Lula Wins Brazil Elections, But Will London Allow Him To Govern?

“They tried to bury me alive and here I am,” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told the giant crowd gathered in São Paulo on the evening of Oct. 30 after it was officially announced that he had defeated incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro, 50.9% to 49.1%, in the final round of Brazil’s presidential election. Lula, the former 2-term President (2003-2010) had been framed and jailed in 2018 on blatantly fraudulent corruption charges by the Anglo-American interests running the Lava Jato operation. He was released in March 2021, when the Supreme Court threw out the corruption charges.

Lula’s victory has big implications for Brazil’s role in the world at this historic moment, both as a member of the 5-nation BRICS grouping, now a strategic factor in the fight to create a new international economic architecture, and for Ibero-American regional integration within the developing new paradigm.

In contrast to Bolsonaro’s downgrading of the BRICS, on the morning of Oct. 31, President-elect Lula met with Argentine President Alberto Fernández in São Paulo. “We spoke more of the future than the past,” Fernández reported afterward. High on the agenda were integration, including Argentina’s intent to join the BRICS, and how to advance his efforts with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to reunify the continent. Interestingly, Argentina’s Infobae reported that the possible creation of a single currency for trade among the South American nations would be discussed.

The closeness of the election, however, has created the opportunity for the Anglo-American axis to unleash an operation to destabilize Brazil at this crucial juncture, with the hope of pinning down this BRICS nation, and making it impossible for Lula to govern a polarized and divided country.

That was evident in the fact that while Lula was congratulated by many foreign heads of state, including many from Ibero-America, outgoing President Bolsonaro waited until Nov. 1 to sullenly announce in a 2-minute statement that he would not contest the results; but he did not concede defeat. Bolsanoro’s chief of staff then briefly announced that he had been instructed by the former president to begin the process of transition according to Brazilian law.

But one day earlier, Bolsonaro backers among truckers and agricultural interests launched an operation to “shut down Brazil” by blocking highways and roads in at least 17 of Brazil’s 26 states, with some calling for military intervention to stop the “fraud.” Revealing the intentions of London’s “let’s create chaos” crowd, the intellectually mediocre Steve Bannon, who has a long-standing and close relationship with one of Bolsonaro’s sons, told a Gettr podcast after the Oct. 30 election that “Bolsonaro can’t concede.”

Bolivian Provincial Strike Aimed at Destabilizing Arce Government

The governor of Bolivia’s southeastern Santa Cruz department (province), the fascist Luis Fernando Camacho, is in open rebellion against the government of President Luis Arce. He announced Oct. 30 that the indefinite strike he called on Oct. 21, to protest the government’s postponement of the national census until 2024, will continue until the President agrees to schedule the census in 2023. The 2023 date is necessary, he said, to determine the level of economic aid the government must provide Santa Cruz.

The census is a bogus issue. The pro-Nazi, racist networks around Camacho and his allies are local assets of the global Project Democracy apparatus that orchestrated the Nov. 2019 coup against then-President Evo Morales. They have never accepted Arce’s Oct. 2020 election and have operated since then to sow upheaval in the country under the guise of defending Santa Cruz’s “way of life,” which Camacho claims is not compatible with that of the rest of indigenous Bolivia.

President Arce is very clear on the motives behind the strike, warning Nov. 4 that the census issue has been politicized, “not only as an instrument to destabilize the government, but to overthrow it.” Camacho has rejected all government’s calls to peacefully resolve the timing of the census, insisting that the strike will go on indefinitely unless the census date is changed.

Santa Cruz is Bolivia’s most economically powerful province, producing 64% of the country’s food, and any interruption of its economic activity is felt both locally and nationally. Finance Minister Marcelo Montenegro announced Nov. 4 that the ongoing strike has caused at least $500 million in economic losses, due to closure of businesses and shutdown of agricultural production, planting and harvesting, among other things.

China-Argentina Radio Telescope To Be Inaugurated Soon

The China-Argentina Radio Telescope (CART), located in the Argentine province of San Juan, will be officially inaugurated at the end of October or early November, the daily Dangdai reported Oct. 18. Begun in 2015, CART is a wonderful example of cooperation between the Argentine state, through its National Science and Technology Research Commission, several leading universities, and the National Astronomy Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The largest radio telescope in South America, CART will carry out geodesic studies able to precisely measure the movement of tectonic plates, listen to waves emitted by celestial bodies in deep space, and detect the formation of stars, among other things. CART’s location in Argentina and the capabilities it represents for the Southern Hemisphere are generating much excitement among the astronomical community in Argentina and in the South American region generally.

In coming weeks, 30 Chinese technicians will be arriving in San Juan to provide further training to Argentine scientists who will be working at CART. Also, as part of the agreement signed with China for CART’s construction, the first China-Argentine Astronomical Institute will open.

UNSC Members Question U.S.-Mexican Resolutions on Haiti

The UN Security Council met in urgent session Oct. 17 to debate two draft resolutions presented by the U.S. and Mexico to address Haiti’s dire crisis.

One resolution called for establishing a framework for imposing financial sanctions on Haitian gangs and those who supply them with money and weapons, which particularly targeted Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, the head of the G9 gang that has paralyzed the capital’s economy by blockading the main Varreux oil terminal. The second resolution calls for the deployment of a multinational force into Haiti.

The rationale for both measures is to help the Haitian police re-establish control of the security situation so as to facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid to the population, in the midst of a cholera outbreak, compounded by the collapse of the healthcare system, and the lack of fuel, clean water, and food.

While the meeting was taking place, Haitian citizens took to the streets in cities across the country to protest the sending of any international force, and to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Reservations about the two resolutions were such that no vote was taken at that time, although on Oct. 21 the Council unanimously voted to impose a sanctions regime on Haitian gangs, their political supporters, and financiers.

Virtually every speaker expressed horror over Haiti’s deteriorating security and humanitarian situation, but they also raised serious questions about the wisdom of deploying an international force, and pointed to the need for a “Haitian-owned and Haitian-led” solution. They were not convinced by U.S. ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s insistence that the proposed multinational intervention would be different from past foreign interventions as it would be “a carefully-scoped non-UN mission led by a partner country with the deep necessary experience,” to handle the Haitian security situation.

Former U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti Denounces ‘Insane,’ Racist U.S. Policy

Former U.S. Special Envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, scathingly attacked U.S. policy toward that nation, particularly the likelihood there may be a U.S. or foreign intervention, as “insane,” in an Oct. 17 interview with Breaking Points, covered in The Intercept Oct. 19. Foote had resigned his position in September of 2021 in protest over the Biden administration’s brutal mass deportation of Haitian migrants who had gathered in Del Rio, Texas.

Haitians who had sought to escape the hell that is daily existence in Haiti were herded like cattle by the United States onto planes and flown back to Port-au-Prince, to a horrific situation Foote called “unlivable.” The former diplomat explained that while he resigned over Biden’s deportations, ultimately it was the U.S. interventionist policy that forced his hand because he sees U.S. policy moving in that direction.

Historically, Foote said, the U.S. has carried out multiple armed interventions into Haiti, always with the same disastrous results, as an example of what Albert Einstein called “insanity”—doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Previous interventions may have created temporary stability, Foote said, “but it never lasts, and becomes worse over time.”

The fact that the U.S., the UN, and international institutions “are blindly stumbling through” with support for Prime Minister Ariel Henry, when Haitians are demanding “a different solution,” is “unfathomable,” said Foote. If Henry’s illegitimate government holds elections, he warned, Haitians won’t accept them, and “we’ll continue to be in a place where they are governed by foreigners.” This, he says, goes back to the “unspoken U.S. policy that’s been going on for 200-plus years, and I’ve heard this in hushed tones in the back quarters of the State Department: ‘What drives our Haiti policy is this unspoken belief that these dumb Black people can’t govern themselves’.”