ckaihatsu
25th March 2016, 19:42
Overthrowing Dilma Rousseff
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1237 .... March 23, 2016
__________________________________________________ _
Overthrowing Dilma Rousseff:
It’s Class War, and Their Class is Winning
Alfredo Saad Filho
Every so often, the bourgeois political system runs into crisis. The machinery of the state jams; the veils of consent are torn asunder and the tools of power appear disturbingly naked. Brazil is living through one of those moments: it is dreamland for social scientists; a nightmare for everyone else.
Dilma Rousseff was elected President in 2010, with a 56-44 per cent majority against the right-wing neoliberal PSDB (Brazilian Social Democratic Party) opposition candidate. She was reelected four years later with a diminished yet convincing majority of 52-48 per cent, or a majority of 3.5 million votes.
Dilma's second victory sparked a heated panic among the neoliberal and U.S.-aligned opposition. The fourth consecutive election of a President affiliated to the centre-left PT (Workers’ Party) was bad news for the opposition, because it suggested that PT founder Luís Inácio Lula da Silva could return in 2018. Lula had been President between 2003 and 2010, and when he left office his approval ratings hit 90 per cent, making him the most popular leader in Brazil's history. This likely sequence suggested that the opposition could be out of federal office for a generation. The opposition immediately rejected the outcome of the vote. No credible complaints could be made, but no matter; it was resolved that Dilma Rousseff would be overthrown by any means necessary. To understand what happened next, we must return to 2011.
Continue reading (http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1237.php#continue)
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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encouraged to distribute widely. Comments, criticisms and
suggestions are welcome. Write to [email protected]
If you wish to subscribe: www.socialistproject.ca/lists/?p=subscribe
The Bullet archive is available at www.socialistproject.ca/bullet
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- - - Updated - - -
Brazil: Who is Fomenting the Attempted Coup and Why? -- A Dossier
[to subscribe/unsubscribe, contact [email protected]]
http://www.socialistorganizer.org/brazil-coup-2/
Brazil: Who is Fomenting the Attempted Coup and Why?
The political crisis continues to deepen in Brazil, taking on more and more the form of a class vs. class confrontation.
Events are moving very quickly, and workers and their allies are becoming more radicalized by the day. On the one side you have the Brazilian oligarchy, assisted every step of the way by a compliant judiciary system inherited from the military dictatorship (1964-1980). All are demanding and orchestrating the removal of President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party.
On the other side, as was demonstrated with full force on Friday, March 18, there are the more than 1.5 million workers and activists who took to the streets in 23 major cities across Brazil to express their strong determination to stop the coup by any means necessary.
Popular Committees Against the Coup are rising up in working class neighborhoods and shantytowns throughout Brazil. A Manifesto of the Periferias [shantytowns on the city's outskirts] of Sao Paulo -- distributed publicly on March 22 with the endorsements of 120 popular organizations -- shows how the fight against the coup is being coupled with the fight for workers' pressing demands, which the PT government, for the most part, has failed to address.
The Manifesto Das Periferias de Sao Paulo reads, in part:
"We - dwellers in the city's periferias - are here to send a wake-up call to the fascists: We are against the coup under way - a coup that affects us directly.
"We defend the Workers Party (PT) government against the ongoing coup, while at the same time noting its contradictions, as it's a government that has given us only crumbs while allying itself with the very same people who exploit us. . . .
"We, who have come from all the periferias, are against the coup being plotted against the current federal government, which is promoted by conservative politicians, businessmen, and a manipulative media, all of whom have absolutely no commitment to the people.
"We have nothing in common with those who have taken to the streets with their hate speech: the fascists and their hangers-on, who talk about the 'fight against corruption' only because they are motivated by their own private interests.
"We have nothing in common with those who in the name of the 'fight against corruption' want to weaken the public sector and the State to line their own pockets, to break with legality and democracy, and to put down the working class and the oppressed.
"We know that democracy will only be real and effective when we expand our rights and conquests as Black people, as poor people living in the periferias, as workers, on a left platform, from the bottom up.
"We, who have only obtained one part of the dream that we have sought for so long, are not going back. We will not allow it. We call for the respect of the voting booth [a reference to Dilma's election] and of democratic rights. We call for freedom of expression. We call for the defense and expansion of policies strengthening the public sector and social services, of policies advancing our civil and social rights."
On Tuesday, March 22, more than 4,000 workers at the Ford Factory in the ABC industrial triangle of Sao Paulo met in a general assembly outside the plant gate with their CUT union officers and voted a motion to oppose the coup and to defend workers' rights.
"The coup is already happening," stated Joao Cayres, general secretary of the CUT-SP metalworkers' union. "If it is consummated, the next step will be to attack our labor and civil rights," Cayres added.
Cayres told the gathering that bills are already in the docket in the National Congress, all drafted by the political forces preparing the coup, that call for generalizing the outsourcing of jobs to non-union subcontractors, lowering the minimum wage, and increasing labor law "flexibility." With a coup, the path will be freed up to further these attacks, Cayres concluded.
At the end of the general assembly, the following motion was put to a vote: "Do you want to fight against the coup and in defense of labor rights?" The answer came in the form of thousands of upraised hands and voices in unison. [See photo of Ford Assembly vote.]
General assemblies such as this one at the Ford plant are beginning to take place in factories across Brazil.
We are publishing below the Declaration Against the Coup by the Internationalist Communist Faction (FCI) of the O Trabalho current of the Workers Party (PT). -- A.B.
- - - - -
BRAZIL DECLARATION:
A Coup D'etat Is Under Way!
No to the Coup! For Democracy and Social Rights!
A coup d'etat is under way, there can be no doubt about it! This coup is in progress via the legal, illegal, and arbitrary actions of Judge Sergio Moro against Lula [Past President Luis Inacio da Silva] and Dilma [Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff]. These are actions that target the Workers Party (PT). The coup preparations also include the possibility of Dilma's impeachment by most of the hacks in the House of Representatives, led by Eduardo Cunha (PMDB).
The coup is an effort undertaken jointly by the bosses, the judicial system, and the reactionary political forces - involving the San Paulo Chamber of Industry (FIESP); the Supreme Court; parties such as the PSDB and the PMDB; and the mainstream media, such as Globo and others. All aim to create a "state of exception."
The president of the CUT trade union federation, Wagner Freitas, stated: "I know that workers only have rights and conquests in a democracy. Coups like this one are for the purpose of enslaving the workers for capitalism."
He's right.
On the one side, you have the working class, the youth, the landless peasants, the oppressed of the country. On the other side, you have imperialism, the financial oligarchy and big business, to whose interests the judicial system has shown to be subordinate - a system that is making use of all the means inherited from the military dictatorship that have still not been fully dismantled.
We must state this clearly: To defend the PT, the CUT and all organizations of workers and popular sectors, and to put a stop to the coup, requires first and foremost breaking with all the dictates of imperialism and taking immediate action to implement the measures that the masses - the workers and the youth - have been demanding for the past 12 years, ever since the first victory of Lula.
This is not about pointing fingers at anyone. It is about understanding what is at stake in order to take action!
A question is posed: How is it possible that after 12 years of the PT in the presidency and government we have reached a situation today that is so incredibly dangerous for the workers, the youth, the landless peasants -- and for democracy itself, which was won more than 30 years ago against the military dictatorship through bitter struggle? How is it possible that imperialism and its lackeys in Brazil can now feel so emboldened to again target democracy in our country?
If imperialism and its reactionary forces are so disposed to launch a new coup d'etat today, 36 years after the military was swept from power, it's because for 12 years at the helm of the government, the top leadership of the PT never stopped bending to the demands of imperialism.
Certain measures of a social-assistance character were carried out under the pressure of the struggles waged by the landless peasants, the youth, and the poor people of our country. But what was done to address the more fundamental and essential questions that concern the popular masses of the country?
What happened with the agrarian reform?
What was done to end the "primary-surplus" [superávit primário] policy that imposed drastic restrictions and budget cuts in education and public health -- for the sole purpose of ensuring the timely payment of the infamous foreign "debt" that was not contracted by the people? What was done in terms of canceling that bloody debt, which the Brazilian people have already paid back many times over -- but which keeps on getting bigger?
What was done to re-nationalize the corporations and public services delivered into the hands of the private sector by the privatizing forces of the PSDB and other sectors linked to the "privataria tucana"?
Lula has just been brought into the Dilma government as the president's Chief of Staff. On the day his new post was announced, Dilma took the opportunity to announce the privatization of four more large airports, stating, "I am certain that we will be turning over four airports -- Porto Alegre, Florianopolis, Salvador and Fortaleza -- to the private sector."
It is precisely this policy that has led us to the difficult situation we are facing today. This is the policy that me must break with -- urgently!
This requires:
* Ending the fiscal adjustment and budget policy based on the "primary surplus" that cuts and restricts social and public service spending -- all for the purpose of paying the bankers and speculators the interests on an illegitimate debt;
* Repealing the misnamed Protection Program for Employment (PPE), which guarantees no jobs whatsoever and only lowers the workers' wages in the name of job preservation -- instead of doing what should be done, that is, prohibiting all layoffs so as to prevent the workers from shouldering the burden of the crisis;
* Stopping privatization, guaranteeing control over all deep-water oil reserves by Petrobras, ensuring Dilma's veto of bill PL 555, which delivers our public enterprises to the control of private shareholders.
* Suspending all new measures that undermine the retirement and pension systems, which have already been hard hit in recent years;
* Suspending all the cuts to public education and public services.
This National Congress -- which is led by corrupt individuals -- has no legitimacy to remove Dilma from the presidency nor to modify the Constitution in favor of the plans of recession on behalf of imperialism, the IMF, and its national friends. Therefore, it is urgent and necessary to convene a National Constituent Assembly in which the people, in a sovereign manner, can decide their own destiny.
-- IC Faction of O Trabalho
March 18, 2016
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1237 .... March 23, 2016
__________________________________________________ _
Overthrowing Dilma Rousseff:
It’s Class War, and Their Class is Winning
Alfredo Saad Filho
Every so often, the bourgeois political system runs into crisis. The machinery of the state jams; the veils of consent are torn asunder and the tools of power appear disturbingly naked. Brazil is living through one of those moments: it is dreamland for social scientists; a nightmare for everyone else.
Dilma Rousseff was elected President in 2010, with a 56-44 per cent majority against the right-wing neoliberal PSDB (Brazilian Social Democratic Party) opposition candidate. She was reelected four years later with a diminished yet convincing majority of 52-48 per cent, or a majority of 3.5 million votes.
Dilma's second victory sparked a heated panic among the neoliberal and U.S.-aligned opposition. The fourth consecutive election of a President affiliated to the centre-left PT (Workers’ Party) was bad news for the opposition, because it suggested that PT founder Luís Inácio Lula da Silva could return in 2018. Lula had been President between 2003 and 2010, and when he left office his approval ratings hit 90 per cent, making him the most popular leader in Brazil's history. This likely sequence suggested that the opposition could be out of federal office for a generation. The opposition immediately rejected the outcome of the vote. No credible complaints could be made, but no matter; it was resolved that Dilma Rousseff would be overthrown by any means necessary. To understand what happened next, we must return to 2011.
Continue reading (http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1237.php#continue)
Share on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: @socialism21
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Bullet is produced by the Socialist Project. Readers are
encouraged to distribute widely. Comments, criticisms and
suggestions are welcome. Write to [email protected]
If you wish to subscribe: www.socialistproject.ca/lists/?p=subscribe
The Bullet archive is available at www.socialistproject.ca/bullet
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~
If you do not want to receive any more newsletters: Unsubscribe
If you wish to subscribe: this link
Forward to a friend: this link
To update your preferences: this link
powered by phpList
- - - Updated - - -
Brazil: Who is Fomenting the Attempted Coup and Why? -- A Dossier
[to subscribe/unsubscribe, contact [email protected]]
http://www.socialistorganizer.org/brazil-coup-2/
Brazil: Who is Fomenting the Attempted Coup and Why?
The political crisis continues to deepen in Brazil, taking on more and more the form of a class vs. class confrontation.
Events are moving very quickly, and workers and their allies are becoming more radicalized by the day. On the one side you have the Brazilian oligarchy, assisted every step of the way by a compliant judiciary system inherited from the military dictatorship (1964-1980). All are demanding and orchestrating the removal of President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party.
On the other side, as was demonstrated with full force on Friday, March 18, there are the more than 1.5 million workers and activists who took to the streets in 23 major cities across Brazil to express their strong determination to stop the coup by any means necessary.
Popular Committees Against the Coup are rising up in working class neighborhoods and shantytowns throughout Brazil. A Manifesto of the Periferias [shantytowns on the city's outskirts] of Sao Paulo -- distributed publicly on March 22 with the endorsements of 120 popular organizations -- shows how the fight against the coup is being coupled with the fight for workers' pressing demands, which the PT government, for the most part, has failed to address.
The Manifesto Das Periferias de Sao Paulo reads, in part:
"We - dwellers in the city's periferias - are here to send a wake-up call to the fascists: We are against the coup under way - a coup that affects us directly.
"We defend the Workers Party (PT) government against the ongoing coup, while at the same time noting its contradictions, as it's a government that has given us only crumbs while allying itself with the very same people who exploit us. . . .
"We, who have come from all the periferias, are against the coup being plotted against the current federal government, which is promoted by conservative politicians, businessmen, and a manipulative media, all of whom have absolutely no commitment to the people.
"We have nothing in common with those who have taken to the streets with their hate speech: the fascists and their hangers-on, who talk about the 'fight against corruption' only because they are motivated by their own private interests.
"We have nothing in common with those who in the name of the 'fight against corruption' want to weaken the public sector and the State to line their own pockets, to break with legality and democracy, and to put down the working class and the oppressed.
"We know that democracy will only be real and effective when we expand our rights and conquests as Black people, as poor people living in the periferias, as workers, on a left platform, from the bottom up.
"We, who have only obtained one part of the dream that we have sought for so long, are not going back. We will not allow it. We call for the respect of the voting booth [a reference to Dilma's election] and of democratic rights. We call for freedom of expression. We call for the defense and expansion of policies strengthening the public sector and social services, of policies advancing our civil and social rights."
On Tuesday, March 22, more than 4,000 workers at the Ford Factory in the ABC industrial triangle of Sao Paulo met in a general assembly outside the plant gate with their CUT union officers and voted a motion to oppose the coup and to defend workers' rights.
"The coup is already happening," stated Joao Cayres, general secretary of the CUT-SP metalworkers' union. "If it is consummated, the next step will be to attack our labor and civil rights," Cayres added.
Cayres told the gathering that bills are already in the docket in the National Congress, all drafted by the political forces preparing the coup, that call for generalizing the outsourcing of jobs to non-union subcontractors, lowering the minimum wage, and increasing labor law "flexibility." With a coup, the path will be freed up to further these attacks, Cayres concluded.
At the end of the general assembly, the following motion was put to a vote: "Do you want to fight against the coup and in defense of labor rights?" The answer came in the form of thousands of upraised hands and voices in unison. [See photo of Ford Assembly vote.]
General assemblies such as this one at the Ford plant are beginning to take place in factories across Brazil.
We are publishing below the Declaration Against the Coup by the Internationalist Communist Faction (FCI) of the O Trabalho current of the Workers Party (PT). -- A.B.
- - - - -
BRAZIL DECLARATION:
A Coup D'etat Is Under Way!
No to the Coup! For Democracy and Social Rights!
A coup d'etat is under way, there can be no doubt about it! This coup is in progress via the legal, illegal, and arbitrary actions of Judge Sergio Moro against Lula [Past President Luis Inacio da Silva] and Dilma [Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff]. These are actions that target the Workers Party (PT). The coup preparations also include the possibility of Dilma's impeachment by most of the hacks in the House of Representatives, led by Eduardo Cunha (PMDB).
The coup is an effort undertaken jointly by the bosses, the judicial system, and the reactionary political forces - involving the San Paulo Chamber of Industry (FIESP); the Supreme Court; parties such as the PSDB and the PMDB; and the mainstream media, such as Globo and others. All aim to create a "state of exception."
The president of the CUT trade union federation, Wagner Freitas, stated: "I know that workers only have rights and conquests in a democracy. Coups like this one are for the purpose of enslaving the workers for capitalism."
He's right.
On the one side, you have the working class, the youth, the landless peasants, the oppressed of the country. On the other side, you have imperialism, the financial oligarchy and big business, to whose interests the judicial system has shown to be subordinate - a system that is making use of all the means inherited from the military dictatorship that have still not been fully dismantled.
We must state this clearly: To defend the PT, the CUT and all organizations of workers and popular sectors, and to put a stop to the coup, requires first and foremost breaking with all the dictates of imperialism and taking immediate action to implement the measures that the masses - the workers and the youth - have been demanding for the past 12 years, ever since the first victory of Lula.
This is not about pointing fingers at anyone. It is about understanding what is at stake in order to take action!
A question is posed: How is it possible that after 12 years of the PT in the presidency and government we have reached a situation today that is so incredibly dangerous for the workers, the youth, the landless peasants -- and for democracy itself, which was won more than 30 years ago against the military dictatorship through bitter struggle? How is it possible that imperialism and its lackeys in Brazil can now feel so emboldened to again target democracy in our country?
If imperialism and its reactionary forces are so disposed to launch a new coup d'etat today, 36 years after the military was swept from power, it's because for 12 years at the helm of the government, the top leadership of the PT never stopped bending to the demands of imperialism.
Certain measures of a social-assistance character were carried out under the pressure of the struggles waged by the landless peasants, the youth, and the poor people of our country. But what was done to address the more fundamental and essential questions that concern the popular masses of the country?
What happened with the agrarian reform?
What was done to end the "primary-surplus" [superávit primário] policy that imposed drastic restrictions and budget cuts in education and public health -- for the sole purpose of ensuring the timely payment of the infamous foreign "debt" that was not contracted by the people? What was done in terms of canceling that bloody debt, which the Brazilian people have already paid back many times over -- but which keeps on getting bigger?
What was done to re-nationalize the corporations and public services delivered into the hands of the private sector by the privatizing forces of the PSDB and other sectors linked to the "privataria tucana"?
Lula has just been brought into the Dilma government as the president's Chief of Staff. On the day his new post was announced, Dilma took the opportunity to announce the privatization of four more large airports, stating, "I am certain that we will be turning over four airports -- Porto Alegre, Florianopolis, Salvador and Fortaleza -- to the private sector."
It is precisely this policy that has led us to the difficult situation we are facing today. This is the policy that me must break with -- urgently!
This requires:
* Ending the fiscal adjustment and budget policy based on the "primary surplus" that cuts and restricts social and public service spending -- all for the purpose of paying the bankers and speculators the interests on an illegitimate debt;
* Repealing the misnamed Protection Program for Employment (PPE), which guarantees no jobs whatsoever and only lowers the workers' wages in the name of job preservation -- instead of doing what should be done, that is, prohibiting all layoffs so as to prevent the workers from shouldering the burden of the crisis;
* Stopping privatization, guaranteeing control over all deep-water oil reserves by Petrobras, ensuring Dilma's veto of bill PL 555, which delivers our public enterprises to the control of private shareholders.
* Suspending all new measures that undermine the retirement and pension systems, which have already been hard hit in recent years;
* Suspending all the cuts to public education and public services.
This National Congress -- which is led by corrupt individuals -- has no legitimacy to remove Dilma from the presidency nor to modify the Constitution in favor of the plans of recession on behalf of imperialism, the IMF, and its national friends. Therefore, it is urgent and necessary to convene a National Constituent Assembly in which the people, in a sovereign manner, can decide their own destiny.
-- IC Faction of O Trabalho
March 18, 2016