Desertores não são todos covardes: há os que protestam contra o absurdo das guerras - John Tagliabue (New York Times)

Bélgica homenageia desertores da Primeira Guerra Mundial 

Monumentos sobre a Grande Guerra são comuns na flamenga Ypres. 

Mas só agora os soldados mortos por recusarem combater têm o seu. 

John Tagliabue, New York Times, em Ypres, Bélgica, 07/12/2008

 Noventa anos após seu fim, a Primeira Guerra Mundial ainda paira sobre essa pequena cidade flamenga, ponto central do massacre ocorrido durante a Grande Guerra, como a chamavam as pessoas, crentes de que aquele seria o último combate de proporções mundiais. Monumentos aos mortos pela guerra brotaram como cogumelos após o cessar-fogo. Mas demorou cerca de 85 anos para se erguer um monumento a um grupo diferente de mortos: soldados executados pelos próprios aliados por terem se recusado a continuar o combate. A oito quilômetros de Ypres, em um tranqüilo pátio no vilarejo de Poperinge, está localizado um poste parecido com aqueles usados para apoiar vinhas de lúpulo, uma cultura comum por aqui. Tem mais ou menos a altura de um homem. Logo atrás dele fica uma placa de aço onde vemos gravado um verso de Rudyard Kipling: "Eu não podia olhar para a morte, mas, como se sabe, homens me levaram para ela, com os olhos vendados e sozinho". 

 Foto: Jock Fistick/The New York Times Monumento aos desertores da Primeira Guerra Mundial no local em que eles eram executados na vila de Popering, na Bélgica, em 28 de novembro. Atrás, uma placa com versos dos 'Epitáfios da Guerra' de Rudyard Kipling. (Foto: Jock Fistick/The New York Times) 

 À medida que a aparente guerra sem fim se arrastava, deserções e revoltas de tropas se tornavam um problema cada vez maior. Para combatê-lo, comandantes começaram a amarrar desertores e soldados rebeldes em postes como esse, onde seriam executados por um pelotão de fuzilamento. Os britânicos atiraram em 320 homens, e os franceses, em mais de 700. Os alemães, contraditoriamente, atiraram em cerca de 50. Em uma das duas celas próximas ao monumento de Poperinge, onde soldados foram amarrados antes da execução, que ocorria pela manhã, visitantes hoje chegam para relembrar não só atos heróicos da guerra, mas também seus horrores. Em uma tarde fria há poucos dias, um pedaço de papel jazia sobre uma cama de madeira onde os homens passavam a última noite. 

Assinado por T.T.S., o bilhete, rabiscado em inglês, era um dos muitos que foram deixados aqui. "Vocês sempre serão lembrados", dizia o bilhete, "Vocês nos deixaram orgulhosos." Com a proximidade do centésimo aniversário da guerra, o monumento de Poperinge marca uma grande mudança na atitude recente de países europeus que sofreram as maiores perdas humanas, relembrando não somente os mortos em combate, mas também aqueles que enfrentaram um pelotão de fuzilamento por protestar, por se recusar a lutar, ou por fugir da frente de batalha. Em Ypres, essa mudança de atitude levou curadores a mudar inteiramente a forma como o museu de guerra local apresenta o conflito, salientando a desumanidade da guerra em vez dos vencedores e dos derrotados. Na Grã-Bretanha, essa mudança levou em 2006 ao perdão póstumo do parlamento aos desertores, após a construção em 2001 de um monumento aos mortos pelo pelotão de fuzilamento. Na França, essa mudança de mentalidade levou o presidente Nicolas Sarkozy a reconhecer em público este ano que os executados também mereciam compaixão – essa foi a primeira vez que um presidente francês fez algo do tipo. 

 No Dia do Armistício em Fort Douaumont, leste da França, onde centenas de milhares de alemães e soldados franceses morreram, Sarkozy disse que os executados "não eram desonrados nem covardes", mas que tinham ido "até o limite extremo de suas forças". No entanto, não houve nenhum perdão em seguida, afirmou mais tarde um porta-voz da presidência. "Foi uma das questões mais difíceis acerca de toda a discussão sobre as execuções", afirmou Jurgen van Lerberghe, membro do conselho municipal que ajudou a promover o monumento de Poperinge. "É algo que não podemos esconder. Não houve somente feitos heróicos." Questionado se o monumento teria sido possível há uma geração, Van Lerberghe disse: "Se você enxerga isso como uma pergunta, o que a guerra pode fazer com as pessoas, teria havido uma discussão difícil". De fato, visões antigas ainda permanecem. "Veteranos da Segunda Guerra Mundial têm problemas com isso", comentou Luc Dehaene, 57 anos e prefeito de Ypress há 11, em relação à mudança de atitude. O museu de guerra daqui, localizado no imenso Cloth Hall, um mercado do século 14 que foi literalmente achatado durante a guerra por um tronco onde ficava sua enorme torre com um relógio, já não é mais chamado de Ypres Salient Museum. Agora, é o In Flanders Fields Museum, intitulado assim em memória do famoso poema e seu do autor, Tenente-Coronel John McRae, além de seus colegas soldados poetas, muitos dos quais morreram na guerra, mas não sem antes denunciar sua desumanidade. 

 Foto: Jock Fistick/The New York Times Visitante no In Flanders Fields Museum, na cidade belga de Ypres, assiste a filme com imagem da execução de um desertor. (Foto: Jock Fistick/The New York Times) 

 "É claro que militarmente e diplomaticamente houve vencedores e perdedores", disse Dominiek Dendooven, historiador de guerra do museu. "Mas o museu tem de lidar com o fato de que nessa guerra, com seus dez milhões de mortos, será que se pode dizer: 'Eles venceram e eles foram derrotados?'" O museu agora tem uma ala dedicada aos desertores, que nasceu de uma série de conferências, com participantes de Grã-Bretanha, França e Alemanha, que incluía familiares dos soldados executados. "Além da injustiça, a maioria deles foi morta para dar o exemplo", disse Dendooven. "Era uma forma de coerção mental", concluiu o historiador. Hoje, cerca de 400 mil visitantes, muitos deles crianças em idade escolar, são atraídos por Ypres a cada ano, o dobro do número de visitantes de dez anos atrás. André de Bruin, 63 anos, sul-africano e guia de passeios nos campos de batalha, disse que a informação disponível na internet permite às pessoas encontrarem parentes que lutaram ou morreram aqui. "De repente, eles se dão conta: "Tio Bertie lutou em Passchendaele'", disse ele, referindo-se à cidade hoje conhecida na língua holandesa moderna, mais simplificada, como Passendale, onde lutas violentas aconteceram. O caso judicial amplamente divulgado do soldado raso Harry Farr, continuou ele, um soldado britânico que sofria de um distúrbio mental causado por experiência violenta em guerra e que foi executado por covardia em 1916, também levantou interesse sobre a guerra. "Em nossa opinião, houve somente perdedores nessa guerra", afirmou Dehaene. "Nossa mensagem é muito simples: veja o que aconteceu aqui. Não é ingenuidade. Sabemos o que podemos e o que não podemos fazer. Sabemos, então, que temos de fazer nosso apelo".

Russia-Ukraine War Briefing - New York Times

Do New York Times, 11/11/2022: 

Welcome to the Russia-Ukraine War Briefing, your guide to the latest news and analysis about the conflict.

By Carole Landry

Editor/Writer, Briefings Team

• A Russian missile strike on an apartment building in Mykolaiv killed seven people.
• Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that more than 100,000 Russian troops had been killed or wounded and that Ukraine had probably suffered a similar number of casualties.
• President Vladimir Putin will skip next week’s summit of leaders of the Group of 20 in Indonesia. U.S. officials say President Biden will be “unapologetic” about the U.S. defense of Ukraine at the meeting. 

Get the latest updates here. Track the invasion with our maps.

Videos posted on social media showed crowds cheering Ukrainian soldiers in Freedom Square in Kherson, Ukraine.via Reuters

What’s next after Kherson

Ukrainian forces were greeted by cheering crowds as they entered Kherson today after Russia withdrew its forces from the southern city. Residents raised the Ukrainian flag in the main square in celebration.

The loss of Kherson, the only regional capital to be captured by Russia in nearly nine months of war, is a humiliation for Putin. Six weeks ago, he announced that Russia was annexing Kherson and three other regions of Ukraine and vowed that they would “forever” belong to Russia.

For Ukraine, the return of Kherson is one of its most significant victories of the war. President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was a “historic day.”

So what happens now? Despite this blow to Russia, analysts agree that the war is far from over. Here’s a look at what might lie ahead.

A flare-up in fighting: Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine, said the withdrawal would free up troops — thought to be among his army’s best trained and battle-hardened — to fight elsewhere on the front line. Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine’s former defense minister, expects an escalation in fighting in eastern Ukraine. “The only way Surovikin could realistically sell the idea of the Kherson retreat to Putin was by offering the promise of assured success in the east,” wrote Zagorodnyuk, now a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a research organization based in Washington. “Ukraine must therefore brace for a major escalation in the Donbas region in the coming weeks.”

A woman wept after Ukrainian troops entered Snihurivka, a town in the Kherson region.

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

A winter war: Some U.S. officials have suggested that the fighting could slow down over the winter because conditions would be more difficult. That appears to be a point of contention among some analysts, who say that it is not in Ukraine’s interests to ease up. “Winter weather could disproportionately harm poorly equipped Russian forces in Ukraine, but well-supplied Ukrainian forces are unlikely to halt their counteroffensives due to the arrival of winter weather and may be able to take advantage of frozen terrain to move more easily than they could in the muddy autumn months,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote. Ukraine is about to receive an additional $400 million in U.S. military aid that includes air defense systems and cold weather gear.

Peace talks: Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has made the case in internal meetings that the Ukrainians have achieved about as much as they could reasonably expect on the battlefield before winter sets in, and should try to cement their gains at the bargaining table, reports Peter Baker, our chief White House correspondent. Other advisers to President Biden disagree. Some U.S. officials say that peace talks remain a distant prospect and that both sides think continued fighting will strengthen their eventual negotiating positions.

The endgame: Western and Ukrainian officials are starting to envisage what a stable conclusion to the war might look like, The Economist reports. Will Ukraine become a new Finland, forced to cede land and remain neutral? Or another West Germany, with its territory partitioned and its democratic half absorbed into NATO? Another template is Israel, which has been able to defend itself against hostile neighbors with extensive U.S. military support. Last night, Biden told reporters that the conflict would not be resolved “until Putin gets out of Ukraine.”

A Cornered Vladimir Putin Is More Dangerous Than Ever - Roger Cohen (NYT)

 The New York Times – 22.9.2022

A Cornered Vladimir Putin Is More Dangerous Than Ever

In a major speech, he recast the war in Ukraine and made clear it could spread.

Roger Cohen

 

Vladimir V. Putin’s menacing televised address on Wednesday was much more than a bid to change the course of his faltering war against Ukraine. It attempted to invert a war of aggression against a neighbor into one of defense of a threatened “motherland,” a theme that resonates with Russians steeped in patriotic history.

Mr. Putin, Russia’s president, aimed at nothing less than altering the meaning of the war for his country, raising the stakes for the entire world. He warned the West in unmistakable terms — “this is not a bluff” — that the attempt to weaken or defeat Russia could provoke nuclear cataclysm.

Rattling his nuclear saber, accusing the West of seeking to “destroy” his country and ordering the call-up of 300,000 military reservists, Mr. Putin implicitly conceded that the war he started on Feb. 24 has not gone as he wished. He painted the Ukrainians as mere pawns of the “military machine of the collective West.”

By veering far from his original objective of demilitarizing and “de-Nazifying” all of Ukraine, he made a nonsense of the Kremlin’s far-fetched claims that the war was proceeding according to plan, and tacitly acknowledged something he had always denied: the reality and growing resistance of a unified Ukrainian nation.

But Mr. Putin cornered is Mr. Putin at his most dangerous. That was one of the core lessons of his hardscrabble youth that he took from the furious reaction of a rat he cornered on a stairwell in what was then Leningrad.

“Russia won its defensive wars against Napoleon and Hitler, and the most important thing Putin did here from a psychological perspective was to claim this, too, is a defensive war,” said Michel Eltchaninoff, the French author of “Inside the Mind of Vladimir Putin.” “It was an aggressive war. Now it’s the defense of the Russian world against the Western attempt at dismemberment.”

In Mr. Putin’s telling, that imagined world imbued with some inalienable Russian essence has grown in size. He said Russia would support imminent referendums in four regions of Ukraine on whether to join Russia — votes denounced by Ukraine and the West as a sham, and a likely prelude to annexation.

The Kremlin has signaled that if it absorbs that territory, the Ukrainian counter-offensives underway in the east and south to recapture territory seized by Russia would be considered attacks on Russian soil, justifying any level of retaliation, up to and including a nuclear response.

The State of the War

“If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will of course use all means at our disposal to defend Russia and our people,” Mr. Putin said.

His speech, which may of course be a bluff despite his denial, nevertheless placed before the West a dilemma that has been inherent in its policy from the start of the war: How far can intense military and logistical support of Ukraine — effectively everything short of NATO troops on the ground — go without setting off nuclear confrontation?

“I believe the nuclear threat is a bluff but it gives Putin a means to terrify the West, and accentuate divisions about providing arms because some may now view that as too dangerous,” said Sylvie Bermann, a former French ambassador to Russia.

Hours after the speech in Moscow, President Biden denounced Mr. Putin’s “overt nuclear threats” against Europe, describing them as “reckless.” Addressing the United Nations General Assembly, he said the West would be “clear, firm and unwavering” in its resolve as it confronts Mr. Putin’s “brutal, needless war” in Ukraine.

“This war is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state, plain and simple,” Mr. Biden said. He continued: “Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe, that should make your blood run cold.”

A game of brinkmanship has begun with the American and Russian leaders seeking to outmaneuver each other as the war festers. If Ukraine and its Western backers have the advantage for now, that edge is by no means secure.

Seven months into the war, its resolution appears more distant than ever and its reverberations more dangerous. Perhaps not since the Cuban missile crisis six decades ago have American and Russian leaders confronted each other so explicitly and sharply on the danger of nuclear war.

As Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, has said, the United States and its Western allies have been trying to use “all means possible” to help Ukraine “without creating an uncontrollable escalation.” But the risk of that escalation, possibly the start of World War III, just grew, because what constitutes a strike “inside Russia” may now be defined differently by Mr. Putin.

Full of anger and venom, portraying Ukraine as the headquarters of neo-Nazis and the West as a giant engine of “Russophobia,” Mr. Putin appeared as deluded about the neighbor he attacked as he was in his Feb. 24 speech that announced the war.

He has downsized Russia’s military ambitions in Ukraine — upended by the Russian defeat in Kyiv and recent battlefield setbacks in the northeast — without downsizing his obsessions over Russian humiliation at the breakup of the Soviet Union three decades ago.

On Wednesday, as in February, he accused the Ukrainian authorities, falsely, of genocide against ethnic Russians. He boasted of nuclear weapons that are “more advanced” than the West’s. He made wild allegations about the threat to Russia. He alluded, for example, to “statements by some high-ranking representatives of leading NATO states about the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction — nuclear weapons — against Russia.”

There is no evidence of this.

Mr. Putin “claimed he had to act because Russia was threatened. But no one threatened Russia and no one other than Russia sought conflict,” Mr. Biden said.

The speeches came on the eve of a winter that will be hard in Europe, with inflation and energy costs rising, and days before an Italian election Sunday in which a far-right candidate, Giorgia Meloni, is the favorite. The European extreme right has generally been sympathetic to Moscow, although Ms. Meloni’s own position appears to be evolving.

Up to now, Mr. Biden has been very effective in cementing Western unity. But while the Biden administration has little apparent faith in diplomacy with Moscow at this stage, France and Germany still seek the dialogue with Russia that President Emmanuel Macron of France mentioned in his speech on Tuesday to the United Nations, a dialogue judged necessary, he said, because “we seek peace.”

Not at any price, however. Mr. Macron’s position has hardened. He presented a stark picture of a world hovering on the brink of war and brutal division as a result of Russia’s “imperial” aggression.

He said the world was close to “an enlarged era of conflict, a permanent one, where sovereignty and security will be determined by force, by the size of armies.” It was imperative, he insisted, that those remaining neutral — an apparent reference to India and China, among others — speak out.

“Those who are silent today are, despite themselves, or secretly, serving the cause of the new imperialism,” Mr. Macron said.

The Russian attempt to rebuild the imperium lost at the dissolution of the Soviet Union finds itself at a treacherous crossroads. After multiple military setbacks, Mr. Putin spoke from a weaker position than the one he held seven months ago.

“The situation is very dangerous because Putin is in a trap,” Ms. Bermann said.

 

*

Os EUA estão ficando latino-americanizados? - David Brooks (NYT)

 Não me digam!

Depois de um século e meio de avanços espetaculares à frente dos atrasados hermanos hemisféricos south of Rio Grande, os EUA estariam, incrivelmente, ficando mais “latino-americanos”, na desigualdade social, na corrupção política, na violência policial e na deterioração geral das condições de vida?

Até onde vai esse declínio?

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Joe Biden Is Succeeding [???]

David Brooks

The New York Times, 20.11.2021

Joe Biden came to the White House at a pivotal moment in American history. We had become a country dividing into two nations, one highly educated and affluent and the other left behind. The economic gaps further inflamed cultural and social gaps, creating an atmosphere of intense polarization, cultural hostility, alienation, bitterness and resentment.

As president, Biden had mostly economic levers to try to bridge this cold civil war. He championed three gigantic pieces of legislation to create a more equal, more just and more united society: the Covid stimulus bill, the infrastructure bill and what became Build Back Better, to invest in human infrastructure.

All of these bills were written to funnel money to the parts of the country that were less educated, less affluent, left behind. Adam Hersh, a visiting economist at the Economic Policy Institute, projects that more than 80 percent of the new jobs created by the infrastructure plan will not require a college degree.

These gigantic proposals were bold endeavors. Some thought them too bold. Economist Larry Summers thought the stimulus package, for example, was too big. It could overstimulate the economy and lead to inflation.

Larry is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known and someone I really admire. If I were an economist, I might have agreed with him. But I’m a journalist with a sociological bent. For over a decade I have been covering a country that was economically, socially and morally coming apart. I figured one way to reverse that was to turbocharge the economy and create white-hot labor markets that would lift wages at the bottom. If inflation was a byproduct, so be it. The trade-off is worth it to prevent a national rupture.

The Biden $1.9 trillion stimulus package passed and has been tremendously successful. It heated the overall economy. The Conference Board projects that real G.D.P. growth will be about 5 percent this quarter. The unemployment rate is falling. Retail sales are surging. About two-thirds of Americans feel their household’s financial situation is good.

But the best part is that the benefits are flowing to those down the educational and income ladder. In just the first month of payments, the expanded Child Tax Credit piece of the stimulus bill kept three million American children out of poverty. Pay for hourly workers in the leisure and hospitality sector jumped 13 percent in August compared with the previous year. By June, there were more nonfarm job openings than there had been at any time in American history. Workers have tremendous power these days.

The infrastructure bill Biden just signed will boost American productivity for years to come. As Ellen Zentner of Morgan Stanley told The Economist recently, it’s a rule of thumb that an extra $100 billion in annual infrastructure spending could increase growth by roughly a tenth of a percentage point — which is significant in an economy the size of ours. Federal infrastructure spending will be almost as large a share of annual GDP as the average level during Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

But Summers was right. The stimulus — along with all the supply chain and labor shortage disruptions that are inevitable when coming out of a pandemic — has boosted inflation. In addition, Americans are exhausted by a pandemic that seems to never end.

And they are taking it out on Democrats. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll revealed that voters now prefer Republican congressional candidates in their own districts by 51 percent to 41 percent. That’s the largest G.O.P. lead since this poll started asking the question, 40 years ago.

If presidencies were judged by short-term popularity, the Biden effort would look pretty bad. But that’s a terrible measure. First-term presidents almost always see their party get hammered in the midterm after their inauguration. That’s especially true if the president achieved big things. Michigan State political scientist Matt Grossmann looked at House popular vote trends since 1953. Often when presidents succeeded in passing major legislation — Republicans as well as Democrats — voters swung against the president’s party. Look, just to take a recent example, at how Obamacare preceded a Democratic shellacking in 2010. People distrust change. Success mobilizes opposition. It’s often only in retrospect that these policies become popular and even sacred.

Presidents are judged by history, not the distraction and exhaustion of the moment. Did the person in the Oval Office address the core problem of the moment? The Biden administration passes that test. Sure, there have been failures — the shameful Afghanistan withdrawal, failing to renounce the excesses of the cultural left. But this administration will be judged by whether it reduced inequality, spread opportunity, created the material basis for greater national unity.

It is doing that.

My fear is not that Democrats lose the midterms — it will have totally been worth it. My fear is that Democrats in Congress will make fantastic policies like the expanded Child Tax Credit temporary to make budget numbers look good. If they do that the coming Republican majorities will simply let these policies expire.

If that happens then all this will have been in vain. The Democrats will have squandered what has truly been a set of historic accomplishments. Voters may judge Democrats harshly next November, but if they act with strength history will judge them well.

O modelo Trump-Bannon para a reeleição no Brasil - Jack Nicas (NYT)

 O NYTimes é um jornal progressista, ou "liberal", no conceito americano de esquerda light, que para a direita é socialista, quase comunista. Não encontrei muita novidade neste artigo, pois tudo o que o jornalista reporta eu já tinha lido em diversas matérias de imprensa, reportagens ou análises e colunas de opinião.

Em todo caso, para os brasileiros, nada do que está dito é estranho ao que nós mesmos observamos daqui, mas isso pode impressionar os americanos.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

 

The Bolsonaro-Trump Connection Threatening Brazil’s Elections

With his poll numbers falling, President Jair Bolsonaro is already questioning the legitimacy of next year’s election. He has help from the United States.

Jack Nicas

The New York Times, 12/11/2021

 

Brasilia - The conference hall was packed, with a crowd of more than 1,000 cheering attacks on the press, the liberals and the politically correct. There was Donald Trump Jr. warning that the Chinese could meddle in the election, a Tennessee congressman who voted against certifying the 2020 vote, and the president complaining about voter fraud.

In many ways, the September gathering looked like just another CPAC, the conservative political conference. But it was happening in Brazil, most of it was in Portuguese and the president at the lectern was Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s right-wing leader.

Fresh from their assault on the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are exporting their strategy to Latin America’s largest democracy, working to support Mr. Bolsonaro’s bid for re-election next year — and helping sow doubt in the electoral process in the event that he loses.

They are branding his political rivals as criminals and communists, building new social networks where he can avoid Silicon Valley’s rules against misinformation and amplifying his claims that the election in Brazil will be rigged.

For the American ideologues pushing a right-wing, nationalist movement, Brazil is one of the most important pieces on the global chess board. With 212 million people, it is the world’s sixth-largest nation, the dominant force in South America, and home to an overwhelmingly Christian population that continues to shift to the right.

Brazil also presents a rich economic opportunity, with abundant natural resources made more available by Mr. Bolsonaro’s rollback of regulations, and a captive market for the new right-wing social networks run by Mr. Trump and others.

For the Brazilian president, who finds himself increasingly isolated on the world stage and unpopular at home, the American support is a welcome boost. The Trump name is a rallying cry for Brazil’s new right and his efforts to undermine the U.S. electoral system appear to have inspired and emboldened Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters.

But Brazil is a deeply divided nation where the institutions safeguarding democracy are more vulnerable to attack. The adoption of Mr. Trump’s methods is adding fuel to a political tinderbox and could prove destabilizing in a country with a history of political violence and military rule.

 “Bolsonaro is already putting it into people’s heads that he won’t accept the election if he loses,” said David Nemer, a University of Virginia professor from Brazil who studies the country’s far right. “In Brazil, this can get out of hand.”

Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, has said President Bolsonaro will only lose if “the machines” steal the election. Representative Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican who has pushed laws combating voter fraud, met with lawmakers in Brazil to discuss “voting integrity policies.”

And President Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, gave perhaps his most elaborate presentation on what he said were manipulated Brazilian elections in Sioux Falls, S.D. He was at an August event hosted by Mike Lindell, the pillow executive being sued for defaming voting-machine makers.

Authorities, including academics, Brazil’s electoral officials and the U.S. government, all have said that there has not been fraud in Brazil’s elections. Eduardo Bolsonaro has insisted there was. “I can’t prove — they say — that I have fraud,” he said in South Dakota. “So, OK, you can’t prove that you don’t.”

Mr. Trump’s circle has cozied up to other far-right leaders, including in Hungary, Poland and the Philippines, and tried to boost rising nationalist politicians elsewhere. But the ties are the strongest, and the stakes perhaps the highest, in Brazil.

WhatsApp groups for Bolsonaro supporters recently began circulating the trailer for a new series from Fox News host Tucker Carlson that sympathizes with the Jan. 6Capitol riot, Mr. Nemer said. The United States, which has been a democracy for 245 years, withstood that attack. Brazil passed its constitution in 1988 after two decades under a military dictatorship.

 “What concerns me is how fragile our democratic institutions are,” Mr. Nemer said.

The American interest in Brazil is not only political. Two conservative social networks run by allies of Mr. Trump, Gettr and Parler, are growing rapidly here by leaning into fears of Big Tech censorship and by persuading President Bolsonaro to post on their sites — the only world leader to do so. Mr. Trump’s own new social network, announced last month, is partially financed by a Brazilian congressman aligned with President Bolsonaro.

Beyond tech, many other American companies have benefited from President Bolsonaro’s opening to trade, including those in defense, agriculture, space and energy.

“We’re turning ideological affinity into economic interests,” said Ernesto Araújo, President Bolsonaro’s foreign minister until March.

The Trumps, the Bolsonaros, Mr. Green and Mr. Bannon did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

President Bolsonaro’s fraud claims have worried officials in the Biden administration, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In August, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, traveled to Brazil and advised President Bolsonaro to respect the democratic process.

In October, 64 members of Congress asked President Biden for a reset in the United States’ relationship with Brazil, citing President Bolsonaro’s pursuit of policies that threaten democratic rule. In response, Brazil’s ambassador to the United States defended President Bolsonaro, saying debate over election security is normal in democracies. “Brazil is and will continue to be one of the world’s freest countries,” he said.

For President Bolsonaro, the Republicans’ support comes at a crucial moment. The pandemic has killed more than 610,000 Brazilians, second to only the 758,000 deaths in the United States. Unemployment and inflation have risen. He has been operating without a political party for two years. And Brazil’s Supreme Court and Congress are closing in on investigations into him, his sons and his allies.

Late last month, a Brazil congressional panel recommended that President Bolsonaro be charged with “crimes against humanity,” asserting that he intentionally let the coronavirus tear through Brazil in a bid for herd immunity. The panel blamed his administration for more than 100,000 deaths.

Minutes after the panel voted, Mr. Trump issued his endorsement. “Brazil is lucky to have a man such as Jair Bolsonaro working for them,” he said in a statement. “He is a great president and will never let the people of his great country down!

 

‘The Donald Trump of South America’

 

In 2018, President Bolsonaro was carried to victory by the same populist wave that buoyed Mr. Trump. The comparisons between Mr. Bolsonaro, a former Army paratrooper with a penchant for insults and off-the-cuff tweets, and Mr. Trump were instant.

“They say he’s the Donald Trump of South America,” Mr. Trump said in 2019. “I like him.”

To many others, Mr. Bolsonaro was alarming. As a congressman and candidate, he had waxed poetic about Brazil’s military dictatorship, which tortured its political rivals. He said he would be incapable of loving a gay son. And he said a rival congresswoman was too ugly to be raped.

Three months into his term, President Bolsonaro went to Washington. At his welcome dinner, the Brazilian embassy sat him next to Mr. Bannon. At the White House later, Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolsonaro made deals that would allow the Brazilian government to spend more with the U.S. defense industry and American companies to launch rockets from Brazil.

Joining President Bolsonaro in Washington was his son, Eduardo. A congressman and former police officer, Eduardo Bolsonaro already was wearing Trump hats and posing with assault rifles on Facebook. He then emerged as Brazil’s chief liaison with the American right, visiting the United States several times a year to meet with Mr. Trump, Jared Kushner, top Republican senators and a cadre of far-right pundits and conspiracy theorists.

A few weeks after his father was elected, Eduardo Bolsonaro went to Mr. Bannon’s birthday party and was treated as “the guest of honor,” said Márcio Coimbra, a Brazilian political consultant who was also there.

Two months later, Mr. Bannon announced Eduardo Bolsonaro would represent South America in The Movement, a right-wing, nationalist group that Mr. Bannon envisioned taking over the Western world. In the news release, Eduardo Bolsonaro said they would “reclaim sovereignty from progressive globalist elitist forces.”

‘We cannot allow them to silence us’

Before the pandemic, President Bolsonaro had been good for American business.

The Trump and Bolsonaro administrations signed pacts to increase commerce. American investors plowed billions of dollars into Brazilian companies. And Brazil spent more on American imports, including fuel, plastics and aircraft.

Now a new class of companies is salivating over Brazil: conservative social networks.

Gettr and Parler, two Twitter clones, have grown rapidly in Brazil by promising a hands-off approach to people who believe Silicon Valley is censoring conservative voices. One of their most high-profile recruits is President Bolsonaro.

Gettr’s chief executive, Jason Miller, is Mr. Trump’s former spokesman. He said that President Bolsonaro and his sons’ activity on his site has been a major boost for business. The four-month-old app already has nearly 500,000 users in Brazil, or 15 percent of its user base, its second-largest market after the United States. Gettr is now advertising on conservative Brazilian YouTube channels. “I had Brazil identified from day one,” he said.

Parler said Brazil is also its No. 2 market. Both companies sponsored CPAC in Brazil. “We cannot allow them to silence us,” Candace Owens, the conservative pundit, said in a video pitching Parler at CPAC.

Gettr is partly funded by Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese billionaire who is close with Mr. Bannon. (When Mr. Bannon was arrested on fraud charges, he was on Mr. Guo’s yacht.) Parler is funded by Rebekah Mercer, the American conservative megadonor who was Mr. Bannon’s previous benefactor.

Companies like Gettr and Parler could prove critical to President Bolsonaro. Like Mr. Trump, he built his political movement with social media. But now Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are more aggressively policing hate speech and misinformation. They blocked Mr. Trump and have started cracking down on President Bolsonaro. Last month, YouTube suspended his channel for a week after he falsely suggested coronavirus vaccines could cause AIDS.

In response, President Bolsonaro has tried to ban the companies from removing certain posts and accounts, but his policy was overturned. Now he has been directing his supporters to follow him elsewhere, including on Gettr, Parler and Telegram, a messaging app based in Dubai.

He will likely soon have another option. Last month, Mr. Trump announced he was starting his own social network. The company financing his new venture is partly led by Luiz Philippe de Orleans e Bragança, a Brazilian congressman and Bolsonaro ally.

 

‘Stolen by, guess what, the machines’

 

On the day of the Capitol riot, Eduardo Bolsonaro was in Washington. When asked later, he said the rioters’ efforts were weak. “If it were organized, they would have taken the Capitol and made demands,” he said.

The day after the riot, President Bolsonaro warned that Brazil was “going to have a worse problem” if it didn’t change its own electoral systems, which rely on voting machines without paper backups. (Last week, he suddenly changed his tune after announcing that he would have Brazil’s armed forces monitor the election.)

Diego Aranha, a Brazilian computer scientist who studies the country’s election systems, said that Brazil’s system does make elections more vulnerable to attacks — but that there has been no evidence of fraud.

“Bolsonaro turned a technical point into a political weapon,” he said.

President Bolsonaro’s American allies have helped spread his claims.

At the CPAC in Brazil, Donald Trump Jr. told the audience that if they didn’t think the Chinese were aiming to undermine their election, “you haven’t been watching.” Mr. Bannon has called President Bolsonaro’s likely opponent, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a “transnational, Marxist criminal” and “the most dangerous leftist in the world.” Mr. da Silva served 18 months in prison but his corruption charges were later tossed out by a Supreme Court justice.

Eduardo Bolsonaro’s slide show detailing claims of Brazilian voter fraud, delivered in South Dakota, was broadcast by One America News, a conservative cable network that reaches 35 million U.S. households. It was also translated into Portuguese and viewed nearly 600,000 times on YouTube and Facebook.

After his presentation, Mr. Bannon declared “Bolsonaro will win,” unless the elections are “stolen by, guess what, the machines.”

Both Mr. Bannon’s and Mr. Trump Jr.’s comments were translated into Portuguese and shared on Facebook by Bia Kicis, a conservative Brazilian congresswoman. They have been viewed more than 330,000 times.

‘Prison, death or victory’

The first week of September was a critical moment for the Bolsonaro presidency. Facing political crises, he called for nationwide demonstrations on Sept. 7, Brazil’s Independence Day, to protest his enemies in the Supreme Court and on the left.

The weekend before, just down the road from the presidential palace, Mr. Bolsonaro’s closest allies gathered at CPAC. Eduardo Bolsonaro and the American Conservative Union, the Republican lobbying group that runs CPAC, organized the event. Eduardo Bolsonaro’s political committee mostly financed it. Tickets sold out.

The American Conservative Union paid about $15,000 to send Mr. Green, the Tennessee Republican, according to a lobbying disclosure. His planned agenda included a discussion, over lunch, of voting laws with two Brazilian members of Congress who pushed to change Brazil’s.

During the conference, the head of Project Veritas, the conservative group that secretly records journalists to try to expose liberal bias, told the audience that he aimed to expand to Brazil.

Afterward, Eduardo Bolsonaro brought several Americans to the presidential palace. Mr. Miller of Gettr and two men connected to Project Veritas sat outside with President Bolsonaro and his sons, in view of the nearly Olympic-size swimming pool. President Bolsonaro was barefoot and in a soccer jersey. The Americans were in suits. They talked for more than an hour, Mr. Miller said. The Brazilians wanted to “kick the tires” on Gettr, he said.

The next day, Brazil’s federal police detained Mr. Miller at the airport. A Supreme Court judge had ordered police to question him about how Gettr might be used to spread misinformation in Brazil. “It was just farcical,” Mr. Miller said.

Eventually, Mr. Miller’s friend called Eduardo Bolsonaro and asked for a lawyer, according to police records. After the lawyer arrived, so did a senior adviser to President Bolsonaro. The lawyer requested the police not mention the adviser in their reports because, she said, he was there as her boyfriend, according to the records. The police mentioned him. He is not her boyfriend, they said.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Bolsonaro supporters in yellow and green were filling the national esplanade in Brasília. Pro-Bolsonaro banners hung from government buildings.

President Bolsonaro gave a fiery speech. Then he flew to São Paulo, where he used Mr. Miller’s detainment as evidence of judicial overreach. He told the crowd he would no longer recognize decisions from a Supreme Court judge.

He then turned to the election.

“We have three alternatives for me: Prison, death or victory,” he said. “Tell the bastards I’ll never be arrested.”

 

Movimento de peças no grande xadrez estratégico do Pacífico Sul: Australia faz roque com EUA - Damien Cave, Chris Buckley (NYT)

Não se trata de um simples acordo de segurança estratégica, e sim de uma aliança para a guerra...

Why Australia Bet the House on Lasting American Power in Asia

Less than three years ago, Australia’s leader said his country need not choose between the U.S. and China. A nuclear submarine deal shows that much has changed since then.

Damien Cave and Chris Buckley

 The New York Times – 17.9.2021

 

Sydney , Australia — When Scott Morrison became Australia’s prime minister three years ago, he insisted that the country could maintain close ties with China, its largest trading partner, while working with the United States, its main security ally.

“Australia doesn’t have to choose,” he said in one of his first foreign policy speeches.

On Thursday, Australia effectively chose. Following years of sharply deteriorating relations with Beijing, Australia announced a new defense agreement in which the United States and Britain would help it deploy nuclear-powered submarines, a major advance in Australian military strength.

With its move to acquire heavy weaponry and top-secret technology, Australia has thrown in its lot with the United States for generations to come — a “forever partnership,” in Mr. Morrison’s words. The agreement will open the way to deeper military ties and higher expectations that Australia would join any military conflict with Beijing.

It’s a big strategic bet that America will prevail in its great-power competition with China and continue to be a dominant and stabilizing force in the Pacific even as the costs increase.

 “It really is a watershed moment — a defining moment for Australia and the way it thinks about its future in the Indo-Pacific region,” said Richard Maude, a former Australian security official who is now a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

“It does represent really quite sharp concerns now in the Morrison government about a deteriorating security environment in the region, about China’s military buildup and about China’s willingness to use coercive power to pursue national interests,” he said.

Clearly, the United States also made a choice: that the need for a firm alliance to counter Beijing is so urgent that it would set aside longstanding reservations about sharing sensitive nuclear technology. Australia will become only the second country — after Britain in 1958 — to be given access to the American submarine technology, which allows for stealthier movement over longer distances.

Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said during a regular news briefing in Beijing that the submarine agreement would “seriously damage regional peace and stability, exacerbate an arms race and harm international nuclear nonproliferation efforts,” according to a transcript issued by the ministry.

“This is utterly irresponsible conduct,” Mr. Zhao said.

For the United States, the decision to bolster a close Asia-Pacific ally represents a tangible escalation of its efforts to answer China’s rapid military growth. The Defense Department said in its most recent report to Congress that China now had the largest navy in the world, measured in numbers of vessels, having built a fleet of approximately 350 ships by 2019, including a dozen nuclear submarines.

By comparison, the U.S. Navy has around 293 ships. While American vessels tend to be larger, China is also catching up with aircraft carriers while surpassing the United States with smaller, agile ships.

At the same time, China has moved aggressively to secure locations for outposts and missiles, building up its presence on islands that it constructed in the South China Sea. Security analysts believe that Australia would be likely to use nuclear-powered submarines to patrol the important shipping lanes there, in waters also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. The choice of vessel, they said, sends an unmistakable message.

“Nothing is more provocative to China than nuke stuff and submarine stuff,” said Oriana Skylar Mastro, who is a fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and at the American Enterprise Institute. “China’s so weak in anti-submarine warfare in comparison to other capabilities.”

“To me,” said Ms. Mastro, a regular visitor to Australia, “it suggests that Australia is willing to take some real risks in its relationship to stand up to China.”

 

The U.S. Defense Department says China now has the largest naval fleet in the world. 

 

American and Australian officials, seeking to douse proliferation concerns, emphasized that the submarines were nuclear-powered but had nothing to do with nuclear weapons. The promise of eight American vessels coincided with Australia’s cancellation of a contract for 12 conventional French-designed submarines that had been delayed and running over budget. French officials reacted angrily, calling the abandonment of the deal a betrayal of trust.

Speaking Thursday, Mr. Morrison said the reinforced security alliance with the United States and Britain, which will include collaborations on artificial intelligence and other emerging technology, reflected the needs of a more dangerous dynamic in the Asia-Pacific region.

“The relatively benign environment we’ve enjoyed for many decades in our region is behind us,” he said, without directly mentioning China. “We have entered a new era with new challenges for Australia and our partners.”

Some security analysts argued that China’s recent retaliation against Australia over its harder line — slashing imports of coal, wine, beef, lobsters and barley, along with detaining at least two Australian citizens of Chinese descent — appeared to have pushed Australia in the Americans’ direction. In response, China may extend its campaign of economic sanctions. Australia seems to have calculated that Beijing has little interest in improving relations.

“I think the fear of doing this would have been much more palpable even three or four years ago, maybe even two years ago,” said Euan Graham, an Asia-Pacific security analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies who is based in Singapore. “But once your relationship is all about punishment and flinging of insults, frankly, then that’s already priced in. China doesn’t have the leverage of fear, of being angry, because it’s angry all the time.”

A looming question, according to critics of Australia’s steadfast faith in the United States, is whether Washington will measure up. Ever since President Barack Obama announced a “pivot to Asia,” speaking before Australia’s Parliament in 2011, America’s allies have been waiting for a decisive shift in resources and attention. For the most part, they have been disappointed.

Dr. Graham said that the submarine deal would temper some of that criticism. For other allies like Japan and South Korea, he said: “It answers that question that the U.S. is still engaging in its alliance network in this part of the world.”

Still, the agreement did not erase all doubts about America’s commitment to countering China and defending its role as the dominant power in a complex region far from Washington and much closer to Beijing.

Sam Roggeveen, director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute, a research center in Sydney, said that over the long term, the United States might decide that the contest with China is too costly, forcing some degree of power sharing and reduced influence.

“The U.S. has never faced a great power of China’s size in its history,” he said. “It has never faced down a challenger like this.”

An alternative risk is that the American pushback against China spirals into a conflict that Australia, because of its bolstered partnership, cannot avoid. The two superpowers have experienced deepening tensions over Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as Chinese territory. The United States says that using force to determine Taiwan’s fate would be of “grave concern,” leaving open the possibility of military intervention.

“As the U.S.-China rivalry escalates, the United States will expect Australia to do more,” said Hugh White, a defense analyst at the Australian National University and a former military official.

“If the U.S. is allowing Australia to have access to its nuclear technology,” he added, “it’s because the U.S. expects Australia to be deploying its forces in a potential war with China.”

For now, the Australian government appears to view even that risk as worth taking on. James Curran, a historian of Australian foreign relations at the University of Sydney, called the decision to double down on the United States “the biggest strategic gamble in Australian history.”

“Australia is betting its house,” he said, “on the U.S. maintaining its resolve and will.”