“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Glenn Greenwald: Brazil’s Democracy to Suffer Grievous Blow as Unelectable, Corrupt Neoliberal is Installed
In 2002, Brazil’s left-of-center Workers Party (PT) ascended to the presidency when Lula da Silva won in a landslide over the candidate of the center-right party PSDB (throughout 2002, “markets” were indignant at the mere prospect of PT’s victory). The PT remained in power when Lula, in 2006, was re-elected in another landslide against a different PSDB candidate. PT’s enemies thought they had their chance to get rid of PT in 2010, when Lula was barred by term limits from running again, but their hopes were crushed when Lula’s handpicked successor, the previously unknown Dilma Rousseff, won by 12 points over the same PSDB candidate who lost to Lula in 2002. In 2014, PT’s enemies poured huge amounts of money and resources into defeating her, believing she was vulnerable and that they had finally found a star PSDB candidate, but they lost again, this time narrowly, as Dilma was re-elected with 54 million votes.
In sum, PT has won four straight national elections – the last one occurring just 18 months ago. Its opponents have vigorously tried – and failed – to defeat them at the ballot box, largely due to PT’s support among Brazil’s poor and working classes.
So if you’re a plutocrat with ownership of the nation’s largest and most influential media outlets, what do you do? You dispense with democracy altogether – after all, it keeps empowering candidates and policies you dislike – by exploiting your media outlets to incite unrest and then install a candidate who could never get elected on his own, yet will faithfully serve your political agenda and ideology.
That’s exactly what Brazil is going to do today. The Brazilian Senate will vote later today to agree to a trial on the lower House’s impeachment charges, which will automatically result in Dilma’s suspension from the presidency pending the end of the trial.
Bob Graham: Former senator: Release the uncensored truth about 9/11
Nearly 15 years after the horrific events of 9/11, President Obama must decide whether to release 28 pages of information withheld as classified from the publicly released report of the congressional inquiry into the terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Americans. [..]
The release of the 28 pages would allow the American people to evaluate important questions, such as:
●Should we believe that the 19 hijackers — most of whom spoke little English, had limited education and had never before visited the United States — acted alone in perpetrating the sophisticated 9/11 plot?
●Did the hijackers have foreign support? If so, who provided it?
●Brennan stated the 28 pages contain information that is “uncorroborated, unvetted” and “inaccurate.” What is the investigatory basis for his conclusion?
●Has the 13-year delay in empowering the American people with the information in the 28 pages affected national security, delayed justice to the families of the nearly 3,000 Americans killed on 9/11 or undermined the confidence of the American people in their federal government?
Former Illinois governor and two-time presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson put it best: “As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law- abiding, the beginning and the end.” That unique status gives the American people all the authority and capability needed to review the 28 pages and determine the truth. It is long past time they had the opportunity.
Jeffrey Sachs: To end corruption, start with the US and UK. They allow it in broad daylight
The fight against corruption entails no small amount of absurdity, since so much of the corruption these days occurs in broad daylight. The corruption is so blatant, so indefensible, that attempts at justification are necessarily surreal. Recently, 300 economists, including me, made the point thanks to Oxfam’s mobilization. Prime Minister David Cameron’s job at Thursday’s Anti-Corruption Summit is not to whisper about the corruption of Nigeria or Afghanistan but to end the deep and historic role of the United Kingdom in this sordid mess. Ditto for the US and other major parties to the abuse.
One of the pervasive elements of corruption is the use of shell companies, which are legal entities designed purely to protect real owners from disclosure, liability and accountability. When the Panama Papers were leaked, the law firm at the center of the disclosure, Mossack Fonseca, had this astounding justification:
Finally, the instances you cite in your reporting represent a fraction – less than 1% – of the approximately 300,000 companies that Mossack Fonseca has incorporated in its over 40 years in operation. This fact shows that the vast majority of our clients use companies we incorporate for legitimate uses and that our due diligence and compliance procedures are overwhelmingly successful in thwarting those who have other intentions.
The very idea that the law firm has done “due diligence” on 300,000 companies, even over 40 years, is beyond ludicrous. Even over 40 years and 200 working days per year, incorporating 300,000 companies would entail an average of 37.5 companies per day. Of course there is no due diligence (as the corrupt cases plainly demonstrate). There is blatant abuse of incorporation.
Stephen W. Thrasher: George Zimmerman’s gun auction is an ugly symbol of racism
Waking up to news that George Zimmerman will be auctioning off the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin today is a reminder that, metaphorically and literally, racism is a gun always waiting to go off in the United States of America.
Zimmerman has not only been allowed to keep the gun he used in Trayvon’s death, but as he’s now “proud to announce” he’s selling it with “a portion of the proceeds [to] be used to: fight BLM”, Black Lives Matter, “violence against Law Enforcement officers”. The Black Lives Matter movement is largely accepted to have been sparked by George Zimmerman’s killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
His audacious auction is a reminder to black Americans that the guns of racism are always pointed at us, ready to seal our fate at any time.
I had been thinking in the past few weeks about this reality in a more intimate, figurative sense. As a black gay man, one of the dangers of ever getting involved with a white dude is that he can pull the trigger of racism at any time. This won’t do mortal damage (necessarily), but it can still wound.
Tom Engelhardt: Washington’s Military Addiction
There are the news stories that genuinely surprise you, and then there are the ones that you could write in your sleep before they happen. Let me concoct an example for you:
“Top American and European military leaders are weighing options to step up the fight against the Islamic State in the Mideast, including possibly sending more U.S. forces into Iraq, Syria, and Libya, just as Washington confirmed the second American combat casualty in Iraq in as many months.”
Oh wait, that was actually the lead sentence in a May 3rd Washington Times piece by Carlo Muñoz. Honestly, though, it could have been written anytime in the last few months by just about anyone paying any attention whatsoever, and it surely will prove reusable in the months to come (with casualty figures altered, of course). The sad truth is that across the Greater Middle East and expanding parts of Africa, a similar set of lines could be written ahead of time about the use of Special Operations forces, drones, advisers, whatever, as could the sorry results of making such moves in [add the name of your country of choice here].
Put another way, in a Washington that seems incapable of doing anything but worshiping at the temple of the U.S. military, global policymaking has become a remarkably mindless military-first process of repetition. It’s as if, as problems built up in your life, you looked in the closet marked “solutions” and the only thing you could ever see was one hulking, over-armed soldier, whom you obsessively let loose, causing yet more damage.
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