=By= Dady Chery and Gilbert Mercier

Protests in Brazil. Photo by Jordi Bernabeu

Chery and Mercier offer an insightful analysis of the expulsion of Dilma Rousseff from the presidency. As they note, one must surely ask who is doing what to whom, and towards what end? It seems highly likely that this is yet another game within a game aimed at weakening Russia and China by undermining the BRICS agreement. It is at least component deserving serious consideration, as Brazil is an important partner in BRICS.

The authors also point to the ongoing exploitation and suppression of the poor and labor. This includes what amounts to slavery for Haitians in Brazil. Rougly 75, mostly male, Haitian a day arrive in Brazil and enter a highly exploited labor class. The fact that his has proliferated under the Workers Party is damning evidence that the leadership is anything but pro-workers. – rw

In a public open vote, Brazil’s lower house voted overwhelmingly on April 17, 2016 to impeach President Dilma Rousseff. The tally of 367 for impeachment, as opposed to 137 against and 7 abstentions, far exceeded the two-thirds majority that was required. Rousseff says it’s a coup; the mainstream media say it’s a coup; and the alternative press, from the pro-Russian anti-imperialist left to the neoliberal fake left, says it’s a coup. This absurd consensus alone should tell everyone that it is not a coup. To say that the political crisis in Brazil is a soft coup d’état, organized by the United States, is at best a simplification of the situation and at worst a poor representation of reality. After 14 years of Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, or Workers’ Party), the Brazilian public has grown profoundly disappointed with a government that has failed, not only to keep its promise to clean up Brazil’s systemic corruption but also to avoid becoming tainted by this corruption. Inequality, social injustice, and racism are practically unchanged. Rousseff was elected with the expectation that the criminals of Brazil’s military dictatorship would be brought to justice, but instead of pursuing them, she promoted what she called a “national reconciliation.” Under both Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil grew its police and military to unprecedented levels in peacetime and became an active handmaiden to US imperialism in the occupation of countries like Haiti. It took Lula and Dilma’s fake socialism to invade Haiti, not Brazil’s military dictatorship.

Protestors in Sao Paulo March 2015.- Agencia Brasil.

Ms. Rousseff’s legal troubles should rather be viewed as a sign that Brazil’s justice system is sufficiently well to take down the country’s top bankers, industrialists, and elected officials. This is a distinction that few countries can claim: certainly not the US where corrupt bankers were given a bailout after crashing the economy, and definitely not France where former President Nicolas Sarkozy was not impeached despite various accusations during his tenure. In fact, Sarkozy is making a political comeback despite five open legal cases of alleged corruption against him. Rousseff’s desperate attempts to fight the impeachment have only aggravated her situation. The lower house vote followed a clumsy and unsuccessful bid to grant temporary immunity to Lula after his arrest by appointing him to a cabinet post. Rousseff will likely lose the next impeachment vote in the senate, which requires only a simple majority. More and more senators are turning away from her, especially since her New York trip on April 22, 2016, during which she appealed to the United Nations to intervene on her behalf, in a move that was widely seen as an insult to Brazil’s national sovereignty.

Rousseff argues that unlike her political colleagues who have been ensnared in the Petrobras scandal (also called operação lava jato, or operation carwash), she did not launder money, embezzle public funds, or hide her wealth in offshore bank accounts. She is formally accused of using public funds from state banks to cover up her government’s large budget deficit in 2014 while she was up for reelection. In Brazil, the use of such funds to cover government deficits was previously legal but is no longer so. The connection to her reelection is damning when one realizes that nearly all the cases of corruption uncovered in her party have involved kickbacks to finance her campaign, which succeeded by only three percentage points over the opposition and would have certainly failed without those large infusions of cash.

The left’s main argument in support of its soft coup theory is to say that the US is instigating an attack on BRICS; but a new Brazilian government will probably not withdraw from BRICS, for the simple reason that, in this alliance, Brazil’s trade of minerals and agricultural goods is substantive and essential to its economy. In the unlikely event that it should pull out, the impact on BRICS will be limited. From an economic, strategic, and military standpoint, the core of the alliance consists of Russia and China. In terms of geopolitics, Iran, which is not formally in BRICS, is also a key strategic ally that could counterbalance any potential defection from Brazil. Geopolitical considerations aside, most ordinary Brazilians are unaware of BRICS. Instead, they are reminded daily of the government’s corruption by the high taxes they pay and the interrupted public projects that should have benefited from the funds that were embezzled, and for which entire neighborhoods were displaced. The most startling among these projects include unfinished public transportation works, airport terminals, aquariums, and apartment buildings: empty shells that stand as visual testaments to Brazil’s endemic corruption.

Bill Clinton and Rousseff in 2013. (Blog do Planalto

There is no reason why the US should want to get rid of Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva, both of whom have been paragons of humanitarian imperialism. After a US-orchestrated coup against democratically elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004, Bill and Hillary Clinton arranged with Lula’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Celso Amorim, to occupy Haiti with Brazilian troops, using the UN peacekeepers as a convenient cover. This was an unprecedented move against a country that was not at war. As a carrot, Brazil was vaguely promised a possible seat on the UN Security Council. For more than a decade, Brazil trained its troops and tested its military technology in Haiti, and for nearly all this time Brazil commanded the occupying troops of an expanded UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Brazilian generals justified the occupation by the fact that Haiti was not a dangerous assignment. By the time Celso Amorim became Rousseff’s Minister of Defense in 2011, there had been numerous calls by Haitians for the withdrawal of the UN occupation and many examples of rapes, killings, and other abuses by MINUSTAH troops. Nevertheless Amorim did not withdraw Brazil from the UN mission. More recently, Amorim reappeared as the Head of the Organization of American States’ (OAS) contingent that oversaw Haiti’s fraudulent elections of August 9 and October 25, 2015 on behalf of the US.

Hillary Clinton at Rousseff’s inauguration in 2011. – reflecting both her own and the U.S. approval. Agencia Brasil.

One of the most repulsive and hypocritical aspects of Roussef’s presidency has been the traffic of Haitians to Brazil, since the 2010 earthquake, to serve as slave labor for corrupt construction companies that supported her election campaigns and are shunned by Brazilian workers. The traffic continues at the rate of 75 Haitians per day. Many Haitians have died unnoticed while building stadiums for the World Cup and working on unpopular hydroelectric and mining projects that have deforested the Amazon. In one fell swoop, Dilma’s administration trampled the rights of the indigenous, degraded the environment of Brazil, and assisted the US goal to depopulate Haiti of its potentially troublesome young educated males.

Haitian slave labor in Brazil.

In Brazil, as in France and most countries worldwide, citizens are fed up with their corrupt political class. Brazil suffers from a deep social malaise. The rich and even the middle class live in fortresses guarded by private security. Meanwhile the poor, who are mainly blacks and mulattoes, are reduced to the misery of the favelas. Lula has been celebrated by the poor and some of the left for the bolsa familia: a social program that subsidizes education by allocating funds to impoverished parents for every child in school. It is by this gimmick that the Workers’ Party won the poor people’s vote. In a blatant contradiction, however, Lula and Dilma have treated the favelas like occupied territories where Brazil wages war on its own poor. The massive militarized police that are “pacifying” the favelas received their training and desensitization in places like Port-au-Prince’s slum Cite Soleil. The problem with Dilma Rousseff, who is often presented as a leftist firebrand, and her political party, which carries essentially a communist name, is that, just like the pseudo-socialist Francois Hollande in France, she represents a fake left that serves the interests of the super-rich and is thoroughly corrupt.

There is no coup against Rousseff. Most Brazilians have simply become wise to her act and want her to go. On May 11, the Brazilian Senate will probably ask her to step down and stand trial by a committee of senators headed by the chief Supreme Court justice; and by January 2016, she and the rest of her clan will likely be permanently removed from office. This will prevent Lula from seeking the presidency, which he could do again, or promoting a candidate like Celso Amorim. Let Dilma and all the rest cry “coup!” Justice will pursue its course. Dilma should never have been reelected, and her impeachment might well be an early step toward a more representative democracy in Brazil. Perhaps the favelas will advance the job by rising up in a samba of Brazilian noite em nossos pés (nuit debout).

Update: May 12, 2016. In a vote of 55 to 22, Dilma Rousseff was impeached by the Brazilian Senate and suspended from her post.

Source: News Junkie Post

Gilbert Mercier is a French journalist, photojournalist and filmmaker based in the US since 1983. He is the co-founder & editor in chief of News Junkie Post.

Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com

We apologize for this inconvenience.

Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

Photo by Lenny Wood

FRONTLINE NEWS—

Reports, News Flashes, and Commentary from Various Conflict Zones Around the Globe
HUMANITY IN TORMENT

=By= Carlos Aznárez

Brazilian protests. (Fernando Frazão/ABr – CC BY 3.0 BR)

Practice makes perfect they say, and the US has refined its coup strategy to a fine art. How simple it is to bring down any government that seems disadvantageous to the US desires at the time. The US is now sweeping back through South America, apparently reshaping governments and policies at will. (rw)

The coup has been consummated. Brazil now joins Honduras and Paraguay in the list of countries that Imperialism used as a giant laboratory to test, with undoubtable success, their technique to destitute neo-developmentalist governments. This recipe is labeled as “moderate” by some analysts that are not experiencing its results in their own flesh, and for those who compare it with the inhuman dictatorships that these countries suffered a few decades ago. In fact, they are brutal, like capitalism is in essence. In Argentina, for example, in just a few months, 120,000 workers were laid off, as inflation increased dramatically, crushing hopes for a better future. This onslaught in Latin America has to be analyzed in a broader context: it’s part of the same strategy that the heads of Washington DC implemented in the Middle East, destroying one country after the other, until they found out they could attain the same results with more ease in Latin America.

What these coups have in common is that they were propelled by a reaction against the most basic reforms in favor of the people. Each and every one of the heads of state that the coups destituted was targeted only because they began to design some social policies for the sectors that the neoliberalism of the 90s had, plain and simply, thrown into exclusion. Their measures weren’t even revolutionary, such as nationalizing foreign commerce, or making the agrarian reform. On the contrary, the case of Brazil pathetically shows that it didn’t matter to them that Dilma did all types of concessions and made alliances with their side that derived in austerity policies that were clearly in line with the neoliberal project. The bourgeoisie kept attacking from every flank and eroding, day after day, the Workers’ Party (PT).

Unlike the Argentine right-wing and media, which managed to get Mauricio Macri democratically elected, their Brazilian peers forcefully clawed their way into the Presidential house by using the institutions as weapons. Their candidate, Michel Temer, has enough criminal records to enter the Itai Prison instead of the Planalto Palace. But the increasingly discredited bourgeois democracy will allow him to attempt a plan for adjustment that has been plotted by the think-tanks of the opposition.

In fact, it’s announced that the infamous people that were in power with former neoliberal  president Henrique Cardoso will return, and that officers and allies of the IMF and the World Bank will arrive in the country hand in hand with local right-wing leader Aécio Neves. Of all these comebacks, the most disturbing one is that of Henrique Meirelles, who was in charge of the Central Bank under Lula’s Presidencies, between 2003 and 2011, when the economy was peaking unlike these days. Meirelles, a neoliberal whose tendencies were muzzled under Lula’s administration, currently is an executive for big transnational companies and trusted by members of the US Republican Party, will promote in the Ministry of Finance a policy of austerity and indebtment, following the steps that his colleague Joaquim Levy began under Dilma’s administration.

Encouraged by their “victory”, in the next six months without Dilma in power, the Brazilian right is going to try to avoid her comeback (which at this point seems unlikely), and also avoid that Lula da Silva, the only charismatic leader of the working class, holds any chance to win future elections.

However, although the right thinks their dreams of privatizations, layoffs and devaluation are going to soon come true, there’s a factor that they must take into consideration: it’s the enormous popular resistance that for several months has taken over the streets of Brazil. Those workers and peasants that stood up with determination against the austerity policies of former Minister Levy and the pro-agribusiness policies of former Minister Katia Abreu —both of them members of Dilma’s government. They block roads, they man the barricades, they light up when they hear their peers chanting slogans for “land, housing, work!”, they march for kilometers to denounce that the people of Brazil has been waiting for years for unfulfilled promises. They are workers that chose against occupying seats and defend the class autonomy, precisely to not drown the revolutionary ideas they possess in the sewers of bureaucracy and politicking. That’s the real Brazil, with its Landless and its Homeless, with its metal workers from the ABC union or the combative Mercedes Benz workers, who cried out loud that “there will be no coup”. They are the grassroots from which the resistance will emerge from today on, against this tragic May 12, and will try to counteract Temer’s and his partners’ will to govern the country.

Source: The Dawn

=SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.=
free • safe • invaluable

Andre Vltchek
Itinerant Philosopher and Journalist

Broken Chains – The Immigrants – Battery Park – NYC (Donald & Cameron – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Andre Vltchek speaks from the heart about the West’s brutalization of the planet and its people, and about the power of resistance and community. (rw)

There are several essential messages literally shouting from the screen, whenever one watches ‘The Last Supper’ (La Ultima Cena), a brilliant 1976 film by a Cuban director Tomas Gutierrez Alea.

The utmost one: it is impossible to enslave an entire group or race of people, at least not indefinitely. Longing for freedom, for true liberty, is impossible to break, no matter how brutally and persistently colonialism, imperialism, racism and religious terror try to.

The second, equally important message is that the whites and the Christians (but mostly the white Christians) have been behaving, for centuries and all over the world, like a horde of savage beasts and genocidal maniacs.

At the end of April 2016, on board Cubana de Aviacion jet that was taking me from Paris to Havana, I couldn’t resist opening my computer and watching La Ultima Cena again, for at least the tenth time in my life.

Screen capture

Gutierrez on my screen, Granma Internacional (official Cuban newspaper named after the boat which brought Fidel, “Che” and other revolutionaries to Cuba, triggering the Revolution) and a glass of pure and honest rum on my table, I felt at home, safe and blissfully happy. After several depressing days in Paris, I was finally leaving that gray, increasingly depressing, oppressive and self-righteous Europe behind.

Latin America was waiting for me. It was facing terrible attacks organized by the West. Its future was once again uncertain. “Our governments” were bleeding, some of them collapsing. The appalling extreme right-wing government of Mauricio Macri in Argentina has been busy dismantling the social state. Brazil was suffering from the political coup performed by corrupt right-wing lawmakers. Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution was struggling, literally fighting for its survival. Treasonous reactionary forces were confronting both Ecuador and Bolivia.

Where my heart lies. (NASA)

I was asked to come. I was told: “Latin America needs you. We are fighting a war for survival”. And here I was, on board the Cubana, going ‘home’, to the part of the world that has always been so dear to me, and has shaped me into what I am now, as a man and as a writer.

I was going ‘home’, because I wanted to, but also because it was my duty. And I damn believe in duties!

After all, I’m not an anarchist but a Communist, ‘educated’ and hardened in Latin America.

***

But what does it mean when I say: ‘I’m a Communist?’

Am I a Leninist, a Maoist, or a Trotskyist? Do I subscribe to the Soviet or the Chinese model?

Honestly, I have no idea! Frankly, I don’t care much for those nuances.

To me personally, a true Communist is a fighter against imperialism, racism, ‘Western exceptionism’, colonialism and neo-colonialism. He or she is a determined Internationalist, a person who believes in equality and social justice for all people on this Earth.

I’ll leave theoretical discussions to those who have plenty of time on their hands. I never even re-read the entire Das Kapital. It is too long. I read it when I was 16 years old. I think that reading it once is enough… It’s not the only pillar of Communism and it is not some holy scripture that should be constantly quoted.

More than Das Kapital, I was influenced by what I saw in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. I saw the entire world, some 160 countries; I lived on all continents. Wherever I went, I witnessed the horrors of ongoing Western plunder of the Planet.

I saw the Empire forcing countries into bestial civil wars; wars sparked so the multi-national companies could comfortably loot. I saw millions of refugees from once proud and wealthy (or from potentially wealthy) countries that were ruined by the West: Congolese refugees, Somali refugees, Libyan and Syrian refugees, refugees from Afghanistan… I saw inhuman conditions in factories that looked like purgatories; I saw monstrous sweatshops, mines, and fields near feudally run villages. I saw hamlets and townships, where the entire population vanished – dead from hunger, diseases, or both.

I also spent days and days listening to shocking testimonies of victims of torture. I spoke to mothers who lost their children, to wives who lost husbands, to husbands whose wives and daughters were raped in front of their eyes.

And the more I saw, the more I witnessed, the more shocking the stories I heard; the more obliged I felt to take sides, to fight for what I believe could be a much better world.

I wrote two books compiling hundreds of stories of terror committed by the West: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”.

It didn’t bother me how derogatorily the Empire has been in depicting people who are still faithful to their ideals; ready to sacrifice everything, or almost everything, for the struggle against injustice.

I’m not afraid of being ridiculed. But I am terrified of wasting my life if I put selfishness on a pedestal, elevating it above the most essential humanistic values.

I believe that a writer cannot be ‘neutral’ or apolitical. If he is, then he is a coward. Or he is a liar.

Naturally, some of the greatest modern writers were or are Communists: Jose Saramago, Eduardo Galeano, Pablo Neruda, Mo Yan, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to name just a few. Not a bad company, not bad at all!

And I believe that living and struggling for others is much more fulfilling than living only for one’s own selfish interests and pleasures.

***

Cuban boys in Trinidad (Jplavoie)

I admire Cuba for what it has done for humanity, in almost six decades of its revolutionary existence. Cuban Internationalism is what I personally see as ‘my Communism’.

Cuba has heart and it has guts. It knows how to fight, how to embrace, how to sing and dance and how not to betray its ideals.

Is Cuba ideal? Is it perfect? No, of course it is not. But I don’t demand perfection, from countries or from people, or from the Revolutions for that matter. My own life is very far from ‘perfect’. We all make errors and bad decisions: countries, people as well as revolutions.

Perfection actually horrifies me. It is cold, sterile and self-righteous. It is ascetic, puritanical, and therefore inhuman, even perverse. I don’t believe in saints. And I feel embarrassed when someone pretends to be one. Those small errors and ‘imperfections’ are actually making people and countries so warm, so lovable, so human.

The general course of the Cuban Revolution has never been ‘perfect’, but it has always been based on the deepest, most essential roots of humanism. And even when Cuba stood for some short time alone, or almost alone (it was China at the end, as I wrote and as Fidel shortly after confirmed in his “Reflections”, that extended to Cuba its mighty fraternal hand) – it bled, it suffered and shivered from pain brought by countless betrayals, but it did not stir from its path, it did not kneel, it did not beg and it never surrendered!

This is how I think people and countries should live. They should not exchange ideals for trinkets, love for security and advantages, decency for cynical and bloodstained rewards. Patria no se vende, they say in Cuba. Translated loosely: ‘The Fatherland should never be sold’. I also believe that Humanity should never be sold, as well as Love.

And that is why I am a Communist!

***

Betraying what we – human beings – really are, as well as betraying the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable among us is, I believe, more frightening than suicide, than death.

A person, a country or a culture that thrives on the suffering of others, is defunct, thoroughly immoral.

Hive Life (Vladimir Chuchadeev)

The West had been doing exactly that, for decades and centuries. It has been living from and thriving on the enslavement of others and usurping everything on and under the surface of our Earth. It has corrupted, morally and financially, millions of people in its colonies and client states, turning them into shameless and spineless collaborators. It has ‘educated’, indoctrinated and organized huge armies of traitors, on all continents, in almost all corners of the world.

Betrayal is the most powerful weapon of the Western Empire – betrayal and oblivion.

The West turns human beings into prostitutes and butlers, and those who refuse, into prisoners, slaves and martyrs.

Indoctrination is well planned. Dreams are poisoned and ideals dragged through dirt. Nothing pure is allowed to survive.

People are made to fantasize only about hardware; phones and tablets, cars and television sets. But the messages are empty, full of nihilism, repetitive and shallow. Cars can now drive very fast, but there is nothing really significant waiting at the end of the journey. Phones have thousands of functions and applications, but they are broadcasting increasingly trivial messages. Television sets are regurgitating propaganda and intellectually toxic entertainment.

It all brings profits to big corporations. It guarantees obedience. It strengthens the regime. But in many ways, humanity is getting poorer and poorer, while the Planet is almost entirely ruined.

Beauty is replaced with images full of gore. Knowledge is spat on, substituted by primitive pop. Or it is confused with those official-looking diplomas and stamps of approval issued by the indoctrination centers called universities: “Graduated: ready to serve the Empire!” Poetry is gone, from most of bookstores, and from life.

Love is now shaped on pop culture images, anchored in some ‘retro’, oppressive and outdated Christian dogmas.

It is clear that only Communism has so far been strong enough to confront the essence of the mightiest and the most destructive forces on our Planet: Western colonialism/ imperialism, which is locked in a disgusting and incestuous marriage with its own offspring – cruel feudal, capitalist and religious gangs of ‘local elites’ in conquered and ruined countries all over the world.

Both the Empire and its servants are betraying humanity. They are ruining the Planet, pushing it into the state where it could soon become uninhabitable. Or where life itself could lose all its meaning.

To me, to be a true Communist means this: to be engaged in the constant fight against the incessant rape of human brains, bodies and dignity, against the plunder of resources and nature, against selfishness and consequent intellectual and emotional emptiness.

I don’t care under which flag it is done – red with the hammer and sickle, or red with several yellow stars. I’m fine with either of them, as long as the people holding those banners are honest and concerned with the fate of humanity and our Planet.

And as long as people calling themselves Communists are still able to dream!

***

Western propagandists tell you: “show us one perfect Communist society!”

I answer: “There is no such society. Human beings, as we have determined, are incapable of creating anything perfect. Fortunately!” Only religious fanatics are aiming at ‘perfection’. Humans would die of boredom in a perfect world.

Revolution, a Communist Revolution, is a journey; it is a process. It is a huge, heroic attempt to build a much better world, using human brains, muscles, hearts, poetry and courage! It is a perpetual process, where people give more than they take, and when there is no sacrifice, only a fulfillment of duty towards humankind.

‘Che’ Guevara once said: “Sacrifices made should not be displayed as some identity card. They are nothing less than fulfilled obligations.”

Maybe in the West, it is too late for such concepts to flourish. Selfishness, cynicism, greed and indifference have been successfully injected into the sub-consciousness of the majority of people. Perhaps that is why, despite all those material and social privileges, the inhabitants of Europe and North America (but also of Japan) appear to be so depressed and gloomy. They live only for themselves, at the expense of others. They want more and more material goods and more and more privileges.

They have lost the ability to define their own condition, but probably, deep inside, they feel emptiness, intuitively sensing that something is terribly wrong.

And that’s why they hate Communism. That’s why they stick to self-righteous lies, deceptions and dogmas delivered to them by the regime’s propaganda. If Communists were right, then they would be wrong. And they suspect that they may be wrong. Communism is their bad conscience, and it brings fear that the bubble of lies could one day get exposed.

Most people in the West, even those who claim that they belong to the Left, want Communism to go away. They want to smear it, cover it with filth; bring it ‘to their level’. They want to muzzle it. They are desperately trying to convince themselves that Communism is wrong. Otherwise, the responsibility for the hundreds of millions of lost lives would haunt them incessantly. Otherwise, they would have to hear and maybe even accept that the privileges of Europeans and North Americans are constructed on dreadful crimes against humanity! Otherwise, they would be forced to, on moral grounds, dismantle those privileges (something truly unthinkable, given the mindset of Western culture).

The recent position of the majority of Europeans towards the refugees coming from countries destabilized by the West, clearly shows how morally defunct the West really is. It is incapable of basic ethical judgments. Its ability to think logically has collapsed.

But the West is still ruling the world. Or more precisely, it is twisting its arm, pushing it towards disaster.

Western imperialist logic is simple: “If we rape and loot, it is because if we don’t, others would! Everybody is the same. It cannot be helped. What we do is essential to human nature.”

It is not. It is rubbish. I have seen people behaving better, much better than that, almost everywhere outside the Western world and its colonies. Even when they manage to slip away from their torturers and jailers – the Empire – for only a few years, they behave much better. But usually they are not allowed to slip away for too long: the Empire hits powerfully against those who dare to dream about freedom. It arranges coups against rebellious governments, destabilizes economies, supports the ‘opposition’, or directly invades.

It is absolutely clear to anyone who is still able and willing to see, that if the criminal Western Empire collapses, human beings would want to, they’d be capable of building great egalitarian and compassionate societies.

Global Solidarity by Angel Caido/

I believe that this is not the end. People are waking up from indoctrination, from stupor.

New, powerful anti-imperialist alliances are being forged. The year 2016 is not 1996 when there seemed to be almost no hopes left.

The war is waged, the war for the survival of humankind.

It is not a classical war of bullets and missiles. It is a war of nerves and ideals, dreams and information.

Before passing away, the great Uruguayan writer and revolutionary, Eduardo Galeano, told me: “Soon the time will come, and the world will erect old banners again!”

It is happening now! In Latin America, Africa and Asia, in almost all parts of the former Soviet Union and in China, people are demanding more Communism, not less. They don’t always call Communism by its name, but they are crying for its essence: freedom and solidarity, passion, fervor, courage to change the world, equality, justice and internationalism.

I have no doubt that we will win. But I also suspect that before we do, the Empire will bathe entire continents in blood. Desire of Westerners to rule and to control is pathological. They are ready to murder millions of those who are unwilling to fall on their knees. They already murdered hundreds of millions, throughout the centuries. And they will sacrifice millions more.

But this time, they will be stopped.

I believe it, and shoulder-to-shoulder with others, I am working day and night to make it happen.

Because it is my duty…

Because I’m a Communist!

Andre Vltchek

Philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

=SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.=
free • safe • invaluable

Interview With
João Pedro Stédile

The   B u l l e t
Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 1254

The economist and leader of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) of Brazil, Joao Pedro Stédile, affirmed that left-wing forces won’t allow the Parliamentarian right to fulfill their wish to force Dilma Rousseff out of the presidency to reinstall neoliberalism in the country.  Stédile was interviewed by LibreRed, where this article was first published, and the English translation on The Dawn website.

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff Defiant but weakening.

Thousands rallied in major cities across Brazil on May Day to support the embattled President Dilma Rousseff.

João Pedro Stédile (JPS): First of all, we’re confident that it’s possible to stop the coup in process now that it has reached the Senate. We believe that the government has a greater representation in the Senate than in the Chamber of Deputies [where the vote was in favor of the impeachment], the Senators themselves are older, more experienced in politics and know that a Parliamentary coup like the ones that took place in Honduras or Paraguay would lead Brazil to a deeper crisis.

But if this coup is consolidated in the Senate, we, as part of the movements that are organized in the Popular Brazil Front won’t hesitate in denying any kind of legitimacy to a Michel Temer–Eduardo Cunha government. It would be an illegitimate government completely stained by corruption. It’s now public that they gave out a lot of money to get the votes of the deputies. Besides denying their legitimacy, and not participating in any process, we will keep taking to the streets to exert pressure and lead people to become conscious of what will happen.

As for now, on April 29 – next Friday – there will be mobilizations in several cities and on May 1 we want there to be a massive protest action. For that, we almost certainly will coordinate with several union organizations – there are eight of them, and only one supports the coup. We are in discussions with the seven unions (that are with the people), the possibility of doing a general strike before the vote in the Senate. We want to point out to the businessmen that despite their money and their plan to impose the comeback of neoliberalism and the subordination of our economy to the interests of yankee companies, we the working-class are the ones that produce riches. And if we make a general stoppage, it will be a signal to them that says “you may want to increase your profits and your exploitation again, but those who produce the riches in this country in the industry and agriculture are we, and we won’t allow a coup that destroys democracy in our country.”

LR: Now the right is saying, in Brazil and in the rest of the continent and the world, that this is not a coup but the mere application of Constitutional laws.

JPS: Sure, that’s what they said in Honduras, as well as in Paraguay, and it’s a trap. In Brazilian law, there is a provision that says that if a President commits a crime of responsibility or corruption against the country, the Parliament can punish and expel him or her. But in fact President Dilma didn’t commit any crime at all, the accusation they used against her in the process they started in the Parliament has to do with a mechanism of public accounting that the Government uses to meet its social obligations in health, education, and seeked other funds that were in public banks or in the provision for other areas. But this is not a crime, it’s an artifice of any government, even Michel Temer did it himself when he was in the Presidency of the Republic, replacing the President, and in the states of Brazil there are 24 governors, several of them from the right, but also from the center, left and any other ideological convictions, that use that form of accounting.

Therefore, there is no crime, and if there were, then Temer would have to be ousted too, and that’s why we denounce that a single innocent person can’t be judged for an action that was made by two partners: President and Vice President. But the bottom of the issue is not removing the President or not, apart from being a true blow to democracy, the problem is that we are going through a serious economic crisis and the capitalists’ way to deal with that crisis and restore their profit rate is to return to the neoliberal model, that is, to take away workers’ rights, hand out our resources, such as oil, mining, water, and biodiversity to transnational companies and keep interest rates high – President Dilma was an obstacle to that.

Temer has already announced his government plan, which is completely neoliberal. That’s why the Brazilian people’s organizations say that Temer is to Brazil what Mauricio Macri is to Argentina, but the difference resides in that Macri earned the votes to become President and he didn’t. Not only that, but he’s so unpopular that in recent polls 80 per cent of the people said that they don’t want him, and that if he ran for President, he’d get only one per cent of the vote in Brazil. That’s the state of affairs: it’s a coup against democracy.

LR: How come President Dilma chose him as Vice President?

JPS: That’s the sort of move that we in the MST always criticized. In reality, Lula (in both of his terms) and Dilma always proposed a formula for class conciliation, like in Chile, so there were always seats reserved for sectors of the Brazilian bourgeoisie.

When Lula was President, that strategy worked well because his Vice President was a nationalist, serious and even honest businessman from the textile industry, whose business depended also on the internal market and therefore he was interested in having wealth distribution because that way he could sell more, but Mr. Temer is a lumpen bourgeoise. His only role is to defend the bourgeoisie, but he’s not actually a bourgeoise per se, and because of that, because he’s a lumpen, he betrayed the President. When the President publicly spoke to denounce that betrayal, the right started a process in the Supreme Federal Court to prevent her speech from being broadcast on the national network, to silence her speech against this man and the whole coup that was being schemed by more than a hundred corrupt Parliamentarians, who are themselves being investigated by the Supreme Federal Court. There’s no explanation as for why, to this day, the judicial power hasn’t had the courage to accelerate those processes, because most of the Parliamentarians that voted against Dilma could even go to jail for the millions they stole from public coffers, and in the form of kickbacks from companies.

LR: As an economist, could you explain how much the current economic crisis weighed in the current political crisis of Brazil?

JPS: The economic crisis is the reason why the class conciliation ceased to be possible, because when Lula was President, he designed a conciliation that was based on three pillars: firstly, to make the economy grow through industry (which he accomplished), secondly, to recover the role of the state of making productive investments such as education and health, to better the living conditions of the population and thirdly, to distribute income through an increase in the minimum wage. What happened? With the international crisis of capitalism the economy of Brazil, as a country on the periphery of capitalism, suffered greatly, and for three years the economy hasn’t grown.

Twenty years ago industry accounted for 50 per cent of our GDP and now, due to deindustrialization and competition from Chinese and U.S. companies, national industry accounts for only 9 per cent of the GDP, and there’s a deep economic crisis that can only be solved by recovering, again, the role of the state, controlling financial capital so that instead of accumulating wealth through speculation, the state can use that money to make productive investments in the industry and agriculture sectors, oriented toward the internal market. With that, the economy would grow again, and we’d have a new role for the workforce (because nowadays we have an unemployment rate of 10 per cent) and we could have social programs again.

Massive demonstration against Rousseff, detonated by nonstop media accusations.

The political crisis we’re going through is a consequence of the elites trying to get back the state and restore neoliberalism, but the working class isn’t going to accept that. It’s going to take years to get out of this, because the only way out of a crisis of this magnitude is through an agreement between social classes – not just parties – over a new model of the country, that can be hegemonic in most of society.

And now, at this moment, there’s no project being discussed in the country, not even within any of the classes – neither the bourgeoisie nor the petite bourgeoisie, nor the working class, have a clear project for the country. This is why we’re in this confusion and why the bourgeoisie is stupid enough – because they’re subordinated to the interests of imperialism – to think it’s enough to change the President of the Republic to magically solve the problems of the economy, but that’s not true. On the contrary, that would deepen the contradictions of inequality, deepen the institutional crisis and, hopefully, send the masses back to the streets so that they, with their political force, debate a new project for the country.

LR: Have some sectors of the working class, that have benefited by the social policies of Dilma and Lula, been co-opted by the right in Brazil?

JPS: It wouldn’t be fair to say they’ve been co-opted, because in that process of mobilization there was a sector of the petite bourgeoisie that went out on the streets to defend the coup. But they are the eight per cent of the population, and we, the left, went out on the streets and even in greater numbers, but we were all militants, organized sectors, the mediation between the masses and the leaders. The masses are still silent, still afraid. They haven’t mobilized yet but they were also not co-opted by the right.

But why is it so? At that point we have to be self-critical, because during the eight years that Lula governed, there was almost no work to elevate the level of political and cultural consciousness of those masses, who got better policies and better salaries but without a change in their views, and the government did nothing to change that. Unlike Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, there was no effort to break with the monopolies in communications, therefore the TV station O Globo puts garbage in people’s heads every day and they remain perplexed while they watch the political game as if it was just another soap opera.

JPS: Times are hard but we mustn’t be discouraged or pessimistic, as the great thinkers of Latin America told us. We have to be pessimistic in our analysis but optimistic toward the future. It’s true that our continent, as everything else, is in crisis, but that’s not the fault of a leader, a government or a party.

Capitalism is to blame – the capitalist way of organizing production and life in society is in crisis around the world and because we in Latin America are in the periphery of world capitalism, capitalists see our continent as a bigger opportunity to dominate natural resources, markets and the workforce. These are hard times because we have to confront the empire, but this brings contradictions.

It’s time to put more energy into bringing awareness and organizing people, because in the coming years we’ll see a new, rising, mass movement on our continent and in this movement there will be new liberation projects and new leaders, and we’ll surely see the dream of Chavez, Martí, and Che come to life again. A project that unifies the dreams of Latin America. We must have hope because we have to fight every day. Those who fight, always win. •

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( The   B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• ISSN 1923-7871 •

---

Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com

We apologize for this inconvenience. 

---

---

---

=SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.=
free • safe • invaluable

If you appreciate our articles, do the right thing and let us know by subscribing. It’s free and it implies no obligation to you—ever. We just want to have a way to reach our most loyal readers on important occasions when their input is necessary.  In return you get our email newsletter compiling the best of The Greanville Post several times a week.  

[email-subscribers namefield=”YES” desc=”” group=”Public”]

Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

GET EVEN.
Send a donation to 
The Greanville Post–or

SHARE OUR ARTICLES WIDELY!
But be sure to support YOUR media.
If you don’t, who will?

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL-QUOTES BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS.

---

---

---