as it transpired.
Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash), the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, the false-imprisonment of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva & the subsequent installation of the visibly-disturbed dotard shitopath Jare Bolsonaro.
Calamity.
Albeit a common calamity.
We’ve suffered this manufactured oblivion before.
More drastic interventions in the 60s & 70s were exerted in Chile, Argentina & Brazil, when a popular socialist government was elected, by the peoples will, in free & fair elections. The response came in the shape of military coups, assassinations & targeted killings, torture, mass arrests, violent tyrannical terror, abduction & the installation of military regimes that cooperated with the kind of subservient, free-market mutilation & stifling of state protections that the northern aggressors intended for expansions in exploitation.
Banana republics & willing “bastards”.
Venezuela has suffered repeated attempts at regime neutralization (no cessation seems to be nascent).
Both Jeremy Corbyn & Bernie Sanders endure extraordinary, extracurricular restriction, obstruction & suppression – both of which have derailed their overt ascensions to power.
You can heap on a whole pile of African, Middle Eastern & South American countries that have had these liminal or graphically conspicuous subfunctional incursions inflicted on their progress/election results/governments when the US – or a body of billionaires within the US – are ‘unhappy’ with the natural democratic directions of the peoples will.
so Petra Costa’s doc is pretty damn important, as it is a fly-on-the-wall, in-situ account of this heinous heist as it unfolds.
I don’t know if she was aggravated to film by the advent of Operation Car Wash as it emerged, or had been filming general coverage as the event materialized in real time? – but whether by opportunism or motivated response, here is a remarkable catalogue of this egregious unfurling coup.
A specious scandal & a well-coordinated eruption of premeditated political theatre, all backed-to-bulging by the plutocratic, pro/business, neo-libral-elite media-barons delivered the faked-furore, where the noise of the pantomime & its puerile emotives & repetition became more important than the original accusation OR ITS ACCURACY OR VALIDITY.
Culpability is offset by volume – as the bandits scream robbery.
Facts, evidence & truth are supplanted by aggression, repetition & the bull-horn of giant tabloid-media´s enhanced echopraxia chorusing it’s cacophony.
There is a familiar pattern here – operating for the same interests, with modifications only really in the regional circumstances & the level of extremity & dishonesty used for the crime.
One thing this excellent documentary does not discuss here enough, & a subject that I personally have yet to see really rolled-out & investigated conclusively, is who was really behind this corporate coup? Who orchestrated, bankrolled, devised & executed this crucial episode in Brazil’s turmoil & degenerative meltdown? – that saw one of the most popular presidents of the century, jailed on horse-shit charges, that would later be overturned, just before the election that had him trouncing his right-wing opponent?
His accusers were a rabble of filth-encrusted corruptocrats, fraudsters & scammers – who ended up, very literally, being caught in their own corruption probe & being sentenced to jail on numerous serious corruption offences.
Again, who instigated this? Steve Bannon’s presence tells us a lot. Brazil, with its typical subservience to US corporate power, is one of the few places that has courted the Bannon bilge-bane (even shitty pro-market proton-fascist or populist political movements from around the world largely shun Bannon’s blandishments as they know that he works for acutely indecent US interests, not their own). JBS, the gigantic Brazilian cheap-meat multi-national has been exposed for playing a strong role in the fraud & conspiracy. JBS also has a giant stake in the US meat market & sprawling US based meat-production facilities. Big-ag soy-baron billionaires like Blairo Maggi, who, insanely, would actually become agricultural minister (a conflict of interest travesty), were also tightly bound to the plotters. The Bancada Ruralista or agricultural lobby in Brazil is humongously powerful, & humongously corrupt, with snouts-in-the-trough & fingers-on-the-strings. This oil-heavy, super destructive industry chimes with the corporate colossus of US meat production, petroleum, big-ag & the GMO industry, as well as the hedge fund, derivative & commodity inverters & asset-strippers (The Mercers, Koch Industries etc). Michel Temer flew to New York in September 2016 to speak to hedge-funders, venture capitalists, economic advisors & “foreign policy elites”. Would Robert or Rebekah Mercer have been in attendance? Or a satrap representing their interests? Perhaps the dreg-drape Steve Bannon?
Where was Rupert Murdoch in all this? As he is so opinionated & influential on such transgressions & the furthering of neo-libertarian totalitarianism via max-strength chicanery of all ilks & by any means.
What about his pal & peer Charles Koch & their mutual vehicle of the Cato Institute, of which Murdoch is a member of the board?
Selling the “rape rights” to the country for scraps whilst screaming nationalism …. yep! We heard this shit before (Brexit a paragon of putridity)….. you getting tired yet?
Anyway, greater investigation into the origins of the conspiracists, financiers & schemers that delivered this falsified-fiasco needs desperately to be established.
The Edge of Democracy otherwise provides a deeply-disturbing ring-side seat into major criminal violations/interventions into democracy/sovereignty and popular politics by extreme-wealth/corporatists subversives & the aberrational outcomes that follow.
Petra Costa, 2019, Netflix