August 28, 2025: A federal government taskforce made up of state civil and military police and federal police agents conducted search warrants on 350 targets in 8 states, revealing a R$7.6 billion money laundering scheme through hundreds of gas stations, most of which that had been privatized by the Bolsonaro administration starting in 2019. The scheme was connected to Brazil’s largest organized crime group, the Primeira Comanda do Capital. The investigation also revealed that the PCC had fed over R$30 billion ($6 billion USD), into 40 hedge funds, including some located in the US state of Delaware.

October 28, 2025: Under orders from Rio de Janeiro Governor and loyal Bolsonaro ally Claudio Castro, hundreds of military police marched into the favelas of Alemao and Penha on the city’s North Side. Using armored troop carriers, helicopters and drones, they opened machine gun fire against groups of armed, low level street dealers. Although there is no death penalty in Brazil, by the end of the day 122 people had been killed, including civilians caught in the crossfire. Evidence later surfaces showing that, that day, groups of youth were marched into a forest at gunpoint, ordered to kneel and shot in the back of the head. Days later a poll by Quaest showed that 64% of the residents of Rio de Janeiro supported the action. A month later, Sao Paulo’s Bolsonarista governador Tarcísio de Freitas gave Governor Claudio Castro an award in the name of his military police special forces, the ROTA. In March, 2026, Castro resigned in the middle of a corruption trial against him, and since then, two more investigations have been opened up against the governor by the federal police.

These two police operations, one coordinated by a progressive federal government and the other coordinated by a far right state government, illustrate the different approaches to fighting crime by Brazil’s two leading presidential candidates this year: incumbent president Lula da Silva and far right challenger/Steve Bannon protege Flavio Bolsonaro.

Historically, Brazilian conservatives like to accuse leftists of being “soft” on crime, whereas leftists argue that the last 40 years prioritizing spending on military equipment and holding theatrical acts of violence in the slums might be good for television news ratings and popular with the public, but have done very little to reduce the crime rate.

The following first in a series of news stories I am producing for TeleSur on how the candidates are responding to the most important issues for voters this year.

Bruno Guimarães grimaces after missing Brazil’s first World Cup penalty in 40 years

After years of waiting for a small lawsuit from a car accident to settle, I moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1991. I had never visited Brazil before, but I was not there as a tourist. As a young man, I had made a decision that I did not want to spend the rest of my life living in a country where you only got 2 weeks of vacation a year. After a lot of informal research talking to fellow bellhops at the Palmer House in Chicago, mainly immigrants from all over the world, I decided on Rio de Janeiro.

I arrived and, after blowing my small lawsuit settlement on restaurant food, drinks, and taxis in the first month, got a job teaching conversational English to business executives. There, I met a coworker from Sweden named Bo and we started having a few drinks together from time to time. One day I arrived at his apartment and he sent me up. He answered the door completely naked, in the Swedish tradition, and said, “I’m going to get ready in a few minutes. I just want to watch the end of the Flamengo game.”

“OK,” I said, “I have to admit that I’m not much of a fan of soccer, though.”

He looked shocked. “Fucking hell, Brian!” he said, “if you are seriously thinking of living in this country, you have to learn how to love football.” As the shock of sitting in the living room with a naked Swedish guy wore off, he began explaining the game to me. Bo was a former back who played professionally in the second division in England and first divisions in Sweden and Greece, whose career was cut short by a knee injury. He’d moved to Rio de Janeiro because of his psoriasis after doctors told him he needed to get more sunlight, deciding on Brazil because of its football tradition.

“Look how they move the ball up the field. The Brazilians’ problem is that they love the ball too much. A Brazilian will kick the ball four or five times before passing. If you watch the Germans play, for example, they will only kick the ball once or twice. Nevertheless, on any given year, any list of the world’s best players will be made up mostly of Brazilians. They are the best individual players in the world, and any time they get a manager who can get them to play together as a team, they win the World Cup.”

That Summer Bo made it a personal project to get me to love football. He took me to watch legendary midfielder Junior play football for fun in an amateur league, barefoot on Copacabana beach, to the delirium of the hundreds of fans who came out to cheer him on. Then, in an act that caused me to really fall in love with football, he invited me to the Brazilian championship finals in the cheap seats in Maracana stadium, where 168,000 people had come out to watch Junior lead Flamengo to victory over Botofogo in the last great game of his career. Brazilian football was a lot different then. There was no wall separating rival fans, just hundreds of riot control military police standing in the aisles. We were in the Botofogo section near the dividing line between the two groups in solidarity with a Brazilian friend, and every time Flamengo scored, their entire fan section stood up, dancing and giving us the middle finger.

Junior jumps for joy after scoring a goal in the 1992 Brazilian championship final. I was there.

I was lucky enough to be live in Brazil for both the 1994 and 2002 World Cups, and being able to experience both of those victories on days when the entire country shut down, buses stopped running, and banks and schools closed, rank among the greatest experiences of my life. For the first 15 years I lived in Brazil, it really did seem like Brazil always had the best individual players in the world and all it needed was a manager who could get them to play together as a team for them to win the World Cup. Then things started going awry. Here are a few things that I have observed during my decades living in Brazil that have contributed to the decline of football.

Huge crowd lines the streets in Recife, to great the returning 1994 World Cup champions

The decline of samba

Samba is a genre of Afro-Brazilian music that was first mentioned in the 1840s in Pernambuco that was modernized and urbanized in Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s through fusion of musical traditions of people who had migrated to the city from places like the coffee plantations in Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo and the towns and quilombos in the Sao Francisco river valley. Over the years, it has branched out into different subgenres, and in 1991, when I first moved to Rio de Janeiro, two of its subgenres, Samba Canção and Pagode, were among the most popular forms of music. Brazilian football developed hand in hand with samba. As anyone who has ever been to a football match in Brazil knows, all of the organized fan groups have their own samba drum groups that beat out syncopated polyrhythms during entire games. It’s no exaggeration to say that Brazil’s unique flair for dribbling is closely related to samba dance steps. In the 90s, if a player was a good dribbler, people would say he had samba no pe (samba foot). In the late 90s, a new form of romantic pagode pushed traditional samba off the radio. Developed in Sao Paulo, it was based on a simplified rhythm that removed half of the percussion instruments, and the poetic themes full of double entendres that once taught young people how to survive in the favelas and exalted Afro-Brazilian gods and goddesses gave way to sappy ballads of guys whining for their ex-girlfriends to return. Meanwhile, as US-style evangelical prosperity gospel churches sprung up in Rio’s favelas, samba gave way to Brazilian funk that exalted consumerism and double entendre-free descriptions of sex. In the rest of Brazil’s poor areas, sertanejo, once an interesting regional form of folk music, was fused with American country music. I’ve never heard anyone describe a footballer as having sertanejo foot or funk foot. Whatever one may think of those genres, their dances haven’t translated to any kind of fancy footwork on the football pitch. As for samba, it has undergone a similar process to what happened with Jazz in the US. Although romantic Sao Paulo pop pagode is still capable of generating hit records, the rest of samba lives on as a niche genre primarily played by middle class music nerds.

Samba foot: Ronaldinho Gaucho didn’t just incorporate samba dance moves into his dribbling style, he led samba jam sessions between matches during the 2002 World Cup. Today’s players seem to prefer dour gospel pop and syrupy sertanejo

The rise of Prosperity churches

As I wrote in 2014 for Vice Brasil, Rio de Janeiro’s drug trafficking gangs were evangelized and began a policy of kicking out any type of manifestation of Afro-Brazilian religion and culture from the favelas in favor of money laundering Funk parties. As a former leader of the Comand Vermelho I interviewed for a my article told me, to evangelical Christians, funk is acceptable because it represents the devil, which is something you can repent. Samba, Jongo, Capoeira and other traditions represent an alternative religious belief system were things that evangelicals needed to destroy. Whereas it is true that there were a few evangelical Christians on the 1994 and 2002 World Cup teams, most weren’t explicitly connected to prosperity gospel churches. This started with Kaka and Robinho, whose family belonged to the same prosperity gospel Church as Neymar. Neymar followed and has been a huge influence on the current generation of players. The 2026 squad only has one non-evangelical in the starting lineup. Keeper Alisson regularly baptises other footballers into his prosperity gospel church in the swimming pool behind his Liverpool mansion. Prosperity gospel indoctrinates its followers into believing that all of the success and failure in their lives is the result of an individual relationship with God, as opposed to traditional Catholic and Afro-Brazilian values of the importance of working with others to improve the World. This has resulted in narcissistic players who believe they are famous because they are more special than commoners, more holy than lesser players. It’s not very good for teamwork and this was exemplified by Neymar’s individualist histrionics when he came onto the pitch after the mandatory corporate advertising break in the second half of the game against Norway.

Kaká, a fine club player but huge disappointment for the Seleção, celebrates a goal for Jesus against Brazil’s rich Afro-Brazilian religious and cultural traditions

Child Trafficking

Before the 1990s, it was rare for Brazilians to ever play in Europe. When they did, they were often forgotten about back home and ended up not being selected for the national team. Up to that point, the level of club play in Brazil and Argentina was as good or better than that of the top teams in Europe, as the results of 70 years of confrontations between top South American and European teams proved. This can be exemplified by the fact that nearly all of the players on Brazil’s first 3 World Cup championship teams, including 1970, widely known as the greatest team of all time, played for South American clubs.

June 26, 1959: Led by Pelé, Brazilian club team Santos beat Inter de Milan 7x1 in one of its many routs of top-ranked club teams during a European tour

This began to change in the 1990s as the inflation crisis caused a series of successive currency collapses in Brazil and more money began pumping into the sport. Now, after 5 or 6 years proving themselves in the still top level Brazilian first division, players would move to Europe for a few years to make money. At this moment, the Dutch first division, which was still capable of competing with other top European divisions, became an incubator for some of Brazil’s best players. Romario and Ronaldo both played at PSV Eindhoven before moving to higher paying contracts in La Liga. As the years progressed, wealthy European teams started importing younger and younger players. Felipe Coutinho was sold to Inter at age 16 after playing in a handful of first division matches for Vasco da Gama. When he cropped up years later on the Selecao, few people in Brazil, where only the middle class had the money to watch European club leagues on satellite TV, even remembered who he was. Alexandre Pato is another player who was sold to Europe at age 16 after playing one professional game with Internacional de Porto Alegre. For these two high profile examples, there are dozens more of players going straight from Brazil’s 3rd division to top level European teams as teenagers. For all the success stories, there are many more cases of talented players who were ruined in Europe. Robinho was the most talented right winger in Brazil when he landed his contract with Real Madrid. He was a great passer and his nickname was the King of the Dribble. Some Brazilian sports writers compared him to Garrincha. The problem is that the team already had a well functioning starting line up. This prompted the manager to move him off the wing to fit him in. He was a better than average striker but never reached his full potential because he simply had a weak shot. There is a long list of Brazilian players who didn’t have the benefit of incubating at a Dutch team, as that league began to collapse in the 2000s, made ill informed decisions to go straight to top level teams, and saw their careers fizzle. When the best players move abroad young, they are forced to unlearn their traditional Brazilian skills and fit into European tactical formations which reward mathematical precision and athleticism more than creativity on the pitch. It also causes them to lose touch with Brazilian fans, especially kids. Contrary to what a lot of people in Europe assume, the vast majority of Brazilian fans do not watch European football. The Libertadores Cup has higher ratings than the Champions League, which is rarely even broadcast on open air TV in Brazil. For the last 16 years, I’ve watched my Brazilian friends scramble to figure out who the Selecao players even are the day after the managers announce the teams. Very few people in Brazil knew who David Luiz and Roberto Firmino were when they joined the team, for example. I only knew who Felipe Coutinho was because, as a Vasco fan, I remember thinking, ‘why are they putting a 16 year old on the pitch’? The siphoning off of Brazil’s finest talent reached such a crisis point that the federal government had to step in, enacting a new law banning players under the age of 18 from playing professionally in Europe. This meant that, for example, Vini Jr. signed his contract with Real Madrid at age 16 but was only able to move there after his 18th birthday. I believe that the age limit should be increased to 21.

Playing 16-year-old Philippe Coutinho with the big boys and nickaming him, “the Little Prince” certainly helped increase his transfer fee

Brazil’s Inferiority Complex with Europe: the Stray Dog Complex

The morning after Brazil was eliminated in its earliest exit from the World Cup in 36 years, Peruvian football historian Jaime Pulgar Vidal wrote, “Brazil has spent years trying to overcome a supposed inferiority complex with Europe by attempting to Europeanize its football. Managers are obsessed with tactics, players are trained from adolescence forward in Europe, they focus on defensive transition, blocking, intensity, and rational occupation of space. The problem is that when the team does this it can’t compete with European teams precisely at what they know how to do best. Brazil has lost its identity, its essence.”

This inferiority complex is epitomized by the CBF’s decision to hire the first foreign manager in Brazilian history, Carlo Ancelotti. I’ve spent the last 2 years reading in local sports press that the reason Brazil was losing so many friendlies and qualifying matches was because Ancelotti was a genius who was playing 5D chess, allowing the team to lose because he was testing out different lineups and tactics in the lead up to the Cup. When Brazil barely qualified, it was just typical Ancelotti, I was told. He was the best manager in the world and one of his tactics was to always squeak by until his team won a tournament. I also heard this excuse after Brazil’s lackluster tie against Morocco in the opener. All of my doubts about Ancelotti were put to rest in Brazil’s final match against Norway, when he made two huge errors that contributed to Brazil’s earliest elimination from the World Cup since 1990, when a member of Argentina’s support staff gave Branco water doped with sedatives in the match that caused their early exit. After Brazil was awarded a penalty in the first half, Bruno Guimarães was chosen over Vini Jr. to shoot it. Visibly nervous, his weak shot was easily defended by Norwegian keeper Ørjan Nyland. After the game, it came out that Ancelotti’s ‘brilliant’ tactical decision to designate Guimarães to shoot the penalty was the result of a mathematical calculation based on the grand total of 3 shots taken in his history with the Seleção. The second huge error was playing Neymar, who hadn’t had a good game in 4 years before he was called in at a moment when the score was 0x0. Gravitating towards the center, an old and slow Neymar pushed Brazil’s two biggest scoring threats, Endrick and Vini Jr., to the sides of the pitch. Soon, Norway was up 2x0.

The game was tied 0x0 when Ancelotti made the ‘genius’ move of bringing on an over-the-hill Neymar

When Ancelotti was first announced as the new manager in 2023, President Lula, who was a fine amateur player in his day and had a lifelong friendship with football legend Socrates, said, “If he’s such a great manager, how come he’s never been able to fix Italy? It’s easy to coach a team when you have 11 starters who all play for their national teams. I’d like to see him try to manage a team like Corinthians.”

The fact is that managing a national team, which Ancelotti tried for the first time in this Cup, requires different skills from managing a club team, where one has the benefit of much more time to practice tactical formations and set plays. With the hugely diminished practice time allowed for national teams, leadership becomes one of the most important attributes. It’s hard to imagine how effective leadership can be conducted by someone who has little familiarity with the culture of his players.

In 1994, Carlos Alberto Perreira did interesting things with tactics, but, having a good understanding of his own leadership weaknesses, he brought in the first man to ever play on and manage World Cup champion teams, Mário Zagallo, as advisor and technical coordinator. In 2002, Luiz Scolari may have had a relatively easy task managing the greatest talent pool since the 1970 World Cup, but his leadership strategy of acting like a friendly Dad figure to his player ‘children’, was praised at the time.

Zagalo (l) and Perreira (r) - a decades-long professional relationship and friendship formed during Brazil’s victorious 1970 World Cup run

Ancelotti appears to have ignored the cultural differences between Brazil and Europe. He hired his own son, a clear case of nepotism, and most of his staff were Europeans who didn’t seem to speak Portuguese. I find it hard to believe that he lost all of those friendlies and qualifying matches on purpose as part of a 5D chess strategy, but if that was really the case, how did he counteract the lack of confidence that that must have instilled in his players?

The bottom line is that Brazil has never had a shortage of talented managers. As I have laid out in the preceding text, the problems with Brazilian football today go far deeper than anything that could be fixed with the band aid of paying R$5 million/month for a celebrity manager.

Final thought: Brazil needs craques

Doctors said he would never play football. The team psychiatrist recommended he stay on the bench. Then, in the first 2 minutes of Brazil’s group stage match against the USSR in 1958, Manuel Garrincha left 4 USSR defenders on the ground, to the laughter of the crowd

Legendary 1970 World Cup star, sports physiologist, and football writer Tostão defined what he viewed as the main problem with Brazilian football after Brazil was eliminated from the World Cup in 2010. Brazil, he wrote, was no longer producing craques. A craque is a mythological figure in Brazilian football who isn’t just one of the best in the world in his position, he brings an element of creative magic into the game. A craque is someone who defies logic, like Garrincha, who was diagnosed by doctors as not being physically able to play football because of his partially crippled leg, who went on to perform 4 of the top 5 highest numbers of dribbles per game in World Cup history. According to Tostão, a player could be one of the best in the world in his position and still not be a craque. Cafu, he wrote, was the world’s best right back for years, but was not a craque. The reason? He was unable to make a long pass curving around a defender into the feet of a teammate while running full speed up the pitch. “Brazil is no longer producing craques,” he wrote in 2011. “Some people say Neymar might develop into one, but the word is still out on that.” Tostão cited lack of investment by clubs in youth development in favor of selling young players off to Europe for a quick buck as reasons it would be a long time before Brazil developed another craque. Unfortunately, his prophecy has come to be. There were no craques on Brazil’s Seleção in 2026. Maybe next time.

Flavio Bolsonaro (l) and Daniel Vorcaro (r)

On Wednesday, May 13, The Intercept Brasil released a series of audio and text messages exchanged between far-right presidential hopeful Flavio Bolsonaro, son of jailed ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, and Daniel Vorcaro. Vorcaro is the former owner of Banco Master, which collapsed and folded on November 18, 2025, in the midst of a scandal involving defrauding 800,000 investors of approximately $2.3 billion in toxic financial assets. Vorcaro, who was known for his lavish lifestyle, was arrested in March 2026. The released conversations show that he had agreed to give Bolsonaro R$134 million to help finance a movie about his father. They show that, after delivering R$61 million, he halted the payments. The conversations reveal a series of requests by Flavio for the rest of the money, which continued until the day before Vorcaro was arrested.

Earlier this year when the Banco Master scandal first broke, the Bolsonaro coalition worked through its network of paid far-right influencers to weaponize it against President Lula. Brazil’s mainstream media, which has decades of experience slinging mud at Lula, jumped in line. Globo, Brazil’s largest media organization, was so widely ridiculed for airing a PowerPoint slide with no accompanying evidence on its cable news network that showed Lula as being the central figure in the scandal that it apologized the next day and removed its news director.

As the investigation advanced, however, the far right grew silent. On May 7, Federal Police raided the residence of Jair Bolsonaro’s former Chief of Staff, Ciro Nogueira. The investigation was getting closer and closer to the Bolsonaro family.

After the audio leaked yesterday, Flavio Bolsonaro spent hours consulting with political advisors, then released a statement framing it as an issue of laissez-faire-style economic freedom. “In our case [using the royal we],” he said, “all that happened was that a son was looking for PRIVATE sponsorship for a PRIVATE film about the history of his own father.”

The argument falls short when the relationship between his father’s government and Banco Master is scrutinized, as PT Congressman Paulo Pimenta pointed out in a speech in Congress that day. Banco Máxima, the predecessor to Banco Master, lost its operating license in 2016. In 2017 and 2018, bids to enable it to restart operations were rejected by President Michel Temer’s Central Bank. The license was finally granted shortly after Jair Bolsonaro’s Central Bank President, Roberto Campos Neto, took power in late 2019, and it changed its name to Banco Master. Afterwards, the Bolsonaro administration issued it a license to make predatory loans from retirees and deduct payments directly from their retirement pension checks. A few months later, the administration allowed licensed lending institutions to increase their maximum deduction from retirement pension checks to 40%. In 2021, Banco Master started offering dividends on certificates of deposit significantly higher than market rates that were insured by the Central Bank. In 2022, Daniel Vorcaro’s brother-in-law, Fernando Vettel, was the largest campaign donor to Jair Bolsonaro and São Paulo gubernatorial candidate Tarcísio de Freitas. Shortly afterwards, Bolsonaro’s Chief of Staff, Ciro Nogueira tried to push a bill through congress to increase federal government insurance of certificates of deposit from R$250,000 to R$1 million.

In order to learn what this new scandal means for the Bolsonaro family, I spoke with award-winning political journalist Joaquim de Carvalho. Currently an editor at Brasil 247, during Carvalho’s 44-year career he has worked as a print and television reporter and in editorial positions for Estado de São Paulo, Globo, Band, SBT, and Record.

Joaquim de Carvalho. May 14, 2026

How has Intercept Brazil’s publishing of audio conversations and other messages between Flavio Bolsonaro and Daniel Vorcaro changed the public perception of the Banco Master scandal?

The Banco Master scandal is now reaching the truly responsible parties.

Who are these responsible parties?

They are people who governed Brazil between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2022, when the president was Jair Bolsonaro. Banco Master was authorized to operate toward the end of 2019. Daniel Vorcaro had bought another bank, but he wasn’t authorized to be the owner of Banco Master until that date. At that point, the name was changed. It was originally called Máxima and became Master, but he should have never been authorized to run it in the first place. During the previous administration, under Michel Temer, the Central Bank did not authorize Banco Máxima’s transfer to his name. One of the arguments made by the Central Bank at the time was that it could generate a reputational crisis. That was the argument and, as it turns out, that is what eventually happened. Daniel Vorcaro reapplied after Jair Bolsonaro appointed Roberto Campos Neto to head the Central Bank, and he authorized it. So Banco Master began operating during the first year of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency. Former Minister of Finance Fernando Haddad, who is the person who first discovered and reported Banco Master’s crimes, defines its activities as the biggest banking fraud in Brazil’s history.

What is happening to the investigation now?

We have strong evidence of the involvement of Ciro Nogueira, who was Jair Bolsonaro’s last Chief of Staff. He’s a veteran politician linked to the Centrão, a conservative, powerful, and opportunistic parliamentary group that spans multiple political parties whose only ideology seems to be seeking personal and economic advantages for itself. Federal Police have discovered that Nogueira received personal benefits from Daniel Vorcaro: an apartment, paid trips, and a monthly allowance that started at R$300,000 and later grew to R$500,000 a month. In exchange for these favors he used his mandate to support Daniel Vorcaro. Evidence gathered by the Federal Police shows that Daniel Vorcaro drafted a bill and sent it to Ciro Nogueira, to his luxury apartment. In this draft, which Ciro Nogueira submitted to Congress word for word, there was an increase in the Federal Government’s insured guarantee for investments in Certificados de Depósito Bancário (CDBs/certificates of deposit).

How do CDBs work in Brazil?

They are bank securities that are sold, and legislation stipulates that the government insures up to R$250,000 through a mechanism called the Credit Guarantee Fund (Fundo Garantidor de Crédito/FGC). If you buy R$250,000 worth of these CDs from any banking institution and it goes bankrupt, the insurance kicks in and you get your money back, up to R$250,000. What Ciro Nogueira did with this legislative bill that was drafted by Daniel Vorcaro and his team was to attempt to increase this limit from R$250,000 to R$1 million. In other words, this fraud, which left a shortfall of R$47 billion for the FGC when Banco Master collapsed, could have been much larger, and Daniel Vorcaro himself could have continued doing exactly what he is now being accused of: raising funds and rerouting over US $1 billion into clandestine accounts. This is what the Federal Police is investigating. They have even attempted to negotiate a plea bargain with him, in which he would return part of that money. However, all indications show that this plea bargain deal was not accepted because Vorcaro tried to protect too many people, including Ciro Nogueira himself. The Federal Police discovered the relationship between Ciro Nogueira and Daniel Vorcaro on their own because Vorcaro said the opposite and protected him. That’s a fact.

How will the release of the audio messages between Flavio Bolsonaro and Daniel Vorcaro change the investigation?

As I said, the Master scandal is approaching the truly responsible parties. The most important thing that has changed is that yesterday, based on a report published here in Brazil by The Intercept that includes several audio recordings and text messages, there is evidence showing 2026 presidential pre-candidate Flavio Bolsonaro demanding R$134 million from Daniel Vorcaro. We learn from this exchange of messages that, only a few months ago, Vorcaro had agreed to secretly sponsor, without Banco Master’s name appearing in public (this is important), a film that was supposed to be used in his presidential campaign. It’s a movie that will be called Dark Horse that is already in post-production, featuring American actors including Jim Caviezel, the actor who played Christ in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. This film was scheduled to be released this September. It would be a film shown in movie theaters with a political purpose, to boost Flavio Bolsonaro’s candidacy because it would be released only a few weeks before the presidential elections. September is the month of that episode in Juiz de Fora in which Flavio’s father, jailed ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, was hospitalized after being stabbed by Adélio Bispo de Oliveira. That episode is supposed to be the climax in Dark Horse. Of course, the trailer and everything would promote that stabbing episode, which by Bolsonaro’s own admission is responsible for his winning the election because it triggered a huge spike in the polls. His boost in the polls was such that he no longer needed to participate in debates and ended up winning the election. So it would be a piece of propaganda. This alone could characterize abuse of economic power during election season, in violation of Brazil’s election laws.

What else is revealed in the audio?

The messages show that a portion of the money Flavio demanded, about $2 million, was definitely sent through one of Daniel Vorcaro’s shell companies to a company based in Eduardo Bolsonaro’s adopted home of Texas. This company, whose administrator or agent in charge is called REAG, has an account in Texas. And the Texas agent who manages that account is an attorney named Paulo Calisto - Eduardo Bolsonaro’s lawyer. Why is a lawyer from another company involved in this film? What is his relation to this film? And there’s another important fact: the actual producer of the film said she received no funds from Daniel Vorcaro or from any of his companies. In other words, the sponsorship was clandestine. This is evidence of possible money laundering. This suspicion is reinforced by one of the messages revealed by The Intercept, which shows that Daniel Vorcaro’s Banco Master would not appear as a sponsor. It wouldn’t even be credited for institutional support. It simply wouldn’t be listed anywhere. This strengthens the suspicion that it was actually money laundering. What draws attention in this case, and this has been commented on in the Brazilian media and is clear from all these messages, is the work of the Federal Police. The Supreme Court minister supervising this Federal Police investigation is André Mendonça, who was appointed by Jair Bolsonaro.

So now the big question is whether André Mendonça will act autonomously and independently. He has this opportunity to show that he is truly seeking justice. Because the audio reveals Flavio Bolsonaro asking for advantages from a corrupt banker the day before he was arrested. One of the messages was sent the day before Vorcaro’s arrest. Now we will see how independent André Mendonça really is. When Jair Bolsonaro appointed him to the court he called him “terribly evangelical.” And indeed, André Mendonça is an evangelical Christian. But now his independence will be tested. Because, in light of this revelation, what is the natural course of action? The Federal Police should be granted full access to Flavio Bolsonaro’s bank, tax, and communications information. Flavio Bolsonaro is a senator and is Jair Bolsonaro’s son, and it’s public knowledge that he influenced some of his father’s decisions when he was president. So in the coming days we will be able to assess whether André Mendonça will do what is required of a judge following a request, whether from the Federal Police or from the Attorney General. We will find out how independent he is if and when he is called upon — and the logic of the investigation points in this direction — to authorize a breach of Flavio Bolsonaro’s private records.

Colloquially known as “Old Chico”, the 1900 mile long São Francisco is the 24th longest river in the world and the longest one that runs entirely within the national borders of Brazil. Unlike the more famous Amazon, it doesn’t cut through rainforest, with a large portion of it running through the semi-arid Sertao, a unique biome which is the World’s only steppe that does not border on a desert.

Indigenous Tacaratu City Councilor Celo Pankararu

The Sao Francisco River has been the subject of hundreds of songs and has appeared in films, literature and myths that go back to pre-colonial times. The indigenous people who have lived along it’s banks for thousands of years, calling it the Opará, have always viewed it as a living entity that deserves to have the same rights as people. Therefore it is only fitting that the first measure to designated it as a legal person, come from the pen of Celo Pankararu, an indigenous city councilor in the river side municipality of Tacaratu, Pernambuco. If the Pankararu people succeed in passing this municipal-level law, they say they will work with other indigenous nations and environmental activists to pass laws in other municipalities and at the state and federal level. Their goal is to reestablish their rights to perform their religious rituals on the banks and in the river, wherever they want, and to undo decades of environmental damage caused by five huge hydroelectric plants and toxic runoff from agrobusiness.

Watch my TeleSur story on the movement to grant legal personhood to the São Francisco River here:

One day after submitting the bill for a 40 hour work week to Congress, Lula met with union leaders in Brasilia

During the late 1970s, Brazil’s US-backed military dictatorship initiated a process of democratic opening. Unions were begrudgingly allowed to strike, although leaders continued to be arrested, as Lula himself was in 1980. Amnesty was granted to thousands of political exiles who were allowed to return to Brazil, and new political parties were allowed to form, with the Workers Party founded in 198o, by a broad tent coalition of labor unions, social movements, intellectuals like Paulo Freire and Sergio Buarque, and argumentative trotskyist groups.

At the time, Brazil’s work week was 48 hours. One of the first things the new Workers Party did was engage in a campaign with the unions for a 40 hour work week. After 6 years of marches, protests and pressure on lawmakers, a compromise was struck, reducing the work week to 44 hours in the 1988 constitution. For most Brazilian workers, this meant 8 hours a day from Monday to Friday and a half day on Saturdays.

I was shocked when I immigrated to Brazil and got my first job to discover that I was expected to work on Saturday mornings and wondered why my coworkers didn’t complain about it, not knowing, with my poor portuguese at the time, that the half day off on Saturdays was a new thing. As I reached my 30s and my career moved forwards, working on Saturdays became a thing of the past. Many of the better paying jobs for the middle class phased out the half day on Saturday as a perk. But for the vast majority of Brazil’s formally employed workers who make under two times the minimum wage in the service sector, construction, etc, the 44 hour work week lives on to this day.

After the coup against Dilma Rousseff in 2016, through an impeachment for a commonly practiced budgetary infraction called “fiscal peddling” that she was later proven innocent of, which was legalized two days after she left office and subsequently practiced by President’s Temer and Bolsonaro, illegitimate President Michel Temer pushed through “reforms” that massacred Brazil’s labor rights. It’s outsourcing provisions caused millions of workers to be able to be legally removed from the books and hired back as freelancers. The week after the reforms went through, Estacio, one of Brazil’s largest private university franchises fired 10,000 professors and hired most of them back as freelancers, eliminating their rights to severance pay, paid sick leave and vacations. This pattern was repeated across the country. Temer also pushed through a constitutional amendment, nicknamed the “amendment of death”, that froze all spending on Brazil’s public health and education system for 20 years, in a country with a growing population. This was just the beginning of a tsunami of setbacks for the working class that would be exacerbated under the Bolsonaro administration, which raised the retirement age by 3.5 years.

This was the conjunture that President Lula inherited when he took office in 2023, and although he has managed to undo some of the damage, he has not been able to completely revert it.

As some unfortunate voices in the Anglo left spread defeatism about Lula’s predicted inability to govern with Brazil’s most conservative congress in modern history, he shocked many by quickly pushing through an amendment called the “fiscal framework”, partially undoing the freeze on education and health funding. This measure allows above-inflation increases in public health and education spending, within tight guidelines connected to the previous year’s GDP growth. Although the fiscal spending guidelines embedded into the law have been weaponized against probable Lula successor Fernando Haddad by some figures connected to smaller left parties eyeing the post-Lula future, most people understand it as the best deal they could secure at the time, and it has enabled the federal government to increase spending on the SUS, Brazil’s universal free public health system by 30% since Lula took office in January, 2023. After 6 years of no real gains in minimum wage, the Lula administration has implemented 4 consecutive above inflation minimum wage hikes, causing a total increase of 32.76% since taking office.

Another victory for labor has been raising the cap for income tax exemption from R$3500 to R$5000 a month, making up for the income loss through a tax increase on the super wealthy. As 15 million workers became exempt from paying income tax in 2026, 86% of Brazil’s formal workforce is now fully exempt from paying federal income tax.

The last major campaign promise to the workers that Lula has yet to push through is the reduction of the work week. With 16 parties holding seats in Congress, the PT has never had a majority in Congress. Currently holding 67 seats the total percentage of left and center left seats in Congress is 95, representing 18% of the lower house. In order to make a majority Lula has to rely on his fickle outer coalition of the center-right parties, who tend to vote along with the government on 60-70% of its initiatives but have historically blocked most of its most progressive moves, such as a constitutional amendment to disband Brazil’s notorious military police, which was blocked 3 times by the PT’s own center-right coalition partners between 2003 and 2015.

During an election year in which Flavio Bolsonaro is rising in the polls, thanks to massive international support from CPAC partners in the international far right, including top officials within the Trump administration and the neo-fascists of the AfD and Vox, there has been a lot of jockeying between the left and the far right for support from the traditional center right, with dozens of lawmakers switching parties at the last minute before this years April 3 deadline.

Last week at a meeting with Union leaders, Lula said, “We wanted to lower the work week to five days in the 1980s. It’s been 45 years, and we have to look at the technological advances since then. For example when I was the metalworkers union president in Sao Bernardo, Volkswagen had 44,000 workers in its plant and it made 120,000 cars per year. Now it only has 12.000 workers and produces double the number of cars. So why can’t it reduce its work week?”

Flavio Bolsonaro’s buddy Javier Milei recently attempted to increase the work day to 12 hours in Argentina. If elected, will Flavio Bolsonaro attempt the same?

If the measure passes it will represent the biggest advance for workers rights since the Rousseff administration. Nevertheless, millions of workers in Brazil still have almost no labor rights whatsoever, thanks to the reforms implemented after the 2017 coup. I think of my own next door neighbor in Recife. After 20 years working as a journalist for a large Brazilian newspaper, he and his wife were laid off when the paper folded. They used their then mandatory severance packages to open a clothing store in a shopping mall. Last year, their store went out of business, unable to compete with online shopping. Now he’s driving an Uber at 62., working 16 hours a day. The reduction of the work week won’t affect him at all. With driverless cars on the horizon, and advances in AI and robotics decimating labor forces around the World, Brazil is on the precipice of a massive labor crisis. The difference between a Workers Party government and a potential Javier Milei-style anarcho-libertarian leader like Flavio Bolsonaro is that, while once side is trying to fight it, the far right and its international Silicon Valley technofascist backers will undoubtedly work to accelerate it.

Brian Mier: Welcome to Globalistas. We’re here again once again with Batool Subeiti, who was with us last year when the United States unsuccessfully tried to start a war against Iran and got humiliated. And because of all of the things that are happening in Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine right now, I’m very happy to be able to invite her back onto the show to speak with us for about half an hour about these different subjects.

I want to thank you once again for coming on. I’d really like to hear your conjectural analysis of the three primary countries fighting US/Israeli imperialism right now: Palestine, Lebanon and Iran. Would you like to start talking about Lebanon? As you told me before we came on air, your father lives in Lebanon. So what is your analysis of what’s happening there right now?

Batool Subeiti: Thank you very much for having me on. I’ll start off with that. And yes, you’re right, my father is in Lebanon. And, really, the people of Lebanon, have paid a heavy, heavy price due to the Israeli aggression.

This is not something new. Israel has occupied Lebanon since the end of the 70s. It went into Beirut in 1982, and it was actually similar to what we’re seeing today in terms of the kind of negotiations and the normalization of the Israeli occupation entity. That was also happening in the 1980s when there were formal talks between the Israeli occupation entity and Lebanon, which, may I add, is unconstitutional and illegal, since Israel is classified as an enemy state.

So here the Lebanese government is actually going against its very constitution. Despite this, you see that the Lebanese population is very strong and very steadfast. ‘Death with dignity is better than life with humiliation’ is literally their slogan.

Regarding the Lebanese people, especially those who belong to the resistance environment who are heavily affected by this war... of course the Israeli occupation entity does not discriminate in terms of its bombs. It recognizes everyone who has a problem with it as subhuman, it dehumanizes all. But despite this, the majority of those who are bearing the brunt in Lebanon belong to the resistance environment within the Shia areas.

Those who are paying the price are paying so with their heads held high, very steadfast. What I will say is that the ramifications of the war in Iran has been great on Lebanon. The allies of Lebanon have had a major share in the outcome of this war.

In Lebanon, Israel has witnessed the strength of the resistance that entered the war as a unified front with Iran right at the beginning, this was one day after the Israeli and American strikes on Iran. It became clear that America likes to use them as so-called proxies and tools. It became clear that the Lebanese resistance cannot be defeated.

So, despite the overwhelming force and destruction they were neither eliminated, not even in small Gaza which is 365 square kilometers, let alone in Lebanon. When the Lebanese resistance is seen as victorious in preventing the enemy from achieving any of its goals, and when supported by Iran with all means of supply, the confrontation expands from local and regional to international in scope. And its inclusion in any deal that Iran makes with America has become a condition without which no agreement can be made.

This represents a very rare model of allied relations that surrounds the Israeli occupation entity. When Iran’s victory reflects on its allies as an added factor, preventing any of the resistance fronts from being isolated, the outcome becomes a comprehensive victory across all fronts. So it’s not just in Iran, but in Gaza, in Lebanon, in also Iraq and Yemen, each reinforcing the other from its position of strength.

In terms of the latest developments from Lebanon, the Israeli Channel 12 reported that Washington is pressuring the occupation entity Israel to fully halt its attacks in Lebanon and to avoid striking. And this temporary ceasefire is basically similar to the Iranian track and speaks to how the Lebanese fight is interwoven directly with the Iranian one and speaks to how there is no solution for America except to strike a deal with Iran. A naval blockade from the American side will not solve the problem.

Iran has made it very, very clear that if the US continues to attack it, that Iran will not allow any imports or exports to continue in the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman, and the Red Sea. And so America has no choice but to impose its will on the Israelis regarding the Lebanese front and America is completely able to do so, even if America did not impose that from the start of the ceasefire. The Israeli occupation entity launched what it called Operation Eternal Darkness because it is an entity of eternal darkness.

We believe that if America did not restrain Israel on its attacks in Beirut, the most deadly attacks in decades, it was because it wanted to test the waters. It wanted to see how committed Iran would be to the Lebanese front. And let us not forget that the fall of Iran and the fall of the Lebanese resistance is not more important to Israel then it is to America. But of course, as long as the Israeli attacks persist on Lebanon, the resistance is very strong.

If I just give a very, brief summary of the Islamic resistance operations, in the last week alone they’ve conducted 488 operations. Half of them were inside Palestinian territories, another half inside Lebanon. On average, we’re seeing about 70 operations a day and some of the attacks have reached about 150 kilometers into the Israeli occupation entity. And they’ve targeted repelling advances, cities and settlements, strikes on military barracks, strikes on military bases, strikes on aircrafts and drones on military points.

They’ve used all kinds of weaponry to this effect and the enemy losses have been huge. Today as we speak, there are fierce clashes that are happening in southern Lebanon between the resistance fighters and the Israeli occupation forces, especially in Bint Jbeil, but the resistance has thwarted them, contrary to what you might be reading in the media, which is of course very defeatist in its nature and doesn’t show the true colors.

According to the resistance media, the resistance has thwarted all Israeli attempts to establish a foothold in the city of Bint Jbeil and Israeli outlets, especially Yediot Ahronoth, have been reporting how many Israelis have been basically helicoptered to hospitals, especially in Haifa. And there’s been an influx of wounded Israeli soldiers evacuated, especially from Southern Lebanon yesterday. So if Israel continues its aggressions, there will be costs and prices it must pay.

This also includes the settlers leaving the Northern part of the Israeli occupation entity again, which of course would lead to economic disruption that the entity cannot sustain for long. But ultimately the Islamic resistance of Lebanon is here to stay. And this really, really shocked Israel.

They had no idea that the resistance was this capable. It is demonstrating more ferocity than it did in those 66 days of open war in 2024 that began with the assassination of its secretary general and the pager attacks. And so the period of patience, the 15 months that we saw in Lebanon where the resistance was adhering to the ceasefire terms and Israel was continuously breaching it, that is completely gone.

That’s completely gone with full mandate from the people of Lebanon who vow to stand behind the resistance. And if the period of, let’s say, patience, strategic patience would have continued for much longer, then the Lebanese resistance would have lost its core identity, which is why it was so important that it did actually enter this confrontation when the war on Iran, the open war on Iran was launched. And this shows that the resistance today is both resilient and it’s also hidden.

That’s another element that really scares the Israeli occupation entities that it is unable to understand this new configuration of the resistance that is a lot more decentralized, whose figures are a lot more hidden after Israel’s bank of targets have completely been exhausted and they’ve struck the first and second line commanders. If Israel had intelligence about the presence of the resistance, south of the Litani, it would have eliminated it. Likewise, if the Lebanese authorities that we see today, normalizing with the Israeli occupation entity, the uniform forces, the mechanisms and all intelligence services knew about the resistance presence, they would have gone and seized its capabilities.

But the reality is that Israel is going through a huge intelligence failure today as well as an operational failure with respect to its enemy, which is why it had only one solution and really that was to ground invade and to directly confront on the ground, which is actually the resistance’s strong point because it has experienced, especially given that it had that long experience in Syria, fighting the ISIS terrorist menaces that were supported by the West, whereas the Israeli occupation entity is not built for these kinds of long-term confrontations. But the reason Israel is really shooting itself in the foot is because it has come to a point of an existential crisis where it’s either we exist or the resistance exists, but all indications are that the resistance is not giving up even if it has to fight an existential war of survival. This is the model that in Islamic terms, we call the Karbala choice, which talks about this man, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad who over a thousand years ago fought a war to fight the arrogant powers of the time knowing that in that war, he and his family and all his companions would be martyred and killed.

So this kind of confrontation is taking on the Karbala form where death with dignity is better than a life of humiliation.

It looks to me like there’s this feedback loop where the Western media, the extended state institutions of the US government and its vassal states in Europe start spreading so much disinformation about the countries whose natural resources they want to steal, that they start believing in their own lies. We saw this with Venezuela, where I recently spent a month, where taking out the leader did nothing to stop the socialist party government of Venezuela.

And in the same sense, it looks like they went into Iran thinking, oh, we can just kill the leadership. Well, okay, we killed Khomeini, that didn’t work. Let’s kill another leader.

This shows kind a fundamental misunderstanding of the Iranian revolution as if they believe that this really was a kind of dictatorship, that there was this dictator ruling with an iron hand. And with Khomeini dead, the revolution continues stronger than ever, it looks like, right? So my question to you about my observation, do you think this is a result of bad intelligence on the US’ part, that they are now being so humiliated in this conflict with Iran? Do you think it’s just arrogance or what? Stupidity?

Absolutely. I would start off by saying there’s a reason that the US has not gone into direct confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran since the 80s, since the Iran-Iraq war when Iran was at its weakest point.

That is because there was an understanding that ultimately that would be a failed war. The war would lose. For eight years, Iran endured, having zero capabilities. They demonstrated the resilience of a patient nation and that they would not give up the fight despite having nothing but will. They have strong will.

We’ve seen that for the past several decades, despite all Israeli efforts to lobby the United States of America to fight this war on its behalf, it did not happen until a man like Trump came along - until a foolish man like Trump arrived. As a result of this foolish man, all of the American interests are being completely extinguished. And of course, there is also a reason that the United States, despite imposing sanctions on Iran, has never imposed a kind of naval blockade as it’s threatening to do today.

That is because it recognizes that actually Iran holds the strongest card that it could use if it wished to do so. And that is the Strait of Hormuz, which is a whole separate discussion on its own in terms of the most significant outcome of this war being Iran declaring its control over the Strait of Hormuz, which is tantamount to really controlling the world economy because you’re controlling the flow of oil and the petrodollar, essentially the dollar is pegged to oil. The reason that no confrontation has happened with Iran, the war of terror was actually based on occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and stationing its troops in Pakistan was all to encircle and engulf Iran in hopes of weakening it. So it tried to take out out its allies one by one, in Lebanon, the 2006 war, then going into Syria, the whole Arab Spring, the volatility of that and taking advantage of that to reach the American goals of regime change in the countries that they don’t like that are supportive of the resistance. But it finally happened with a man like Trump.

I would agree with your assessment that the decision to go to war with Iran was based less on manipulation and more on miscalculation. Because if we’re saying manipulation, then really Israel could have manipulated many of the presidents of the U.S. It could have manipulated Trump in his first term. The Epstein files were still a thing, they still existed. Trump had been fed information that with the atomic war missiles and the strong and precise Delta forces, they could go into Iran and conduct the precise operations that they needed to do.

The straw that really broke the camel’s back was really what we saw in Isfahan, with the failure of the ground invasion and the failure to take the uranium that they wished to take. So ultimately, Iran is no Venezuela.

They also misunderstood or misread Iran, believing that the strategic patience model of the Islamic Republic would continue and that Iran would not dare to exercise its sovereign control over the Strait of Hormuz. Let’s not forget other Straits like the Suez Canal. They charge tariffs on ships and vessels that go through them. Iran has the right to do so under international law. Especially with hostile countries that are blackmailing it and actually imposing a literal war on it. So yes, I believe that if Trump knew the outcome of this war, he would not have went into it.

Attacking Iran and escalating matters to the level of war has led to enormous consequences for the new global order that Trump seeks to establish. He went into this war from a position of debt and he’s only consolidated it. And actually worse than that, they’ve left the war and really the only thing that they seem to be talking about now is the Strait of Hormuz, which is actually right now under direct Iranian control because of this war, as a result of this war.

So this shows you the extent of the compounded failure. I mean, the compounded failure was so great that Trump exited this war without even consulting the Israelis. So he was misled. He made miscalculations about Iran’s way of thinking, the limits of its power, its influence, the structure of Iranian society, and he’s backed out before it significantly affects America’s dominance and economic position more than it already has. Trump, in the typical Trumpian way of doing things, has claimed victory as he always does. He’s saying that everything was destroyed, Iran’s Navy, its missiles, its platforms, even claiming that its first and second rank leaders were eliminated. Of course, that’s very Trump.

He says very contradictory things, but the growing foolish threats of annihilating a civilization, like the Persian civilization, were the very evidence that we needed of Trump’s acknowledgement of the total inability to achieve objectives through all the means that were employed. And as I mentioned, that massive failure in the Isfahan operation was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was the last attempt for a ground invasion and the results were shocking. You had the aircraft and deployed units completely destroyed.

And if we talk about, and add to this, the repeated other goals that the US has, like forcibly obtaining the highly enriched nuclear material, eliminating the missile arsenal, addressing what it calls the so-called proxies, their support and funding, all of that resulted in complete failure. And actually, America was forced to accept Iran’s 10-point plan, which included a formal acknowledgement by the UN that an attack occurred and that there should be compensation for the attacks. If those compensations don’t take place, Iran can forcibly get it through the tariffs imposed on those vessels passing through the Strait. Iran demands release of Iranian funds frozen in the US. It did not agree to this temporary truce without an acknowledgement that those Iranian funds would be released, along with lifting of sanctions and a system of shared regional security. There can be no security for others if Iran has no security.

Of course, Iran has been able to impose this through its control over the Strait of Hormuz, which is very powerful. So all of this has led to the conclusion that an agreement and dealing with the new balance of power that truly exists on the ground today is really the only option that America has. The Americans and the Israeli occupation entity have really reached their limit in using every other available tool. Because let’s remember that they hadn’t been in confrontation with Iran for four decades. So America itself could not really estimate what Iran was capable of. They only had intelligence reports to go could go off of.

There was also this late realisation that Iran is not Venezuela, that it cannot be subdued by threats, and that it is a nation that would rather die than surrender. I mean, what more than threatening than entirely annihilating a civilisation, which many people understood to mean the Samson Option and launching a nuclear weapon. But even that did not deter the Iranians who came out on the streets every single day saying, “no ceasefire! We will not accept the ceasefire until our conditions are met.”

So the conclusion was reached and it’s clear to me that a return to war is not possible from the American perspective due to the very inability to define achievable objectives. I believe a return to war is unlikely. Of course, you cannot rule anything out, especially with a madman like Trump. But a return to war is unlikely, even if no agreement is reached in the coming two weeks. The key thing over here is that America came to confront Iran only to become hostage within reach of its influence, really at any time.

You say that you think the return to war is unlikely. But what’s going to happen then to people in the southern part of Lebanon and in Gaza if Israel continues to act unchecked? A lot of people were frankly happy to see Israel finally getting some retribution for all of its genocidal crimes it’s carried out against the Palestinian population when the missiles started raining down in Israeli cities, which were almost entirely non-civilian targets, by the way. What’s going to happen to the entity known as Israel if the fighting stops with Iran right now? Are Palestine and Lebanon left to their own devices? Are they stuck by themselves again?

Absolutely not. I will reiterate that the Lebanese situation is very interwoven within the Iranian situation and the pressure that we’re seeing today on the Israeli occupation entity to basically force its hands for a ceasefire is due to the very fact that Iran has promised that the Lebanese situation will not be decoupled from the Iranian situation. And really there is no way that the Americans have around this, even if the Americans want to impose a blockade. By the way, even today, despite threatening with this blockade, Iranian container ships broke the US siege and entered international waters and their navigation was on and nothing happened to those ships because America wouldn’t dare to strike.

If it struck, it would have been a ceasefire violation and it would be a return and a resumption to war. What we need to understand is that the reason Iran was targeted in the first place was because of its support for these resistance movements because Iran is the beating heart of the resistance. If Iran falls, rest assured the rest of the resistance movements would also be really detrimentally affected.

And that will be the tantamount to their falling despite that will to resist still remaining within the people. Ultimately, I think the way Israel will be defeated will be the eating of itself from within. I think actually, if we talk about the end of the war, that is really the biggest threat to Israel, which explains why Israel has been trying to continue the war forever, because actually, ironically, it’s Netanyahu, this war monger, who’s actually keeping Israel together during times of war.

And if this war ends, then Netanyahu has his trial to face and he’s ultimately a pariah. But I don’t believe the Israeli entity is functional anymore. Those secular residents and those who don’t believe in its inherent values are just there for a life of milk and honey. They find no future there because ultimately this idea of safety has been completely shattered.

Israel is fighting a fight of survival and if it does not expand, Israel will shrink. And this is why it was so important for the Israeli occupation entity to have this war with Iran, to fight it head on with American support. The hope was that they could really cripple the Islamic Republic of Iran and that could turn the Iranian attention away from confronting Israel and supporting its so-called proxies in the region, the resistance movements.

But since this war has failed to topple the government in Iran, it’s actually led to increased Iranian influence in the region. And this will lead to an expansion of its allies and Iran is proving itself as a power that cannot be bypassed. And we know that the goal with Iran has always been regime change, but since the government has not been overthrown, the operation has failed.

Now that Iran is emerging from this war recognized as a power that cannot be overcome, I believe this will actually lead to the very decline of the Israeli occupation entity and its inability to impose the agenda that its expanded presence seeks to enforce. I mean, Trump made it very clear during his election campaign that Israel is really thin and that it needed fattening up.

It needs to occupy in order to survive. But if it’s unable to do that and it’s being hampered on the ground, then actually Israel becomes a liability, making it no longer suitable to meet the requirements of the new phase in the new global order that Trump seeks and aspires to establish. And that’s basically to split the world into different areas of influence that could serve American interests, that could be self-sufficient on their own, but actually serve America. The Israeli occupation entity has remained at the forefront, but since we’re talking about Trump, not wanting this war to drag on and Iran would feel compelled to respond fundamentally to the aggressions, I believe that this war coming to an end is what will have a real detrimental impact on the Israeli occupation entity, which relies on American support like artificial life support. We could see Israel becoming a heavy burden on the West, especially the United States. This burden could become significant because the intention has been to destroy Iran, overthrow its system, so that Israel could expand enough to play an effective role in managing the entire region. But if Israel cannot remove Iran from its equation - I mean it cannot even defeat the Hezbollah resistance for crying out loud let alone Iran - then an entity of that size becomes useless and no longer serves America’s needs.

I think at that point alternatives would be sought, turning to powers that have proven themselves on the ground. And this will naturally lead to Israel’s contraction, especially after its image has been exposed and global public opinion has increasingly revealed what critics see as that brutality. With global public opinion now seeing this reality and increasingly considering its existence unnecessary and harmful to humanity, this will have real ramifications.

So behind the scenes I believe solutions may be discussed on the Iranian front, compensations and concessions to Iran and also its regional allies through recognition of their influence and power. And when you recognize Iran’s influence and power, that in and of itself will transform Israel into a pariah because Israel’s function is to fight the influence and power of resistance movements. But if direct dealings are beginning between America and Iran, through America’s recognition that it cannot overcome that power balance and the more it tries to fight Iran the weaker it becomes, I believe Israel will end up being the biggest loser. So it’s really post-war that I think we’ll see Israel shrink itself.

Well, we’re out of time. I just want to thank you once again, because it’s always fantastic to hear you on Globalistas and when I see you on Instagram and places like that, I just think you’re very eloquent and you speak really well. You make me feel kind of stupid comparatively. I think it happens with Americans listening to people with English accents sometimes. But I just feel like I wish I could speak as well as you.

I mean, that’s British colonization for you, right? Like, that’s the only currency they have anymore. [laughs]

Exactly. [laughs] But that’s it. So thanks a lot, Batool. I hope we can have you on again sometime in the near future.

Always a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

When new revelations about the relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein began to emerge, the US government shifted the focus of its international agenda with a military escalation against Iran. The timing between a domestic scandal and a foreign offensive cannot be interpreted as mere chance. In the history of great powers, international crises often also serve the function of reorganizing the internal public debate, repositioning leaders and rebuilding legitimacy through war. When this movement against Iran is observed together with recent US policies towards Latin America, the picture becomes even more disturbing.

The aggression against Iran does not only affect the Middle East. It has a direct impact on the global economy, puts pressure on energy prices, affects logistics chains, makes inputs more expensive, and can produce sensitive effects on peripheral or semi-peripheral countries, including Brazil. In a context where economic stability is a central variable in any electoral dispute, a war involving the USA, Israel, and Iran could have concrete effects on inflation, fuel, exchange rates, food costs, and the social perception of well-being. In other words: an international conflict of this magnitude could also interfere with the political conditions for Lula’s reelection.

However, the decisive dimension of this war is geopolitical. The attack on Iran should not be seen as an isolated episode, nor as a mere continuation of its historical antagonism with the USA. Iran occupies a strategic position for China, due to energy and the logistics routes linked to Eurasian integration; it is relevant to Russia for its cooperation in the nuclear sector and its position on the North-South corridor. Furthermore, as a member of BRICS, Iran has become part of a broader arrangement challenging the unipolar order. From this perspective, the aggression against Iran can be read as an indirect attack on Russia, China, and the BRICS group as a whole. The immediate target is a State; the strategic target is the emerging multipolar order.

If this interpretation is correct, Brazil appears as a piece of special value. It is a founding member of BRICS, holds territorial, energy, mineral, food, and diplomatic weight, and remains one of the few nations capable of acting in an autonomous margin between different poles of power. Precisely because of this, it has become a priority target of a new architecture of pressure. This architecture was unashamedly spelled out in the 2025 National Security Strategy, when the USA reaffirmed the western hemisphere as a space for containing rivals, protecting strategic assets, defending critical supply chains, and combating “narco-terrorists,” concluding with the willingness to affirm and impose a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. The message is brutally clear: Latin America is once again being treated as a zone of US strategic tutelage, and any change in the hemispheric power architecture directly affects Brazilian sovereignty. It is in this context that recent events cease to appear unrelated.

The possible classification of the Brazilian organized crime groups Comando Vermelho (CV) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) as foreign terrorist organizations by the US State Department is one of these inflection points. The measure, if formalized, is not merely legal. It alters the political framing of organized crime in Brazil, shifting it from the field of public security to that of hemispheric security. This is a semantic reclassification with strategic effects: terrorism is not just a serious crime; it is a category that legitimizes new forms of sanctions, monitoring, extraterritoriality, and military cooperation. By turning factions into objects of the global “war on terror” grammar, the USA begins to claim a broader role for itself in defining what constitutes a threat in Latin America.

This movement does not arise in a vacuum. It is accompanied by a military and security escalation across the entire region. The joint military operation between the USA and Ecuador, announced as an action against groups framed as “narco-terrorists,” makes the transition from discourse to practice explicit. The fight against drug trafficking, formerly treated as a concern for the police and the judiciary, is now a justification for direct military presence and action. The very adoption of the term “narco-terrorism” plays a decisive role: it fuses organized crime and terrorism into a single political category, expanding the scope of external intervention.

In Paraguay, the Senate’s approval of an agreement authorizing the presence of US military personnel, Department of Defense civilians, and contractors on national territory, with extensive privileges, immunities, freedom of movement, and operational autonomy, reinforces the same pattern. This is not just about conventional military cooperation. The pact indicates a deepening of a regional security architecture aligned with the USA, including around the triple border, a historically sensitive area for Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. Add to this the Paraguayan announcement of an anti-terrorism center with agents trained by the FBI, the declarations about Hezbollah in the region, and the diplomatic alignment with the USA and Israel. The result is a regional framework in which terrorism, drug trafficking, borders, and foreign influence come to be managed under increasing US tutelage.

Within this framework, Brazil becomes a likely target of pressure. Not necessarily through classic intervention, but through instruments of hybrid war: legal reclassifications, regional alignments, language operations, production of informational instability, pressure on institutions, and electoral exploitation of chaos.

It is at this point that the recently authorized, then blocked attempted visit of Darren Beattie to ex-President Jair Bolsonaro in prison gains broader political meaning. Beattie is not a neutral bureaucrat. He is a figure associated with the US radical right, with a history of attacks on the Brazilian Supreme Court and public defense of Bolsonaro. His visit to an imprisoned former president, in the midst of tensions between Bolsonarism, the Judiciary, and the government, cannot be read as an irrelevant gesture of protocol. It reinforces the perception that sectors of Trumpism are closely monitoring the Brazilian institutional dispute and seeking to actively insert themselves into it. When a political operative linked to the US administration travels to meet Bolsonaro and has already rhetorically constructed a narrative of judicial persecution in Brazil, the gesture becomes part of a transnational dispute over political framing.

Meanwhile, suspicions persist that holdovers from the now-disgraced Operation Car Wash still occupy strategic positions in the Federal Police (PF) and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR). If Car Wash factions have survived institutionally and remain in positions of control or influence, then there is a real possibility of convergence between domestic destabilization agendas and external geopolitical pressures. The opinion of some actors within the Supreme Court, that attacks against individual justices will erode support for the executive branch of government, needs to be taken seriously. In the context of a hybrid war, corrosion of support for the Supreme Court and the Executive branch can be two sides of the same process.

It is impossible to discuss this scenario without mentioning former Car Wash judge, Bolsonaro Justice Minister and current Senator Sergio Moro. His relationship with the USA is old and deep, and has been widely debated at different times during the past 15 years. His participation in events promoted by the US Department of Justice, the ratification of agreements that directly affected Petrobras, contacts with groups like the FBI, his trip to CIA headquarters at the very beginning of the Bolsonaro government, and later, his time at Alvarez & Marsal, fueled the analysis that Operation Car Wash was not just an anti-corruption crusade, but also a vector for reconfiguring national power in line with foreign interests. Add to this the fact that Moro was declared a biased judge by the Supreme Court and the central role he played in removing Lula from the elections in 2018. The question about the nature of his ties and his historical function remains open because it is central to understanding how lawfare, economic dismantling, and geopolitical alignment could walk hand in hand.

The so-called Banco Master corruption case also needs to be understood in this context. The public debate focuses almost exclusively on Supreme Court justices, their families, and lateral aspects of the scandal, while politically much more compromising figures appear only on the sidelines. The scandal touches central names on the right and their power circle: Bolsonaro, through donations and political proximity; Ciro Nogueira, through legislative initiatives seen as favorable to the group; far right influencer/Congressman Nikolas Ferreira, due to the relationship with campaign structures and movements linked to the bank; Sao Paulo governor Tarcísio de Freitas, due to political-electoral proximity with networks that benefited from the fraud; and Federal Discrict Governor Ibaneis Rocha, due to the link with public resources and funds under his sphere of political influence. This produces a classic effect of informational warfare: attention is diverted from the material centers of power and redistribution of benifits to concentrate it on targets more useful for the political battle. If the consequence is to wear down the Supreme Court, reinforce narratives of institutional rot, and amplify the feeling of chaos, the case ceases to be merely financial and becomes also communicational and strategic.

My story on the Banco Master scandal for TeleSur’s From the South

The pattern emerging from analyzing these facts is clear. First, a more aggressive US doctrine for the hemisphere is established internationally, based on the militarization of the fight against crime and the containment of rival powers. Then, the category of “narco-terrorism” is disseminated, allowing the reclassification of internal conflicts in Latin American countries as continental security threats. Next, concrete military agreements and operations are consolidated in neighboring countries, such as Ecuador and Paraguay. Meanwhile, channels of political influence over the Brazilian far right are strengthened, symbolized by the activities and attempted visit of Darren Beattie. Brazil’s institutional, media, and judicial circuits capable of wearing down the Supreme Court and the government are reactivated or preserved. And in the background, the war against Iran puts pressure on BRICS, strains the global economy, and produces potentially disorganizing impacts on countries seeking autonomy.

None of this, in isolation, proves a linear, perfect, and centralized plan. Real historical processes rarely operate like that. What exists is something more plausible and more dangerous: a convergence of movements. Geopolitical doctrine, regional military operations, legal reclassification, information warfare, economic pressure, the survival of hostile institutional networks, and the international activation of the far right can together compose an environment conducive to interference in Brazilian democracy.

This is precisely where 2026 comes in. The presidential elections will not occur in a vacuum. They will take place under increasing international tension, possible global economic deterioration, fierce narrative disputes, a continental security offensive, and internal institutional conflicts. Hybrid war does not depend on tanks in the street. It operates by saturating the public space, destroying trust, disorganizing social perception, and manipulating real crises. If life worsens due to the effect of an external war, if the government is blamed, if the Supreme Court is turned into an internal enemy, if public security is recodified as a terrorism problem, and if foreign actors participate in legitimizing a radicalized opposition, then the conditions for the electoral dispute are already being shaped long before the formal campaign begins.

The conclusion, therefore, is harsh but necessary. The joint reading of the war against Iran at the time of the Epstein scandals; the attempt to classify the CV and PCC as foreign terrorist organizations; the US-Ecuador military operation; the deepening of military cooperation in Paraguay; the attempted visit of Darren Beattie to Bolsonaro in prison; the suspicions about the permanence of Operation Car Wash remnants in strategic positions in the Federal Police and Attorney General’s Office; Moro’s historical relations with the United States; the political-communicational use of the Banco Master case; and the understanding of the aggression against Iran as an attack on the BRICS group as a whole reveals more than coincidences. It reveals the construction of a hybrid war strategy.

Its objective is not to formally occupy Brazil, but to interfere in its choices, condition its sovereignty, weaken its government, discipline its political system, and shape the environment of the 2026 elections. The center of the problem is not just Lula, although Lula’s reelection is the immediate target. The center of the problem is Brazil as a country that can still choose autonomy, multipolarity, and sovereignty. That is what is at stake. And that is why the the current signs need to be read with the historical gravity they deserve.

* Dr. Larissa Ramina is a Professor of International Law at Federal University of Parana, and a member of the Brazilian Association of Jurists for Democracy (ABJD)

This article originally ran in Brasil 247, was translated by Brian Mier, is reproduced with permission from the author, and can be read in its original Portuguese here.

On January 23rd, I ignored a factually incorrect state department warning about chavista motorcycle gangs “kidnapping Americans” and flew into the airport in La Guaira, Venezuela, for a 30 day reporting assignment for TeleSur. The first thing I saw stepping into the airport was a “wanted” sign for US-backed 2024 presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who fled the country that September after being charged with falsification of public documents, instigation to disobey the law, conspiracy and other crimes associated with the wave of violent mercenary attacks against police and public institutions the day after the elections on August 1.

I encountered motorcycle clubs several times at Free Maduro rallies, and contrary to the State Department Warning, noone kidnapped me

I was a little worried. I remembered my trip to Serbia a few years earlier when friends from the Party of the Radical Left showed me the burnt out shell of the Radio-Television Serbia headquarters, which was bombed by US/NATO forces in 1999, killing 16 people, including actors, journalists and an employee in the makeup department. With Iran’s public TV station bombed by Israel in 2025, I was reminded that the US police-state has no moral qualms about the murder of journalists.

The US and freedom of the press: Radio-Television Serbia headquarters in April, 1999.

Luckily for the people of Venezuela, however, things had now returned nearly to normal after the January 3 attack.

My first assignment was in Carlos Soulblette, a working class neighborhood adjacent to a naval academy in La Guaira which had been hit with US missiles. We watched repairs underway in one of the hundreds of thousands of ownership-based social housing buildings constructed by the Maduro administration which had been directly hit, killing Rosa Elena Gonzales de Yanez, an 82 year old grandmother. I interviewed a middle aged woman named Maria Elena Carreno, the next door neighbor of the woman who had been murdered by the US government.

“When we managed to get out to the living room,” she said, “we saw that the door was gone. The wooden door had been completely blown away by the force, by the sound. I told my husband ‘Let’s calmly open the gate,’ because we didn’t know what could be waiting for us, since everything was full of dust. Thank God that we stepped out cautiously because we realized the wall was no longer there. If we had run out of the living room we would have plunged into the void.”

Maria Elena Carreno, nurse and next door neighbor of victim of US missile strike

Two days later I covered the first of 6 “free Maduro” protests I would report on during my month in Venezuela. Thousands of local residents had gathered in a favela in Antimano parish to march down to a main avenue and close it off, demanding the return of their President and First Lady.

A local resident named Ronny Camelo told me, “Since the empire burst into the dreams of the Venezuelan people on January 3rd, crossing our border and violating all international laws, we demand that the will of the people is honored. We demand the return of our First Lady and our president Nicolas Maduro Moro, who was elected by the power of the people and the social movements. We pledge all of our support to comrade Delcy Rodríguez to bring back our president Nicolás Maduro Moro. Viva Independence and Viva our socialist homeland!”

Minutes before start of Free Maduro march in Antimano Parish

This was my 4th trip to Caracas since 2020, and I was happy to see that the quality of life had improved significantly from what I witnessed the first few times I visited. The crime rate has plummeted, with 2025 registering the lowest homicide rate in recent history: 1.9/100,000. This has been an impressive achievement considering that ten years ago, Venezuela had one of the World’s highest homicide rates at 60/100,000. Whereas the first two times I visited Caracas I was warned not to walk on the streets around my apartment after 7 PM, I witnessed first hand how it was now perfectly safe to walk around anywhere at night. This included the working class neighborhood of San Agustin which was once the third most violent neighborhood in Venezuela, where a coworker and I saw groups of children having hose and water balloon fights at midnight on carnaval Monday. The dropping crime rate has opened San Agustin to the general public and tourists alike, and people now flock there at night to enjoy it’s cultural heritage as one of the epicenters of Afro-Venezuelan music.

Mural celebrating Yoruba religious traditions in San Augustin

Another positive thing I noticed in Caracas was the near absence of homeless people. During my month of traveling to the four corners of the city during news reporting and on my days off, I counted a total of 5 homeless people in a city of 3 million. As in any city there were signs of poverty, but in terms of homelessness I can’t remember visiting any city in my home country of Brazil, the US or the UK in the last decade that had so few homeless people. This is undoubtably due in part to the Bolivarian government’s social housing program, which has seen construction of over 5 million social housing units in the last 15 years, in a country with a total population of 28 million.

Caracas street scene

Unlike the average month in Recife, where I live, there were no electrical blackouts while I was there. I commuted to Telesur by subway and bus. Although the subway operating speed was as slow as it is in US cities like Chicago and New York, they came every few minutes, even on Sundays, and at 17 cents US the ticket price was a bargain compared to the $1 USD I am used to paying in Sao Paulo. The buses are old and raggedy looking, but they are run by cooperatives instead of outsourced private companies like in Brazil and are dependable, especially with that 17 cent fare price.

I found grocery prices to be significantly higher than in Brazil, but the residents of poor and working class neighborhoods buy much of their weekly groceries at the government neighborhood markets which sell basic food stables at heavily subsidized prices for residents. Although I didn’t need this service, I understand that there is still a big problem with medical treatment in Venezuela, as after the Trump administration’s criminal blockades kicked in and the national income plummeted by 90% between 2017 and 2020, there was an exodus of doctors out of the country, leaving many of the public health posts in working class neighborhoods woefully understaffed. In January, acting President Rodriguez announced plans to implement a new, universal public health system. Hopefully the increased oil revenue caused by relaxing the blockades can help transform this into a reality.

Subsidized prices at weekly market in San Augustin

Caracas is still crippled by lack of parts for its water system caused by the US blockade and we went for 24 hours without water in our apartment one day, forcing us to take bucket showers with water from our reserve tanks. An end to the blockades would quickly solve this problem. When Hugo Chavez took office in 1999, Venezuela imported 80% of its food. Over the last 26 years, the nation has developed food sovereignty, with a record 94% produced nationally in 2025. The minimum wage, including the mandatory minimum bonus system established by the Maduro administration, hovers at around $160/month, compared to around $300 in neighboring Brazil. This is a weak point in the system that I heard many people grumbling about, which hopefully will improve as the economy continues to grow. With 19 consecutive quarters of positive GDP growth, the time seems right for revamping the minimum wage policy. When Lula first took office in 2003, Brazil’s minimum wage was under USD$50, and his 8 consecutive above-inflation minimum wage increases are now cited as the most important factor in poverty reduction. This serves as a good example for the Rodriguez administration.

On February 2, while sitting in the journalist’s apartment kitchen during our nightly round of food and political conversation, I asked what the point of the free Maduro protests was. Did anyone really think that street protests were going to influence a US decision to drop its fabricated charges against Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Gomes, whose only “crime” appeared to be standing next to President Maduro when the kidnapping goons arrived?

My roommate, and fellow TeleSur correspondent Osvaldo Zayas said, “A CIA team has just arrived in Caracas and they are certainly going to try to start Gen Z revolution-style protests. The point of tomorrow’s protest is to show a sign of force by the organized left to send a signal to them that things won’t be as easy as they think. If it flops, they will move forward quickly.”

On February 3, tens of thousands of people marched through downtown Caracas for the largest free Maduro protest yet. Although no official crowd size estimate was generated, at it’s height I observed a dense, moving crowd fully occupying 4 city blocks of a four-lane road. One of the marchers, Miladros Rinconez, told me, “We are demanding the release of Cilia and Nicolás. Exactly one month ago, the US. government, represented by the pedophile Trump, invaded Venezuelan soil, killing over 100 compatriots. We are mobilized, and we will not leave the streets until they return our presidential couple to us. And we reaffirm our support for Acting President Delcy Rodríguez Gómez.”

Free Maduro march in Caracas on February 3

The next day, we headed two hours down from the mountains to the city of Maracay, in Aragua state, for a rally commemorating the 34th anniversary of the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200 rebellion that was led by Hugo Chavez against IMF-imposed austerity cuts. Maracay was the city where the rebellion kicked off, and although it was eventually crushed, Lieutenant Colonel Chavez emerged from prison 5 years later and was elected President in 1999.

We expected this to be a show of force by “the machine”, the nickname given to the working class left political network of communes, government workers, cooperatives, citizens militias, union workers and local party officials that forms the base of the ruling PSUV party, and turnout proved to be larger than expected. The crowd that was easily twice, possibly even three or four times the size of the February 3 march in Caracas, in a city with less than 1/3 of its population.

Portion of mile-long moving crowd in Maracay

After racing back and forth through a moving crowd for two hours, my cameraman and I arrived at the end point of the march, only to discover that we had only been filming a small portion of it in front of the first sound car. Tens of thousands of people of all ages continued to stream in for another hour. This march was larger than the largest campaign rally I covered during the 2022 elections in Brazil, the massive Lula rally on final day before the election on Paulista and Augusta avenues in Sao Paulo. We doubled back and found our co-worker Osvaldo interviewing Diosdado Cabello, who participated in the 1992 rebellion as an army Captain and is currently Venezuela’s Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace.

“Today is very important,” he said, “you can see the people here on the streets. The people remember Chávez, he is the guide. It was his leadership and it’s his legacy, but moreover, it is his revolution. This is Chávez’s revolution. And we will always come out every February 4th to remember our commander and remind the world why these people rose up.”

Diosdado Cabello

One thing that stands out in the marches I have covered in Venezuela compared to those in Brazil is that the crowds exercise more discipline. Marches in Brazil are typically accompanied by dozens of beer cart vendors and drum groups and can have a carnaval-like atmosphere. I didn’t see that kind of alcohol consumption in Venezuelan marches. Obviously one factor is that public drinking is illegal in some places, but even the bars along the routes didn’t seem very crowded. In Maracay, in addition to the kinds of social movements and organizations associated with the “machine”, entire families were out on the street. There were thousands of students and signs and banners calling for freedom for Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores were everywhere.

On February 12th, 1814, when Spanish forces attacked the city of Caracas thousands of students joined the battle. After a day of fighting the Royalists fled to the mountains. It was a key victory in the war of Independence and in memory of the students who fought, the day is now a holiday known as National Youth Day. On February 12, 2026, high school and university students were gathering on Plaza Venezuela to march 6 kilometers through downtown Caracas.

Since some analysts weave a narrative that Latin American working class, organized left movements are aging and the only people who still support the socialist cause are over the age of 50, this would be a good test. I was pleasantly surprised to see tens of thousands of youth on the streets, demanding freedom for Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores.

Small portion of student protest, illustrating crowd density

Natasha Coronado, a teenager from the Miranda chapter of the Venezuelan High School Students Federation, told me, “Today, our greatest battle is not with a rifle—it is in books, it is in the historical consciousness of our youth, and in defending our peace. That is why today we students march with joy, but at the same time we march to demand the prompt return of our constitutional president, our builder of victories, Nicolás Maduro, and our first combatant, Cilia Flores. Today, the youth supports them, and we also march with the spirit of José Félix Ribas and Robert Serra. Let the students go forth, let the student organizations go forth, and let the Venezuelan High School Student Federation go forth!”

Natasha Coronado

The international media had been disseminating state department-friendly disinformation all month. During the first weeks after the missile attack, caution in issuing visas to journalists from international media organizations that support the blockade, run continual fluff pieces about right wing multi-millionaire Maria Corina Machado and label Nicolas Maduro as a “dictator” was spun as “authoritarian repression of journalists.” A story that Venezuela had sent an oil tanker to Israel was immediately debunked by the government, but few media outlets ran corrections. On February 12, the international media both-sidesed the student march, insinuating that an opposition protest, the second I had seen since arriving in Caracas, was equal in size despite photo and video evidence showing there were only a few hundred people there.

My observations of these and other “free Maduro” protests that I witnessed during my month in Venezuela have led me to conclude that the base level support for the Bolivarian transformation to socialism remains strong. The Trump administration’s decision to not challenge the PSUV’s hold on political power in the country, instead merely claiming victory and moving on to their next media circus act, has been at least partially due to the fact that, as in Iran, regime change seems beyond its reach due to the strength of base level support for the government. Whereas large street demonstrations clearly aren’t reflective of the opinions of the entire population, in the case of Venezuela they seem to have been large enough in February, to complicate or at least delay any attempts to trigger a social media fueled “Gen Z rebellion” like the one that recently flopped in Mexico.

This could change depending on how the relationship between Acting President Delcy Rodriguez and the US government develops. For the last month I have been disappointed to see some analysts on the left repeat the narrative spread by expanded state actors like the New York Times and BBC that acting President Rodriguez has been totally co-opted by the US government, with some pretending it is their own original analysis. This simplistic, social media-friendly narrative avoids a lot of nuance, including the push-back from the Bolivarian government within its adaptation to what appear to be US demands.

I covered the preliminary ratification, two popular consultations and the final ratification of Venezuela’s partial hydrocarbon reform law. Although there are questionable elements to it, it looks like continuity with Nicolas Maduro’s anti-blockade law of 2020 that partially liberalized sectors of the economy, that Steve Ellner framed in Leninist terms as “defensive economic measures”, and an expansion of the government’s long relationship with Chevron. The new reforms maintain state petroleum company PDVSA under 100% public ownership, enabling public private partnerships in the form of 30 year leases on oil fields which can be canceled at any time for breach of contract. This resembles the lease contracts that were ratified in limited form for Brazil’s pre-salt reserves during the Dilma Rousseff administration and expanded after the 2016 coup. In a similar manner to Rousseff’s move, acting President Rodriguez has announced the creation of funds guaranteeing that the royalties will be exclusively used to fund infrastructure, health and education projects. One key difference is that, whereas the Brazilian contracts route 15% of the royalties to the government, the Venezuelan law calls for 30%, including 15% in taxes and 15% in royalties, with exceptions enabled that could bring the total amount down to 25%. After illegitimate coup President Michel Temer took power in Brazil, exceptions were opened up that lowered royalties to 5.9% in a deal struck between the government and BP during the last year of Jair Bolsonaro’s mandate. The biggest red flag in the new petroleum reforms is that the US government is calling for the royalties to be held in a fund in Qatar, under supervision of the US government. This raises the worry that the US will merely steal them as it stole Venezuela’s CITGO gas station chain in the US. Time will tell, however, how this plays out. The US is demanding that these partnerships only apply to US companies, but during her refreshingly short speech to thousands of petroleum workers on the night that the law passed its first parliamentary hurdle, acting President Rodriguez announced that they plan to work with companies from Asia and Europe as well and said they were closing a natural gas deal with a company from Indonesia. During her speech, Rodriguez also announced that she had been working on the hydrocarbon law reforms for months with President Maduro before his kidnapping, and presented it as an extension of the 2020 anti-blockade law.

The same kind of push-back is clearly visible in the Amnesty law, which is enabling the release of thousands of political prisoners from parole and incarceration, but clearly lists a series of exceptions in article 8, which exempt a series of crimes including murder, human rights violations, and public support for the murderous blockade and US invasion of Venezuela. According to the new law, neither Edmundo Gonzalez nor Maria Corina Machado, the most ridiculous example of a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate since Henry Kissinger, would qualify for amnesty. Acting President Rodriguez made this clear in her February 12 interview with NBC when, asked about Maria Corina Machado, she said, “with regards to her coming back to the country, she will have to answer to Venezuela. Why she called upon a military intervention, why she called upon sanctions to Venezuela, and why she celebrated the actions that took place at the beginning of January.”

During the interview she also made it clear that she does not consider herself to be President of Venezuela. “I can tell you President Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate president,” she said. “I will tell you this as a lawyer, that I am. Both President Maduro and Cilia Flores, the first lady, are innocent.”

The morning of the kidnapping, a State Department-friendly narrative immediately viralized that someone at the top level of the Venezuelan government had betrayed Nicolas Maduro. “Why was it so easy? It went, “why didn’t anyone fight back?” On social media, it took wings, with Pepe Escobar making yet another of his typically fantastic claims that a (non existent) Russian battalion had rushed to the scene only to be driven back by a group of Venezuelan bodyguards. This theory was immediately debunked when it came out that 32 Cubans and dozens of Venezuelans had been killed during the kidnapping. Why didn’t the much hailed Russian anti-aerial defense system work? One possibility is that the US and France aren’t the only countries that pawn off outdated military equipment to their allies. But reports have surfaced that the US jammed the phone, radio and internet communications systems minutes before the attack. Trump has bragged about using a secret weapon in the attack and eye witness accounts suggest that artificial intelligence was used in the helicopter gunships as they illegally encroached onto Venezuela’s sovereign territory. TeleSur correspondent Osvaldo Zayas spent the second half of February interviewing friends and family members of victims of the US attack. He told me that one of the victims, a 19 year old Venezuelan soldier, was hit with a missile within seconds of firing his first shot at a US helicopter. “His friends told me it seemed like an automated response that immediately pinpointed the location of the gunfire. His body was carbonized with his arms still locked in the firing position.”

To date, no evidence has surfaced of any betrayal at top levels of the Venezuelan government, and the behavior of Venezuelan leadership indicates that they are united. These leaders include Congressman Nicolas Maduro Guerra, son of the kidnapped President, who regularly appeared in public alongside Delcy Rodriguez, congressional president Jorge Rodriguez, and Diosdado Cabello. The alliance between Maduro Guerra with the acting President and Bolivarian government can be interpreted as evidence against the “betrayal” narrative.

In closing, I would like to emphasize that I am not a Venezuela specialist. I am a just a journalist who has spent a few months in Venezuela over the past 5 years. This story is the result of my observations covering Venezuelan politics between January 23 and February 22, 2026. For more counter hegemonic analysis of what is happening in Venezuela I suggest not giving too much credence to people who have made careers for themselves as “ex-chavistas” and triangulating sources with Venezuela-based news and analysis outlets like TeleSur, Mission Verdad, and Venezuela Analysis. Although the signs of push-back give me hope for the future of the Bolivarian government, it’s clear that the imperialist United States has deeply encroached on the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people. As Kawsachun News’ Camila Escalante tells me, “Venezuela is being robbed at gunpoint while trying to negotiate a hostage crisis.” As I left Venezuela on February 22, I noticed that the wanted signs for Edmundo Gonzalez were still on display in the Caracas airport.

Boris Luis Cabrera, 53, is a veteran Cuban journalist who writes in a style clearly influenced by the cinematic, new journalism of the 1970s. He covers a wide range of topics and, for the last 10 years, has worked as a sports reporter for the Cuban press agency, Prensa Latina. I met him in February, 2026, when I arrived home from working for TeleSur in Caracas, Venezuela, to discover that two more beds had been placed in the journalists apartment I was staying in in the city’s Chacao quarter. Cabrera was in town covering the Latin American and Caribbean baseball championship. Like the other Cubans staying there, I noticed him having constant conversations with friends and family back home, to stay up to date on the effects of the US government’s criminal attempt to starve the island nation, who’s government it has been trying to depose for 65 years. A few days after he arrived back home, I got in touch to find out how things were going. The following interview is a result of that conversation.

Brian Mier: Can you describe what a typical day is like in Cuba right now?

Boris Luis Cabrera: An average day in Cuba today is marked by concrete material tensions: scheduled blackouts due to energy deficits, difficulties in obtaining certain foods and medicine, and limited public transportation due to shortages of fuel and spare parts. These problems cannot be analyzed in isolation from the structural impact of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States, which limits access to credit, makes imports more expensive, and penalizes third countries that trade with the island. It is not just about internal shortages, but about systematic external pressure that shapes daily life. Nevertheless, education and healthcare remain universal and free, which makes a substantial difference compared to many countries in the Global South. So a typical day now revolves around material hardship, community support networks that we have set up to overcome them, and a strong culture of resistance.

What are your friends and family doing to cope with all of the difficulties?

The collective response has been diverse. Many resort to family cooperation strategies: sharing food, organizing joint purchases, exchanging services. Others have bet on local productive initiatives, private or cooperative ventures, within the margins allowed by the current economic model. These responses should not be interpreted as “adaptation to the market,” but as forms of popular resilience in the face of external economic aggression and a hostile international environment. There is also a growing internal debate on how to perfect the socialist model, make it more efficient, and combat distortions such as inflation and excessive bureaucracy.

Cabrera in Caracas in February, 2026, speaking with friends back home. Photo by Panchito Gonzalez

For several years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cubans faced food and fuel shortages. This time is now remembered as the “special period.” You seem old enough to remember those years. How do they compare to the period of US-imposed hardship that you are undergoing right now?

The so-called “Special Period” began after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Cuba lost its main trading partner and source of energy supply. That era was marked by prolonged blackouts, severe food shortages, and a sharp drop in GDP.

The population weathered the crisis with a mix of extreme austerity, creativity, and social organization. There was widespread use of bicycles, urban agriculture, and solidarity networks in the neighborhoods and in workplaces.

Compared to today, many consider the psychological impact of the Special Period to have been more abrupt and profound. However, the current moment has created complex challenges due to a combination of factors including the tightening of the blockade, the post-pandemic global crisis, and internal economic tensions. The key difference is that back then there was a clear expectation of recovery supported by a different international environment; today the geopolitical landscape is more uncertain.

Over the last 6 decades, Cuba has developed the reputation as a country which has shown an impressive amount of solidarity with other peoples and nations in the Global South. During the Cold War, it also received support in its defense against US aggression from historic allies Russia and China. Now that Cuba is in a moment of need, why aren’t more countries reaching out to provide food and fuel?

Cuba has developed a recognized policy of international solidarity, sending medical brigades and technical support to dozens of countries. The limited current aid from some allies is not interpreted as abandonment, but as a result of their own economic limitations and geopolitical pressures.

Many countries face sanctions, energy crises, or financial dependence on multilateral institutions dominated by Western powers. Furthermore, the extraterritorial nature of U.S. sanctions discourages banks and companies from interacting with Cuba, even when there is political will.

What do you think is going to happen now? How is Cuba going to be able to survive this criminal blockade?

The international denunciation of the blockade as a violation of international law and the principle of peoples’ right to self-determination will continue. Every year, the UN General Assembly votes overwhelmingly against this policy. We expect that a combination of diplomatic pressure, international solidarity, and internal transformation including greater economic efficiency, productive decentralization, and the fight against corruption, will enable Cuba to sustain its sovereign project. More than a passive waiting period until the end of the blockade, this vision emphasizes the need to strengthen Cuban socialism from within, diversify alliances, and maintain social cohesion as the country’s main political capital.

We’ve been hearing for years from back-stabbing opportunists of the far right that Brazil’s Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores/PT) will transform Brazil into another Venezuela. For better or worse, 19 years of PT governments have proven the absurdity of those words. Now that the Trump administration, hailed by some self-proclaimed geopolitical analysts as a lesser evil alternative to Kamala Harris in 2024, has bombed our neighbor ,Venezuela, and kidnapped its President and 1st lady, it’s a good time to look at how events could play out that could transform Brazil into a similar target for US regime change.

For those who think I may be exaggerating, let’s take a look at recent history.

When Luis “Gege” Gonzaga da Silva, historic leader of the Central dos Movimentos Populares (People’s Movements Central/CMP), returned to Brazil after living for years in Venezuela, he spoke at a conference 9 days before the inauguration of Dilma Rousseff, correctly predicting there would be a coup in Brazil.

“When I said this, various petit bourgeois intellectuals who were among us laughed at me,” he said in a 2017 interview for Brasil Wire. “’You are in Brazil,’ they said, ‘you are not back in Venezuela. Over there they could have a coup any minute, but here in Brazil we don’t have these kinds of things. We don’t have a political climate for that here in Brazil.’ And now, where are all these intellectuals providing an analysis of their mistakes? Because the left made a mistake in not making this analysis. They thought that once they won the election it was over. The bourgeoisie does not joke around.”

It’s true that the Lula administration made significant advances in its relationship with the Trump administration in the second half of 2025. Make no mistake about it, however, the US wants ideological hegemony in the Western hemisphere. It wants our rare earth minerals and, especially, our petroleum, and the leading pre-candidate for the opposition, Flavio Bolsonaro, is already promising to privatize Petrobras.

Meanwhile, in the long tradition of acting as useful idiots for empire, there is an entire flock of petit bourgeois radical leftists waiting in the wings to attempt to destroy any possible successor to Lula, by doing things like blaming the fiscal framework, the best compromise with Brazil’s right wing congress that the Lula administration could broker, as a Machiavellian plan by Fernando Haddad to neoliberalize the workers party from within. This is the 2026 equivalent of the PSOL and PSTU intellectuals who embraced Globo’s mensalão scandal and Lava Jato for their own opportunistic purposes and it plays directly into the international bourgeoisie’s hand.

During the 1970s, Phillip Agee, a deep-cover CIA agent who had been stationed in Ecuador and Uruguay for over a decade, moved to Cuba and wrote a book explaining everything he knew about CIA operations in Latin America, called Inside the Company: The CIA Diaries.

In it, he described a graduated scale of CIA intervention tactics which they prioritized according to descending level of desirability. The most desirable outcome was that an entreguista president would be elected naturally, with no intervention from the US government. The second most desirable strategy was to covertly support an entreguista candidate for the presidency through measures such as clandestine financing and support for psychological operations that included fabricated scandals and media coverage in the important US newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, which would echo into the bourgeois media outlets in the target country. One example of a probable scenario where this took place was the 2014 elections. In 2013, expanded state actors like Facebook and Twitter helped expand the free public transport protests into a full blown color revolution, with ample support from international and national media outlets like Globo and Folha, which suddenly gave editorial space to figures associated with electorally insignificant “radical left” parties to criticize the PT. In 2014, a reporter from the LA Times told a Brasil Wire editor, “there is an unwritten rule in the international correspondent community that Aecio Neves has to win this election.”

According to Philip Agee, the next step down the CIA’s regime change priority list is to support a coup d’etat. This support is done both clandestinely and in the open through the work of the bourgeois media. One example of this is Lava Jato. As a handful of “radical left” national and international petit bourgeois intellectuals gloated with opportunistic delight, the US Department of Justice worked with a local public prosecution team and judge to wage a targeted anti-corruption war to politically annihilate the PT. The millions of job losses and judicially imposed bankruptcy of Brazil’s 5 largest civil engineering companies deeply exacerbated what had been a mild recession, setting the stage for Dilma Rousseff’s illegitimate impeachment in 2016.

According to Agee, the final regime change solution supported by the CIA, if the coup attempts fail, is assassination of a president, as it did to Patrice Lumumba, financing a proxy war, as it did with Nicaragua during the 1980s, or full blown military invasion, as the US has done dozens of times in Latin America and the Caribbean over the past century. In 1989, former CIA director and President George Bush added a new twist to this formula, when he ordered the kidnapping of his old friend and alleged drinking partner, Panamanian President Manuel Noriega.

We can see how this entire CIA regime change scale played out in the last 2 years in Venezuela. When the US estimated that Edmundo Gonzalez didn’t have the support needed to win a free and fair election, it began to meddle by deepening sanctions that hurt the Venezuelan people, and promising to lift them if he won the elections. The US routed millions of dollars into Venezuelan NGOs. They orchestrated disinformation campaigns across the political spectrum in mainstream media and in NED funded alternative “progressive” media outlets to damage the image of the Maduro administration. When all of that failed, on the day after the 2024 presidential elections, they supported a violent coup attempt in which dozens of police officers were killed and public schools, PSUV headquarters, community centers and mayors offices were firebombed across the country. After the Biden administration’s coup attempt failed, the Trump administration moved towards a final solution, copying Bush’s playbook from Panama.

‘But Venezuela is Venezuela and Brazil is Brazil,’ you might say. Let’s look around the continent. There was a right wing coup in Peru. The US has actively worked to influence recent elections in favor of far right candidates in Argentina, Ecuador, Honduras and Chile, and is threatening the governments of Mexico and Colombia. US elites like Elon Musk, Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson have been spreading anti-PT propaganda for 3 years. Even the New York Times ran 7 articles spreading the Bolsonaro/Musk/Greenwald false narrative of Brazil’s “authoritarian judiciary.”

How could possible US intervention in Brazil play out according to Agee’s formula? The US could support a far right candidate overtly, through praise and threats from Trump, and covertly, through support for an impeachment drive against Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, destabilization of Congress, amnesty for Jair Bolsonaro and his neofascist Generals, and financial support for so called “independent media” outlets financed by the US National Endowment for Democracy and its partners like Luminate, Open Society and the Ford Foundation through shell organizations like the International Fund for Public Interest Media to attack the Workers Party from the left.

If Lula is reelected, the US could build on the work it did in 2026 to damage Lula’s reputation and attempt to orchestrate a coup, like the one it supported in 2016. If all else fails, given the way the Trump administration has been acting, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s historic animosity towards the PT, the possibility exists that, yes, the US could attempt to assassinate or kidnap a democratically elected President of Brazil.

The following statement was made by President Lula on the morning of January 3, in response to the US government’s attack against Venezuela

The bombings on Venezuelan territory and the capture of its president cross an unacceptable line. These acts represent an extremely serious affront to Venezuela’s sovereignty and yet another extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community.

Attacking countries, in flagrant violation of international law, is the first step toward a world of violence, chaos, and instability, where the law of the strongest prevails over multilateralism.

The condemnation of the use of force is consistent with the position Brazil has always adopted in recent situations in other countries and regions.

This action recalls the worst moments of interference in the politics of Latin America and the Caribbean and threatens the preservation of the region as a zone of peace.

The international community, through the United Nations, must respond vigorously to this episode. Brazil condemns these actions and remains ready to promote the path of dialogue and cooperation.

This Tuesday, Brazil’s Finance Minister Fernando Haddad announced that R$38 billion reais of illicit funds have been frozen in accounts connected to organized crime groups like the PCC and Comando Vermelho. The action comes as part of a federal police investigation that has led to over 100 arrests. According to the Federal Police, over $5 billion usd in trafficking group assets has been laundered in the US state of Delaware this year, with the most recent transaction involving $225 million usd.

“I’m talking about this issue because it has spilled across international borders,” Haddad said in a press conference on Tuesday. “Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski and I have spoken with President Lula on the need for him to include fighting organized crime as a topic in his negotiations with the United States, because they are using the State of Delaware, which is a tax haven in the United States as a headquarters for tax evasion and money laundering operations.”

Shortly after Minister Haddad made the announcement on Tuesday, President Lula had a 40 minute call with US President Donald Trump. During the conversation he asked the US government for support investigating financial crimes committed by organized crime groups in the United States. Afterwards, Brazil’s Foreign Ministry formalized the request in an official communication, and a US embassy official in Brasilia requested more information about the investigation and indicated that there is a good chance it will get involved.

The entire current US government narrative about the need to fight international drug trafficking, which it labels narcoterrorism, is based on extreme hypocrisy,” says geopolitical analyst Rose Martins. “One of the signs of this is that until very recently, the US hadn’t shown any concern about the huge sums of money transferred there by Brazilian criminal organizations for laundering and arms purchases.”

According to Haddad, the federal police have identified hedge funds set up in Delaware that receive an influx of money from trafficking groups in Brazil. The money returns to in the form of foreign investments that they suspect never have to be paid back. One of the industries receiving “investments” from Delaware is the petroleum sector. Last month, Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency shut down REFIT, formerly Brazil’s largest refinery, stating that it had stopped refining petroleum and was operating as a shell company for businessmen connected to the PCC organized crime faction. Last year, it earned R$70 billion (around $14 billion US).

REFIT, the huge refinery seen by millions of tourists on their way in from Rio de Janeiro’s Galeao airport every year, hasn’t been refining any petroleum

The question remains: If the US is so concerned about drug trafficking that it’s murdered 87 people in small boats off the coast of Venezuela, why did it take a foreign government to inform them that drug trafficking groups are laundering billions of dollars in their country?

Watch my TeleSur news story about this here:

On October 28, 2025, Rio de Janeiro’s military police massacred 121 people in the favelas of Penha and Alemão, on the city’s North Side. Marketed by the governor’s sophisticated PR department as an operation against the Comando Vermelho drug trafficking organization, none of the dead, which included 4 police officers, had any outstanding arrest warrants or were under investigation for any crime. Most of the victims were poor, Afro-Brazilians. The following is the transcript, edited for readability, of a one-hour interview I did about the massacre, with Oscar Fernandez from the Latino Media Collective, which aired on the Washington D.C. radio station WPFW 89.3 FM. You can listen to the full interview here.

Oscar Fernandez: Can you tell us about the stated intent of this police raid versus the actual reality and actual results as it pertains to organized crime?

Brian Mier: I first moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1991. And over the years, I’ve spent about eight years there. In 2013, I spent a year on the production team of a documentary for BBC 2 called Welcome to Rio which was filmed entirely in favelas. And I’ve been to a lot of these favelas, and I’ve interacted with a lot of people there, including members of drug gangs, because we had to get authorization from them to film inside of the favelas. These kinds of attacks where the police come in shooting in favelas are routine in Rio de Janeiro and have been since the 1980s.

There is a psychological component of these actions. It’s to maintain the residents in a state of constant terror. It’s a form of harassment. But Governor Claudio Castro, who is a staunch ally of imprisoned President Jair Bolsonaro, former president, is now responsible for four of the five worst police massacres in Rio de Janeiro history during his four years as governor.

This strategy of coming into the favela shooting basically started in the 1980s, employing US-style war on drugs rhetoric. And what’s changed this year is that, first of all, it’s an election year next year for governor and Claudio Castro wants to be reelected. And it’s good for publicity. 57% of the residents of Rio de Janeiro supported the massacre.

Rio de Janeiro has a very racist, historically racist middle class within which a lot of people just seem to think everyone in the favelas should be killed. But what’s different about this one is that a coalition of far right-wing governors have got together and tried to push through a measure declaring these drug trafficking gangs as terrorist groups to appeal to Donald Trump, who’s done similar things in Mexico and Venezuela and Colombia. And they think it’s a way to get support back that they seem to be losing from the international far right and Steve Bannon and the Trump administration.

So they’ve been lobbying with members of Congress and the Senate to try and push a bill through that would have this and the other major drug trafficking factions in Brazil declared terrorists. This would enable US military operations inside of Brazil, which they hope would weaken or even get rid of Lula and the Lula administration. So this massacre happened in the midst of this lobbying effort that’s going on and in a way that it seems to strengthen their position with Congress.

In addition to this idea of trying to get support from Trump to leverage against the Lula administration, it’s also an election year next year and being tough on crime, as everyone in the US knows well, is a good way to get reelected when you have a bunch of constituents who don’t have any empathy for anybody.

Fernandez: Yeah, it’s hard to not only invoke the name of Trump here in this conversation, but also just the very thoughts of how he sort of dominates our conscience in our orbit politically and socially as well, especially in the context of these sort of violent acts that took place in Brazil, in the context of Rio de Janeiro as well. And just to support what you said at the beginning, which is these sort of raids have been going on for such a long time, next year is going to mark the 20th anniversary of this show on WPFW.

And as far back as 2016, we’ve been talking about these sort of raids taking place in Rio de Janeiro that would leave not necessarily this amount of people dead, but a significant amount in almost time after time and case after case. It’s quite stunning and even more shocking that there is a percentage, a large percentage of the Brazilian middle class, as you just said, that supports this. Now, at the center of this tragedy, and we heard it in the clip at the beginning, is that of Rio de Janeiro Governor Claudio Castro.

Can you tell us more about who he is and how his governance at the state level is different from the federal for American audiences who may not know?

Rio’s necropolitical governor Claudio Castro, who has been charged with 11 counts of bribe-taking

Mier: It’s important to explain how the police operate in Brazil, because whenever something like this happens and a left-wing government is in charge, they try to blame the president, just as if it would be like if there was a big shooting in the United States, let’s say in St. Louis or something, if the press would blame the president for that shooting that took place in the city of St. Louis. In Brazil, Brazil has four police forces. The federal police, which are like the FBI, and the highway police are controlled by the federal government. Then you have the civil and the military police. These are both controlled by the state governors.

And so they are state-wide organizations controlled by the governor. The military police are only loosely connected to the Army, despite their name.

The military police were initially founded in different times in different states from the late 1700s to the early 1800s. And one of their main functions was obviously to capture escaped slaves, like many police forces in the United States were first created to do. And there’s never been any real effort in most states to remove that core element of racism in their entire essence, their entire being. T the military dictatorship was installed and supported with aid from the United States . From 1964 to 1985, some of the state police forces developed their own death squads to support activities from the dictatorship, executing political prisoners, disappearing political activists, labor union leaders and whatnot, and also practicing a lot of torture.

Two of the main, institutionalized death squads during the dictatorship were the Rota in Sao Paulo and the Bope in Rio de Janeiro. And when the dictatorship finally fell, a deal that was struck to guarantee a transition to democratic rule gave all of the military and all of the police amnesty for their crimes committed during the dictatorship. And although they briefly toyed with the idea of eliminating the Rota in Sao Paulo, after a few months they brought it back, they never disbanded the Bope in Rio.

Since the dictatorship, the military police do not respond to the regular rule of law. They operate outside of the law. When their officers commit crimes, they are judged in their own military police courts.

And if they’re ruled guilty, they’re held in military police prisons. And so as you can imagine, the record that United States police departments have at self-regulating in cities like Chicago, where I come from and stuff, isn’t very good. Imagine a system like that.

In addition, you have a situation in Rio de Janeiro where it’s a very unusual local context compared to the rest of the country. For example, in Sao Paulo, you have one big drug trafficking faction that was founded with help from people from the Gomorra, who were in jail in 1987 in a city called Taboate. And they structured it like the mafia.

And so you don’t normally see them when you go into favelas in Sao Paulo. They’re around, but if you see them, they are normally unarmed. Rio has three different factions of drug trafficking gangs constantly fighting with each other and several paramilitary militias that were started by military police officers that are made up of off-duty military police officers who have moved in and taken over favelas and charge extortion from local merchants and things like that. One of the three drug factions in Rio, the Amigos dos Amigos, or the Friends of the Friends, was literally founded by two military police officers. And the military police in Rio will often rent their equipment and their services out from one faction to attack another faction.

So there have were moments when I lived in Rio 10 years ago or whatever, when it was discovered that the police had rented out their armored vehicles to a drug trafficking faction to invade a rival favela. And they’re completely infiltrated by the gangs. It’s the most corrupt police force in Brazil.

And the police violence level in Rio is much, much higher than any other state in Brazil. It’s just outrageous. Like, São Paulo has double the population of Rio de Janeiro, and they average a couple hundred police killings a year, whereas Rio de Janeiro officially always averages over 1,000, sometimes over 2,000.

Sometimes annual deaths from undetermined causes in Rio also number in the thousands, and a lot of those are understood to be police executions. This is the situation there, and obviously none of the leaders of these gangs live in the favelas. The federal police just made a big raid on the PCC, which is the big gang based out of Sao Paulo, and they found that they had set up their own hedge funds. They arrested a bunch of bankers involved with the PCC and several of the gangs leaders by using good intelligence and investigative tactics, without killing anyone.

When they go into favelas like this in Rio, they’re shooting low-level street dealers, who are very well-armed because of the gang violence situation. A lot of them are armed with machine guns and stuff like that. But they’re street-level drug dealers.

None of the bosses live in the favelas. They’ve been doing this for 40 years now, and it’s never made any kind of dent whatsoever in organized crime in Rio de Janeiro. It’s just done for the headlines, for publicity, and unfortunately, because Rio de Janeiro is the center of Bolsonarism and has a large number of former military people living in Rio, it helps candidates get elected. There are a lot of people who fight against it, but opponents of this state violence only make up 40% of the local population.

Not only that, but we should also point out that the favelas are not the ones that are manufacturing arms or producing the actual drugs in the favelas. That’s somewhere else, and you’re right. There should be a greater emphasis on the financial aspect of these drug cartels and these drug organizations, not the favelas, because as you just said, they are the soldiers in these sort of organizations.

Now, it just dawned on me, you mentioned earlier that four of the five worst police shootings have taken place in Rio de Janeiro under the leadership of Governor Claudio Castro. As you said that, it sort of dawned on me that perhaps for an American audience, is it fair to compare his actions to that of, say, for example, Texas Governor Greg Abbott? Because one thing that comes to mind for me is that some of the worst mass shootings in the United States have taken place in Texas. So it’s a crude parallel perhaps, but is it a fair one?

Well, I’m sure that they have a lot of ideological common ground. Claudio Castro is a conservative Catholic from the charismatic movement, and they have a lot in common with evangelical Christians. Basically, a common thread among these governors who support Bolsonaro is that they’ve slashed funding for intelligence, and they’ve spent a lot of funding on better weapons for the police. I suspect there a a lot of police departments in the U.S. that probably operate in a similar manner.

I don’t know that much about Texas. I’ve been living in Brazil 30 years, but I would assume that its governor supports similar police policies. For example, deemphasizing the intelligence part of it and increasing the weaponry and general harassment and oppression of poor people in the poor neighborhoods.

Yeah, not to mention the fact that he sort of has the same bluster and sort of demeaning, dehumanizing way of talking to poor working-class people as, say, for example, even the “Border Czar” Tom Holman here in the U.S. So in an October 30th report by Al Jazeera, they interviewed a crime reporter who was quoted as saying that police operations in which more than 20 people die are very rare, quote-unquote, his words, not mine, in Brazil, and most of those happen in Rio.

And to prove the point, that same report cited Jacarezinho and Alemão as a frame of reference, two other favelas that also had deadly police raids. As horrendous as this particular raid was this past October, does it serve as a microcosm to the over-militarization over the years of the Rio de Janeiro police, especially following the images of bombed-out buildings on fire? Obviously, we’re on the radio, but people can go on Google and on YouTube and they could see buildings, residential buildings, completely bombed out, and there are certain images and scenes that kind of look like war zones in another country. And going back to Claudio Castro, I don’t know how you could have that many people die, innocent people die, and see images of bombed-out residential buildings and make the conclusion that it was a successful operation.

It just doesn’t fit with the reality of what we see with our own eyes. In terms of military equipment and stuff, now his first police massacre took place in Jacarezinho, right?

At the time, that was the worst police massacre in Brazilian history. Now it’s this one that took place in Alemão and Peña.

They started using prison terminology to describe favelas in Rio, so they call them complexes now. So it’s the Alemão complex and the Peña complex. They’re really like five or six favelas, one next to the other.

But this was one of the first raids or massacres, I should say - I’m not going to use the word raid - in which they used drones dropping hand grenades and stuff, in addition to their traditional armored helicopters with snipers.

I think part of the modus operandi to justify this as a success is that to people like him and his supporters, many of whom claim to be Christians, the people who live in favelas aren’t human. They’re completely dehumanized. So it doesn’t matter if he kills the target or not.

If they kill anyone in there, it’s good. Just as when I first moved to Rio in the 1990s, there was a wave of murders of homeless children, and this was also supported by a large percentage of the population of Rio de Janeiro. It’s just complete dehumanization.

Part of it’s racial, part of it is racial legacy from slavery, part of it’s a legacy of this wave of migration of rural workers from the Northeast during these massive cyclical droughts that took place between the 1940s and 1980s . So you have some favelas where almost everybody’s black, and then other favelas where everybody’s from the Northeast. These are newer favelas, and there you see people with all kinds of skin tones, different types of people. But to the long-term residents whose families have been living in Rio for hundreds of years, they are all the same.

None of those people are human to them so many people think they should all just be wiped out.

I remember drinking with some buddies in Borel favela one night about 10 years ago. Borel was located around the corner from our building and my wife worked with a woman who lived there. So we were up there drinking some beers and they told me one time the Bope came in and shot like 10 random teenagers and then just made up fake drug dealer names and called the press and did a press conference with these dead bodies claiming they’d scored a victory against the drug gang. When the BOPE go into neighborhoods on any kind of police action, they’ll always kill at least two random people. It’s an Israeli counterinsurgency tactic to maintain a climate of terror, and they also have a loudspeaker system in their armored vehicles. When they come into the neighborhoods, it’s blasting messages like, “I’m going to take your soul” and stuff like that, scaring children.

They don’t have any respect for school hours. They come in shooting from their helicopters sometimes when school’s getting out, and then when some kids get killed or something, they’re like, oh, we’re sorry, whatever. So it’s a really bad situation in Rio de Janeiro.

It’s really disgusting, and it’s one of the reasons I personally ended up moving out of that place. It’s Nazi-level, neo-Nazi-level police violence. The actual logo of the Bope is the SS skull with the two daggers pushed through it. That’s on the side of their vehicles. So when I say Nazi, I’m not being facetious. The only real solution for this, according to the Workers’ Party and the black movements and human rights activists in Brazil is to eliminate the military police, because even though in other cities they don’t do things as bad as Rio, they come pretty close sometimes. For example there have been police massacres in Pará in the last couple of years where they killed 40 or 50 people, and there are massacres where they just hide a bunch of the bodies and you never find out how many people died, and that happens in Rio too.

Over the last 25 years, the Workers’ Party, Lula’s party, has introduced bills for constitutional amendments to eliminate the military police three times. Each time they’ve done it, it’s been blocked by conservative members of their own governing coalition because the Workers’ Party has never had more than 22% of Congress. There are 16 political parties represented in Congress and its impossible for the PT to govern without forming a coalition with the larger, center right parties which support the military police.

In order to govern, he has to give cabinet positions to politicians from these parties, and every time the PT has tried to change the constitution, it’s been blocked. So it’sa situation that’s really complicated to resolve. The president can’t just wave his magic wand and issue a decree ending the military police but the consensus among human rights activists, the black movements, labor unions, and the working class social movements is that the only solution is eliminating the military police.

That is a scary thing to think about as far as how difficult it is to eliminate this particular police, especially with the extensive history of extrajudicial killings of people of color, as you just described. It’s scary for an American audience as well because even before this second incarnation of the Trump administration, there were calls by grassroots organizations to try to abolish ICE, and now it’s gotten even worse than before and perhaps gotten to the point where it may not be any other government after Trump may not be able to abolish it altogether. Now, we’re going to take a break momentarily, but before we do, correct me if I’m wrong, but since you mentioned that police in the past have tried to hide bodies, wasn’t there an attempt to do that in a wooded area near this Favela Peña last month?

Exactly, yes.

And also, the whole city was at a standstill. I think there was a report also that the airport was shut down in addition to public transportation throughout the city. Yeah, because the major highway between the airport and downtown goes pretty close to Peña Favela where part of the operation was going on.

They found dozens of bodies in a forest who looked like they had their hands tied behind their back and were executed at close range, not in any kind of confrontation situation. This is a very common thing in Rio de Janeiro as well and in other places around Brazil too, but especially bad in Rio.

Yes, and again, I’ll reiterate what I said at the beginning of the show from this Reuters report, which is that none of the 117 people killed by police were among the 69 suspects named by prosecutors in the complaint providing the basis for the raid.

In the early days following the deadly police raid, several news outlets pointed out that the raid also occurred just days before the United Nations Climate Summit, known as COP 30. Why do you suppose this connection is important in the larger context of what took place last month? Because at first glance, I didn’t see the connection, but then it occurred to me, oh, wait, there was a similar raid, not to the same extent that was what we saw in October, but there were similar ones before the Olympics in Rio and also before the World Cup several years ago. So, again, can you connect this to the larger context of what we’re discussing here?

In this case, I don’t think there’s very much relationship at all. I think it’s related to two main things. First, Claudio Castro is worried that the mayor is going to run against him in the gubernatorial election next year. Rio mayor Eduardo Paes is very popular right now. So, for his selfish, opportunistic electoral interests, he killed 121 people, officially, maybe more. And secondly, because of this group of far-right Bolsonarista governors who are trying to convince the Trump administration to declare Brazil’s drug trafficking gangs as terrorist organizations. In the case of the Olympics and the World Cup, those were events happening in the city of Rio de Janeiro, but Belém, where the UN Cup 30 conference took place, is thousands of miles away.

So I don’t think there’s much of a relationship. If there was any relationship at all, it wasn’t top level. Maybe it was like, oh, we’ll also embarrass the Lula government in the lead-up to Cup 30. But I don’t think the press really treated it that way. So, I don’t think, in this case, there was much of a relationship.

Well, perhaps you may have answered my next question already, because on your Twitter account, you mentioned somebody by the name of Marcelo Freitas.

So, who is Marcelo Freitas? And could you explain his denunciation of the actions of Claudio Castro as, quote-unquote, electioneering? You may have sort of answered that, but can you tell us who he is as well?

Well, he’s actually one of my sources for saying that the massacre was election-related. Marcelo Freitas is currently the national Secretary of Tourism. However, he is a legendary figure in Rio de Janeiro politics.

Currently a member of the Brazilian Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Brasileiro/PSB), He was, for a long time, affiliated with the left-wing Socialism and Liberty Party (Partido Socialismo e Liberdade/PSOL). As a state congressman, he was the first person to take on the paramilitary militias. He led a parliamentary investigation of the militias.

Like his protégé, Marielle Franco, he started off as a city councilman. When he moved up to the state congress he helped Marielle Franco get elected city councilor. She was trying to do the same kinds of things, taking on the paramilitary militias at the municipal level that he was doing at the state level. And that’s the main reason I believe she was killed. But he’s run for mayor twice and come close. But like I said, only about 40 to 45 percent of Rio’s population is actually progressive.

People don’t realize it because of its party reputation, but it’s the first state in Brazil that had a majority evangelical Christian population, and it’s the headquarters of the Bolsonaro family and their closest allies. So, Freixo may have went to the federal government three years ago but anything he says about Rio de Janeiro politics is still extremely relevant because he knows it inside and out.

And he accused Claudio Castro of playing electoral politics, which is the same thing that several other prominent politicians did. Nationally, the Workers’ Party criticized him for that. And it’s because simply, as the polls showed afterwards, 57 percent of the population supported the killings.

And there’s a percentage of the population that probably didn’t support it fully, but still generally supports the idea of the type of governor who sends his police into favelas to kill people. Maybe some people thought it was a little too excessive, but still support generally his “tough-on-crime” jingoism, which is ironic because these kinds of police chiefs—I’ll compare them to U.S. police chiefs here— with these kinds of police leaders who are the most tough on crime,the crime rate often ends up going up.

The governor of São Paulo acts the same way as Claudio Castro. He’s basically Bolsonaro’s number two guy, Tarcísio Freitas. And he’s also employed the same tactics. He’s had massacres where they killed like 40 or 50 people, but police killings went up almost 100 percent during the first three years of his government. The overall murder rate stabilized. The theft rate went down by like 4%, but this lower than the national average decline. However the rape rate in the state of São Paulo went up by something like 60 percent. Rape of children went up like 40 or 50 percent because he gutted the budget for intelligence and just based his strategy on generating media events where he can show up at the scene of a police action and put on a police jacket and talk about how tough he is on crime. It’s for his own electoral purposes.

These people aren’t really that interested in tackling the crime problem.

In fact, the worst thing for them would be for crime to disappear because they wouldn’t have any electoral strategy anymore.

It sounds like they’re cosplaying like Christine Noem.

Yeah, exactly. And also Claudio Castro is literally a criminal. He’s on trial for 11 cases of bribery in different cases which he keeps appealing, but it’s working its way through the court system. So he’s himself is a criminal, allegedly, right? I mean, he’s being put on trial for committing crimes himself.

Well, speaking of criminals, the focus of this conversation today is on the massacre that took place in Rio. But we cannot ignore what’s taking place this week. Even as we have this conversation this week, former President Jair Bolsonaro has now been ordered to start his 27 year prison term for plotting a coup against his own country.

Now, again, the focus here is on the massacre that took place last month. But I want to get your thoughts on this ruling of him to start his 27 year prison term, whether or not it’s connected to what we’re discussing here. Well, it’s just connected in the sense that Bolsonaro is a very close ally of Claudio Castro, and he’s from Rio.

Basically, the media in the US is treating this story in an interesting way. Because to the Democrats, I think, the Democratic affiliated media, it’s really important to show that Bolsonaro is the Brazilian Trump, and that he tried to do what Trump did. But in Brazil, they actually punished him.

Why can’t Americans punish Trump like Brazil did to Bolsonaro? And then conservatives are disseminating disinformation spread by people like Glenn Greenwald, and trying to spread this idea that it wasn’t as bad as the January 6th capital invasion, and it’s a witch hunt, and Bolsonaro shouldn’t be in jail. It’s important to point out that this was a much more serious attempt at a coup d’etat than anything that happened in the US. They uncovered thousands and thousands of pages of evidence, testimonies from witnesses, written plans, recorded conversations.

One of the generals arrested today, Augusto Heleno, he’d written out all the plans for the coup on a notebook, a paper notebook, because he’s like 78 years old. He had the entire notes from all the meetings. Then Bolsonaro’s aide-de-camp, Lt. Colonel Mauro Cid, forgot to empty the trash folder in his PC, so they found all of his emails about the coup plot.

Basically, they spent two years plotting, first, an auto coup to maintain Bolsonaro in power. And the way they did that was by working with this social media network of right-wing bloggers under the command of Carlos Bolsonaro and Paulo Figueiredo, who’s been hiding in the US for a couple years, who’s become this kind of spokesman for Brazil to the Republicans, to delegitimize the Supreme Court , the Electoral Court, and the electronic voting system. This was done very systematically over the course of two years.

Bolsonaro held a press conference in which he used public television. It wasn’t even a press conference, it was a televised event on national public television, in which he spent an hour saying that the elections were going to be stolen, that he had proof the electronic voting system could be hacked into. And for this, he was barred from running for office for eight years, because it’s abuse of power.

He harnessed the communications network to make accusations, without providing any proof, about the electronic voting system. In fact, he commissioned the military to study the vulnerability of the voting system. And when the results were that it couldn’t be hacked into, he hid the results of the study from the public.

So they had been planning all of this. On Christmas Eve, one of the allies of Bolsonaro, who had been camping out in front of a military base with a group of people demanding a military coup, he was arrested trying to blow off a bomb attached to a kerosene truck in Brasilia airport. There was a mob of Bolsonaro supporters a couple days later that attacked the federal police headquarters with Molotov cocktails.

And then on the day that Lula arrived before the elections to get his credentials, they attacked the hotel he was staying in with Molotov cocktails. Prosecutors provided material evidence proving that they met with all of the commanders of the military to try and get them on board with an auto coup to keep Bolsonaro from leaving office after he lost the election. The head of the navy and the head of the air force agreed to go along with it. The chief of the army disagreed. He refused. But the army is like over twice as big as the air force and navy combined.

So at that point, they realized that wasn’t going to work. So they went to this plan C of trying to get this riot going on January 8th. And the idea behind that, as they found on written records, minutes from meetings and testimonies, was they were hoping that Lula would declare a state of emergency.

If a President declares a state of emergency, that automatically turns control of national security over to the military. And that point, someone from the air force or the navy was going to arrest Lula, Vice President Alckmin, and one of the Supreme Court ministers. And they were going to just announce that the military was going to form a transitional government until they could hold new elections.

So Lula, to his credit, he didn’t declare a state of emergency. He knew what they were going to do. So he just ordered the federal police, the only police force he controls, over to the national mall. They cleared the place out in like 20 minutes with tear gas. It was a little more complicated than what happened in Washington, D.C. You know? And so in that sense, I don’t want to sound like I’m defending Trump or anything, but it’s just not the same thing.

Unlike the U.S., Brazil has a history of military coups. It’s already had two successful military coups and multiple failed military coups.

General Smedley Butler helped Franklin Delano Roosevelt stave off a coup in the 1930s. That’s the last time we’ve ever had anything similar to that happen in the U.S., I guess. So I guess that’s one point about it. And then the other point is just that he tried to escape early Saturday morning. He tried to take off his ankle bracelet.

Yeah, I was about to mention that, that he actually on film, on video, admitted to trying to break his ankle bracelet, correct?

Yes, so what’s come out in the last couple hours is the following, which is just ridiculous. I just wonder what the hell was going through these federal police’s heads when they let him stay in that mansion under house arrest.

Everyone has been saying there was going to be some commotion created by a protest in front of his house that his son was calling for, and he was going to slip out and make a beeline for the American or Argentine embassy, like 15 minutes away by car. But now they’ve discovered that there is a private airstrip, 200 meters from his mansion, owned by the family of Nelson Piquet, the Formula One racer who was one of Bolsonaro’s biggest campaign donors, who’s already been tied up in a corruption scandal with Bolsonaro. In other words, there was an airplane waiting 200 meters away.

So all he had to do was get through that ankle bracelet, he could have run there if he wasn’t such a pathetic, out-of-shape guy.

Oh man, as if we needed any more proof of his criminality here. And I think there’s more to that story as you just mentioned, so I feel like that’s a one-hour conversation in and of itself.

For sure. But let me just say, the point about the ankle bracelet is irrelevant now because his actual prison term has started anyway. So he hasn’t been preemptively arrested anymore, now he’s actually serving his time.

Well, it’s good to have some degree of justice in this world during these times, so that’s good to know at the very least. So as we have this conversation today, going back to the police raid in Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro’s public safety secretary, Victor dos Santos, who oversees the police, was quoted as saying that more raids like the one in Penha will take place. So amid the talks of more military-style raids, what can you tell us about the lack of effort to not only address the financial apparatus of drug cartels, but also putting more resources basically into more pertinent things like public education, public transportation, public health care? Because it seems to me, and I’ve dealt with this scenario in various other countries on various episodes that we’ve done on the show, is that it’s a lot easier to shoot a gun than it is to teach your child how to read or how to do mathematics.

And so it just lends another component to the moral bankruptcy, I would say, to the people who make the decisions to militarize, over militarize, re-militarize the police in one form or another. And perhaps another question to add to that is, could we see the same thing happen here in the U.S. as far as these sort of deadly raids?

The different police forces have different functions in Brazil, right? The investigative police are the civil police. They’re the detectives. They do the investigations. And the military police are only supposed to come in to execute warrants, to stop crimes while they’re happening, and things like that. In a functional system like that, there would have to be much better communication between the different forces.

It seems like the military police just do whatever they want. But the fact is that these drug trafficking mafias operate in multiple states and multiple countries. In many cases, you really need the federal police, which is the equivalent of the FBI, to aggressively go after these drug gangs. And so at the same time that these far-right governors are pressuring Congress and the Senate to introduce legislation to declare the drug trafficking gangs as terrorist organizations, they’re also introducing legislation to weaken the federal police, to weaken their ability to go after drug trafficking gang leaders.

And it’s because these drug trafficking gangs are infiltrated into the right-wing political parties and the establishment, the financial establishment of Brazil. So it’s clear that they’re not interested in actually solving the problem of drug trafficking gangs. If they were, they would be doing it in a different way.

It’s not a question of like, oh, somebody just needs to explain to them a better way to do it. They’re making money off of this whole situation. They like it the way it is.

They gain more political power this way. And so that’s what makes it hard to fight when a powerful group of political interests is doing everything it can to kind of maintain the situation the way it is right now. I agree with the first thing you said, regarding whether we could see something like this happening in the U.S. If you’re talking about an armed group that acts clandestinely like this legalized death squad embedded in the military police in Rio de Janeiro, the BOPE, that doesn’t respond to the regular rule of law, isn’t judged in the regular courts, whose criminal members can’t be thrown in a regular jail and can’t be sued, then the closest thing I think we have to that in the U.S. is ICE, right? ICE is a secret masked police force that regularly ignores the law and doesn’t seem to suffer any repercussions for this. A lot of these military police special forces guys wear masks too. So I believe that both the Brazilian military police and ICE operate in a state of exception. They don’t answer to the regular rule of law. ICE is not just going in and massacring people, it’s kidnapping people. The military police are actually massacring people. But the fact that both groups operate in a state of exception outside of the regular rule of law is very similar.

And in both cases, I would say that it’s an example of fascism. And I don’t use the word fascism lightly. I’m not someone who says everybody is a fascist.

I’m saying based on historical tradition of fascism, if you look at how fascist governments and their police forces operated it’s very similar, if not almost identical.

Usually towards the end of the show, I would ask guests, what else can we learn from this sort of event? But considering that the people in power who set all these tragic chains of events in motion, openly declaring that there are going to be similar events happening again in the future, it gives me great cause for concern.

In addition to what you mentioned during the course of this conversation, you also mentioned the idea of the state of exception. And I have to say that as the son of Salvadoran immigrants, that definitely hits pretty hard considering the authoritarianism that we see in El Salvador under the Bukele administration. So I think perhaps maybe it’s a more justified comparison to compare the police with what’s going on in El Salvador, in addition to the parallels that we can make with the U.S. So with that said, we are out of time.

We’ve been speaking with Brian Meir, who’s an author and a Brazil correspondent for Telesur English. So Brian, I’ve been following your work for some time. I really admire what you do. Keep up the great work, and thank you very much for being on the show with us.

All right, thanks for having me. And maybe if you want to help out somehow, try and get the International Criminal Court to investigate Governor Claudio Castro from Rio de Janeiro for crimes against humanity.

Far-right former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been arrested and is currently being held in a heavily guarded state room with a private bathroom inside the Federal Police headquarters in Brasilia - an alternative to a common prison cell which is a privilege typically guaranteed to former heads of state.

The arrest order was requested by the Federal Police and issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The 17-page document can be read, in Portuguese, here.

According to the arrest order, the former President violated the conditions of his house arrest by attempting to remove his electronic ankle monitor shortly after midnight on November 22.

Earlier that day, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, himself under investigation for payroll skimming, used Christian nationalist language in a call for a vigil in front of his father’s mansion on his social media accounts.

According to the Federal Police, with Bolsonaro’s mansion in Solar de Brasilia condominium complex located approximately 15 minutes by car from the Argentinian embassy, this protest created an environment conducive to his escape.

“Although the call for protesters is disguised as a ‘vigil’ for the health of the defendant,” Supreme Court Minister Alexandre de Moraes wrote in the arrest order, “Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s conduct indicates a repetition of the modus operandi of the criminal organization led by the said defendant, in the sense of using criminal popular movements to obtain personal advantages. In this case, the potential holding of the alleged ‘vigil’ presents a very high risk to the effectiveness of house arrest and endangers public order and the effectiveness of criminal law.”

Bolsonaro was put under house arrest on July 22, 2025, during final deliberations in the trial for plotting a military coup which resulted in a guilty verdict and 27-year prison sentence on September 11, after the federal police judged he was a flight risk. At the time, his former ally Carla Zambelli had already fled to Italy and his son, Eduardo, who is now wanted for treason for lobbying with the Trump administration to impose tariffs on Brazil to pressure for his father’s release, had fled to Texas. Earlier this year, Bolsonaro had spent two nights in the Hungarian embassy unannounced. In December, 2023, he renounced the presidency 3 days before the end of his term and fled to Orlando, Florida, in an apparent attempt to create plausible deniability for the Jan. 8 capitol uprising which he was later convicted for planning. Shortly after his house arrest, he violated the terms of his imprisonment by allowing family members and allies to post videos and audio messages on their social media accounts. After being convicted along with Bolsonaro, former Intelligence Chief, Alexandre Ramagem, fled to the United States in September and is currently fighting an extradition order.

Bolsonaro’s preemptive arrest is expected to come to a close next week, as the final deadline for appeals is set for Tuesday, November 26. The legal wiggle room for appeals is tight and depends on the introduction of new evidence or proof of mathematical error in the sentencing. The first appeals presented by his lawyers were immediately rejected by the Supreme Court and there is no reason to believe any last minute appeal will be accepted. Therefore, the former President is expected to begin serving his 27-year sentence sometime later next week. His political allies have been pressuring for him to serve his sentence under house arrest, citing his advanced age and alleged health issues which have not been verified by an independent medical team. His attempt to remove his electronic ankle monitor complicates this and he is now expected to serve at least some of his time in a privileged cell inside the Federal Police headquarters or Papuda penitentiary.

On March 6, 2019 the Lava Jato taskforce announced that the US DOJ was transferring 80% of the fines it levied against Petrobras to the Brazilian Public Prosecutors Office (Ministerio Publico Federal/MPF) to set up a privately managed “anti-corruption investment fund” that would bypass all of the public institutions and laws that were set up to protect against corruption, including the Federal Auditing Courts (TCU), the Federal Transparency Portal, and federal budget and budgetary planning laws. This transfer, which essentially constituted a kickback to the Lava Jato task force for its help in sabotaging Brazil’s national development strategy, attacking the PT party and jailing Lula, was valued at $682,560,000.

One week later, the Supreme Court blocked the initiative, ordering that the money returned to Brazil from the fines be rerouted into the public education system. At this point, journalists and investigators began to scrutinize the role that Transparency International had played in the process. This culminated in 2022, when Brazil’s Federal Auditing Court and MPF opened an investigation against Transparency International Brazil, for it’s role supporting the now disgraced Lava Jato task force in an attempt to illegally reroute public funds into a private foundation. In May, 2024, the Supreme Court opened a second investigation against Transparency International for an alleged attempt to take over the management of funds acquired in fines during the Lava Jato investigation. In October, 2024, the Attorney General’s Office threw out the case for lack of material evidence.

In August, 2024, veteran investigative journalist Luis Nassif revealed evidence showing that Transparency International had attempted to establish a similar private, “anti-corruption fund” with fines and settlements collected by the MPF in another anti-corruption investigation called, “Operation Greenfield”. TI published a response to Nassif’s article which can be read here.

On October 15, 2025, during a speech explaining his vote on a Supreme Court’s ruling over a case involving establishing the destination of fines collected by Federal Labor Court, entitled, Allegation of Breach of Fundamental Precept (ADPF) 944, Supreme Court Minister Gilmar Mendes spent 20 minutes criticizing Transparency International. Now a matter of court record, Minister Mendes introduced new information and analysis that is important for anyone studying what Gaspard Estrada called, “the biggest judicial scandal in Brazilian history”. In his conclusion on the topic, Minister Mendes alleges that real goal behind the attempt to outsource hundreds of millions of dollars in public money into the stewardship of Transparency International was electoral. This, at a time when members of the Lava Jato task force, like director Dallagnol, where planning their resignations so that they could run for office themselves.

The following is a transcript and translation of an excerpt of Minister Gilmar Mendes’ October 15 justification of vote on ADPF 944. The entire plenary session of the Supreme Court that day, including the full speech made by Minister Mendes, can be watched here. Deliberations on ADPF 944 begin at 3:14:14.

On Transparency International

Minister Gilmar Mendes: The partnership between the Lava Jato and the Greenfield operations involved Transparency International Brazil, a multinational NGO based in Berlin which is supposedly dedicated to promoting anti-corruption practices. As I have emphasized before, the truth is that Transparency International acted as a veritable accomplice to the Lava Jato task force and the abuses it perpetrated within the Brazilian Criminal justice system.

On December 9, 2014, Transparency International signed a memorandum of understanding with the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministerio Publico Federal/MPF) and the Attorney General, to establish an agenda for cooperation in the fight against corruption. Since then, the NGO claims to have collaborated with the MPF in producing anti-corruption knowledge, supporting whistle-blowers, providing technical training, and conducting awareness campaigns. A scrutiny of this partnership, however, reveals actions that were less than republican and deeply connected to financial and private interests, bordering on illegalities.

Some episodes from this long relationship are noteworthy. Transparency International was appointed by the MPF to compose the so-called Social Curatorship Committee of the so-called Lava Jato Foundation to help manage its resources, and its own representatives may even have gotten seats on that board. In the case of the leniency agreement struck with the Operation Greenfield prosecutors, Transparency International’s participation was even more revealing, and more blatant. In 2017, the prosecutors responsible for Operation Greenfield signed a memorandum of understanding with JBS corporation and Transparency International to formalize a management and execution schedule for resources earmarked for social projects according to the company’s leniency agreement. The Attorney General approved this initiative after Transparency International repeatedly asked to be included in this specific leniency agreement, which involved a billion-dollar sum earmarked for social projects.

Supreme Court Minister Gilmar Mendes reading his statement on TI in Brazil’s Supreme Court on October 15, 2025

Following his approval, a specific action was launched under the existing memorandum of understanding between the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office and Transparency International to fully execute the leniency agreement. As a result of this MoU, Transparency International was put in charge of managing 2.3 billion reais for social projects, with decision making power over which projects to fund. The MoU’s terms were unclear and lacked proper controls. Because of this, it is impossible to know if Transparency International was even remunerating itself with these funds.

During this period of Lava Jato and similar operations Brazil produced a type of Brazilian singularity, a jabuticaba - a type of corruption fighter that really likes money. It is a singularity. It’s the idea that the fight against corruption can be profitable, even on an international level, because what we see later is cooperation with Swiss prosecutors and people from the DOJ, who, start providing services in Brazil in a kind of revolving door. That Swiss prosecutor, Lentz. Lentz ended up seeking employment here in Brazil. In other words this was was an international criminal organization.

Minister Alexandre Moraes: “And some of our people sought employment in the United States.”

Minister Gilmar Mendes: Indeed! You know? It’s a, a thing... This prosecutor brought evidence from Switzerland and handed it over here in a supermarket bag. This is a level of informality the World had never seen. This Republic of Curitiba [a nickname for the Lava Jato task force and colluding local judiciary] was really very creative, very inventive. And this informality is a trademark of theirs.

I know a former judge of the German Federal Court of Justice who is a director at Transparency International. I hope to have the opportunity to tell him about these facts some day. But we see later from [the Telegram leaks revealed in] Operation Spoofing that in Brasilia, besides Bruno Brandão from Transparency International, who was also frequently present in Curitiba, Joaquim Falcão was acting on behalf of the Getulio Vargas Foundation to help create this foundation. The revelations from the series of reports known as Vaza Jato and Operation Spoofing show that Bruno Brandão, then representative of Transparency International in Brazil, was a true partner for the causes of the Public Prosecutor’s Office with the head of the Lava Jato task force, Deltan Dallagnol.

This cozy relationship between the task force and the NGO is well illustrated in a report published by Agencia Publica entitled “Lava Jato’s Alliance with Transparency International“. One passage of the article reads:

“In June 2017, the chief prosecutor of Lava Jato [Deltan Dallagnol] asked Brandão to help him think of strategies to build international support for the investigation . ‘I was thinking whether there could be an international declaration of support saying that it was important for the country’s economic development that emphasized the need for the investigation to proceed within the law’, he wrote in a private chat on Telegram on June 2, 2017. As a solution, the executive director of Transparency International proposed to Dallagnol that it publish a a study that would credit Lava Jato for Brazil’s economic recovery.”

See how cretinous they were? See how bold they were?

“I think we have several options and we should start acting quickly,” Brandão responded. “We can start looking at this on Thursday. We are thinking of starting a survey on the perceptions of the largest foreign investors in Brazil about what they think of Lava Jato, if it is good for the economy or not. And I would doubt that an investor, looking at the medium and long term, would say no. If Brazil is beginning to recover, we can start crediting that to your work. Putting that in the mouth of the foreign investor would give it much more credibility and would dismantle one of the arguments that critics repeat the most.”

Brandão contacted Dallagnol in 2018, when the National Council of the Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an administrative complaint against then-prosecutor Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima (now retired) for a breach of decorum—a charge resulting from his criticisms of former president Michel Temer and the Supreme Court in the press and on social media.

Dallagnol showed concern that the case would open a breach for a complaint against public statements that he himself had already made on social media. While privately criticizing Carlos Fernando’s stance, Brandão heeded Dallagnol’s request. That day, the prosecutor received no response. On May 10, he again pressed for a position from Transparency International. “Bruno, do you think TI could release something balanced, as always, about freedom of expression by next Monday? It’s good to revisit this kind of text because, as Minister Alexandre argues, freedom of expression is frequently used as a smokescreen for the attacks we are now suffering in the court’s actions,” he wrote.

This time, Brandão answered that he would try to write something the next day. After several follow-up messages, Brandão, who was providing a remunerated advisory service to Dallagnol, finally published a note on Transparency International’s (TI) Facebook page on May 22, 2018. In it, TI expressed concern about threats to prosecutors’ freedom of speech and urged the council to define “breach of decorum” through a general rule, not a single case. This general interpretation was crucial, as it aimed to prevent a scenario where Dallagnol could be investigated for his own statements. Dallagnol had made it clear to Brandão that he needed this public statement from TI to exert political pressure.

In another conversation, dated February 2017, and also reported by the media, the head of the task force shares the details of a political endeavor he was starting.

“Dude, I am starting a new project with the Getulio Vargas Foundation: the revenge of the ten measures (laughs), with Joaquim Falcão and TI. I sought them out with the goal of expanding on the ten measures for political reform, bids, budget, etc. We will remove the parts that were criticized from the original ten measures and develop a series of other proposals. This is phase one, the proposals are being finalized. We are trying to involve the largest number of actors possible as consultants. What I see is that many people make generic alternative proposals or simply criticize the ten measures, but they do not make articulated proposals for the debate table. The idea is to make this happen, generate concrete proposals like the ten measures. Afterwards, as phase two, disconnected from the first, I will coordinate with movements with whoever is more strategic, to give a seal of approval, according to objective criteria, to candidates for the 2018 elections. It will be for candidates who commit to the ten measures who have no criminal record. The goal is to seek some degree of political renewal and bring people to Congress who are committed to change. In phase two, the MPF will not appear. FGV and TI, therefore, Transparency International, have already agreed to phase one, but we are starting in the shadows. Please keep it confidential for now.” At this point, the project was taking on a distinct electoral bias. This demonstrates that the Task Force members collectively aspired to realize a specific political-electoral project, leveraging the support of both official organizations and informal contacts to do so.

The facts referenced here are listed merely as examples. I could mention others that further demonstrate the scenario of total confusion between the actions of the prosecution team on the Lava Jato Task Force, their personal interests, and the actions, in this case, of Transparency International. And here, one must also register the acephalous state of the Attorney General’s Office itself, which was headed by prosecutor Rodrigo Janot during most of this time of sad memories. The instrumentalization of an NGO as an arm of the Task Force’s political and media defense, along with the attempt to co-opt other institutions like the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, which has a history of substantial contributions to Brazilian society, further demonstrates this blurring of interests. This same indistinction is also evidenced by the positions held by the individuals involved, such as Joaquim Falcão. As both the director of the FGV Rio Law School and a board member of Transparency International Brazil, Falcão was an early and public enthusiast of Operation Lava Jato.

Transparency International positioned itself to manage multi-billion dollar sums acquired through settlements made by prosecutors from the MPF. These funds were to be handled either via the Lava Jato Foundation or through the management of an endowment that they attempted to establish with fines levied in Operation Greenfield.

In conclusion, the public agents involved in the Lava Jato Foundation case exploited loopholes in the regulations governing the allocation of funds from plea bargains and leniency agreements. They used these gaps to maneuver billions of dollars in a surreptitious and opaque manner to serve improper purposes. The failed foundation that Transparency International attempted to establish under Operation Greenfield was designed to follow the same model. These episodes conclusively demonstrate the need to establish precise parameters and explicit prohibitions for the judicial allocation of funds from legal settlements. Without such reforms, we risk a recurrence of the regrettable scandals witnessed in Operation Lava Jato.

On October 28, Rio de Janeiro suffered its worst police massacre in history, with 64 deaths recorded so far - a tally that is certain to rise in coming days as the search for bodies continues. Under Bolsonaro ally, Governor Claudio Castro, Rio’s government claims that only 12 of the victims found so far had police records connecting them to the Comando Vermelho drug trafficking organization, with 4 police officers numbering among the dead. No information has come out yet about the other 50 victims, but many are believed to be innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire, as police fired automatic weapons from armored vehicles and drones dropped grenades into the favelas of Penha and Complexo do Alemão. The following statement has been issued by 28 civil society organizations, most comprised of favela residents.

Public safety is not built with blood

The deadliest police operation in the history of Rio de Janeiro, Operation Containment, this Tuesday (28), exposes the failure and structural violence of the state’s public security policy and plunges the city into a state of terror.

The massacre that has been unfolding since the early hours of this Tuesday (28), in the Alemão and Penha favela complexes in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone, is part of a long and tragic history of killings committed by police forces in the state, mistakenly presented as public policy. So far, 64 people have been killed in a single operation. It’s the deadliest police operation in Rio de Janeiro’s history.

The massive loss of life reiterates the pattern of lethality that characterizes the administration of Cláudio Castro, the governor who holds the title of being responsible for four of the five deadliest police operations in Rio de Janeiro’s history, surpassing his own previous records set in Jacarezinho (2021) and Vila Cruzeiro (2022). What Governor Cláudio Castro described today as the largest police operation in Rio de Janeiro’s history is, in reality, a massacre produced by the Brazilian state.

Throughout the nearly 40 years of the Federal Constitution’s existence, what has been seen in Rio’s favelas is the consolidation of a security policy based on the use of force and death, disguised as “war” or “resistance to crime.” It is a selective action, directed against Black and impoverished populations, which uses bloodshed as its instrument of control and domination.

It contains no elements that effectively reduce the power of criminal factions in these territories. On the contrary: these actions deepen insecurity and fear, instill panic, disrupt the daily lives of thousands of families, prevent children from going to school, and impose terror as an expression of state power. Death cannot be treated as public policy.

This cycle of violence is not accidental: it stems from a deliberate strategy that privileges armed confrontation to the detriment of any commitment to life and legality. During his statement, the governor even attempted to blame an investigation into police violence, the Allegation of Breach of Fundamental Precept (ADPF) No. 635 and the civil society organizations that worked for its implementation, for the operation’s lethality. In doing so, he attacks police oversight, a role constitutionally assigned to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and seeks to delegitimize the work of entities fighting for the right to life in the favelas.

Castro also acted politically to weaken ADPF 976 in the Supreme Federal Court, aiming to release security forces from legal obligations such as prior planning and the preservation of lives. Simultaneously, he maintained the logic of rewarding lethality by sanctioning, in the new Organic Law of the Civil Police, a “bravery” bonus — a provision that replaces the old “Wild West bonus,” which was vetoed after widespread social disapproval. By rewarding confrontation and death, the government encourages a war mentality and turns communities into battlefields, where residents are treated as “internal enemies.”

The Manual on the Use of Force and Firearms by Public Security Officials, published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), establishes fundamental principles that should guide all police action: legality, necessity, proportionality, precaution, and accountability. The operations conducted by the State of Rio de Janeiro blatantly violate all these parameters, constituting a systematic practice of the illegitimate use of lethal force.

Brazil and the State of Rio de Janeiro have been repeatedly warned by the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about the racist and discriminatory nature of the “war on drugs” policy, which determines who dies and who lives in the favelas and peripheries. The State of Rio de Janeiro has accumulated two convictions in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights — for the Acari (1990) and Nova Brasília (1994 and 1995) massacres — and continues to replicate the same pattern of violence. In the last ten years (2014–2024), 5,421 young people under the age of 29 were killed in police interventions, according to the Public Security Institute.

Since the 1990s, successive governments have ignored public security proposals guided by prevention, violence reduction, and the strengthening of rights. Investment remains focused on confrontation, with tragic and repeated results: more deaths, more pain, and no security.

What we are witnessing today is the collapse of any commitment to legality and human rights: the state replaces rights-based public safety with large-scale military actions. Under the pretext of the “war on drugs,” a state of permanent insecurity is established, directed against the Black and poor population of the favelas. There is no justification for a state policy, supposedly aimed at protecting society, to continue to be conducted through bloodshed. Public safety must guarantee rights, not violate them. The residents of the favelas have the right to life, physical integrity, and peace — and this is non-negotiable.

Rio de Janeiro (RJ), October 28, 2025.

Anistia Internacional Brasil
Justiça Global
Centro de Estudos de Segurança e Cidadania — CESeC
Conectas Direitos Humanos
Centro pela Justiça e o Direito Internacional — CEJIL
Instituto Papo Reto do Complexo do Alemão
Movimentos
Redes da Maré
Instituto de Estudos da Religião — ISER
Observatório de Favelas
Núcleo de Assessoria Jurídica Universitária Popular (NAJUP) Luiza Mahin
Movimento Unidos dos Camelôs
Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais — RJ
Fórum Popular de Segurança Pública do Rio de Janeiro
CIDADES - Núcleo de Pesquisa Urbana da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
Instituto de Defensores de Direitos Humanos — DDH
Iniciativa Direito Memória e Justiça Racial
Frente Estadual pelo Desencarceramento — RJ
Instituto Terra Trabalho e Cidadania — ITTC
Associação de Amigos/as e Familiares de Pessoas Presas e Internos/as da Fundação Casa — Amparar
Gabinete Assessoria Jurídica Organizações Populares — GAJOP
Instituto Sou da Paz
Rede Justiça Criminal
Federação de Órgãos para Assistência Social e Educacional — FASE RJ
Rede Nacional de Advogadas e Advogados Populares — RENAP RJ
Rede de Comunidades e Movimentos contra a Violência
Casa Fluminense
Plataforma Justa

With COP 30, the United Nations Climate Change conference, kicking of in Belem next month, some voices in the Global North are using the authorization of a new offshore drilling permit near the border with French Guiana as a platform to delegitimize the Brazilian government. Through misleading headlines claiming Lula authorized drilling “at the mouth of the Amazon River,” the government is framed as hypocritical for hosting the conference. Most of these articles fail to mention that Brazil’s environmental regulation agency, IBAMA, has only authorized testing, not commercial drilling, and that the site in question is actually located 540 kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon River and 175 kilometers offshore, near the border with the Guianas, where imperialist petroleum multinationals like Exxon have been drilling for years.

Without belittling the urgency of fighting climate change or transitioning to renewables, but to illustrate the perspective of Brazil’s organized working class on this issue, I interviewed Deyvid Bacelar, President of Brazil’s Unified Federation of Petroleum Workers (Federação Única dos Petroleiros, or FUP). Founded in 1994, the FUP is a federation of 14 labor unions that represents 180,000 workers at Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company.

The new offshore drilling license for the Brazilian Equatorial Margin is drawing international criticism in the lead-up to COP 30. What benefits will it bring to Brazil, especially its working class?

Deyvid Bacelar: We are talking about the Equatorial Margin, which stretches from Amapá to Rio Grande do Norte. This is an area of oil reserves that encompasses two major Brazilian regions—the North and the Northeast. These regions have the worst human development indices in Brazil and have always been overlooked in terms of development, especially industrial development.

The exploration and production of oil and gas in the Brazilian Equatorial Margin will allow these regions to achieve not only industrial and economic development but also social and sustainable development. The FUP advocates that this extraordinary revenue from oil activity be used in a differentiated manner. This is particularly important because the auctions for this area were held under a concession regime, unlike the production-sharing regime used for the pre-salt area. Under the proposed framework, a large portion of this this strategic reserve will remain with the Union. Half of the royalties would go to Brazil’s social fund, which allocates 75% to public education and 25% to public health.

We need specific legislation for the Equatorial Margin, approved by the Brazilian National Congress, to ensure this wealth truly drives economic, social, and sustainable development. This includes protecting the Amazon rainforest, the Atlantic raiforest, and the Caatinga biome, and supporting socio-environmental projects developed in full dialogue with indigenous, quilombola, and riverside communities, forest peoples in general, and workers. Without this approach, we will not see the full and correct use of this wealth in the north and northeast of the country. This is why we support two major bills, one in the Chamber of Deputies and another in the Federal Senate, that provide differentiated treatment for the Equatorial Margin.

I must clarify that the recently licensed pioneer well is solely for identifying whether oil is present. It will not produce oil. If the area is approved for commercial drilling, production platforms have to be ordered and built, hopefully in Brazil. This will generate domestic employment and income. But they will only start operating in five or six years. This gives us time to establish a differentiated framework for the wealth generated by the Brazilian Equatorial Margin.

How would you, as a leader of the FUP, respond to environmentalist critics who say that drilling should not happen because Brazil should make an immediate transition to renewable energy?

First, we must engage in dialogue. We have already spoken with several environmental NGOs, and a few of them have met with the FUP. Our response is that Brazil is already light-years ahead of nearly every country in its use of renewable energy. Fifty percent of our energy matrix comes from renewable sources, making it cleaner than that of many countries. Our electrical matrix is already 90% renewable [primarily hydroelectric], which sets us apart from the rest of the world. Brazil has been fulfilling its role well in promoting the energy transition.

In fact, the main culprit for greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil is not industrial or oil activity. Unfortunately, it is agribusiness, through the misuse of land, including slash-and-burn practices. This segment accounts for 76% of our greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, if we want to seriously and correctly confront climate change in Brazil, we must target the group that pollutes and emits the most.

Second, it is inadmissible for the Global North to set rules for the Global South. The Global North, which has already destroyed its forests and is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is in no position to make demands on Brazil, which has been fulfilling its role in the energy transition, by saying we cannot explore our oil reserves. We will never agree with that. And it will definitely not be some NGOs—without generalizing—funded by the Global North and international oil companies that set the rules for the Brazilian people.

We need to guarantee our energy sovereignty. If Brazil does not bring new reserves into production by 2030, our country, which is currently self-sufficient in oil, will become dependent on other oil-producing nations. We would have to import oil from the United States of North America, the United Arab Emirates, or other gulf states. If we do not explore this reserve in the differentiated way we propose, we will see a major drop in production from the Brazilian pre-salt area—which accounts for 78% of our total output today—starting in 2036. Brazil would then be forced to import dirtier oil, with a much worse carbon footprint than our own and at a higher cost. We already face issues of energy poverty; if we fail to guarantee our energy sovereignty, the Brazilian people will become even more energy-insecure, especially in the north and northeast.

These two arguments are central to our dialogue with environmental NGOs. Furthermore, some of them agree that it is far better for Petrobras, a public company controlled by the Brazilian state, to conduct oil exploration and production in the Equatorial Margin than international oil companies. Many already agree with us. Why? Because Petrobras exercises much greater control and has not had any environmental accidents in the last 25 years. This stands in contrast to international oil companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East. Petrobras has been operating in the heart of the Amazon jungle, in Urucu, for over 35 years without a single environmental accident. This proves that Petrobras has the competence, as a Brazilian company controlled by its people, to promote energy sovereignty while protecting the environment, caring for forest peoples and workers, and engaging with surrounding communities.

As we have said, we need differentiated treatment for the Equatorial Margin, and this requires legislation that the FUP is supporting in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate.

Rio de Janeiro, September 21, 2025 (screenshot of video by Douglas Engle)

On Sunday, September 21, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets in dozens of towns and cities to protest an attempt by right-wing forces in Congress to amend the constitution. The changes would grant amnesty to former President Jair Bolsonaro and seven of his cronies—including high-ranking military officers recently convicted with sentences ranging from 2 to 27 years in prison. A second amendment would make it nearly impossible to prosecute corrupt federal lawmakers.

Organized by two broad-based fronts of labor unions, social movements, and leftist political parties—Povo sem Medo and Frente Brasil Popular—the protest was the largest national demonstration since the "Education Tsunami" of 2019, which blocked former President Bolsonaro's plans to introduce tuition at public universities.

In the following opinion piece, João Ricardo Dornelles, who fought the military dictatorship during the 1970s as part of the clandestine Ação Popular Marxista-Leninista (APML/Marxist-Leninist People's Action), offers a guide for how the Brazilian left can capitalize on the momentum generated last Sunday.

September 21: A Cleansing of the Soul and Tipping Point for the Brazilian Left

By João Ricardo Dornelles*

September 21, 2025, could mark a true turning point—the moment the tide begins to turn against the unfavorable political dynamics that have hampered Brazil's popular and progressive movements. It could be the decisive shift in the government's strategy to secure its own ability to govern.

Recife, September 21, 2025 (photo by Brian Mier)

Getting people into the streets has never been a strength of the Brazilian left, and it has certainly not been a priority for the Lula administration. The government has preferred a defensive strategy, playing for a nil-nil draw, choosing "not to make waves" in a futile attempt to win over right-wing forces—the enemy. The official line is always the same: the so-called "balance of power" is stacked against us, making it impossible to advance a social reform agenda that requires massive, mobilized popular support.

I, however, disagree with the strategy of the Lula administration and Construindo Um Novo Brasil (Building a New Brazil/CNB) - the largest internal caucus in the Workers' Party (PT). In their quest to maintain an ever-broader coalition, they end up prioritizing institutional maneuvering and endless negotiations with our enemies, all in the name of expanding this "broad front" to ensure governability. And then we hear the same old excuse: "The balance of power isn't in our favor."

But the balance of power isn't a natural law or a mathematical formula; it doesn't fall from the sky. It is built through political action, and conditions can be created to change it. This requires the collective action of political actors from the popular social movements. We must organize and mobilize a historic popular bloc and set it in motion. We need organized mass action. This is what is meant by praxis as the criterion of truth—a permanent social practice.

Rio, 9/21/2025 (screenshot of video by Douglas Engle)

This change doesn't happen spontaneously, contrary to what many of our comrades in the Lula government and the broader left seem to think. It is not a matter of passively waiting for the objective conditions to magically ripen and shift the balance of power.

Political struggle and genuine social transformation are achieved through a dialectical process that merges the objective and subjective conditions of reality. It is within this process that the necessary conditions can be created to radically shift an unfavorable balance of power.

This requires the action of the organized masses, of leftist political parties, trade unions, and social movements—this confluence of forces unifying into a mass movement with a precise political project. This means occupying public spaces, the streets, the squares, and all available communication channels; applying pressure as a mass political force on state institutions; and becoming an axis of attraction and cohesion for the whole of society. In other words, it means winning the hearts and minds of the entire population. We must stop speaking only to our own circles and start addressing all of society. The goal is to become a leading political force, building a historic popular bloc with a clear platform: to fight neoliberalism and fascism, and to point toward a strategic anti-capitalist objective.

S. Paulo, 9/21/2025 (Screenshot of video by Midia Ninja)

Discussing the fight against the two constitutional amendments that passed the lower house last Thursday is to engage in a mass democratic struggle against Bolsonarista fascism and the delinquent center right. Fighting against the 6 day workweek, for income tax exemption for workers earning up to R$5,000/month and for taxing the super-rich is—in today's Brazil—to directly confront neoliberal capitalism. In doing so, it challenges the colonial, slave-holding, oligarchic legacy of the Brazilian elites, which has never been broken. These are popular demands, issues that matter to all workers, small business owners, and the vast majority who live by their daily labor. To this, we must add the fight for national sovereignty and Brazil's true independence.

This is the essential foundation for building a popular, counter-hegemonic historic bloc capable of decisively advancing the social emancipation of the Brazilian people.

September 21 can represent this turning point. It can be the moment of popular realization that politics is not made solely in the backroom deals and accommodations of the powerful. Politics becomes a noble endeavor when the people, organized in their countless social movements, enter the scene, leave the audience, and step onto the real stage of history. By occupying the streets and squares, they become the active subjects of history. It is the moment when the abstract concept of "the people" can transform into a constituent force and change the destiny of a society.

We have a golden opportunity which started on September 21, 2025. It is a chance to change the course of events, to shift the direction of Brazilian politics, to pull the government further to the left, and to show many of our leftist politicians how social emancipation is achieved through collective mass action.

We can take the first step to significantly alter this so-called "unfavorable balance of power."

It's time to corner not only Bolsonarista fascism but also the delinquent center right, the financiers of Faria Lima street, the Globo, Estadão, and Folha media empires, and other communication outlets that act as agents of capital and U.S. geopolitical interests.

We have a chance to turn the tide. This was shown on September 21.

It was a day that cleansed the soul of the Brazilian people.

Dare to struggle, dare to win.

The struggle continues!

Rio de Janeiro, September 22, 2025.

* João Ricardo Dornelles teaches law at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio); He is the Coordinator of the Human Rights Center at PUC-Rio; member of the Joaquín Herrera Flores Institute/Latin America; member of the Fernando Santa Cruz Collective; former member of Ação Popular Marxista-Leninista (APML/Marxist-Leninist People's Action); and author or co-author of 11 books.

Watch my news story on the protests for From the South here:

Here is a list of the convicted co-conspirators with their sentences:

Lieutenant Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro’s former Aide-de-Camp, struck a plea bargain deal and received a sentence of 2 years of house arrest.

Alexandre Ramagem, former Chief of ABIN, Brazil’s National Intelligence Agency, received a sentence of 16 years.

Army General Paulo Sergio Nogueira, Bolsonaro’s former Defense Minister, received a sentence of 19 years.

Retired Army General Augusto Heleno has received a sentence of 21 years. During the military dictatorship he served as Aide-de-Camp for hardliner General Sylvio Frota. In 1978, Frota was forced into early retirement after attempting to implement an auto-coup to block Brazil's transition back to civilian rule. Many also remember General Heleno as head of UN military operations during the Cité Soleil massacre in Haiti in 2004, serving under MINUSTAH Chief Juan Gabriel Valdez, who is now Gabriel Boric’s ambassador to the US.

Admiral Almir Garnier Santos, former Commander in Chief of the Brazilian Navy, received a sentence of 24 years.

Anderson Torres, President Bolsonaro’s former Minister of Justice, received a sentence of 24 years.

General Walter Braga Neto, former Minister of Defense and Bolsonaro’s Vice Presidential running mate in 2022, was identified by the court as co-ringleader of the coup plot (alongside Bolsonaro). He received a sentence of 26 years.

The fact that high-ranking military officers have been convicted of attempting to install a military coup is a historic first in Brazil, which has suffered from multiple military coups and coup attempts since November 3, 1891, when Field Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca enacted an auto-coup and dissolved congress. This marks the first time that any high-ranking military officer has ever received a prison sentence for participating in a coup.

Gilberto Carvalho, Brazil’s National Secretary for the Solidarity Economy, says, “The ruling makes us happy. Not because of hatred or a thirst for revenge but because it represents a defense of Brazil's democracy. Those who lived through the military dictatorship, and saw the torture and killings of those who tried to resist it, understand what I am talking about.”

This sentiment was echoed by many in Brazil’s social movements.

“We believe that it's a fair verdict because they attempted a coup d'état,” says Paulo Mansan, from the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). “Beyond that, it represents a historical rectification for the great injustice that has happened in Brazil, including all of the people who were murdered fighting against the military coup of 1964 and the dictatorship that followed. It's symbolically important to now have army generals convicted of a coup attempt.”

What happens next?

Jair Bolsonaro and his cronies are not going to prison just yet. According to Brazilian law, the defense attorneys have a period of 5 working days from the day of the court opinion to analyze the details of the final ruling and file two types of limited appeals.

According to Brazilian law, the first type of appeal is called a motion for clarification. It can be used to reduce sentences and fines if lawyers can convince the court that there is some sort of inconsistency between the justices' rulings and the opinion. A simple example of this would be if a mathematical error was made summing the different sentences for the 5 crimes committed.

The second type of appeal filed after Supreme Court rulings issued by either of its two working groups is called a motion for review. Among other things, this type of appeal can be used to pressure for a second ruling, issued by the full, 11-member plenary of the Supreme Court. However, since motions for review are traditionally based on dissenting opinions from at least 2 justices, and in Bolsonaro’s case, only one, Minister Luis Fux, voted for acquittal, there is little likelihood that the defense lawyers will be able to submit them.

The Supreme Court has a deadline of 60 days from receiving the appeals to respond to them and issue the terms and conditions for the arrests of the defendants. In recent high-profile cases, however, the court has acted quicker, averaging around 15 days. In any event, barring the remote possibility of the "use of violence” to keep Bolsonaro out of jail, which was threatened by the Trump administration last week, the defendants should be behind bars anywhere from within the next two weeks to two months from now.

* According to Brazilian law, the Supreme Court handles criminal procedures through its two five-member panels. This was the standard process until 2020, when an attempt was made to transfer these cases to the full 11-member plenary. The change created a significant backlog, leading the court to rule unanimously (11-0) on December 7, 2023, to return to the panel system. Contrary to claims by bad-faith actors like Glenn Greenwald, who misrepresent the panels as a miscarriage of justice, it is important to note that both of Jair Bolsonaro's appointees voted in favor of the measure.

Watch my news story on reactions to the Bolsonaro conviction here:

L-R: Army Chief of Staff General Walter Braga Neto, Institutional Security Cabinet Chief General Augusto Heleno and then-President Jair Bolsonaro. They aren’t laughing so much anymore

The election of former dictatorship-era captain Jair Bolsonaro debunked this idea decades later, as he immediately appointed dozens of fellow graduates from the elite, Agulhas Negras military academy to his cabinet—some of whom would later join him attempt to rupture from the democratic rule of law. Now, three of those generals—Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira, Walter Braga Neto, and Augusto Heleno—are on trial alongside ex-President Bolsonaro for plotting a military coup after he lost the 2022 presidential election. If the court issues a guilty verdict next week, they will become the first army generals in Brazilian history to be convicted of plotting a coup d'état.

Watch my full report for TeleSur’s English-language news program, From the South, here: