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Brazil: Sometimes it sinks
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  • Far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro went out on a limb to support a truckers strike that paralysed Brazil and forced the government to reinstate costly fuel subsidies, and the strategy may have helped his chances of beating one of several pro-business reform candidates in October's election.

    World of paradoxes and cheats :-) This is that happens if you have no proper party and leaders.

  • @RoadsidePicnic

    Yep. Capitalists slowly realize that old advisers/media tricks work worse or stop work at all.

  • Business and investors media talk about strike spread.

    "On Tuesday, the paralizations spread to new sectors [...] The Sao Paulo Motoboys Union (Sindimoto) called for stoppages throughout the country against the rise in ga prices, the teachers of private schools in the city of São Paulo decided to start a new paralization, [about the collective convention], Metroviários in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, also promised to reduce the operation of the subway from this Tuesday. By commencing an indefinite strike, the union claims that the passage will not be increased [...] The Workers' Union of Road and Collective Urban Transport of Manaus and the Amazon (STTRM) also indicated a stoppage for today. The municipal buses in Florianópolis should also stop in support of the truck drivers [...] The tankers will strike a warning of 72 hours from Wednesday, 30 [they claim the] reducing of fuel prices, maintaining jobs, the resumption of refinery production, the end of imports of petroleum products, and the resignation of Pedro Parente from the company's presidency. As of this Tuesday, teachers and employees of the University of São Paulo Paulo (USP) and the University of Campinas (Unicamp) also start a strike [...] Yesterday, dockworkers working in the Port of Santos, representatives of the unions of Oil Tankers, Graphers, Construction Workers and Judiciaries joined a march in support of truckers , in the port city.

    Government Secretary Carlos Marun assured on Monday that the price of diesel in the pumps of the gas stations would be 0.46 real lower already on Tuesday. It would, in theory, allow the truckers to return home permanently. But it may not be enough for the country to return to normalcy." (Exame - business directed magazine)

  • The government about the R$ 0,46 reduction of diesel fuel.

    "Secretary of Government Ministry Carlos Marun said he counts on the 'reason and patriotism' of the owners of the gas stations in the relation to the effort being made by the Government and he expects to see the reduction of prices reaching the final consumer. 'It's a crime of lèse-nation someone to usurp for themselves the discount that is being given,' he said" (El Pais)

  • Brazil faced a deepening crisis as the nation’s truckers refused to abandon a crippling strike despite a series of concessions from the government and other workers threatened to join the movement. 

    For now all going not bad.

    The Brazilian Truck Drivers Association – a key union that claims to represent 600,000 drivers – even said the strike was over. But truckers have yet to return to work.

    This is how slowly voice of masses rise.

    Among the truckers in the Régis Bittencourt, there was no sign of abandoning the strike. They said they had organized themselves spontaneously across the country through WhatsApp and social media, such as Facebook — not through the unions, which they distrusted. Large banners attached to their trucks said: “The unions don’t represent us”.

    Also good, as ruling class usually is in very good relations with all big unions.

  • @Vitaliy what do you mean by real.working. people.

    @Rodesidepicnic

    It's.evident what kind of situational stress is Brazil living right now. About the social group's, it's all too much, organize system is a mayor blockage to prosperity and.equality that to deploy action on filed by revolutionary group's is.all most impossible. At this point what history suggests.and from a realistic perspective social war should be a.viable option, assuming people there are willing to change things.

    Modern society is.design to create procrastinated beings. So.It's.difficult to sustain such need of revolution. Things should be done differently. Under the radar and.on top of the ladder. Technology now makes possible new ways of communicating and elaborate plans. Either way infield planing finally is applied and that's what matters and that's what's lack.

    A lion that has.just.eat, it's not.as.sharp as hunting as.the.hungry one. Ok maybe desperation was not the.right.word but NEED is shure one. About union, it's is.undoubtedly the.most important feature. It's.not.idealistic to think about a United country, the difficulty is.to.sustain that machine. You need resources organized logistics, you need military support.

    In time all this.Will settle, and after all this.chaos new rules and new legislations.Will be made, more strict.measures will be.imposed, less liberty and right.for the people. It's.a.constrained planning to take the ability to gather the resources we all live with. Those.who we have the.right.to have.

    Is.there.a.way.to really make a.revolution in this.time.period where all revolutionaries are takes down.before even.reaching a.good status.

  • @RoadsidePicnic

    Of course it is now just economic demand out of desperate situation.

    And you need really smart and organized people to turn it in proper way. But such strike has one good quality - it shows how much society actually depend on real working people.

  • @endotoxic Upper class will always do smart moves and capitalize whatever they can... look at Krupp history. And so these kind of people are here too.

    We know the army is operating in background, we know imperialists are operating in background, we have a bunch of very dubious personas clashing for attention to run the elections (if they will be run). It's hard to foresee what's actually being played, but everything points to disruption and suppression of rights of the people.

    And there's close to nothing in terms of organized actions and coherent tough from the left. Last time I checked, people were arguing about if it's a strike or a lockout and if the hard workers have right to strike or if they are been manipulated... and that kind of fruitful debate have a total of zero hard workers involved and all leftists in it have a total of zero contact with the strike. I'm not aware of anything better, people are hoping god will intervene in the elections and put a divine class-pactualist bearded man in the office, prevent a coup and provide bread to everyone etc.

    Don't know, desperation doesn't seems to point to a good direction in that context, it can also be one more thing to the upper class to capitalize with. Maybe if you means it can lead to radicalization, if things are so critical that people stop wasting effort with flower dreams and the elections, start organizing to use facts like that strike to leverage some way to become more cohesive and some kind of resistance or effort to change the direction of things.

  • Vitaliy its a world crysis, a wide trend. The problem is there is no aparent solution. Until desperation and union comes together.

  • I wonder at what extent is the people willing to wistand. Brazilians are crazy.

    Nothing crazy in this. As with soaring prices of fuel and same cost of transportation people can't survive.

  • Thus, is a very smart move from upper class rulers, to motivate certain moves for their benefit.

    I wonder at what extent is the people willing to wistand. Brazilians are crazy.

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    Brazil's largest city and economic hub Sao Paulo decreed a state of emergency, as did Rio de Janeiro, as gas stations and airports ran out of fuel.

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  • Nationwide truckers' strike over soaring fuel prices strike entered its fifth day on Friday - completely ignoring a Thursday night agreement, Sao Paulo declared a state of emergency due to the lack of vital resources for its more than 12 million residents.

    President Michel Temer deployed national security forces to unblock roads amid warnings that supply disruptions risk causing a public calamity.

    “I have actioned the federal security forces to unblock highways and I am asking governors to do the same,” Temer said in a televised address on Friday. “We will not let the population do without its primary needs.”

    "Those who act in a radical manner are harming the population and they will be held responsible."

  • Last night, april 03:

    The commander of the army, Gen. Villas Boas, twitted with a menacing undertone about the possibility of the army to intervene directly in the government crisis, some vague idea atached about corruption of institutions, no fuher details.

    The twitt was published in time to be read in the last minute of the most watched television news, to a dramatic effect. And a day before the judgment of the habeas corpus of the former president Lula by the Supreme Court.

    Vocal support about military intervention was very common in the conservative sector of the army, mainly the reserve high patent, and some active duty army generals have been (lightly) punished for expressing it too (insubordination).

    But it's the first time Villas Boas echoed that same sectors and the first time an army commander has emitted opinion with aims to intervene in the civil government since the military dictatorship.

    The results were a chain effect in the high command around the country, the active generals are now in open mobilization to who knows what.

    Posting a link to El País because most of the news I have crossed are biased or some very ludic nonsense.

    https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2018/04/02/politica/1522697550_276313.html

  • And the government is using that trend to start a dictatorship. We now have Rio de Janeiro under military federal intervention, enforced by decree. It's not just some kind of reinforcement, as by now all the security affairs of that state bypass the civil office and goes to a army general with powers akin and above the Governor. And Rio isn't the worst case of security here.

    One day after that a federal security task force was sent to another state, Ceará, to make intel and "preemptive" operations (basically, spec ops). Judging by the tide it will be escalating task forces, Law and Order military operations and military government intervention until all the country will be, direct or indirect, under state of exception.

    And we are months before presidential election, maybe it would be a hard coup, maybe it will be all "normal", but any results will be state of exception anyway.

    BTW, there's evidence of some things being fabricated "on purpose". The security plan for the rio carnival was insane, aka, misplacing a huge number of police far away from where it was expected to be needed. That gave a social and media fact needed to the intervention right away.

  • Criminal things

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  • I believe that the motives that led me to be removed from my position as president—and in what was really a coup d’état, because there was no real high crime and misdemeanor in my case—I could attribute this to three motives. One, which is more important than all the others, has to do with great misogyny. And for the first time, a woman was elected president. This misogynist treatment has to do with how men and women are seen and described in politics. Women are harsh and insensitive; men are strong and sensitive. Women, when working intensely, are considered obsessive-compulsive, whereas the man is considered a hard worker. So, all of these uses of instruments to attack a woman were mobilized against me, in addition to the many low-quality words.

    But what led to the impeachment were two major things. One, they sought to keep—they, the coup mongers from the PMDB and PSDB, two political parties in Brazil—they were trying to keep the corruption investigations from reaching them, so they said, "We’re going to get rid of her in order to keep the investigations from continuing and for this thing to continue."

    In addition, we had won four elections in a row with a government program that was clearly against many of the trends that were in vogue in the United States and Europe, which were exacerbating inequality. We were fighting inequality. And we had secured some very important results. We took Brazil off of the U.N.’s map of poverty, and we lifted up some 86 million from extreme poverty. We were not selling our lands without any limitations to foreigners.

    https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/26/exclusive_dilma_rousseff_on_her_ouster

    It is always fun to read left opportunists telling about excuse reasons why things happened as they must have happened.

    Also very good read for anyone not understanding "obsession with ruling classes" :-)

  • Some improvements

    At least not talks only.

  • @MarcioK

    You mean that capitalist fight? Well, it does not change anything. Read more, get rid of them.

  • Day of turmoil here in Brazil.

  • Brazil's gross domestic product contracted by 3.6 percent last year, statistics agency IBGE said, following a 3.8 percent drop in 2015. The nation's two-year downturn is the longest and deepest on record for Latin America's biggest nation.

    The economic contraction worsened in the fourth quarter, with a steeper-than-expected decline of 0.9 percent, following a 0.7 percent drop in the previous three months.

    Investment tumbled 10.2 percent in 2016, in a sharp drop that is partly blamed by economists on Brazil's chronically high interest rates.

    And all of this come "unexpectedly".

  • Unemployment improvement

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  • The state of Rio expects a budget deficit of over 19 billion reais ($5.56bn) this year as spending planned before oil prices fell outstrips revenue that is tumbling during Brazil’s worst recession since the 1930s.

    Since late last year, the state has been forced to delay pension and salary payments and shutter some schools and hospitals, where crucial supplies, including medicines and syringes, are lacking.

    Want to support capitalists? Witness your future.

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev Very well said. The only people that is defending Dilma are the "social" movements, sindicates and some artists, all fed by her. During the Lula´s mandate the minister of culture Gilberto Gil performed more shows than ever and when a brazilian music week was presented in France he took basically his friends to represent our whole contry, which is continental and very diverse.

  • Those "good guys" are involved in the same "Lavajato" (carwash) scandal as previous PT management. After all, they were their allies.

    Of course. Both just implement that capitalists want. As soon as resources and energy became an issue you can no longer play into fake "socialism" games.