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Brazil's revolution starting to reveal its true colors
Pepe
Escobar
©
Paulo Whitaker / Reuters
As
we approach High Noon in the savage Brazilian politico-economic
western, here’s what is at stake following my previous piece on RT.
For
the past five days, all hell has broken loose. It started with
judge Sergio Moro, the tropical Elliott Ness at the head of the
two-year-old, 24-phase Car Wash corruption investigation, crudely
manipulating an – illegal – phone tapping of a Lula-Dilma
Rousseff conversation, which he duly leaked to corporate media and
was instantly used as “proof” that
Lula may be back in power as Chief of Staff because he’s “afraid” of
Elliott Ness.
The conversation
The
appalling politicization of the Brazilian Judiciary is now a fait
accompli, with many a judge moved by opportunism and/or corporate
interest/shady political agendas. That implies a “normalization” of
illegal procedures such as phone tapping of defense lawyers and even
the President (Edward Snowden, in a lightweight aside, commented that
Rousseff is still not using cryptography in her communications).
Supreme
Court ministers – at least so far – have not punished Elliott
Ness for his illegal tapping of the President’s phone and for his
illegal leaking of the Lula-Rousseff conversation (there’s nothing
in it to implicate them in any wrongdoing, as Elliott Ness himself
admitted).
The
next cliffhanger was Supreme Court minister Gilmar Mendes – a
notorious opposition puppet – using the illegal phone tapping to
suspend Lula’s new role; that was “required” from
him by two opposition parties. Lula back in government means two
anathemas for the white coup/regime change crowd; political
articulation – which may end up by defeating the impeachment drive
against Rousseff; and fundamental help for the Rousseff
administration to start at least taming the economic crisis.
It’s
crucial to note that Mendes’s unilateral decision was taken only a
day and a half after he had a long lunch with two opposition
heavyweights, one of them Wall Street darling banker and former Soros
protégé Arminio Fraga.
Mendes
not only pushed the administration into a corner; he went further,
handing back to Elliott Ness the competence to investigate Lula under
Car Wash, and this after Moro himself had already been forced, by
law, to transfer the jurisdiction to the Supreme Court, as Lula was
to become a minister.
Essentially
the phone tapping leak is crammed with serious illegalities, as a
smatter of jurists has pointed out; from the tapping taking place
after Moro himself determined they should be discontinued, to the
leak of a Presidential communication, which could only be authorized
by the Supreme Court. Which leads us to the hidden political agenda
behind the leak: to expose Lula to public execration and pit him
against politicians and the Judiciary.
Lula
has presented a habeas corpus request to the Supreme Court, signed by
some of Brazil’s top jurists, while the government is about to
present its own appeal against the blocking of Lula’s nomination.
The ball is with the Supreme Court – and all bets are off.
What “rule of law”?
The
Brazilian Supreme Court in fact has ceased to act as a Supreme
Arbiter as some of its members refuse to admit all the current
trappings of a police state. This is happening while a rash of
prosecutors and a gaggle of investigators at the Brazilian Federal
Police – the equivalent of the FBI - now can be identified as mere
pawns of the ultra-politicized Car Wash investigation.
In
a nutshell: “Justice” in Brazil is now totally politicized. And
Car Wash’s mandate is now revealed to clearly consist in the
outright criminalization of absolutely anything related to the
coalition governments led by the Workers’ Party since the beginning
of the first Lula term in 2003.
Car
Wash is not about the cleansing of corruption in Brazilian politics;
if that really was the target, top opposition politicians would be
under investigation, and many behind bars already. Moreover, the
appalling corruption scheme in the development of Sao Paulo’s metro
lines would not have been treated only as the working of a cartel of
companies, with no politicians involved; the Sao Paulo metro racket
follows the same logic of the corruption scheme discovered – by the
NSA - inside Petrobras.
“Rule
of law” in
Brazil has now been debased to Turkey’s Sultan Erdogan levels –
featuring business leaders with the“wrong” political
connections arrested for months without trial, which translates as
blatant manipulation of public opinion, the preferred tactic of Mani
Pulite fan Moro and his team.
The
road map ahead is grim. The Brazilian Constitution is being torn to
shreds, submitted to a white coup logic to be enforced by all means
necessary. The politicization of the Judiciary runs in parallel to
the mainstream media spectacularization of everything that the
process touches, criminalizing politics but only selected
politicians.
Brazil’s
hugely concentrated economic interests are willing to support any
deal that would mean an endgame to the political/judicial war, as
politico-economically the country remains totally paralyzed – and
polarized. Inside the – immensely corrupt – Brazilian Congress, a
special commission to deliberate over Rousseff’s impeachment has
been appointed, including 36 dodgy members of Parliament who are
facing myriad judicial problems; Kafka or the Dadaists would not come
up with anything as absurd.
So
the road map ahead now depends on how this dodgy impeachment
commission will progress – or not. One of the possible scenarios is
Rousseff’s ouster as early as late April, even if she has not been
formally accused of any wrongdoing; the usual Empire of Chaos
suspects and the local comprador elites barely contain their glee as
they “inform”Bloomberg
or the Wall Street Journal. But then there’s the Lula factor.
How sweet was my coup
Assuming
Lula may be back in action in the next few days, extensive political
articulation – which the opposition wants to kill by all means -
will need 171 votes to smash the impeachment drive in the lower
house; only then may the administration defuse the political crisis
to seriously tackle the economic crisis.
In
a cliffhanger-heavy, extremely fluid scenario, there would be only
two possible negotiated solutions: a sort of legal ersatz
Parliamentarism, with Rousseff still as President, and Lula as a de
facto Prime Minister; and an all-out ersatz Parliamentarism, with
Lula in charge of all the government’s political articulations.
A
pact – forged during “secret” dinners
in Brasilia - between the PSDB (the former social democrats turned
neoliberal enforcers) and the PMDB party (the other major cog in the
Workers’ Party ruling coalition) has been sealed to kill both
options. The PMDB, incidentally, is notorious for – what else –
corrupt politicians, not as a governing entity.
All
eyes are now on the Supreme Court and the – wallowing in corruption
– Brazilian Congress. Lula, in the eye of the hurricane itself, is
in the most unenviable position. He will need to use all his
political capital and all his decades as a master negotiator to find
a (political compromise) way out.
The
Brazilian street remains totally radicalized; the logic (?) of blind
hate prevails while virtually all instances of juridical or political
mediation, not to mention plain, civilized common sense, have been
frozen. Brazilian democracy – one of the healthiest in the world –
is now being strangled by the warped python logic of a police state.
Which
brings us to the tawdry scenario that might as well play out before
summer. A cowardly, very conservative Congress expelsRoussef
from power; the Vice-President, PMDB’s Temer, steps in, the country
is “pacified” and
the proverbial foreign investors, Wall Street, the Koch brothers in
the US, hail the white coup; the Car Wash hysteria slowly – and
magically – fades out because no way former opposition mandarins
should be indicted or go to jail (that’s only for the Workers’
Party).
Kafka
and the Dadaists to the rescue, again; this is exactly
the “soft” regime
change deal that has been clinched in Brasilia by a nasty combo;
selected (corrupt) politicians bought and paid for by the Brazilian
comprador elites; selected businessmen; a large part of a co-opted
Judiciary; and corporate media (ruled by four families).
Call
it white coup. Call it regime change. Call it the Brazilian color
revolution.
Without NATO. Without “humanitarian”imperialism.
Without blood and zillions of US dollars lost, like in Iraq, Libya or
Syria. So “clean”.
So “lawful”.
How come Empire of Chaos’s theoreticians never thought about this
before?
“Humanitarian” imperialism
is so old Hillary; at least the Masters of the Universe will have a
new template to apply all over the developing world. Happy – regime
change – days are here again.
And
forget about reading any of this on Western corporate media.
Pepe Escobar on al-Jazeera
Pepe Escobar on al-Jazeera
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