#fernando haddad

[dadsinsuits]

Fernando Haddad

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Finance Minister: 600 betting sites may be banned from Brazil

Up to 600 betting sites could be banned from Brazil in the next few days if they are in breach of legislation passed by Congress, Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said Monday (Sep. 30).

The sites will have to be blocked by telecom watchdog Anatel. “The first step will be to ban unregulated betting sites from Brazil. Approximately 500 or 600 betting sites will go offline in the next few days, as Anatel is going to block access to them in Brazil,” the minister stated.

In an interview with CBN radio, the minister recommended that bettors withdraw their money immediately to avoid losses.

“If you have any money in a bookmaker, you should request to have it back now, because you have the right to have it refunded. We’re already warning everyone,” he added.

Continue reading.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

What happens when a right-wing presidential candidate is attacked?

In 2018, Brazilian presidential frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed. The aftermath can tell us about how the attempted assassination of D

Isabela Dias at Mother Jones:

It didn’t take long for the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania to galvanize right-wing politicians and supporters of former far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. About a month before the election in 2018, Bolsonaro, then the frontrunner, was stabbed on the campaign trail. While Trump seems to have recovered from the shot in the ear, his Brazilian counterpart had to undergo a colostomy and several abdominal surgeries in the aftermath of the stabbing. The incident with Bolsonaro has lessons for how the attempted assassination of Trump could affect this year’s US election. In Brazil afterward, false theories spread—both on the left and the right—of either a staged attack or a purposeful attempt to kill a dangerous threat to the establishment. Critics softened rheotric. Right-wing actors blamed the media for instigating the attack. And the discussion about Bolsonaro’s anti-democratic politics became notably more complex.

After the Trump news, Brazilians on the right were quick to see the similarities and decried the shooting as part of a systematic persecution against conservatives. On X, Eduardo Bolsonaro, a congressman and the third son of the one-time Brazilian president, shared a photo montage of a bloodied Trump and a pained Bolsonaro. “Trust me: he is already elected,” he wrote in English. “We have experience with a situation like that, we know the enemy—and you too.” Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son, also chimed in, blaming the left: “They tried to kill Trump, they tried to kill Bolsonaro, but the (extreme) right is the one accused of being violent. You may not like Trump or Bolsonaro, but ask yourself: why did they want to kill them?” A debunked video dubbed in Portuguese with a supposed message from Trump to Bolsonaro said, “They tried to do the same thing to me as they did to you.”

When asked about the shooting, Bolsonaro suggested “only conservatives suffer attacks.” Echoing talking points from some US Christian Nationalist groups, Bolsonaro said it was “a miracle from heaven” that Trump “was saved by a matter of a few centimeters,” just like it was a miracle that he survived in 2018. Calling the Republican nominee the “biggest world leader of the moment,” Bolsonaro, who has been barred from running for office until 2030, posted, “See you at the inauguration.” Earlier this year, the police confiscated Bolsonaro’s passport as part of a sweeping search-and-seizure operation linked to an ongoing federal investigation in Brazil—overseen by the Supreme Court—into Bolsonaro and his allies’ alleged coup-like efforts to overturn the results of the 2022 elections. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva condemned the attack as a loss for democracy.

[...] The shooting also resurfaced false theories, from both sides of the political spectrum, about the attack against Bolsonaro six years ago. In September 2018, Adélio Bispo, who had previously been a member of a left-wing party, stabbed Bolsonaro in the abdomen. Although police investigations concluded that the perpetrator, who was arrested on the spot, acted alone, Bolsonaro and his supporters insisted that the stabbing had been ordered by someone and tried to blame it on the left. At the time, Bolsonaro called the left “aggressive,” saying they “have tried to eliminate their opponents no matter how.” His supporters have continued to use the stabbing to cultivate an image of Bolsonaro as a “political martyr.” Meanwhile, some on the left raised doubts about the incident, suggesting it had been staged and calling it a “fake stabbing.” After Saturday, André Janones, one of Lula’s allies in Congress, joked about Bolsonaro having “taught” Trump how to fake an attack and questioned the seriousness of the attempted assassination, mentioning the fact that Trump asked for his shoes amidst the chaos. “At least this time they remembered to provide the ‘blood,'” he posted on X. In response, a far-right congressman aligned with Bolsonaro has vowed to send a letter to the US Embassy requesting the cancelation of Janones’ US visa.

The impact of the assassination attempt against Trump on the presidential race remains to be seen. But there could be hints in what happened with Bolsonaro. Some political analysts in Brazil believe that staying away from the public stage during recovery ultimately helped the far-right Brazilian candidate insulate himself from fiercer criticism and potential debate confrontations. A voter intention poll by the Economist from that time shows a rise in support for Bolsonaro and a decline for the opponent Fernando Haddad, from the Worker’s Party, after September.

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump in 2024 in the US and the stabbing of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 in Brazil have some things in common: they brought increased support for the person in polls (though it is too early to tell in Trump’s case).

[brasil-e-com-s]

[becasketches]

[gay-limulus]

My world is tearing apart

Brazil is in a really bad state right now. 46% of all countable votes in the elections went for Bolsonaro, a mysogenous, homophobic, racist and just overall a neo-fascist. The only candidate who can fight against him is Haddad, who is a candidate for PT, a political party that has been in elected 4 times, and during these 4 times, gay marriage has been legalized, overall education was getting better, the poor had more help and became wealthier, Brazil was no longer suffering from extreme hunger. Whoever, it seems that just because the rich weren't receiving benefits, they manipulated the population to go against PT no matter what circumstances.

During that, the extreme right ex-soldier Jair Bolsonaro, who had been in the government as a deputy for 30 years (even though only made 2 projects in his entire career), started rising after Dilma's impeachment, after honoring the military ditacture torturer Ustra in his discourse, prior to voting yes for the ipeachment. He hates minorities. Some of his speeches include "The law should respect the majorities, and the minorities should accept it, if they don't, they should simply disappear", "Women should be payed less. Even though, there are SOME women that are capable", "I would rather have my son dead than being a homosexual" and, lastly, "My children would never marry a black woman, after all, i've educated them well". Also, the first thing he wants to do is legalize guns, just raising the chance of deaths.

So what is the result now? Everyone is simply saying "not PT" and letting the fascist rule Brazil. They say that "it will be better for economy". The number of people that are going with Bolsonaro is scary, especially as a homosexual. But what really scares me the most are some of his fans. In a metro, they started shouting "Be careful faggots, Bolsonaro is going to kill gays". In another movement they shouted "Men is born as men and women are born as women. Here in my Brazil nobody does what they want". There even was a protest in which they said that girls who want to vote for bolsonaro are beautiful, while the others are hairier than dogs.

I'm scared for my life. Just knowing that the chances of me dying due to a homophobe attack are raising and so are people who vote for bolsonaro, including most people around me. And even thought we explain what can happen to everyone, they just say that we are overreacting and that he never said anything bad against any of the minorities. Please help us brazilians. The chances for another right ditacture are rising, and so will deaths for minorities. Pray for Brazil.

[ginys]

acho engraçado vc fazendo campanha contra o bolsonaro! Você não se preocupa com a corrupção? Vai ferrar o país todo pq o bolsonaro não apoia a sua bandeira lgbt/feminista colocando o pt DE NOVO no poder. Concordo que são pautas importantes, mas não é uma questão emergencial, precisamos lidar com a corrupção, educacao saúde, segurança e economia. Coisas que afetam a população inteira e não certos grupos.

Bem pra mim tá mais do que claro que nós temos ideias diferentes do que significa ferrar o país. Essas pautas sociais podem não ser emergenciais pra você, mas elas afetam milhões de pessoas que estão morrendo diariamente unicamente por injustiças e preconceito. Pra mulher trans que é assassinada, isso é muito emergente. Pra mulher pobre que apanha do marido, isso é muito emergente. Pro menino negro que morre nas mãos da policia, isso é muito emergente.Tem razão não afetam TODA a população. Mas quando vc diz isso vc quer dizer que não afeta o homem branco, cis, hetero e rico né? Mas tudo bem por mim, porque ele não precisa muito do auxílio do governo. Acho que ele vai sobreviver se a economia continuar meio mal, ele vai ficar bem se o dólar estiver um pouquinho alto. Agora, se o bolsonaro entrar no poder, eu não tenho tanta certeza se essas outras pessoas vão estar tão seguras assim.

E mais uma coisa, vc diz que educação, saúde, etc são as coisas que precisam de atenção do governo agora. E realmente, precisam. Mas eu não acho que o bolsonaro tem um projeto que vá melhorar essas demandas. As propostas de saúde dele são simplórias, nada que realmente resolva alguma coisa. Em educação, o projeto dele não parece ter nenhuma base pedagógica (INCLUSIVE ELE QUER REMOVER O MÉTODO DO PAULO FREIRE!!!), e pretende que todo aluno saia da escola sendo um mini empreendedor, como se fosse isso que o país precisa. Não quero nem falar sobre segurança, pq é uma pauta ridícula vindo dele. Armar a população não é uma solução, se já da tanta merda nos EUA, imagina como vai ser aqui no Brasil. Tem milhares de propostas dele que eu simplesmente acho errado, como por exemplo a questão da maioridade, “qualificar como terrorismo invasão de propriedade” e “redirecionamento da política de direitos humanos”. Nao vou entrar em questão sobre economia pq é um papo que eu realmente não entendo, ele pode ter o melhor ou o pior projeto, eu não saberia dizer. Mas pra mim não importa. Todos os outros fatores são mais importantes e indicam que ele não é um candidato que mereça o meu voto. Em contra partida, o Haddad foi ministro da educação e fez um trabalho que eu gostei muito. Foi prefeito da minha cidade e eu realmente acho que ele fez uma boa diferença. Ele não é perfeito e nem tem o plano de governo que eu mais concordo no mundo. Mas é o único que tem força pra tirar o bolsonaro do jogo. Pra mim parece uma escolha óbvia. Então sim, eu prefiro o pt no poder. Não vou fingir que o pt não é corrupto. É! Mas também é um partido que ajudou muita gente e que não vai fazer o país beirar uma ditadura. Não podemos dizer o mesmo de um homem que ficou 27 anos na câmara dos deputados sem fazer porra nenhuma e incita a violência, intolerância e celebra a ditadura militar.

[brazilianism]

Brazilian Elections - Let’s talk about  Fernando Haddad

Alright, so. Elections this year and we’re in a big mess, right? The new plot twist to our ever changing political scenario is Fernando Haddad, who happens to be one of the only politicians I actually like, so i’m gonna use this post to talk about his work so y’all can get to know him better since he’s not that famous outside of São Paulo. First of all, for all of you who have no idea what i’m talking about, let me catch you up: Lula (our ex-president) is still, ya know, in jail. For corruption and stuff. We can debate that more thoroughly in another post. Problem is, he wants to run for president again (he wanted before he was arrested already), and technically by some legal standards he might, cause his sentence hasn’t really been contested in every possible court, which is to say that even though his chances of them being overthrown are VERY small, it could still happen and therefore there’s a legal breach there that could allow him to run for president. And bOY is he popular at it - he was leading all the polls around the country these past few months, he was at the lead with nearly 40% of the votes at the last poll (published on the 21st/august). But there has been a debate for months now on whether he’d appoint someone else as a candidate in his place in case the most likely thing happens and he can’t run... And we kinda got the answer a few weeks ago - he didn’t appoint someone else, but he picked his vice president: Haddad, from his own party. Which is to say, in case he is barred from running, Haddad will likely be taking his place. [in the very surprising scenario where Lula DOES run Haddad would not be vice president anymore cause they have a deal with another party and then Manuela D’avila, another ex-candidate for the presidency gets the job cause she’s now supporting Haddad as kinda vice-vice president but that’s a whole other matter). So let’s talk about Fernando Haddad.

Quick background: Haddad is the son of a Lebanese immigrant and graduated in law school (and is a certified lawyer). He's also got a masters degree in economy and a doctorate in philosophy, all at USP, which is like, one of the best universities in Latin america. He’s also a teacher there in Social Sciences and currently a teacher at another private university. In public office, he has been the Minister for Education for 6 years of Lula’s government and Mayor to Brazil’s biggest city, São Paulo, from 2013 to 2016. I’m not saying you need any of those titles to be any good at the job (I mean, just look at Lula I guess) but we sure have to say Haddad came prepared for the fight talking about ground knowledge. 

As the Minister for Education Haddad invested mostly in making the access to universities broader - it was his government that created ProUni (a program that provides government scholarships to poor students in private universities), and re-designed FIES (the financing and credit system for poor students to pay for universities) making it easier for people to pay (less interest rates, more time). During his time we also got 14 new public (free) universities and other kinds of educational centers making the number of available spots go from about 140K to 218K. He was also responsible for reformulating ENEM so that it could start to become a sort of brazilian SAT, now accepted as an entrance test to several universities that all had different tests (and you had to take all of them and pay for all of them if you wanted to apply to multiple places). When he started, Brazil invested about 3,9% of our GDP in education. At the end of his run, we were investing 5,1%. The PISA results showed Brazil among the 3 countries that had evolved the most in education during those years (yeah, we were still pretty low on the rank, but we can’t say it wasn’t working). So education is quite his thing, but that’s not all. 

As a Mayor, Haddad had a clear vision for the city that involved making it more livable - his slogan said “more human”. The ideia is based on studies that say once the citizens have a sense of personal relationship with the place they inhabit the whole area starts to become safer (and also better taken care of, obviously). And that seems obvious but São Paulo had some MAJOR problems of livability. 

Imma list some of my favorite projects. For starters, Haddad changed the lightning of a big part of the city to LED lamps (they’re way brighter so the sense of safety is enhanced cause no dark alleys and stuff AND they’re more efficient so we also started saving energy) [x]. Then he created bike lanes and more bus corridors to make public transport faster and so that people could actually use BIKES in the damn city without too many risks (the number of people who use bikes here grew over 60% in a couple of years, who could have guessed it [x]). He then reduced the speed limits for several streets and speed lanes. That was MASSIVELY impopular, but he said he didn’t care if people hated him as long as it worked in the long run - and, lol, it did. With all of that he reduced accidents and deaths on traffic in the city by 15% overall and by half in specific areas [x] [x], and most interestingly: São Paulo dropped over fifty fucking places on international traffic ranks (which is over 10 times what ANY other brazilian city varied in the ranks those years so there’s no blaming it on any external factors) [x] . Yeah, Haddad started to solve traffic, which is arguably the thing everyone hates the most in this city. People spending less time in traffic start spending more time at leisure - no matter, he closed important avenues on Sundays so that people could use that space, public space, for fun, and anybody who’s been at Paulista on a Sunday nowadays will have seen how damn awesome that place became. He also regulated and stimulated Carnaval as a street party that is now country-famous (do y’all remember how nearly nobody ever considered spending Carnaval in São Paulo a cool thing before 2012? yeah. and people come to the city now just for that and spend a whole lot of money here cause of it [x]). Then he created our very first fucking city tour program with buses and all (man, biggest city in the country and we didn’t have a city tour bus for tourists, what the fuck). He did the first actual Floods Tackling project that involved actually mapping the floods and acting directly on them with more cleaning of the streets and even smart-monitored sewers and trash cans at some places [x]. He created LGBT support centers and was responsible for putting the São Paulo Pride Parade (one of the biggest in the world) on the official government calendars (and as minister for education he was responsible for trying to implement an anti-homophobia program involving educating and orienting teachers to deal with these situations) [x] . He tackled the drug problem (especially the crack-cocaine problem) downtown by offering support (food, housing, medical and psychological assistance, and actual jobs) to addicts - a lot of people were against “giving money to drug addicts”, but again, it worked, and I have a whole post about this here. He created a program to stimulate recycling food at the big open markets and to ensure that organic food was served in the local schools every week. He helped open several tech centers that allowed for people to take tech and coding courses and use 3D printers and other stuff for free or at low prices [x]. Still want more culture? He created public cinemas at poor areas (that showed all kinds of movies, local ones, international ones, all in theaters as good as the paid kind) and created a whole institution to stimulate film making in São Paulo, SPCINE [x] [x]. Oh, and he started a project to take the names of our previous dictators and torturers off the street names (cause yeah we had that) and replace them with, well, decent people [x]. 

Not enough to have some cool ass projects? K, we can discuss his economy as mayor. Cause not only Haddad was innovative as fuck as said above, he also made the city’s finances as good as ever - and I mean it, cause he renegotiated our historical debts to the federal government and reviewed several contracts to companies AND created an agency to investigate corruption scandals regaining several millions into our vaults [x] [x], in a way that by the end of his government we had over 40 billion less in debt [x], 2-3 billion in store and had our investment rate (you know the thing that Brazil kept being lowered at? by international agencies? those grades and stuff?] raised. Oh yeah, and he got like 95% of what he promised in his campaign done [x]. 

And I said all of this so I can exemplify why I like Haddad - it’s not about one or two individual projects, it’s about the way he thinks as a whole. He thinks ahead and he thinks based on actual science - without forgetting a human side of it all. All of his unpopular and polemic measures had positive results - they went miles away from common sense, but it didn’t matter for him cause scientific studies had showed it would work (and it did! what a fucking surprise!). Of couse, that made him the most hated mayor by some people cause all he does is just so weird, right? and he never cared, multiple times he mentioned he didn’t mind being unpopular if it was the right thing for the city. And he was in fact unpopular cause of that (and cause of his party, obviously). He left office leaving contracts signed for about 7 years ahead. He didn’t even have high hopes of being reelected by then, but he left stuff ready to work for the next government (likely an opposition one) anyway. Cause that’s what you do if you’re a decent politician, but it’s so damn rare to see this kind of attitude here. Haddad looked at cold hard facts, saw a city that could use a lot of change in several areas, made a plan and went ahead with it knowing that a lot of people would hate him for it but that in the end it could actively change how we live - and he was right. By the end of it, people did have a different relationship with the city. 

Haddad showed me in both his public offices that he doesn’t have the small mind of most our politicians that seem to only be able to think about things that can happen every 4 years, nor only about things that will be popular for the sake of being popular without being right. And that’s just what I want from a politician. Seems so simple, and yet it’s nearly impossible to find. So that’s why he’s a politician i’m not afraid to support. 

To close this off i’m gonna leave y’all with links to articles from the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times (portuguese here) and The Wire complimenting his time as mayor too so english readers can get some more opinions AND here an Haddad article (in portuguese) that I like if you want to see more of him (especially his views of Brazilian politics), cause this doesn’t even cover all his interesting projects.  Here’s also an interview with him in english, and here here and here some in portuguese for people who want to get a better sense of him and his government plan. Feel free to ask more questions about his projects, I’ll try to get to them when I have time.