Lula defeats Bolsonaro to again become Brazil’s president
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The Amazon is already close to the tipping point of becoming a savanna and net carbon emitting system.
Think this doesn't matter to people in the US? Well, turns out the rain in the Midwest of the United States comes from the Amazon rainforest. The planet is intricately intertwined and we do not truly understand the forces we are messing with...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18728-7 https://www.economist.com/interactive/graphic-detail/2022/05... https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-deforestation-affecting-g...
Please don’t normalize the election of a criminal.
That said, this is hardly an argument against Lula's effectiveness at cutting down deforestation, and even less an argument for Bolsonaro.
It took Lula the first half of his first term to effectively cut the trend that had started between 1997 and 1998.
For the rest of his time in office, there was a sharp and sustained drop. Numbers put it at roughly a 70% drop. That trend continued if slowed down a little during Dilma's first term.
After that we had Dilma's second term in very tough circumstances, the unlawful imprisonment of Lula, an impeachment that was deemed a coup by many, followed by 2 years with what was an interim President at best and a tyrant at worst, and Bolsonaro's ascension afterwards.
During Bolsonaro's term there was a sustained increase in deforestation. [0]
In 2018, it was just short of 8000km2. During Bolsonaros's first 3 years, it went up to ~10500km2, ~11000km2 and finally ~13000km2. By early June this year, it had already surpassed last year's numbers [1].
For reference, Lula was in office from 2003 to 2010.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/ws/includes/idt2/5630ed76-05f4-457f-b6a1...
[1] https://amazonia.org.br/desmatamento-acumulado-em-2022-na-am...
Edit: originally I had written that by early July this year's figures had already surpassed last year's. That's not technically wrong, but it actually happened a month earlier than that, in early June.
This whole paragraph is partisan bullshit. I’m not interested in further interactions. Enjoy the win of your pet criminal and have a good night.
I don't have any pets (unfortunately - I love dogs but I live in a carpeted flat), but if I did I'm pretty certain they wouldn't be criminals.
Are you joking?
The jurisdiction issue? A minor technicality that got him off the hook. He was supposed to undergo a new trial but I guess that's never gonna happen now.
We all saw the evidence. For years we watched news about this. Other politicians ratted him out. It's like every few months they'd discover a new thing this guy stole. I remember watching such a news report less than a year ago.
Are you seriously claiming he's not a criminal in spite of everything he's done because they let him go free on a technicality? I just don't know what to say anymore. I'm done. There's no point, he won.
He had his basic human right to a fair trial robbed of him.
If you think that's "a minor technicality", then we really have no common ground to argue on.
> we really have no common ground to argue on
Probably not. There's no point anyway. Probably best to move on from this insanity.
He is corrupt and a criminal. Officials actually tried to censor these facts here in Brazil.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-30/lula-wins...
> Lula was a wildly popular president before accusations of wrongdoing and fiscal mismanagement resulted in the impeachment of his hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff in 2016.
> By 2019, Lula was behind bars and facing a long prison sentence amid accusations he steered billions of state contracts to allies.
> Released on a technicality, it cleared the way for him to run last year after the Supreme Court quashed his convictions.
He walked free because of some jurisdiction bullshit and his judgement is pending retrial to this day. He was not absolved of wrongdoing as he claimed.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56326389
Didn't just escape justice, he made it back to political office, to the presidency of this country.
Collaboration between prosecution and judges [1] is not bullshit.
Also his judgement is not pending. Some charges were dropped by the new court because there were not enough evidences and the other case is now prescribed [2].
[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/04/brazil-crimi...
[2] https://oglobo.globo.com/politica/juiza-federal-do-df-reconh...
That's not the reason why he was cleared by the supreme court though. It says in all references it was because the court that tried him didn't have jurisdiction. The crimes didn't happen where he was tried.
> Some charges were dropped by the new court because there were not enough evidences and the other case is now prescribed
Wow.
I give up. I don't have the energy for this anymore.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/24/lula-judge-was...
Maybe that wasn't the final ruling that set him free, but it was a very important step into it.
I believe i recall him also looking to 'send in the military and kill all those who protest' something along those lines. This was in comparison to Canada's banning of protests and simply arresting all the lawful protestors. Under the same vein, having not followed the same lockdowns for covid he was committing crimes against humanity.
I do believe he was pro-putin and ukraine war. In that he was providing support to russia, but no direct military support? Kind of like what the west is doing for ukraine. I get this, BRICs is a thing.
Here's the thing, you dont have to tell me the above is inaccurate. Canadian political media is extremely biased. Curious if you agree with any of this?
It is shocking to me that there is not a paper record for each cast vote in Brazil.
I've never seen voting machines but I remember reading constantly about US southern states using them and the suspicions. As I said many democratic nations have banned them.
https://portal.tcu.gov.br/en_us/imprensa/news/tcu-audits-bra...
There are many valid criticisms against this system. It not being opensource, it's audit process being very restrictive etc... There is a nice presentation following a conclusion of a vulnerability test that highlight many of the issues: https://youtu.be/4MgsGdbtf6o
But this impossibility you claim is just nonsensical.
He did have a problem with the machines for a long time, and so did other candidates and parties. It was them who changed their stance to avoid being on the same side as Bolsonaro.
I don't agree with that. I'm curious about where a person can verify that their vote is actually the one counted? Because you can't in the US (whether by mail or in person).
Don't get me wrong, I think and individual printout would be great! And even better if you could go online (or somewhere) and verify that the vote counted was the one that you have a receipt for. I just don't think these improvements justify Bolsonaro's claims.
Yes, he is right about the problems of a nonexistent paper trail of votes.
One of the reasons for the vote being secret and not leaving the ballot is to avoid people being coerced to vote for any particular candidate.
In Brazil we have the concept of electoral corrals. This is a known and wide practice, although it was much worse in the past. Electoral courts and processes have been fighting this since the early days of Brazilian democracy.
In a nutshell, this is when someone who holds a certain amount of power over many individuals (an employer, a farmer, a community leader, a church pastor, etc) exercises this power in order to coerce people into voting for their favoured candidate even if it goes against the individual's best interests and preference.
They would make people prove that they voted for candidate A, or get fired, expelled from the community, perhaps even fear for their or their family's lives.
These practices still happen and have increased massively this year compared to previous elections, but they're still lower than they used to be.
If people left the ballot with proof of whom they voted for, it would be much easier to coerce them.
With a secret vote being enforced the way it is, individuals still have the choice to agree with their superiors but cast whatever vote they want.
It's not perfect. Like I mentioned, the problem still exists, but it's reduced.
Like other commenters have already said though, the ballots are auditable (and audited).
I would rather our systems and processes keep improving rather than going back to worse ways just because what we have now is not perfect.
[edit] The last one, Parliament was dissolved September 11, 2019, the vote held on October 18th and results announced on the 21st.
Lula’s party has a history of totalitarian tendencies and of siding with dictatorships (Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Angola, etc) and a well known desire to control the media (of course, they call it “democratizing the media”).
If dictatorships, totalitarianism and state-sponsored censorship are not fascist, I don’t know what is.
A few more key characteristics of fascism: nationalism, overt anti-egalitarianism, militarism.
Bolsonero is the fascist here. Lula is not.
Bolsonaro tried to reduce the size of the state, in direct contradiction with that.
Please list concrete actions by his government that can be reasonably characterized as “anti-egalitarian” or “militaristic”.
In fact the military in his government was mostly used in the process of helping Venezuelan refugees escape their country into Brazil.
Mussolini and Hitler did not care about empowering "the State" for its own sake. The State was simply a vehicle to exercise a particular racial and/or political ideology and to gain personal power. If they could've excised state apparatuses and achieved power in some other way, they would've. Indeed, that's exactly what both dictators (though more so Hitler) did once they found the appropriate political leverage to do so. Everything is subordinate not to the State, but to the Fuhrer. The State itself was subordinate to the Fuhrer. You only need look at Hitler's public actions leading up to the war, not to mention the private memoranda, letters, and other documents, to see that. How many times did Hitler risk the complete destruction or occupation of Germany by the Versailles powers? How many times did he exclaim that if he failed, Germany would fail, and would deserve it? Hitler did not care about the State, he cared about his own personal power and legacy and maintaining the facade at all costs.
Fascists use the state to empower themselves. By reducing its size, by definition, a politician reduces his own sphere of influence.
Rereading your comment, I think you’re more or less equating the State with the country, while I’m talking about the government and supporting structure and bureaucracy.
Of course Hitler didn’t care about Germany. He cared about his own power and he had an overreaching state under his control to maintain it.
Why do you call him a fascist though?
> His campaign ran on a platform of “regulating the media”
It didn't, but in any case the media is regulated. Everything that's being argued in this regard is about breaking trusts and monopolies in the media.
Trusts and monopolies are widely regarded as counter to working democracies, and free markets. Seeing liberal right-wingers fight against it is at least somewhat ironic.
> succeeded in censoring a major news channel and the release of a documentary film about the attempt to murder the president in the previous election.
Could you please post references to this?
The first is the acutal supposedly censored media vehicle complaining. That's expected.
In any case, the decision is at best in a grey area. A lot of people cry about freedom of press but the decision was around electoral laws and was simply trying to get better isonomy for both candidates.
The other decision was about avoiding the use of an incredibly loaded and polemic at best situation that happened 4 years ago to influence this year's elections. Mind you, there's nothing more than hearsay and conspiracy theories to try to link the event to Lula, PT or others related to the elected President.
This is an interesting topic, certainly one where there's a non-obvious balance between freedom of press and speech, and just and isonomic elections.
About the documentary: it was censored based on its title only. It was not even watched by the sensors. When questioned about it, the president of the electoral court basically said something like “Let’s not fool ourselves, we know what will be there”. In other words, preemptive censorship.
At the same time, a “documentary” that explicitly invited watchers to vote the opposing candidate was aired for free on YouTube on the week of the election, with zero concerns about isonomy or its influence over it.
This kind of double standards casts a shadow of partisanship and illegitimacy on the electoral and supreme courts (they’re ridiculously basically the same people anyway), especially in a close election like this one.
According to their own website which you linked above:
“Não podemos, em nossa programação (...), falar sobre os fatos envolvendo a condenação do candidato petista Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva”
Translated to English:
“We are not allowed, in our programmes, to speak about facts involving the condemnation of the _petista_ (Workers Party member) candidate Luís Inácio Lula da Silva”
Well, given that the condemnation was unlawful, I imagine it’s not very hard to understand why talking about it without also speaking clearly about the unlawfulness and facts around it would be misleading to the public.
To your other point:
> At the same time, a “documentary” that explicitly invited watchers to vote the opposing candidate
> This kind of double standards
I don’t know which documentary you’re talking about, but here’s some food for thought.
Generally, explicitly asking for votes for one candidate makes it pretty clear what the bias in the publication is.
On top of that, the other, supposedly censored work, was speculative at best - given that despite Bolsonaro’s 4 years in power and effectively commanding the Federal Police, the alleged attempt on his life was never fully solved. Publishing it during the electoral campaign was considered an attempt at misleading the public opinion against one of the candidates based on hearsay and opinions.
That’s not a double standard. It’s perhaps just one that happens to inconvenience one more than the other but it’s a fairly clear one.
This kind of partisan half-truth is what allows totalitarian governments to be successful. He was convicted in three instances, including by the supreme court. He was proven to be a criminal. People convicted along with him have given back money they admitted to have stolen. The "unlawfulness" part is simply the supreme court judges finding a ridiculous excuse to allow him to run against a candidate they don't like. After years they suddenly figure out "well akshually he should have been judged in a court from a different city". Yeah, like that should invalidate all the crimes that were exposed.
The TV network was forbidden by the State to use specific terms like "ex-convict" and "criminal". It is not under dispute that he is both of these things.
Please keep in mind that dictators always say they are acting "within the law". In fact they are, because they control the law. This is what's going on here.
> On top of that, the other, supposedly censored work, was speculative at best - given that despite Bolsonaro’s 4 years in power and effectively commanding the Federal Police, the alleged attempt on his life was never fully solved. Publishing it during the electoral campaign was considered an attempt at misleading the public opinion against one of the candidates based on hearsay and opinions.
The documentary wasn't even about the elections. Besides, how do you know that it was speculative? How do you know it would be an attempt to mislead the public? You didn't watch it. Nobody has, because it was preemptively censored.
Whatever your political side is, left or right, I beg you, please don't side with censors.
This kind of partisan half-truth is what allows totalitarian governments to be successful.
"Lula trial in Brazil violated due process, says UN rights panel" [0][1]
He was unlawfully investigated and judged by Sérgio Moro, who then followed to become Justice Minister [2] in what's at best a clear ethical conflict.
The whole process was ridden with vices and other legal and ethical issues. Secret US involvement [3][4], coordination between judge and prosecution [5][6] and many others.
> The "unlawfulness" part is simply the supreme court judges finding a ridiculous excuse to allow him to run against a candidate they don't like.
The leaks make it fairly clear that the whole process was politically motivated to eliminate Lula from the race against Bolsonaro [7].
> Please keep in mind that dictators always say they are acting "within the law". In fact they are, because they control the law. This is what's going on here.
It is not. The current President, chief of the executive and the Armed Forces, is the one who's being supposedly hit by these decisions.
> The TV network was forbidden by the State to use specific terms like "ex-convict" and "criminal". It is not under dispute that he is both of these things.
I agree it is not under dispute. You could say "ex-convict" is not wrong but it doesn't tell the whole story. He was unlawfully convicted.
You can absolutely not call him a "criminal". That he is not, or at least it has not been proved within a fair trial that he is. I believe I have provided enough high profile references to this effect.
> The documentary wasn't even about the elections. Besides, how do you know that it was speculative?
There hasn't been a conclusive investigation on the matter. I don't see how it could be anything but speculative, and given the timing they wanted to have it released it's hard to not think it was electoral in nature.
> Whatever your political side is, left or right, I beg you, please don't side with censors.
I do not. Now that elections are over, I fully expect it to be allowed to air and if there are credible accusations they should be investigated. That said, if it does have any substance, why hasn't it been sent to the prosecutorial authorities so that they could start investigative proceures?
The fact that it hasn't also hints at purely electoral motives.
[0] https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/04/1117192
[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/04/brazil-crimi...
[2] https://uk.news.yahoo.com/brazil-anti-graft-judge-accepts-bo...
[3] https://theintercept.com/2020/03/12/united-states-justice-de...
[4] https://progressive.international/wire/2021-02-12-lava-jato-...
[5] https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-lula-operation-ca...
[6] https://theintercept.com/series/mensagens-lava-jato/
[7] https://theintercept.com/2019/06/16/vaza-jato-corrupcao-serg...
You have got to be joking. The UN has neither jurisdiction nor the access to the necessary information to make such a statement. This panel's opinion is worth nothing, and obtained purely as result of Brazil having a right wing president at the time, i.e., thy must take the opposite side, whatever it is, because right-wing-bad.
> The leaks make it fairly clear that the whole process was politically motivated to eliminate Lula from the race against Bolsonaro [7].
No, they don't, and no amount of linking to The Intercept will change that. They are partisan hacks trying (not very hard) to pass as independent journalists. Zero credibility whatsoever. Their leaks are a big nothingburger used as an excuse by a corrupt supreme court in order to be able to have a popular candidate that represented the establishment's interests in the election.
> It is not. The current President, chief of the executive and the Armed Forces, is the one who's being supposedly hit by these decisions.
The censorship and dictatorial actions are coming from the judiciary, against whose documented abuses of power the executive (and pretty no one) can do anything about.
The Brazilian supreme court has been playing the role of victim, judge and executor in illegal inquiries through Bolsonaro's term, with almost zero reaction from the media and the left, because the abuses are against "the right" and so they think it's a good thing. Ironically the only voices from the left denouncing the supreme court's abuses come from the Trotskyist party PCO.
> You can absolutely not call him a "criminal". That he is not, or at least it has not been proved within a fair trial that he is.
Again, he has been judged in three independent instances of the judiciary and found guilty in all of them. The sentence given by the judge you call "politically motivated" was considered low and increased by a superior instance. His people in the corruption scheme have given back millions they stole. His finance minister. People he has put in the board of state-run companies. If there was no corruption, why have they returned this money?
High profile sources? Come on, at least pretend to be arguing in good faith. Apart from "The Intercept" your other link is to "Progressive International" (Seriously? One of the members of this group is CUT, a violent labor union with deep ties to the Worker Party), which is republishing an article from "Brasil Wire", an entity tied multiple other far-left groups, who publish blatant bizarre partisan fake news on their home page.
> it's hard to not think it was electoral in nature.
It's hard to think anything at all without having seen the documentary.
Again, please stop defending censorship. It will come to bit you sooner or later.
Yes. I posted the news here on HN as it was happening.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33312582
> granted the nation’s elections chief unilateral power to order tech companies to remove many online posts and videos
> one of the most aggressive actions taken by any country to combat false information
> the elections chief can order the immediate removal of content that he believes has violated previous takedown orders
Whatever this guy believed became the only allowed truth. He was clearly biased towards the left. Censored plenty of people calling attention to the fact Lula is known to be corrupt and many other instances.
For Bolsonaro, he's a fascist, if nothing else for glorifying the previous dictatorship and threatening an army coup (but there's plenty else).
That's half of it, yeah. The other half is the centrist technocratic hegemony exploiting the situation to malign the working-class-power left in the same stroke.
The coming decade is going to be as profound as end of world war
BRICS is a thing the way FAANG is a thing, not the way NATO is a thing. Solidarity is not one of its features.
However, Bolsonaro is arguably more pro-Russian: https://www.reuters.com/world/brazils-bolsonaro-says-western... So it does not really matter, at least Lula will help the rainforest or whatnot.
The only issues he cares about is to foster mining, guns and hypocritical neopentecostal religious beliefs for personal gain.
Like a pandemic he criminally mismanaged resulting in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths? Or brutal deforestation of the Amazon?
Would be real weird to see that happen in Brazil too
One explanation is that voters may be enthusiastically voting "against" a particular candidate, in which case they would likely not be attending any rally or showing support in any meaningful way.
I'm not sure if this is the strongest argument in favor of your hypothesis. In most instances it would rather be an indicator of election fraud.
A politician who attracts a more visceral audience is going to superficially look more popular than they actually are.
So going by crowd size can be deceptive.