Released Lula in Greatest Fight of His Life
November 12, 2019
The predicament of the former Brazilian president shows how incendiary
Brazil is at the moment, writes Pepe Escobar. And the Western mainstream
media will make no effort whatsoever to explain the nasty, convoluted plot
for a global audience.
By Pepe Escobar
The Asia Times
Hes back. With a bang.
Only two days after his release from a federal prison in Curitiba, southern
Brazil, following a narrow 6×5 decision by the Supreme Court, former
President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva delivered a fiery, 45-minute long speech
in front of the Metal Workers Union in Sao Bernardo, outside of Sao Paulo,
and drawing on his unparalleled political capital, called all Brazilians to
stage nothing short of a social revolution.
When my colleagues Mauro Lopes, Paulo Leite and I interviewed Lula at the
federal prison, it was his Day 502 in a cell. By August, it was impossible
to predict that release would happen on Day 580, in early November.
The author greets Lula in prison. (Felipe L. Gonçalves/Brasil247)
His first speech to the nation after the prison saga which is far from
over could never be solemn; in fact he promised a detailed address for the
near future. What he did, in his trademark conversationalist style, was to
immediately go on the offensive, taking down a long list of every possible
enemy in the book: those who have mired Brazil into an anti-people agenda.
In terms of a fully improvised, passionate political address, this is
already anthology material.
Lula detailed the current terrible conditions for Brazilian workers. He
ripped to pieces the economic program basically a monster sell-out of
Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Chicago boy and Pinochetist whos applying
the same failed hardcore neoliberal prescriptions now being denounced and
scorned every day in the streets of Chile.
He detailed how the Brazilian right wing openly bet on neo-fascism, which is
the form that neoliberalism recently took in Brazil. He blasted mainstream
media, in the form of the so far all-powerful, ultra-reactionary Globo
empire. In a stance of semiotic genius, Lula pointed to Globos helicopter
hovering over the masses gathered for the speech, implying the organization
is too cowardly to get close to him on ground level.
And, significantly, he got right into the heart of the Bolsonaro question:
the militias. Its no secret to informed Brazilians that the Bolsonaro clan,
with its origins in the Veneto, is behaving as a sort of cheap, crude,
eschatological carbon copy of the Sopranos, running a system heavy on
militias and supported by the Brazilian military. Lula described the
president of one of the top nations in the Global South as no less than a
militia leader. That will stick all around the world.
So much for Lula peace and love, which used to be one of his cherished
mottos. No more conciliation. Bolsonaro now has to face real, fierce, solid
opposition, and cannot run away from public debate any more.
Lulas prison journey has been an extraordinary liberating experience
turning a previously wounded statesman into a fearless warrior mixing the
Tao with Steppenwolf (as sketched in Herman Hesses book). Hes free like
hes never been before and he said so, explicitly. The question is how he
will be able to muster the organizational work, the method and have enough
time to change the dire conditions for democratic opposition in Brazil. The
whole Global South is watching.
At least now the die is cast and crystal clear: Its social democracy
against neo-fascism. Socially inclusive programs, civil society involved in
setting public policy, the fight for equality versus autocracy, state
institutions linked to militias, racism and hate against all minorities.
Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, to their credit, have offered Lula their
unconditional support. In contrast, Steve Bannon is losing sleep, qualifying
Lula as the poster boy of the globalist Left across the world.
This all goes way beyond Left Populism as Slavoj Zizek and Chantal Mouffe,
among others, have been trying to conceptualize it. Lula, assuming he
remains free, is now ready to be the supreme catalyst of an integrated,
progressive, pro-people New Global Left.
Cocaine Evangelistan
Now for the really nasty bits.
I saw Lulas speech deep into the night in snow stormed Nur-Sultan,
Kazakhstans capital, in the heart of the steppes, a land trespassed against
by the greatest nomad empires in history. The temptation was to picture Lula
as a fearless snow leopard roaming the devastated steppes of urban
wastelands.
Yet snow leopards, crucially, are a species threatened with extinction.
After the speech I had serious conversations with two top interlocutors,
Bern-based analyst Romulus Maya and anthropologist Piero Leirner, a crack
authority on the Brazilian military. The picture they painted was
realistically gloomy. Here it is, in a nutshell.
Brasilia at night. (NASA/Paolo Nespoli/Flickr)
When I visited Brasilia last August, several informed sources confirmed that
the majority of the Brazilian Supreme Court is bought and paid for. After
all, they de facto legitimized all the absurdities that have been taking
place in Brazil since 2014. The absurdities were part of a hyper-complex,
slow-motion, rolling hybrid war coup that, under the cloak of a corruption
investigation, led to the dismantling of industrial national champions such
as Petrobras; the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff on spurious
charges; and the jailing of Lula, the work of judge, jury and executioner
Sergio Moro, now Bolsonaros justice minister, who was completely unmasked
by The Intercepts revelations.
The Brazilian military are all over the Supreme Court. Remember, Lulas
liberation happened after a narrow 6-to-5 score. Legally, it was impossible
to keep him in prison: the Supreme Court actually bothered to read the
Brazilian Constitution.
But there are no structural changes whatsoever on the horizon. The project
remains a Brazil sell-out coupled with a thinly veiled military
dictatorship. Brazil remains a lowly U.S. colony. So, Lula is out of jail
essentially because this system allowed it.
The military abide by Bolsonaros abysmal incompetence because he cannot
even go to the toilet without permission from General Heleno, the head of
the GSI, the Brazilian version of the National Security Council. On
Saturday, a scared Bolsonaro asked the top military brass for help after
Lulas release. And crucially, in a tweet, he defined Lula as a scoundrel
who was momentarily free.
Its this momentarily that gives away the game. Lulas murky juridical
situation is far from decided. In a harrowing but perfectly plausible
short-term scenario, Lula could in fact be sent back to jail but this time
in isolation, in a maximum security federal prison, or even inside a
military barracks; after all, hes a former chief of the armed forces.
The full focus of Lulas defense is now to have Moro disqualified. Anyone
with a brain whos been through The Intercepts revelations can clearly
identify Moros corruption. If that happens, and thats a major if, Lulas
already existing convictions will be declared null and void. But there are
others lawsuits, eight in total. This is total lawfare territory.
The militarys trump card is all about terrorism associated with Lula
and the Workers Party. If Lula, according to the harrowing scenario, is sent
back to a federal prison, that could be in Brasilia, which not by accident
holds the entire leadership of the PCC, or First Command of the Capital
the largest Brazilian criminal organization.
Maya and Leirner have shown how the PCC is allied with the military and the
U.S. Deep State, via their asset Moro, to establish not a Pax Brasilica but
what they have described as a Cocaine Evangelistan complete with
terrorist false flags blamed on Lulas command.
Leirner has exhaustively studied how the generals, for over a decade on
their website, have been trying to associate the PCC with the Workers
Party. And the association extends to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC), Hezbollah and the Bolivians. Yes, this all comes straight
from His Masters Voices playbook.
Lula, Putin and Xi
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, left, with President
Vladimir Putin. (President of Russia)
With the military betting on a strategy of chaos, augmented by Lulas
immense social base all over Brazil fuming about his return to prison and
the financial bubble finally burst, rendering the middle classes even
poorer, the stage would be set for the ultimate toxic cocktail: social
commotion allied with terrorism associated with organized crime.
Thats all the military needs to launch an extensive operation to restore
order and finally force Congress to approve the Brazilian version of the
Patriot Act (five separate bills are already making their way in Congress).
This is no conspiracy theory. This is a measure of how incendiary Brazil is
at the moment, and Western mainstream media will make no effort whatsoever
to explain the nasty, convoluted plot for a global audience.
Leirner goes to the heart of the matter when he says the current system has
no reason to retreat because its side is winning. They are not afraid of
Brazil turning into Chile. And even if that ends up happening, they already
have a culprit: Lula. Brazilian mainstream media are already releasing trial
balloons blaming Lula for the spike of the US dollar and the rise of
inflation.
Lula and the Brazilian Left should invest in a full spectrum offensive.
The 9th BRICS summit takes place in Brazil this week. A master counter-coup
would be to organize an off-the-record, extremely discreet, heavily
securitized meeting among Lula, Putin and Xi Jinping, for instance in an
embassy in Brasilia. Putin and Xi are Lulas real top allies on the global
stage. They have been literally waiting for Lula, as diplomats have
confirmed to me over and over again.
If Lula follows a restricted script of merely reorganizing the Left, in
Brazil, Latin America and even the Global South, the military system
currently in place will swallow him whole all over again. The Left is
infiltrated everywhere. Now its total war. Assuming Lula remains free, he
most certainly wont be allowed to run again for the presidency in 2022. But
thats no problem. Hes got to be extra-bold and he will be. Better not
mess with the Steppenwolf.
Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large
for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is 2030. Follow him on
Facebook.
