the risk of being extremely reductive the current brazil crisis can be boiled down p easily it seems: opposition politicians, the great majority of whom are implicated in corruption, are voting to impeach the president ostensibly for corruption, but really because the pt keeps winning elections and they've had enough of that

Rio all set for the Olympics

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-19/rio-warns-of-fiscal-collapse-as-brazil-states-seek-debt-relief

Bolsonaro just got stabbed.

Not thought to be seriously wounded, afaict.

Wouldn’t put it past him to do a Chen Shui-bian tbh.

Elections this weekend:

https://newsocialist.org.uk/future-brazilian-democracy/

Interesting parallels in the way courts have been used in Brazil and the US to shut down any resistance.

That article is so poorly written it makes a mildly confusing situation almost utterly incomprehensible.

Maybe certain things were lost in translation and granted a couple of the scenarios could be hard to understand - its not a newspaper piece so there is more analysis than usual - but the situation is fairly clear, and I am not that close to the minutiae of Brazilian politics.

Somebody told me it is "just like America". This can't be right.
― just adam (nordicskilla), Monday, March 14, 2005 9:59 PM (thirteen years ago)

They just needed a little help

It was a pleasure to meet STEVE BANNON,strategist in Donald Trump's presidential campaign.We had a great conversation and we share the same worldview.He said be an enthusiast of Bolsonaro's campaign and we are certainly in touch to join forces,especially against cultural marxism. pic.twitter.com/ceHoui6FH5

— Eduardo Bolsonaro 1720 (@BolsonaroSP) August 4, 2018

brazil is the most fucked-up country in the world y/n (see also: india)

i mean i guess it's about to be. when you're not sure whether he destroys civil liberty or the rainforest more quickly then you're kind of worried

hopefully someone doesn't fail next time they come at him /silby

There's a real sense of deja vu looking at my Brazilian friends on FB saying they're in mourning for their country, unfriending friends and family members who voted Bolsonaro, etc.

people are such craven fucking savage morons. you'd have thought they'd have learnt something as children, but no here they are, voting in satan himself, all in the name of their unreconstructed need to see other people dead. fuck this species

What is moronic is to call Brazil or India the most fucked-up country.

There is a 2nd round so Haddad could win that.

What is moronic is to call Brazil or India the most fucked-up country.

― xyzzzz__, Monday, October 8, 2018 11:02 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk, ecological damage x murder rates x rape culture x suicide x political corruption it all kind of points to a perfect storm. what would your suggestion be

US...ah never mind.

Just under 80% turnout and yet Bolsonaro only just missed an outright victory :[

+ of all the countries built on rape, murder and slavery by europeans they've pretty much got the most abominable histories give or take the african west coast. i mean sure the congo/car might be more fucked up on some average-life-of-citizen basis but these are places that have just seen endless, endless evil for centuries anyway this isn't a competition really whatever

This will end well.

America wishes it had India's Supreme Court.

The whole Brazil situation just seems desperately sad, scary and depressing. In a final two run-off you'd normally expect some kind of Macron/Le Pen outcome but 46% of the vote is terrifying.

imago, I'm sure you're doing this with no ill intent, but the very thought exercise of "let's decide what the most fucked up place on earth is" has an unsavoury Mondo Cane exoticism to it, and certainly isn't very helpful at a stage where most of our problems are global in reach.

The whole Brazil situation just seems desperately sad, scary and depressing. In a final two run-off you'd normally expect some kind of Macron/Le Pen outcome but 46% of the vote is terrifying.

Yeah, and Macron had a somewhat successful rebrand on his side, while Haddad is settled with the legacy of the PT*. I can't see this going well.

* obviously I think Macron's rebrand is bullshit and the anti-PT sentiment pretty suspect but that's neither here nor there rn.

yeah no that's fair, i'm just venting, this guy cannot be for real and yet he is

If you had spent time any reading about Latin America or bothered to check any of its literature instead of wanking on about Pynchon you'd know this guy is very much for real and very common.

tbf....i did read 'nazi literature in the americas' recently

but it felt like a fantasy with an only tangential relationship to truth. lol

still great obv

I wonder how much Haddad can take away from Gomes (12.5) and then the others? Need to look at the full breakdown once we have full results

Anecdotally, from the people I’ve discussed it with, there seems to be a complacency that Brazilian social liberalism isn’t under threat - that Bolsonaro’s rise has much more to do with economic stagnation and perceived corruption than a Trump-style culture war, though the view from SP is likely to be different from elsewhere.

It can’t be underestimated how effective the campaign to tarnish first the left and then ‘politicians in general’ has been. It’s also incredibly well-funded and able to successfully astroturf targeted public protests. Tracing where all that money comes from, within Brazil, would be interesting.

I agree that it's to do with economic stagnation and perceived corruption, but surely so is Trump's culture war? Drain the swamp, bring back jobs, etc. It goes hand in hand, Bolsonaro stans argue exclusively by attacking "corruption" and when you bring up the dude's fascist ideas it's either "fake news" or they fess up that they see no problem with that.

"How can he be sexist when he's pushing for chemical castration of rapists?" was one particularly choice tidbit from a recent Bolsonaro FB argument I witnessed.

Still wrapping round my head around the far right party in Brazil being known as the "Social Liberals".

Interesting demographic data that suggests he’s surprisingly popular with the youngest voters as well as the oldest:

I’ve been wondering who the 40 million Brazilians who voted for Bolsonaro yday are, and my mum sent me this polling (link below). There are some demographic trends...

— Yara Rodrigues Fowler 🧜🏼‍♀️ #mariellepresente (@yazzarf) October 8, 2018

I'm with my Brazilian friends against this fucker; they've been in the streets for weeks against this, and now it's happened. but I do wonder what is to be done about Brazilian crime. I passed on an invitation to Salvador last fall because the crime there seemed to be spiking; and sure enough, several people who went ended up getting robbed. when I've been in the SP area it's been taxis everywhere on the advice of locals. there's an air of menace everywhere it seems. How can you live like this? This election is on the surface at least about that, and about the complacency of past politicians in the light of this crime. What is the left going to do about it?

SP isn't particularly dangerous imo if you know which areas to avoid.

It's worth bearing in mind that the police were still killing three or four thousand people a year under Dilma and Lula, that the jails were still overflowing, etc. The number of shootings has gone up since, and will go up further under Bolsonaro, but it's not as though there hasn't always been a heavy-handed, militarised approach to law enforcement. It's just not particularly effective in the context of an extended economic crisis and unbelievable disparity in wealth.

I've spent more time in Campinas than in SP proper, so I trust you there.

I suppose a big enough part of the population isn't ready to deal with inequality, and so they're thinking another round of (unofficial) military rule can safeguard the way things have been, which is better than losing their current status.

Looking at this more widely and beyond the election...obviously its horrible if you are on the Brazilian left but the new socialist article talks about the problems even if you have Haddad winning, and the obstacles he would face from the elites. Lula -- like most Latin American left leaders -- compromised and never really dealt with breaking elite power. The elites themselves are under threat from climate change and ofc the fallout from the financial crash never properly being dealt with.

So while its depressing and divisive I also see opportunities for action and organisation too. It's dangerous, could go either way but whatever happens the days of having dumbos going on about the worst country are surely coming to an end.

"Whatever happens"

Not to worry, dialectical materialism will save the day. It's all just an unpleasant interlude.

I mean it could go both ways, right? At least something is happening! Anything is better than liberal mediocrity!

Pretty much. We'd have time for libs and plenty for sitting on the fence but its a hot autumn we are having.

We'll solve it comrade, just you wait. It'll take a bit of extra bloodshed but it will have been worthwhile. Once we reach the end of history, there will be no more sickness, no more crying, no more poverty, no more death. We will have overcome it all through sheer strength of will. There will be no ghosts left to haunt us, for the Geist will have reached its final destination.

You are catching on, my friend.

Hilarious post pomenitul, as if the left are the only ones that spill blood.

That was obviously, clearly, glaringly implied, wasn't it?

Yeah you were on your libs are best as the world burns routine again. Keep it up.

On the contrary, I was wistfully musing about the utopia that I will unfortunately not come to know in my lifetime but that will no doubt be achieved thanks to our collective efforts as a species. As long as you have faith… (This is totally-not-secularised-monotheism btw).

Just staying true to the Absolute, you know what I mean? All it takes is a bit of patience. The interregnum will go away eventually – it always does.

No but you are clearly having fun with it. And I would never want to stop the fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1rxzFL0dE

Please if this ghoul is winning at least let it be close.

this thread title sounds like the title of some italo disco song

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/28/brazil-election-leftwinger-fernando-haddad-narrows-lead-in-polls-ahead-of-runoff

However, Haddad’s prospects of overhauling Bolsonaro were dented when he failed to win the crucial endorsement of former center-left candidate Ciro Gomes on Saturday.
Gomes, a former governor of the north-east Ceará state, is influential in Brazil’s poorest region. His endorsement could have given Haddad’s Workers party (PT) a big lift in the South American country’s most polarised election in a generation.

what the ever-long fuck is wrong with Brazil's centrists that they can't endorse a center-left candidate over a guy who promises to bring back a fucking murderous dictatorship?

ciro's PDT has longstanding tensions with PT. PDT has a more robustly socialist history and counts with one of the country's few successful openly socialist(ish) politicians in leonel brizola, and they are historically suspicious of PT's more anything-goes, low-brow approach to leftism. ciro wants to secure the anti-PT vote in a potential 2022 election. I think thats delusional.

so, how we ended up electing a guy who publicly shares that his granddad was a nazi soldier and that he would gladly fight in hitler's army himself: it's mostly a libidinal/identity thing. polls have long shown that the armed forces are the most trusted institution among brazilians. we have such a sentimental attachment to the figure of a military strongman candidate that we can just project all we want onto him (effective, strong, incorruptible etc) while ignoring all the facts (he was a lowly officer who was expelled from the army b/c of a failed terrorist plot; he has changed party allegiance around 10 times; has left no substantial legacy during his 27 years in congress).

reminding b voters of his failings and violent statements is missing the point; they dont operate on that kind of logic, it's a kierkegaardian leap of faith, they WANT and NEED him to be the alpha soldier they have dreamed about all their lives. this sort of 'tyrant father' might be *the* master-signifier in the brazilin imaginary, see: our most internally successful cultural product being the movie <i>tropa de elite</i> during which the country fell head over heels in love with ultraviolent cops. there is also the extremely successful anti-corruption operation Lava-Jato being led by the ruthless, handsome judge Moro, who is treated like a god by the media and much of the populace. fitness/sports/fighting subcultures also all vote en masse for bolsonaro (which is a kind of obvious elective affinity, I know, but bolsonaro is actually flabby and skinny-fat)

other things that add to the perfect storm:

identification with his proud whiteness, in a context of generational social chaos/crime/violence which has led to polarization between white/rich and poc/poor sections of society (white poor places also tend to vote for him). he will probably allow our extremely brutal military police to enact de facto genocide on favelados, and most of us will stay silent about it

the widespread hatred of the left which reached a feverish pitch this year (only 39% of the electorate actually votes for bolsonaro, but 50% HATES PT and would not vote for them under any circumstances), this despite the irony that many of these are poor people who enjoyed the benefits of PT's social safety net. the reasons for this are surreal and darkly humorous, including the success of hysterical right-wing memes and fake news spread by right-libertarian outfits like MBL which mimic american channer culture. it's not that "memes caused widespread proto-fascism", it's a bit chicken and egg, but there's a correlation. there is generally, I think, a spiritual affinity between american and brazilian culture, in the sense that both are v mercantilistic, distrustful of any kind of collectivism, and politically subliterate and proud of it

also widespread corruption, anti-establishment feeling etc. but really, I always circle back to our military infatuation. to be essentialist for a bit, it's a very latin thing—I've always said to my friends that the only way for a latin leftist government to secure long-term power is for it to somehow infiltrate the military, which did happen with chavista venezuela. a part of me even thinks that, if we were in bizarroworld and bolsonaro was a tankie communist calling for land reform, we would still vote for him en masse because of his army credentials and manly bravado

long post whoa

Thank you for writing it.

yes, thank you.

Thanks for the analysis, epigone.

excellent.

Yes excellent - although I don't know if that explains Lula and Dilma. I was just recommending Bunuel's El to a friend yesterday when talking about all of this - which gets that masculine Latin American culture just right.

thanks, epigone.

results coming in 2-3 hours, i guess? god, some good news would be nice today.

Since Bolsonaro has openly stated that if he loses in the second round it's voter fraud, I'm worried that even if we get lucky and the fucker doesn't win the fall-out from this will be bloody.

More than 20 Brazilian universities were invaded by the military police in the past 2 days. They confiscated material on the history of fascism, interrupted classes due to 'ideological content', removed anti-fascist banners and posters claiming that it was electoral propaganda. https://t.co/T0KyOhe2Yv

— Rodrigo Castriota (@castriotar) October 26, 2018

fucking hell.

christ, the election was not even close. 55/45 or 56/44.

stay safe our friends in Brasil.

Christ this is depressing.

not surprising at all, but very depressing.

The Nordeste came correct - around 70% for Haddad almost across the board - but it wasn't enough.

I'm reading posts by Brazilian friends on my timeline and tearing up, what a shitty fucking time.

Oh, man.

fucking hell

this will be one of the better assassinations

Ben Fogel interview on Chapo is also a good history lesson on all of this. Nb it’s just a straight interview by amber without the others present so if you don’t normally enjoy the show this one is still easy to listen to.

my landlords run an NGO for street kids in Brazil (where they current live, and how I'm able to live in their house) -- I hope they're going to be ok, some of his comments about "NGOs" (which seems to be a catch-all term for...progressives?) are pretty chilling

this is one of the most frightening angles imho

Brazil has been a world leader in climate change mitigation but this is about to change. Fascism is an immediate threat to nature. Bolsonaro wants to cut down protection of the Amazon rainforest- the lungs of the planet and the most biodiverse place in the world.

— tina⚔️ (@babyvietcong) October 29, 2018

Looks like we’ll broach the era of geoengineering “solutions” even more quickly than I thought.

Bolsonaro is not the "Brazilian Trump". He also has little in common with European right-populists.

Bolsonaro will curb democracy like Putin & Erdogan and unleash the violence of Duterte.

But he is still worse than all of these. Here's why:https://t.co/CFh6TzcjAw

— Alex Hochuli (@Alex__1789) October 28, 2018

Militant activities (think of the FARC in Colombia or Maoist squads in parts of India) will have to be organised. It's pretty much the only thing left. No time to fuck about with a rigged democracy.

Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso who was once jailed by the then military government and later put into exile, wrote an op-ed for the NY Times before the election entitled "Dark Times Are Coming for my Country"

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8481690/caetano-veloso-new-york-times-op-ed

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/opinion/caetano-veloso-brazil-bolsonaro.html

I've followed this pretty casually, but why would a country that was ruled by a military dictatorship for decades democratically elect by a large margin someone who even hinted at a return to that era? Is it mostly an extreme reaction to "corruption" (which, to be fair, was afaict itself pretty extreme in Brazil)?

Sometimes I think that the American political system is even more corrupt than what was going on in Brazil -- we've basically legalized the scheme of corporate campaign contributions and kickbacks that they had to do illicitly.

Sometimes I wonder if our problem isn't corruption so much as being supremely wasteful and inefficient.

Isn't a hunk of Brazil's previous administration literally in jail right now?

Militant activities (think of the FARC in Colombia or Maoist squads in parts of India) will have to be organised. It's pretty much the only thing left. No time to fuck about with a rigged democracy.

― xyzzzz__, Monday, October 29, 2018 4:35 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Brazilians have much more experience with this than Americans do. Only recently the country was led by an ex-guerilla fighter against the prior military dictatorship.

C. Veloso in NY Times: The major news outlets have tended to minimize the dangers, working in fact for Mr. Bolsonaro by describing the situation as a confrontation between two extremes: the Workers’ Party potentially leading us to a Communist authoritarian regime, while Mr. Bolsonaro would fight corruption and make the economy market friendly

I haven't seen it discussed a lot but I'm guessing the collapse of Venezuela, their neighbor, played a role in all of this?

brazilian urban guerrillas were very small, ineffective and easily crushed. the mid-late 20th century has shown it to be an extremely bad tactic. even in countries where the radical leftist movements were substantial and guerrilla cells had thousands of members, like in argentina and chile, they didnt accomplish much and were brutally murdered/disappeared. people thought it would work because guerrillas were a success in cuba, but that only happened due to contingent reasons and their success wasnt replicated anywhere else in latin america.

yes there is a lot of hysteria about !!!bolivarian communists!!!

I understand that except the left can't go anywhere except exile...or the Amazon.

Racist, sexist and homophobic or a refreshing break from political correctness? Jair #Bolsonaro's history of controversial statements. #BrazilElection https://t.co/yX0JP2GUG0

— BBC Monitoring (@BBCMonitoring) October 26, 2018

"essential media insight" from the classy BBC, who think talking up torture and death squads might be a "refreshing change" from that PC gone madness.

I think you'll find there were very fine people on both sides...

Classic example of media-fuelled, mercantile false equivalencies right there.

xp

Facts or a refreshing break from facts.

Heh, that's a little too otm for comfort.

For BBC Monitoring it seems the austerity has never been over.

@BBCMonitoring
After much speculation Turkish President Erdogan has announced that the new airport in Istanbul will be called "Istanbul Airport"

Infuriating BBC tweet. Bolsonaro isn’t doing an HBO standup special

I've followed this pretty casually, but why would a country that was ruled by a military dictatorship for decades democratically elect by a large margin someone who even hinted at a return to that era? Is it mostly an extreme reaction to "corruption" (which, to be fair, was afaict itself pretty extreme in Brazil)?

Because a lot of people did pretty well out of the dictatorship and do well out of fascism - I think you can guess who.

I just don't even know. I would hope other SA countries will take up the slack and move towards more progressive agendas, international companies will move their offices out of Sao Paulo, but none of this will help the Brazilian people.

Precedent for international companies disliking fascism?

I just don't even know. I would hope other SA countries will take up the slack and move towards more progressive agendas

Latin America’s Right-Wing Turn

Another excellent tweet, this one from Canada:

Brazil's new president elect, Jair Bolsonaro, is a right-winger who leans towards more open markets. This could mean fresh opportunities for Canadian companies looking to invest in the resource-rich country. https://t.co/g00QUOeutt

— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) October 28, 2018

googling a bit I found some UBS presentation on why a Bolsonaro win would be good for markets

as much as the bolsonaro is going to cause horrific human death and destruction, the idea that he will raze a good section the amazon rainforest is hitting me the hardest here.

Humans are really too stupid to manage themselves aren't they. And it's the "smartest" humans in particular who seem to fit that description.

I mean, I am a temporary resident of Chile (soon to become permanent) I can see it opening up opportunities for other countries whose currency and current social landscape aren't are volatile. I just forbade my spouse from traveling to Brazil for work anymore.

And hopefully other countries will welcome any LGBTQ/allied Brazilians who want to leave.

He won't cause much death and destruction if he is dead and destroyed first. I can't see him lasting the year

BBC tweet really lays bare that "political correctness" now mostly means "the taboo against openly endorsing authoritarianism, fascism, or genocide"

political correctness

You know the old expression, when a few well meaning college protesters seem to lose a bit of perspective in their rhetoric, it’s time to overthrow basic concepts of democracy and human rights

Also international companies tend to dislike fascism more and more these days since they have more women and poc working for them. I am trying to find optimism because it is all bad.

A beautiful song from another bad time in Brazilian history
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ellis+regina+la+y+la

sorry I mean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g_p4Xcn5CE

He won't cause much death and destruction if he is dead and destroyed first. I can't see him lasting the year

― imago, Monday, October 29, 2018 12:18 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

even if this happens, which it won't, it'll just set up his VP/successor, General Antonio Hamilton Mourão, to use military power to seize the government, as he threatened to do earlier this year.

I know the pt has had rough times recently, but they were originally an extremely successful popular movement, so brazil has a strong and recent history of progressive activism. I hope that re-asserts itself—only hope i see. Braxil won’t be isolated by the business world because of human rights abuses and besides that will hurt ordinary brazilians more than the regime

is there a scenario where foreign intervention on environmental or genocidal grounds might occur

even if this happens, which it won't, it'll just set up his VP/successor, General Antonio Hamilton Mourão, to use military power to seize the government, as he threatened to do earlier this year.

― fred-a van vleet (voodoo chili), Monday, October 29, 2018 10:24 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i think that if he caught a bullet it would make things dramatically worse, much faster

xp lol no what are you on about

beautiful vision of corbyn and gillibrand unleashing the cruise missiles on brasilia

no but seriously, back in the real world, this is horrendous and I can't see a positive way out

Can we just give a country to all these men who want to wrestle and clean their guns all day? They can build whatever wall they want, sing their anthem, and their insipid wives can go with them.

It would never be enough, knowing we're still out there.

yeah but if we gave them an island we could just nuke it

sorry for overheated hate speech about actual fucking fascists

Just pick one at current sea level

i met a brazilian guy a few months ago and we became good acquaintances

i'm very uninformed of the details of brazil's current politics but from a cultural perspective, it's interesting that this brazilian guy voted for him and knows all the nasty things the english speaking world says about him, but he still voted for him and doesn't believe bolsonaro will actually kill anyone or will have anyone killed

he is studying business in canada, so i'm not sure how informed his opinions are on politics but i get a sense that he is definitely into US neoliberalism -- he seemed happy that bolsonaro wants to appoint guedes as financial advisor, at least

whether they're mutually exclusive or not, he enjoys getting high a couple times a day and is socially very progressive, with that tinge of homophobia and sexism that pervades most of south america

i did bring up a possible coup, but he believes it won't happen, since it's been a long time, since the 60s, that brazil has had one

bolsonaro's approach and social values are similar to trump's, but other than that, he sounds worse

the brazilian business student was trying to get me to understand how there's huge desperation in brazil, with a gdp comparable to canada's, yet a population 5 times bigger, and feels that brazil needs to be closed off, grow local businesses/companies, and provide/protect people's interests first, rather than big global companies. kinda typical, and in fact, lots of people have this mentality in vancouver/canada too though

fun dude

Doesn’t sound like a fun dude

he's baked most of the time we talk

that must be why he forgot the dictatorship didn't end until 1985

kinda sounds like all the people who voted for Trump because all the horrible stuff was just bluster..."seriously not literally"

He probably wouldn’t have been as casual about the possibility of bolsonaro killing people if he was part of a targeted group

Trump didn’t directly say he wanted to abolish democracy and kill democrats

It’s hard to think of a politician more indefensible than trump but this guy is it. He praises a military dictatorship that is not at all hypothetical. It existed recently, up until he was 30 or something

The stoner on the plane is a fascist

curious to know if some of the blase reactions to bolsonaro's (at least among the younger set) is that they all grew up in democracy, don't remember the bad old days, and only know of him as a punchline politician from years ago

xp treesh there's at least a dozen more indefensible politicians in line before trump, cmon guy

Yeah thats true. I just think the comparisons to trump in this case are facile. This guy is advocating authoritarianism and he knows what it means. He lived it

Lazy machismo can not die soon enough.

Also authoritarian nationalism and racism

And violent homophobia and misogyny and defense of torture

really starting to believe that humans weren't meant to live this long.

Facile Trump comparisons are also frustrating because they place the US at the center of the universe and the present moment at the center of history.

i have a kind of tangential question -- were the charges against lula legit or a bullshit soft coup by the nation's oligarchs?

Like people who call him the “Brazilian Trump” are implying, incorrectly, not only that Trump is a dictator but that Trump invented dictatorship.

xp with respect to Lula it seems like a bit of both. The corruption was real but it was pervasive and not limited to the PT, it was basically the way politics was done across the board. So it was used as a soft coup inasmuch as it specifically targeted Lula but it was also real. As for Dilma, her charges were bullshit, she did basically nothing wrong.

curious to know if some of the blase reactions to bolsonaro's (at least among the younger set) is that they all grew up in democracy, don't remember the bad old days

Pretty much every member of the selecao seems to support this guy, regardless of background.

Juninho Pernambucano has spoken strongly against but that seems to be about it

the real villain here is mesut ozil for not making it 8-0

That CBC article is vile btw.

Facile Trump comparisons are also frustrating because they place the US at the center of the universe and the present moment at the center of history.

Yeah, some people on my timeline shared the news about the military terrorizing Brazilian colleges purely through a lens of "this could happen here soon". Yeah sure, but it's also happening there now, it's not just a symbolic warning for the US.

curious to know if some of the blase reactions to bolsonaro's (at least among the younger set) is that they all grew up in democracy, don't remember the bad old days

Plenty of people who live through dictatorships come out the other end nostalgic for it, is the sad truth, approach people of a certain age in Portugal and it won't take you long to find a Salazar apologist.

In Brazil if you're middle class you didn't bear the main damage that the regime did - unless you decided to speak out against it, and Bolsonaro stans don't worry about that because, hey, they're not gonna disagree with him, he's the greatest!

On a more trivial note, right wingers who smoke weed and want to be down are some of my least favourite people to hang out with. Terminally needy, in most cases.

They're also heavily into Jordan Peterson. In my experience, at least.

and bitcoin

Overall its a mixed picture in Latin America:

For a period there had been that moment where a series of presidents, including in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, El Salvador, and other countries were all governed by survivors of torture of their nations’ former dictatorships. Now, veterans of the dictatorships take back over.

— Anti-fa-Lantern 🎃🦇🕸 (@sabokitty) October 29, 2018

"Bolsonaro wins in 97% of the richest cities and Haddad in 98% of the poor"

https://www.estadao.com.br/infograficos/politica,bolsonaro-vence-em-97-das-cidades-mais-ricas-e-haddad-em-98-das-pobres,935854

that seems to be true after giving that article a very quick glance -- but this probably needs to be cited too:

Apesar de ter conquistado maioria em menos municípios, Bolsonaro foi vitorioso em cidades muito mais populosas do que Haddad – como São Paulo, por exemplo, que tem o maior eleitorado no País. Em votos válidos, a diferença de Bolsonaro para Haddad foi de 10,7 milhões de votos.

most populated cities voted for bolsonaro, which is weird and scary, because most populated cities are usually more liberal/center/left of center/democratic

I've heard some serious concerns about rampant and random crime, like people afraid to go out at night, and I imagine those types of fears might lean urban.

The urban/rural divide doesn't pan out the same way in Brazil as it does elsewhere - the Nordeste, which is the poorest part of Brazil and which voted for Haddad en masse, is predominantly rural.

I wasn't aware of all of these: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics-bolsonaro-factbox/factbox-far-right-brazilian-candidate-thrives-on-controversy-idUSKCN1II2T3

For instance:

- Brazil’s public prosecutor charged Bolsonaro last month with inciting discrimination against black people, indigenous people, women and gays in public comments he has made, including “If I see two men kissing in the street, I will hit them.”

- At an event last year in Rio de Janeiro, he said having a daughter, his fifth child after four boys, was a “weakness.”

- “I would not be able to love a gay son. I would rather he die in an accident,” he told Playboy magazine in 2011.

- Speaking last year about communities of descendants of escaped slaves, who are protected by Brazil’s social programs, Bolsonaro suggested the state was wasting money: “They do nothing! I don’t think they even serve for reproduction.”

Before we all get too excited about the possibilities of guerilla firebomb attacks on the presidential palace or whatever, what are the chances of Bolsonaro being impeached here and what would need to happen for that to take place? Brazil seems to remove presidents relatively frequently but I've no idea if the congressional numbers add up this time round.

Collor was impeached on corruption charges. Can't see a coup as the elites are behind him unless he goes rogue.

The other possibility is any kind of action in Venezuela or Bolivia going deeply wrong. That would just weaken him though.

Assassination would bring in the military so Maoist guerrilas -- what we have left.

Guerrila warfare and impeachment seem equally far-fetched to me, sad to say. Dude's just gonna be in power, vulnerable people are going to get slaughtered, and things will go on as usual. Sorry for the defeatism but that does seem the most likely scenario.

praying for a deus ex machina solution worked so well in the US...

Oh look Bolsonaro's right-hand economics man (University of Chicago trained) will consolidate three whole ministries under his rule and basically run all Brazil by himself cool cool cool https://t.co/XUcbLBKk99

— Vincent Bevins (@Vinncent) October 30, 2018

http://www.brasilwire.com/why-bolsonaro-won-beyond-the-cliches/?fbclid=IwAR3gXfw0jeAB7Dxcyx1NdPWtgbIKOFU8-PB1CBIVKLcRu5O51N7rB0RzNTI

International capital and the US government now have exactly what they want in Brazil. All natural resources will be opened to exploitation from foreign capital. The US military will be able to use the Alcantara rocket launching base as a take off point for forays into Venezuela. Brazil’s participation in the BRICS is dead in the water and US Petroleum companies will be swimming in Brazilian oil. Regardless of the level of participation by the US and its institutions, these events fit a pattern of US interventions in Latin America over the past 100 years. If we are truly interested in defeating fascism it is important to move beyond cliches and work to identify the real actors at play, so that their power can be countered. In order to do this, we have to move beyond the idea that Brazil operates in a geopolitical vacuum and that the return to neofascism, which was previously installed with ample US government support from 1964-1985, can be explained by oversimplified generalizations on public opinion.

i met a brazilian guy a few months ago and we became good acquaintances

i'm very uninformed of the details of brazil's current politics but from a cultural perspective, it's interesting that this brazilian guy voted for him and knows all the nasty things the english speaking world says about him, but he still voted for him and doesn't believe bolsonaro will actually kill anyone or will have anyone killed

he is studying business in canada, so i'm not sure how informed his opinions are on politics but i get a sense that he is definitely into US neoliberalism -- he seemed happy that bolsonaro wants to appoint guedes as financial advisor, at least

whether they're mutually exclusive or not, he enjoys getting high a couple times a day and is socially very progressive, with that tinge of homophobia and sexism that pervades most of south america

i did bring up a possible coup, but he believes it won't happen, since it's been a long time, since the 60s, that brazil has had one

bolsonaro's approach and social values are similar to trump's, but other than that, he sounds worse

the brazilian business student was trying to get me to understand how there's huge desperation in brazil, with a gdp comparable to canada's, yet a population 5 times bigger, and feels that brazil needs to be closed off, grow local businesses/companies, and provide/protect people's interests first, rather than big global companies. kinda typical, and in fact, lots of people have this mentality in vancouver/canada too though

fun dude

― F# A# (∞), Monday, October 29, 2018 1:56 PM (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm in a similar conversation with a brazilian business student, a woman, who really does claim that if PT had continued on its path (??) there would be 190 millions Brazilians refugees so really I suppose some sort of Fox News is operating over there.

That and she kinda have this nostalgia for Brazil in the 60s 'things used to work then'. My whole life I thought the right wing 'trains on time' thinking was usually a straw man from the left, a not so clever way to ridicule the narrow thinking of law and order types but the last 4 years have proved me some straw man come alive and haunt you.

Horrible story.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-47009118

Some fucking mega corporation involved, inevitably.

Terrible

At least the 2nd time this coal mining company has screwed up (I heard someone say on the BBC this morning). At least 60 dead

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-47151645

Lula’s jail term has been doubled to 26 years.

Anderson's piece on Bolsanaro is now free to read:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n03/perry-anderson/bolsonaros-brazil

Is been fun seeing a million people shout 'GOOD' to this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/08/brazil-president-jair-bolsonaro-hospitalised-with-pneumonia?CMP=share_btn_tw

perry reckons the stab's wot won it

Just in the past few days: 1) humanities courses will get defunded bc "not productive" 2) state-owned ads are explicitly censored from using "lgbt language" (sic) 3) 9 army soldiers who fired 80+ bullets to a civilian car killing two will have their charges dropped for now.

— Pedro Oliveira (@pedroliveira_) April 30, 2019

fun as that all is, I want the latest deforestation stats as well

It's not about what you want

insanity

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/29/americas/brazil-prison-riots-intl/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/gang-members-behead-rivals-while-guards-look-on-inside-brazils-deadly-prison-riots/2019/08/03/4c3454cc-b2ed-11e9-acc8-1d847bacca73_story.html

“Brazil is a violent country, so people feel that they want harsher treatment, and isolating people in these conditions is the best response,” said Maria Laura Canineu, the Brazil director of Human Rights Watch. “They don’t understand that these abusive conditions only encourage gang violence.”

“Brazil is a violent country” — as description this cannot be denied. But does it mean more: that there is a violent essence to the nation? What would that mean?

And yet: I know many Brasilians and I have been there, and I think there is something to that claim.

they do love their martial arts

There's a violent essence to most nations, no? I don't think Brazil's history is particularly bloodier than that of its neighbours.

I think the person calling it a violent country wouldn’t have bothered if every country is the same way.

Yeah, but that's not what we're talking about - you asked if Brazil is a violent country because there is a "violent essence to the nation".

The person calling it a violent country also might not have a clue about it. You can visit or live in the country, but Brazil seems incredibly divided along class and racial lines and people often don't know other places within a city, never mind the nation.

There is violence in the country, which is often true of many parts of Latin America and the US. And yet it's also often the case that Brazilians are v friendly compared to some European nations. Things - and clichés - which can co-exist.

they do love their martial arts

― ogmor, Tuesday, August 6, 2019 6:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

TBF, jiu jitsu is the least ostensibly "violent" martial art. Watching it is like watching a slug wrestle a snail.

The person who called Brazil a violent country is Brazilian, the Brazil director of Human Rights Watch. The person is on Twitter, I could ask them what they meant.

I don't think it's unfair to call Brazil a violent country, in that it's a country suffering under tremendous violence from gangs, militias, police brutality, etc.

Where I get skeptical is in trying to pin this down to some sort of essential national characteristic. Seems to me the reasons for the current situation - inequality, poverty, corruption - are pretty prosaic and exist in plenty of other places, so there's no need to grasp for deeper explanations concerning national character.

I just did a cursory google but there are a lot of statistics about Latin America in general being the most violent region in the world relative to its population with most of the homicides in Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico cities.

it's the fiery latin temperament

Not disagreeing with Euler's post that Brazil is violent. But a lot of the initial post was just fucking weird. Violence, as I said, is often true of parts of Latin America, which would bring a question on whether violence was a thing in essence for just Brazil...which was sort started on and left as we moved to Euler's experience as a visitor, recounting some anecdotes of his (assuming here) middle-class academic friends fearing for their lives, in their closed off flats. We don't know about that so I make it up because a lot of Euler's post was weirdly cloaked in an attempt to think about things.

Mexicans being essentially violent:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/08/mexico-bodies-police-uruapan-drug-cartels

So, this happened.

Last night, President Jair Bolsonaro was very publicly linked to the murder of Marielle Franco, and then lashed out wildly at former political allies, and the country's most important TV station. This is going to keep rocking Brazilian politics today

— Vincent Bevins (@Vinncent) October 30, 2019

saw that. Was his denial enough to make the story go away

Not gonna lie, I'm not sufficiently informed on Lula to know whether he was crooked or not, but seeing the jubilant reaction of ppl at his being set free - people whose lives he directly contributed towards making better - and the teeth gnashing of the Bolsonaro crowd at it does make me really happy.

lula is good

Lula is good even if crooked. Corruption is like the deficit, no-one gaf unless it can be levered against left wing figures

This guy writes for the WSJ

Legend. I can't decide who I like more, Lula or Bolsonaro. Seriously, they both seem like great guys who have far-different views but truly love their country. Hope the future is bright for Brazil. https://t.co/N6EycFE89P

— Dan Molinski (@molinskidan) November 8, 2019

If there was evidence Lula was crooked, they wouldn't have had to make up a story the way they did. The trial was a complete sham, designed to disqualify him from office. I think that's pretty well established by now.

There's a great film on netflix called The Edge of Democracy, which pretty straightforewardly explain what happened. It didn't get to incorporate the latest revelations from the intercept, but after having watched the film, no new scandal has been that surprising.

https://jornalistaslivres.org/brazilian-secretary-of-culture-paraphrases-goebbels-in-official-statement/

That URL doesn't sound too good

The most shocking thing about that story is that he got fired for it.

Vile.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/24/jair-bolsonaro-racist-comment-sparks-outrage-indigenous-groups

Nice:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/08/lula-convictions-annulled-by-brazil-judge-bolsonaro-election-2022

so is this officially a coup / occupation now?

Vice magazine have a 4 part series called Black Lives Matter A Global Reckoning. It covers the black experience in 4 countries which are Italy, Denmark, Brazil and Israel. I haven't watched the Israel one yet but did watch the Brazil a few days ago.
Seems that there has been way too much linking thinking of black Brazilians in terms of slavery. Which has lead them to be treated way too much like 2nd class citizens. It was also saying that there was a coming wave of black politicians vying to get into parliament where they were very under represented.
I assume that the series was filmed over the last year since they were wearing covid masks during a lot of it.

Not been to Brazil or any of South America but that programme was pretty scathing on the black experience. Police officers sent to the fave last while training being given an open day on how violent they can get with residents and so on.

I do know that Paolo Friere's work on education had been used as a model in the pre Bolsanaro govt. So it was possible for things to be much more progressive.

This is all half-knowledge cobbled together from having had a few Brazilian friends and listening to Brazilian music/watching Brazilian cinema, so reader discretion is advised:

One thing to keep in mind about racism in Brazil is that it's a much more mixed country compared to the US or the UK - so there's not really the same kind of ethnic minority status (in numbers), and bigotries can often be as much about colourism as racism; the gap of opportunity between light-skinned and darker skinned black people seems to be quite huge.

Also of note is the sociological theory of "luso-tropicalismo" developed by Gilberto Freyre. Basically this suggests that the Portuguese, by dint of having been colonized themselves, had a different attitude towards race issues than other colonizers, foremost amongst them that racial mixing was encouraged. This rather thin premise was then seized on by the dictatorships in both Portugal (where it was used to justify the country's occupation of various African countries - not "colonies", you see, but "just part of Portugal") and Brazil, where it was launched as a way to prevent the then-emerging ideologies of black power from gaining traction in the country. So the official government policy included paying some lip service to ideas of racial equality and celebration of black culture while inequalities remain.

It should be noted that populations in Brazilian favelas are pretty mixed as well, so the issue of police brutality intersects with racism but not quite as closely as it does in the US. Sadly, the one black guy who's lived in a favela I know tends to be quite fascist when it comes to the police, because he's been targeted by local gangsters in the past. His stance on Bolsonaro used to be "I wish he didn't talk so much nonsense but at least he's creating order"; he has changed his mind due to dude's handling of the coronavirus crisis though.

The Brazilian left is to the far left of any US or UK left and Lula's government elevated millions out of poverty, which has earned him eternal adoration from some sections of the population and eternaç hatred from a bourgeoisie very pissed at seeing their status threatened.

Some good films to check out on race and class in Brazil: Pixote, Bacurau, The Second Mother.

Oh, also, a very important figure in recent Brazilian politics: Marielle Franco, whose murder the police are almost certainly implicated in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marielle_Franco

I think she may have been featured for a few minutes but it slipped my mind this morning. one of the triggers for a number of new candidates to stand.

looong piece attempting to define The Brazilianization of the World. There are lots of interesting bits, but it ended up drawing a long 'hmmmmmmm' from me.

central theses include, from my single reading:

• deaption: the behaviour and social responses to ideas (such as enlightenment liberalism) displaced in zones with different material conditions (eg colonised countries) - strong
• the applicability of that process back out globally - v wary
• high level geopolitical mechanics of end of history to

this quote gives a good example of where i'm super-wary: do they *actually* make rich and powerful states look like banana republics? (an unhelpful term, given its literal meaning - i assume the meaning here is more 'shoddy governance and public corruption').

yes we have seen very recent examples of political indifference to corruption, which in turn do seem greater in venality and magnitude that the sort of corruption visible in earlier decades, but on the whole the public and civic structures in western democracies are still very strong.

i'm also incredible wary about generalising patterns of wealth inequality across different countries - wealth inequality in the US has grown significantly since the bicentennial of the declaration in 1976, wealth inequality took a jump in the thatcher years but has stayed static in the UK since. (that's not to say there aren't very visible signs of how we fail the most vulnerable eg homelessness, or substantial deficits being built up in the civic realm eg social care, which will probably lead to significant increases in wealth inequality, just that the measures have been static, and wealth inequality in the UK is more of a London and its large financial hinterland, and everywhere else.

the piece is good on the telos of post-history liberalisation that endorses fascism when it doesn't get its way (eg the outcome of the telos doesn't materialise) - the relief with which papers like the Economist welcomed Bolsanaro being the best example.

at one point the author identifies a social mechanic for the absence (and therefore the conditions for the presence of) culture:

Writing in the early 1940s, the great Brazilian historian Caio Prado Jr. analyzed the colonial form of contemporary Brazil, remarking upon the efficiency of the colonial order as an organization of pro­duction combined with a sterility with respect to higher-level social relations—all economy, no culture. What defined a modern periphery molded by colonialism was therefore a “lack of a moral nexus,” that complex of human institutions that maintain individuals linked and united in a society and that weld them into a cohesive and compact whole. If we already hear echoes of the contemporary neoliberal dis­aggregation of society here, it is not by chance.

I buy it. But you then don't get to do this later in the same essay:

Given the country’s natural bounty, its admired and widely shared culture (despite everything)

nope, you don't get to do a 'despite everything' there i'm afraid. it exists in the conditions you have outlined so what does that mean for the 'lack of moral nexus' thesis? Maybe at most it just means that culture is not dependent on that moral nexus, and is just shaped by, adaptive to, and reflective of the material conditions of its creation. (and indeed the frictions of 'deaption' (a new concept to me).

it gets pretty sketchy towards the end, referring to 'the EU's neoliberal death spiral'. really? i mean it's been pragmatically and frequently badly managing crisis from day one and continues to do so and presumably will one day cease to exist or transform beyond its current definition. but i don't see any reason to call that a death spiral.

so yes, some easy mode thinking, but it's a good piece with plenty of ideas in it.

picked it up from Adam Tooze's excellent Chartbook series - this one on Central America and the Caribbean.

*high level geopolotics from end of history to the end of the end of history

i should probably say the whole piece is an attempt to understand what comes next via an analysis of what a definition of what Brazilianization is and might look like. i think there's a lot of *reach* there tbh, but as i say, it's good.

DEATH OF SATIRE KLAXON tho ffs.

Social movements flood São Paulo's Paulista Avenue demanding vaccines, food and the immediately impeachment of Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro.pic.twitter.com/u2o5HgOk2U

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) May 29, 2021

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/14/bolsonaro-brazil-hospital-hiccups

thoughts and prayers

"with one prominent Brazilian journalist claiming the president was suffering from a bowel obstruction."

"Where ere you be, let your wind blow free, for it is the wind, that killeth thee."

Hope to see him in the Obituary thread soon

aw not too soon. a while longer. with deterioration

That dental surgeon is the silent hero Brazil deserves.

And needs, obv.

i hope the hiccups never go away and he ends himself in a year or two. after he's been voted out and maybe lula can through a little case his way for good measure

Bolsonaro is being transferred to São Paulo hospital after doctors diagnose bowel obstruction.

After 10 days of hiccups, he was rushed to the hospital in Brasília early this morning. https://t.co/96lzOXOGOV

— Raquel Krähenbühl (@Rkrahenbuhl) July 14, 2021

RI p- ip ip ip

Diddums got a sore tummy?

A busy day for the Brasilian doctor whose expertise is prolonged hiccups.

Not unrelated:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-rainforest-now-emitting-more-co2-than-it-absorbs

Sao Paulo, Brazil, on July 24, 2021

Burning statue of Borba Gato, symbol of slavery pic.twitter.com/f3RWmh5O8I

— Emily (@Emily_Lykos) July 25, 2021

is he still hiccuping, do we know?

https://www.fiafnet.org/pages/News/FIAF-Statement-Cinemateca-Brasileira-07-2021.html

"It is with great shock and upset that the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) and its 172 Members and Associates around the world heard reports of a fire in one of the warehouses of the Cinemateca Brasileira in São Paulo on 29 July 2021."

SMDH--this is just the latest disaster to hit Brazil's cultural institutions under Bolsonaro. The Cinemateca staff had been warning the government that something like this could happen.

Lol

#BREAKING Brazil's Bolsonaro urgently hospitalized: reports pic.twitter.com/y52Uw1hjmq

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) January 3, 2022

one of the better new years

goddamnwhen is this guy gonna finally fuckin die

intestinal blockage again?!

Lula is so cool pic.twitter.com/ylTAtp3OxD

— Venom Lord (getting worried) (@aniceburrito) September 30, 2022

bread and picanhas, baby

just voted here in NYC. hope this all ends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZJ6QGSpVSk

Have been following the emigrant/diaspora results, Brazilians in Ireland:

BREAKING: 🇧🇷🇮🇪

🗳️ RESULTADO DA IRLANDA:

Lula VENCE na Irlanda

Results of Brazilian Citizens voting in Ireland (1st Round):

Lula: 73.80%
Bolsonaro: 17.51%
Others: 8.69%#Eleicoes2022

pic.twitter.com/EctOL9yyUy

— Next Irish General Election (@NextIrishGE) October 2, 2022

Brazil, Ipec exit poll:

Lula (PT, centre-left): 52% (new)
Bolsonaro (PL, right): 26% (-20)
Gomes (PDT, centre-left): 7% (-5)
…

(+/- 2018 Election)

Sample size: 22,004 #Brazil #eleiçoes2022 pic.twitter.com/fsL503HU7H

— America Elects (@AmericaEIige) October 2, 2022

Sounds too good to be true.

There’s no exit polling this year, I read? It’s the results that are being counted now

One of the comments to that tweet also said no exit poll.

yeah, no exits. bloomberg is tracking it:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-brazil-election/

numbers are higher for Bolsonaro because most of the complete/quicker results are always in areas where he has more votes anyway.

looking at family and friends posts – there was also larger turnout I think this year.

last election was the biggest number of people voting blank/null ever.

Hope for a strong 1st round result for Lula, one & done would be great but…

Mark Hamill is... cool?

The future is YOURS, Brasil. 🇧🇷 pic.twitter.com/A8p1uu5gHW

— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) October 1, 2022

hamill and mark rufallo are normally giving their support a lot to lula and against bolsonaro. ruffalo for a long time, afaik

This thread from French ipsos guy is tasty.

🇧🇷🗳️ Les résultats à ce stade dans les plus grandes villes :

São Paulo : Lula 48,9% (Haddad 39,6%)
Rio de Janeiro : Lula 42,3% (Haddad 33,6%)
Brasilia : Lula 36,4% (Haddad 30%)

Lula fait nettement mieux qu'Haddad *au second tour* en 2018.

— mathieu gallard (@mathieugallard) October 2, 2022

taking a lead now, exactly around the time it normally turns for PT/left parties

well, getting a new red outfit ready for the end of the month now

Brazil’s Congress will be very right wing, as usual. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party is projected to be the largest in the chamber of deputies, with possibly over 100 seats. In 2018 his PSL only got 52. Lula has appeal, but the PT is weak in the downballot races.

— Liam (@Hezbolsonaro) October 2, 2022

Seems like moderate centrists reluctantly voted for fascism? How odd

A lot of Bolsanaro's base seems to be more middle-class, richer.

I wonder what Lula can do about Amazon deforestation if he doesn't have much help in Congress? That's what I'll be looking out for.

BREAKING: Sergio Moro – Bolsonaro’s former Justice Minister and architect of the Lava Jato prosecution that put Lula in prison on false charges of corruption – is elected to the Senate. pic.twitter.com/BrrKoOHuZ6

— David Adler (@davidrkadler) October 2, 2022

closeness of this doesn't bode well at all

Lula is a strong favourite to win. But his popularity has stopped disguising the weakness of the centre left. We can see it now as the results have come in for the Congress and Senate.

In that sense its very similar to much of the world: US, UK, and so on.

in the sense that lula was freed from jail and that legal proceedings were curtailed i guess you can say that the "procedural centre" held, at least for now

closeness of this doesn't bode well at all

Someone on twitter pointed out that the difference of votes between Lula and Bolsonaro is roughly equivalent to Portugal's entire voting population. Lotta people in Brazil! Astounding insight I know.

How brutal is this election in Brazil? Lula’s campaign stated yesterday that he believes in God “and does not have a pact with, nor has he ever spoken with the Devil.” pic.twitter.com/JSDPWfySXi

— Brian Winter (@BrazilBrian) October 5, 2022

Bit disappointed in Lula over this tbh. Should always hear both sides.

he'll never get to hear all the best tunes

Lula has picked up 48%. He'll surely get the 2% he needs without chasing the evangelicals who will never vote for him?

After Jair Bolsonaro makes openly paedophilic remarks in a filmed interview, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro angrily denies that the extreme right president is a paedophile, calling the video of his father making openly paedophilic remarks "fake news". https://t.co/0jEEYBmC1i

— BRASILWIRE (@BRASILWIRE) October 16, 2022

Jair Bolsonaro, who has spent days denying paedophilia, and is to be investigated for paedophilia apologism, has filmed a video asking forgiveness for linking 14 year old Venezuelans to prostitution, after describing his sexual chemistry with one. pic.twitter.com/20GPKCfvcj

— BRASILWIRE (@BRASILWIRE) October 18, 2022

Bit worried about this bolsonaro paedo stuff, has the feel of the trump access hollywood tape

Trump got the NAMBLA endorsement in 2016 and it didn't do him any harm ..lol

🚨 This is EXTREMELY important. Simulations of the second round suggest that Lula will only take the lead when *88.5%* of votes have been counted. Be careful: Bolsonaristas will be crying victory all the way until this switch – and then fraud all the way after. pic.twitter.com/JFnGHnx5Dd

— David Adler (@davidrkadler) October 27, 2022

I'm starting to worry about me and my wife and friends and family security when voting this Sunday... thinking about if it's best to have lots of people really close together and maybe stay near the voting place after for a while just to make sure there's a good presence of Lula's voters there and maybe this could diffuse the tension/fear mongering somehow. Never thought in my life I'd have to do that.

Good luck (where in Brazil are you?)

Boa sorte! Tá na hora do Jair embora, as the memes say.

Thank you all. I'm from Recife, Pernambuco, northeast. I'm living in the US now, NY, for the last 5 years. But even here during the last vote it was pretty tense, with lots of taunting from his followers... And a pretty crowded street without a lot of coordination from the NYPD. This asshole really needs to go. Just on his Covid response he should be prosecuted by international law.

I musta admit I cringe every time I see shots of Lula being driven though the streets on the back of a lorry, it would be so easy for someone to take a shot at him.

Went to the vigil for deaths in police custody at Downing Street yesterday and we passed a PT rally, lots of shouts of support and "we're with you" from the PT crowd. Lovely stuff.

Unrelated, but as the thing wound up an Iranian protest came to take our place that had some seriously chaotic energy - lgbt flags jostling with a sign saying "thank you Donald Trump - Make Iran Great Again" and one with the face of Khomeini and "CIA agent" and "666" written on it.

If frontrunner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wins Brazil’s election it would mark a major comeback for the leftist, signaling that Brazilians care more about jobs and food than battling corruption

the grapes were already sour at the WSJ yesterday before any votes have been counted. Good luck Brazil.

Cops trying to block ppl from voting in the Lula stronghold of Nordeste

🚨 Diretor-geral da Polícia Rodoviária Federal terá que parar IMEDIATAMENTE operações de transporte público contra eleitores nordestinos, caso contrário, será PRESO, afirma Alexandre de Moraes!#Eleicoes2022 pic.twitter.com/G8Sa8sLuNr

— POPTime (@siteptbr) October 30, 2022

Basically traffic cops stopping public transportation for no reason.

Hope it doesn't work, but from the polling these are fine margins..

Polls now closed.

🚨 The head of Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal REFUSES to take action against the Bolsonarista conspiracy to suppress votes in Lula strongholds, saying the 560 blockades “affected both sides” and that the pre-meditated actions of the Federal Highway Police were actually okay.

— David Adler (@davidrkadler) October 30, 2022

Going to be doomscrolling for the next few hours.

🚨 Brazil’s electoral authorities send out a country-wide message to everyone who has downloaded their app: “To impede the population from voting is to commit an electoral crime.” pic.twitter.com/5kFhmzqXc6

— David Adler (@davidrkadler) October 30, 2022

Lula edged ahead with 67% in, perhaps a little ahead of projection?

🇧🇷#Brazil, presidential election results (2nd round):

67,76 % of polling places counted:

Lula (PT): 50,01 %
Bolsonaro (PL-inc): 49,99 %#Eleicoes2022 pic.twitter.com/1SDzoLvGCw

— World Elects (@ElectsWorld) October 30, 2022

something you do not hate to see

*jorge ben voice* lula da, lula da, lula da, lula da silvaaaaaa

refreshing this thread every minute

Brazil projection using municipality swings in areas with 50%+ counted (86.7% of the vote in)

🔴 Lula: 50.81% (+0.06)
🔵 Bolsonaro: 49.19% (-0.06)

— Patrick Flynn (@patrickjfl) October 30, 2022

just been looking on betfair to see where the money is going, it's looking good for Lula

https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/en/politics/brazil-general-election/brazil-general-election-2022/president-after-2022-election-betting-1.180434883

🚨 I think I've seen enough 🚨

🇧🇷 PROJECTION: Bar a coup from Jair Bolsonaro, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will be Brazil's next president.

— Patrick Flynn (@patrickjfl) October 30, 2022

lots of ropey outlets in a desperate scramble to call Lula first, but holy shit it's looking good!

He is leading 50.7%-49.3% with 96.6% in, apparently most outstanding votes from northeast. Lula winning isn’t the issue, it’s whether Bolsonaro concedes.

don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened pic.twitter.com/wQzs0vRvBA

— Bris Angel (@Cryptoterra) October 30, 2022

wau this is fucking great

thoughts and prayers to all the fascist Brazilian footballers in the premiere league

— Nihal | نهال (@NotNihal) October 30, 2022

yes, a certain Spurs winger instantly comes to mind

Half the Liverpool squad rn pic.twitter.com/pZe6MNSGKF

— Daniel Stapleton (@danstapleton89) October 30, 2022

Absolutely dying at the LFC fans going in

You and your husband pic.twitter.com/SXN4N2GhU1 https://t.co/kfdA3jZR0Y

— Jamie 🔴 (@_jamiemoran) October 30, 2022

Congratulations to President Lula and all his supporters.

Was confused walking through the park by a massive crowd of people all in red screaming in joy

Brazil: The Supreme Electoral Court has declared that former President Lula (PT, centre-left) has won the presidential election, defeating incumbent President Bolsonaro (PL, right). #Brazil #Lula #Bolsonaro #eleições2022

— America Elects (@AmericaElige) October 30, 2022

Cry more!

Bolsonaristas are crying and praying away their loss to Lula. pic.twitter.com/D8F0wUNwna

— David Adler (@davidrkadler) October 30, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/30/world/brazil-presidential-election

https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/187042dd4584454f9de2c445476f0f7c/800.jpeg

for a second I was thinking this image was revealing that Lula smokes rollups, but quite disappointingly it's his voting ticket

can't get enough of something good happening, congratulations Brazil.

pic.twitter.com/l4LYB8tR3b

— Stan's Account (@tristandross) October 30, 2022

Biden and Macron have given their congrats.

In the UK.

if you want something from a senior British politician in support of Brazilian democracy, you're stuck with this guy for now https://t.co/aDpTjMsCqS

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) October 31, 2022

great outcome but scary how close it was relative to first round and polls

Incredible news. Congratulations to Lula and the people of Brazil.

Northeast #Brazil rn pic.twitter.com/AE0ZeINFP9

— Abier (@abierkhatib) October 31, 2022

that's actually footage of split.

https://www.newsflare.com/video/389053/fans-of-croatias-hajduk-split-celebrate-clubs-70th-anniversary-with-spectacular-fireworks-display

🤣🤣

lmao he waited until the morning to check there wasn’t a coup first (he was up and tweeting about football when the result was confirmed) https://t.co/b5Jo1ORMfb

— the uk press cover for serial groper nick cohen (@wariotifo) October 31, 2022

He was actually waiting until his advisors woke up in the morning and told him it was ok to do so. Tweeting only after most major foreign leaders had already done it.

Kieth won't take a dump until he's focus grouped it tbf

meanwhile i would advise Lula to take swift and permanent action to ensure Bolsonaro can never make a comeback

man some states changed the pace of how their votes are counted, and that threw me off a while. thank fucking god this is (starting to be) over.

btw NYPD screw you for deploying 4 cars and 10 police officers to finish a small party at a corner in Astoria at 8pm.

Nobody has heard anything from Bolsonaro or his sons yet, but his wife Michelle and him unfollowed each other

— Benjamin Fogel (@BenjaminFogel) October 31, 2022

Has he still not said anything as of yet?

So perhaps we may hope he is quietly giving up:

While Bolsonaro remained mute, key allies did accept the result in a sign that the populist’s power was rapidly ebbing away after four tumultuous years in office.

Silas Malafaia, a prominent televangelist who was one of Bolsonaro’s most vocal cheerleaders, tweeted: “The sovereign will of the people has established itself.”

Malafaia tweeted a quote from the British writer CS Lewis as his candidate’s defeat sank in: “It is not your business to succeed, but to do right. When you have done so the rest lies with God.”

The newly elected pro-Bolsonaro governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, also recognized Lula’s win, telling journalists: “The election result is sovereign.”

Another key ally, the lower house leader, Arthur Lira, said: “The will of the majority, expressed at the polls, should never be challenged.”

Even Sergio Moro, the pro-Bolsonaro judge who controversially jailed Lula in the lead-up to the 2018 election before taking a job in Bolsonaro’s cabinet, recognized the leftist’s victory.

“Thus is democracy,” Moro tweeted.

By Monday lunchtime the only hint that Bolsonaro might be prepared to accept defeat was a tweet from one of his closest allies, the evangelical preacher Damares Alves, in which she wrote: “We lost an election but we haven’t lost our love for our country ... Bolsonaro will leave the presidency in January with his head held high”.

José Roberto de Toledo, a political columnist for the news website UOL, thought it mattered little whether Bolsonaro conceded defeat or not.

“The senate has accepted [the result]. The lower house has accepted it. The electoral court has accepted it. All of the institutions have accepted it – and the military is quiet,” Toledo said, adding that he was rather enjoying a rare break from the president’s blathering. “Bolsonaro’s a poet when he shuts up,” Toledo said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/31/brazil-election-bolsonaro-concede-reaction

Bolsonaro 81% in Miami lmao. What a shitty city. pic.twitter.com/XZuDT4urwO

— Justin (@jdabre11) October 31, 2022

the middle class to comfortably well off S American diaspora/ex pats in the US always seem to be big fans of fascism, both domestically and back in the "home country". Great set of lads.

It was ever thus. Older expats, I'll stress. I know a few younger ones who're naturalized citizens working for progressive causes.

Yeahh I have some relatives who emigrated to Brazil from Iran and later moved to Miami. idk how well off they still are but the last time I saw them one of them was spouting Fox News bullshit and the other was ranting about how universities are brainwashing our kids.

afaict the move to Miami precipitated their turn to fascism, don't remember it being an issue before that.

My Brazilian sister-in-law tells me Miami is full of wealthy Carioca law-and-order types who have fled Rio because the cops aren't killing enough people in the favelas to their liking.

you can just call them all sudestinos lol

being from the u.s. and kind of sheltered i was at first shocked to discover that many immigrants here were true believing chauvinists and white supremacists, even more hardcore than many americans. but now it makes a lot more sense. if you want to move here enough to make it happen you would most likely buy into what is a core part of the u.s.'s identity. also frantz fanon etc.

US numbers

https://s2.glbimg.com/OYRmbPZMixmJ9n9_IcLP_uEwibQ=/0x0:1200x5167/1000x0/smart/filters:strip_icc()/i.s3.glbimg.com/v1/AUTH_59edd422c0c84a879bd37670ae4f538a/internal_photos/bs/2022/J/B/MBhw75Q8qlYSdECrs8ow/3110eua.png

I think it's also hard for most non-Brazilians to understand what Anti-PT ideology has done in the last 2 decades... it's a constant talking point and battle for so long, since Lula's first try at election in 1989, but the 2000s and 2010s were really bad in turning people against them.

There’s a good number of Brazilians in Ireland and supposedly a lot of the newcomers in recent years have been anti-Bolsonaro. According to the Brazilian consulate 1% of the population is Brazilian (!). Anyway, they went for Lula.

BREAKING: 🇧🇷🇮🇪

🗳️ RESULTADO DA IRLANDA:

Lula VENCE na Irlanda

Results of Brazilian Citizens voting in Ireland (2nd Round):

Lula: 81.8%
Bolsonaro: 18.2%#Eleicoes2022 @eixopolitico @CentralEleicoes

— Next Irish General Election (@NextIrishGE) October 30, 2022

lmao at this dickhead from the first round vote

Andre Carlos Pereira Rodrigues (24), whose family emigrated to Ireland when he was eight-years-old, was waiting in line to vote for Bolsonaro.

“With the pandemic is hasn’t been great for anybody, but I believe in some of his principles and what he wants to do for the country,” he said. “Yes he can be a little bit, very forward in the way he speaks. He’s got a good intention, he knows the common people,” he said.

“It’s good to vote, so we come out to vote, let people know our voice,” he told The Irish Times.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/01/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-election-silence-lula

Pobrecito.

a cowardly non-statement because he knows he's got no one in his corner now

but unsurprisingly bolsominions are doing QAnon levels of deep reading into it and arriving at "he wants us to continue to resist"

I think it's also hard for most non-Brazilians to understand what Anti-PT ideology has done in the last 2 decades... it's a constant talking point and battle for so long, since Lula's first try at election in 1989, but the 2000s and 2010s were really bad in turning people against them.

Difficult to tell with all the far right insanity cross-pollinating around the globe but I feel this is being imported to Portugal (aimed at the PS government, which is nowhere near as left as Lula) in the same way US culture war talking points get imported to the UK.

Brazil's lame duck President Jair Bolsonaro, who has only averaged about 25 minutes of work per day since becoming the first incumbent to ever lose a presidential election, has been rushed to the armed forces hospital in Brasília with abdominal pain. https://t.co/q5GBCflqDt

— BrianMier (@BrianMteleSUR) November 18, 2022

It’s starting pic.twitter.com/akQm2maHS4

— L Ron Mexico (@LRonMexico) November 19, 2022

BREAKING 🇧🇷: Bolsonaristas are invading Congress en masse in Brasilia.

pic.twitter.com/6dh3rItJgH

— David Adler (@davidrkadler) January 8, 2023

Ugh, figures

horrible

CNN International going for a “lol it’s just like Jan 6” approach so far

It looks a lot worse. Congress, Senate, Supreme court, presidential palace have been trashed.

Looks like it has also been organised out of Florida

BREAKING 🇧🇷: Evidence suggests that the Brasilia insurrection may have been planned in Florida. Secretary of Security for the Federal District is in the USA and recently traveled to Orlando — exactly where Jair Bolsonaro is currently staying.https://t.co/bm0ZrqOaVQ

— David Adler (@davidrkadler) January 8, 2023

Not seeing whether Lula is safe at the moment?

Ok.

Worth underlining here that nobody is at work in Brasília today. President Lula is in São Paulo, Congress and the Supreme Court are in recess. There is no Jan 6 attempt to theoretically block a change in government, this comes across as merely mindless and performative vandalism https://t.co/rvR5Fcqkja

— Euan Marshall (@euanmarshall) January 8, 2023

Holy shit. A policeman arrives on horseback to contain the insurrection and the Bolsonaristas beat the horse and bloody the policeman to the ground. I am speechless pic.twitter.com/EhZZeTDq4M

— David Adler (@davidrkadler) January 8, 2023

This is sickening.

Ugh

Emergency state declared in Brasília, the national guard will act as security. 150 people were already arrested, we have identified a lot of names. Hope we also get all the organizers of this whole mess

LIVE FROM BRAZIL 🇧🇷 : Lula points the finger directly at Bolsonaro. Says that Indigenous peoples, black communities, the "left" has never led such an attack on the nation's democracy. It was the "words of the ex-president" that led to today's violent insurrection, says Lula. pic.twitter.com/7RiXK3eVme

— David Adler (@davidrkadler) January 8, 2023

Lula says agribusiness, illegal mining and illegal logging interests could be financiers of today's planned assault on government buildings by Bolsonarista cells.https://t.co/SFJRmysAIb

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) January 8, 2023

This is good not bad.

Lula’s Speech 🇧🇷: “Those people we call fascists invaded the three powers [Congress, Court, Presidency]. Like real thugs. All these people will be found and will be punished. Democracy demands that people respect institutions. These vandals who might be called Nazis.” pic.twitter.com/8CLDKUfDAF

— David Adler (@davidrkadler) January 8, 2023

After the Youtube Administration, Brazil has been Hegel-pilled https://t.co/Cs7oTAe0xq

— Vincent Bevins (@Vinncent) January 23, 2023

why, why couldn't Haddad got elected in 2018, whyyyy

he was my neighbor for a while while he was mayor of SP! poor guy, everybody used to protest in front of his building (some protests were valid! some were dumb, but ok. others were just horrible people angry because he created dedicated lanes for buses during his time as mayor 🙄)

<3

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/world/americas/bolsonaro-brazil-banned-office.html

to celebrate, play this as loud as possible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvdKz4VPPq0

Great news!

I watched O Que É Isso, Companheiro? on yt today, for unrelated reasons but a good watch to celebrate this nonetheless.

ha, funny! not my favorite movie to be honest.

I'd celebrate maybe watching this:
https://archive.org/details/they-dont-wear-black-tie-1981-eles-nao-usam-black-tie-subtitled

or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svh-lGcSDmU <- documentary on the beginnings of the labor movement of the steel workers in São Paulo led by Lula. no subtitles, but it's pretty chilling

Heartbreaking

From our comrades in Brazil, writing about the flooded areas in Rio Grande do Sul, south of Brazil. More than 80 cities, including the metropolis Porto Alegre (4,3 million habitants) are partially destroyed or under water. @libcomorg @communaut_jrnl @weareplanc @virginia_worker

— AngryWorkers (@WorkersAngry) May 17, 2024

Damn.

In Portuguese right now and have been meeting a lot of Brazilians who have moved here for work.