Tag Archives: Brazil

Last summer readings The issue of class conflict and its relation to accumulation of capital was central for classical political economists of the surplus approach. That tradition has survived in political science mostly through the work of Marxist authors. And in many recent discussions of the Brazilian crisis, that started with the 2013 protests, the 2015 turn in economic policy (the so-called New Economic Matrix), the 2016 mediatic/parliamentary coup against Dilma, and the 2018...

Beijing could be forever tarnished if it does ‘dirty business’ with the Bolsonaro government in Brazil Asia TimesChina must avoid a role in destruction of AmazonPepe Escobar

Gabriel Aidar and Julia Braga (Guest Bloggers) We have, in our new paper, gone back to the old pull-push debate on determinants of capital inflows to emerging markets, to look at the behavior of country risk premium spreads. Our Principal Component Analysis of the country-risk spread series of ten emerging economies from 1999 to 2019 revealed that 86% of the total volatility of the original series can be represented by only two components, suggesting the prevalence of common factors in...

  Cartoonish figures... and Disney toons too With the incoming inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, the United States and the two largest countries in the Latin American region will have what the press has more or less universally and uncritically referred to as populist leaders in power. It has been very common in the press to compare Trump and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) as right and left-wing populists. And although the term has not been applied as often to Bolsonaro,...

The ascendence of China and multilateral trading blocks could eventually spell the doom of the G20 and U.S. global dominance, as Pepe Escobar explains. Consortium News On The Road to a Post-G20 World Pepe Escobar See also by Pepe Escobar at Consortium News Future of Western Democracy Being Played Out in Brazil (9 Oct 2018) Welcome to the Jungle (29 Oct 2018)See also Reminiscence of the FutureA Teaser Andrei Martyanov

As noted in my previous post on this, there was a good chance that the Neo-Fascist candidate Jair Bolsonaro would win the election in Brazil. And he did, with approximately 39 percent of all votes. There are only a few things that I want to point out about this. The Workers' Party (PT) candidate received about 32 percent of all votes. Note that 29 percent or so did not vote, in one way or another. So PT maintained almost one third of the electorate in this election, while its rival in...

[Jair Bolsonaro's] first speech as president exuded the feeling of a trashy jihad by a fundamentalist sect laced with omnipresent vulgarity and the exhortation of a God-given dictatorship as the path towards a new Brazilian Golden Age.French-Brazilian sociologist Michael Lowy has described the Bolsonaro phenomenon as “pathological politics on a large scale”.His ascension was facilitated by an unprecedented conjunction of toxic factors such as the massive social impact of crime in Brazil,...

By Thomas Palley (guest blogger)Brazil is falling under an evil political spell. The leading candidate in the presidential election is Jair Bolsonaro, an extreme right-wing politician. It is as if voters are sleepwalking their way to destruction of Brazilian democracy. Under the spell’s influence, they have become blind to the truth about Brazilian politics and blind to their better nature. Read rest here.

Stripped to its essence, the Brazilian presidential elections represent a direct clash between democracy and an early 21stCentury neofascism, indeed between civilization and barbarism, writes Pepe Escobar. I would say that the future of Western democracy is being played out in the US and UK, and it doens't look like a bright one.On the other hand, the West has never been democratic in the sense of rule of, by and for the people. All Western nations have been either monarchical or...

#nothim protest in São Paulo This is, hands down, the most important election in Brazilian recent history. Haven't seen any exit polls, but if the last polls are trustworthy expect a second round between an openly fascistic candidate, Bolsonaro, and the Workers' Party (PT in Portuguese) and Lula's candidate Haddad. Maybe Ciro Gomes has a shot. The US and international media have been part of the problem, in all fairness, for the rise of Neo-Fascism. They suggest that Bolsonaro is not...