Tag Archives: Bolsonaro

Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Unlikely hero

By Tom Arms | Sat 5th November 2022 - 10:10 am

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is on the cusp of being an unexpected champion of democracy – albeit an extremely reluctant one.

As of this writing he is yet to utter that nasty four letter word preceded by the first person pronoun – “I lost”.

Nor has he graciously offered best wishes to his opponent. But, most important of all, he has not claimed – as expected – a false victory, branded the results “fake” or called on his military friends to stage a coup.

He has privately told leading politicians that he accepts that he lost; ordered his staff to work with Lula’s transition team for a peaceful and efficient handover of power and asked his supporters who have been blocking roads to go home.

The Trump of the Tropics has done a thousand times more than his North American political namesake to protect the sanctity of the ballot box which is the foundation stone of any democratic system of government.

Meanwhile, in the United States, some 400 election deniers for state or federal office are on the ballot in the mid-term 8 November elections. Many of these Republicans (yes, they are all Republicans) follow the example set  by their leader Donald Trump and say that if they personally lose it will be because of a fraudulent voting system.

Let’s make it clear. Reports of fake American elections are fake news designed to undermine the democratic process so that a group of politicians can illegally grab power.

Furthermore, that the forthcoming mid-term elections are one of the most important in American history. Many of the 400-plus election deniers are standing for state offices which control the electoral machinery. They have made it clear that if elected they see their job as ensuring the election of like-minded candidates.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 23rd October 2022 - 8:30 am

Ukraine

Good news/bad news on the Ukraine front.

Good news is that Ukrainian military are now making progress. It is also good news that Vladimir Putin has declared martial law in the parts of Ukraine he recently annexed and imposed lesser but still severe restrictions on other parts of Russia. The crackdown is a sure sign of lack of public support.

Bad news that the Russians have started bombing Ukrainian power generating and water pumping stations. So far about a third of the country has lost power. It will be a dark, cold winter for Ukrainians who may also lose water supplies.

Good news on the economic front. The Ukrainian economy is actually growing. This is mainly due to a stable banking system backed up by $23 billion in Western loans to secure currency reserves. But the loans would have been ineffective if the Ukrainians had not cleaned up their banking system which a few years ago was one of the most corrupt in Europe.

European Union

Good and Bad News also on the EU front. They are having another summit as I write this and at the top of the agenda will be how Europe can weather the energy crisis. The bad news is that the European Council has to discuss this issue because the richer countries are bowing to domestic demands to outbid the poorer EU countries for gas and oil supplies. The good news is that they are at least discussing the problem.

Other bad news is that it appears that Iran is involving itself in Ukraine on the Russian side. The drones attacking Ukrainian power stations were made in Iran and there are reports that Tehran is also supplying Russia with trainers and surface to air missiles. The Iranians publicly disapprove of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but, more importantly, they hate America.

France

President Emmanuel Macron had developed a reputation for being more interested in locating Putin’s golden exit ramp than prosecuting the war. As such he was not Volodomyr Zelensky’s most popular Western leader. That perception is changing. This week France announced that they were sending a quarter of their high-tech Caesar cannon to Ukraine. They also announced training facilities for 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers and the dispatch of French anti-aircraft systems and radar. The French still lag well behind the British and Germans, but they are now committing themselves to increased military backing for Ukraine.

Italy

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Tropical Trump

By Tom Arms | Sat 23rd July 2022 - 8:50 am

They call him “The Trump of the Tropics.” The parallels between Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump are legion, with one big difference – Bolsonaro is better placed to overturn his country’s democracy.

Presidential elections are scheduled for 2 October and far-right Bolsonaro is trailing well behind his socialist rival Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. So what does he do? He pulls a Trump. The elections will be a fraud, Bolsonaro claims months before the polls open. The electronic voting machines, he says, have been hacked.

Rubbish, counters the electoral authority, who maintain that there have been no incidences of widespread fraud in any elections since the system was introduced in 1996, including the election which put Bolsonaro in office in 2018.

But Bolsonaro persists. This week, the Brazilian leader summoned diplomats to the presidential place to listen to an hour-long televised harangue in which he claimed – without evidence – that a military investigation into a voting system which the country has successfully used for 25 years was fraudulent. The investigators, by the way, were appointed by Bolsonaro.

The US embassy in Brazil immediately issued a statement describing Brazil’s election machinery “as a model for the world.” Last month, Joe Biden dispatched CIA Director William Burns to tell Bolsonaro to change his story. The US president is clearly worried that a successful Bolsonaro coup in October will give encouragement to the supporters of Trump’s “Big Lie.” Bolsonaro has gone on record to say that Biden’s election was “suspicious.”

Trump said: “Brazil is lucky to have a man such as Jair Bolsonaro working for them. He is a great president and will never let the people of his great country down.”

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