The CIA is allegedly working behind the scenes in Brazil’s election, planting stories to favor Flávio Bolsonaro and build a positive narrative about the senator.

The claims come from John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent who has become something of a celebrity in recent years. Earlier this week, he took to social media to flag what he called “credible” evidence of the spy agency’s involvement in Brazil’s election.

On Tuesday, Kiriakou gave more details on his podcast.

“I heard a rumor from a former CIA colleague of mine this past weekend that the agency is actively working behind the scenes to support Bolsonaro,” he said.

“And the way they’re doing it is by planting pro-Bolsonaro stories in both the Brazilian press and the international press,” he claimed.

He offered no evidence and was careful to say he doesn’t know whether this account is true. But he argued that it fits the agency’s pattern of behavior over the years.

“There’s a long history of CIA involvement in elections abroad, controlling the media narrative,” he said.

He noted that much of the Brazilian press has swung behind Bolsonaro.

“This is despite the fact that Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency was one mistake after another,” he said.

The former agent pointed to the former president’s 27 year prison sentence, calling his conduct “incredibly corrupt.”

Kiriakou said the runoff projections don’t favor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and suggested the right has already secured one of its biggest wins in Brazilian history.

“Lula is likely to lose the election, and I think the younger Bolsonaro will end up pardoning his father,” he predicted.

He also noted that Donald Trump has already endorsed Flávio Bolsonaro’s candidacy, acknowledging that doing so could be a “violation of international rules.”

Earlier in the week, Kiriakou wrote on social media that he met with Lula three years ago. On Tuesday, he explained that a Lula aide had reached out so the two could discuss government transparency.

According to the former agent, one topic in that conversation was police violence under Jair Bolsonaro’s government. He said he suggested that Lula confront that issue directly, and that doing so had led police to turn against Lula.

Who Is This Former Agent?

In 2013, Kiriakou pleaded guilty to revealing the identity of an undercover agent, the first case of its kind in 27 years. He had worked for the CIA from 1990 to 2004 and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison as part of a plea deal.

He admitted to disclosing to a reporter the identity of an undercover officer who had taken part in harsh interrogations of alleged Al Qaeda members held at secret CIA detention sites.

Kiriakou first drew national attention in 2007, during the George W. Bush administration, when he told ABC News in an interview that waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning, had been used on a Guantánamo detainee named Abu Zubaydah.

Then CIA Director David Petraeus issued a statement praising the plea deal with Kiriakou, even though four other charges against him were dropped. The case “represents an important victory for our agency, for our intelligence community and for our country,” Petraeus said.

It was the first time in 27 years that someone had been found guilty of revealing the identity of an undercover agent.

This article first ran in ICL Notícias, was translated by Panamerican Dispatch, and can be read in its original Portuguese here.

Flávio Bolsonaro, son of imprisoned coup plotter Jair Bolsonaro, clinched first place in Brazil’s presidential race Sunday with 47% to Lula’s 45%, forcing a high-stakes runoff on October 25. As Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) suffered major losses and Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) allies took governorships and more seats in congress, Stephanie Weatherbee Brito of the International Peoples’ Assembly asks, was this really a surprise? She joins Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra from São Paulo to break down Brazil’s election “shock” — from the hard right’s “silent campaign” and the “shy votes” that caught polling institutes off guard, to why 33 million Brazilians skipped the polls, to the PT’s failure to offer a vision of real change.

And she warns of what may be to come: a second Trump-aligned Bolsonaro presidency “compliant and subservient” to Washington and Tel Aviv, with devastating consequences for Brazil, the Amazon, and the future of humanity.

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Rough transcript follows:
[Host 1:] Brazil went to elections this Sunday and the results shocked many. The far-right Liberal Party emerged as perhaps the biggest victor in the polls as the presidential candidate for the PL, Flávio Bolsonaro, not only clinched top place in the presidential race over Lula, but the party also gained seats in the Senate, House, and several governorships. The Workers’ Party meanwhile suffered significant losses, and incumbent progressive president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva finished in second place with 45% to Flávio’s 47%. Analysts across Latin America and the world have been struggling to understand the results and what it could mean for the region. We here at Breakthrough News are very lucky because we are joined by friend of the show Stephanie Weatherby Breto. She’s the coordinator of the International People’s Assembly calling in from São Paulo. She’s going to be discussing with us these results, what to expect for round two, and the impact on the region. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us today.

[Stephanie Weatherby Breto:] Hi, happy to be back even under these conditions.

[Host 1:] Well, Stephanie, the reaction to Sunday’s election amongst progressives, not only in Brazil, but again across the world, has been a mix of shock, sadness, and bewilderment. I want to ask you first, how should we understand the results? Was October 4th a victory for the far right?

[Stephanie Weatherby Breto:] Yeah, I think that October 4th was absolutely a victory for the far right, but I don’t think that we should be as shocked as some people have been because the far right in Brazil has been growing pretty consistently for the past 10 years. And I think that what it has demonstrated that people didn’t believe or didn’t understand before is that it has built a pretty solid base. It is not just a reaction movement. It’s not a spontaneous movement built over social media. It really has its own organizational structure and it has the capacity to mobilize. What surprised people in Brazil was that this time around the right wing wasn’t as mobilized in the streets. Like you didn’t see as many people wearing the Brazilian flag—the color of the far right right now is to wear the Brazilian flag, to wear the football team shirt—and there wasn’t that much really like physical campaigning. Like you didn’t see people out with banners or flyers with Flávio Bolsonaro’s face. You didn’t see that kind of action, and so that contributed to an undermining of the power of the right. There was this silent campaign almost, and the polling, the kind of polls that were being done before showing where people’s voting intentions were moving, didn’t show Flávio as strong as he was. But that has happened in the past. Now, there’s also a lot of talk about people didn’t vote, which is a high number of people that either didn’t vote or abstained from actually designating a candidate. They didn’t choose a candidate on their ballot. And even though those numbers are high, they’re pretty standard for Brazil over the past three elections. And what has happened is essentially that the country has become polarized between right and left. Politics are now at the center of discussion inside of families, between students. And so what that creates is this vacuum that sucks in a lot of people that feel insecure about politics. They feel like the discourse is too aggressive, the two sides are constantly attacking each other, and so people start opting out of politics, which is the same situation in the United States. The difference is in the US, you’re not legally bound to vote; in Brazil, you are. So what you see is a lot of people canceling out their ballot. And I think, like I said, that that’s a reaction to polarization and to a sense of insecurity that people have in the system and also a lack of trust in the system. People don’t think that it makes any difference.

[Host 2:] We want to try to—we’re having a little bit of an audio kerfuffle. Okay, we’re going to try to power through, but we may try to stop and fix it. Let’s see how it goes. I know you can’t tell, Stephanie, because you can’t hear it, but we can. But no, I appreciate what you’re saying here. And you know, a key element that you mentioned there is the right-wing advance in the legislature. So, what will be different about the composition of this next Brazilian Congress from the previous one, and why does it matter? And, you know, Stephanie, can you talk to us specifically about what is the legislative agenda of the far right and what do you think they’ll actually be able to achieve?

[Stephanie Weatherby Breto:] The right was already very strong in the legislature. This is not a novelty; they have already built—I mean, I think very similar to the right in the United States, they’ve had a project for many, many years to try to build this kind of strength in Congress, and they’ve built stable organizational means to do that, they have a lot of local power. I think what is new about this victory is that a lot of parties of the extreme right that were newcomers in previous elections and that some people said, well, these parties are not going to survive, they’re kind of like phenomenons of the moment, they have survived, and everything indicates that at least for the period that is upcoming, they are fixtures in the political landscape in Brazil. Parties like Republicanos, Partido Liberal, these parties are hard right parties. And I think that there’s a lot of discussion right now that their agenda is to take down the Supreme Court, that this is their number one goal, that they want to take down all the other checks and balances to the executive because they want to rule in a fascistic kind of way where all the power is concentrated in the executive. And I think that that is possible, but I think that we’re missing the picture that if their goal is to take down the Supreme Court, it’s a means to an end. It’s not an end in and of itself. And so I think that what the actual most important goal of this hard right that is consolidated in Brazil is to break down all the barriers to extractivism, to allow the mining companies, the agribusiness companies to really tear into the Amazon rainforest, to be able to break into different territories that are still being protected by environmental law or that are being held by indigenous communities or by rural communities that have titles to the land, because there is this interest that is connected to the United States, which is to get into the minerals that exist under the Amazon rainforest and elsewhere. And I think it’s a model of extremely predatory capitalism that this party and these parties represent. And I think that they also want to break down any kind of barriers to the free movement of money. They want to liberalize finance even more than it already is. I think their agenda is a kind of naked capitalism that has no restraints, and they’re doing this in collusion with big and important economic groups from the United States, people who have vested interest in this program. Of course, they also intend to scale back social programs. Brazil has built over decades a form of welfare state. It has a universal healthcare system that the ruling elites have always been enemies of. They want to privatize healthcare, they want to privatize education. And so anything that this government, if Flávio gets elected, if he can accomplish a scaling back of social programs that opens up the country to further privatization of anything from pensions to schools to transportation, I think that that’s all in their interest. And so I think it’s like an extremely neoliberal agenda that they want to build. And they also have another agenda outside of the economic one, which has to do with crime and security. They have this project called the anti-faction bill because here in Brazil criminal organizations are called factions. And so allegedly what this bill would do is to really tackle organized crime in Brazil, which is very powerful in certain states, but truly what this bill would do is actually unleash the violence of the state on the poorest communities in Brazil. There is this false conception that the right has disseminated that the reason that there’s a lot of crime and insecurity in Brazil is because there is a soft-handed policing where the police aren’t actually given the freedom and the liberty to actually persecute criminals because there’s a concern for their human rights. This is absolutely false. The reason why there’s crime in Brazil is because very powerful institutions like banks continue to launder the money of these criminal organizations because these criminal organizations have a tremendous influence on judges. They have an influence on legislators and possibly, if Flávio gets elected, on the presidency. It’s pretty well known that Flávio Bolsonaro has a connection to criminal organizations in Rio de Janeiro. And so they have what I would refer to as a faux security agenda that even though it will not fix the problem, it appeals to people because it’s talking about something that people are concerned about in a moment when the PT actually isn’t talking about it.

[Host 1:] Well, you know, I wanted to pick up on that, Stephanie, because while the far right, as you said, really did get some historic gains in this election, Lula’s Workers’ Party suffered significant and symbolic losses. Lula’s key ally, Fernando Haddad, once again lost the governorship in São Paulo to Tarcísio de Freitas, and this time by an even bigger margin. Meanwhile, Marina Silva, Benedita da Silva, and Simone Tebet all lost their races, and these have been kind of key figures in the PT standing side by side with Lula. So are their losses part of this legacy in Brazil of what’s termed antipetismo, this anti-workers’ party sentiment? Is it something else? Is it purely the popularity of the far right? What is behind this losing ground of the PT in Brazilian politics?

[Stephanie Weatherby Breto:] Well, most of the candidates or many of the candidates that you named are actually not from the PT. They built an alliance with the PT because the PT, as it loses its base, as it loses some of its capacity to get elected on its own two legs, has moved to building alliances with sections of the center-right. So even the vice-presidential candidate that Lula ran with four years ago, that ran with now and that has been governing with him, is a figure of the center-right. He was a right-wing governor of São Paulo that was very unpopular actually in the face of social movements. And so I think that I wouldn’t see this as a recourse of antipetismo. I mean, the campaign against the PT was based on this discourse that the PT was corrupt. But I think that the population has moved on from that. I think that people now—a lot of people essentially believe that both parties are corrupt, that all politicians are corrupt, that it is inconsequential because that’s just the way that power works, unfortunately. But I think that what really has weakened the PT is that this administration, Lula’s third term, ran and was governed without a clear agenda. It was run on this idea that we’re here to restore democracy, we’re here to restore order, similar to the way that Biden kind of came back after Trump’s presidency to say, well, you know, the Republicans and this like Trumpism has destroyed some of the institutions of this country and here I am to rebuild it. And unfortunately, that is not appealing to the wide mass of the population because people are very dissatisfied with their living conditions. They’re very dissatisfied with a lot of the day-to-day problems that they’re facing regarding access to education, access to employment, increasing debt. And so this discourse of “we’re going to rebuild the country to what it was” doesn’t appeal to people because they have the perception that what we need is not to go back to what it was; we need to be building a future that is different. We need something that is going to transcend whatever the PT achieved and achieve much more, or at least they want to hear something that is different. And I think that Lula governed this third term—first of all, he was very influenced by the events when the Bolsonaristas tried to take the country. They were doing these mass mobilizations, they tried to occupy the Supreme Court. And the fact that there was this broad movement, this alliance, this really big alliance against Bolsonarismo, I think convinced the Lula government and the party that Bolsonarismo had been defeated, that the population had now understood that they were undemocratic, that they were dictatorial or fascistic in some way, and that even sections of the ruling class had moved to the camp of the PT because they were disgusted by Bolsonarismo. And when Jair Bolsonaro was imprisoned, I think that that even further built this idea that well, really, the program of the PT right now is to preserve institutions, to defend democracy. And that is the last thing that I think people are thinking about. People don’t want a defense of the status quo. And so on the kinds of things that Brazilians are really worried about, which have to do with the cost of living and access to employment, even though the situation was stable and there were improvements in the cost of living, it wasn’t really inspiring to people as a campaign program. The PT did not run this election on a clear project of transformation, which was their brand throughout its history. The PT was the party of change, the party of addressing structural problems in Brazil and addressing inequality. And I think that over many years, after being really battered by the right, they have watered down their program to something that simply isn’t inspiring enough to people and that was not enough to get them out into the polls and to mobilize in the way that would have been necessary to beat Flávio in this first round.

[Host 1:] I mean, there are so many numbers that stand out from Sunday. Zoe had mentioned some of them earlier. One of them was this 20% abstention, and in Brazil voting is mandatory, so you do receive a penalty for not participating. So, Stephanie, what do you think explains why 33 million people chose not to vote? Are they expected to do so, do you think, in the second round? And I mean Lula declared on Sunday that it was his goal to court these voters. Do you think this is actually possible?

[Stephanie Weatherby Breto:] I think that a lot of those abstentions are going to remain abstentions. I think that what has created them is the climate of polarization. People have been repelled from politics. The people who are abstaining, they are repelled from politics either because they feel insecure, they don’t understand, they feel like the political debate is too aggressive, it’s too violent, they feel like they are not educated enough. But also, I think that people don’t see the difference. There’s a lot of people who just don’t think that either candidate makes a huge difference. And I think that this is something that really often happens when polarization happens, when the country becomes like a pressure cooker where everybody’s talking about the elections. Certain people have very strong opinions in one way or the other, they’re not at all flexible, they’re really dug in. It’s a situation that we know in the United States as well. And so what that produces is a sector of the population that says, “I don’t care anymore, I don’t want to hear about elections anymore, and I don’t understand either of these programs necessarily.” Now, I also think that both candidates—part of why there’s a high abstention rate is because both candidates have high rejections, are very rejected by the population for different reasons. Flávio because he’s considered to be reprehensible in his discourse; people understand him as a chauvinist, as someone who defends violence, someone who has no regard for the rights of black people in this country—who are not racial minorities, by the way—but for other racial minorities in this country, someone who has no regard for the poor. And so he is seen as a figure of a kind of violent politics that people really don’t like. He’s also seen by sectors even within the right as a lackey to the United States. Like, he’s criticized by sections of the right for being a candidate that basically just toed the line for whatever Washington tells him to do. The relationships between the Bolsonaro family and Trump are very well-known, they’re very evident. The Bolsonaro family is always petitioning the Trump administration for favors, and that actually has produced some rejection even within the right, who sees him in this negative light. Now, Lula has high rejection ratings for other reasons. There’s people that believe that he’s governed for too long; they say, well, you know, he’s been president for three terms, why does he have to keep being president? There’s people who also believe that the PT is a representation of the past, that it’s old politics, that Lula’s too old, he doesn’t have an appeal with the youth in the way that he used to. Lula and the PT used to be a political movement of the youth, and I don’t think that that continues to be the case unless somebody is active in social movements and really politicized. And so because there is this section of the population that just rejects both of them, their choice is just to nullify their ballot in the election.

[Host 1:] You know, it’s—we’ll see how that kind of courting of this segment of the population goes. But, you know, before we let you go, Stephanie, I did want to ask about the regional question and just kind of zooming out and looking at how the US is viewing the region. Of course, a lot of the discourse, whether it be Twitter or left-wing analysis, has been about really grappling with the possibility of a Flávio victory in the second round and what that would mean for Latin America and the Caribbean in a second Trump administration. So, on one hand, how would this impact regional ties? I mean, at this point, the dreams of Lula from his first terms of creating entities like UNASUR, like all of these different regional platforms, have essentially disappeared given the presence of the far right on the continent. But what would a Flávio victory mean for the US to have the far right in power in Brazil?

[Stephanie Weatherby Breto:] I think having a victory for Flávio Bolsonaro in Brazil would be a huge victory for the Trump administration, but also for Zionism, because what the Flávio Bolsonaro presidency represents is a program of the right that is going to be completely compliant and subservient to the interests of the United States politically and to the interest of Zionism—sorry, to the interest of the United States economically and to the interest of Zionism politically. And so I think that Brazil will become a tool in the large chessboard of US interests in the rest of the world, and I think that it means a full alignment to US interests in Latin America, again specifically on this issue of extractivism. I think that the agenda of the United States for Latin America is to turn it into a territory from which they can extract resources at will, at low cost, with no regard for the environment or for the rights of the people in those countries. And the Bolsonaro family definitely represents that kind of interest. You know, they’re very happy to play that role. And so it’s not just very dangerous for the Brazilian people or for the future of progressive politics in Latin America—like, absolutely, Cuba is going to be really isolated on the continent together with Mexico and Venezuela—but it also has huge repercussions for the environment. I think that one of the most serious consequences of a second Bolsonaro presidency is the further destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and the implications of that for the rest of the world are tremendous. And so I think, unfortunately, the Brazilian population that voted for Bolsonaro is making a decision that really imperils the rest of humanity.

[Host 1:] No, really important perspective there. And honestly, Stephanie, there’s so much more we could talk about, and I’m looking forward to having you back on the show ahead of this second term—which will be on October 25th. Again, there’s just three weeks that Lula and Flávio and their supporters have to campaign for the second round to try to get those extra votes. It will be a very interesting period. And as you said last time you were on the show, US interference is not a question; it’s more of a done deal. We just have to see how it is going to manifest. So I think that’s something else we’ll be definitely looking out for. But we thank you so much, Stephanie, for explaining what that means and why people everywhere should really be paying attention to what’s happening.

Lula falhou em atender às demandas do povo – e agora enfrenta as consequências.

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O primeiro turno das eleições presidenciais brasileiras terminou com o candidato Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) na frente de Lula da Silva (PT) por 47% a 45%. Nas eleições parlamentares, o PT e a esquerda sofreram derrotas esmagadoras em todo o país, indicando uma crescente rejeição da esquerda entre os brasileiros comuns. Agora, nas últimas semanas restantes antes da decisão final sobre quem governará o país a partir do próximo ano, a questão permanece aberta: que fatores serão considerados pelos eleitores na escolha do presidente?

O governo Lula tem tomado várias medidas consideradas “desesperadas” para reverter sua crise de impopularidade e retomar apoio na reta final das eleições. A ampliação de programas sociais é uma dessas medidas, mas sua eficiência política é cada vez mais contestável. Após décadas de redistribuição de renda nos governos PT, sem que isso representasse qualquer mudança real na situação dos trabalhadores, a avaliação dessas políticas tem se tornado cada vez mais negativa.

O problema central para Lula é que uma parcela significativa do eleitorado parece estar menos interessada em novas medidas paliativas e mais preocupada com problemas que permanecem presentes em sua vida cotidiana. Segurança pública, emprego, renda, inflação e qualidade dos serviços públicos têm impacto muito mais direto sobre a população do que os grandes debates promovidos pelo governo.

A segurança talvez seja o exemplo mais evidente. O avanço das organizações criminosas, a expansão territorial do crime organizado e a sensação de impunidade transformaram a violência em uma das principais preocupações nacionais. Para milhões de brasileiros, a questão deixou de ser uma discussão abstrata sobre políticas de segurança. Trata-se de uma realidade cotidiana que determina onde as pessoas podem morar, trabalhar, circular e até mesmo abrir um negócio – ainda mais especialmente nos grandes centros urbanos, como o Rio de Janeiro, onde o crime organizado já controla algo entre 60% e 70% do território total da cidade.

Nesse contexto, propostas associadas à agenda cultural progressista também podem produzir custos eleitorais importantes para a esquerda. O debate brasileiro sobre questões de gênero, identidade, educação e direitos de minorias passou a reproduzir cada vez mais conflitos políticos originados nos Estados Unidos e na Europa. Uma parte considerável da população, porém, não se identifica com essa agenda e considera que o Estado deveria concentrar seus esforços em problemas materiais mais urgentes.

Isso ajuda a explicar por que o segundo turno provavelmente será decidido muito mais por questões domésticas do que pela política externa – que é a parte mais elogiada do governo Lula na comunidade internacional de especialistas. Os BRICS, a Palestina ou a posição brasileira diante dos Estados Unidos podem mobilizar setores politizados da sociedade, mas definitivamente não constituem as principais preocupações do eleitor médio quando ele decide seu voto.

A política externa possui importância estratégica para o Estado brasileiro. O cidadão comum, entretanto, tende a avaliá-la através de seus efeitos concretos sobre a própria vida. Uma política externa considerada bem-sucedida não compensará, por si só, uma percepção de insegurança, desemprego ou deterioração dos serviços públicos. E à medida que o governo Lula evita combater o problema do crime organizado diretamente, cresce naturalmente a popularidade de uma direita que elogia os EUA por considerarem as facções criminosas brasileiras terroristas.

O mesmo vale para os já mencionados programas de transferência de renda. Esses mecanismos podem até possuir uma função social importante em um país marcado por desigualdades profundas, mas sua utilização como principal instrumento de política social apresenta limitações graves. Transferir renda pode aliviar uma situação de pobreza, mas não cria automaticamente empregos qualificados, não aumenta a produtividade e não reconstrói a indústria nacional. Pelo contrário, cria uma massa de precarizados dependentes de ajuda governamental. Quando a assistência se transforma em substituto permanente para políticas de desenvolvimento, o problema estrutural permanece.

É justamente nesse ponto que a disputa eleitoral entra em uma fase decisiva. O eleitor terá de escolher entre propostas diferentes para enfrentar problemas que não desapareceram durante os últimos anos. A capacidade de apresentar respostas convincentes para segurança, emprego, renda e ordem social poderá pesar mais do que discursos sobre grandes projetos geopolíticos.

O resultado do primeiro turno também demonstra que a direita brasileira conseguiu transformar o descontentamento doméstico em força eleitoral. A vantagem de Flávio Bolsonaro e a composição do novo Congresso indicam que existe uma demanda significativa por mudança. Isso não significa que todos esses eleitores compartilhem uma mesma visão sobre economia, política externa ou questões culturais. Significa, sobretudo, que existe uma insatisfação suficientemente ampla para alterar o equilíbrio político nacional.

Nas semanas restantes da campanha, portanto, a questão fundamental será saber se o governo conseguirá convencer o eleitorado de que suas políticas oferecem soluções duradouras ou se prevalecerá a percepção de que foram adotadas medidas paliativas para administrar problemas que continuam sem solução.

Falar sobre gênero, direitos humanos ou Palestina definitivamente não ajudará Lula a se reeleger.

By Mike ELK

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

There are still three weeks until the next round, and Lula could still win, but it’s gonna take a massive fight. Part of that fight is changing how the international media covers things.

With the Brazilian presidential election headed to a runoff, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is down 47% to 45% and faces a massive fight ahead. I wanted to give a quick analysis of what happened and where things are going next.

Lula Could Still Win if He Can Consolidate Support from Third Parties

Lula lost by only 2%, and several third-party candidates, who took a combined 8% of the vote, have publicly indicated they would not endorse Flávio Bolsonaro in the second round.

Likewise, 29 million Brazilians did not vote in this round of the runoff and may be persuaded to vote for Lula in the second round if they fear Bolsonaro.

While Brasil defeated Jair Bolsonaro narrowly in 2022, it swung right again, much like the United States. Voters are upset, and they are taking it out on the party in power.

On Tuesday, the Brazilian Senate is scheduled to vote on a measure that would shorten the Brazilian workweek from six days to five days. Bolsonaro has opposed this measure, and Lula could use the vote to mobilize workers’ support against the Bolsonaro team.

It’s a tough road ahead for Lula, but not impossible.

What Hurt Lula in the First Round?

Three primary factors hurt Lula in the first round. First, Lula’s age and the fact that the Workers’ Party (PT) has held the presidency in Brazil for 18 of the last 24 years.

The second is that the Brazilian corporate media constantly manufactured scandals against Lula.

Finally, the role that US President Donald Trump played in training and validating the right-wing in Brasil, while not decisive, provided critical support. Here’s what went wrong for Lula.

1. Lula is 80 & His Party Ruled Brasil for 18 of the Last 24 Years

Like former US President Joe Biden, one problem Lula faces right now is that he is 80 years old. He doesn’t look as sharp as he used to, while Flávio Bolsonaro is nearly half his age—45 years younger.

Additionally, Lula’s party, the Workers’ Party (PT), has held the presidency for 18 of the last 24 years. Lula and Dilma, both members of the Workers’ Party (PT), held the presidency from 2002 to 2016. Lula was reelected in 2022 for his record third term. No Brazilian has ever won a third term.

Although the PT has rarely controlled Congress, it is seen as the ruling party because it has held the presidency for 18 of the last 24 years. Voters are likely to associate any problems in the country with the PT, which has held the presidency for so long.

While Brasil defeated Jair Bolsonaro narrowly in 2022, it swung right again, much like the United States. Voters are upset, and they are taking it out on the party in power.

Even worse, Lula failed to recruit young candidates, who may have excited voters to turn out in tight races. In what should have been a competitive Senate election in Rio de Janeiro, the PT recruited 84-year-old Bendedita da Silva, who lost in a landslide to Bolsonaro allies.

Last week, Lula skipped the presidential debate; so did Bolsonaro and its unclear how much this decision might have hurt him.

Lacking excitement, nearly 29 million Brazilians did not vote despite it being obligatory in Brasil.

2. Brazilian Media Manufacturing Scandals Against Lula

The Brazilian media market is extremely consolidated, and the heads of major networks like Globo have been going after Lula hard. They have been accused of manufacturing scandals against Lula.

Last November, the financial institution Banco Master collapsed amid allegations of massive fraud. The bank was being run like a Ponzi scheme, resulting in the largest financial collapse in Brazilian history, with nearly $8 billion in investors’ funds lost.

Despite Banco Master CEO Daniel Vorcaro being a very vocal Bolsonaro supporter, the Brazilian media has repeatedly tried to link the scandal to Lula’s Workers’ Party, as Vorcaro cultivated political ties on both sides of the aisle.

Every attack on Lula by the Trump administration generated headlines in Brasil and validated the wild claims made by Bolsonaro allies of a flawed Brazilian justice system.

Lula’s son, businessman Fábio Luís da Silva, commonly known as “Lulinha,” was scrutinized over large bank accounts worth millions of dollars. For months, Lulinha has offered to open his books and has claimed that he received no special favors from Banco Master. Still, the media repeatedly raised questions about Lulinha’s alleged impropriety.

At one point, media giant TV Globo made a giant infographic web with arrows, showing a complex network linked to Lula. Other reporters widely ridiculed the conspiracy theory map, and TV Globo eventually had to apologize publicly on air.

Then, in May, The Intercept Brasil released a WhatsApp message from Flávio Bolsonaro to Vorcaro, asking him for more than $26 million to fund a strange English-language biopic named Dark Horse, about his father. In the film, Jair Bolsonaro is portrayed by right-wing American actor Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in the controversial 2004 film The Passion of the Christ.

Polling throughout the spring and summer showed Lula leading as the scandal remained fresh in people’s minds. Then, the Brazilian corporate media went into high gear to attack Lula. They went after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who led the prosecution that jailed Bolsonaro.

Moraes has accused Brazilian Supreme Court Justice André Mendonca, a Bolsonaro appointee, of failing to follow proper procedure in his handling of the Banco Master scandal, leaking information to the press on Lula’s political allies while hiding information on Bolsonaro’s allies.

Moraes asked the Brazilian Federal police to investigate Mendonça’s violation of federal investigation procedures and for selectively leaking information to the press that would make Lula allies look bad while suppressing information on Bolsonaro allies.

Moraes accused Mendonça of attempting to “steer the production of evidence toward falsely accusing Supreme Court justices of crimes, expressly naming Justices Gilmar Mendes, Dias Toffoli, Luiz Fux, Alexandre de Moraes, and Nunes Marques, as well as the prosecutor general and the director-general of the Federal Police.”

3. Trump Trained and Emboldened Bolsonaro Allies

While I don’t want to underestimate the strength of fascists within Brasil, it’s important to note that Trump and his operatives did help the Bolsonaro family pull off an impressive comeback.

In March 2025, Eduardo Bolsonaro fled to the United States rather than face prosecution in Brasil for his role in trying to orchestrate a coup, and he was granted permanent residency status in July. While in the United States, Eduardo Bolsonaro has worked closely with Trump officials, including Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions Richard Grenell, to oust Lula from power.

“It was a privilege to speak with Ambassador Richard Grenell at President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago,” Eduardo Bolsonaro wrote on Instagram following a meeting with Grenel in 2025. “The conservative movement is global—and we are just getting started.”

Eduardo Bolsonaro worked closely with top Trump aides like Brad Parscale, Trump’s director of digital strategy, to learn the social media strategy that led Trump to win reelection.

As president, Trump worked hard to attack Lula. He placed punitive tariffs on Brazil for convicting Jair Bolsonaro, Eduardo’s father, for attempting to assassinate Lula and overthrow his government in 2022. These tariffs hurt Brasil’s economy.

More importantly, Trump’s constant denunciation of the jailing of Bolsonaro validated conspiracy theories of right-wingers that the justice process was flawed. When Alexandre de Moraes, who led Bolsonaro’s conviction, was implicated in the Banco Master scandal, it only reinforced these conspiracy theories.

Ahead of the Brazilian presidential election, the Trump administration has labeled Brasil as a major distributor of cocaine and attempted to paint Lula as weak on taking on drug gangs.

In June, the Trump administration labeled two gangs as “terrorist organizations,” something which the Lula administration has repeatedly resisted because of fears of how the Trump administration could intervene in law enforcement and military matters in Brasil.

Still, every attack on Lula by the Trump administration generated headlines in Brasil and validated the wild claims made by Bolsonaro allies of a flawed Brazilian justice system.

On Friday, the Trump administration closed its embassy in Brasil and all of its consulates in a move that many saw as a scare tactic designed to interfere once again in the Brazilian presidential election.

The same day, the Brazilian federal police and intelligence service ABIN were warning of a possible US coup attempt. It was already known that Trump operatives were training operatives in Brasil, and the Brazilian federal police report described in depth how much Trump’s intervention had shifted things in Brasil.

International Media Failed to Check Brazilian Media

Finally, the international media completely ignored the Brazilian presidential election, allowing corporate media within Brasil to dominate the conversation without any accountability from the international media.

There are still three weeks until the next round, and Lula could still win, but it’s gonna take a massive fight. Part of that fight is changing how the international media covers things.

Payday Report can help play a small role in getting the US press more involved. The Washington Post once cited Payday Report in a front-page story for changing the way the pandemic strike wave was discussed, and maybe we can play a small role in getting American reporters to pay attention.

Original article:  www.commondreams.org

Why did the machines suffer a kind of breakdown, if they had been rigorously tested?

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

The counting of votes in the first round of Brazil’s general elections was the subject of great controversy. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, was ahead of Lula in the official count, with 49.6%, against 42.2% for the president seeking re-election.

64.8% of the polling stations had been tallied up to that point. But the count was halted for more than an hour. Strangely, the votes for governor, senator and deputies continued to be counted normally. Only the presidential count was halted.

And, even more strangely, when the presidential count resumed, Flávio Bolsonaro’s upward trend and Lula’s downward trend were reversed. The opposition candidate’s votes plummeted, while those of the current president rose. Flávio Bolsonaro was less than 0.5% away from the victory that would hand him the presidential sash. He lost more than 2%, ending with 47.03%, while Lula gained almost 3%, ending with 45.16%.

It seemed that Flávio Bolsonaro would dethrone Lula right in the first round. But, after more than an hour of halted counting, Lula managed to recover and the race will only be decided in the second round.

The count was halted at 7:06 p.m. (Brasília time), with 64.8% of the ballots tallied. Only at 8:08 p.m. were the new results presented, already with 84.96% of the ballots tallied.

The official justification was given by the president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Kassio Nunes Marques, who is also a justice on the Supreme Federal Court (STF). “What happened was a data congestion. In every election, we are surprised by some incident, which is natural for those who deal with complex and highly varied systems,” he said. “At first, it is not known whether this was derived from another problem. What our IT found was a flow [of data] above the normal level, and that congestion caused a delay,” he added.

There is an aggressive propaganda campaign in Brazil, spearheaded by the Electoral Justice, to convince citizens that elections are 100% clean. The main focus of this propaganda is precisely the electronic voting machines. Judicial institutions and media outlets give wide dissemination to the Electoral Justice’s claims about the total reliability of the electronic voting machines, even highlighting that they are tested before the election and then sealed so that no one can access them.

So why did the machines suffer a kind of breakdown, if they had been rigorously tested? Well, the oh-so-wise TSE has full knowledge of the number of eligible voters and of the number of votes that can be recorded in the machines, including in each polling station. The Electoral Justice’s propaganda tells the public that the machines are fully prepared in advance to record and tally voters’ votes perfectly.

No flow of data “above the normal level” that would lead to system congestion should occur, because the most varied data and statistics regarding vote recording are known and the calculations are perfectly feasible. The infallibility of the electronic voting machines requires that all possible outcomes be predictable and that, therefore, there be no anomaly whatsoever.

So how is it possible, then, that such a perfect system – as it is portrayed by the institutions of the Brazilian State – suffers a failure which, once supposedly resolved, so radically changed the trend of the presidential votes?

It may be a coincidence that Flávio Bolsonaro plummeted and Lula rose after the voting machines failed. But who knows? The TSE president acknowledged that the electronic voting system is “complex.” Only highly qualified specialists, from the TSE itself and from technology companies, can access it and understand it, according to the Electoral Justice. Thus, the fate of an entire country for the next four years rests in the hands of these specialists – 150 technicians unknown to the public. The tally of votes from the machines is fully automated; it passes through no human being. An even more select number of 22 employees access the automated vote totalization.

This means that 214 million Brazilians need to trust those 150 or 22 Egyptian priests to interpret that occult science. They must be the most enlightened beings on planet Earth – 100% honest, upright, immaculate and virginal. Even the STF justices, who over the past 15 years have been presented as impeccable, virtuous and chaste individuals, now appear embroiled in the biggest corruption scandal in Brazil’s recent history, yet those anonymous specialists deserve citizens’ most absolute trust.

It was for reasons such as these that the Supreme Court of Germany declared electronic voting unconstitutional: “every citizen must be able to understand and verify the central stages of elections in a reliable manner and without any prior specialized technical knowledge.”

The verdict, dated 2009, concludes:

“An electoral procedure in which the voter cannot reliably understand whether his or her vote was recorded in an unfalsifiable manner and included in the tally of the election result, and how the total of votes cast is assigned and counted, excludes central elements of the electoral procedure from public scrutiny and therefore fails to meet constitutional requirements.”

The Brazilian judicial system is mired in its greatest crisis in history and is living through a true Wild West, with partisan feuds interfering in the functioning of its work. Partisanship, in fact, has contaminated most of the judiciary, including the TSE. In the final stretch of these elections, decisions by the Electoral Justice, backed by the dominant wing of the STF, favored Lula.

It is evident that this dominant wing (represented by justices Alexandre de Moraes, Gilmar Mendes and Flávio Dino) does not want a victory of Bolsonarismo, for it is their declared political enemy. These justices have acted, in recent years, as true vigilantes against Bolsonarismo. Now that they themselves have been caught in extremely promiscuous dealings with a banker who corrupted countless high-ranking state officials, their bureaucratic careers are threatened. Lula’s continuity is a hope of salvation for these gentlemen, for the president is beholden to them and cannot break that commitment without risking his own neck, given the level of dependence Lula has contracted toward the STF’s top brass. Meanwhile, a Flávio Bolsonaro victory would tend to lead to a clash with the heads of these institutions – although the opposition candidate himself has shown little willingness to confront them, because those who control elections in Brazil (international financial capital) demand moderation and pacification, otherwise they will make life difficult for anyone elected president.

And the people are treated like cattle, victims of a system they cannot understand, so that their exploitation may be perpetuated through the staging of the “festival of democracy.”

Lula has failed to meet the demands of the people and is now facing the consequences.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

The first round of Brazil’s presidential election ended with candidate Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) ahead of Lula da Silva (PT), 47% to 45%. In the parliamentary elections, the PT and the left suffered overwhelming defeats across the country, indicating growing rejection of the left among ordinary Brazilians. Now, with only a few weeks remaining before the final decision on who will govern the country from next year onward, the question remains open: what factors will voters take into consideration when choosing the president?

The Lula government has taken several measures considered “desperate” attempts to reverse its popularity crisis and regain support in the final stretch of the election. Expanding social programs is one such measure, but its political effectiveness is becoming increasingly questionable. After decades of income redistribution under PT governments, without this producing any real transformation in the situation of working people, public perceptions of these policies have become increasingly negative.

Lula’s central problem is that a significant portion of the electorate appears less interested in new palliative measures and more concerned with problems that remain present in their daily lives. Public security, employment, income, inflation, and the quality of public services have a much more direct impact on the population than the major debates promoted by the government.

Security is perhaps the clearest example. The expansion of criminal organizations, the territorial growth of organized crime, and the perception of impunity have made violence one of the country’s main concerns. For millions of Brazilians, this is no longer an abstract discussion about security policy. It is a daily reality that determines where people can live, work, travel, and even open a business – particularly in major urban centers such as Rio de Janeiro, where organized crime is estimated to control between 60% and 70% of the city’s total territory.

In this context, proposals associated with the progressive cultural agenda may also carry significant electoral costs for the left. Brazilian debates over gender, identity, education, and minority rights have increasingly reproduced political conflicts originating in the United States and Europe. A considerable portion of the population, however, does not identify with this agenda and believes that the state should concentrate its efforts on more urgent material problems.

This helps explain why the runoff will likely be determined much more by domestic issues than by foreign policy – which is the aspect of the Lula government most frequently praised by the international expert community. BRICS, Palestine, or Brazil’s position toward the United States may mobilize politically engaged sectors of society, but they are unlikely to constitute the main concerns of the average voter when deciding how to vote.

Foreign policy has strategic importance for the Brazilian state. Ordinary citizens, however, tend to evaluate it through its concrete effects on their own lives. A foreign policy regarded as successful will not, by itself, compensate for perceptions of insecurity, unemployment, or deterioration in public services. As the Lula government avoids directly confronting the problem of organized crime, support may naturally grow for a right-wing camp that welcomes the United States’ designation of Brazilian criminal factions as terrorist organizations.

The same applies to the aforementioned income-transfer programs. Such mechanisms may have an important social function in a country marked by profound inequalities, but their use as the principal instrument of social policy has serious limitations. Transferring income can alleviate poverty, but it does not automatically create skilled employment, increase productivity, or rebuild national industry. Instead, it can contribute to the emergence of a large precarious population dependent on government assistance. When welfare becomes a permanent substitute for development policies, the structural problem remains.

This is precisely where the electoral dispute enters a decisive phase. Voters will have to choose between different proposals for addressing problems that have not disappeared in recent years. The ability to present convincing answers on security, employment, income, and social order may carry greater weight than speeches about major geopolitical projects.

The first-round result also demonstrates that Brazil’s right was able to transform domestic discontent into electoral strength. Flávio Bolsonaro’s lead and the composition of the new Congress indicate significant demand for change. This does not mean that all these voters share the same views on the economy, foreign policy, or cultural issues. It means, above all, that dissatisfaction has become sufficiently broad to alter the country’s political balance.

In the remaining weeks of the campaign, therefore, the fundamental question will be whether the government can convince voters that its policies offer lasting solutions, or whether the perception will prevail that it has adopted temporary measures to manage problems that remain unresolved.

Talking about gender, human rights, or Palestine will definitely not help Lula secure reelection.