Using out of context information and a Delaware-based NGO with 0 financial transparency called Coffee Watch, the New York Times and Guardian are running a coordinated hit job on Brazil's coffee industry. Recently hit by Trump tariffs, the sector employs an estimated 1.5 million.+ Like many countries, including the US, Brazil has forced labor problems. Police regularly raid coffee farms to rescue workers in these conditions. The highest annual number of rescued workers since 2000 was 313 in 2023, according to Coffee Watch's own partner Reporter Brasil.

The death knell chimes for the PSDB (Social Democratic Party of Brazil). Once the most powerful party in Brazil and perennial favorite of US Democrats. After a series of dismal elections, it announced it's merging with another right-wing party, Podemos. How did it fall so fast? 1) Like Gorbachev, Brazil's ex-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso had a better reputation abroad than at home. In Brazil, he's despised for his privatizations, like state mining company Vale do Rio Doce, sold to a group of cronies for the equivalent of 1/4 of its annual profits

Valério Arcary, one of Brazil's greatest Marxist historians, unaffiliated with the PT since 1991, warns radicals from repeating the errors of 2013-2016: "Unfortunately, a segment of the radical militant left does not agree that we need to buy time, much less that we need Lula+ "Some declare themselves independent of the government, while others adopt the strategy of left-wing opposition. Independence means criticizing what one believes is wrong while prioritizing the defense of the government against Bolsonarism...

Glenn Greenwald may by whining about protecting the political rights of fascists now, but in 2017 a billionaire allegedly flew him to Canada so he could promote a US DOJ-backed lawfare operation in Brazil.

https://twitter.com/BRASILWIRE/status/1614264572092760067

His role in Operation Spoofing later turn the public against the prosecutors he awarded the Allard Prize to. However it seems like he sat on a massive trove of evidence of US collaboration w/ Lava Jato until Intercept lost its monopoly on the info+ fair.org/home/greenwald…

Here's "Owned" Glenn Greenwald misleading Americans about Brazil, while revealing his true, millionaire nature by engaging in the long tradition of US elites denying coups in Latin America: 1) Jair Bolsonaro was not declared "guilty" of anything;+ 2) This weeks Court procedure was not a trial. It was a formal review of evidence;

After ex-President Jair Bolsonaro was formally charged with leading an armed criminal organization to plot a military coup by the Supreme Court today, he said, "discussing hypotheses isn't a crime." Not only is he wrong, he's confessed again. I'll explain why here.+ Bolsonaro's argument that merely discussing a coup is not illegal fails because, 1) Intent matters: If discussions involve planning, recruitment, or incitement, they cross into criminal conspiracy;

Brazilian journalists are scouring the new Kennedy files for info about the US role in the 1964 Military Coup. Supporting what Phillip Agee wrote in the 1970s, new info shows that Rio Grande do Sul Gov. Leonel Brizola was one of the most spied on individuals in Latin America.+ As Jacob Gorender wrote in "Combate nas Trevas", infighting in the Brazilian left led to inability to form armed resistance during the coup in 1964 - everywhere except Rio Grande do Sul, where governor Leonel Brizola (left) had put together an armed militia.

This week, Brazil's Federal Govt. delivered 789 new ambulances for use by the national free, universal public health system, to 59 cities in 21 Brazilian states. Ambulance service is free in Brazil, thanks to the SAMU program, started in 2004 during the 1st Lula administration.+ Established by then Health Minister and current Senator and PT President Humberto Costa, Brazil's free public ambulance service has it's own dedicated, free emergency number, 192, which can even be accessed from a locked smartphone with no credit. Regular emergency number is 190.

2.5 years after former tech reporter Jack Nicas began to push Elon Musk's "judicial overreach" narrative about the Supreme Court Justice, Alexandre de Moraes, supervising the investigation into a failed military coup attempt, NYT finally admits he was targeted for assassination.+ Another first: NYT runs a positively framed photo of Justice Moraes, who is not (as Glenn Greenwald might have you believe) Chief Justice but one of 11 members of Brazil's Supreme Court.

In 1978, Jimmy Carter cut off US support for the Brazilian military. Then he made an uninvited visit to Brazil, where he met with liberation theology clergy and human rights activists. S. Paulo Cardinal Dom Evaristo Arns (l) asked him about the CIA's torture training program.+ "I was in a car, alone with the US President and his wife, in Rio de Janeiro," Arns said. "I said, 'a lot of people say that the CIA tought us torture techniques, most notably psychological torture. Do you think this is true?' ...

New York Times hero, bolsonarista ex-Congressman Daniel Silveira, is back in prison after only 4 days, for parole violations. The ex-Rio military police cop (kicked out after 60 disciplinary procedures) was arrested in 2021 for calling on the army to overthrow the Supreme Court+ As I wrote for FAIR, on 10/4/2024, the Times Jack Nicas spent the first 4 paragraphs of a hit job on Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes softening Silveira's image, misrepresenting the terms of his arrest, and fixating on his "bulging muscles." fair.org/home/with-bols…

Phase 2 of Musk's "free Bolsonaro" campaign has begun, with help from sidekick Greenwald, who's released WhatsApp chats from Supreme Court Justice Moraes' staff showing him "informally directing" an Electoral Court investigation. The problem is there's nothing illegal about it.+ In the pages of Folha de S. Paulo, Glenn uses US law to claim his leaked messages prove that the Supreme Federal Court (STF) minister illegally acted 'outside the procedural framework' by having his staff request Superior Electoral Court (TSE) reports on investigation suspects.

It's depressing to see the normally respectable magazine Current Affairs run yet another one of a long series of misleading, Perry Anderson-style "from the left" hit pieces against Lula. I'll highlight some of the worst examples of disinformation in this thread+ I'll start with these two examples of gaslighting of the Brazilian left.

When President Lula brought up Venezuela, AS/COA endorsed "leftist" Chilean President Gabriel Boric rolled his eyes and stuck his beloved US State Depatment narrative.

https://twitter.com/EnverConde/status/1820535808845365345

Here's the infamous Americas Quarterly (AS/COA's Latin American news magazine) 2021 fluff piece about Gabriel Boric, pictured here as a cool guy for going to a big oil/pharma/mining-funded think tank in a Nirvana t-shirt. americasquarterly.org/article/what-i…

On September 6, 2018, the news broke that Jair Bolsonaro had been stabbed at a campaign rally. As World leaders expressed solidarity for him, a friend from the PT called and said, "this is our 9/11. We've lost the election". Later, all kinds of suspicious information came out + Many Brazilians have never believed that Bolsonaro was really stabbed, in part because there was no blood (actually a pretty common situation in puncture wounds), but also because he had a series of intestinal surguries before and after the alleged stabbing.

Last week, I was shocked to learn that in 2021, Congresswoman Tabata Amaral (L) secretly pressed criminal charges against me in S. Paulo's TRF-3 Court in a clear attempt to suppress my free speech rights. Even more surprising: the Court appointed a public defender and I won. + in April 2021, Amaral sided with the Bolsonaro coalition, voting to fast-track a bill to force reopening of public schools at the height of the Covid 19 pandemic, before teachers could access vaccines - against the wishes of the teacher and students unions. I tweeted this:

One full spectrum warfare tactic against the Brazilian Workers Party involves attacks on environmental issues by ostensibly leftist academics & jornalists in the Global North to weaken solidarity. They never mention Brazil leads the Global South in sustainable energy transition+ According to the WEF's 2024 Energy Transition Index Brazil ranks 3rd among the World's 10 largest economies, 1st among nations with pop. > 100 million and 1st among developing nations in increased adoption of clean energy sources and energy efficiency.

5 ex-mayors of Porto Alegre, from 3 political parties, have signed a public statement criticizing bolsonarista Mayor Sebastião Melo of negligence that exacerbated the flood which has left portions of the city underwater for nearly 4 weeks. Here it is in English+ "We, former Mayors of the capital of Rio Grande, want to express our complete solidarity with all the families affected – directly or indirectly – by the climate catastrophe that is impacting Porto Alegre...

Built in the 1960s to handle a 6 m rise in the Guaíba River, Porto Alegre's flood protection system would've prevented the city from flooding this month, if it hadn't been systematically neglected by 20 years of conservative mayors, writes Jeferson Miola+ bmier.substack.com/p/city-halls-r…
"The fact that storm-water pumping station number 17 [EBAP-17] was broken, which caused flooding in an area of the city last September, had been known since 2018, according to a Matinal News report. Despite this, the bolsonarista city government of Sebastião Melo did nothing."

In 2019, Bolsonaro's Fed. Police tried to force Greenwald to name his source for the Telegram leaks in the Vaza Jato scandal. 40 progressive lawyers agreed to defend him, pro bono, on 7.7.2019. On 8.8.2019 the Supreme Court he now slanders as "totalitarian" ruled in his favor+ Greenwald's Musk-alligneded PR campaign, that ridicules the Brazilian left, pushes Jair Bolsonaro's Trumpian "stop the steal" narrative and uses US law to make a baseless claim that Brazil's Supreme Court is totalitarian, therefore, reeks of hypocrisy. www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/monica…

Estela Aranha accuses Michael Shellenberger of dishonestly manipulating his "Twitter Files" to push Musk's agenda. The only Brazilian group to ever press charges for refusing to turn over user data is GAECO - S. Paulo police's organized crime unit. More info in this thread+ Aranha, a lawyer, internet crimes specialist & former Sec. of the Justice Ministry, dismantles Shellenberger's claim that Supreme Court Justice Moraes and other officials threatened to prosecute Twitter Brazil's lawyer if he didn't hand over users' personal information.