By BRUNO BEAKLINI*
Car Wash, Moro Suspect and Fundos Abutres: the same logic of subordination to imperialism.
Introduction
On March 23, the eve of the macabre date that celebrates the genocide of the glorious Argentine youth, in the 1976 coup (24/03/76), the Second Panel of the Federal Supreme Court (the STF, the one that Romero Jucá said “would be with the Supreme, with everything") judged by 3 votes to 2 the suspicion of the former federal judge of the 13th criminal court of Curitiba (headquarters of the Republic of Curitiba, in allusion to the 1954 coup plotters and their infamous República do Galeão). Mentioned by name by Gilmar Mendes (the sharpest lawyer of the Estamento Togado), Sergio Fernando Moro was presented as he is: a biased judge, who tramples on due process of law and operates in line with the prosecution, anticipating the steps of the defendant's defense
The other named by Mendes was the priceless federal prosecutor Deltan Martinazzo Dallagnol, former coordinator of the Task Force and the most agitated member of conversation groups such as “Filhos de Januário” and others.
If it weren't for the series of reports known as Vaza Jato, made public by the journalistic website The Intercept Brasil (and solemnly ignored by some big newspapers, including Rede Globo), nothing would have happened. To finish the summary, Operation Spoofing, launched in July 2019, transformed at least into evidence (without proven expertise yet) the conversations obtained by Brazilian hackers, when they invaded the Telegram groups of the most prominent Lava Jato jurists.
In this way, the former opposition of the PIG (Partido da Imprensa Coupista), the mainstream media that adhered to the Fox News type style – a concept applied by Luis Nassif, which I consider correct – partially abandons the executioner of the class pact that propitiated the Brazilian alliance capital-State-labour. Such a coalition, at the usual costs of the “Centrão” (the right that co-governs Brazil since the non-approval of the “Diretas Já” amendment, in April 1984), which had the partial adherence of “national” economic agents , led the country to a gigantic income distribution (with at least 44 million beneficiaries) and the country's position as the 6th economy in the world. Operation Lava Jato was born to dismantle this potential and not to punish elite crime.
At most, Lava Jato has the goal of defending a supposed “competitive capitalism”, impossible to be carried out in high value-added chains. In this way, the goal is not to “ensure good practices” but to increase the presence of transnational capital, of any origin and nature, reducing the internal pressure for distributive conflict and the capacity of the State apparatus to achieve. The basis of Operation Lava Jato is the Pontes Project, already proven through the Wikileaks portal, whose documentation was never denied (and everything coming after being proven through the conversations recorded in Spoofing, whose content the STF had access to).
There would be no Bolsonaro mismanagement without the denial of a request for habeas corpus by the STF, a legal appeal filed by the defense of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The more than controversial Plenum of the 4th Federal Regional Court (4th TRF, the second instance of national justice), only determined the arrest of the former metallurgical director and social-democratic leader, because the request for habeas was denied. And how much of this denial was the result of the influence of the threat of a coup d'état, emanating from the Twitter account of the then commander of the Brazilian Army, the four-star general, Eduardo Villas Bôas? And none of these maneuvers would be possible without Lava Jato and the illegal International Legal Cooperation, which circumvented the central authority structure and entered into direct relationships with agents and legal attachés of the US embassy in Brazil.
The members of the “Republiqueta Coxinha de Curitiba” were the nationalized arm of the gringos, applying the FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or Law on Corrupt Practices Abroad; federal legislation of the gringos dated December 1977, and, obviously, defending the “ minority shareholders" of Petrobras. What is the harm? The use of price composition and strategic goals of the largest company in Brazil, in a way that is not subordinated to speculative indices (such as WTI and Brent, as we have already explained in previous articles). These are renewed practices of old formats of interventions.
The case of Operation Lava Jato is Lawfare (the use of the law as a weapon of war. Simple as that.
Lava Jato, Papeis Abutres and the estate at the service of another country
In addition to the “coxinha micaretas” and “post-integralist pandemonium” (we will talk about this instrumentalized stupidity in later texts), the repetition of the historical farce is also impressive. As we have already explained in previous articles, price composition according to the “international consortium” was one of the requirements of British Petroelum and the Gulf Oil Company after the coup in Iran, in 1953. “Energy nationalism” is a power factor and accumulation across the planet, but Brazilian viralism insists on defending “alignment with international prices”. Something similar happened in Argentina and this analyst has already developed the theme some time ago.
More farce, since the action of the so-called Fondos Buitres – Fundos Abutres – equally defended and judged in a federal court of 1st Instance in NYC – condemned Argentina to pay interest for loan sharking. The Cristina government resisted and did not pay, taking the issue to international courts. The brothers' media cursed and screamed, defending the “historical duty of the financial homeland” to subordinate themselves to US speculators. Afterwards, Macri did everything the parasite wanted. In four years, the grandson of the dictatorship and son of Menemism managed to reverse the income distribution indices that had been recovered from 2003 to 2015. With all the problems – and there were loads of them – the Kirchner version of justicialism at least attenuated the difference in poverty and wealth and in some branches of the economy managed to regain national control (including YPF, the Argentine state-owned oil and derivatives company, breaking Repsol's fraudulent contract).
In the Brazilian case, we are sinking in DDP – poverty differential, the internal distributive conflict – since the impeachment coup and also in the previous year, when the austerity policies returned with Joaquim Levy (another root Chicago Boy), who took over the portfolio Dilma Rousseff's Farm. Lava Jato's deadly stab was the "agreement" with the "minority shareholders", through a foreign federal court in NYC. There, the price composition following the Brent futures contracts and, mainly, the WTI, changes the orientation of Petrobras which, according to the Justice of another country, applied “artificial prices” based on production costs and not on speculative pressures. It sounds absurd, it's absurd, and it's just not even more absurd, because the noble attorney Deltan Dallagnol didn't can take the Lava Jato Foundation forward, literally stealing a percentage of that fine.
There is a way out, but it involves risk and conviction
Any peripheral capitalist development project, even when in our case it is semi-peripheral, can imply broad social mobilization and projects of majority power beyond the electoral game and the coalition between antagonistic forces. That was what was at stake in the Popular Power trials of the Salvador Allende government, in Chile (1970-1973), which culminated in the coup headed by Augusto Pinochet, but which in fact was orchestrated by Chicago Boys economists and the intelligence of the US Embassy. USA.
In the Brazilian case, both the coup that induced Vargas to commit suicide, in August 1854 and, ten years later, on April 1, 1964, when João Goulart refuses to resist, came in this “preventive” sense from the right. In 2016, everything was “clean and fragrant”, as in the “scientific analysis” of economists at the service of speculation and financial gambling, those who recommend that we work without any rights and who will never accept investments with a return forecast in 12 months, as it is the industry average.
Anyway, it will take time to clean up all this filth, even more so with the pandemic and the mismanagement of the proto-fascist Jair Bolsonaro, the more than 6.100 military personnel who occupy positions in function deviation, in addition to the group of market operators castellated in the Ministry of Economy, under the baton of the pinochetista Paulo Guedes. Nor can we count on a great effort by social democracy to resist in the sense of anticipating a counter-coup. They took a coup without reacting in 2016, and the tendency is for them to take several more as long as they refuse to fight with all the necessary tools against imperialism and its internal allies.
*Bruno Beaklini is a political scientist and professor of international relations. Editor of the Strategy & Analysis channels.
Originally published on Maintenance Magazine.