jorge sasaki

One more amazing thing about Brazil and Lula's campaign: The NYT today has a gushing profile of a Congressman named @AndreJanonesMG, who became the face of Lula's campaign, its chief communication strategist. and -- as a result of admittedly innovative though extremely creepy digital strategies -- the greatest hero of the Brazilian left. But listen to what the article doesn't mention: Just 2 years ago -- not 20 years ago or 10 years ago, but 2 years ago -- Janones got caught committing one of the most despicable crimes imaginable: he forced his Congressional staff employees to transfer a portion of their (quite low) monthly public salary to him as a condition for keeping their jobs. The money he stole from his workers didn't go to his campaign: it just went to enrich himself, into his pocket,. He got caught when the employees secretly taped him angrily telling them they should stop complaining. When all this emerged, the left-wing members of Congress loyal to Lula -- who, remember, claims to lead a movement of workers! The name of Lula's party is the Workers Party -- protected him from all consequences from stealing the salary of his workers. The pro-Lula judiciary let Janones confess guilt and simply pay back the money that he stole. And yet this doesn't bother anyone on the Brazilian left. Janones has become a beloved figure overnight among left-wing celebrities and is now one of Lula's closest allies. The NYT profile doesn't even mention this in their gushing profile. In the scheme of Brazil's authoritarianism, it's not the biggest issue, but to me it's one of the most revealing about what frauds these people are:

One of Brazil's few independent left-wing parties, the Trotskyist @PCO29, has long been vehemently opposed to Moraes' censorship regime (their own accounts have been banned), and are adamant that Moraes is persecuting his own and Lula's critics, including Flavio Bolsonaro:👇

For those who don't know, this person below is Brazil's Logan Paul, though without Logan's humility to know what he is and isn't.👇 He's a YouTuber who got extremely rich making clown and prank videos for young teenagers well into his 20s and 30s: zany faces, video games, profiteering off Brazil's poor with multiple videos ostentatiously showing off his and his brother's $20 million mansions, etc. etc. He's about to be 40 and this is still what he does. But at some point, he decided he aspired to more: he wasn't just a YouTube clown but a profound political thinker. Except he could only uncritically recite elite opinion. When anti-PT hatred prevailed, he made 1,000 videos about how Lula was a thief and crook and Dilma should be impeached and jailed. When elite opinion turned against Bolsonaro, he retracted all his prior views, apologized to Dilma and Lula, and now does trite anti-Bolsonaro clichés while calling for social media censorship. Basically, he's only capable of watching Globo and CNN and repeating what he hears, always aligned with the most superficial opinions of Brazil's power centers. Every country is plagued with these. Anyway, if my credibility really were what he claims here, he probably wouldn't be constantly writing and talking about me as he's been doing ; my work probably wouldn't be as influential; my reporting and columns probably wouldn't be featured in Brazil's largest newspaper, and I probably wouldn't be credited by all factions with breaking many of the most important stories of the last 6 years in Brazil, including about Moraes and the judiciary. Most importantly, he purports here to malign my viral tweet today about the Flavio/Moraes controversy, but you'll notice that he doesn't actually refute a single point I made. That's because he hasn't yet heard anything on his favorite Globo or CNN TV shows that would let him know what he should say in response. It's probably time to just go back your daily adolescent antics for 12-year-olds before your feelings get hurt:

Brazilian authorities and media are trying to find out where Flavio Bolsonaro is. Brazil's notorious authoritarian Judge Alexandre de Moraes -- before the votes were counted -- already had an order prepared to seize Bolsonaro's passports and bar him from leaving the country even though **he's been charged with no crime** (there are various pending financial investigations). Moraes signed the order barring Bolsonaro from leaving Brazil SEVEN MINUTES after Lula was declared the winner on Sunday night. A media outlet in Argentina this morning reported that Bolsonaro entered Argentina to fly to the US. His friends and allies deny this, but Flavio could easily just appear in Brazil or even by video and has not done so. Argentina is being sketchy, evasive and somewhat uncooperative with Brazil's federal police (Lula and Milei are obviously not allies). Whatever else is true, it is not exactly a sign of a healthy, normal or functioning democracy when the candidate who narrowly loses a presidential race -- and concedes defeat -- is suddenly barred from leaving the country by a Supreme Court Judge now globally notorious for censoring, imprisoning and otherwise persecuting his critics and opponents of Lula's government. It is also worth noting that Bolsonaro's party dominates the Senate, having run on a vow to impeach Moraes, and this is seen by many as a kind of leverage/hostage ploy by Moraes to cling to power.

Há algum outro exemplo em todo o mundo democrático em que o candidato derrotado numa eleição presidencial tenha seus passaportes apreendidos e seja proibido de sair do país no dia seguinte à votação, por ordem de um juiz alinhado ao candidato vencedor? Estou procurando precedentes históricos e, até agora, não encontrei nenhum. A medida é ainda mais extrema considerando que Flávio sequer foi denunciado criminalmente.

One day after Lula was declared the winner of Brazil's elections, his opponent -- Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro -- just had had his passport seized by the Federal Police. Theose police were sent by notorious tyrant Judge Alexandre de Moraes. What a lovely democratic image.