Olavo de Carvalho
Diario do Comercio, September 26th, 2005
Translated by David Carvalho and Donald Hank to Laigle’s Forum.
I should be grateful to President Lula. When practically all the national media makes an effort to cover up the activities of the Sao Paulo Forum or even to deny its existence, labeling as a “madman” or “fanatic” anyone who denounces them, cometh the very founder of the entity and does the job, proving by his own words the most depressing suspicions and some even worse.
The presidential speech on July 2, 2005, stated in the fifteen year anniversary of the Forum and reproduced in the government’s official site , is the explicit confession of a conspiracy against the national sovereignty, an infinitely more serious crime than all crimes of corruption perpetrated and covered up by the current government; a crime that, by itself, would justify not only impeachment but also the imprisonment of its perpetrator.
At the distance at which I find myself, I have only now become fully aware of this unique document, and yet the editors-in-chief of the major newspapers and of all the radio and TV news broadcasts in Brazil were there the whole time. Though aware of the speech since the date it was made, they remained silent, proving that their persistent hiding of the facts was not the result of distraction or pure incompetence: it was subservient, Machiavellian complicity with a crime, of which they expected to enjoy profits unknown.
The meaning of these paragraphs, once unearthed from the verbal garbage that wraps it, is crystal clear:
“As a function of the existence of the Sao Paulo Forum, comrade Marco Aurelio has played an extraordinary role in this effort to consolidate what we started in 1990… This was how we, in January 2003, proposed to our comrade, president Chavez, the creation of the Group of Friends to find a peaceful solution that, thank God, took place in Venezuela. And it was only possible thanks to political action between comrades. It was not a political action of either a State with another State, or one president with another president. Some will remember, Chavez attended one of the forums we held in Havana. And thanks to this relationship it was possible for us to build, with many political divergences, the consolidation of what took place in Venezuela, with the referendum that installed Chavez as president of Venezuela.
“In this way we could act, together with other countries, with our comrades of the social movement, of those countries’ parties, of the union movement, always using the relationship built in the Sao Paulo Forum so that we could talk without appearing to do so, and so that people would not understand any political interference taking place.”
What the President admits in these excerpts is that:
1. The Sao Paulo Forum is a secret or at least undercover entity (”built… so that we could talk without seeming to do so, and so that people would not understand any political interference taking place”).
2. This entity is actively involved in the internal politics of many Latin-American nations, making decisions and determining the course of events, at the fringes of all supervision by government, parliaments, justice and public opinion.
3. The so called “Group of Friends of Venezuela” was but an arm, agency or facade of the Sao Paulo Forum (”as a function of the existence of the Forum… we proposed to our comrade president Chavez.”..).
4. After being elected in 2002, he, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, while having abandoned pro forma his position as president of the Sao Paulo Forum, giving the impression that he was free to rule Brazil without commitments with ill-explained foreign alliances, kept working underground for the Forum, helping, for instance, to produce the results of the Venezuelan referendum of August 15, 2004 (”thanks to this relationship it was possible for us to provide the consolidation of what took place in Venezuela”), without giving his voters the slightest satisfaction for this.
5. The orientation in vital issues of Brazilian foreign policy was decided by Mr. Lula not as President of the Republic at meetings with his ministers, but as an attendee and advisor of underground meetings with foreign political agents (”it was a political action between comrades, not a political action either of one State with another, or of one president with another”). He put loyalty to his “comrades” above his duties as a president.
The President confesses, in short, that he subjected the country to decisions made by foreigners, gathered in conferences of an entity whose actions the Brazilian people would not be made privy to, much less understand.
The active humiliation of the national sovereignty could not be more evident, especially when one realizes that the attending entities of these decision-making meetings include organizations such as the Chilean MIR, kidnapper of Brazilians, and the FARC, Colombian narcoguerilla, responsible, according to its member Fernandinho Beira-Mar, for the annual injection of two hundred tons of cocaine into the national market.
Never before has an elected president of any civilized country showed such complete disdain for the Constitution, the laws, the institutions and the entire electorate, while giving all confidence, all authority, to a conclave swarming with criminals, in tracing the nation’s destiny and its relations with its neighbors behind the people’s backs. Never before in Brazil was there as brazen, complete and cynical traitor as Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.
The greatest proof that he consciously eluded the opinion of the public, keeping them ignorant of the operations of the Sao Paulo Forum, is that, as the elections approached, fearing my constant denunciation of this entity, he told his “advisor for international affairs,” Giancarlo Summa, to appease the newspapers by means of an official note from the Workers Party stating that the Forum was just an innocent debating club, devoid of any political action (see http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/semana/10192002globo.htm ). And now he boasts of the “political action of comrades,” performed with resources from the Brazilian government and hidden from Congress, justice and public opinion.
Compared to such an immense crime, what importance can the Mensalao and the like phenomena have but as a means of financing operations that are only part of the overall strategy of transferring national sovereignty to the secret authority of foreigners?
Can there be greater disproportion than between ordinary cases of corruption and this supreme crime for which they served as instruments?
The answer is obvious. But why then did many readily denounce the means while agreeing to keep covering up the ends?
Here the answer is less obvious. It requires presorting. The denouncers are divided into two types: (A) individuals and groups committed to the Sao Paulo Forum’s scheme, but not directly involved in the use of these illicit means in particular; (B) individuals and groups unrelated to both things.
The rationale of the former is simple, to whit: off with the rings, but keep the fingers. Once it has become impossible to keep hiding the use of illicit instruments, they agree to throw their most notorious operators under the bus, in order to keep perpetrating the same crime by other means and agents. The content and even the style of the charges leveled by these people reveal their nature as pure decoys. When they attribute the Workers Party corruption, which started as early as 1990, to settlements with the IMF signed in 2003 on, they show that their need to lie does not shrink even before the plain and simple material impossibility. When they cast the blame on some “group,” hiding the fact that the ramifications of the criminal structure extended from the Presidency of the Republic to the rural town halls, implicating practically the whole party, they prove that they have as much to hide as those who were charged at the time.
More complex are the motivations of group B. In part, it is composed of characters devoid of fiber, physical and moral cowards, who would rather focus on the lesser details for fear of seeing the continental dimensions of the overall crime. There is also the subgroup of the intellectually weak, who stake their bets on the “death of communism” nonsense and now, in order not to contradict themselves, feel obliged to reduce the greatest coup scam in the history of Latin America to the more manageable dimensions of an ordinary corruption scheme, depoliticizing the meaning of the facts and pretending that Lula is nothing more than a Fernando Collor without a jet ski. There are those who, out of either opportunism or stupidity, collaborated way too much with the rise of the criminal party to power and now feel divided between the impulse to cleanse themselves of the stench of the bad company they kept, and the impulse to lessen the crime to avoid the burden of their complicity in it. There are also the pseudo-wise guys who aided and abetted the enemy, blinded by the insane illusion that it is more viable to defeat him by gnawing at him from the edges than by lunging a death blow in his heart. There are, finally, those who truly understand nothing of what’s going on and, parroting Brazilian speech patterns, just repeat what they hear, in hopes of blending in.
I earnestly ask all the flaming anti-corruption accusers of recent weeks – politicians, media owners, businessmen, journalists, intellectuals, judges, and military – to examine carefully their own consciences, if they have any left, to see into which of these subgroups they fall. Because, aside from those few Brazilians of valor who supported in timely fashion the charges against the Sao Paulo Forum, all the others will inevitably fall into one of them.
It would be absurd to blame only Lula and the Sao Paulo Forum for the Brazilian moral decay, forgetting the contribution they got from these fair-weather moralists, as eager to denounce the parts as they are to hide the whole picture. Nothing could have fueled national self-deceit more than this marvelous network of complicities and omissions born of motivations that, while varied, converge into the same result, namely, the creation of a false impression of transparent investigations, and a facade of normality and lawfulness even as the entire order crumbles, invisibly gnawed away from the inside.
The destruction of order and its replacement by “a new pattern of relationships between State and society,” decided in secret meetings with foreigners – such was Mr. Lula’s confessed objective. This objective, as he said in another part of the same speech, must be attained and consolidated “in a manner such that it can be sustained, regardless of who is governing the country.”
What is perceived from the behavior of Mr. Lula’s critics and accusers is that, in this general objective, he has already emerged victorious, regardless of the success or failure that he may have in the rest of his term. The new order whose name may not be spoken is already in place, and its authority is such that not even the president’s fiercest enemies dare to challenge it. All of them, in one way or another, have already committed themselves at least implicitly to put the Sao Paulo Forum above the Constitution, the laws and the institutions of Brazil. If they complain about looting, embezzlement, vote buying and bribes, it is precisely to avoid complaining about the transfer of national sovereignty to the continental conference of “comrades,” like Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, the Colombian narcoguerillas and the Chilean kidnappers. It is like a rape victim protesting the damage to her hairdo, neglecting to mention, even politely, the rape itself.
Perhaps the deeds of Mr. Lula and his wretched Forum would not have wrought such vast damage in Brazil as this total inversion of proportions, complete destruction of moral judgment, and total corruption of the public conscience. Never before has such a profound agreement between accusers and accused been seen that would indulge the crime, denounced with so ado, so as to succeed in the overall objectives “without seeming to do so and so that people would not understand.”
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