The Biden administration’s and its allies in Congress ‘ coddling of Brazil’s extremely authoritarian president, Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva, has gone from being perplexing to harming U.S. national interests.
Lula is an army of the United States, one itching to raise China’s appearance in the continent.
What gives?
” They see Bolsonaro as]Donald ] Trump south of the border”, a congressional staffer told me, referring to Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president and Lula’s opponent in 2022’s election.
Presidents Bolsonaro and Trump had similar personalities, and they did indeed form a close association while they were in charge of America’s two most popular democracies.
But is that premises to undermine British interests?
The House of Representatives ‘ Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission abruptly canceled a March 12 animal rights receiving it had planned with Portuguese opposition leaders, reporters, and activists, this month.
Rep. James McGovern, D- Mass., the i- chairman of the commission, made the strange shift of blocking the reading.
On the Hill, the committee is uncommon. It is administratively impartial, and has two inc- chairs, rather than one president from the majority, as additional committees do. It’s named after the delayed Tom Lantos, who was a longstanding member of Congress from California known for bipartisanship.
McGovern’s business rebuffed the claim that it had halted the hearing to give cover for Lula, claiming that it had done so because the Republicans had invited Gustavo Gayer, a part of the Portuguese Congress, as a testimony.
A staffer at McGovern’s office told me that the unexpected and extraordinary thing was to ask a sitting parliamentarian to testify. The Republicans countered that it had taken place in the past.
What’s clear is that it was a missed opportunity, as a reading may have gotten so much interest it might have slowed down Lula’s power grab. The Brazilians saw plainly that Lula had reached out to his companions in Washington to stop a review of his history, and they were left with the impression that he had once more apologised.
I’m told by a Portuguese standard that he and his staff are in regular phone call with communist American officials, quite as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I- Vt.
The withdrawal came at the last minute, after some 50 Brazilians, including members of the Portuguese Congress, had now made the trip to Washington to speak. The Heritage Foundation’s Latin American professional, Andres Martinez, was also to get a witness. The Daily Signal is The Heritage Foundation’s media source.
One of the Brazilians who was going to speak, journalist Paulo Figueiredo Filho, posted on X, previously Online, on March 8:” To my surprise, we received a phone monday saying that the reading had been blocked by Rep. Jim McGovern and partially postponed. More than that: Rep.]Chris ] Smith’s staff mentioned they were perplexed, as they had never seen such a pushback for a simple hearing”.
The Brazilians otherwise had to assemble for a media meeting outside the Capitol on March 12, in an area called the House Triangle, with Smith, R- N. J., the various co- chairman of the commission, who lambasted Lula’s record.
Brazilians have been the victims of widespread human rights violations by Portuguese authorities since soon 2022, Smith told the audience. ” Differential or credibly reported rights violations are widespread in Brazil, including the political misuse of legal processes to prosecute political opposition, including the imprisonment of opposition figures on false charges, media freedom violations, the oppression of journalists, the banning of opposition figures, lightly veiled censorship laws claiming to fight “disinformation,” as well as numerous violations of the rule of law and judicial malfeasance,” according to the report.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of the former senator and a part of the Portuguese Congress since 2015 ( who received more votes in his election in 2018 than any other senator in Brazilian history ), even traveled to the country and spoke in the shadow of the Capitol.
” My land is in danger of turning into another Cuba or Venezuela”, Bolsonaro said, citing the hemisphere’s two worst communist human rights offenders and economic box situations.
He continued, explaining how his father has been charged with harassing a whale whale while jet-skiing off the coast of Sao Paulo status in June.” The limits of the crazy no more exist.”
Like Trump, the elder Bolsonaro has been hit with a number of claims and examinations. His card has been taken away by the Lula state.
Figueiredo himself has been a sufferer of Brazil’s fresh descent into darkness. Figueiredo, one of Brazil’s most well-known television characters and the nephew of a previous president, has been deplatformed ( losing 1.5 million followers on social media ), and the condition has taken his card and freezing all of his goods.
The Biden presidency has accepted Lula instead of condemning him. Biden telephoned him just 45 minutes after he won 50.9 % of the vote to Bolsonaro’s 49.1 % in the election on Oct. 31, 2022—results that were hotly contested by Bolsonaro’s supporters.
” How did Lula da Silva repay all these great providers”? asked Figueiredo at the click meeting. ” He has antagonized every one British involvement worldwide, aligning Brazil with Hamas, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, Iran, and, of course, China. Under his command with the BRICS ( a team led by Brazil, Russia, Iran, China, and South Africa ), Brazil has been constantly working with China toward ending the economy’s dominances as the international business money”.
The Biden administration has a nicely- earned reputation not just for embracing international leaders like Lula, but of even antagonizing another leaders who identify with traditional American values, such as Argentina’s Javier Milei, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and Paraguay’s Santiago Peña.
However, encouraging anti-Americanism due to petty ideological concerns is not the best foreign policy.
Disenso originally released the book in Madrid.
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