Corporate efforts at killing Brazilian democracy, backed by the U.S. government and American oil companies, continues unabated.
For now, let’s skip over the first U.S. backed military coup in 1964 and jump into the present-day.
More recently, the corporate-controlled right wing senate illegally impeached President Dilma Rousseff without any evidence of wrong-doing. Her defenders have called it a “political coup,” fueled by a pact between the government, military leaders and the oil companies. She was not as friendly to big business as the conservatives in her government would have liked. And, of course, they are all very chummy with the U.S.
The current president, Michel Temer who was a leader in the group that ousted Rousseff, is now the most unpopular leader in Brazilian history, crippled by his own well-publicized corruption scandals.
Enter Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (known simply as Lula among the people), a former president seeking another term in that office now that his protege, Rousseff, has been ousted. He is extraordinarily popular, and seemed to be headed towards an easy upset at the polls.
But corporate powers have intervened yet again. Lula has just been “convicted” on corruption charges and sentenced to prison, despite the fact that no one has ever been able to offer any evidence of his guilt. (Read this amazing story at The Intercept).
The Supreme Court that just convicted Lula has more suspicious financial connections to the corporate oligarchs that funded Rousseff’s impeachment than you can shake a stick at.
If you don’t believe that the U.S. government and the American oil industry 
is not helping to finance all of this turmoil, well then, I have some swamp land I’d like to sell to you in Florida.
- Update: check out this informative analysis by Mark Weisbrot, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, from Democracy Now.