Brazil’s Car Wash Investigation in the Mud: A Dirty War Against the Left
“I simply can’t believe what is happening in Brazil,” says Noam Chomsky exclusively to Edu Montesanti.
As the Brazilian right-wing is imposing on the South American country a grave regression, The Intercept has revealed that their tool to take back power through the local justice system, especially arresting Lula da Silva, is as disgusting as Bolsonaro’s nation in these times. “I simply can’t believe what is happening in Brazil,” says Noam Chomsky exclusively to author Edu Montesanti.
Operation Lava Jato: since 2014 trumpeted by the mainstream media, nationally and internationally, as cleansing Brazil of corruption, has become another example of the great service to the truth and democracy by the alternative media. Since the beginning, it has denounced the culture of corruption — facing wrath and every kind of aggressions — the outrageous disservice of the “heroes” of the criminal task force, clandestine right-wing ideologues masquerading as apolitical law enforcers, perpetrators of a self-evident lawfare.
The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald has revealed, or confirmed taking into account alternative media’s exhaustive denouncements through the last five years. He has recorded the serious wrongdoing, unethical behavior and systematic deceit by Lava Jato investigation’s prosecutors led by the chief prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol.
Together with Judge Sergio Moro (now the Justice minister for Brazilian far-right president Jair Bolsonaro) the prosecutor oversaw former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s trial based on fake news and a campaign of deep hate – strongly supported by the local mainstream media.
Lula da Silva was sentenced by Moro to 12 years in prison for corruption and money laundering, in July 2017. According to the judge, he was convicted of benefiting from renovations to a beachfront apartment, both paid by the building company OAS as payback for some contracts he helped the company get. The accusation was based on a report published by O Globo’s paper, which brought contradictions in the same publication years ago.
It is worth remembering that Lula’s exclusion from the election, based on Moro’s finding of guilt as Dallagnol confided to the judge his increasing doubts over two key elements of the prosecution’s case, was a key episode that paved the way for Bolsonaro’s victory. As soon as this retired military officer took over the Presidency, he nominated Moro as his “super-minister” of Justice and Public Security.
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“I believe that the U.S. government influenced, at least tacitly, the outcome of Brazil’s recent national elections,” the CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who co-hosts the Sputnik’s radio show Loud and Clear, told Pravda’s Montesanti.
The well-known mucky Brazilian “Justice” system has been mostly composed of the same elitist white families through the years. It is deeply corrupted, a solid caste secretly trained by the Washington regime, as revealed years ago by WikiLeaks (Moro included in such legal courses, based on United States law). The main objective through Lava Jato has been:
- The deterioration of the Brazilian left, especially preventing Lula da Silva from winning the 2018 election.
- The destruction of the national industry, especially oil and construction companies, in favor of the American one.
- Latin America’s and BRICS’s disintegration.
The investigation called Lava Jato which, in alliance with the mainstream media — especially Rede Globo with a vast history of promoting coups in the South American country — has taken the form of a totalitarian regime in Brazil. It has had a strong and clear political character which relinquishes national sovereignty in favor of the interests of the United States, as well as the 1964 CIA-funded military coup.
(“What is good for the United States, is good for Brazil,” said the Justice Minister Juracy Magalhães shortly after the coup, that overthrew elected President João Goulart without any corruption charge).
A Biased Task Force Heading Brazil to Chaos
An excess of temporary prisons, bargains of rewarded delation, pressure to report whether false or factual as long as they aligned with Sergio Moro’s political interests, illegal documents, illegal eavesdropping, “clumsy” media leaks of covert operations and private conversations between then-President Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva, dismissing legal formalities on sensitive judicial cases (including Lula’s) are but a few examples of Lava Jato task force since the money-laundering probe was launched in 2014.
Since then, many lawyers including some Prosecutor’s Public officials all over Brazil has said that every Lava Jato sentence is closr to being invalidated and Sergio Moro, expelled from the judiciary. The Intercept also has revealed that the then-judge acted like a chief of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, something, of course, illegal to a judge who must be impartial, of course.
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At the same time, prosecutors secretly allied to protect the judge, and prevent tensions between him and the Supreme Court from paralyzing investigations, in March 2016. “The prosecutors’ submission to Moro is scandalous. There is no doubt that they acted illegally,” said the Brazilian lawmaker in Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo Freixo.
Operation Lava Jato origins in the scandal of Banestado, a state bank of Parana State in Southern Brazil: between 1996 and 2002, during President Fernando Henrique Cardoso years (1995-2003, of the rightist Brazilian Social-Democratic Party – PSDB -, Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party’s – PT – strong opponent), Banestado was used as a means for PSDB politicians, money dcealers, a big drug trafficker, economists and businessmen, to evade currency to tax havens that reached US$84 billion (Brazil’s Odebrecht construction company, at the center of Lava Jato probe now, struck a deal with the United States Justice Department in 2016, admitting it paid at least US$3.5 billion in bribes around the world, from Latin America to Africa).
In the mid-2000s, then-Judge Moro, until then an unknown jurist – as national tasks, of course, require a renowned lawyer -, condemned several bank officers but not one politician among many involved in the case that has developed and, in the last years, has generated a national hysteria (falsely) against corruption – against the Workers’ Party, particularly.
There has been another investigation in Brazil, important to be noted in this context: Operation Zelotes inquires Brazil’s Ministry of the Treasury for the embezzlement of US$4,9 billion, in which are involved government officials, businessmen — including Ford and Mitsubishi vehicle makers — bankers (Bradesco, Santander, and Safra banks), and Rede Globo, the country’s biggest media company.
Even being the monetary values involved much higher than in Lava Jato scandal, too, Zelotes has not drawn the mainstream media’s attention — but when, in late 2014, Lula da Silva’s son was denounced. Neither a big company nor a businessman has been prosecuted.
In other leaks by The Intercept on June 21, then-Judge Moro turned a blind eye to the corruption scheme that Flavio Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro’s son, kept in his cabinet while he was a lawmaker in Rio de Janeiro, not to displease his father who had already given him the post of Minister of Justice in his future government.
Such scandals, among others in Brazil, have not got the local Justice’s and the mainstream media’s interest, neither The Intercept’s revelations: cynically, the focus has been who hacked prosecutors and Moro’s cell phones, not the contents of the revelations. A strong, disproportional, incredible contrast to the widespread hysteria anti-corruption regarding Lava Jato probe.
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Greenwald versus Moro, ‘The U.S.’ Son of a B*tch’
“We’re of course watching the great work that Glenn Greenwald has been doing, with real fascination,” says Noam Chomsky to Pravda’s Edu Montesanti. “We hope that those with real power won’t succeed in covering it up.”
To make matters worse in the already tragic Brazil, since his first revelations about Lava Jato, last June 9, Glenn Greenwald has been investigated and intimidated by the Brazilian Federal Police, subordinated to Minister Moro. “I have known Glenn Greenwald since 1986. I have found him to be an honest journalist, even if I do not always agree with him,” states John Kiriakou to this report. “If Glenn Greenwald were in the U.S. to talk to the FBI or any other government agency, it would have been in his role as a legitimate journalist.”
According to the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations (U.N.), referring to Greenwald’s case, the Brazilian State is now “obliged to prevent, protect, investigate and punish violence against journalists, especially those who have been subjected to intimidation, threats or other types of violence.”
One of Moro’s secret sayings to his obedient “Public Prosecutor” Dallagnol revealed by Greenwald, about ex-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, was: “An important support, that is better not to be offended [through investigations].”
Greenwald has said that Rede Globo, which in 2013 published a cynical letter stating the organization regretted having supported the 1964 coup in Brazil, “has been Lava Jato’s friend, an allied and associate.” A coalition that many still believe as being “a coalition of good people,” that conceals under the carpet the blood of the victims of the dictatorship regime (1964-1985), which Bolsonaro and Minister of the Supreme Court Dias Toffoli, openly advocate.
What said then-U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt about the Nicaraguan dictator in 1936, can undoubtedly be said about Moro by U.S. deep State in these times: “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”
Uncle Sam’s Puppets: Criminals Wearing Ties
During presidents Lula’s and Dilma’s years (2003-2016), Petrobras (the Brazilian state oil company) production multiplied by several times: while in 2000 it represented 3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), in 2014 the company produced of 13 percent of the GDP.
It is worth pointing out that the local elites, aligned with the Washington regime (according to WikiLeaks and so many historical evidence), wants to privatize the national oil company – since its creation, in the 1950s. Petrobras boosted the overthrow of presidents Getúlio Vargas in 1954, much likely Jânio Quadros in 1961, and João Goulart three years later.
Surely not for a mere coincidence, Lava Jato has strongly weakened Petrobras, as mentioned above as in no country across the globe, a state agent goes against its nation’s interests as Moro and his gang has done. Moreover, the Brazilian “Justice” system is well-known for also being biased against the poor, blacks and leftists in general, while shamefully shields the elite’s interests.
As for Dallagnol, he has received money lately from two sectors spared by the probe that has condemned Lula da Silva’s: health plans and banks, for presenting lectures. Both the chief Lava Jato’s prosecutor in Brasília and Judge Moro in Curitiba disregarded accusations against such billionaire sectors (in the second case, Bradesco, Itaú, Safra and BTG banks).
The Public Prosecutor’s Office has spoken out against the annulment of the penalty imposed on Lula da Silva, disregarding The Intercept revelations.
A Color Revolution that Many Do Not See Yet
Operation Car Wash, a so precarious as aggressive lawfare, is part of an imperialistic intervention in Brazil, a soft coup with clear objectives backed by the local oligarchs.
Brazil, June 2013. The President was, since 2010, Dilma Rousseff with a 57 percent approval rating at the time. Brazil, after eight years of Lula da Silva in the Presidency, Dilma’s predecessor, was respected all over the world as never before. Domestically, the nation was living times of full employment – as never before, again: unemployment was then 5,7 percent, a historic record in Brazil.
Suddenly, a popular “Spring” took to the streets across the country. The motive? Few people could explain why they were in the streets angerly protesting. “Against everything that is there” was the most common answer to journalists, in many cases after thinking some seconds to speak something; people were confused.
Three weeks after the beginning of the protests, deeply fueled by the mainstream media and incited also by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (!), then-President Dilma fell to a 30 percent approval rating. Unexplainable. Nothing had changed in the country, to justify such a free-falling. From overnight, as the local mainstream media, soon followed by The New York Times, incited more protests praising “the sacred people” (whose causes the same elitists par excellence, had barely or even never advocated before), and then demonized President Dilma with much hate.
The Brazilian “Spring” followed the same pattern of the countries that were, all over the world, being victims of a U.S. color revolution, idealized by the American Gene Sharp. A Tension Strategy took place in the South American country, through attacks of public places by policemen to justify more repression by the State – this video published by Telesur is just one example, among many others regarding a Tension Strategy in Brazil at the time.
Part of the Brazilian alternative media, shyly and just for some time denounced that a Color Revolution was happening. It was unpopular reporting a fact like that at the time. And many others in the media did not understand what was suddenly going on in the country – the massive protests took everybody by surprise. Sociologists could not explain that “phenomenon”.
The Brazilian political and social scenario, of course, started to drastically change, then. At the same time, Edward Snowden spoke out, saying in the first week of July that Brazil had been the world’s most spied on by the U.S. on January 2013 and in the last decade, the most spied on in Latin America – especially then-President Dilma and Petrobras.
Two years later, would start a strong boycott against the Dilma administration by the Congress, secretly led by then-Vice-President Michel Temer who also led, publicly speaking out about this, the impeachment process against the then-president – a total shame as the first woman in Brazil’s Presidency did not commit any crime.
Temer was revealed by WikiLeaks as the main CIA informer in Brazil. Meanwhile, obscure movements such as Vem pra Rua (Take to the Streets) and Movimento Brasil Livre (Free Brazil Movement), evidently funded and trained by the Washington basements (detailed in Pravda Brasil) – the latter, a national champion in spreading fake news, according to academic studies.
Then took place the impeachment process in 2016, an aberration that negatively drawn the attention of jurists, journalists, activists, and intellectuals in general across the globe. No word from the Washington regime, whose “diplomat” in Brazil was Lilian Ayalde who served as an ambassador in Paraguay in 2012, when the progressive President Fernando Lugo was overthrown by a parliamentary coup, much similar to the Brazilian one. Lava Jato investigation reached its peak at the time.
The alternative media, locally and internationally, started very soon to denounced that a coup was taking place in Brazil. And that Temer would not be a solution to the economic and political crisis, as heralded – on the contrary, he and his gang were poison to Brazil’s weak democracy. Shortly after Temer took power on October 5, 2016, the House of Representatives revoked Law 4567/16, which ensured exclusivity for Petrobras to exploit crude oil.
On March 14, 2018, Marielle Franco, a councilwoman in Rio de Janeiro who used to speak out against the State repression towards the poor in her city, was murdered in a sophisticated operation. Shortly after that crime, the alternative media all over the country started denouncing she was assassinated by State forces – mocked by right-wing politicians (including then-lawmaker in Rio, Jair Bolsonaro), and civilians -, which has become evident through time.
All those “phenomena” have fundamentally cooperated with hate speech spread today in Brazil, and the election of a too mediocre and violent character to the Brazilian Presidency, Jair Bolsonaro, late last year. It was warned by the alternative media all over the world, that Brazil would be far from finding its way back with the retired military in the Presidency.
Asked about a possible U.S. funding to Bolsonaro’s campaign, John Kiriakou analyzes:
“I do not believe that there was a massive, expensive operation to elect Jair Bolsonaro. But the U.S. doesn’t always need expensive operations to influence outcomes. The State Department, working with the CIA and others can easily exert ‘soft power’ to bend foreign elections to its will. For example, did the U.S. pressure the Brazilian courts to keep President Lula in prison? Did the U.S. support Brazilian forces that sought to depose President Rousseff? What was U.S. influence over the Brazilian media to make the U.S. position known, but not necessarily publicly tied to the U.S.?”.
These are questions never investigated, neither asked by the Brazilian mainstream media, they a motive of Kiriakou’s questions.
Recently, a survey in Brazil about Moro’s behavior revealed by The Intercept presented a fearful outcome. It was considered inappropriate by 33 percent of respondents, but for 32 percent, not. Nevertheless, far more people, 48 percent, considered that Moro and the prosecutors acted correctly, while those who think otherwise, corresponded to 31 percent.
Surely a byproduct of the mainstream media that has denied achieving the basic job of journalism in covering Lava Jato – investigating, criticizing, questioning, reflecting -, the Brazilian society position now, regarding Moro’s secret behavior, scares Chomsky: “That’s shocking and depressing.”
The corrupted businessman Emilio Odebrecht, once said: “Everything that is happening is an institutionalized business. The whole press knew that what was happening was that. Why are they doing this now? Why didn’t they do it ten, twenty years ago? This sector of the press always knew that, but now is coming with such demagogy”.
Into the Trash of History
While inside the country the Brazilian elite angrily seeks by all means possible to defend its privileges, abroad the shame is more and more evident. A U.S.’s backyard again.
“I simply can’t believe what is happening in Brazil. I saw clips of Bolsonaro at the G20 conference, making a complete fool of himself and embarrassing Brazil,” observes Chomsky. “Hard to remember that a decade ago, Brazil was one of the most respected countries in the world.”
Car Wash investigation is the clearest evidence of whats is happening in Brazil. There are many progressive politicians, journalists, and activists in general suffering in the hands of a strong elite in power, a ruthless lawfare paving the way for fascism whose starring clown now calls Jair Bolsonaro applauded by obscure mass manipulation groups such as MBL, that controls millions of washed brains through marketing, excessive lies and money not declared.
What is happening in Brazil is part of the U.S.’s plan of regional and global dominance, through a neo-fascism.
Unfortunately, Chomsky’s hope that those with real power won’t succeed in covering Lava Jato’s crimes up, is not going to come true. Much more amazing than the mainstream media manipulation of facts in this case, too, is that millions of individuals, in times of information revolution led by the Internet and even before this, being well-aware of the media’s features still form an opinion through it, being so easily deceived and manipulated.
Edu Montesanti
Edu Montesanti is a Brazilian-Italian journalist, writer, teacher, and translator. Edu is the author of Lies and Crimes of the "War on Terror" (Brazil, 2012; Mentiras e Crimes da "Guerra ao Terror," original title in Portuguese), highlighted in the 2012 Sao Paulo International Book Fair. He writes for Brazil's Instituto Humanitas Unisinos, Pravda (Portuguese), and Orinoco Tribune. Used to write for Pravda Report (English), the Brazilian magazine Caros Amigos (both printed issues and the website), Brazil TV's website Observatorio da Imprensa, Spain's Diario Liberdade, the Canadian website Global Research (English, Portuguese, and Spanish), Bangladesh's The Weekly Blitz, London's Atlas Institute for International Affairs, for Telesur English, and US's Truth Out and Pressenza. He used to translate for Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo's website (Argentina), the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan's website, and Malalaï Joya's website (Afghanistan). Edu Montesanti has been teaching at Brazilian public schools. You can follow his work at edumontesanti.wordpress.com.
