Brazil's Lula rides again.

crimson5pheonix

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Brazil's former president before the disastrous Bolsonero had been convicted of trumped up corruption charges fabricated by the US and forced by a corrupt judge, but his conviction has been annulled and at least for the time being, he's both free and absolutely eligible to krump Bolsonero in the next election.
 

meiam

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This is a problem because the charge against him (and petrobas while him and his party were in power) were pretty solid but the judge in charge of the case was a dumbass who managed to kill everything and a guilty man walks free. Now Lula might come back and double down on the corruption, probably better than Bolsonero but still bad for Brazil.
 
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crimson5pheonix

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This is a problem because the charge against him (and petrobas while him and his party were in power) were pretty solid but the judge in charge of the case was a dumbass who managed to kill everything and a guilty man walks free. Now Lula might come back and double down on the corruption, probably better than Bolsonero but still bad for Brazil.
Solid?


The anti-corruption racket run by the judge was a political hit job by the US to depose a popular leader who consistently won while improving the lives of Brazilians. It wasn't close to solid.
 

meiam

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No the charge were extremely solid, the Petrobas scandal was very widely investigated by most country in Latin america (because it was so wide spread), these were independently verified by various departement across plenty of countries. Hell iirc a former president from Peru just commited suicided directly due to fraud that was brought to light from Lava Jato.

At most you could maybe, incredibly generously, say that maybe Lula was clean (incredible stretch and would require ignoring lots of strong proof). But then you end up in the classic situation where a clean politician just so happened to have been entirely surrounded by corrupt people (including his hand picked successor who was the boss of Petrobass while all the corrpution was happening). If he really was clean in this situation, then he was a moron who should be kept away from power.
 

Gergar12

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Lula's good on the economy, and social issues. I also don't get why Obama compared him to a corrupt Tammy Hall Boss. No noes someone giving jobs to underprivileged people/immigrants.

Also the rich were the ones who wanted him in the beginning because if they didn't redistribute the wealth, they would end up getting kidnapped, and having to pay lots of money in insurance.

Oh, and he sided with China and Russia, but he wasn't a jackass about it.
 
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crimson5pheonix

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No the charge were extremely solid, the Petrobas scandal was very widely investigated by most country in Latin america (because it was so wide spread), these were independently verified by various departement across plenty of countries. Hell iirc a former president from Peru just commited suicided directly due to fraud that was brought to light from Lava Jato.

At most you could maybe, incredibly generously, say that maybe Lula was clean (incredible stretch and would require ignoring lots of strong proof). But then you end up in the classic situation where a clean politician just so happened to have been entirely surrounded by corrupt people (including his hand picked successor who was the boss of Petrobass while all the corrpution was happening). If he really was clean in this situation, then he was a moron who should be kept away from power.
Yeah but, Lava Jato is toxic, it's been outed as an American anti-left propaganda operation. The person heading it was on the take from the CIA.
 
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Agema

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Yeah btu, Lava Jato is toxic, it's been outed as an American anti-left propaganda operation. The person heading it was on the take from the CIA.
Honestly, I think that's a position in the credibility stakes with the claim that the Democrats stole the 2020 US presidential election through mass voter fraud.

The story seems to me more about over-aggressive, ambitious and slightly slipshod prosecutors. They wanted to move quickly, there were legitimate international dimensions to the case, and they could get leverage against suspects through the USA - the cost was exposure to interests from the US side of things. But there's plenty of information from scoops in, for instance, The Intercept showing that the prosecutors were by no means US stooges and aware of protecting Brazilian interests from the USA. We can hardly deny that the dirt on people all around Dilma Rousseff is awkward, even despite her appearing clean herself. Similarly that for the improprieties around Lula's conviction, again those around him were corrupt and his dealings have not been transparent enough for us to be confident about him personally.

Did the USA interfere in ways to potentially advance their own interests? Apparently so. Did they cook it up and trick Brazil just to take down the Brazilian left? Almost certainly not. The latter sounds to me like a comforting narrative for the left to invent to cover for the fact that many of their own were caught and tarnished, doubly attractive for tapping into the perennial fear of US manipulation.

But given that Bolsonaro's family is also seemingly neck-deep in corruption and he's a frothingly disturbing quasi-fascist as well, one can only see Lula as a massive improvement.
 

crimson5pheonix

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Honestly, I think that's a position in the credibility stakes with the claim that the Democrats stole the 2020 US presidential election through mass voter fraud.

The story seems to me more about over-aggressive, ambitious and slightly slipshod prosecutors. They wanted to move quickly, there were legitimate international dimensions to the case, and they could get leverage against suspects through the USA - the cost was exposure to interests from the US side of things. But there's plenty of information from scoops in, for instance, The Intercept showing that the prosecutors were by no means US stooges and aware of protecting Brazilian interests from the USA. We can hardly deny that the dirt on people all around Dilma Rousseff is awkward, even despite her appearing clean herself. Similarly that for the improprieties around Lula's conviction, again those around him were corrupt and his dealings have not been transparent enough for us to be confident about him personally.

Did the USA interfere in ways to potentially advance their own interests? Apparently so. Did they cook it up and trick Brazil just to take down the Brazilian left? Almost certainly not. The latter sounds to me like a comforting narrative for the left to invent to cover for the fact that many of their own were caught and tarnished, doubly attractive for tapping into the perennial fear of US manipulation.

But given that Bolsonaro's family is also seemingly neck-deep in corruption and he's a frothingly disturbing quasi-fascist as well, one can only see Lula as a massive improvement.
It's a position I feel I must take as the default because of a reliable habit of the US to play up or fabricate reasons to depose Latin American leftists. The most high profile recent example that's well and truly cut-and-dry was the OAS implicating MAS and Morales in voter fraud, only to have it turn out to be a clerical error on their part that they still deny to this day, as I understand it.
 
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Seanchaidh

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Did they cook it up and trick Brazil just to take down the Brazilian left? Almost certainly not.
Not sure why you would make such a declaration when this has been the pattern of behavior of the United States in Latin America for decades. The only thing a little bit weird about it is that it wasn't as gauche as the orchestration of an armed insurrection, assassination, or military coup.
 
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crimson5pheonix

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Every specter of the Car Wash investigation has been removed from Lula's past and there's nothing left to stop him from running. Even the far right supreme court justices in Brazil had to admit the investigation was bullshit from top to bottom.
 

crimson5pheonix

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meiam

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And now Bolanero's government is deteriorating. How awful do you have to be to have a country literally handed to you by the US and still fuck it up?
Sigh, at least be factually correct in your crazy conspiracy. Bolsonaro was not the head of state after the worker party was ousted, Temer was, who then lost in election in 2018 to Bolsonaro. But I'm sure the US somehow orchetsrated all that from the shadow, but are also somehow incapable of making the Bolsonaro government competent and also incapable of preventing the lava jato trial from falling apart. Schrodinger US government that's somehow hyper competent and completely useless at once.
 

Revnak

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Sigh, at least be factually correct in your crazy conspiracy. Bolsonaro was not the head of state after the worker party was ousted, Temer was, who then lost in election in 2018 to Bolsonaro. But I'm sure the US somehow orchetsrated all that from the shadow, but are also somehow incapable of making the Bolsonaro government competent and also incapable of preventing the lava jato trial from falling apart. Schrodinger US government that's somehow hyper competent and completely useless at once.
Ok, given a brief glance at literally any documented interaction between the US and Latin America, what would lead you to thinking US foreign policy arms don’t have a tendency to be both obscenely competent on occasion (due to an abundance of resources and manpower) then randomly extremely incompetent (due to greedy infighting between different arms and the resources they handle)? The US has both completely torpedoed the Venezuelan economy and sent a dozen ex-SEAL mercs to overthrow the government who proceeded to get caught by fishermen and publicly piss themselves. That’s not 80’s coke dealing CIA, that’s present day clean shaven state dept and NGOs.

Every historical act of US foreign policy for the last century very clearly shows the US is constantly both hyper competent and utterly incapable.
 

crimson5pheonix

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Sigh, at least be factually correct in your crazy conspiracy. Bolsonaro was not the head of state after the worker party was ousted, Temer was, who then lost in election in 2018 to Bolsonaro. But I'm sure the US somehow orchetsrated all that from the shadow, but are also somehow incapable of making the Bolsonaro government competent and also incapable of preventing the lava jato trial from falling apart. Schrodinger US government that's somehow hyper competent and completely useless at once.
Reading of the tea leaves at the time of the trial said that if Lula wasn't there, Bolsonaro would win. The US only cared about Bolsonaro insofar as he would be subservient to US interests without caring if he could actually run a country. Apparently he can't. It's really not that hard. It's not much of a conspiracy theory, so much as it's an extension of the history of US meddling in central and south America.
 
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Silvanus

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Reading of the tea leaves at the time of the trial said that if Lula wasn't there, Bolsonaro would win. The US only cared about Bolsonaro insofar as he would be subservient to US interests without caring if he could actually run a country. Apparently he can't. It's really not that hard. It's not much of a conspiracy theory, so much as it's an extension of the history of US meddling in central and south America.
To add to this: the skills required to take power are very, very different from the skills required to govern competently. Right-wing rabble-rousers excel at the former, because they can whip up and (mis)direct anger. A lot of them are useless at the latter, because they're perennially short-sighted and the same skills... simply don't apply.

Mussolini would be the prime example.
 
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