Of the 65 members of the sham congressional committee who voted on impeachment, 35 of the 38 who voted in favor are being investigated for corruption.
Why the Coup in Brazil Should Fail
The nation remains deeply polarized — even with Rousseff not charged with any wrongdoing, unlike the lot in Congress who wants to bring down her government. Of the 65 members of the sham congressional committee who voted on impeachment, 35 of the 38 who voted in favor are being investigated for corruption.
Reprinted from Sputnik
As a metaphor of the advanced state of putrefaction plaguing the entire political system of one of the Global South’s leading nations, nothing comes close to what is about to take place in Brazil.
The notoriously corrupt leader of the lower House in the Brazilian Parliament, Eduardo Cunha — holder of 11 illegal Swiss accounts, listed in the Panama Papers, and indicted at the Supreme Court — has scheduled a crucial plenary vote on the possibility of impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff for this coming Sunday. Sunday traditionally is the day when an overwhelming majority of Brazilians relax watching football on TV.
The crook in question also tried to define the rules of the game; the roll call would start with the wealthier southern states, which are more favorable towards impeachment — a euphemism for coup/regime change, the culmination of the soft Hybrid War strategy deployed from the beginning by the usual suspects allied with the Brazilian oligarchy/comprador elites.
This voting procedure — now changed; voting will alternate northern and southern states — was supposed to create a wave in the House floor towards impeachment, thus allowing the glorious entrance of another crook; current vice-President Michel Temer. Anyway, the magnificent piece of double down crooking should ideally yield Temer as President and Cunha as Vice-President.
The run-up towards Sunday’s farce has been monopolized by a vicious infowar — with mainstream media, controlled by four families, purporting to create an impeachment inevitability. And yet all bets are off. Rousseff’s opposition, increasingly desperate, has not regimented all the necessary two-thirds of patsies/fools/crooks/traitors for the vote in the House. The matter must then be referred to the Senate. And the Supreme Court must also rule on whether Rousseff committed a “crime of responsibility.” She’s actually being accused of accounting tricks that allegedly misrepresented the government’s fiscal status — something that every Brazilian president has done, not to mention leaders all across the world. In parallel, vast strands of civil society are now mobilizing to make sure the coup will be defeated in Congress and in the streets.
Look Out for The Great Conciliator
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his sorry saga has nothing to do with corruption, allegedly the key motive behind the sprawling, two-year-old, initially NSA spying-fueled Car Wash investigation. It’s all about dirty political opportunism.Vice-President Temer’s conspirator colors were fully revealed via an audio leak expertly delivered to the Globo empire’s widely watched 8 o’clock nightly news. The PR angle was to create a “positive climate” towards impeachment, with Temer already acting presidential and positioned as the prodigal bearer — and facilitator — of good news, finally moving the nation away from the current, dire economic crisis.
Temer then went on a mainstream media overdrive, stating that, yes, he’s qualified for the Presidency; but if the impeachment motion is defeated, he must remain as Vice-President. He insists this is not a coup, while abhorring the possibility of a new general election, because that would represent a “constitutional rupture.” Macbeth? No; just a lowly parochial opportunist.
So where’s Lula in all this mess?
Glenn Greenwald has conducted an extensive interview with the former President and Global South political icon where he defends the government’s case. Compare it with the City of London view, for which, of course, this is not a coup. What matters is the wellbeing of “foreign investors” — as if the Brazilian government had an obligation first and foremost towards them. Well, it’s doable — if foreign investors have comprador elites and mainstream media working for their interests.
The big industrial/banking interests concentrated in Sao Paulo — Brazil’s wealthiest state and the nation’s economic superpower — supported by most mainstream media and the Koch Brothers-financed “youth movements,” have now moved towards the center, with a “No Dilma and no Temer” motto, and already focusing on the 2018 elections.
The Right still believes in Car Wash to decimate the Left. Yet what already happened in the constantly evolving chessboard was the decimation of the former social democrats turned neoliberal enforcers, the PSDB.
These Wall Street/City of London cronies now can only count on a last-minute Car Wash-related scandal, the attorney general coming out with a bombshell, and the influence of CEOs of major Sao Paulo-based companies. Their patron saint is former Brazilian President Cardoso — former social developmentalist and “Prince of Sociologists” turned mere comprador elite paperboy; he managed to alienate both the social democrats and strident right-wingers.
And yes, this is all about the 2018 elections — because the impeachment, in a nutshell, means the judicial/media reversal, via a white coup, of the 2014 result when Rousseff was reelected President. And yet all recent simulations reveal that Lula still stands a chance in 2018 — although his percentage of popular rejection remains high. As much as he emerges as The Great Conciliator — and he’s the only one who can pull it off, after impeachment is defeated — these numbers will be reversed.
The Hybrid War Cobra Clutch
So what happens next?
Rousseff’s government, in the last few days, has managed to organize a somewhat minimalist base capable of preventing impeachment, yet incapable of assuring governance. At least the Supreme Court now seems to be finally inclined to examine the — dubious — juridical merits of the Congress-driven impeachment process.
What’s certain is that the Globo media empire, in the last stretch, will go no holds barred to twist the vote towards impeachment — including a twisted, spurious last-minute Car Wash bombshell; that’s how the judicial/media complex works.
This sheds new light on Car Wash’s lethally mistaken move of trying to incriminate Lula by all means necessary — without serious evidence. And that was the last straw that laid bare to the so far silent majority, the “deep Brazil,” the stark fact of a highly politicized “fight against corruption.”
The ball is now with the Brazilian attorney general. Either he positions himself as a lowly partisan, or with a necessarily impartial Brazilian Public Ministry. This might entail “saving” Rousseff but at the same time trying to tarnish Lula’s political capital for good.
As for the Supreme Court, it’s now more than obvious that they should authorize legal action against the notorious crook Cunha — leading to his inevitable removal as president of the lower House. A serious total package would imply the whole impeachment farce being judged unconstitutional, period.
Even the OAS secretary-general, Luis Almagro, has dubbed it a surrealist farce, “the world upside down” of the notoriously corrupt chasing away an honest President who always favored the fight against corruption. The “secret” of the whole parliamentary conspiracy — to which Western corporate media is oblivious — is that those crooks voting for impeachment on Sunday need by all means to escape the clutches of Car Wash themselves.
Amidst this gaggle of Hollow Men, it’s hard to find a peaceful way out. If Rousseff is not impeached she will be unable to govern; if impeachment wins it will be tarnished as illegitimate. Assuming the impeachment motion is approved in the House, the Senate could have up to May 11 to finally deliver its verdict. Rousseff would then be automatically suspended for up to 180 days, during which time the President will be “judged”; all bets will be off; and Hybrid War will keep paralyzing with a cobra clutch a key BRICS member. Mission accomplished?
Over 60% of Brazilians do not believe that President Dilma Rousseff should be subject to impeachment proceedings, but a cadre of corrupt far right politicians armed with NSA surveillance documents continue to push for her ouster.
On Monday, a 65-member congressional committee in Brazil voted to advance impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff, in relation to the “carwash” corruption investigation. Although President Rousseff is not herself implicated in illegal or corrupt activity, the impeachment is proceeding on the grounds of “a crime of responsibility,” suggesting that she should have taken action to prevent corruption.
The congressional committee voted 38 to 27 in favor of impeachment, advancing the proceedings to a full vote of the lower house. If the lower house votes for impeachment by a two-thirds majority, the matter moves to a Senate vote to determine whether to advance a trial, with a simple majority sufficing.
If the Senate votes for an impeachment trial, Rousseff will be relieved of her duties for 180 days, pending trial. If the Senate, following the trial, returns a two-thirds vote for impeachment, President Rousseff would be permanently removed from office.
The investigation was sparked by information compiled from NSA surveillance of President Rousseff, members of the Brazilian government, and the major Brazilian oil company Petrobras. Within Brazil, and internationally, it has been questioned whether the proceedings are legitimate, or part of a concerted strategy by the United States to conduct a political coup.
Loud & Clear’s Brian Becker sat down with Brazilian political analyst Pepe Escobar to discuss the cause of the impeachment proceedings, and what to expect next.
A slow motion political coup?
“Yes, it is, that is the short answer,” stated Escobar. “Kafka, the surrealist, could never come up with something like this political intrigue in Brazil. It says it all. The composition of this congressional committee shows it. Of the 38 who voted for impeachment, 35 are actually under investigation for corruption, and of the 27 who voted against impeachment, only 2 are under investigation for corruption.”
Escobar worries what will transpire if the impeachment proceedings, whether or not legitimate, move forward. “If they manage to pass in the Congress floor, if they have the 2/3 majority to send it to the Senate — that would be the beginning of the end of the Dilma Rousseff government,” said Escobar.
“It is a political vendetta. Especially by members of the center-right opposition and even members of the ruling coalition, and two major figures orchestrating this farce, in fact, are the Vice President of Brazil Michel Temer and the leader of the lower house Eduardo Cunha who, himself, is being investigated left and right for illegal accounts in Switzerland, and he came up in thePanama Papers as well,” detailed Escobar.
“It is completely crazy,” Escobar said, noting that over 60% of the Brazilian population, according to recent polls, do not believe that Rousseff should be impeached. Despite popular sentiment against impeachment, “if a full open vote at the Congress floor by mid-April is against Dilma by a 2/3 margin, then she’ll be sidelined for 180 days and, for all practical purposes, VP Michel Temer will be the President.”
Will Dilma Rousseff be impeached?
“This is not going to happen, based on the latest inside information, because there has been a groundswell of public opinion in Brazil,” said Escobar. “The lower house vote will take place on a Sunday, which is strategic in Brazil because most people are watching football games, soccer games, on Sunday afternoon so they scheduled it when most people are relaxing with their families.”
Escobar does not expect that the Sunday vote will distract the public.”In this case, about 90% of the population will be glued to the TV stations following it. They are going to name people who are behind the coup, the architects of the coup are fully identified – the vice president and the leader of the lower house. Public opinion has turned against the perpetrators of the coup and nobody is talking about the carwash investigation anymore,” said Escobar.
What was the carwash investigation?
“The real beginning is the NSA spying on Petrobras, the major Brazilian oil company, and members of the Brazilian government including President Dilma Rousseff, including her personal cell phone,” explained Escobar. “This was the starting point for an obscure judge in one of Brazil’s southern states to start an investigation with information about Petrobras leaked or directed to him by the NSA leak.”
The NSA leak, Escobar said, showed a criminal cell inside of Petrobras directing contracts to a construction company, with kickbacks leaking into political parties. Escobar argues that “this is something that happens in other countries, even in the United States, but it is just done in a much more sophisticated way than in Brazil. This happens everywhere in the developing world.”
The problem with the investigation, in Escobar’s opinion, is not that corruption was discovered and whether or not it should be stamped out, but that the investigation is proceeding in a targeted manner.
“The focus of the carwash investigation is only on the Workers Party and, if it was a real investigation, they would target everybody, including the center right opposition, because this whole thing started years ago when the Workers Party was not even in power.”
Are US and Western governments behind the impeachment efforts?
“It is slightly more complicated than that,” said Escobar. “There are elements of foreign manipulation, including Wall Street betting against the Dilma Rousseff government since she won her reelection in late 2014, and the fact that all of these center right interests are aligned with our American friends.”
Another reason for this development, Escobar suggests, is a concerted effort by the West to turn back the tide of socialism and workers’ rights in South America, with similar developments occurring in recent years in Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
Escobar also observes that the US has a direct interest in the collapse of the BRICS alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which threatens America’s economic hegemony. “If there was a fall of the Brazilian government it would result in an imploding of the BRICS alliance, which is a wide-open secret.”
Escobar believes that the United States seeks the toppling of the Rousseff government and the Workers’ Party in Brazil, but the motives behind the investigation have a strong internal component, with former economic ruling elites wanting to reclaim power and distract attention from their corrupt activities.
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