PrairiePundit

 NY Times: Masses Arrested in Brazil After Anti-Democracy Riots Scores were in custody after supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed government offices to protest what they falsely claimed was a stolen election. Lula has been accused of crimes in the past and he was not a popular choice of half the country.  The media tends to reject claims that leftist elections were illegitimate.  But they are all in on investigating the Trump election and the Russian collusion scam.

 Breitbart: Thousands of opponents of socialist convicted felon President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stormed his offices and the headquarters of the Congress and Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) of Brazil on Sunday, reportedly demolishing the facades of two of the three buildings and causing “irreparable” damage to priceless artifacts in the chambers. The riot in Brasilia occurred while Lula himself was in Sao Paulo state assessing the damage of recent floods. Lula, in a public statement following police action to subdue the protesters, announced an official “federal intervention” in Brasilia – consolidating the public security powers of several agencies into the hands of a hand-picked, top-level official – and accused police of acting in “bad faith” in failing to prevent the protesters from storming the buildings. The incident is an offshoot of months of protests following the October presidential election that saw Lula narrowly defeat then-incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro in two ...

Washington Post: At Brazil’s Carnival, Rio declares war on a daunting foe: Public urination It’s not just offensive, it’s a matter of health and safety: Authorities have blamed the practice for the deterioration of Brazil’s infrastructure, including a deadly 2007 stadium collapse. Look there is a reason why civilization means having toilets to relieve oneself.  So why isn't the media concerned about San Francisco and other California cities where public urination and defecation are allowed?

NY Times: Brazil Fails to Replace Cuban Doctors, Hurting Health Care of 28 Million After Cuba recalled 8,517 doctors from Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s new president, told Brazilians “we can solve this problem.” So far, he has failed, with millions paying the price. The recall was prompted by Brazil wishing to pay the doctors directly for their services instead of sending the money to Cuba to benefit the government.  The Times does not seem to mind the slave labor aspects of the operation.

Silvo Cantu: President-Elect Jair Bolsonaro recently made news with his announcement about Cuban doctors in Brazil. He also ran as a "law and order" candidate, and the Paraguay-Brazil border will quickly be on his agenda. This is the latest report from that border: Paraguay shares a thinly policed, 848-mile border with Brazil, and has long been a hub for smuggling and money laundering. The country is a major producer of marijuana, has a vibrant arms market and acts as a conduit for cocaine shipped from neighboring Bolivia. But now, powerful gangs from Brazil are exploiting Paraguay's lax gun laws, police corruption and weak justice system to establish a more permanent foothold. These criminal organizations "no longer treat Paraguay like a foreign country, but rather part of their criminal domain," Mr. Guizzio said. Eradicating the gangs' influence poses a significant institutional challenge for Paraguay, senior officials say. Yes, a problem f...

Silvio Cantu: For years, Cuba has sent doctors to Brazil. It started in 2013 under an agreement between the Castro regime and Brazil's leftist government. The doctors were sent to poor areas. In reality, it was just another source of hard currency for the Cuban government. Brazil's President-Elect Bolsonaro wants to change the arrangement, and Cuba does not like it. ... This is the news report from The Guardian : Mr Bolsonaro said Brazil would offer asylum to Cuban doctors who wished to stay in Brazil. "This is slave labour," he said. "I couldn't be an accomplice of that." It makes a lot of sense and is long overdue. It's nice to hear an international leader call out this sham. It was never a program to provide medical services to poor people. It was another way of bringing hard currency to the Cuban government. Cuba is balking because the salaries will be paid to the doctors, not the government. ... Bolsonaro would also allow...

Washington Times: Federal authorities wrangled a guilty plea Wednesday from a Brazilian man who ran one of the Western Hemisphere’s more flagrant alien smuggling operations, sneaking dozens of illegal immigrants from terrorism-connected countries into the U.S. from 2014 to 2016. Sharafat Ali Khan specialized in smuggling illegal immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh over to the West, where they would be staged in Brazil before being sent north to try to penetrate the U.S. One of the men Khan helped smuggle into the country was an Afghan who authorities said was involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. or Canada and had family ties to members of the Taliban. Khan appeared in federal court in Washington on Wednesday and agreed to plead guilty to a smuggling conspiracy charge. He will be sentenced this summer and could get up to 46 months in prison, though a lower sentence is likely. Khan also agreed to accept deportation after he serves his time — though...

Miami Herald: In a zeal to hide cocaine profits, South American traffickers have funneled billions of dollars of illegally mined Amazon gold to a Miami metals refinery in what federal authorities say amounts to a massive money-laundering scheme. The man suspected of being in the middle of it all — NTR Metals director of operations Juan P. Granda — was arrested by federal agents this week at his mother’s Miami home after he flew back from Colombia and got fired from his job. Granda is accused of conspiring with two other NTR employees to buy gold from illegal mines in the Amazon rain forest, refine the precious metal, sell it and then wire the proceeds back to drug traffickers, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court Thursday. Narco-traffickers use the clandestine operation to convert their cocaine profits into cash. U.S. Customs records show that NTR imported $3.6 billion worth of illegal gold through a “shifting array of Latin American countries” under the ...

NY Times: Brazil’s Leaders Tout Austerity (Just Not for Them) President Michel Temer is pressing austerity measures, including a government spending cap, even as judges and lawmakers enjoy raises and other lavish benefits. It seems to reflect the corrupt nature of Brazilian politicians who have been rocked by corruption scandals for months.

Fuel Fix: ... “Higher prices are always a good thing but these are state-owned quasi-companies that have tremendous social obligations to their countries and little freedom to take rational cost-cutting steps,” said McNulty, director of Navigant’s valuations and financial risk management practice. “U.S. companies have to pay taxes, sure, but they don’t have to build schools.” Petroleo Brasileiro SA said it isn’t changing its business plan in response to OPEC’s production agreement. Mexico’s Energy Ministry said it won’t change its auction plans because of OPEC. Petroleos de Venezuela SA, as the Venezuelan state-oil company is formally known, didn’t respond to requests for comment. ... “Higher prices are positive for these companies to varying degrees,” said Lucas Aristizabal, a senior director at credit-rating company Fitch Inc. For Petroleos Mexicanos and PDVSA, the benefits are diminished by staggering debt loads that eat up cash that could otherwise go toward drilling to sust...

NY Times: Congress Will Work on $1.1 Billion Measure to Fight Zika, McConnell Says Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, said Senate and House negotiators would push to reconcile legislation to finance efforts to battle the Zika virus. How many more millions of people will die and get sick because of the discredited objections to using DDT to kill the mosquito that carry disease?  It is utterly ridiculous to focus only on the symptoms of the disease rather than stopping it at its source.

Fuel Fix: At the Plymouth Energy LLC plant in the heart of the U.S. corn belt — where home-grown fuel from grain was supposed to ease American dependence on foreign oil — every drop of ethanol goes to motorists in Brazil. Like many Midwest distillers, Plymouth’s Merrill, Iowa, plant was built a decade ago for a U.S. market that was importing ethanol to satisfy laws mandating increased use of renewable fuels. Since then, surplus capacity and a glut of cheap gasoline has left the industry navigating losses and looking for new markets. That has helped spur exports as far away as China, but the biggest surprise buyer in recent months has been Brazil, the world’s No. 2 producer. While Brazil makes ethanol from its sugar-cane crops — the world’s biggest — the cost surged as economic and political turmoil led to accelerating inflation. As the price of gasoline rose to a record, owners of flex-fuel cars that can switch to ethanol did so, and inventories plunged by 75 percent from a y...

IBD Editorial: It's easy to get lost in the weeds of Brazil's, Venezuela's, or other Latin countries' internal political strife. But there's a broad, unmistakable trend out there: The region's socialist rule is collapsing as the cash runs out. That's quite a change, given that in 2011, President Obama made Brazil the first stop on his first trip to Latin America, posing for glamorous pictures and hailing the country and its president, Dilma Rousseff, as the wave of the future. He came with Export-Import bank credits and a plea for America to become Brazil's "best customer" in its nascent oil industry. Today, the country is in shambles, a crony-looted, crime-infested, corruption-plagued mess that resembles its fellow BRIC, Boris Yeltsin's gangster-plagued Russia in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. ... There is much more including the new government in Argentina and Guatemala.   Venezuela is on the brink of collap...

Washington Post: Brazil’s economy tanks as multibillion-dollar corruption scandal expands Corruption is an insidious  theft fro the people as a whole.  It burrows in and leads to inefficiencies and even more corruption.  It distorts the marketplace where goods and services are usually distributed ont eh basis of the seller with the best product at the best price.  Instead it goes to less efficient sellers who pay a bribe to a government official.

Fuel Fix: According to a recent Gallup survey, the most positive people in the world are in Latin America. But given recent events in global financial markets, I suspect this upbeat attitude is being severely tested. While Venezuela teeters on the precipice of social unrest amid a persistent shortage of basic goods, the Brazilian economy is giving it a good run for its money in a race to the bottom. The fortunes of both economies are closely linked to commodities. While Venezuela’s economy is inextricably tied to oil, with 95% of its exports and 50% of its economy reliant upon it, Brazil’s economy is dependent upon a number of different commodities, from iron ore to soybeans. Even though this seeming diversification across commodities should hold the country in good stead, the opposite has happened, given China is Brazil’s largest export market; China accounts for half of all commodities that the South American nation sends around the world . So while Brazil has been best positioned...

AP/Fuel Fix: The head of Brazil’s Petrobras vowed Monday to use a widening corruption scheme to improve governance at the state-run oil giant, in part through creation of a compliance department aimed at stamping out corruption. In her first public remarks since the arrests of around two dozen people including a top company executive late last week, Maria das Gracas Foster told a conference call with investors, “We want to turn this difficult moment into something better.” “Petrobras is a company that dreams to produce more and more oil and more and more transparency,” Foster said. “We are going through a very difficult moment in the company, but we are convinced that we will have better management after we structure and implement all of these management improvement processes.” Authorities allege top company officials operated a kickback scheme on contracts involving several billion dollars, with the money eventually fed back to the governing Workers Party and other top parties for p...

Fox News: Americans could be on the hook to send Brazilian cotton farmers millions of dollars if Congress passes the current version of the farm bill making its way through both chambers. The measure is just one of dozens of provisions and amendments tucked into the sprawling 1,000-page bill which some critics are blasting as a pork-filled government giveaway. While lawmakers on the House side began debating their version on Tuesday -- with much of the debate centered on the bill's funding for food stamps -- others are raising alarm about the subsidies that remain in the package. The yearly $147 million payout to Brazil, for example, is part of the international fallout stemming from U.S. government subsidies for domestic cotton farmers. About a decade ago, Brazil sued the U.S. before the World Trade Organization. In its complaint, the South American country claimed the U.S. government had subsidized American cotton farmers so much it would make it impossible for other countries ...

IBD: As drought destroys the U.S. corn crop and drives prices skyward, the U.S. now buys corn from Brazil and faces the end of its prized role as the world's top food supplier. It's time to scrap the ethanol mandate. There's a whiff of foreboding about an already-economically enfeebled U.S. now losing its crown as the nation whose corn harvest could feed the world. The worst drought since 1956 has hit 88% of the U.S. corn crop and is driving corn prices sharply higher. For the first time, U.S. agricultural companies are importing corn from Brazil — the equivalent of Saudi Arabia importing oil, as the Financial Times noted. ...  The same people who support the ethanol mandate passed a requirement that we could not import ethanol from Brazil.  Neither requirement makes any sense and they both make less sense because of the drought. With a growing supply of domestic oil and gas, the need for biofuels is certainly less urgent and would be even less important if O...

Guardian: An Iranian diplomat is facing child abuse allegations in Brasilia after angry parents at a local swimming pool accused him of fondling girls between the ages of 9 and 15. The diplomat was arrested by Brazilian police at the weekend shortly after the incident but his diplomatic immunity secured his immediate release. The diplomat who has remained unnamed by the police rejected the accusations. The swimming pool officials, however, named him Hekmatollah Ghorbani,  according to a press report . It is unclear whether he has left  Brazil . The Brazilian foreign minister, Antonio Patriota, reacted to the news by describing the allegations as "unacceptable" and "very disturbing". "These are allegations that we consider very disturbing, and I personally consider it unacceptable if a Brazilian diplomat behave this way in any country," the minister said at a news conference,  according to the translation of a report published on folha.com . ....

Yahoo News: Brazil Stiffs Obama on Oil Deal, Exposing President’s Incompetence Hat tip to Fausta.   Obama promoted Brazil's offshore oil business and planned for US companies to buy it.