A network of Conservative Think-tanks & Foundations from the United States, such as Koch, Cato & Templeton, are financing young Latin Americans to fight Left Governments and defend old positions with a new language. “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior […]
“Only a crisis, real or perceived, produces real change.” – Milton Friedman. Brasil is having a horrible 2015; a far less favourable global economic situation, a number of policy misjudgements made early in President Rousseff’s first mandate and rolling scandals that have followed 2014’s election have resulted in flurry of headlines both at home and abroad decrying “Brasil in Crisis” or “On […]
The Brazilian organized or “popular” left is made up of labour unions, poor people’s social movements, women’s and Afro-Brasilian movements, religious base organizations and the political parties that they feel best represent them within the confines of a capitalist system. As the corrupt Brazilian media and the conservative middle class, unhappy with last years election results […]
Sunday, April 12, was supposed to be bigger than ever before. The same groups that organized Brazil’s March 15 demonstrations against Dilma Rousseff’s government via social media had planned a new wave of protests across Brazil. Today they are undoubtedly privately disappointed. The early crowd estimates indicate a drop of at least 50% in every […]
Brasil’s right-wing march under a banner of anti-corruption but the protests of the past weekend illustrated what is actually a fresh manifestation of Brasil’s ongoing class conflict, with an undercurrent of racial tension and a dash of anti-communist hysteria. The Petrobras scandal is a primary concern of many Brazilians today, across the political spectrum, but nebulous […]
“There’s an unwritten understanding amongst Foreign Correspondents that the U.S. wants PSDB in power.” – Foreign Correspondent, São Paulo, 22/6/2013 Originally published March 2015. As we discussed in the article ‘Brasil’s Citizen Kanes’ the mainstream press in the country has a long tradition of antidemocratic bias. In 1989, as documented in the British film “Beyond […]
Losing elections isn’t easy, and Brasil’s anti-communist paranoia is almost as old as communism itself, but in 2014, the decades-old fantasy of a Marxist takeover of the country is being amplified by a small fringe of Brasil’s right. They have their mentor in astrologer & ultra-conservative philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, who is based in Richmond, Virginia. Their principal bogeymen are Foro do […]
Brasil has a healthy and noisy media landscape; from sophisticated daily papers and weekly magazines comparable to any in Europe, right through to trashy supermarket rags like you see across the United States. But at the top level there is a deep undercurrent of conservatism that often goes unnoticed, a conservatism that pre-dates any of […]
ORIGINAL DEBATE TRANSCRIPT TRANSLATED FROM CARTA CAPITAL This second debate, on SBT, and the first since Brasil Wire went live was slightly more nervous than the first on Band, which was in part down to the manner of the host, and perhaps as a result of the latest polls showing PSB candidate Marina Silva, who entered the […]
Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (PMDB formerly MDB) is Brasil’s largest political party, who control Congress & Senate and are currently in coalition with Dilma Rousseff’s PT. PMDB keep a curiously low profile, have not fielded a presidential candidate for 12 years, are absent from much public debate, unreported abroad, yet hold the vice-presidency, key ministries, and thus policy makers to […]