National address of president Dilma Rousseff regarding demonstrations in Brazil

[Magda Hassan]

"My dear friends,
All of us, Brazilians, are following with great attention the demonstrations taking place in the country. They show the strength of our democracy and the desire of our youth to move Brazil forward.
If we make good use of the momentum brought by this new political energy, we can, in better and faster ways, achieve a lot of what Brazil has so far been unable to conquer because of political and economic constraints. But if we allow violence to stray us from our path, not only will we be wasting a great historic opportunity, but we also run the risk of putting a lot to lose.
As President, I have both the obligation to hear the voices of our streets and to talk with all segments of our society, but within the rule of law and order, both indispensable to democracy.
Brazil fought hard to become a democratic country, and is also fighting hard to become a fairer country. It was not easy to get to where we are, as it is also not easy to get where many of our citizens taking to the streets wish to go.
We can only turn this into reality if we strengthen democracy - the power of citizens and the powers of the Republic.
The demonstrators have the right and the freedom to question and criticize everything; to propose and demand changes; to fight for better quality of life; to passionately defend their ideas and proposals.
But they need to do so in a peaceful and orderly fashion.
Government and society cannot accept a violent and authoritarian minority set out to destroy public and private property, attack temples, set fire to vehicles, stone buses and attempt to bring chaos to our major urban centers.
This violence, promoted by a small minority, cannot tarnish a peaceful and democratic movement. We cannot live with such violence, which shames Brazil. All institutions and public safety bodies have the obligation to curb, within the limits of law, all forms of violence and vandalism.
With balance and serenity, but firmly, we will continue to guarantee the rights and the freedom of all.
I assure you: we will maintain order.
Dear Brazilians,
The demonstrations of this week have brought important lessons. Bus fares have decreased and the demands of the demonstrators have gained national priority. We must harness the vigor of these demonstrations to produce more changes that benefit the whole of Brazil's population.
My generation fought hard for the voice of the streets to be heard. Many were persecuted, tortured and died for it. The voice of the streets must be heard and respected, and it cannot be drowned in the noise and the brutality of a few rioters.
I am the President of all Brazilians; of those who are protesting and of those who are not.
The direct message coming from the streets is peaceful and democratic. It demands a systematic fight against corruption and the embezzlement of public funds. Everyone knows me. This is a something I will never let go.
This message requires higher quality for public services. It wants quality schools; it wants quality healthcare; it wants better public transport at fair prices; it wants more safety and security.
It wants more. And to give more, institutions and governments must change.
Over the coming days, I will speak with the heads of the other government branches to join efforts. I will invite the state governors and mayors of all major cities of the country to come together on a great pact for the improvement of public services.
The focus will be threefold: First, the preparation of a National Urban Mobility Plan, which will emphasize public transportation. Second, the allocation of 100 percent of the national oil proceeds for education. Third, immediately bringing thousands of doctors from overseas to expand the services provided under the Unified Healthcare System (the SUS).
I am hereby announcing that I will receive the leaders of the peaceful demonstrations and the representatives of youth organizations, unions, labor movements and popular associations.
We need their contributions, thoughts and experience. We need their energy and creativity, their bet on the future, and their capacity to challenge the mistakes of the past and the present.
Dear Brazilians,
We need to oxygenate our political system. We need to find mechanisms that make our institutions more transparent, more resistant to wrongdoing, and above all more permeable to the influence of society. It is citizenship, not economic power, that must be heard first.
I want to contribute to building a broad and deep political reform that expands popular participation.
It is a mistake to think that any country can do without political parties, and especially without the popular vote, which is the basis of any democratic process.
We must work to ensure that our citizens have more comprehensive control mechanisms for their representatives.
We need, we very much need, more effective ways to fight corruption.
The Access to Information Act, which was passed under my government, must be extended to all branches of government and bodies of the federation. It is a powerful instrument for citizens to oversee the proper use of public money. The best way to fight corruption is with transparency and rigor.
With regard to the World Cup, I want to clarify that the federal money spent on the stadiums is in the form of financing that will be duly repaid by the companies and governments that are exploiting these stadiums. I would never allow these funds to come out of the federal public budget or to damage priority sectors such as health and education.
In fact, we have strongly expanded spending in health and education, and we will expand it more and more. I trust that the National Congress will approve the bill I presented that ensures that all oil royalties are spent exclusively on education.
It is also imperative that I mention a very important topic that has to do with our Brazilian soul and our manners. Brazil, the only country to have participated in every World Cup and a five-time world champion, has always been very well received everywhere. We must give our friends the same generous welcome we have received from them with respect, love and joy. This is how we must treat our guests. Football and sport are symbols of peace and peaceful coexistence among peoples.
Brazil deserves to, and will, host a great World Cup.
My dear friends,
I want to reiterate that my government is listening to the democratic voices calling for change.
I want to say to you who have peacefully taken to the streets: I am hearing you, and I will not give in to violence or rioting.
It will always be in peace, with freedom and democracy, that we will continue to build together this great country of ours.
Good night."

Source: SECOM

http://www.copa2014.gov.br/en/noticia/na...ons-brazil

[Magda Hassan]

In the favelas on the frontline of protest, Brazilians ask: who is this World Cup for?

In Fortaleza, a city of glaring inequality, 130,000 live in extreme poverty, a mother sold her baby for £15 and a £150m stadium has been built for next year's tournament

Wednesday night was due to be a celebration in Fortaleza. This north-eastern coastal city was the first in Brazil to complete its World Cup stadium in readiness for the 2014 contest. Things didn't quite work out as planned.
"After the first teargas bomb, my brother and I ran with a few others to flee the police," said Julia Lopes, 27, who was among 30,000 local people demonstrating before the Brazilian national side's showcase Confederations Cup match against Mexico. "My husband Pedro ran in the opposite direction. Later I met him he had a swollen eye.
"Brazil is experiencing something very big and we cannot completely understand it now. During the demonstration we saw many claims, not only concerning the World Cup, but some that were more political. Some were clear and others vague. People were definitely asking: who is the World Cup for?"
The sudden explosion of resentment and frustration in Fortaleza was repeated in cities throughout Brazil last week.
On Friday, thousands again took to the streets to demand new spending priorities in a country whose recent economic boom has made global headlines. Dilma Rousseff, the president, responded by saying that she had an obligation to listen to the voices on the street.
In Fortaleza the fifth most unequal city in the world, according to the United Nations the protests were led by the young and middle-class. But the website of Comitê Popular da Copa e das Olimpíadas makes clear its concerns include those of the poorest. The World Cup, say campaigners, has justified "the distancing of the poorest to remote areas on the fringes of Fortaleza, causing segregation and social distinction". You don't have to walk far into the city's desperate suburbs to understand their concern.
Outside a row of breezeblock houses along a dirt road in Bom Jardim, one of the most violent favelas in Fortaleza, social worker Silvana Severo rips open the parcel of flour, beans and other food that she is bringing to a family. "We do that to stop them selling on the food for drugs," she says.
The precaution is routine for the social workers who visit the poorest families living in some of the more than 400 favelas that encircle the fifth largest city in Brazil. But they could not prevent the sale, a few months earlier, of a baby by her mother for 50 reais (£15). The child, rescued from the trafficker, is now toddling around outside the house in just a nappy.
Inside, seven people are crowded into the sparsely furnished living room, where the baby's grandmother, Felicia, says she is no longer smoking crack and plans to find her own house. They are struggling, but their situation is a big improvement on the days when the whole family lived on the streets, including Paulo, 14, who is staying at a shelter for street children run by a charity, the Pequeno Nazareno (PN).
Then the social workers visit the family of Emerson, also 14, who once lived on the streets. His brother was shot dead by gang members last year when he went back to his old favela for a concert. Outside the home of a third boy, Sandro, 13, the team hear cries and inside find a young baby swinging in a hammock, left entirely alone.
In recent years more than 350,000 people have emerged from extreme poverty classified as living on 70 reais or less a month in the state of Ceará, but hardship is still widespread. Statistics from Ipece, the Ceará institute of research and economic strategy, show that more than 133,000 people were living in severe poverty in Fortaleza in 2011. A third of inhabitants live without sanitation and there is a dire lack of adequate housing. In Barroso, a community built on a rubbish dump, residents hunt for recyclable goods while their children run past flying plastic bags on string.
The renovation of Fortaleza's stadium for the World Cup cost 519m reais (£149m). The match against Mexico on Wednesday marked the return of the national team to the Arena Castelão after 11 years. According to Lopes, "the committee [Comitê Popular Copa e Olimpíadas] has been debating the legacy of the World Cup for the past three years and investigating how investments are made. What we have seen proves the country is going to be the stage for an enormous abuse by Fifa with the endorsement of the government."
Speaking from Rio de Janeiro, political scientist Luiz Eduardo Soares, the former minister of public security under President Lula da Silva, says the protests nationwide reflect an unwillingness to go along with a new public image that is at odds with reality. "There are several agendas [of the protests] but citizenship rights, the quality of public services, the choice of priorities and the ruin of politics are the core. People cannot stand any longer the theatre of authorities and political leaders pretending that everything is getting better in our land of promises, in our tropical paradise."
For Forteleza's poor, the World Cup has meant changes, including the forced removal of 5,000 people from communities Lagoa da Zeza and Vila Cazumba to areas without schools, and fears that the tournament will increase exploitation of children in a city that has been trying to shake off its reputation for sex tourism.
"There would be no problem in investing in better stadiums and infrastructure to benefit the mega-events [World Cup and Olympics]. The problem starts when, one suspects, corruption is involved in the way vast amounts of money are spent at the same time as there is no investment in education or hospitals," says Bernardo Rosemeyer, the founder of PN.
Street children are at the sharp end of the social divide in Fortaleza. Around 300 are believed to have fled to the streets because of poverty, abuse or other problems at home. While social welfare programmes such as the Bolsa Família have lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty, many of the poorest do not qualify for such assistance because their children do not attend school or they have no fixed address. Some fear that, as has happened in the past, homeless children will be bussed out of the city when visitors start to arrive. For now, they exist in a twilight zone of begging, stealing or working on the streets, at risk of falling into prostitution or drugs.
At night on the Beira Mar, a stretch of road that is lined with hotels and bars, PN worker Antonio Carlos is searching for children sleeping rough. His aim is to persuade them to visit PN and then to begin the process of reintegrating them into their families, where possible. Tonight he meets Elena, the woman who sold her baby to the trafficker. She is obviously high on crack cocaine. At just 22, having already spent more than a decade on the streets, for her it may be too late.
Hopefully, however, it won't be for the boys living at the shelter, where PN provides schooling, healthcare, counselling and the chance to be children and play football. For Paulo, Emerson and Sandro, the World Cup has had a positive impact on their lives in one sense they are in the boys' team that will represent Brazil in the Street Child World Cup that takes place before the Fifa championships in Rio de Janeiro in March 2014.
The tournament will bring together teams of former street children from up to 20 countries for a 10-day event that aims to raise awareness of street children and give them a platform.
For these three boys and the other members of their team in Fortaleza, as well as the girls' team from the Ibiss project in Rio, playing in the tournament is the chance to be part of a society where they are largely invisible, to demonstrate their talents and forget the hardships of life. No one would dream of begrudging them that chance. But in Forteleza, as elsewhere in Brazil, among broad swaths of the population, the enthusiasm for the real thing is ebbing away as a nation takes a hard look at the priorities of its elite.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun...-world-cup

[Magda Hassan]

FIFA Website hacked by Brazil protester
Posted: 23 Jun 2013 07:03 PM PDT
Here's a screenshot of the hack for posterity:

Sambahack's "We want a fair World Cup", a dancing Blatter and then this message, "Forced evictions and human rights violations overshadow the preparations for the World Cup. Share the hack and find out more on our Website." are all part of the fun. http://incakolanews.blogspot.com.au/2013...ester.html[url=http://www.fifa-brazil-2014.com/][/url]

[Magda Hassan]

BRAZIL FEDERAL PROSECUTOR CHALLENGES WORLD CUP LAW

By STEPHEN WADE and JENNY BARCHFIELD


Jul. 10 10:02 PM EDT

You are here

Home » Dilma Rousseff » Brazil federal prosecutor challenges World Cup law
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) Brazil's federal prosecutor has challenged the constitutionality of the so-called World Cup law which was signed last year by Brazil President Dilma Rousseff.
The law gives FIFA, the world governing body of soccer, the guarantees it says it needs to organize the 2014 World Cup.
Federal prosecutor Roberto Gurgel has questioned four articles of the World Cup law. In his filing, Gurgel contends the law violates citizens' constitutional guarantee to equal treatment, as well as provisions of Brazilian tax law.
Put in place last year, the legislation was delayed several times in heated debates in Brazil's Congress, where critics argued the national government was giving FIFA too much power.
Saint-Clair Milesi, a spokesman for the local organizing committee, said there would be "no comment on an on-going process."
The prosecutor's office confirmed the challenge on Wednesday. The action was filed on June 17, two days after the start of the Confederations Cup the practice event for the World Cup.
According to the filing, the World Cup law violates the constitution by requiring the state to assume civil responsibility instead of FIFA for any damages during the events.
"The exception given to FIFA, its subsidiaries, legal representatives, consultants and its employees manifestly violate" the taxpayers' equal status under Brazilian law. ... "Legislators cannot favor a taxpayer in detriment to another, but may only identify situations in which there are differences which justify different treatment."
The two-week Confederations Cup was targeted by protesters, angry about Brazil's poor public services, education and hospitals, and upset the country is spending about $14 billion to organize the World Cup. The bill is expected to be even larger for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
About $3.3 billion of that money will go toward new stadiums or remodel older ones. About 90 percent of the financing is public, although when Brazil won the bid, it said no public money would be needed to finance stadium construction.
At the height of the protests, one million people took to the streets. Protests at the six venues for the Confederations Cup were met by volleys of tear gas, shock grenades and rubber bullets.
The Confederations Cup final, won 3-0 by Brazil over Spain on June 30, was played at Rio's Maracana stadium. A security force estimated at 11,000 used tear gas outside the venue as the match was going on, with tear gas detected by fans inside the 79,000-seat venue.
The prosecutor's office said the case would be heard by Brazil's federal supreme court, though a timetable wasn't immediately made public.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/brazil-fe...-cup-law-0

[Keith Millea]

Published on Wednesday, July 24, 2013 by Common Dreams

Evidence Mounts Agent Provocateurs Used by Brazilian Police

Demonstrators say police infiltrator threw the molotov cocktail used to justify severe police violence

- Sarah Lazare, staff writer

Police sent infiltrators and agent provocateurs into crowds of protesters in Rio de Janeiro Mondaythe first day of the Pope's visit to Brazil as extensive video footage and witness testimony strongly suggests.
A still frame from video recorded on Monday night in Rio de Janeiro showed a man suspected of being an undercover police officer carrying a large backpack. (Photo: New York Times)

One of the two suspected infiltrators captured on film may have thrown the Molotov cocktail that was used as pretext for police to charge on hundreds of demonstrators with water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets and attack protesters and journalists alike with blunt force objects.

Military police released a video shortly after the police crackdown, allegedly showing that the repression was a direct response to protesters' violence. Yet, the video was mysteriously removed when photo and video evidence emerged suggesting that the person pictured throwing the Molotov cocktail, and his associate, were police officers.

The Lede blog of the New York Times compiles extensive video evidence from journalists and demonstrators that suggests the presence of at least two police infiltrators.

One clip, recorded by a witness, shows, "the two men were briefly stopped by a uniformed officer who seemed to take them for protesters before one of them pulled out some form of identification and said, "It's the police, dude."" the Lede reports. The footage can be seen here:

While the Lede says there is "little doubt" that video evidence shows at least two infiltrators, it claims there is insufficient evidence to prove that the Molotov cocktail was thrown by one of them. However, Brazilian activists compiled evidence they say shows that the Molotov thrower was an agent provocateur, including an annotated video by a Brazilian blogger.

Police appeared to target journalists and videographers who were recording Monday's events, bludgeoning the head of an AFP photographer and arresting at least two journalists with the Midia Ninja media collective.

In an online statement, one of the Midia Ninja journalists who was arrested said that protesters rallied outside of the police station to support those on the inside, and the outpouring of solidarity left him "with the confidence that tomorrow will be greater."

Demonstrators were protesting the $53 million allocated towards funding the Pope's visit at a time when public services are being gutted and unemployment and poverty plaguing the country.

Mass mobilizations throughout Braziltouched off by a March bus fare hike that swelled anger about diversion of public resources towards mass spectacles, like soccer matches and Pope visits, rather than vital serviceshave been met with severe police violence, and images of gas attacks on unarmed protesters have gone viral.

The tactic of sending police agent provocateurs into protests and communities to justify repression and violence is employed by police departments across the world, and is prevalent in the US.

I think Dilma needs to make another National address and explain this:

[Peter Lemkin]

Hey, just like Boston Marathon and many of the OWS actions.....must all be sister cities.:curtain: