NP Brasil

[Joseph Tracy]

  Glenn Greenwald has one of the most powerful outsider voices on the planet. He lives in Brazil and for him it is a safe base from which to do the kind of Journalism and commentary he does.  I don’t know much about Brazil, but they are part of a vast shift in global political and economic power and there are many powerful players who do not want the movements in the Western Hemisphere toward European style socialism to succeed. The western press  has been focused on Brazil for awhile, but makes little of the corruption in Honduras, the last outpost of abject US colonialism, where 2 environmental activists were just murdered following close on the heels of the US approved overthrow of an elected leader.  
The Intercept has become a formidable vector of investigative journalism, a form of journalism that is all too rare in the US media.

> On Mar 19, 2016, at 8:01 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> An excellent point.
> However, the fact that the protests are largely organized and funded
> by the elite, including the powerful elite outside the country who are
> desperate to get their greedy fingers on the resources of the nation
> and to put an end to one of the most successful efforts to support the
> poor, the landless, and the rights of the indigenous peoples calls for
> a closer examination of the protest objectives and its composition.
> That photograph of the wealthy white couple and the nanny has become a
> symbol of the need for such scrutiny. The PT, as the article points
> out, has a very loyal electorate, mostly poor and powerless and darker
> in complexion. The poor have hammered by the press, the government
> programs that helped to lift 50 million from abject poverty have been
> demonized by the rich, the affluent and their constituency, by the
> churches, by the business classes and even by the Vice president, who
> is, by strange workings of politics, not of the PT party. That the
> protesters embrace the prosecution of elites and of corrupt
> politicians is a common ground, but that they reject Lula/Dilma work
> to support the poorest members of the society must be analyzed and
> debated.
> 
> On Sat, Mar 19, 2016 at 5:40 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>> 
>>> None of this is a defense of PT. Both because of genuine widespread
>>> corruption in that party and national economic woes, Dilma and PT are
>>> intensely unpopular among all classes and groups, even including the party’s
>>> working-class base. But the street protests — as undeniably large and
>>> energized as they have been — are driven by those who are traditionally
>>> hostile to PT. The number of people participating in these protests — while
>>> in the millions — is dwarfed by the number (54 million) who voted to
>>> re-elect Dilma less than two years ago. In a democracy, governments are
>>> chosen by voting, not by displays of street opposition — particularly where,
>>> as in Brazil, the protests are drawn from a relatively narrow societal
>>> segment. <
>> 
>> When millions are marching the streets it's not nothing, yet a strong
>> manifestation of democracy. And while it's true that in parliamentarism
>> "governments are chosen by voting", the democratic possibilities of the
>> people, as the subject of the constituent power, can never be reduced to
>> taking part in elections and plebiscites. As Carl Schmitt says: The people
>> are an immediately present and real entity.
>> 
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> "Nach der demokratischen Lehre von der verfassungsgebenden Gewalt des Volkes
>> steht das Volk als Träger der verfassungsgebenen Gewalt außer und über jeder
>> verfassungsgesetzlichen Normierung. Wenn ihm verfassungsgesetzlich gewisse
>> Zuständigkeiten (Wahlen und Abstimmungen) übertragen werden, ist damit seine
>> politische Handlungsmöglichkeit in einer Demokratie keineswegs erschöpft und
>> erledigt. Neben allen solchen Normierungen bleibt das Volk als unmittelbar
>> anwesende - nicht durch vorher umschriebene Normierungen, Geltungen und
>> Fiktionen vermittelte - wirkliche Größe vorhanden."
>> 
>> Carl Schmitt: Verfassungslehre [1928], § 18,  p. 242, Berlin 1993: Duncker &
>> Humblot.
>> 
>> 
>> On 18.03.2016 21:16, ish mailian wrote:
>> 
>> https://theintercept.com/2016/03/18/brazil-is-engulfed-by-ruling-class-corruption-and-a-dangerous-subversion-of-democracy/
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> 
>> 
>> 
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list

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