This video says about itself:
Brazil under fire over Amazon forest mining decree
29 August 2017
Brazil’s government is scrambling to respond to public outcry after it dismantled a vast national reserve in the Amazon to open up the area to mining.
Translated from Dutch NOS TV:
Amazon forest in Brazil not opened to mining after all
Today, 09:53
A Brazilian judge has stopped the plan to open up a large part of the Amazon rainforest for mining. [Right wing coup] President Temer had decided that, but according to the court, Congress should decide.
The rainforest, known as Renca, has been a protected area since 1984. It is 46,000 square kilometers, slightly larger than the Netherlands.
In order to stimulate the economy [of his Big Business cronies], Temer wanted to allow corporations to search for gold and bauxite in the area. Environmentalists warned that this would lead to deforestation.
US Vice-President Mike Pence’s Latin American tour last month provoked an anxious reaction within Brazilian ruling circles, as the country was left off the itinerary, which included meetings with the governments of Peru, Argentina, Chile and Colombia. It marked the second time in two years that Washington has sidelined Latin America’s largest country in this fashion, with Barack Obama excluding it from his own tour of the continent in 2016. Concerns within the Brazilian ruling class over the country’s geopolitical position are fueled by the country’s deepening political and economic instability amid the worst economic crisis in a century, as well as by the increasingly vicious palace intrigues and internecine warfare within the highest echelons of the state apparatus headed by President Michel Temer: here.
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Reblogged this on msamba.
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Wednesday 6th September 2017
posted by Morning Star in Features
Without having received a single vote, Temer’s regime is hurting millions, writes CHRIS WILLIAMSON
IT’S been a year since Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT), was removed from office.
The mechanism used to remove her was devious, undemocratic and tantamount to a parliamentary coup that enabled the right-wing opposition, which had been defeated at the ballot box, to install Michel Temer as president on a new, right-wing programme. This illegitimate president has gone on to slash budgets for healthcare, education and social schemes, has scrapped environmental and indigenous protections, and also rolled back workers’ rights.
When Dilma’s controversial impeachment was passed on August 31 2016, on the grounds of “budget manipulation,” critics pointed to the growing evidence that the key orchestrators of the coup were themselves involved in a fraud and corruption.
Internationally, the process was widely labelled a “parliamentary coup” as it succeeded in removing the PT from office after 13 years in government, without the Brazilian people getting a say.
The scale of this democratic outrage is staggering when you consider that over 50 million people in Brazil had voted in Dilma as their president.
Despite the fact that Dilma herself was cleared of corruption by a senate report in the run-up to the impeachment, Brazil’s largest media conglomerate Globo was happy to portray her as corrupt, championing her coup orchestrators as the saviours of the country, while ignoring the mass resistance to her removal.
Even leaked wiretaps revealing that ministers were collaborating in her removal to stop a widening corruption investigation was not enough to stop the coup.
Now, with hindsight, those of us who saw the true motives of the coup have been proven right. Numerous ministers of Temer’s administration have been forced to resign over corruption scandals.
Eduardo Cunha, former head of the lower house and key figure behind the impeachment, is in jail and even Temer himself has been caught on tape endorsing bribes for the silence of witnesses, including Cunha himself.
When Temer became the first-ever sitting Brazilian president to be formally charged with corruption, he was able to use his political allies to avoid investigation.
Consequently this last year in Brazil has seen an innocent president removed and an unelected one protected by the old elite.
During its year in power, the right-wing administration has been able to enforce a raft of neoliberal reforms that would have never been considered under Dilma or the PT.
The right has implemented an agenda that will hurt millions, without a single vote from the public being cast and Temer’s popularity currently languishes in single figures.
In December 2016, the coup government implemented a 20-year freeze on healthcare and education spending that led to thousands mobilising in the streets against it and widespread criticism in the international community.
The UN special rapporteur on human rights called it a measure “lacking in all nuance and human compassion.”
Environmental measures have been stripped back and indigenous protections weakened, while Temer has even moved to relax the definition of slavery and stopped the publication of the “dirty list” that named and shamed companies which were practising modern slavery.
Rights enjoyed for decades are being removed, including through the new labour law which made it harder for workers to join unions, gave employers greater powers to set wages and reduced health and safety regulations. ITUC leader Sharron Burrows even went as far as to label the labour law changes a “recipe for corporate greed.” A huge privatisation agenda was also announced at the end of August.
While these dangerous policies spell bad news for future generations, the resistance to the coup has been uplifting. Mass mobilisations have been held in support of Dilma and huge strikes and rallies have taken place against the harsh austerity measures.
One figure who has been key in the resistance is former two-term president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, now the most popular politician in Brazil.
He oversaw a period of immense success for the country, lifting millions from poverty with his ground-breaking social programmes while simultaneously turning Brazil into an economic powerhouse that received worldwide praise at the time.
Millions of Brazilians have called for direct elections to be held and Lula has been pegged as the PT candidate.
His popularity has caught the attention of the country’s right wing and there has been a concerted legal and media campaign to discredit the former president to stop him standing in the election.
This orchestrated effort has been branded “lawfare” by his legal team, headed by the renowned QC Geoffrey Robertson, who says Lula’s human rights have been infringed.
For those of us calling for the return of democracy to Brazil, Lula’s battle is as important as Dilma’s was last year.
With his social programmes under threat for the first time in a decade, which will detrimentally affect the lives of millions of Brazilians if they are removed, Brazil’s struggle must be fought internationally as well as at home.
Chris Williamson is shadow minister for fire services and MP for Derby North, joint honorary president of Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America and is involved in the No coup in Brazil initiative.
Find out more from Williamson when he speaks alongside Julia Felmanas of the Brazilian Workers Party and Geoffrey Robertson QC at the upcoming event: O Brasil resiste! Stand up for Democracy and Social Progressat Unite, 128 Theobald’s Road, London, WC1X 8TN, Thursday September 7 at 6.30pm. Register on the door from 6pm, or online at http://bit.ly/standupforbrazil.
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-f50f-The-injustice-continues-one-year-on-from-the-Brazilian-coup#.Wa_nacZpwdU
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Saturday 16th September 2017
posted by Morning Star in World
Attorney general says Rousseff was ousted so Temer could escape justice
BRAZIL’S unelected President Michel Temer has now been charged with obstruction of justice and racketeering by Attorney General Rodrigo Janot.
Mr Janot said on Thursday that the president, who replaced Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party in a “constitutional coup” last year and proceeded to reverse all her social and economic policies without holding an election, is the head of a group of four politicians who took over $160 million (£117m) in bribes from business figures.
The accusation is based on testimony from Joesley Batista, the former chairman of meat-packing giant JBS, who gave evidence against the president in a plea deal.
Mr Janot went further by declaring that the impeachment of Ms Rousseff was itself part of a desperate bid to evade corruption charges by various senators.
The president denies all the accusations against him.
As the sprawling inquiry known as Operation Car Wash, a money-laundering probe that expanded into investigating corruption at the state-owned oil company Petrobras, threatened to bring down senior politicians, “senators of [Mr Temer’s party] the Democratic Movement began a series of manoeuvres to stop it,” Mr Janot asserted.
“As these did not work, they sought to begin the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff.”
Also on Thursday, federal police raided the home of Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi, who is also accused of taking bribes.
The Communist Party of Brazil slammed an “infamous government, trapped in the web of a gang,” pointing to last week’s arrest of Geddel Vieira Lima, a former minister and close ally of Mr Temer, who was forced to resign last November over graft allegations.
Police found 51 million reals (£12m) in bags bearing his fingerprints in a fl at in Salvador.
The communists highlighted the bid to accuse figures on the left of corruption — most notably former president Lula da Silva, who has been sentenced to nine years and six months in jail, barring him from standing in next year’s presidential election, on charges of money-laundering and “passive corruption” that are widely regarded as politically motivated.
The “sordid” persecution of Mr da Silva was “a task left over from the coup” that overthrew Ms Rousseff, the party said.
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-d5c4-Brazil-Coup-leader-charged-over-corruption-claims#.Wb0ya8ZpEdU
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