Jornalistas Livres

Categoria: English

  • Brazilian Secretary of Culture Quotes Goebbels in Official Statement

    Brazilian Secretary of Culture Quotes Goebbels in Official Statement

    The Special Secretariat of Culture of Brazil has just released a video in which the Secretary of Culture Roberto Alvim announced a funding program for the arts. In a well centred frame and with a piece from Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin on the background – the same used in Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator -, a well groomed and brilliantine haired Roberto Alvim, with a picture of president Bolsonaro above him, a Cross of Lorraine on his left and the brazilian flag on his right, describes the Bolsonaro’s government guidelines for the arts: patriotic, linked to family values, connected to god and virtues of faith.

    A few minutes into his speech, he delivers a pearl: an almost identical quote from the infamous Nazi Germany Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels:

    “The Brazilian art of the next decade will be heroic and it will be national, it’ll be endowed with great capacity for emotional involvement and deeply committed to the urgent aspirations of our people, or it will be nothing.”

    The Goebbels quote, probably taken from his biography by Peter Longerich, which was published in Brazil in 2014, reads as follows:

    “The German art of the next decade will be heroic, it will be steely-romantic, it will be factual and completely free of sentimentality, it will be national with great Pathos and committed, or it will be nothing.”

    The resemblance is too clear to be an accident, or even a mere inspiration. It’s an explicit reference. What Mr. Roberto Alvim means by it, if it’s a tip on the path Brazilian government wants our culture to follow, or just a provocation meant to unsettle the left, it’s unclear. It is, though, undoubtedly, very unsettling.

    Watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiO23U59CdU

    UPDATE: In his facebook account, Secretary Roberto Alvim has denied to have quoted Goebbels, stating it was a “rhetorical coincidence” and that, nevertheless, the sentence is perfect and there’s no problem with it, as it describes precisely what the government wants for Brazilian culture.

    UPDATE II: After a huge reaction from society, press and even the congress, Roberto Alvim was already removed from his position as head of the Special Secretariat of Culture.

  • DEFEAT FASCISM, WITH FERNANDO HADDAD AND MANUELA D’ÁVILA!

    DEFEAT FASCISM, WITH FERNANDO HADDAD AND MANUELA D’ÁVILA!

    Editorial Free Journalists

    Army captain Jair Bolsonaro is a political adversary, but he is much more (or less) than that. If elected, he has already promised to machine-gun the Rocinha favela and the PTs (whom he calls “petralhas”). Bolsonaro has treated women as result of “weaknesses.” And referred to black people as “reproducers”, to be weighted in arrobas (like animals).

    Bolsonaro honours torturers, such as Brilliante Ustra. He has already said that he would have killed 30,000 opponents of the 1964 dictatorship regime, including Fernando Henrique Cardoso (former Brazil’s president).

    Bolsonaro is fascism. He is Nazism itself, taking advantage of an abyssal economic and political crisis to gain power through the vote.

    Let us never forget that Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor by the democratic vote of the German people. His first act – and of his gang of thugs – was to set fire to the Germanic Parliament, the Reichstag. He blamed the communists for this, triggering furious repression against all those he despised: Jews, blacks, gypsies, gays, physically and mentally handicapped, feminists, and, of course, the left-wing parties.

    The democratic forces cannot afford to play tug of war at this very moment. The enemy is too much threatening for that.

    Right now, it is important to remember the phenomenon observed today in Brazilian Northeast region, where more than half of voters vote for Lula and now for his candidate. Fernando Haddad intends to keep the social programs that guarantee the worker’s child at the University, the chance for the poor to visit their hometown and relatives on a plane trip, to have refrigerator and TV indoors, after the “Light for All” program.

    In addition to being the first in the fight against fascism in electoral polls, Haddad is now representing the spectacular legacy of inclusion begun by Lula, and the PT, which resists as a popular and electoral force.

    Bolsonaro binds both summits of the Brazilian Army and the Armed Forces together, including the Military Police. He gathers together economic power, the coup’s judiciary, the oligopolistic media. All against PT. Just like before, at the time of Hitler, when all forces were against communism.

    It’s no longer about Lula against Bolsonaro. Enough of this stupid polarization, so tasteful to the mainstream media, that predicted days of glory for the post-impeachment of Dilma Rousseff!

    The result is clear – Brazil is back to the maps of misery, with record numbers of unemployment and despair.

    Enough of playing “paneleiros” against petistas. What is at stake now is the life or death of millions of people economically disadvantaged, humiliated by the coup, who have returned to cooking with wood stoves or alcohol.

    Now it is a question of defending the idea of a plural society against the united orders of military barracks.

    We know that Brazil accumulates centuries of murderous oppression over black and indigenous people. We know the burden that machismo placed on the shoulders of women, treated as mere sexual objects for all sadisms and twisted fetiches, or as mere reproducers. We know of the loads of pain that gays, lesbians and transvestites bear, when expelled from home and from their families, thrown into abject marginality simply because of proclaiming their right to that love that dares to say its name.

    We cannot risk seeing a moral monster like Bolsonaro, who proclaims murder, persecution and torture as methods of improving Brazil, rule the country.

    It scares us to see Christians longing for Bolsonaro victory. When did Jesus Christ ever stand for torture, persecution, and murder?

    Please answer, bishop Edir Macedo!

    No! Christ never preached torture. On the contrary, he was tortured and murdered for the crime of defending the poor against the Imperial Rome system.

    Today, whoever is silent consents! That is why Free Journalists feel themselves compelled to say and declare very loudly that a serious risk is placed upon the future of Brazil. And that risk is Bolsonaro. The meaning of choosing him would be that we, as people, would turn ourselves into partners to the worst crimes.

    The German people are penitent until today due to the concentration camps and crematory ovens in which millions of human beings have been sent to die. It is not possible that the Brazilian people, marked by suffering, mean to agree with such a hideous vote decision.

    Bolsonaro does not hide who he is; never did. And all the powerful in Brazil already nest under the shady wings of this bird of prey. It is astonishing that the Democrats do not realize the immense historical responsibility that is placed upon each of them.

    We are four days away from the presidential elections. A gesture by Guilherme Boulos, Ciro Gomes, Marina Silva, and other competitors, stating support for what could stop the victory of fascism, the death of the poorest and the presidency of a man that a country like Brazil does not deserve, a gesture to support Fernando Haddad, would have enormous psychological effect at this moment in which Bolsonaro surfs the waves of a possible victory in the first round.

    Marina, as a black woman, would automatically be defending her own people, a sentence so often repeated by her. Ciro, a very clever man, would have the opportunity to fight alongside what seems to have marked his political history: the protection of the North-eastern people. Boulos then would have the chance to bring up, once and for all, his spirit of compassion for the poorest, and the daily struggles of the most suffering workers.

    Bolsonaro did not face debates, he is not in the streets to debate with the contradictory. So far, he has been hiding inside hospitals, by means of a life-threatening attack for all effects very badly explained. And it did a disservice to people who did not have the chance to hear him directly, declaring his animosity towards the suffering of the poorest.

    The (in) justice of Judge Sérgio Moro released to the buzzards of the corporate press the “rewarded accusation” of Antonio Palocci, a former PT who has been jailed for a year and has since offered to help destroy PT and Lula.

    Uselessly.

    Not even the Federal Public Ministry embarked on Palocci’s infamous accusations. Because they lack a single element of proof! So, it is clear the release of Palocci’s delation by Sérgio Moro obeyed only the purpose of “smashing” the PT, to pave the way for any anti-PT candidate.

    Fernando Haddad has been campaigning for 15 days. Well less than Ciro Gomes, Guilherme Boulos and Marina Silva, who have already been able to show their gifts and proposals. If instead of Haddad it had been Ciro Gomes the anti-Bolsonaro leader, we would be calling vote for him. If it would have been Boulos, ditto. For Marina, the same. We would make the defense of any democratic candidate who would have the chance to fight and win the elections against Bolsonaro.

    But it is Fernando Haddad that emerges as the first of the opponents of Jair Bolsonaro. We, Free Journalists, won’t let go of our historical responsibility.

    It is necessary to defeat the “coiso” (“the thing”). We must shout out loud “#EleNão” (“NotHim”).

    It is necessary to halt the aggravation of the genocide of the blacks, the poor and the favelas’ people … The worsening rates of feminicide and rape.

    It is necessary to talk to those who are on our side, to those who want to turn Sunday, October 7, a day for useful vote and say that we need to be alive for the next round. We need to be together and strong against everything Bolsonaro represents.

    Because of all this, it is Fernando Haddad for now. The rest is division between us, that the right-wing political parties love so much!

    After defeating the torturer, the Nazi, the Brilhante Ustra, the anti-woman, anti-gay Bolsonaro, we will be together again to charge for anti-racist and inclusive guideline policies, from a winning Fernando Haddad!

    Fernando Haddad and Manuela! Gorgeous and awesome! So, Brasil can Be Happy Again!

    And Free Lula!

  • The Amazon that is being given away

    The Amazon that is being given away

    The Amazon region comprehends a unique cultural and ecological heritage and the effects of mining can reach far beyond the already gigantic 47,000 square kilometers delivered over to private enterprise.

     

    On Wednesday, August 23, 2017, the Brazilian federal government signed a decree that abolishes the RENCA – the Portuguese acronym for the National Reserve of Copper and Associates – and allows a gigantic area of 47,000 square kilometers (18,000 square miles) in the Amazon, between the states of Pará and Amapá, to be exploited by private mining companies.

    The decree not only lacks the debate that should take into account the knowledge produced by environmental and social studies and but also neglects indigenous and traditional peoples who must be directly affected.

    The breath of the forest picture Cyro Assahira Jornalistas Livres

    Together, inserted, connected, co-integrated and co-evolved with the forests and their natural processes, there are approximately 150 indigenous peoples and dozens of caboclo and riverside communities. The coexistence among indigenous peoples and the forest has been going on for centuries. Nowadays it is already known that the forest was molded together with these peoples, as an example, the distribution of the trees and the composition of the soil is the result of these civilizations’ cohexistance and the natural environment.

    Tukanos indian communities, Desana e Tuyuka, São João do Tupé-AM picture Cyro Assahira / Jornalistas Livres

    The consequences of Amazonian degradation are, in many cases, irreversible and planetary, since the ecology of these areas may be related to global scale processes. Some areas have very delicate balance and little dynamic, and may shelter forests of millennial trees, a small disturbance in these environments may mean the break of an equilibrium achieved over centuries and result in the death of this unique forest.

    Sunset on Jari River, it was in the “ex-RENCA area”, larger than Denmark (42,931 km²) picture Cyro Assahira / Jornalistas Livres

    The “ex-RENCA area”, larger than the State of Rio de Janeiro (43,696 km²) and Denmark (42,931 km²) includes stretches of the Amazon that still lack studies, mainly regarding the ecology of these forests. The dimensions of the actual damage caused by the exploitation of these areas can be lost and hidden, but the effects will surely be felt and will extend far beyond those already massive 47,000 km².

     

    Bibliography:

    BRASIL. Decreto 9142/17. Extingue a Reserva Nacional de Cobre e seus associados, constituída pelo Decreto nº 89.404, de 24 de fevereiro de 1984, localizada nos Estados do Pará e do Amapá. Poder Executivo, Brasília, DF, 22 de agosto de 2017

    CLEMENT, Charles R. et al. Origin and domestication of native Amazonian crops. Diversity, v. 2, n. 1, p. 72-106, 2010.

    Instituto Sócio Ambiental – Quadro Geral dos Povos Indígenas Disponível em:< http:// https://pib.socioambiental.org/pt/c/quadro-gera/>. Acesso em: 25 de agosto. 2017.

    LEVIS, Carolina et al. Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition. Science, v. 355, n. 6328, p. 925-931, 2017.

    Portal Brasil. Área de 47 mil km² será destinada a atividades de mineração. Disponível em:< http://www.brasil.gov.br/infraestrutura/2017/08/area-de-47-mil-km2-sera-destinada-a-atividades-de-mineracao />. Acesso em: 25 de agosto. 2017.

  • Statement from Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s lawyers

    Statement from Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s lawyers

    Cristiano Zanin Martins and Valeska Teixeira Zanin Martins of Teixeira Martins Advogados (Lula’s lawyers) said:

     

    “President Lula is innocent. For over three years, Lula has been subject to a politically motivated investigation. No credible evidence of guilt has been produced, and overwhelming proof of his innocence blatantly ignored. This politically motivated judgement attacks Brazil’s rule of law, democracy and Lula’s basic human rights. It is of immense concern to the Brazilian people and to the international community.

     

    Judge Moro made his bias and political motivation clear from the beginning to the end of the process. His judgement has shamed Brazil by ignoring overwhelming evidence of innocence and succumbing to political bias whilst overseeing continual breaches of basic human rights and the legal process. The judgement proves what we have argued all along – that Judge Moro and the Car Wash prosecution have been driven by politics rather than law.

     

    President Lula has been subject to lawfare, the use of law for political aims, famously used to brutal effect in dictatorships throughout history. This politically motivated and biased judgement illustrates how President Lula’s domestic legal remedies have been exhausted and why it has been necessary to refer this case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva.

     

    No one is above the law, but no one is beneath the law either. President Lula has always fully cooperated with the investigation whilst making clear to Judge Moro and the investigation that the place to exercise political differences is at ballot box and not in the court room. The investigation has had a huge impact on Lula’s family, not least Lula’s much loved late wife Marisa, who tragically died earlier this year.

     

    The hearing has been a huge waste of tax payer’s money and has shamed Brazil internationally. It is time now to rebuild trust in the Brazilian rule of law and Judge Moro should step aside from all of his duties.

     

    We will prove Lula’s innocence in all unbiased courts including the United Nations.”

     

    ENDS

  • Temer declares war on Brazilian people

    Temer declares war on Brazilian people

    Temer’s administration showed his true colors. With a recent decree, signed yesterday, the Brazilian President summoned the military to repress protests. Beyond being the head of a corruption machine, the usurper from the palaces of Brasilia demonstrated also to manage a war machine against his own people.

    Yesterday, more than one hundred thousand people met peacefully together in the capital, Brasilia, asking for the resignation of the puppet president, direct elections and giving a loud No to the law reforms that destroy retirement and workers’ rights. What did they find? Soldiers, armed to the teeth and willing to attack a democratic manifestation.

    There are dozens of injured. One of them, at least, was shot and is in the hospital. Tear gas and sound bombs were dropped constantly against worker men and women and unarmed youngsters. A typical scene from the times of the Military Dictatorship.

    Temer and his gang do not have any condition to continue in power. His offensive against the yesterday protests leaves no doubts. More and more, the coup’s government can only resort to repression. There is no way to continue defending, in a democracy, a representative soiled in dirt from head to toe by explicit corruption and dyed in blood from protesters.

    To keep in presidency this puppet of reactionary interests is a true provocation to the Brazilian people. The numbers don’t lie: 14 millions of unemployed, millions of families in despair, thousands of closing business, defaults rising… and now, coward repression in large scale. Everything is the work of an illegitimate administration, rejected even among the many that supported the coup’s adventure.

    The tragedy seen yesterday in Brasília is the new signal that the popular mobilization is the true enemy of the powerful. The plots to impose an indirectly elected president by this Congress of bootlickers do not represent a possible way out to the country. More than never, it is time to go to the streets and shout: Out with Temer! Directs Now!

    ___________________________

    Portuguese: https://jornalistaslivres.org/2017/05/temer-declara-guerra-ao-povo/

    Spanish: https://jornalistaslivres.org/2017/05/temer-declara-guerra-al-pueblo/

  • EDITORIAL

    EDITORIAL

    The struggle has just begun. The general strike has shown the way: unity in action against the coup d’état. The alternative independent media plays a fundamental role in this environment.

    About 40 million workers participation; demonstrations in all states of the country and in Brasilia, public transportation, banks and factories stoppage; closed shops; Catholic Church, Evangelical Protestant Church and various civil society organizations support. Yesterday, April 28, Brazil experienced its largest general strike ever.

    In an unexampled move, all the main Brazilian labor union federations were united in the call for the strike — a unity seen as key to explain the movement success. Just as important was the spontaneous mobilization of collective organizations created to cover areas not reached by the arms of unionism. Numerous reports show grassroots organized manifestations, specially in Brazil’s Northern and Northeastern regions.

    Here are the facts that the dominant media try to suppress. Its deceitful narrative followed the same tone adopted before the strike. These channels concealed the consummation of the strike to the farthest point they could. Their manipulation knew no boundaries. Disciples of Joseph Goebbels, the head of Nazi propaganda, have been inebriated with the illusion that a lie repeated a thousandfold turns out to be true.

    The day before the general strike, Brazil’s largest TV network (but not Brazilians’) simply erased the news that a great stoppage was about to happen. Not a word. On the following day, however, it was forced to put almost all its journalists out on the streets to cover a strike which, according to them, was not going to happen … Their behavior change speaks for itself. It discloses their cowardly acknowledgment that, despite of their powerful wish for the opposite, general strike was a reality that not even this billionaire media clan could ignore.

    The narrative of the great capital, broadcasted by those at its service and its command, was full of the same fallacious arguments in the presence of the success of the general strike. In the following day, April 29, the big newspapers still squirm to reduce the movement to a local and inexpressive, minority thing. The contrast with the facts is so brutal that even dead fishes in street markets will probably not accept being wrapped by this kind of papers.

    The coup government recited the same script. Not surprisingly: all cut from the same cloth. During the strike, Temer and the thief entourage who (mis) govern the country climbed ministers of second line to give way to the verbiage of forgeries. Osmar Serraglio, that is, the one caught in negotiations aimed at extorting tips from meatpackers, went to radio, TV and other media outlets to preach the “failure of the strike”. The guy, amazingly, is Minister of Justice. Nothing better to portray the kind of creature that assaulted power — few times such expression has been so real.

    Meanwhile, Michel Temer, the chief of these people, was comfortably sheltered in the presidential palace. He planned to make a statement to the nation to celebrate what he would call as a “setback” of the movement. He gave up his plan, and everyone knows the reasons. He preferred a note from which it is hard to remember the beginning, the middle, and the end. Not without reason. With 4% of popularity, rejected by 92% of the population, hated by the people, snubbed by the pope and hanging on charges of having steered $ 40 million during the election campaign, Temer acted the same way a thief does whenlooking for one side, calls the police and and turn to the other while stealing a wallet.

    Sa Paulo Mayor João Doria has not missed the chance to exercise trickery with the fear of the workers. He got to his cabinet by helicopter on the 28th. Lobbyist who made a fortune on the basis of influence with businessmen, partners and public agencies such as Embratur, Doria had the good idea of describing strikers as “bums”. He forced servants to sleep at work. And he forced one of them to an unprecedented humiliation: to say that he was in favor of strikes, but not on a working day.

    If that were all, we would have the scenario of a country governed by people incapable and disoriented. But that’s not the point. In the absence of any force of ideas, the gendarmerie puppet again resorted to the idea of force. And there came the cops. Coup leaders had summoned thousands of uniformed men to attack a people’s legitimate movement against the reforms that rip labor laws and narrowly require a death certificate from those who want to enjoy already meager retirement pensions.

    Facts, photos and images prove: clashes sung in prose and verse by the official media originated in the brutal police repression. Injured toll surpass the dozens. At least one worker lost an eye; pregnant women gave birth by not resisting the impact of gas bombs and its (i) moral effect; Protesters were hit when they tried to escape from the bombs.

    There were arrests in several cities. The show of force carried out by the police found its apex in the siege around the coup president’s house. Hundreds of soldiers threw bombs and shot rubber bullets at workers and young people who wanted to defend their right to a respectabli job and a better future.

    But the people did not back down, even in the face of such unfavorable conditions of struggle. The message has been sent. Workers, students, the youth and the poorest population will not accept bills erasing hard earned rights. There is atill time to overturn the labor reform, approved only in first vote. There is time to prevent reactionary changes in retirement.

    The fighting has just begun. The path is the same as the general strike: unity in action against the coup. In this scenario, independent media outlets plays a key role. No wonder the news about the strike were in the first place on Twitter trending topics worldwide for several hours on Friday.

    It is a job that is not restricted to the hundreds of workers and young people who make up this true information network. It counts, as it counted on the day of the strike, with the collaboration of anonymous people sending photos, videos, news and audio messages showing what actually happens — not the post-truth (lies, in good Portuguese) spread out by the official media. Jornalistas Livres welcomes and thanks everyone who joins in this effort to rescue the truth.

    From all this, a certainty emerges: nothing will be as before after this historic April, 28 2017.

    Translation by Ricardo Gozzi and Cesar Locatelli