An Attempt To Impeach A Supreme Court Justice In Brasil

 

BRAZIL

Round Two

President Jair Bolsonaro has asked Brazil’s Senate to impeach a Supreme Court justice — a move unprecedented in Brazil’s history – in his escalating war on the judiciary and the electoral system, the Washington Post reported.

Senate’s president, Rodrigo Pacheco, will now decide whether there are grounds to open an investigation into Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The president’s impeachment filing alleges that the judge has carried out investigations with partisan and anti-democratic bias while acting as both investigator and judge. It also accuses him of violating free speech protections.

Since early last year, Bolsonaro has grown increasingly incensed over rulings that clarify that mayors and governors – and not the president – have the jurisdiction to impose restrictions to slow the pandemic. Bolsonaro, a virus-denier, has resisted any restrictions on people or businesses.

He escalated attacks on members of the judiciary following a decision by the electoral court on Aug. 3 to investigate Bolsonaro for his comments undermining the electoral system and de Moraes’ decision to include the president in the Supreme Court’s investigation into the spread of fake news. On Aug. 13, de Moraes also ordered the imprisonment of Roberto Jefferson, a close Bolsonaro ally and president of the Brazilian Labor Party, for also suggesting the voting system is easily manipulated on social media.

The Senate has never initiated an impeachment investigation against a Supreme Court justice and it’s unlikely they will this time, Paulo Calmon, a political science professor at the University of Brasilia, told the Associated Press: “This has a symbolic effect for his base…”

With his approval ratings sliding, Bolsonaro has insisted the country’s electronic vote system is prone to fraud – without presenting any evidence – and insisted that printed vote receipts would allow for auditing results, asking lawmakers to amend the constitution.

That has prompted concern he may be laying the groundwork to challenge election results. Recent polls have indicated that former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is expected to run in next year’s race, would win handily in a runoff.

Meanwhile, in a rebuff to Bolsonaro, lower house lawmakers voted against the proposal to adopt printed vote receipts at electronic ballot boxes earlier this month.

Election Fraud In Brasil

 

BRAZIL

Mirror Images

Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) opened a probe into President Jair Bolsonaro this week after the far-right leader claimed that the current electronic voting system is vulnerable to fraud, reported Reuters.

Bolsonaro, who is running for reelection next year, said that the present system would help his leftist rival, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, return to power. He added that he would not accept the results of next year’s presidential elections if the voting system does not adopt printed receipts that can be counted in the event of disputed results.

His comments prompted his supporters to rally in multiple cities in support of the proposal. Meanwhile, a congressional committee will vote later this week on Bolsonaro’s proposal to introduce paper ballots.

On Monday, the TSE voted to investigate Bolsonaro on whether he committed a crime by attacking the country’s electoral system on social media and threatening Brazil’s democracy.

TSE judges emphasized that electronic voting is free of fraud, adding that there “has never been a documented fraud case in any election” since the system was implemented in 1996.

Bolsonaro’s critics said that the president is sowing doubt with his unfounded claims to build legitimacy when he doesn’t accept official results in 2022.

Peru;s New Leftist President

 

PERU

Hats, White and Black

Peruvians living in the Andean town of Niño Jesús de Huarapite feel as if nobody in the capital of Lima is in their corner. Many remember how Peruvian troops and US-trained counterterrorism forces perpetrated a massacre in the town to quash a Maoist insurgency in the 1980s. Today, with little economic development since then, most survive on a meager diet of potatoes harvested from the hills.

“The resentment here is that the whole world eats well, and we do not, and nobody remembers us,” resident Liez Quispe told the Washington Post.

It’s no wonder that the vast majority of people of Niño Jesús de Huarapite voted for Pedro Castillo, the leftist who was recently declared the winner of a June 6 runoff election, the BBC reported. The cowboy hat-wearing Castillo became a public figure in the South American country after he led a successful teachers’ strike in 2017. On the campaign trail, he vowed to nationalize the country’s mining and hydrocarbon sectors as part of a plan to create 1 million new jobs. Peru is the second-largest copper producer in the world. But poverty has increased significantly since the pandemic hit and more than one-third of Peruvians struggle to eat.

“I ask for effort and sacrifice in the struggle to make this a just and sovereign country,” he said after he was declared the winner, according to the Guardian.

Castillo defeated Keiko Fujimori, a conservative candidate who suggested that Castillo wanted to transform Peru into a mismanaged, economically struggling communist country like Cuba or Venezuela, the Financial Times explained. She is the daughter of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who is currently serving a 25-year sentence for corruption and human rights abuses.

His background is decidedly humbler. A former teacher born into a family of peasant farmers, he lives in a “humble two-story, adobe home” in a poor Andean town, the Associated Press wrote. His wife intends to bring vegetables they grow themselves and cheese made from their cows’ milk to Lima, the capital.

The new president faces structural political challenges. Competition between the president and lawmakers, corruption scandals and other crises have led to Peru having four presidents in the last five years. An elite backlash against Castillo’s leftist program and anti-democratic elements that he espoused before the election suggest Peruvian democracy is under threat, Foreign Policy magazine argued.

For example, a coalition of Castillo’s opponents have taken control of Peru’s Congress after officials rejected the candidacies of members of Castillo’s political party, Free Peru, Reuters wrote. Gridlock could ensue. But, according to Al Jazeera, Castillo has pledged to run a “pluralistic” government in a bid to reduce ideological tensions.

If that’s what it takes to help Liez Quispe, so be it.

Unrest In Cuba

 

CUBA

Patria y vida

Food shortages and price spikes were the initial motivations for the anti-government demonstrations now rocking Cuba. Gross national product declined a whopping 11 percent in the past year as the tourism industry plunged due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But now many observers believe the protests – the largest in decades – have morphed into the most significant challenge to the island’s communist regime in generations. It’s not just that there’s less money in circulation. Many Cubans no longer trust how their planned economy functions.

“The state says it has no resources,” Lillian Guerra, a Cuban history professor at the University of Florida, told National Public Radio. “Yet it’s investing and has been investing those resources in building and continuing to build hotels and tourist facilities with its own money. Cubans are fed up with that.”

A popular slogan during street marches is “Patria y vida” – homeland and life – a play on the motto “Patria o muerte,” or “homeland or death,” CNN reported.

The context for the shift in attitudes is obvious. Fidel Castro, who founded the Cuban revolution, died in 2016. His brother, Raul, who took over after his death, is 90 years old. Current Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, meanwhile, simply doesn’t command the same fear and respect. “He’s no Fidel,” said a Cuban explaining the nature of the protests in the Washington Post.

Writing in an op-ed in the New York Times, Yoani Sánchez, a Cuban journalist and activist, argued that young Cubans today have no connection to Castro’s rebellion in the 1950s. They see a country where the government cracks down on freedom of expression, caters to foreign tourists and investors rather than its own people and mismanages the economy, including a slow rollout of Cuban-made vaccines.

Other changes are afoot. Afro-Cubans are at the forefront of the demonstrations. The Catholic Church has publicly appealed to officials to listen rather than demonize activists, Reuters added. Regardless, the marches turned violent with police clashing with protesters, shops being looted, and other damage. It is unclear how many have been injured or arrested. Even so, the government made some concessions to protesters such as loosening rules on food and drug imports and admitting some responsibility for the situation.

American leaders are figuring out how to respond. As the New York Post explained, conservatives have blasted leftists for calling for an end to the US embargo on the island. President Joseph Biden has stepped up staffing at the US embassy and reviewed rules governing remittances to make sure ordinary Cubans rather than officials receive money from abroad. He also rolled out new sanctions against a top Cuban military official and a special police unit Thursday for the crackdown on protesters, warning of more to come, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The editorial board at the Financial Times, meanwhile, urged the US and other nations to stay out of Cuba’s business given how American meddling in the past hasn’t helped much. A Bloomberg opinion piece suggested that the US could open Cuba’s tightly controlled Internet to help the protests, however.

Many regimes from Europe to the Middle East have fallen over the past 30 years. Some believe it might be Cuba’s time.

W

Chile's New Constitution MOves Forward With A Surprise

 

CHILE

We the People

Chile’s constitutional assembly chose an Indigenous Mapuche woman to lead the drafting of a new constitution to replace the one adopted during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, Al Jazeera reported.

Nearly 100 delegates of the assembly – including 17 Indigenous people that make up the body – picked independent delegate Elisa Loncon, a university professor and activist for Mapuche educational and linguistic rights.

Loncon welcomed the decision to allow “a Mapuche person, a woman, to change the history of this country.”

Her selection marks another highlight for Chile’s constitutional assembly: Chilean voters opted to elect dozens of progressive and independent delegates to redraft the constitution amid frustration with the political status quo.

The election was a major blow for conservative candidates, who failed to secure a third of the seats needed to veto any proposals.

Analysts said that one of the main challenges will be to build trust and cooperate in redrafting Chile’s main legislation.

The assembly will need two-thirds of the vote to approve each new article. It will have nine months – with a possible three-month extension, to draft a new document to be voted on in a referendum.

The previous constitution was widely unpopular and seen as a source of social inequality in Chile, despite being amended over the past few decades.

Protests Erupt In Brasil

 

BRAZIL

Round Three

Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered an investigation into President Jair Bolsonaro for ignoring alleged irregularities in the government’s purchase of Covid-19 vaccines from India, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The investigation centers around a deal earlier this year between Brazil’s health ministry and Indian-based Bharat Biotech to buy 20 million doses of the Covaxin vaccine for about $320 million.

Health ministry official and whistleblower, Luis Miranda, said during a congressional inquiry that he faced “abnormal pressure” from members of the ministry to allow the importation of the Covaxin vaccine despite irregularities in the procurement process.

He said that he had voiced concerns to Bolsonaro in March. He added that the leader responded that he would take the case to the federal police.

Under the terms of the contract, Brazil was only supposed to pay for the Covaxin doses 30 days after they were delivered. But the ministry later received an invoice for part of the jabs to be delivered, which had a different number than those in the contract.

Last week, the government suspended the Covaxin deal following recommendations from the federal comptroller. The comptroller denied there were any irregularities.

Prosecutors have now 90 days to investigate Bolsonaro for the crime of dereliction of duty. The president denies wrongdoing.

The probe comes as the president faces criticism and demonstrations for his handling of the coronavirus: He has downplayed the severity of the pandemic since early 2020 and has criticized vaccines and social distancing measures.

Although Bolsonaro enjoys enough support in Brazil’s congress to quash any legal proceedings against him, analysts said the investigation could further weaken the president’s popularity – currently at 24 percent. He will run for re-election next year.

UK

Argentina Artillery And Missiles In The Malvinas War

 

Ricky D Phillips

Military Historian and Author: Falklands war.January 2

Why didn't Argentina use long range artillery and land based missiles to attack the UK’ ships and planes in the Falkland Islands War?

They certainly did. Colonel Martin Balza of the artillery requested ten 155mm CITEFA long range guns from General Jofre, who replied “Let's talk seriously, it isn't going to come to that” but Balza thought differently and managed to request two of them without Jofre's knowledge. Jofre was not very pleased about that.

The 155mm guns did a good job of keeping British warships on the alert and there were a few close shaves (Argentine propaganda is full of suggestions that British ships constantly turned tail and ran from them, but this is somewhat hyperbolic) and later, the guns were turned to the west to engage the British on Mount Kent and in the staging areas prior to the battles of Mount Longdon, Two Sisters and Mount Harriet.

After this, the British 105mm guns were at close enough range to engage them and, of course, they could fire faster and were more mobile, but the Argentine 105mm Pack howitzers were still at a major disadvantage and Balza managed to have another two 155mm units delivered, although one came into action on the night of June 13th (replacing one which had been blown up by a Harrier) and the other never got out of the airport because there was nothing to tow it. Even then, they were basically out of ammunition. They now adorn several museums in the UK.

As to land based missile batteries, Argentine forces did famously make the ITB (Instalacion de Tiro Beretta) Exocet launcher using an aiming system made out of old cathode ray equipment and a technically ancient Siemens generator and fired on a plugboard system which was an old telephone switchboard, to provide the right signals. It was technically basic but also ingenious.

The story given about this device is, however, one I do not fully subscribe to, as it has too many anomalies (as with so much of the Argentine history on this period, it was shaped by the junta and later apologists) and although it did engage and seriously damage HMS Glamorgan, yet the full story of it isn't properly known.

It is believed in certain circles (the type who know what they're talking about) that the Argentine forces actually had an earlier model made, which has been described as “a sort of simple rail" amongst other things, although details are very scarce. It was believed to have been on Pebble Island, but this was rumour and not one I particularly believe. Certainly, however, the Royal Navy were aware of it, at least conceptually, before the ITB landed in the Falklands, so there's an intelligence question there.

What doesn't fit is when you count how many missiles the Argentine forces actually had and how many they launched… then the available history doesn't work. Either way, they scored one hit with it and Glamorgan was very nearly sunk.

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