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from the oligarchs-are-hard-to-outmaneuver dept.

Pepe Escobar reports [counterpunch.org] via CounterPunch

Brazil's Dilma Rousseff, a Woman of Honor, Confronts Senate of Scoundrels

[August 29,] President Dilma Rousseff, in a detailed, occasionally emotional speech, defended herself with honor and dignity from accusations she committed a "crime of responsibility". [...] She left with her head held high after exhorting those Senators to vote with their conscience.

[...] As I write, Rousseff is on the way to be stripped from the presidency of the world's 8th largest economy by a bunch of scoundrel-cum-coward politicos. Her only fear, she said, was the "death of democracy". Rousseff's impeachment means in practice that democratic voting in one of the world's largest democracies will be [canceled] by a parliamentary coup remote-controlled by oligarchic interests. This is not, and never was, about justice; it's about dirty, nasty politics.

There is no techno-bureaucrat argument whatsoever capable of proving the President should be impeached because of state budget maneuvers that did not yield a single cent for her pockets, or to the detriment of the Treasury--and this in an astonishingly corruption-infested nation.

If we had to rely on a single formulation to explain this charade to a global audience this should be it: The current parliamentary/institutional/big business/big banking/corporate media coup is the tool used by Brazilian oligarchs to smash the wealth distribution drive that preceded, via President Lula, the US-provoked global 2008 crisis of capitalism.

The Lula and subsequent Dilma presidencies had adopted a very Chinese "win-win" model. There was a sort of unwritten pact [cartacapital.com.br] [1] [archive.li] between social classes: The rich got even richer while the poor got less poor.

But then the crisis hit BRICS member Brazil with a vengeance.

[...]Emir Sader, one of Brazil's top sociologists, has summed up [brasil247.com][2] [3] [archive.li] what lies ahead: major social and political conflict; military/police repression; tearing up of the social contract; the nation reduced to a mere US vassal; an unelected, illegitimate government with no autonomy, [no] sovereignty, and geopolitically sidelined. All the while being "led" by currently interim, and President-to-be Michel Temer, a mediocre, corrupt coward who didn't even have the balls to attend the Olympics' final ceremony because he knew he would be booed out of a packed Maracana stadium.

Welcome to post-coup Brazil: Land of permanent crisis, a powerless, illegitimate, corrupt government, economic recession, and unemployment. As Sader noted, "everything positive that Brazil built this century will be thrown out by a coup".

[1][3] In Portuguese. Google did the translation and Archive.li handles the scripts.
[2] Page auto-refreshes.

As expected, on August 31, the Brazilian Senate completed the vote which ousted [reuters.com] Rousseff.

Previous discussions [soylentnews.org] here of this set of events.

Original Submission