Crisis in Brazil

Written on April 21st, 2016 in politics Comments Off

After Vote to Remove Brazil’s President, Key Opposition Figure Holds Meetings in Washington – Published on The Bullet, Socialist Project’s E-Bulletin No. 1249, by Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Fishman, David Miranda, April 20, 2016.

Brazil’s lower House of Congress on Sunday voted to impeach the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, sending the removal process to the Senate. In an act of unintended though rich symbolism, the House member who pushed impeachment over the 342-vote threshold was Dep. Bruno Araújo, himself implicated by a document indicating he may have received illegal funds from the construction giant at the heart of the nation’s corruption scandal. Even more significantly, Araújo belongs to the center-right party PSDB, whose nominees have lost four straight national elections to Rousseff’s moderate-left PT party, with the last ballot-box defeat delivered just 18 months ago, when 54 million Brazilians voted to re-elect Dilma as president.

Those two facts about Araújo underscore the unprecedentedly surreal nature of yesterday’s proceedings in Brasília, capital of the world’s fifth-largest country. Politicians and parties that have spent two decades trying, and failing, to defeat PT in democratic elections triumphantly marched forward to effectively overturn the 2014 vote by removing Dilma on grounds that, as today’s New York Times report makes clear, are, at best, dubious in the extreme. Even The Economist, which has long despised the PT and its anti-poverty programs and wants Dilma to resign, has argued that “in the absence of proof of criminality, impeachment is unwarranted” and “looks like a pretext for ousting an unpopular president.”

Voting to Impeach: … //

… The Political Crisis in Brazil, Euan Gibb: … //

… A Complicated Situation for the Radical Left, Bea Whitaker, João Machado: … //

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Links:

Expedition Beyond Tomorrow, the Fit Children of Seinäjoki, on Spiegel Online International, by Jörg Römer and Janita Hämäläinen, April 2016: someone must have put something in the water that makes the children thin. The Finnish city Seinäjoki has successfully tackled the problem of obesity in children with a program emphasizing physical fitness and better nutrition in schools. Can the lessons learned here also be applied in Germany and elsewhere in the world?

La Suisse et ses étrangers, pragmatisme avant tout, dans SWI swissinfo.ch, par Marc-André Miserez, le 18 avril 2016: plus de deux ans après la votation du 9 février 2014, la Suisse se demande toujours comment elle va concilier les quotas voulus par le peuple et la libre circulation. Alors que les négociations avec l’UE sont au point mort, regard en arrière sur un siècle d’immigration, dans un pays où le bon étranger est d’abord un étranger utile;

Votations, Europe et présidences au menu du PS, du PLR et des Verts, dans SWI swissinfo.ch, le 16 avril 2016;

Danthine plaide pour un emploi inconditionnel, dans 24heures.ch, le 16 avril 2016;

New Malaysian funder of Italian football club is unmasked, on malaymail online, by HARESH DEOL and PEARL LEE, April 16, 2016;

PORTUGAL: Draghi welcomed by “Quantitative Easing for the People” demand while in Lisbon, on BIEN, by André Coelho, April 15, 2016;

Nuit debout, les mots de minuit, dans Libération.fr, par Sylvain Mouillard, le 15 avril 2016;

The Remain campaign needs more than passion and commitment, on New Statesman, by Tom Railton, April 15, 2016;

Uganda: MPs Amend, Pass Income Tax Bill to Exempt Selves From Taxes, on allAfrica, by Urn, April 15, 2016;

UC–Davis Spent $175,000 Trying to Wipe the Internet of Its Pepper-Spraying Scandal, on Slate, by Rachel E. Gross, April 14, 2016;

France-Cahors: Le mouvement Nuit Debout gagne le Lot, dans La Vie Quercynoise.fr, par Marc Louison, le 14 avril 2016: un premier rassemblement a été organisé ce jeudi en fin d’après-midi sur le parvis de la mairie de Cahors;

L’optimisation fiscale pour tous, à quand l’appli? dans France Inter.fr, par Catherine Boullay, le 14 avril 2016;

Canada: Community network wants people to imagine a poverty-free Peterborough, on My Kawartha, by Jamie Steel, April 14, 2016;

Canada: NDP float new ideas, Tories tread old territory as house resumes, on Global News.ca, by Marieke Walsh, April 14, 2016;

Légalisation du cannabis, 59% des Français y demeurent opposés (mais c’est un peu moins qu’avant), dans Atlantico.fr, par Yves-Marie Cann, le 14 avril 2016;

Gold resurgence, who’s buying gold and why, on The Telegraph.co.uk, by Kyle Caldwell, April 13, 2016;

Swiss widen corruption investigation into Malaysia’s 1MDB fund, on The Guardian, April 13, 2016;

1MDB net widens as Swiss probe flags up Abu Dhabi link, on Financial Times/Asia-Pacific, by Jeevan Vasagar in Singapore and Ralph Atkins in Zurich, April 12, 2016;

Yanis Varoufakis and his plan to take on Europe – again, 19.13 min, uploaded by Global Conversation, Feb 24, 2016: Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis locked horns with the European establishment, and ultimately had to stand down. But now the “bad boy of European politics”:http://www.euronews.com/2015/07/06/se… is back with a vengeance – launching a new pan-European movement that he says aims to bring democracy back to EU decision making;

Yanis Varoufakis on Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Europe, 4.29 min, uploaed by Channel 4 News, Feb 10, 2016;

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