The lifestyle of a rich and famous populist: Lula’s case study.

 

Under this heading, two men are top stories these days, The Donald (Trump) in the USA and Lula (also known as Luis Inácio Lula da Silva) in Brazil. They share some personal attributes, both are rabble rousers and enjoy a tacky lifestyle. The first one is a right wing populist who lives off his personal fortune while the second is a left wing former president who lives off his rich friends’ kindness.

Next year, the USA may swear in its first populist president; on the other hand, Latin America has perfected the formula. In 2016, the majority of its leaders are dye in-the-wool leftwing populists. Among them, Lula who was president for eight years has reached mythical status, primus inter pares. Like his clone, the late president Chávez of Venezuela, Lula is a very divisive figure: he is the most loved and the most hated man in Brazil. Now, he is certainly first among equals in matters of political trickeries and obstruction of justice. Although an early admirer, this blogger is no longer a total fan. His fall from grace was faster than his spectacular rise in national politics.

In 2016, Lula stands accused of money laundering in the context of the Petrobras mega- embezzlement scandal investigated by operation Car Wash, influence peddling with construction companies, illicit self-enrichment, concealing property ownership and possibly obstruction of justice. His wealth is estimated at US$ 8 million, and one of his sons is amongst the richest man of Brazil. To add insult to injury, the current president Dilma Rousseff named him Chief-of-staff, a job which shields him from possible prosecution.

                            

                                                      Lula before

Lula comes from an under-privileged background from the poverty-stricken North East of Brazil. He worked as a metal worker in São Paulo, and has been a political fixture since the 1970s when as a trade unionist, he stood up to the military regime. After two attempts, he was finally elected president in 2003, and left the office after two terms at the end of 2010. As president, he put aside his left-wing rhetoric. Benefitting from the commodity boom, Lula led Brazil through years of mega investments. He was a successful president albeit a lucky one. He used the windfall to pull millions of people out of poverty through steady economic growth and money transfers to the most marginalized ones in his native Northeast. However, he failed to reform Brazil’s outdated institutions which would have allowed the country to weather leaner years like now.

When Lula left the presidency, he was legitimately a man with a high middle class standard of living; he had substantial savings and enjoyed many generous retirement pensions. When in office, a president hardly spends anything; Lula had no lawyers to pay like Bill Clinton, another rags-to-rich president, nor gave 90 percent of his salary to charity like José Mujica, the former president of Uruguay who qualifies as the world’s “humblest” of president.

However upon leaving Brasilia, Lula told his adoring supporters that “I am leaving government to live life on the streets where I always was, I will be more of the people than ever before”. Instead of enjoying his new status of a respected self-made man, Lula was longing for his previous life of hardship. He wanted people to believe that in spite of eight years in the presidential palace and a successful career, he had not changed and remained true to his poor man’s values. He even bragged that he had never opened a book in his life. On the other hand, the millions of people who had benefitted from the economic growth where unabashedly busy improving their lots and sending their kids to better schools. For this blogger, through the above statement, Lula planted the seeds of trouble to come.

Emulating many of his peers, the former president started a lucrative career of international lecturer. Charging speaking fees in the order of US$ 100,000.00, Lula delivered hundreds of lectures, mostly in Latin America and Africa. Nothing illegal at this stage. However, these lectures were overwhelmingly paid by business corporations, and many are implicated in the Car Wash Operation. Construction companies not only funded Lula’s conference trips and lectures but also made hefty donation to his foundation in São Paulo (Instituto Lula). Interestingly, the Lula Institute does not post these lectures on line; recently a famous judge wondered whether they actually existed. For a period, Lula was under contract with the New York Times to write opinion columns. During his international trips, Lula has been portrayed as a lobbyist or middle man for Brazilian construction firms. According to the Brazilian media, in 2015 these companies had about US$ 5 billion worth of contracts with the Federal Government. Lula’s close ties with these firms have tarnished his former statesman aura.

                            

                                                        Lula now

With so much money coming his way, Lula faced an existential dilemma. True to his word as a poor man, he could not exhibit a flashy lifestyle. Even the Car Wash sleuths have a hard time following Lula’s money trail; they nonetheless claim that there is evidence that the former president received real estate and money gifts from firms implicated in Petrobras bribery scheme. Lula is linked to a beach front three-story penthouse and to a sprawling country estate with swimming pool and lake. The police believes they were given to him in a “scratch-my-back” type of scheme because Lula’s personal items were found in these places.

                     

                                 Country estate in a shitty location..

The ex-president claims that he owns nothing, and that, he and his family only visited these residences as guests. One knows that Lula lives with his wife in his former apartment in suburban São Paulo, where he owes three apartments. The apartment next to his is empty and someone pays the rent, but who? Facts remain fuzzy regarding Lula’s investments.

                        

                                        Lula: A poor man’s soul.

By Brazilian standards, these are far from being prime location real estates. It is hilarious to hear a released taped phone call whereby the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, an otherwise devoted fan of Lula tells him that “his farm house and penthouse are in shitty places, that Lula’s has never lost his poor man’s soul, and that it is the biggest fucking disgrace”. Lula seems to agree.

                   

                                       Lula and Dilma: Team Work.

Lula’s chief of staff nomination has been suspended by a Supreme Court judge. It is ironical to remember that in 1988, Lula allegedly said that when a poor man steals he goes to jail; but when a rich guy does the same, he get a ministerial job! At this stage of the game, the political crisis has reached such an unparalleled level of pandemonium and crassness that apparently the writers of the political series House of Cards are keenly following the plot’s twists and turns.

Brazilian Bribery Scandals for Dummies

A Swedish politician inadvertently uses her official credit card to have a haircut; she ruins her political career. A British lord spends his stipends on landscaping his garden or on prostitutes; national opprobrium forces him into exile in some backwater estate. A French minister lies about an insignificant secret Swiss bank account (€ 600,000); he is sacked and put on trial.

Conversely, when the Brazilian speaker of the Senate flew 2000 kilometers for free on an air force jet to have 10,000 hairs implanted he receives accolades from his peers. However, lambasted by the media, he grudgingly agreed to refund the state. Embroiled in another scandal, the serial offender was forced to step down. He has nonetheless been reelected speaker of the Senate. The speaker of the lower house of Congress one-ups him. He is accused of money laundering and of hoarding US$ 5 million of bribe money in several Swiss bank accounts. Undeterred, he made clear that he will not leave his post even if indicted. Bribe-taking seems to be in the majority of Brazilian politicians’ DNA. A former president, disgraced and impeached in the early 1990s, is now accused of taking a $ 1million bribe in the Petrolão, or Big Oil embezzlement scandal. And there is the case of Congressman Paulo Maluf, the poster boy for Brazil’s dysfunctional and flawed justice system. In the 1990s, when he was the mayor of São Paulo, he embezzled $ 300 million. He is an Interpol fugitive and France has in abstentia sentenced him to a three-year jail term for organized money laundering. Two years ago, he was reelected to Congress, thanks to his efficient vote buying structure.

The federal police enquiry, Operção Lava-Jato (Operation Car Wash) started innocuously enough about two and half years ago when it began investigating a money laundering scheme running in a chain of petrol stations. Now it had grown exponentially into a zillion dollar embezzlement scandal, and Brazil’s largest bribery and kickback scandal so far. The Petrolão corruption scheme is shaking the foundations of the state and that of Petrobras, the state-owned and publically-listed oil giant. Petrolão incriminates government officials, political parties and political leaders of the government coalition, large construction corporations, and middle men. The prosecutors are boldly casting a large net, implicating an increasing number of people, and uncovering additional but connected corruption cases.

Operation Car Wash with its cynical intrigue, star-powered cast and twist and turn plot is more exciting than even the most entertaining Brazilian telenovela, the celebrated soap operas. State-owned enterprises, particularly in the oil industry, are long-established government’s cash cows and piggy banks. What makes this scandal so infuriating is the mammoth amount of money embezzled from golden goose Petrobras by officials who are expected to be its guardian angels. Petrobras is a national icon and the outrage has been enormous in a population usually portrayed as corruption-blasé. Petrobras’ new management is said to have written down $2 billion for corruption cost. In 2015, the already very much in debt Petrobras may have lost up to $ 7 billion as a result of poor management and oversight, corruption, waste, and low oil prices. To the dismay of its shareholders, the company posted a 60% loss of market value.

How was Petrobras bled? Large construction companies agreed to pay bribes to get their hands on Petrobras’ juicy contracts. The bribes inflated the price of these million and billion dollar contracts by an estimated 3 percent. Moreover, to ensure that projects and bribes were evenly apportioned, contractors formed cartels between them. In the process, Petrobras was twice duped. Bribes are an inherent component of government’s infrastructure projects. In Petrolão, sleaze has a political dimension as most of the siphoned money ended up in the pockets of the government party and that of its coalition partners. The scheme was well lubricated thanks to the resourcefulness of the middle men who on behalf of Petrobras executives and their political benefactors, moved the money offshore to shell companies. The money then resurfaced into political campaign slush funds. Most of the money was disbursed during the 2014 campaign, and the left-over went towards funding the lavish lifestyle of political hacks.

The leftish Worker Party, whose acronym is PT in Portuguese, is the governing party. It was founded by the former president Lula da Silva (aka Lula) and the current president, Dilma Rousseff (aka Dilma) was handpicked by Lula. When Lula became president in 2003, the spoil system went into over-drive: the majority of executive and procurement positions in state-owned enterprises were gradually filled by party and government supporters. As technocrats were replaced by “yes” men, corruption intensified. It has now become endemic affecting all economic sectors. Under Lula’s presidency, nationalist fervor went as far as enacting a tough new national content legislation. Petrobras and other oil companies were required to purchase often shoddy and always overpriced Brazilian supplies and technology and use locally built shipyards. Worldwide, national content rules are regarded as conduit for corruption, and not surprisingly Brazil has finessed the scheme.

                  

                                      Partners in Sleaze?                                           

Operation Car Wash is bringing both surprises and dismay; its appendages are now reaching beyond Petrobras into, among others, the energy, banking, and agricultural sectors. The prosecutors have handed down many convictions, and leading political figures of the governing majority have been implicated but not yet charged (so far they are about fifty). They have reacted with indignation denying wrong doing. Until now, about two dozen individuals have been jailed. They include Petrobras executives and construction sector tycoons who have been perp walked to the delight of the public and the media. Brazilian jail facilities have convinced many to cooperate with the police to seek leniency through plea bargains. They are singing like Zé Carioca the street wise, dapper parrot of Disney cartoons, to expose politicians whose jail terms are eagerly awaited by the Brazilian people. Only the Federal Supreme Court (FSC) can issue arrest warrants to elected officials, so it is a slow, frustrating and tortuous process.

Actually, the FSC regards obstruction of justice with harshness and recently sent a ruling party senator and senate whip to jail along with a famous investment banker. This episode, related to Petrolão, took a page from the script of a bad telenovela. The pair was trying to bribe and spirit out of the country a key witness whose plea bargain could have implicated them. Both denied wrongdoing and have now been released. The senator was freed after agreeing to a plea bargain. However, the pair is not yet out of the woods.

         

                    Ze Carioca and imitator: who sings loudest?

Operation Car Wash may be the Federal police’s “piece of resistance”, but the cops are busy investigating other scandals, less hyped but just as damaging for the government. Operation Zelote stands out for the creativity of the probed corruption scheme. Members of a division of the tax department responsible for settling tax disputes with corporations were actually helping them to avoid taxes. The companies agreed to reward the corrupt bureaucrats with up to 10 percent of the money they saved through this arrangement. Interestingly, many of these companies are also implicated in the Petrobras case. It is estimated that over the last ten years the government lost a whopping $ 5.8 billion in tax revenue.

The Petrobras investigation has been going on for over two years; it is an increasingly complex and convoluted case and people tend to lose interest. However, Car Wash fatigue has not set in because every other week, the humdrum of the investigation is shaken by bombshell disclosures. The latest one is the arrest of Dilma’s campaign guru who allegedly overcharged Petrobras for work and distributed the excess money as kickbacks. Brazilian multinational Odebretch, the biggest construction company in Latin America, is in the spotlight for being involved in every scam. It has been identified by prosecutors as the money launderer-in-chief, giving bribes for business favors. Its cozy relationship with Lula is being scrutinized. The former president is now being investigated for influence-peddling on behalf of Odebrecht as well as bribe taking. The firm’s setbacks are not limited to Brazil. It is under investigation in Peru, Switzerland and in a couple of oil-producing African countries.

Petrobras is slowly returning to good health. People are eagerly waiting with for more arrests, hopefully closer to the center of power. The scandal is regarded a game-changer in Brazil, a country traditionally too complacent with grafts, swindlers and sleazy politicians. The economic downturn makes people less tolerant. Operation Car Wash may be a first step towards cleaning the Augean stables run by the scandal-ridden political elite, a self-entitled caste which until the Car Wash enquiry was a nexus of impunity beyond the reach of justice.

To the dismay of many politicians, and in spite of the spread of the zica virus, Operation Car Wash is still front page news. Nonetheless, politicians of all stripes rejoiced at a recent poll which indicated that Aedes aegypti, the multi-task mosquito, is Brazil’s enemy number one. Aedes aegypti would not have established its operation headquarters in Brazil if the country’s institutions had not been plundered by these criminal officials.

When not to visit Salta, Argentina

 

Carnival in Rio de Janeiro looks like great fun from the outside, but for those who have reached Carnival fatigue-like this blogger- it is better to abandon the city to its revelers. Rio hosts two separate carnival festivities: the extravagant four-night-long show of the well-established samba schools, and a two-week-long street carnival which attracts millions of rowdy people. The resulting gridlock is what many Cariocas who enjoy their carnivals in carefully chosen doses, try to escape. This year, many Cariocas also wanted to escape the bite of Aedes egypti the mosquito which spreads zica fever. The annual exodus benefits carnival-free locations. The city of Salta in the Andean part of Argentina looked like an attractive place for a five-day break; however it turned out to be not the ideal choice.

Visit of Salta la Linda.

The visit started with the run-of-the-mill city tour to get a feel for the geography. Two day-tours to discover Andean Argentina were also booked. Salta city is a bit of a tourist fraud, not as beautiful as its nickname implies. Promoted for its colonial heritage, it has little to show for its glorious past. Most of the old mansions have been replaced by non-descript buildings put up during the post WWI period when Argentina, as rich as the US, was booming by feeding beef to the world. The heart of city has retained its square block colonial plan but now shows a mishmash of ugly buildings. The few surviving 18^th century landmarks have undergone ugly post-earthquake reconstruction. Staying outside town in a charming finca, was a quaint choice but a logistical mistake: the excursions all depart from the city center, 40 minutes away. Doing some research for this blog, I discovered that the extended city tour had taken us to the remote and picturesque location of Taras Bulba, a Hollywood film (1962) starring Yul Brunner and Tony Curtis (so much for the Russian steppes!) Our young guide did not mention it: he probably never heard of Taras Bulba!

                  

         

                             Salta: The Cabildo on Carnival day (BL).

The must see Mummy museum.

Salta has many museums. One, the High Mountain Archeological Museum (MAAM), puts the city on the map. It was especially built to protect three mummies of children dating from the Inca civilization, 500 years ago. The very well preserved mummies were found during the 1999 scientific expedition to the volcano Llullaillaco on the Argentine-Chilean border, 400 kilometers west of Salta. The stratovolcano (6739 meters above sea level) is probably the highest active volcano in the world. It is now dormant, but geologists have identified evidence of late 19^th century lava activity. The Incas worshiped mountains as sacred places and many mummies have been found in high altitude sanctuaries. The children, two girls and a boy, were from noble families. They had been taken to the sacrificial site at an altitude of 6715 m, and made to drink chicha, a fermented maize alcohol. Drugged to stupor and unconsciousness, the three children look as if they are sleeping. They may not have been buried alive, but died of hypothermia.

                                 

                               The Maiden mummy: the 14 years old girl.

Only one mummy is exhibited at any given time. In February, the young boy was displayed in an acrylic cylinder at -20 degrees C. The museum also exhibits another mummy, no longer frozen named la Reina del Cerro, or the Queen of the Mountain. Unfortunately the queen was discovered by looters and not scientists in 1922. Various offerings were found in her tomb on Mount Chuscha (over 5300 m) south of Salta. Between 1922 and 2006, when it was given to the MAAM, the mummy had been unceremoniously bounced between different owners.

Checking landmarks.

This blogger travelled to Salta to discover the Humahuaca Quebrada and the colonial village of Cachi. The Humahuaca Quebrada is a narrow mountain valley over an altitude of 2000 m, a World Heritage site some 250 kms north of Salta. To get there and back took 15 hours! An agonizing slog which included a 45 minute loo stop at a gas station overwhelmed by tourist minibuses! Salta should be avoided during Carnival; this was a second mistake.

                                   Seven Color Hills in Purmamarca

Several villages along the valley were in an advanced stage of carnival madness, the result was a stop and go traffic. To make matter worse, a mud flow blocked the road to the village of Purmamarca, the most picturesque site of the region, famous for its Seven Color Hills. It was dark when we finally arrived at the village and too late to fully enjoy the valley’s colors.

     

                                      Purmamarca and Seven Color Hill.

Needless to say tempers flared in our minivan group. If the Argentines took it in stride, the foreigners were less forgiving. As you may know, I like to criticize, but this time I kept quiet, adopting a neutral position. To avoid such hassle, travel agencies should be more flexible and adapt their itinerary to the circumstances.

       

                                             Humahuaca Quebrada

The Salta region is either wet and lush or dry and parched. In the dry winter, the city is often plagued by nasty dust storms. Mistake number three was to visit Salta in summer during the rainy season, from December to March. Although it mostly rains at night (monstrous thunderstorms), mountain roads are often washed out in the morning.

        

                                                     After the rain

My other excursion was a 320 km long day trip to the colonial village of Cachi through landscapes of impressive beauty and diversity. The famed provincial road 33 is a scenic experience in itself. It snakes along hills covered by lush tropical vegetation (incidentally the road was blocked by a rock fall from the previous rainstorm and we had to drive along the muddy river bed instead!) then climbs the Obispo slope through bends and loops.

      

                                                     Obispo Slope

It finally reaches the Piedra del Molino at 3.620 meters above sea level. The road then drops 1000 meters and crosses Los Cardones National Park in the arid Argentine puna, the high plateaus of the Andes. Cardones cacti are the brothers of the Saguaros of the American West. Some are as old as 300 years and can reach 3 meters high. The park is home to herds of guanacos and wild donkeys, and sometimes solitary well-fed pumas can be spotted at night. The burros were abandoned by the Spanish conquistadores and the miners of colonial time.

                                    Los Cardones National Park

Cachi (alt. 2210m) is a charming colonial village nestled at the foothill of snow covered volcanoes, which play hide and seek during the rainy season. During the 15^th century, the locals who were subsistence farmers did not welcome the heavy handed administration of the Incas and fought successfully to keep their ways of life. The white-washed streets display many opulent adobe houses, remainders of its prosperous 18 and 19^th century when mining took place on both sides of the cordillera. Now, the village’s slumber is only broken by busloads of rowdy tourists, as tourism has become the main economy.

            

                                           Colonial church of Cachi

Andean Carnivals.

Andean populations take their carnival as seriously as the Brazilians even if their rituals are different. Carnival is a family affair, men and boys dress as diablitos, (little devils) and women wear very shiny and colorful raffled dresses, a tradition going back to the early Spanish colonization. The Humahuaca carnival is famous for its Indian, Criolla and Spanish cultural mix. The atmosphere was joyous but a bit wild with people throwing water balloons, tossing handfuls of talcum powder and flour and spraying white foam. Drunk youth stumbled on the spray cans which were littering the ground. I got sticky white foam on my hair (it looks like shaving foam). The dancing, marching and drinking were non-stop. Coincidentally, Salta carnival with its diablitos, water “bombas” (balloon) and foam sprays reminded me of the Indian carnivals of Peru, Bolivia and San Pedro de Atacama in Chile.

         

                                                   Diablitos de Humahuaca

They are all very similar, except for the music. In Humahuaca it was distinctly Criolla, not Indian. These similar carnival traditions perhaps result from population mixing. In the 15^th century, the Incas colonized the Salta region and as customary, forcibly resettled uncooperative population to replace it with a more dependable people. The result was a strained ethnic mix which greatly facilitated the Spanish conquest.

Argentina under new management.

Gone are the days when restaurants were competing among themselves not by the quality of their food but by the competitiveness of their peso/dollar exchange rate. Patrons were selecting eateries by their exchange rate rather than their food! Now, the restaurateurs are back in the kitchen! After years of Kirchnerism, named after the husband (the late Nestor Kirchner) and wife (Cristina) presidential team, the newly elected president Mauricio Macri is trying to make Argentina a “normal” country again. One of his first actions was to lift currency control and thus devalue the Argentine Peso by 30 percent to its more realistic black market value. Kirchnerism, a left-wing, authoritarian populist utopia destroyed Argentina’s economic dynamism. Even the marginal symbols of Kirchnerism are being removed. Notably the portrait of Evita Peron will disappear from the new 100 peso note, and the 200 pesos note will lose the picture of the Malvinas/Falkland islands. Both notes will display the less controversial pictures of Argentine iconic animals.

                       

                                              Soon a collector’s item

People met during this trip, like taxi drivers, guides and hoteliers did not miss Kirchnerism. They complained of its distorting and indiscriminate subsidies, red tape, lack of transparency and grand larceny by the political elite. These people are hopeful that life will improve and that the atmosphere will be less confrontational.

Carnival is like zica, hard to escape in Latin America. Visiting Salta again? Certainly, but in springtime with a friend and a car. I have to figure out where to escape the 2017 Carnival? Any suggestion?

Winterreise: From One Kingdom of Gloom to Another

This blogger lives in Brazil but traditionally spends Xmas and the New Year in France. Brazil, a country renowned for its cheerfulness and easy going atmosphere has fallen into a pit of gloom and doom. The country suffers from a toxic mix of economic recession, high inflation, political gridlock, choking corruption and the spread of the Zica virus. Because most of Brazil’s woes are self-inflicted, the people’s mood is down in the dumps, and the Xmas and New Year’s celebrations were unable to lift their spirits.
France, famously known for the malaise and miserabilism of its denizens, has barely survived 2015, its annus horribilis. Late December, mood and weather were unseasonal. The climate was warm and damp and the Gallic bleak chic had been supplanted by a combination of weariness, mistrust, anger and hopelessness. On November 13, Paris suffered its worse carnage since WWII. Subsequently, the country was thrust into the center of world news as the world stood in solidarity with aggrieved Parisians. The usually self-centered and self-absorbed French further recoiled onto themselves, oblivious of what was happening in the rest of the world[1]. Not even Father Xmas was able to shake out the shrouding gloom.

After November 13, everyday brought news of low intensity terror attempts by the so-called lone wolves, also called Marauding Terrorist Firearms Attacks (MTFA) and of jihadists’ arrests in scores of European countries, seemingly all linked to the November 13 attacks. Whatever the terminology, lone wolves or MTFA, the hapless French people felt that the state was unable to cope with extremist Islamic radicalization spreading out of control. Many blamed the Muslim community for its failure to reign in its youth. Although some of the terrorists had been petty criminals, many others had lived in decent families before quitting their job to move to Syria. Their radicalization was not the result of discrimination or socio/economic marginalization, contrary to the thinking of leftist politicians and journalists (known as bisnounours in French or Care Bears!). On this topic, French people resent being criticized for not making more social and cultural space for a community, whose religion is practiced in an increasingly intolerant way, a community intended to reverse liberal and secular gains.
The amusing footnote of these tragic events was the boost of François Hollande’s approval rating. The unpopular French president is used to poll swings, directly linked to terror levels. After each terror attack, he enjoys a poll boost, but soon after his popularity drops again, and is now on a downward curve.
The New Year’s Eve fireworks in Cologne, and on a lesser extent in other German cities shook the French out of their torpor, and unexpectedly an intense public debate across Europe ensued. There are no links between the events in Cologne and those in Paris except that in both instances the perpetrators reject Western values.
In Cologne, thousands of testosterone-charged migrant-cum-thugs, mostly from North Africa with a few from the Middle East, went on a rampage, sexually harassing, groping, and robbing women revelers. So far, more than 600 women have reported abuse to the police. At the outset, one must question the efficiency of the Cologne police who had originally reported a quiet New Year’s Eve, and  then later admitted having been overwhelmed by the concerted actions of the thugs. Conspiracy theories flourished: Had the police done nothing to embarrass Chancellor Angela Merkel for her pro-migrant policy? Or had the police hidden the extent of the rampage for the sake of political correctness?
The sexual attacks in Cologne were an eye opener. Very quickly, many editorialists recommended that political correctness be substituted by political realism aka an honesty culture[2]. To acknowledge that many would-be asylum seekers in Germany were in fact economic migrants who had become delinquents was a fact, not a racist comment. Liberal media outlets like the New York Times[3] and the Economist (January 16^_22,  2016) which had initially encouraged mass migration as an economic boon for aging European countries, became worried of the destabilizing effect of male-dominated, out-of-control migration. Migrant statistics were a concern, some 72 per cent of asylum seekers are young men. 

                 German Swimming Pool rules: Women are to respected no matter the size of the  swimsuit!

Western media pointed out the cultural gulf between Europe (i.e. its liberal and secular values and standard of living) and the migrants’ countries. With regard to the role of women in society, the gulf is actually an abyss. Many Arab countries treat their woman folk as second class citizens. On the other hand, European women cherish their freedom and do not want their human rights threatened as the female revelers in Cologne found out the hard way. It is reported that the prominent and controversial German feminist Alice Schwarzer said that “Germany is naively importing male violence, sexism and anti-Semitism”. On the contrary, a few women politicians from the socialist party (SPD) tried to minimize the problem by comparing the sexual assaults to those taking place during the Oktoberfest. The police strongly rebutted the comparison. Oddly, on the subject of migration, these women’s support for women’s rights takes a back seat to their politically correct rhetoric.
Cologne brought two issues to the fore: How to deport trouble-makers and how to assimilate asylum seekers when they settled.
To protect social peace, editorialist Ross Douthat recommends bringing brides and allowing family reunions. On the basis of the French and British examples and the San Bernardino case this blogger disagrees. Uneducated, unassertive and submissive Muslim women, by-products of a patriarchal culture, will not contribute to assimilation but will maintain the cultural rift responsible for the toxic multiculturalism. Coincidentally, on January 18, the British Prime Minister David Cameron indicated that Muslim migrant women should learn English “in the hope that they will turn into more powerful moderating forces” and prevent their sons and daughters from becoming jihadists. English will also help them to better integrate. If they fail to learn English Cameron warned that they may face deportation. Instead of bringing brides from home, and as permitted by the Koran, Muslim men should be encouraged to marry non-Muslim women in their adopted countries. By marrying local girls, they may integrate more easily and enjoyably.
Deportation is a politician’s pipe dream and a spurious promise to taxpayers. In its histrionic tabloid style, Express.co.uk of the United Kingdom (December 26, 2015) indicated that at the current 0.1 percent rate of deportation, it will take 143,000 years to repatriate the one million asylum seekers who have landed on Europe’s shores in 2015! Deportation is probably not a worry for the Cologne thugs; most of them have destroyed their passports anyway, and their home countries may be unwilling to extend the welcome mat. In addition, European countries cannot send back home people fleeing war zones or who may be killed.
Meanwhile in France, which is under a state of emergency, reality check is not on the agenda. The political class is spinning its wheels in a sterile debate on the government’s futile plan to strip dual citizens of their French nationality in terrorism cases. IS’ head hunters do not look at passports and would-be martyrs do not need them to claim their 72 virgins.
This blogger is back in Brazil where the mood is increasingly gloomy. This year’s Carnival will not offer the usual hedonistic escape from every day’s worries. Short of money, parties had to be scaled back; even the sale of Carnival masks is down, a blessing in disguise for despised politicians. Masks of heroes as well as villains are indiscriminately worn by revelers. This year, the most popular hero mask is that of the Japanese-Brazilian policeman who has participated in many arrests in operation Car Wash, Brazil’s biggest corruption scandal. In 2016, politicians are not making the cut, not even in the mask business.

                                                      The good guy is in the middle!  

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[1]Oddly, some of the blogger’s acquaintances were unaware of the San Bernardino (California) terror attack where an Islamic radical husband and wife team shot and killed 14 people a few days after the Paris carnage. [2] Jochen Bittner. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/opinion/can-germany-be-honest-about-its-refugee-problems.html?emc=edit_ee_20160116&nl=todaysheadlines-europe&nlid=34360468&referer=&_r=0 [3] Ross Douthat, January 9, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/opinion/sunday/germany-on-the-brink.html

Robin Hood is not Brazilian

 

Robin Hood is a folk hero who stole from the rich to give the poor. With the laudable goal of lessening inequality between their citizens, many Latin American populist governments have institutionalized Robin Hood’s deeds with uneven levels of success. Brazil for its part has taken the opposite tracks: it steals from the poor to give to the rich. Culturally speaking, Brazil is closer to Ali Baba and his 40 thieves than to Robin Hood and his Merry Men! However, many in Brazil wish that there were only 40 thieves!

The thieves are a diverse but incestuous lot: senior public servants, “new money” oligarch families, bankers and above all politicians from every hue. They spend an inordinate part of their time devising ways to milk the state and loot state-owned companies, setting in motion a plundering process which becomes an end in itself. The high jacking of state institutions by special interest groups deprives the state of its capacity to improve the quality of life of its citizens, particularly the most vulnerable of them. Colluding corporate and political corruption is squeezing the poor at both ends. Brazilian fat cats live off the poor.

During the last decade, Brazil has been touting that thanks to its welfare programs, it has pulled 20 million people out of poverty. This is true, but its pervasive looting culture prevented many more from being raised, and now with the Brazilian economy in the doldrums (self-inflicted), many people are falling back into poverty. Education, healthcare, housing and infrastructure are the four most critical sectors for poverty reduction but they are the most affected by looting. What is not stolen is wasted by mismanagement. Because corruption increases the cost of the government’s programs, quality falters and their numbers are consequently reduced.

Brazil’s education budget is a bottomless pit: the country spends about 23 percent of it tax income well above the developed countries’ average for very meager results. Most students attend classes part-time, results are abysmal, the drop-out rate remains vexingly high and poorly paid teachers are not very dedicated. Educational failure does not seem to be high among the country’s concerns. Not surprisingly Lula da Silva, the former president, proudly claimed that he never read a book in his life before becoming president!

The multi-layered public health sector is dysfunctional as well. It is the largest public system in the world. Last year, a survey[1] indicated that 93 percent of the respondents found this sector mediocre or bad. To compensate for the shortage of doctors, the state had to import thousands of Cuban doctors to care for the population in the far flung parts of the country. The health system repeatedly failed to contain mosquito-borne cyclical epidemics like dengue and more recently the Zica fever which are both transmitted by the Aedes eagypti mosquito. Zica is an African virus which causes birth defect in babies, principally micro-encephalitis. Many regions in the poor north-east of Brazil are in a state of emergency and the virus has now spread to 13 states. While the government is desperately trying to contain the disease, one health official advised women not to get pregnant!

Social and low income housing is in worse shape still. Even Dilma’s government (Dilma Rousseff, the current president) admits to gross mismanagement, an official understatement for corruption practices. Government watchdog institutions have disclosed that building costs are grossly inflated in order to provide political kickbacks to local politicians and public servants. As a result, the housing policy meets neither basic demand nor people expectation. Shoddy buildings collapse before completion, stay vacant or are used for unintended purposes.

                  

                       Social Housing, current Brazilian standards

Not only do the poor have to do with bad schools, mediocre healthcare and lousy housing, they see their jobs disappearing. Some 1.5 million jobs were lost in 13 months as a result of the political and economic crisis[2]. To top it all, the 10% annual inflation rate eats into their meagre income. The crisis has been exacerbated by Dilma’s macro-economic mismanagement to gain re-election in October 2014 and the meltdown of the state-controlled oil giant Petrobras triggered by the disclosure of a mega bribery scandal[3]!

The covert financing of the re-election campaigns of national and local political bosses (i.e. vote buying) is the main reason for diverting public funds. The second is for feather bedding and pocket lining at a family scale. Corrupt politicians and oligarchs are joined at the hip, the first follow the instruction of the second, all paid by tax payer money. In such a state of affairs, money and favors are the key political drivers, elections are meaningless, and people are frustrated and disenfranchised. This pernicious system has allowed the tycoons of large construction companies to make tons of money and set up illicit cartels to rig contracts. Not surprisingly, the productivity of many Brazilian companies remains poor even by Latin American standards!

                             

    Ex-president Lula (da Silva) as many Brazilians would like to see him.

The Petrobras bribery scandal and its upstream and downstream developments have become an entertaining political soap opera with dozens of industry big-wigs and politicians in jail or under investigation. To save their skin, many defendants, businessmen and Petrobras executives have signed plea bargains with prosecutors, and their singing has been cacophonic. One tune led to another and more people are getting booked by the police. Recently, irked by the arrogance of the political class, the Supreme Court got involved and ordered jail terms for a leading politician of Lula and Dilma’s Worker’s Party and his alleged partner in crime, a famous investment banker. And the show goes on.

Thirteen years ago, the Worker’s Party won the heart and mind of low-income people by trumpeting its Robin Hood mantra and promising more socio-economic equality and integrity. Robin Hood must be rolling over in his grave.

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[1] By the Federal Medical Council.

[2] November 2015 data.

[3] The management of Petrobras has put a price tag on this corruption, writing off US$ 2 billion. The total loss was estimated at US$ 7.2 billion in 2014.

And the two bloody dams burst!

 

On November 5, 2015 two dams holding mine tailings[1] collapsed near the colonial city of Mariana, in the historic mining state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The dams belong to the Samarco iron mine. One would assume as with the 2010 Chilean mine disaster which buried 33 miners, that the mine was a fly-by-night undercapitalized operation. Very much to the contrary, Samarco is jointly owned by two blue bloods of the industry, Vale of Brazil and British/Australian BHP Billiton. BHP is the world’s largest mining company and Vale the largest iron ore exporter of the world.

           

                                         Photo Plox.com.br

Thirteen mine workers who were working on one of the dams were flushed away and twenty local people are probably also dead. The toxic mudslide[2] has devastated thousands of square miles of land and by flowing into rivers has cut the water supply of the downstream population. As of today, it is suspected that expansion work on one of the dams caused the breach.

Fifteen years ago, when I was taking a keen interest in mining shenanigans, I could easily point out the usual suspects of mine disasters. On the one hand, the mine management was notoriously “culturally disconnected” from the eloquent-talking headquarters staff who are responsible for drafting the company’s policies and code of conduct. On the other, a capacity disconnect occurred between the policy drafting entities of the central government and the local mining agencies which are required to oversee implementation and certify compliance. By enhancing their good corporate governance (i.e. corporate social responsibility) and environmental stewardship, mining companies were falling all over themselves to become good corporate citizens. However, environmental protection and social sustainability come at a price: they increase production cost. Although they are in charge of their implementation, many hard hat managers took a dim view of them. Modern mining generates a huge volume of waste, and efficient tailings management is critical to protecting the neighboring population and its environment.

Tailings management was not considered the sexy or testosterone-infused side of mining. This was an area where the occasional female mining engineer would have been employed, notwithstanding her credentials. Employees assigned to the dumps were not as highly paid as those of mining crews and proper training was often lacking. In other words, management regarded tailings as peripheral and tended to give it low priority, with maintenance and surveillance often falling by the wayside. A fact of mining life is that mining dumps occasionally burst. Miners could mimic Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous comment: “stuff happens”[3]!

Low priority was also given by government’s agents who often lacked updated expertise in tailings monitoring, an expertise closely related to civil engineering. Local offices were commonly understaffed, under trained, under equipped and under paid. When dealing with the deep-pocket mining management, public servants were sometimes complacent and negligent, subjected to bullying and exposed to bribes. In other words, surveillance was given lip service. Because too many technical sectors were involved, no one felt personally accountable. When confronted with an accident and subsequent liability, no one took responsibility for it (diffusion of responsibility).

             

Now, I wonder what has changed!

The mineral-rich State of Minas Gerais is known to have more than 735 mining dams[4], and some may not be properly monitored. The Samarco mudslide made headlines, but both government and company reactions were very slow at best. Although the causes of the burst have yet to be fully investigated, Vale and BHP have taken responsibility for the accident.

The people affected by the toxic mudslide were pretty much left to fend for themselves, caught between the callousness and misguided decisions of the corporations and the inefficiency of the administrative layer cake. The government will give Vale and BHP multi-million dollar fines, and they will face liability claims also worth millions of dollars. In a country which distinguished itself by a leviathan-size corruption, this money will probably not benefit the victims. They may come to envy the 33 Chilean miners who spent 69 days buried under 700 meters of rocks but were pulled out alive by a caring government.

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[1] There many names for the muck produced by mining: “Tailings, also called mine dumps, culm dumps, slimes, tails, refuse, leach residue or slickens, are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore”. Wikipedia.

[2] 62 million cubic meters (O Globo, November 17, 2015).

[3] Donald Rumsfeld is a former US Secretary of Defense. He made this infamous comment on the rampant looting which took place after the fall of Bagdad in 2003.

[4] Folha de São Paulo, November 7, 2015.

Stranded in the Borneo Jungle.

 

We were stranded for two days in the Sarawak rainforest. On the first day, a thick haze resulting from the burning of the rainforest prevented planes from landing and on the second, planes were ground by heavy tropical rain. The rainforest is literally burning itself to death in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo and in Sumatra, the largest Indonesian island. September, supposedly the dry season, is the beginning of the slash-and-burn devastation, an ancestral technique of chopping trees and burning them in situ to clear the rainforest for commercial crops. The acrid cloud of smoke drifts over thousands of miles westward towards Malaysian Sarawak, Sabah and the mainland as well as Singapore and Thailand. Not surprisingly, Indonesia has become the fastest rainforest-clearing country in the world as a result of its illegal logging and palm oil plantations. The country also holds the dubious record of being the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas after China and the United States.

For the past twenty years, haze and smoke have disrupted people’s livelihoods. Because the smoke is thicker this year, it has increased the usual human misery and economic loss: respiratory illness, school closing, air travel disruption and global warming.

                       

                                       Hazy day in Mulu.

Governments engage in their annual futile and dishonest political blame-game. Indonesia is blamed for being unable or unwilling to fight head-on the powerful corporations that run the palm oil and paper plantations. They are responsible for illegal slash-and-burn over large expanses of rainforest and peat land. Palm oil is a growing moneymaking business and a vital foreign currency earner for Indonesia. The decision to resort to slash-and-burn is a no brainer as it is much cheaper and faster than mechanically clearing the land. Many palm oil companies have been fined for resorting to this crude method to clear their own plantation! Every 15 to 17 years, palm trees are uprooted to give way to more productive new ones. Indonesia has tried to defend itself by blaming the investors who are behind the palm oil growth; many are from Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia which has a flourishing but better controlled palm oil business of its own. By destroying habitats, the unrelenting world demand for palm oil is threatening the livelihood of the indigenous people of Borneo and the survival of the mythical orangutan as well as increasing greenhouse gases.

In 2015, for the first time, the slash-and-burn issue is a front-and-center item on the regional political agenda. The new president of Indonesia has been more proactive and many lawbreakers have been sent to jail. Hopefully, when the rainy season resumes (November) this burning issue will not be put on the back burner as in the past.

For a tourist, Borneo’s dry season very much looks like the rainy season. Between daily rain showers, the sky remained dark (smog) and the air was very humid. Borneo’s jungle, or what is left of it, has a reputation of ultimate wilderness, roaming head hunters, infamous blood suckers like leeches, man-eating snakes, dinosaur-size lizards, carnivorous plants and millions of bat colonies to name a few of its less attractive denizens. We survived all of this. During our “downtime” at the airport, a 15 centimeters-long black scorpion paid a visit but was quickly surrounded by some 40 bored tourists eager to snap a close-up. After its five minute of fame, the scorpion was released unharmed into the forest.

So we were stuck in the middle of nowhere in Mulu National Park, a World Heritage site, near the border between Sarawak and Brunei. If the tarmac was idle, the 5-star resort was very busy with all the stranded tourists. We took it in stride, even knowing that our catch-up program was going to be less laid-back.

Borneo is an island of superlatives: the third largest island in the world (Asia’s largest) and the first for the rate of deforestation.  Fortunately most of Borneo is still covered by rainforest; tourists do not come to visit palm oil plantations and illegal logging camps.  Being the land of many exotic but severely endangered species, Borneo had been on my bucket list for some time, and I decided to sample the Malaysian parts of it, i.e. the states of Sarawak and Sabah. Unfortunately, many of Borneo’s exotic sites are only accessible to young energetic backpackers, so this blogger joined a package tour for middle aged and middle class tourists. What was sacrificed in discovery was gained in comfort. In addition to orangutans, we were lucky to spot pygmy elephants, proboscis monkeys, scores of other weird looking monkeys and the mysterious flower rafflesia, the largest in the world.

                      

           Rafflesia Flower: 1m diameter. Kinabalu National Park

Borneo prompts comparison with the Amazon rainforest, with a plus: the orangutans (the people of the forest in the local language).  For visitors on a schedule, the Semengoh Orangutan Sanctuary near Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, is picture-perfect as the primates can easily be seen and photographed! For one hour, some 70 tourists from different continents were able to watch three orangutans at feeding time: a laid-back male and a mother and her seven-year old son.  It was this blogger’s first encounter with orangutans in their natural habitat and she was really amazed by their gentle demeanor. It was business as usual for the apes, selecting the fruits on offer and gazing at nothing in particular. Then they left for the tree canopy, their dwelling. The mother and her kid walked together for a while near us, a heart-warming sight (see pic).

                      

                             Semengoh Sanctuary: Mother and child.

Orangutans and humans share 97 % of their DNA.  When watching these primates’ behavior, we were eager to see what difference the 3 % make.  Not much, if one considers the behavior of Richie, the group’s alpha male.  Richie recently strangled his wife because she refused to have sex with him. It seems that female orangutans also have headaches! The two off-spring are being taken care of by a sister-in-law.  Apparently, Richie now feels lonely and despondent.  The sanctuary’s orangutans will not be released into the wild until they can feed themselves without relying on food provided by humans.  Free board and healthcare may be too much to forgo for the uncertainty of freedom in the wild: that 97% may carry complacency and opportunism.

 

                              Sepilok Sanctuary: Enjoying lunch.

With his powerful binoculars, our guide spotted a wild orangutan when we were in Sabah state. It was very far away in a tree, a slow moving black shape. We were happy to trust his word. Not surprisingly in the past ten years, the ape population has decreased by fifty percent in Borneo and some thousand, mostly in Kalimantan, may be killed each year. Research indicates that the majority of the victims are killed by of palm oil plantation workers. Orphans are brought to rehabilitation centers like Sepilok where we saw many of them literally learning the rope.

Mulu National Park, a UNESCO Heritage site, is only accessible by turboprop plane, weather permitting, as we learned.  The park, which is in the middle of the rainforest, got its UNESCO credentials thanks to its mountains, sharp limestone pinnacles and mega-sized caves.  What these caves lack in beauty, they make up in size: some are kilometers long.  This blogger is not a cave enthusiast, holes in the ground don’t inspire her and without chauvinism, caves in the south of France are much more picturesque than that of Mulu.

 

                     Mulu National Park: Cave and evening bat flight.

This being said, one cave deserves attention, not because it is one of the longest in the world but because it is the creepiest.  From the entrance, visitors are put off by its foul smell and mucky soil.  The cave is named Deer Cave, but it is a misnomer, it should be renamed Bat Cave since it is home to millions of bats huddled together in the roof crevices, hence the stench and droppings.  However, there is a reward to visiting such a filthy cave, but it takes place outside.   Weather permitting, at dusk all the bats fly out of the cave to enjoy their daily mosquito dinner. They may eat some 30 tons of the insects every night.  Their snake-like flights are awesome to watch in a mosquito-free environment.

                        

                            Deer Cave. Bat Family. (photo C.P.)

The wildlife exploration proper took place in the State of Sabah where many comfortable lodges have been built on the river banks. Most wildlife watching takes place on boat. Pygmy elephants are endangered, also victims of the palm oil obsession; fortunately they are not as easily disposed of as the orangutans. Plantation owners and wildlife organizations are increasingly establishing reservations where they roam freely. Many large families were seen peacefully but noisily foraging by the river.

                 

                          Kinabatangan Pigmy Elephants, Sabah State.

The weirdest looking denizen of Borneo is without doubt the proboscis monkeys, endemic to the island. They live in trees near the waterways, and are keen swimmers. In a monkey beauty contest, the proboscis stands at the bottom; even baby proboscis monkeys cannot qualify as cute! Males display a prominent, bulbous and pendulous nose which grows with age hence their name. During the Dutch colonization, local people nicknamed them Dutch Monkeys! The larger the nose, the higher the male is in the pecking order! Lady monkeys cannot resist a big nose and a respectable sized penis always on the ready! Binoculars don’t trick. Both genders also display a very unappealing figure with skinny limbs, a long tail and a bloated stomach resulting from their odd diet. According to wildlife biologists, they fart a lot. All these unappealing attributes are compensated by a beautiful reddish coat, and big males look like they are wearing a bomber jacket.

The Borneo population (approximately 18 million) is a friendly mosaic of culturally distinct indigenous groups generically named Dayak. They have mixed with people who came from afar, mainly Malays and Chinese. Generations of Dayaks were head hunters, a tradition that persisted until the beginning of the 20^th century. It was revived during WW II and many believe that the occupying Japanese soldiers provided the skulls which are still proudly displayed today. After spending ten days in Malaysian Borneo, there is plenty more to write on this exotic experience. Borneo is worth a trip except in September/October when visitors risk being both stranded and choked by toxic fumes. The Indonesian government estimates that this year the fires have cost US$ 30 billion to the country. It may be a blessing in disguise and next year’s fires may be better contained.