Is Brazil ready for more Socialism?
September 26, 2010 1 Comment
Note: Former Guerrilla Leader and street fighter Dilma Rousseff is ready to become Brazil’s next president in an election to be held October 3rd. Rousseff, a former head of a revolutionary group during the military coup in the mis 1960′s is back. This time, she sided with the PT political party, the same socialist movement that took current president Luis Inacio Da Silva to power.
The New Independent
The world’s most powerful woman will start coming into her own next weekend. Stocky and forceful at 63, this former leader of the resistance to a Western-backed military dictatorship (which tortured her) is preparing to take her place as President of Brazil.
Brazil's president Da Silva campaigns with Dilma Rousseff.
As head of state, president Dilma Rousseff would outrank Angela Merkel, Germany’s Chancellor, and Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State: her enormous country of 200 million people is revelling in its new oil wealth. Brazil’s growth rate, rivalling China’s, is one that Europe and Washington can only envy.
Her widely predicted victory in next Sunday’s presidential poll will be greeted with delight by millions. It marks the final demolition of the “national security state”, an arrangement that conservative governments in the US and Europe once regarded as their best artifice for limiting democracy and reform. It maintained a rotten status quo that kept a vast majority in poverty in Latin America while favouring their rich friends.
Ms Rousseff, the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant to Brazil and his schoolteacher wife, has benefited from being, in effect, the prime minister of the immensely popular President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former union leader. But, with a record of determination and success (which includes appearing to have conquered lymphatic cancer), this wife, mother and grandmother will be her own woman. The polls say she has built up an unassailable lead – of more than 50 per cent compared with less than 30 per cent – over her nearest rival, an uninspiring man of the centre called Jose Serra. Few doubt that she will be installed in the Alvorada presidential palace in Brasilia in January.
Like President Jose Mujica of Uruguay, Brazil’s neighbour, Ms Rousseff is unashamed of a past as an urban guerrilla which included battling the generals and spending time in jail as a political prisoner. As a little girl growing up in the provincial city of Belo Horizonte, she says she dreamed successively of becoming a ballerina, a firefighter and a trapeze artist. The nuns at her school took her class to the city’s poor area to show them the vast gaps between the middle-class minority and the vast majority of the poor. She remembers that when a young beggar with sad eyes came to her family’s door she tore a currency note in half to share with him, not knowing that half a banknote had no value.
Her father, Pedro, died when she was 14, but by then he had introduced her to the novels of Zola and Dostoevski. After that, she and her siblings had to work hard with their mother to make ends meet. By 16 she was in POLOP (Workers’ Politics), a group outside the traditional Brazilian Communist Party that sought to bring socialism to those who knew little about it.
The generals seized power in 1964 and decreed a reign of terror to defend what they called “national security”. She joined secretive radical groups that saw nothing wrong with taking up arms against an illegitimate military regime. Besides cosseting the rich and crushing trade unions and the underclass, the generals censored the press, forbidding editors from leaving gaps in newspapers to show where news had been suppressed.
Ms Rousseff ended up in the clandestine VAR-Palmares (Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard). In the 1960s and 1970s, members of such organisations seized foreign diplomats for ransom: a US ambassador was swapped for a dozen political prisoners; a German ambassador was exchanged for 40 militants; a Swiss envoy swapped for 70. They also shot foreign torture experts sent to train the generals’ death squads. Though she says she never used weapons, she was eventually rounded up and tortured by the secret police in Brazil’s equivalent to Abu Ghraib, the Tiradentes prison in Sao Paulo. She was given a 25-month sentence for “subversion” and freed after three years. Today she openly confesses to having “wanted to change the world”.
In 1973 she moved to the prosperous southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, where her second husband, Carlos Araujo, a lawyer, was finishing a four-year term as a political prisoner (her first marriage with a young left-winger, Claudio Galeno, had not survived the strains of two people being on the run in different cities). She went back to university, started working for the state government in 1975, and had a daughter, Paula.
In 1986, she was named finance chief of Porto Alegre, the state capital, where her political talents began to blossom. Yet the 1990s were bitter-sweet years for her. In 1993 she was named secretary of energy for the state, and pulled off the coup of vastly increasing power production, ensuring the state was spared the power cuts that plagued the rest of the country.
She had 1,000km of new electric power lines, new dams and thermal power stations built while persuading citizens to switch off the lights whenever they could. Her political star started shining brightly. But in 1994, after 24 years together, she separated from Mr Araujo, though apparently on good terms. At the same time she was torn between academic life and politics, but her attempt to gain a doctorate in social sciences failed in 1998.
In 2000 she threw her lot in with Lula and his Partido dos Trabalhadores, or Workers’ Party which set its sights successfully on combining economic growth with an attack on poverty. The two immediately hit it off and she became his first energy minister in 2003. Two years later he made her his chief of staff and has since backed her as his successor. She has been by his side as Brazil has found vast new offshore oil deposits, aiding a leader whom many in the European and US media were denouncing a decade ago as a extreme left-wing wrecker to pull 24 million Brazilians out of poverty. Lula stood by her in April last year as she was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, a condition that was declared under control a year ago. Recent reports of financial irregularities among her staff do not seem to have damaged her popularity.
Ms Rousseff is likely to invite President Mujica of Uruguay to her inauguration in the New Year. President Evo Morales of Bolivia, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay – other successful South American leaders who have, like her, weathered merciless campaigns of denigration in the Western media – are also sure to be there. It will be a celebration of political decency – and feminism.
debido a su tamaño, población y recursos. Pero hay una cosa más en la que Brasil es similar a los llamados países desarrollados: Brasil también viola las libertades civiles de sus ciudadanos. A diferencia de, por ejemplo, los Estados Unidos o Inglaterra, la policía aquí no molesta a los ciudadanos. Sin embargo, la violación de sus libertades y derechos se hace en silencio. Brasil es un país con un acceso muy limitado a la información y la gente aquí sabe muy poco acerca de sus derechos y deberes. Este paisaje es un terreno fértil para el abuso y la corrupción gubernamental.
De acuerdo a muchos grupos de derechos civiles, el uso de los escáneres es una grave violación de las leyes de privacidad. Las imágenes generadas por los escáneres se guardan en un disco duro y se usan para monitorear a los ciudadanos. Aunque los funcionarios de Brasil niegan la capacidad de los escáneres para ofrecer estas imágenes, Angelo Gioia, de la Policía Federal en Río de Janeiro, admitió que se trata de un método de vigilancia más invasivo. En la actualidad, la legislación brasileña permite que las personas sean revisadas cuando hay sospecha de actividad ilícita, pero no regula el uso de este tipo de escáner. Goia cree que no deben haber límites cuando se trata de seguridad. El costo de cada escáner corporal es de $ 170.000. La tecnología de escaneo funciona basándose en el uso de ondas y radiación en un cuerpo para medir la energía reflejada, y así hacer una imagen 3D de ondas milimétricas. Los usuarios de los escáneres están expuestos a ondas electromagnéticas entre 3 y 30 GHz, similar a la expedición de un teléfono celular. Los promotores de los escáneres en los aeropuertos siempre citan los enormes beneficios que proporcionan en la prevención de los riesgos de seguridad tales como armas, explosivos, etc. Pero la verdad es que una revisión normal o perros detectores de bombas son tan útiles o más exactos. Como se ha hecho en otros países, en Brasil, el uso de estas tecnologías se presenta como una ventaja, para que más personas la reciban y aprueben. Poco se dice acerca de la violación de los derechos de intimidad de las personas y sus propiedades. Más allá de la conveniencia, hay otro factor inyectado en la aprobación de escáneres: el miedo. La amenaza del terrorismo es la carta bajo la manga lista para ser mostrada en caso que las personas se quejen de los escáneres o piensen que son inconvenientes.
s personas que acuden a las oficinas de la policía federal en todo el país para renovar sus licencias de conducir o de identificación no saben o quieren saber acerca de las nuevas tecnologías utilizadas en los documentos. En otros países donde se aplicó, el Documento Nacional de Identidad es rechazado por grupos de ciudadanos informados ya que contiene toda la información relacionada con el titular de la tarjeta, el número de identidad, dirección física y número de identificación único que incluye una amplia variedad de información privada como cuentas bancarias, de ahorro, el lugar de trabajo, la record votación y otros.
O país está em estágio final na adoção de Cartões de Identificação que possuem um chip de rádio frequência, assim como Scanners de Corpo Inteiro nos aeroportos. Estas duas últimas tecnologias já estão sendo utilizadas ou entrarão em vigor nos próximos 10 anos. No caso dos scanners que emitem radiação, há vários deles em aeroportos nacionais e internacionais. Segundo o jornal Zero Hora do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, passageiros que embarquem nas cidades de Guarulhos, Rio de Janeiro, Recife e Manaus podem ser selecionados como candidatos para provar um destes scanners Esta medida é rejeitada pelos grupos de vigilância da privacidade até mesmo nos países mais desenvolvidos não só pela radiação que emitem, mas também devido ao fato de que os corpos das pessoas são vistos completamente nus nas imagens que a máquina gera.
vive. No sul, as pessoas terão identificação com um número de 10 dígitos exclusivo, em Brasília, sete dígitos, São Paulo, 9 dígitos. A emissão do novo cartão terá início em Outubro de 2010 e estima-se que todos os cidadãos, imigrantes naturalizados e legais farão parte do banco de dados até 2020. De acordo com o especialista em tecnologia RFID Chris Paget, Radio Frequency Technology, do tipo usado em cartões de identidade nacional, tem sido usada há anos em cartões de crédito e verificação. “Houve centenas de milhões de cartões emitidos com RFID. O problema é que as pessoas não sabem que a tecnologia está contida nos cartões e, portanto, eles não fazem nada para protegê-los.” Parece estranho que a tecnologia que é criada para manter-nos seguros, precisa ser protegida. Agora, qualquer pessoa com um leitor de RFID pode encontrar cartões de crédito e cartões de ponto de verificação e obter informações suficientes para cloná-lo e usá-lo em uma transação. Então, por que os países, literalmente, querem contar e ter um controle tão exato dos seus cidadãos? Dra. Katherine Albrecht, fundadora e diretora da organização CASPIAN de Privacidade do Consumidor, considera que há uma pressão enorme para que os governos numerem e identifiquem a todos os seus cidadãos e, no processo, usem a tecnologia criada por mega corporações que estariam, então, no controle de informações pessoais tais como número de identificação, contas bancárias, segurança social, contas de fundos de pensão, números de cartões de crédito e assim por diante. ”Estamos vendo isso na China, onde 1 bilhão de pessoas foram identificadas com cartões de identidade nacionais com dispositivos de rádio freqüência. Eles estão fazendo o mesmo no México, e na India, onde 1,2 bilhões de pessoas também foram submetidas a este processo.”
for its size, population and resources. But there is one more way in which Brazil is similar to the so called developed world: It also violates civil liberties. Different from say, the United States or England, police here do not harass citizens that much. However, the violation of their liberties and rights is still done quietly. Brazil is a country with very limited access to information and people here know very little about their rights and duties. This panorama is fertile ground for government abuse and corruption.
According to many civil rights and privacy groups the use of scanners is a gross violation of privacy laws. The images generated from the scanners are saved in hard drives and kept for further use in surveillance. Although authorities in Brazil deny the capacity of the scanners to provide such images, Angelo Gioia, from the Federal Police in Rio de Janeiro, admitted it is a more invasive method of surveillance. Currently, Brazilian laws allow for searches of people when there are founded suspicions of illegal activities, but do not regulate the use of this kind of scanners. Goia believes there should not be any limits when it comes to security. The cost of every body scanner is $170,000. Body scanning technology 
