Brazil’s Bolsonaro begs Cuba for help

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Just over a year ago Bolsonaro had this to say.

“We can’t allow Cuban slaves in Brazil and we can’t keep feeding the Cuban dictatorship,” Bolsonaro told reporters on Sunday.

During his presidential campaign, Bolsonaro denigrated the doctors and said "we are going to expel the Cubans from Brazil," because their main purpose is "to form guerrilla groups."
Why did he do that? The Trump administration wanted him to.

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There was just one little problem.

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So just before the coronavirus began to hit, Bolsonaro was already backpedaling, but not fast enough.

With more than 900 confirmed cases, 11 deaths and many suspected fatalities, Brazil is shivering with fear but Mr. Bolsonaro continues to send out confusing signals, upsetting the vast majority of middle class, which voted for him in 2018. A survey released on Thursday showed that 64% of Brazilians rejected the way Mr. Bolsonaro has handled the COVID-19 crisis, and 45% of people want him impeached. “People are feeling abandoned by the President. He has been talking about his birthday plans and calling out his supporters to the streets. There is no leadership,” says a top-level official in the Ministry of Health, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We are not prepared to handle this pandemic.” Brazilian healthcare workers are in panic: top private hospitals have run out of beds, doctors do not have enough tests kits, and public hospitals are reporting a shortage of sanitisers, masks and gloves.

Finally, much like Trump, Bolsonaro has been forced to swallow his pride.

And now, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Brasilia’s right-wing occupant has done a complete about-face.

In a press conference on March 15, Brazilian Secretary of Health João Gabbardo beseeched Cuba to send back the doctors who were expelled to prevent the country’s health system from collapsing as it battled a spreading pandemic.

Gabbardo declared that 5,000 of the Cuban doctors re-deployed to Brazil will be assigned to primary care centers across the massive country.

The Bolsonaro administration’s reversal was particularly embarrassing considering that, just last year, the president claimed the Cuban doctors were not real medical experts, but ideological brain-washers training poor Brazilians to become communist guerrillas.

“The PT [Workers’ Party] sent about 10,000 costumed doctors to Brazil here, in poor places, to create guerrilla cells and indoctrinate people. So much so that, when I arrived, they left, because I was going to go after them,” Bolsonaro claimed in a conspiratorial screed in 2019.

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Situational Lefty's picture

all the Cuban doctors and nurses that have been sent all over the world through Doctors Without Borders.

For fuck's sake, capitalism is a shitty way to run a government.

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"The enemy is anybody who is going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on." Yossarian

Cassiodorus's picture

@Situational Lefty In the absence of alternatives to capitalist ways of doing business, predators roam the halls, looking to make the world into their own personal prey. Bolsonaro is something worse -- he hopes to destroy collective existence, thus insuring indefinite predatory life. Why Cuba should do any sort of business with him at all is beyond me. Shouldn't its doctors fear for their lives in the new Brazil Bolsonaro has brought into being?

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17 users have voted.

"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

dervish's picture

when nobody else would, and treated their sick. They also have a promising drug that may prove effective against covid-19.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

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Brazilian healthcare workers are in panic: top private hospitals have run out of beds, doctors do not have enough tests kits, and public hospitals are reporting a shortage of sanitisers, masks and gloves.

US healthcare workers were are in the same panic. The US "solution" is don't test patients.

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Lily O Lady's picture

@Marie

run it’s course, with millions to die, some alone, may in terrible suffering. The wealthy have reserved resources to give them all the care they might need.

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8 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

CB's picture

@Lily O Lady
For a man of his mindset going for herd immunity will have considerable cost benefits. It will free up spaces in overcrowded nursing homes (do you realize just how much these places cost to build and operate?) plus it will release trillions of dollars from unused health and pension plans.

It's not only the financial gains that are beneficial. This plan would also be humane. Who wants to suffer a long and painful existence caused by grossly underfunded medical care for the aged and infirm when they could finally meet their maker in a matter of 7-10 days? The considerable savings on N95 masks and ventilators is also nothing to scoff at.

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@CB
His style is just to wing it because its always worked out for him in the past, and when it didn't, he still worked out because daddy and then banksters were always there to bail him out.

He doesn't have the math skills necessary to perform the sort of cost-benefit analysis that you suggest he has done. Plus, few half-decent cost-benefit analyses include all the costs and inflate the benefits. Lots of hidden costs in letting granny die now instead of later.

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Cassiodorus's picture

@Marie were informed of this thing in advance. Their collective response? "Hey, let's make a quick buck off of it." And so you had insider training and COVID-19 tests going for a cool $1300. They didn't think about it any further. Somehow the prospect of economic conditions that would make the Great Depression look like small potatoes didn't register so much as a brain wave for these people.

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9 users have voted.

"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

@CB
Just let 50% or more of us collecting die, along with our spouses. No need to pay out except the paltry $250 death benefit.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness
and 52% of them went for Trump.
PA > age 64 = 18.2%
WI > 64 = 17%
FL > 64 = 20.5%
AZ > 64 = 17.5%

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@Marie
My sister was as bad. She voted for Shillary based on:
1. gonads
2. Economic record of the 90's

I tried to tell her that (2) had nothing to do with Clinton's neoliberal policies and everything to do with the expansion of the internet from a DARPA project to interface federal labs with wildly divergent operating systems to the dot-com boom.

But baby brothers know nothing.
Voted for G.D. BIDEN this time, but that was negated by me. my wife, my daughter and three grandsons voting for Bernie, for all the good that did us.

Pretty much fed up with politics, except I throw a few bucks a month to that woman running against Pelosi. How is she still running despite the primary being over? Or is that how the "jungle" primary works? Top two face off again in November and (R)'s are extinct there?

Don't know if the woman is any good, but I don't care if she is Trump in drag. pull down pelosi.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness
running against Pelosi, she lost in the primary. Shahid Buttar is Pelosi's general election opponent. He's articulate, speaks well, smart, and appears to be on the correct side of all issues.

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@Marie
I thought Shahid was a woman's name and was running in the primary.
I got the link from someone here. Like voting for Bill Conway in the primary for Cook County State's Attorney. Conway has some not quite respectable aspects but he's not Kim Foxx, the present state's attorney who was elected because she was not Anita Alvarez who was elected because she was not {I forget who}. Shows the limitations of lesser evil voting doesn't it?

EDIT:
Foxx was re-elected with 38% of the vote. She (who is black) had three white male opponents. One was Bob Fioretti, an alderman that the FBI has been sniffing around, and a really unknown guy (Irish?). Ethnic politics are really big here. The electorate has to be at least half black so it appears that Foxx didn't even get 50% of the black vote. There were ads from Conway featuring a young black woman who said she was on welfare in Chicago. "So I didn't get a sweetheart deal like rich and connected defendants like Jussie Smollett" got.

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1 user has voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness
voting guide. Last year a friend said that she'd vote for any of the Democratic candidates over Trump. (She had TDS - and allows him way too much space in her brain.) I said that I couldn't; not that I could ever consider voting for Trump. I'm way past lesser evil voting. If I can't vote FOR, I abstain. Bernie and Tulsi were making it difficult for me by repeating the Russia/Putin garbage, but they remained in my FOR category. Was undecided about Warren, but chose to deal with that if she became the nominee. Biden was definitely out; three strikes: the Thomas confirmation, Iraq War vote, and bankruptcy bill.

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Lily O Lady's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

ultimate die-in. While we are still ambulatory, we seek out the second, third, fourth, etc homes of our not so benevolent overlords and die there, especially on a favorite rug or in a favorite chair. Not only would it be a final FU to them but we’d leave lots of jobs behind for our immune brethren. It would be a nasty one, but I suspect that there will be more and more of those in the dystopian future that is unfolding thanks to TPTB.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

boriscleto's picture

Asks "Is America 'Better Off' letting people die from coronavirus".

I'm not going to link directly to it.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-federalist-asks-is-america-bette...

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

Lily O Lady's picture

@boriscleto

the evil bastards.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

I guess his recent scare with Covid-19 has made him reconsider. Typical. They only give a shit when it directly affects them.

Cuba should not so politely refuse and tell him to go fuck himself. If people hate him now for the poor response to the virus, wait til bodies start piling up. People there will turn on him viciously. He'll be lucky to make it out alive.

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