Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near future?

Rowdy

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

These demonstrations are nothing new, India just woke up 40 years later than the rest


Nuclear power became an issue of major public protest in the 1970s[10] and demonstrations in France and West Germany began in 1971. In France, between 1975 and 1977, some 175,000 people protested against nuclear power in ten demonstrations.[11] In West Germany, between February 1975 and April 1979, some 280,000 people were involved in seven demonstrations at nuclear sites.[11] Many mass demonstrations took place in the aftermath of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and a New York City protest in September 1979 involved two hundred thousand people. Some 120,000 people demonstrated against nuclear power in Bonn, in October 1979.[11] In May 1986, following the Chernobyl disaster, an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people marched in Rome to protest against the Italian nuclear program,[12] and clashes between anti-nuclear protesters and police became common in West Germany


Anti-nuclear protests - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So why did only Christians protest against Nuclear Energy??? LoL is that a routine after sunday sermons :lol:
 

sorcerer

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

Foreign NGOs are a threat to your caste system. Some fractions in India want to keep the caste and even strengthen it, they do not like NGOs bring the message of equality to India.

Oppression is of Aryan origin

Caste system roots and discrimination against Dalits are based on the Aryan nomadic power politics. Aryans conquered Indus river the valley for more than three thousand years ago.
Conquerors subjugated the natives engaged in the cultivation of a complex hierarchical system, which also separated the Aryan invaders of the native. The system stability was ensured by connecting it into the scriptures and Hindu religion.


Kaikki samalle viivalle - Ulkoasiainministeriö: Global.finland: Maat: Uutiset maittain
Christianity is equality?
:D

YOu have more factions and infighting than caste system...

I will send videos of priests in church bashing up each other on difference in ideology :D

Your knowledge and outlook is soo tiny like your lil finnish land.

For a change try to refers something which is not from a Finnish source..cuz it makes you look like a Pakistani who quotes from Quran to justify things ..
 

IBSA

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

BRICS' Brazil President Next Washington Target



Brazil's newly re-elected President, Dilma Rousseff, survived a massive US State Department disinformation campaign to win a runoff vote against US-backed Aecio Neves on October 26. However it is already clear that Washington has opened a new assault on one of the key leaders of the non-aligned BRICS group of emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. With a full-scale US financial warfare attack to weaken Putin's Russia and a series of destabilizations aimed at China, including most recently the Hong Kong US-financed "Umbrella Revolution," getting rid of Brazil's socially-minded President is a top priority to stop the emerging counter-pole to Washington's New World (dis-)Order.

The reason Washington wants to get rid of Rousseff is clear. As President she is one of five heads of the BRICS who signed the formation of the US$100 billion BRICS Development Bank and a reserve currency pool worth over another US$100 billion. She also supports a new International Reserve Currency to supplement and eventually replace the dollar. Inside Brazil she is supported by millions of lower-income Brazilians who have been lifted out of poverty by her various programs, especially the Bolsa Familia, an economic subsidy program for low-income mothers and families. The Bolsa Familia has brought an estimated thirty-six million families out of poverty via Rousseff and her party's economic policies, something that creates apoplexy in Wall Street and Washington.

Her US-backed campaign rival, A̩cio Neves of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira РPSDB), serves the interests of tycoons and their Washington allies.

Neves' chief economic adviser who would have become Finance Minister in a Neves presidency was Arminio Fraga Neto, a close friend and former associate of Soros and his Quantum hedge fund. Neves' senior adviser, and likely Foreign Minister had he won, was Rubens Antônio Barbosa, former Brazil ambassador to Washington and today a Senior Director of ASG based in Sao Paulo.

ASG is the consulting group of Madeline Albright, former US Secretary of State during the 1999 US bombing of Yugoslavia. Albright, a Director of the leading US think-tank, Council on Foreign Relations, is also chair of the prime US Government "Color Revolution" NGO, the National Democratic Institute (NDI). Not surprisingly, Barbosa during the recent campaign called for a strengthening of Brazil-US relations and a diminishing of the strong Brazil-China ties developed by Rousseff in the wake of revelations of USA spying by NSA on Rousseff and her government.

Emerging corruption scandal

During the bitter election campaign between Rousseff and Neves, the Neves opposition began circulating rumors that Rousseff, who until now had never been linked to corruption so common to Brazilian politics, was implicated in a scandal involving the state oil giant, Petrobras. In September, a Petrobras former director alleged that members of Rousseff's government had received commissions on contracts signed with the oil giant which were then used to buy congressional support. Rousseff served on the company's board of directors until 2010.

Now on November 2, just days after Rousseff's hard-fought victory, the US major accounting firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, refused to sign Petrobras' third-quarter earnings. PWC demanded wider investigation into the corruption scandal involving the state-run oil company.

PricewaterhouseCoopers is one of the most scandal-ridden US accounting firms. It was implicated in 14 years of covering up fraud in the AIG insurance group which was at the heart of the 2008 US financial crisis. And the British House of Lords in 2011, criticized PwC for not drawing attention to the risks in the business model followed by Northern Rock bank, a major disaster in Britain's real estate financial crisis of 2008, a client which had to be bailed out by the UK government. The attacks on Rousseff are escalating we can be sure.

Rousseff's Global Strategy

It is not merely Rousseff's alliance with BRICS countries that has made her a prime Washington destabilization target. Under her tenure, Brazil is moving swiftly to decouple from US NSA electronic surveillance vulnerability.

Days after her re-election, the state-owned Telebras announced plans to construct a major underwater fiber-optic telecommunications cable to Portugal across the Atlantic. The Telebras-planned cable will run 3,500 miles from the Brazilian city of Fortaleza to Portugal. It represents a major break for trans-Atlantic communications with US technology domination. Notably, Telebras President Francisco Ziober Filho said in an interview that the cable project will be built without any US companies.

The Snowden NSA revelations in 2013 among other things revealed the intimate ties of key strategic IT companies like Cisco Systems, Microsoft and others to the US intelligence community. He stated that "The issue of data integrity and vulnerability is always a concern for any telecom company."

Brazil has reacted to the NSA leaks by making thorough audits of all foreign-made equipment to check for security vulnerabilities and accelerated the country's move toward technological self-reliance according to the Telebras chief.

Until now virtually all Trans-Atlantic IT traffic routed via the east Coast of USA to Europe and Africa a major espionage advantage for Washington

Reacting to the Snowden leaks, the Rousseff government ordered termination of contracts with Microsoft for Outlook e-mail services. Rousseff declared at the time that it was to help "prevent possible espionage." Instead Brazil is going national with its own e-mail system called Expresso, developed by state-owned Servico Federal de Processamento de Dados (Serpro). Expresso is already used by 13 of the country's 39 ministries. Serpro spokesman Marcos Melo stated, "Expresso is 100 percent under our control." If true or not clear is that under Rousseff and her party Brazil is pursuing what she sees as Brazil's best national interest.

Oil Geopolitics also Key

Brazil is also moving away from the Anglo-American domination of its oil and gas exploration. In late 2007 Petrobras discovered what was estimated to be a mammoth new basin of high-quality oil on the Brazilian Continental Shelf offshore in the Santos Basin. Since then, Petrobras has sunk 11 oil wells in the Santos Basin, all successful. At Tupi and Iara alone, Petrobras estimates there are 8 to 12 billion barrels of recoverable oil, which can almost double current Brazilian oil reserves. In total the Brazil Continental Shelf could contain over 100 billion barrels of oil, transforming the country into a major oil and gas power, something Exxon and Chevron, the US oil giants have tried hard to control.

In 2009 according to leaked US diplomatic cables published via Wikileaks, Exxon and Chevron were noted by the US Consulate in Rio to be trying in vain to alter a law proposed by Rousseff's mentor and predecessor in her Brazilian Workers' Party , President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, or Lula as he is called.

That 2009 law made the state-owned Petrobras chief operator of all offshore blocs. Washington and the US oil giants were furious at losing key control over potentially the largest single new oil discovery in decades.

Making matters worse in Washington's eyes, Lula not only pushed ExxonMobil and Chevron out of the controlling position in favor of the state-owned Petrobras, but he also opened Brazilian oil exploration to the Chinese. In December, 2010 in one of his last acts as President, he oversaw signing of a deal between the Brazilian-Spanish energy company Repsol and China's state-owned Sinopec. Sinopec formed a joint venture, Repsol Sinopec Brasil, investing more than $7.1 billion towards Repsol Brazil. Already in 2005 Lula had approved formation of Sinopec International Petroleum Service of Brazil Ltd as part of a new strategic alliance between China and Brazil, a forerunner of today's BRICS organization.

Washington Was not Delighted.

In 2012 in a joint exploration drilling, Repsol Sinopec Brasil, Norway's Statoil and Petrobras made a major new discovery in Pão de Açúcar, the third in block BM-C-33, which includes the Seat and Gávea, the latter one of the world's 10 largest discoveries in 2011. US and British oil majors were nowhere to be seen.

As relations between Rousseff's government and China as well as Russia and the other BRICS partners deepened, in May 2013, US Vice President Joe Biden made a trio to Brazil where his agenda was focused on oil and gas development. He met with President Dilma Rousseff who succeeded her mentor Lula in 2011. Biden also met with leading energy companies in Brazil including Petrobras.

While little was publicly said, Rousseff refused to reverse the 2009 oil law in a way suitable to Biden and Washington. Days after Biden's visit came the Snowden NSA revelations that the US had also spied on Rousseff and top officials of Petrobras. She was livid and denounced the Obama Administration that September before the UN General Assembly for violating international law. She cancelled a planned Washington visit in protest. After that US-Brazil relations took a dive.

Before Biden's May 2013 visit Dilma Rousseff had 70% of popularity rating. Less than two weeks after Biden left Brazil, nationwide protests by a well-organized group called Movimento Passe Livre, over a nominal 10 cent bus fare increase, brought the country virtually to a halt and turned very violent. The protests bore the hallmark of a typical "Color Revolution" or Twitter destabilization that seems to follow Biden wherever he makes a presence. Within weeks Rousseff's popularity plummeted to 30%.

Washington had clearly sent a signal that Rousseff had to change course or face serious problems. Now that she has won re-election and defeated the well-financed right-wing oligarchs and the opposition, Washington will clearly try with renewed energy to get rid of another BRICS leader in an increasingly desperate bid to hold the status quo. It seems the world no longer snaps to attention as it did in past decades when Washington gave the marching order. The year 2015 will be an adventure not only for Brazil but for the entire world.

BRICS' Brazil President Next Washington Target | New Eastern Outlook
 

Khagesh

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

Christianity is equality?
:D

YOu have more factions and infighting than caste system...

I will send videos of priests in church bashing up each other on difference in ideology :D

Your knowledge and outlook is soo tiny like your lil finnish land.

For a change try to refers something which is not from a Finnish source..cuz it makes you look like a Pakistani who quotes from Quran to justify things ..

@jouni

probably does not know that Casta itself is a european concept (spanish word) to describe and basically disposes in a systematic manner, the poorer/weaker peoples in South Americas. First it was directed against the native americans. Then later on as there was intermixing of people (native americans + africans who came in as slaves + migrant europeans from the lower classes that were easily exploitable) this system of castas was also employed to disposes these new intermixed people and everybody was basically set against the other by the europeans.

In Brazil such intermixed populations comprise close to half the population.

Castas itself is related to the elaborate system of exploitation that exploited every friggin soul in south americas. And most of these interracial castas had to buy certificates of whiteness, in recent history to be able to pull themselves out of exploitation by europeans.
 
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Khagesh

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

BRICS' Brazil President Next Washington Target



Before Biden's May 2013 visit Dilma Rousseff had 70% of popularity rating. Less than two weeks after Biden left Brazil, nationwide protests by a well-organized group called Movimento Passe Livre, over a nominal 10 cent bus fare increase, brought the country virtually to a halt and turned very violent. The protests bore the hallmark of a typical "Color Revolution" or Twitter destabilization that seems to follow Biden wherever he makes a presence. Within weeks Rousseff's popularity plummeted to 30%.

BRICS' Brazil President Next Washington Target | New Eastern Outlook

Interesting datapoint.

Sounds familiar.

We in India call it Muftkhori. Anybody who robs peter to pay paul can always rely on the support of paul.

What is the Main Stream Media like in your country. Do they conduct the propaganda for the Western interests all day long?

We have a major problem with out own Main Stream Media. Virtually 100% are sell outs. Those that are not would by spies sent in by Indian Intel.
 

jouni

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

@jouni

probably does not know that Casta itself is a european concept (spanish word) to describe and basically disposes in a systematic manner, the poorer/weaker peoples in South Americas. First it was directed against the native americans. Then later on as there was intermixing of people (native americans + africans who came in as slaves + migrant europeans from the lower classes that were easily exploitable) this system of castas was also employed to disposes these new intermixed people and everybody was basically set against the other by the europeans.

In Brazil such intermixed populations comprise close to half the population.

Castas itself is related to the elaborate system of exploitation that exploited every friggin soul in south americas. And most of these interracial castas had to buy certificates of whiteness, in recent history to be able to pull themselves out of exploitation by europeans.
Ok, nice to know. In Finland we have "kaste" system, but I do not think it is related to caste or casta systems.
 
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Khagesh

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

Ok, nice to know. In Finland we have "kaste" system, but I do not think it is related to caste or casta systems.
Seems so.

At least the following link gives at least one such interpretation.

http://www.wordsense.eu/kaste/

kaste (Danish)
Origin & history I
From Portuguese casta, from Latin castus 'pure, clean'
Noun

caste
Origin & history II
Old Norse kasta (Norwegian kaste, Faroese, Icelandic, Swedish kasta and English cast).
What do you use it for? Pure as in pure what? Pure white?
 

jouni

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

Colonialism has long tracks....India, South America, Africa... I have never thought how deeply rooted this suspicion about "west" is. It is actually funny being labeled to the same bunch when coming from small Finland who never colonized anybody.
 

jouni

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

Seems so.

At least the following link gives at least one such interpretation.

http://www.wordsense.eu/kaste/



What do you use it for? Pure as in pure what? Pure white?


Kaste means babtise in Finnish. It is actually total opposite of your caste, when babtised all are equal in gods kingdom ;)
 

Khagesh

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

Colonialism has long tracks....India, South America, Africa... I have never thought how deeply rooted this suspicion about "west" is. It is actually funny being labeled to the same bunch when coming from small Finland who never colonized anybody.
You Finns were the early converts to the problem of protestantism. What the hell is it about. About a protest. What protest. The protestor knows nothing. He only knows how to protest. He does not even know who to protest against and why to protest. Merely protesting for the heck of it.

You were like the early europeans of the lower class that were brought into south americas to exploit the locals there. Then when these early europeans, during the course of exploiting the locals also established legit and illegitimate sexual relations with locals they gave rise to an intermixed class that had to be set a level below the pure whites. Hence Castas de Sistemas. Then eventually these intermixed classes realised what the hell we are also getting exploited by this certificate of whiteness nonsense. So these intermixed people began to evolve some kind of working relationship with the natives and hence these present day countries of south americas came into existence. But off course you Pure Whites would not let them live and hence the various forms of western inspired dictatorships which were designed to keep these people into a perpetual state of banana exporters.

So now you know what your future is. Right.
 
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Khagesh

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu



Kaste means babtise in Finnish. It is actually total opposite of your caste, when babtised all are equal in gods kingdom ;)
Except who?

The non baptized? Who are what? exploitable?
 

jouni

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

Except who?

The non baptized? Who are what? exploitable?
We are so homogenous country with 95 % protestant whites... I cannot understand your suspicion. Finland is a secular country for non babtised they are also equal, laws guarantee that. Nowadays we have some immigrants, they go to same schools etc...we try to assimilate them. Of course we have some hidden racism, but idiots are in every country.

As for your protestant part...look at EU, protestants are the "upper caste" catholics and orthodox have the problems....
 

Khagesh

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

We are so homogenous country with 95 % protestant whites... I cannot understand your suspicion. Finland is a secular country for non babtised they are also equal, laws guarantee that. Nowadays we have some immigrants, they go to same schools etc...we try to assimilate them. Of course we have some hidden racism, but idiots are in every country.
& Presumably all your Baptized equality stops at the borders.

What about people in Brazil or Ukraine or even India. Are they equal?


As for your protestant part...look at EU, protestants are the "upper caste" catholics and orthodox have the problems....
But this time the big shots in europe cannot exploit their way out of the troubles faced internally in europe. No looted Silver flowing in, no looted gold, no free food, barely enough gas, always having to protect against the prying chinese.
 

jouni

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

& Presumably all your Baptized equality stops at the borders.

What about people in Brazil or Ukraine or even India. Are they equal?




But this time the big shots in europe cannot exploit their way out of the troubles faced internally in europe. No looted Silver flowing in, no looted gold, no free food, barely enough gas, always having to protect against the prying chinese.
Yeah, we care about equality also abroad. That is why we give development aid 1.44 Bn$ every year, or 0,55% of our gross national income, that is 7th in the world. Why would we otherwise give it? Now there are talks about huge budget cuts due to down economy, but nobody wants to cut development aid... actually development aid that India gives is two times more in dollars, but when we compare the populations Finland actually gives over one hundred times more per population than India. Hopefully this changes when India develops more.
 

IBSA

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Re: Protests against government in Brazil — Military coup in near futu

Who's Protesting in Brazil and Why?



Don't believe the right-wing media's emphasis on corruption—the recent demonstrations are motivated by entrenched elite discontent over expanding economic and political inclusion for the nation's majority.

Reading the English-language press these days, one could be forgiven for thinking that Brazil is in the throes of a democratic uprising against a singularly corrupt government, a politically incompetent president, and a floundering economy. Since late last year, the center-left Workers' Party (PT) government headed by President Dilma Rousseff has been rocked by an ever-widening scandal involving over-inflated contracts and kickbacks to government-allied politicians at the state-owned oil giant Petrobrás. Indignant PT militants—rather than lamenting corruption in a party that once ran on its anti-corruption credentials—have tended to attack the media for highlighting PT corruption after ignoring abuses during the 1995-2002 administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, as well as similar scandals in state governments controlled by the opposition Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB).

In part due to the collapse of Petrobrás's stock, down 67% since the start of September, the Brazilian currency has plunged nearly 40% against the dollar since then. Inflation over the last year has reached nearly 8%, the highest since 2005, inviting Brazilians to nervously recall the hyperinflation of the 1980s and early 1990s. On March 15, nationwide demonstrations organized on social media gathered anywhere from 300,000 to two million protesters in dozens of cities. They brandished signs saying, "Out with the PT!" and demanded Rousseff's impeachment, although the one-time head of Petrobrás has not been implicated in the kickback scheme and can constitutionally only be impeached for crimes committed during her presidency. In the wake of the demonstrations, the percentage of Brazilians rating her government as "excellent" or "good" dropped to an abysmal 12%, while 64% rated it "poor" or "terrible." This disapproval rating is the highest for any president since Fernando Collor de Mello's 68% on the eve of his own impeachment for corruption in 1992. (Incidentally, Collor, now a government-allied senator, is one of 47 politicians currently under investigation for their role in the Petrobrás scandal.)

Foreign media outlets have seized on Rousseff's supposedly lackluster response to the Petrobrás scandal and Brazil's gloomy macroeconomic outlook to speculate whether the collapse of the PT's economic and political model, which has relied on cautiously redistributive policies and moderately increased government involvement in the economy, is imminent. Their sense of hope is palpable: "Brazil's poor turn their back on Rousseff," one headline gleefully reported on March 16. Another article insisted that the protests' "cheerfully democratic multitudes" sought contrition from Rousseff for her party's graft and economic mismanagement, but that the President had so far ignored their indignation. An opinion piece in a British daily expressed hope that "popular dissatisfaction" would persuade Rousseff to take the steps needed to solve Brazil's economic problems – a reduced role for state credit agencies, increased independence for Petrobrás and monetary authorities, tax reform, brakes on special interests, and increased openness to foreign trade. The New York Times added an editorial on March 20 blasting Rousseff's foreign policy, which, it suggested, should draw closer to the United States – despite Edward Snowden's revelations of NSA spying on Rousseff's communications.

It's no secret that most foreign correspondents are neither politically well connected nor fluent in Portuguese. Part of the explanation for their bias, then, comes from their dependence upon Brazil's notoriously one-sided media, owned by a few elite families and corporate groups. The major newspapers are all staunchly anti-government, their reporting on Rousseff's administration universally negative. The Globo television network dedicated much of its March 15 programming to recruiting attendees for what it called, "peaceful demonstrations against corruption, with women, the elderly, and children asking for democracy and out with Dilma." Indeed, the Brazilian and foreign press are engaged in an endless echo chamber of self-validation: foreign journalists get their information from anti-government media outlets, which then breathlessly report the foreign "analysis" in order to validate their own bias. For example, a March 21 story in the Folha de S. Paulo and Veja reported favorably on the New York Times'foreign policy editorial. If foreigners say it, it must be true.

Perhaps the most notorious recent example of press bias occurred when Brian Winter, Reuters' chief Brazil correspondent, interviewed Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Published in Portuguese by Reuters Brasil, the story contained a paragraph admitting that one of the Petrobrás officials involved in the corruption scheme claims that it dated to Cardoso's administration. The paragraph was followed by a parenthetical note, apparently penned by one of the Brazilian editors, that accidentally remained undeleted: "We can take this part out if you want." To his credit, Winter didn't remove the paragraph, but the gaffe shows the inner-workings of the Brazilian branch of an American media outlet, where protecting the opposition and attacking the PT trumps even a casual relationship with the truth. Although the article was hastily corrected (without any indication that it had been modified), it was too late: attentive readers had already posted the gaffe to Twitter, under the hashtag #PodemosTirarSeAcharMelhor.

Amidst predictions of Rousseff's demise, the mainstream media has consistently downplayed, and occasionally outright ignored, one fact: the social backgrounds of protesters. It is not "the Brazilian people" who are in the streets, but rather a very specific segment of the population whose economic interests are historically opposed to those of the majority. They are largely middle and upper class and, consequently, mainly white. In the 2014 elections they sensed that their time had come to get rid of the PT, only to see their favored candidate, former Minas Gerais PSDB governor Aécio Neves, lose in Brazil's closest-ever presidential contest. Despite the very real and serious flaws of the current government, this discontent with the PT finds its true source in centuries of elite fear of popular mobilization and a deep resentment of the gains working class people have made since Lula took office in 2003.

Of course, if one asks the demonstrators in the streets why they are protesting, no one will say that it's because the poor aren't as poor anymore. Indeed, 44% of demonstrators in Porto Alegre told pollsters that they were attending to speak out against corruption. And, responding to a question that permitted multiple answers, 58% indicated that their greatest disappointment lies with the political class overall, as compared to 44% that identified the PT and 29% Rousseff. A further 78% argued that political parties, including the opposition, should have no role in their movement. Could it be the case that the demonstrations were, in fact, overwhelmingly democratic and targeted primarily at corruption? Several clues indicate that this is not the case.

Although they represented a small minority of demonstrators, a vocal contingent was not satisfied with calls for impeachment. In a chilling scene for those who remember the repression unleashed during Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, protesters carried signs emblazoned with slogans like "Military intervention now" and "SOS Armed Forces." A banner in Rio de Janeiro featured a swastika and read, "Armed Forces, liberate Brazil." Another read (in English), "Army, Navy, and Air Force. Please save us once again of [sic] communism." "The best communist is a dead communist. Dilma, Maduro, Hugo, Fidel, Cristina, Lula: the world's garbage." Their signs were eerily reminiscent of the media's enthusiastic response to Brazil's 1964 coup, when the country's press overwhelmingly cheered the military's ouster of João Goulart—another mildly-leftist, so-called "communist" president—as a victory for democracy.


Figure 1: Protesters in São Paulo Plead for a Military Coup, March 15, 2015 (Source: Nelson Almeida / AFP)

In response to the pleas for military intervention, a spokesman for Revoltados ON LINE, a grassroots group that helped organize the protests and has 750,000 Facebook likes, commented, "The people asking for [military] intervention want to remove the PT from power. That is the sole focus. The participation of a variety of groups strengthens the group as a whole." Though a military coup still looks unlikely, it is widely known that many in the military are incensed with the Rousseff administration over the final report of the National Truth Commission, which blasted the armed forces for torture and disappearances during its rule.

If those waxing nostalgic for dictatorships of yore were in the minority, what of the rest of the protesters? Despite attempts to highlight the supposed multi-class composition of the crowds on March 15, they represented, above all, Brazil's white, university-educated economic elite. As Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Marcelo K. Silva recently pointed out, in Porto Alegre, nearly 70% of protesters were college-educated, in contrast with 11% of the general population, while over 40% belonged to the top income brackets, which make up but 3% of the population. Photographs confirm this; in a country with a high correlation between skin color and economic class, where over half of the population identifies as black or brown, the crowds had a decidedly lighter hue. A viral Tumblr accountpoked fun at the similarities with the upper-class, yellow-and-green-clad crowds that attended pricey World Cup matches last year by challenging visitors to determine if the photographs posted came from a March 15 demonstration or the World Cup.


Figure 2: Singer Wanessa Camargo performs the National Anthem for a largely white crowd in São Paulo, March 15, 2015 (Source: Vanessa Carvalho / BPP / AGNEWS)

Of course, the fact that the demonstrations largely consisted of white middle- and upper-class Brazilians does not automatically mean that they were anti-democratic. At the same time, it would be a grave mistake to interpret the class composition of the crowds outside the context of Brazil's historic inequalities of class, race, and region. What does it mean if the majority of demonstrators demanding the ouster of a moderately redistributive center-left party come from the social classes and regions that have least benefited from its policies? What problems do they see with corruption, the PT, or Rousseff that are insufficient to motivate the working classes or people from the impoverished Northeast of the country to take to the streets?

Since the colonial period, political and economic power has been wielded by a tiny European-descended elite, and since the collapse of the Northeastern plantation sugar economy in the nineteenth century, economic power has been concentrated in the Southeast and South, especially in the coffee and industrial powerhouse of São Paulo—today the epicenter of the opposition. An influx of European immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries only heightened the disdain light-skinned, prosperous Southeasterners felt for their mixed-race Northeastern and Northern countrymen and women, and after the 1950s, that prejudice was turned against Northeastern migrants who came to work in the region's expanding industries. Brazil's middle class of government bureaucrats, small business owners, and professionals, tied to the landowning and industrial elite by socialization and patronage, has in turn largely identified with elite interests. Whenever Brazilian leaders, be they the populist dictator and later elected president Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945, 1950-1954), or the left-leaning would-be reformer João Goulart (1961-1964), have proposed reforms that would decrease inequality and broaden political representation, they have been ousted by an indignant elite and middle class – at precisely the moments when the minimum wage was growing the fastest.

The leveling results of the last 12 years are striking, if still far short of what Brazil needs to comprehensively address income inequality. In January 2003, the Inter-union Department of Socioeconomic Statistics and Studies (DIEESE) calculated that in order to provide a living wage, the minimum wage should be 6.93 times what it actually was; by February 2015, the ratio had fallen to 4.03. The unemployment rate when Lula took office was 11.2%; today, it is 5.9% (though it has risen from 4.4% in November 2014). At the same time, the gains were not evenly spread out; between 2001 and 2013, the income of the poorest 10% of the population grew at nearly three times the rate of that of the richest 10%. The result was a Gini coefficient that, while still among the highest in the world at 0.527 in 2012, reached its lowest level since 1960. In sum, then, though economic growth between 2003 and 2014 benefited the whole population, it benefited the poor and working class the most, largely as a result of real increases in the minimum wage. As economist Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, a cabinet minister under Cardoso,put it, "This hatred [against the PT] is a result of the fact that the government revealed a strong and clear preference for workers and the poor."

The persistence of prejudice against the poor and Northeasterners manifested itself most clearly on social media in the wake of the 2014 elections—when the Northeast voted overwhelmingly for Rousseff. "These Northeastern sons of bitches need to die in a drought; good-for-nothings, sucking on the government's teat, ignorant sons of bitches," read one tweet. "Northeasterners don't have a brain, they have no culture; it's the slum of Brazil," read another. Even former president Cardoso, a one-time leftist sociologist and champion of the struggle against the military dictatorship, grumbled, "The PT relies on the least informed, who happen to be the poorest." Much like in the United States, in the wake of government efforts to reduce inequality, the wealthy and middle class have reacted with racially inflected charges of laziness, dependency, and ignorance. And so far it has largely been the same social groups who voted for Neves and blasted Northeasterners who have been participating in the demonstrations against Rousseff.

If the March 15 demonstrations expressed the concerns of the middle class and elite, what are the implications for Rousseff's government? First, despite Rousseff's dismal approval ratings, the PT's base of support in the working class and poor is not ready to abandon it. The PT has retained their support through policies like the wildly popular conditional cash transfer program Bolsa Família, the expansion of the federal university system, and race and class-based quotas in college admissions that have yielded tangible improvements in their daily lives. Unless the economy deteriorates to the point where the working class and poor join the demonstrations – and even Brazil's small leftist press admits that this is not impossible – it's hard to imagine the protests gaining further traction. Second, despite the common class interests of the demonstrators, a message decrying working class gains is not politically feasible. In the absence of this message, which in fact is the real motivator of the protests, the demonstrators are left in the tenuous position of calling for the outster of the PT through a legally invalid impeachment, with no agreement at all about or what should happen afterwards.

The same groups that organized the March 15 demonstrations are planning another round for April 12. Will they attract working class support? What developments in the Petrobrás scandal might affect their success? Will calls for military intervention become more prominent or fade into the background? One thing remains certain: In the absence of a mass working-class defection from the PT, proof of crimes justifying impeachment, or military interest in a coup, the prospects for a change in government are remote. Yet this is unlikely to dampen the hopes of wealthy and highly educated protesters, who will continue to use corruption as an excuse to protest against the socioeconomic ascension of those they see as their inferiors. As sociologist Jesse de Souza pointedly explains, "What distinguishes Brazil from the United States, Germany, and France, who we admire so much," isn't the level of corruption, "but the fact that we accept maintaining a third of the population in subhuman conditions." The PT governments of the last 12 years made progress toward improving those conditions, but in the process they threatened the Brazilian elite's deeply ingrained sense of superiority. Whether conscious or not, class and regional prejudice—not corruption—is the driving force behind the demonstrations.

Bryan Pitts is visiting assistant professor of History at Duke University and a Fulbright Scholars postdoctoral fellow at the Instituto de Ciência Política of the Universidade de Brasília (UnB).

Who's Protesting in Brazil and Why? | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization
 

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