[RD] News Thread of the Americas

[Broken_Erika]

Venezuela 'paralysed' by launch of sovereign bolivar currency

Venezuela came to a standstill on Tuesday as the country tried to deal with its newly introduced currency.

Thousands of businesses closed in order to adapt to the "sovereign bolivar", and many workers stayed at home.

President Nicolás Maduro launched the new banknotes on Monday, revaluing and renaming the old bolivar currency.

The government says this will tackle runaway inflation, but critics say it could make the crisis worse. The notes went into circulation on Tuesday.

President Maduro had declared Monday to be a bank holiday.
........
President Maduro also said the sovereign bolivar would be tied to the petro, a virtual currency the government says is linked to Venezuela's oil reserves.

But the US has banned its citizens from trading in it, and one cryptocurrency site, ICOindex.com, has even labelled the petro "a scam".

"Anchoring the bolivar to the petro is anchoring it to nothing," economist Luis Vicente León told AFP news agency.

See how long this lasts until they have to introduce a "Super Revolutionary Sovereign Bolivar" when this one becomes worthless....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-45262525

 

[W|M]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/22/venezuela-earthquake-caracas-hit-caribbean

big earthquake in northeastern venezuela, felt in several countries in and around the caribbean

 

[plarq]

See how long this lasts until they have to introduce a "Super Revolutionary Sovereign Bolivar" when this one becomes worthless....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-45262525

Weimar Marks

 

[Broken_Erika]

Only the finest foods for the Glorious Leader.

Video of Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro eating in an upscale steak restaurant in Turkey has caused outrage in crisis-hit Venezuela.

The images show Turkish celebrity chef Nusret Gokce, also known as "Salt Bae" carving meat in front of the president and his wife, Cilia Flores, at Gokce's Nusr-Et restaurant in Istanbul.

Almost two-thirds of Venezuelans have reported losing weight as shortages of food worsened in recent years.

Red meat is especially scarce.

The chef, who has been dubbed Salt Bae for his stylised way of sprinkling salt on his meat, is seen carving meat in front of the couple with dramatic flair.

President Maduro can be heard saying: "This is a once in a lifetime moment."

Other videos show President Maduro smoking a cigar taken from a box with his name engraved on a plaque, and Cilia Flores holding up a T-shirt with the chef's image.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-45559504

 

[innonimatu]

A piece on Brazil's situation.

The plan was the following: Deny the legitimacy of Dilma Rousseff’s 2014 election victory. Push for impeachment on a trumped-up charge (creative accounting to disguise a budget deficit)
[...]
Then, once Rousseff was removed, implement a neoliberal shock plan—euphemistically labeled by new president Michel Temer as the “bridge to the future”—with fast-track privatizations, a fire sale of Brazilian assets to international investors, draconian austerity, and labor-market deregulation. Markets would respond, and confidence would flood back. A private-sector-led economic recovery would lay the foundation for a successful presidential run by the pro-business, center-right Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), supported by all sensible commentators in São Paulo, Wall Street, and Washington. Lula, always a threat due to that damned charisma, would, meantime, have been marched off to prison. A PSDB government, led by São Paulo State Governor Geraldo Alckmin, would set Brazil back on the neoliberal path as the Latin American pink tide of the previous decade receded. In 2014, that sounded like a plan.

Last week, as a new set of opinion polls pointed to a second-round run-off between far-right Jair Bolsonaro and former São Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad, candidate for the presumed-dead PT, the plan was definitively in tatters.
[...]
The PSDB senator Tasso Jereissati publicly announced on September 12, “We made some monumental mistakes: Not accepting the 2014 election result was one (we have always been a party that defends institutions and respects democracy); supporting impeachment [of Rousseff] was another, and entering the Temer government, a third.”

A quick survey of the election campaign less than three weeks before the first vote shows just how accurate Jereissati’s explosive mea culpa may prove to be. The establishment’s strategy has backfired magnificently. Lula’s support has grown from 15 percent to 40 percent since 2016 and appears to have been buoyed by his five months in prison. The rejection rate of Judge Sérgio Moro, a superhero in the media portrayal, is now higher than that of Lula, the man he placed in prison. Rousseff’s impeachment is now considered retrospectively by a large section of the electorate to have been a coup d’état. It has also propelled Bolsonaro’s rise, set in motion by mass right-wing rallies, choreographed by the Globo media and the São Paulo Federation of Industries (FIESP), whose giant inflatable duck led the way down the Avenida Paulista.

Weimar republic in the Americas... I'll wait for our brazilian member's comments.

 

[Ajidica]

I'll wait for our brazilian member's comments.

Were any rolls of tape thrown? Because those are the REAL fascists.

 

[Bootstoots]

With almost all votes counted, Bolsonaro has received 46% of the vote in the first round. This is far above his post-stabbing polling average of ~35% and shockingly close to winning outright.

Haddad came in a distant second at 29%. He would have to win the vast majority of votes for other candidates and/or manage to flip a significant chunk of Bolsonaro's first round voters to win. The second round polls appear to have them neck-and-neck, but given the large polling miss for Bolsonaro's first round total, Haddad is likely behind Bolsonaro by a sizable margin in reality. I would be very surprised if Bolsonaro loses.

The worldwide populist wave continues to rack up victories. Brazil will likely become an illiberal democracy/electoral authoritarian state in the vein of Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines, Venezuela, et al. At worst, Bolsonaro may conduct an autogolpe and become an outright military dictator in order to Make Brazil Great Again as it was in 1964-85.

Weimar Brazil indeed. I guess that's what happens when your political establishment, including all significant parties, is rotten to the core with corruption and there's little real hope of improving.

Paging @luiz for his take on the election now that the results are in. @west india man too, if he's still around.

edit: Oh, and @FredLC if he's around at all anymore. Can't think of any other Brazilians here off the top of my head.

 

[Hrothbern]

With almost all votes counted, Bolsonaro has received 46% of the vote in the first round. This is far above his post-stabbing polling average of ~35% and shockingly close to winning outright.

Haddad came in a distant second at 29%. He would have to win the vast majority of votes for other candidates and/or manage to flip a significant chunk of Bolsonaro's first round voters to win. The second round polls appear to have them neck-and-neck, but given the large polling miss for Bolsonaro's first round total, Haddad is likely behind Bolsonaro by a sizable margin in reality. I would be very surprised if Bolsonaro loses.

The worldwide populist wave continues to rack up victories. Brazil will likely become an illiberal democracy/electoral authoritarian state in the vein of Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines, Venezuela, et al. At worst, Bolsonaro may conduct an autogolpe and become an outright military dictator in order to Make Brazil Great Again as it was in 1964-85.

Weimar Brazil indeed. I guess that's what happens when your political establishment, including all significant parties, is rotten to the core with corruption and there's little real hope of improving.

Paging @luiz for his take on the election now that the results are in. @west india man too, if he's still around.

edit: Oh, and @FredLC if he's around at all anymore. Can't think of any other Brazilians here off the top of my head.

A Grand Coalition able to get a high turn out of those other candidates for votes on Haddad, seems also to me very unlikely.

Here some statements of Bolsonaro collected by the Guardian:

• “I had four sons, but then I had a moment of weakness, and the fifth was a girl.”
• “I’m not going to rape you, because you’re very ugly” – to a female representative in Congress.
* “I’d rather have my son die in a car accident than have him show up dating some guy.”
* “They don’t do anything. I don’t think they’re even good for procreation any more” – referring to quilombolas, the black descendants of rebel African slaves.
• “You can be sure that if I get there [the presidency], there’ll be no money for NGOs. If it’s up to me, every citizen will have a gun at home. Not one centimetre will be demarcated for indigenous reserves or quilombolas.”
• “You won’t change anything in this country through voting – nothing, absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, you’ll only change things by having a civil war and doing the work the military regime didn’t do. Killing 30,000, starting with FHC [former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso]. Killing. If a few innocent people die, that’s alright.”
Bolsonaro has also said he will not accept the election result unless he is the winner – only to backtrack after a negative reaction.

There are more really nasty statements.
But not as nasty as reality was during the dictatorships of the Good Ol' Time in Latin America.

Here an article of July on the militia's in Brazil

Paramilitary groups implicated in the killing of Rio’s city councillor Marielle Franco have taken control of swaths of areas by imposing ‘violence, death and summary execution’
The gunmen wore black military fatigues and ninja masks when they arrived in Seropédica, a nondescript town of 84,000 near Rio de Janeiro, and began systematically driving out the drug gangsters.
Those who refused to leave were killed.
“There were three weeks of deaths,” said one resident – who like many locals was still unwilling to be named three years later. “Many people know. They just don’t open their mouths.”
As they did in Seropédica, they commonly arrive in a neighbourhood claiming they will drive out criminals and dealers – but soon start their own extortion and protection rackets.
Known as “militias”, paramilitary groups – which often include former and serving police officers and firefighters – have quietly taken control of swathes of Rio’s western suburbs since they emerged in the early 2000s.
“It was like a tax, that’s what everyone said, to keep the security of the neighbourhood,” the resident said.
Since then, various militia groups have exerted discreet yet effective control of Seropédica and other neighbourhoods across the hardscrabble flatlands around Rio, known as the Baixada Fluminense.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...tary-wield-terror-seize-power-from-drug-gangs

Not really a surprise what happens now, or that Bannon rushed in to score (more to score than to contribute imo)
With all the corruption from politicians to police, the fertile soil was there......, with the militia's, the seeding was done. With Trump, Erdogan, etc the examples were legitimised.
That article on militia's written in the same time Pope Francis visited Brazil and enjoyed the euphory of the masses, cheering up the footbalfans after the Brazil team lost at the worldchampionship.
Will he truly take a stand now to help the Grand Coalition of Hadad ?

Corruption is really bad.
Not protecting regular civilians to lead and build up a peaceful life, is killing these vulnerable democracies.
Democracy is so flinter thin in many countries.
Presidential systems an additional risk factor as step up for strongmen.

 

[AdrienIer]

John Oliver did a segment on the Brazilian election :

 

[AdrienIer]

I think the question of whether the Brazilian democracy will survive his presidency is a far more real concern than in the US with Trump. It doesn't look like Bolsonaro would take kindly to a parliament not agreeing to everything he wants to do, so he's quite likely to do away with it in some way.

 

[innonimatu]

With almost all votes counted, Bolsonaro has received 46% of the vote in the first round. This is far above his post-stabbing polling average of ~35% and shockingly close to winning outright.

Haddad came in a distant second at 29%. He would have to win the vast majority of votes for other candidates and/or manage to flip a significant chunk of Bolsonaro's first round voters to win. The second round polls appear to have them neck-and-neck, but given the large polling miss for Bolsonaro's first round total, Haddad is likely behind Bolsonaro by a sizable margin in reality. I would be very surprised if Bolsonaro loses.

I must revise my guess, given the higher than expected voting share Bolsanaro got. He will get some of the minors to declare support for him, because people tend to back those they guess will win. Will it be enough? I don't know. Part of those votes he got on the fist round were f-you votes against the system. It's not a given that some won't be withdrawn in the second round.

The worldwide populist wave continues to rack up victories. Brazil will likely become an illiberal democracy/electoral authoritarian state in the vein of Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines, Venezuela, et al. At worst, Bolsonaro may conduct an autogolpe and become an outright military dictator in order to Make Brazil Great Again as it was in 1964-85.

Weimar Brazil indeed. I guess that's what happens when your political establishment, including all significant parties, is rotten to the core with corruption and there's little real hope of improving.

It's worse than Weimar. Brazil's system is indeed very rotten, it is impossible to govern without bribery, as I have mentioned in the past. The cause of that is the tremendous dispersion electoral support through small parties with regional or personal basis. The PT's mistake was going with the system instead of using their electoral victory to attempt to change it. This is also the reason why Bolsanaro has gotten so many votes, his one popular message is that the system is rotten. But he is very much at odds with the "nature" of brazilians, which means that even if he gets the presidency he won't be able to do much.

 

[Kaitzilla]

John Oliver did a segment on the Brazilian election :

More murders than the US + Europe combined?
30% of people living in Rio were in a crossfire in 2017?

Urg, is any part of South America doing well

 

[Bootstoots]

I think the question of whether the Brazilian democracy will survive his presidency is a far more real concern than in the US with Trump. It doesn't look like Bolsonaro would take kindly to a parliament not agreeing to everything he wants to do, so he's quite likely to do away with it in some way.

I agree entirely. As I understand it, Bolsonaro has explicitly said on a number of occasions that he favors a military dictatorship like in 1964-85 and doesn't think that dictatorship was brutal enough. He's ex-military and appears to be supported by most of the military establishment, and this is occurring in a country which of course has a recent history of military government, and where the entire political system has lost legitimacy to a much greater extent than even in the US.

Trump and his Republican allies have intensified the erosion of democratic norms and values in order to tilt the playing field towards themselves, similar to what is occurring in Hungary and Poland. This is certainly a very big deal. But there is no risk of the Republicans staging a military overthrow of the civilian government, suspending the constitution outright, eliminating all civil liberties, "disappearing" their opponents, and canceling elections or replacing them with pure shams. Bolsonaro, on the other hand, has made credible and repeated threats of doing exactly that.

It's worse than Weimar. Brazil's system is indeed very rotten, it is impossible to govern without bribery, as I have mentioned in the past. The cause of that is the tremendous dispersion electoral support through small parties with regional or personal basis. The PT's mistake was going with the system instead of using their electoral victory to attempt to change it. This is also the reason why Bolsanaro has gotten so many votes, his one popular message is that the system is rotten. But he is very much at odds with the "nature" of brazilians, which means that even if he gets the presidency he won't be able to do much.

Bolsonaro is certainly a sharp contrast with my previous notions of the "nature" of most Brazilians. I'd imagined Brazil as a rather tolerant society that is relatively comfortable with its diversity. Of course the claims that there is no or essentially no racism are false, blacks and pardos remain considerably poorer than whites, it's quite a violent country where the police act with impunity in favelas and other poor areas, and so on. But I am surprised that a candidate can attack blacks, women, gays, the poor, and basically every other disadvantaged group and still get 46% of the vote in the first round - even with all the problems that Brazil faces.

Then again, though, the last few years have been a perfect storm to collapse faith in liberal democracy and make strongman rule popular. So I'm not too surprised.

What do you think of the chance that Bolsonaro will effect a self-coup with military support once his plans get frustrated by the political system? I believe he's explicitly threatened this and has strong military support, so my suspicion is that the odds of this are quite high.

More murders than the US + Europe combined?
30% of people living in Rio were in a crossfire in 2017?

Urg, is any part of South America doing well

I believe Chile and Uruguay remain pretty nice places with low corruption, low violence, properly functioning institutions, fairly decent economies, no real threat to liberal democracy, etc.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I think the question of whether the Brazilian democracy will survive his presidency is a far more real concern than in the US with Trump. It doesn't look like Bolsonaro would take kindly to a parliament not agreeing to everything he wants to do, so he's quite likely to do away with it in some way.

Hopefully we will be finding out how Trump takes to a parliament not agreeing to everything he wants to do, though I suspect that he is at least as likely to try to do away with it in some way as Bolsonaro is.

 

[Bootstoots]

Hopefully we will be finding out how Trump takes to a parliament not agreeing to everything he wants to do, though I suspect that he is at least as likely to try to do away with it in some way as Bolsonaro is.

Sure, Trump doesn't believe in democracy at all unless he wins. But it's extremely unlikely that he would succeed at overthrowing Congress and ruling by fiat, even though the rest of his party has largely shed any commitment to liberal democracy too. Mostly he'll just fume on Twitter and at rallies, and maybe he'd do some petulant things with the overly expansive executive power he has.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Sure, Trump doesn't believe in democracy at all unless he wins. But it's extremely unlikely that he would succeed at overthrowing Congress and ruling by fiat, even though the rest of his party has largely shed any commitment to liberal democracy too. Mostly he'll just fume on Twitter and at rallies, and maybe he'd do some petulant things with the overly expansive executive power he has.

I've expressed this concern elsewhere, but.

Trump's information sources have him, and his faithful, completely prepared to believe that any election result other than the "red wave" he mentions occasionally could only be the result of some sort of tampering. I don't put it past him to use his position as president to proclaim any result that he doesn't expect to be "tampered with" and demand that it not be certified. Not quite the same as dissolving congress, but the same effect.

 

[innonimatu]

What do you think of the chance that Bolsonaro will effect a self-coup with military support once his plans get frustrated by the political system? I believe he's explicitly threatened this and has strong military support, so my suspicion is that the odds of this are quite high.

His support will collapse quicker than Macron's in France did. The military won't follow him into any adventure, they have nothing to gain from that and a lot to lose. Support for military dictatorships from abroad is zero. Brazil wouldn't have had one without the US encouraging it.

The wild card is when the next serious crisis on "emerging markets" will hit. In my opinion it's ongoing already and will only get worse with interest rates rising on dollars and China cutting raw materials imports. The last one in Brazil destroyed Dilma's support. The next one will likewise destroy whomever is in power. Perhaps it is for the best that Bolsanaro souled win now...

 

[Bootstoots]

I've expressed this concern elsewhere, but.

Trump's information sources have him, and his faithful, completely prepared to believe that any election result other than the "red wave" he mentions occasionally could only be the result of some sort of tampering. I don't put it past him to use his position as president to proclaim any result that he doesn't expect to be "tampered with" and demand that it not be certified. Not quite the same as dissolving congress, but the same effect.

It's possible he could say stuff like that - he's already claimed that there were millions of illegal votes from noncitizens. But he doesn't have the power to certify election results. That's always done on the state level, by state Secretaries of State using publicly available election returns that are double-checked by county officials and vote-counters in each precinct. Unless an election were within a recount margin as in 2000, I don't think there's much risk that certification will be withheld or altered.

It is still a pretty dicey situation to have a sitting president declare that the election results for his reelection were invalid because of unsubstantiated claims of tampering or illegal voting. I'm pretty sure the system would still work to throw him out of the White House and swear in the new president, but some of his followers might try rebelling or something. That risk is smaller for senators or representatives who lost reelection but refuse to acknowledge it; I don't believe that they'd be seated anyway no matter what Mitch McConnell or any other GOP leader tries to do.

His support will collapse quicker than Macron's in France did. The military won't follow him into any adventure, they have nothing to gain from that and a lot to lose. Support for military dictatorships from abroad is zero. Brazil wouldn't have had one without the US encouraging it.

The wild card is when the next serious crisis on "emerging markets" will hit. In my opinion it's ongoing already and will only get worse with interest rates rising on dollars and China cutting raw materials imports. The last one in Brazil destroyed Dilma's support. The next one will likewise destroy whomever is in power. Perhaps it is for the best that Bolsanaro souled win now...

Other countries are still more than willing to deal with military dictatorships without letting the change of government affect much of anything - look at Egypt and Thailand for example. I don't know enough about Brazil to know whether its military would want to disband the elected government and let Bolsonaro rule by decree after the political system jams up and refuses to pass Bolsonaro-supported legislation. Based on his statements, it's definitely something Bolsonaro wants.

I do think it's more likely not to happen than to happen, but it certainly seems plausible. If it does, I suspect it would resemble Fujimori's self-coup in 1992. The most likely outcome, though, is something like a hybrid of Trump and Duterte.

I completely agree about the next "emerging markets" panic. It's already breaking out in places ranging from Turkey to Argentina, and I'd be surprised if it didn't hit Brazil. I haven't looked at the details though.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

It's possible he could say stuff like that - he's already claimed that there were millions of illegal votes from noncitizens. But he doesn't have the power to certify election results. That's always done on the state level, by state Secretaries of State using publicly available election returns that are double-checked by county officials and vote-counters in each precinct. Unless an election were within a recount margin as in 2000, I don't think there's much risk that certification will be withheld or altered.

It is still a pretty dicey situation to have a sitting president declare that the election results for his reelection were invalid because of unsubstantiated claims of tampering or illegal voting. I'm pretty sure the system would still work to throw him out of the White House and swear in the new president, but some of his followers might try rebelling or something. That risk is smaller for senators or representatives who lost reelection but refuse to acknowledge it; I don't believe that they'd be seated anyway no matter what Mitch McConnell or any other GOP leader tries to do.

Every election board in every county is made "non-partisan" by having balanced numbers of the most rabid partisans that can be found. Long before the results are certified by the Secretary of State they have been certified by those election boards. If Trump announces that the results are invalid Trumpist election board officials are going to accept his declaration and there will be mayhem at every election board across the country, but there won't be many certifications. I more or less expect it in November, when the outcome of the mayhem won't directly call Trump into question. With the election results in chaos the legislative branch has no authority, so what to do about "sorting out" the situation is perforce left to the executive...backed by the judicial, of course.

 

[Takhisis]

Bolsonaro's election is as much of a non-surprise as it was a complete disappointment. He had the backing of Steve Bannon, has an army of trolls posting on news websites around the region about how he's already improving the country even before he's sworn in as president, and is posting more or less any crap.
And then, of course, he ran against an idiot who was a stand-in for for Lula da Silva, who was saying that him being in prison for crimes committed during his tenure as president was not enough of a reason to forbid him from running for the presidency again, which was ridiculously stupid and ended up sabotaging the left from within.

• “I’m not going to rape you, because you’re very ugly” – to a female representative in Congress.

Donald ‘grab them by the pussy’ Trump said that he couldn't possibly have sexually assaulted a journalist because she was not pretty enough and got away with it.

The local phenomenon of ‘voto castigo’ strikes again. Anti-politics won. Brazil's got its own Berlusconi in.
And hey, he even gets in like Trump, with less than 50% of the vote.
What a bloody mess.


This piece in Spanish is an interesting summary… people who are politically illiterate and/or intellectually dishonest have proclaimed Macri to be the equal of Trump.
No. Donald Trump's equivalent is Bolsonaro and, on the opposing side (complete lack of sensitivity, homophobia, totalitarian tendencies, nepotism, messianic-style selfishness) it's Maduro and Morales.
Mauricio Macri is a Merkel, whom I don't like in any case, but it's good and downright necessary to know the difference.

-------------------------

Yet not everything is completely bad news.
Even though Alberto Fujimori was released from prison not that long ago, in an attempt to save himself, by Kuczynski, his daughter Keiko has been detained for campaign finance irregularities, obstruction of justice and money laundering. Hopefully this will stick. Of course, she claims that it is all political persecution.
Also, the presidential pardon granted to Fujimori was overturned by the Supreme Court of Peru last week.

It all comes down to the Odebrecht mega-scandal that is crossing the nation.
Speaking of which, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's vice-president Amado Boudou has finally been convicted and sent to jail.
Her chief bribe collector Federal Planning minister, Julio de Vido, has been convicted today for mishandling the assets of the train companies and his complete lack of oversight of the trains - he was cleared of the charge of outright murder but the prosecution will be appealing the dismissal of that charge and anyway he'll spend half a decade in prison and be barred from public office for life nevertheless.
The former Presidentess of all the Argentines herself, as she liked to style herself, has been formally charged for >900 individual counts of bribery and, if she didn't have legislative privilege as a member of the Upper House, would be under preemptive custody right now awaiting trial.
Former President Carlos Menem's post-trial procedures have recently ended under the statute of limitations. Basically the Senate refusing to allow him to be arrested and corrupt electoral judges allowing him to stand up for eternal re-election ever since he left the presidency ended up in this. I hope this can be overturned by the Supreme Court.