[Peace-discuss] Notes

[J.B. Nicholson]

Just in case you need something to discuss, here are a few conversation starters. Have a good show guys.

-J





Diana Johnstone's latest for Consortium News and CN Live

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDZuNFwJ4BIRV_Z5IxFXVrA/videos -- Consortium News videos (including 
episodes of "CN Live!" their CN's talk and analysis show)

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/17/french-popular-uprising-revolution-or-frozen-conflict/ -- 
Diana Johnstone's new article for ConsortiumNews.com:

Thanks to Mort Brussel for the pointer.

> The people are angry with their government.  Where? Just about everywhere. So what makes ongoing
> strikes in France so special?  Nothing, perhaps, except a certain expectation based on history
> that French uprisings can produce important changes – or if not, can at least help clarify the
> issues in contemporary social conflicts.
> 
> The current ongoing social unrest in France appears to pit a majority of working people against
> President Emmanuel Macron.  But since Macron is merely a technocratic tool of global financial
> governance, the conflict is essentially an uprising against policies that put the avaricious
> demands of financial markets ahead of the needs of the people.  This basic conflict is at the
> root of the weekly demonstrations of Yellow Vest protesters who have been demonstrating every
> Saturday for well over a year, despite brutal police repression.  Now trade unionists, public
> sector workers and Yellow Vests demonstrate together, as partial work stoppages continue to
> perturb public transportation.
> 
> In the latest developments, teachers in Paris schools are joining the revolt. Even the
> prestigious prep school, the Lycée Louis le Grand, went on strike.  This is significant because
> even a government that shows no qualms in smashing the heads of working class malcontents can
> hesitate before bashing the brains of the future elite.
> 
> Pension System
> 
> However general the discontent, the direct cause for what has become the longest period of unrest
> in memory is a single issue: the government’s determination to overhaul the national social
> security pension system. This is just one aspect of Macron’s anti-social program, but no other
> aspect touches just about everybody’s lives as much as this one.
> 
> French retirement is financed in the same way as U.S. Social Security. Employees and employers
> pay a proportion of wages into a fund that pays current pensions, in the expectation that
> tomorrow’s workers will pay for the pensions of those working today.
> 
> The existing system is complex, with particular regimes for 42 different professions, but it
> works well enough. As things are, despite the growing gap between the ultra-rich and those of
> modest means, there is less dire poverty among the elderly in France than, for example, in
> Germany.
> 
> The Macron plan to unify and simplify the system by a universal point system claims to improve
> “equality,” but it is a downward, not an upward leveling. The general thrust of the reform is
> clearly to make people work longer for smaller pensions. Bit by bit, the input and output of the
> social security system are being squeezed. This would further reduce the percentage of GDP going
> into wages and pensions.
> 
> The calculated result: as people fear the prospect of a penniless old age, they will feel obliged
> to put their savings into private pension schemes.
> 
> In a rare display of old-fashioned working-class international solidarity, Belgian trade unions 
> have spoken out in strong support of French unions’ opposition to Macron’s reforms, even
> offering to contribute to a strike fund for French workers.  Support by workers of one country
> for the struggle of workers in another country is what international solidarity used to mean.  It
> is largely forgotten by the contemporary left, which tends to see it in terms of opening
> national borders.  This perfectly reflects the aspirations of global capitalism.
> 
> The international solidarity of financial capital is structural.
> 
> Macron is an investment banker, whose campaign was financed and promoted by investment bankers, 
> including foreign investors.  These are the people who helped inspire his policies, which are
> all designed to strengthen the power of international finance and weaken the role of the State.
> 
> Their goal is to induce the State to surrender decision-making to the impersonal power of “the 
> markets,” whose mechanical criterion is profit rather than subjective political considerations
> of social welfare.  This has been the trend throughout the West since the 1980s and is simply 
> intensifying under the rule of Macron.
> 
> President Emmanuel Macron celebrating France’s victory over Croatia in the 2018 World Cup final 
> in Moscow. (Kremlin)
> 
> The European Union has become the principal watch dog of this transformation.  Totally under the 
> influence of unelected experts, every two years the EU Commission lays out “Broad Economic
> Policy Guidelines” – in French GOPÉ (Grandes Orientations des Politiques Économiques), to be
> followed by member states. The May 2018 GOPÉ for France “recommended” (this is an order!) a set
> of “reforms,” including “uniformization” of retirement schemes, ostensibly to improve
> “transparency,” “equity,” labor mobility and – last but definitely not least – “better control of
> public expenditures.”. In short, government budget cuts.
> 
> The Macron economic reform policy was essentially defined in Brussels.
> 
> But Wall Street is interested too.  The team of experts assigned by Prime Minister Edouard 
> Philippe to devise the administration’s economic reforms includes Jean-François Cirelli, head of 
> the French branch of Black Rock, the seven trillion-dollar New York-based investment manager. 
> About two thirds of Black Rock’s capital comes from pension funds all over the world.
> 
> Larry Fink, the American CEO of this monstrous heap of money, was a welcome visitor at the
> Elysée Palace in June 2017, shortly after Macron’s election. Two weeks later, economics minister
> Bruno Le Maire was in New York consulting with Larry Fink. Then, in October 2017, Fink led a
> Wall Street delegation to Paris for a confidential meeting (leaked to Le Canard Enchaîné) with
> Macron and five top cabinet ministers to discuss how to make France especially attractive to
> foreign investment.
> 
> Larry Fink has an obvious interest in Macron’s reforms. By gradually impoverishing social 
> security, the new system is designed to spur a boom in private pension schemes, a field
> dominated by Black Rock.  These schemes lack the guarantee of government social security. Private
> pensions depend on stock market performance, and if there is a crash, there goes your
> retirement. Meanwhile, the money managers play with your savings, taking their cut whatever
> happens.
> 
> There is nothing conspiratorial about this.  It is simply international finance at work. Macron 
> and his cabinet ministers are eager to have Black Rock invest in France.  For them, this is the 
> way the world works.
> 
> Larry Fink, third from right, receiving a Woodrow Wilson Award in April 2010. (Wilson Center, CC 
> BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
> 
> The most cynical pretext for Macron’s pension reform is that combining all the various 
> professional regimes into a universal point system favors “equality” – even as it increases the 
> growing gap between salaried people and the super-rich, who don’t need pensions.
> 
> But professions are different. At Christmas, striking ballet dancers illustrated this fact by 
> performing a portion of Swan Lake on the cold stones of the entrance to the Opera Garnier in 
> Paris. They were calling public attention to the fact that they cannot be expected to keep 
> working into their sixties, nor can other professions requiring extreme physical effort.
> 
> The variations in the current French pension system perform a social function.  Some
> professions, such as teaching and nursing, are essential to society, but wages tend to be lower
> than in the private sector.  These professions are able to renew themselves by ensuring job
> stability and the promise of comfortable retirement.  Take away their “privileges” and recruiting
> competent teachers and nurses will be even harder than it is already.  At present, medical
> personnel are threatening to resign en masse, because conditions in hospitals are becoming
> unbearable as a result of drastic cuts in budgets and personnel.
> 
> Is There an Alternative?
> 
> The real issue is a choice of systems: to be precise, economic globalization versus national 
> sovereignty.
> 
> For historic reasons, most French people do not share the ardent faith of British and Americans 
> in the benevolence of the invisible hand of the market.  There is a national leaning toward a 
> mixed economy, where the State plays a strong determining role.  The French do not easily
> believe that privatization is better, least of all when they can see it doing worse.
> 
> Macron is an ardent devotee of the invisible hand. He seems to expect that by draining French 
> savings into an international investment giant such as Black Rock, Black Rock will reciprocate
> by pumping investment into French technological and industrial progress.
> 
> Nothing could be less certain.  In the West these days, there is lots of low interest credit, 
> lots of debt, but investment is rarely creative.  Money is used largely to buy what is already 
> there – existing companies, mergers, stock trading (massive in the U.S.) and, for individuals, 
> housing. Most foreign investment in France buys up things like vineyards or goes into safe 
> infrastructure such as ports, airports and autoroutes.  When General Electric bought out Alstom, 
> it soon broke its promise to preserve jobs and began cutting back. It also is depriving France
> of control of an essential aspect of its national independence, its nuclear energy.
> 
> In short, foreign investment may weaken the nation in terms in crucial ways. In a mixed economy, 
> profit-making assets such as autoroutes can increase the government’s capacity to make up for 
> periodic deficits in social security, among other things. With privatization, foreign 
> shareholders must get their returns.
> 
> The United States, for all its ideological devotion to the invisible hand, actually has a 
> strongly State-supported military industrial sector, dependent on Congressional appropriations, 
> Pentagon contracts, favorable legislation and pressure on “allies” to buy U.S.-made weaponry. 
> This is indeed a form of planned economy, one that fails utterly to meet social needs.
> 
> The rules of the European Union prohibit a Member State such as France from developing its own 
> civil-oriented industrial policy, since everything must be open to unhindered international 
> competition.  Utilities, services and infrastructure must all be open to foreign owners.
> Foreign investors may feel no inhibition about taking their profits while allowing these public
> services to deteriorate.
> 
> The ongoing disruption of daily life seems to be forcing Macron’s government to make minor 
> concessions. But nothing can change the basic aims of this presidency.
> 
> At the same time, the arrogance and brutal repression of the Macron regime increase demands for 
> radical political change.  The Yellow Vest movement has largely adopted the demand developed by 
> Etienne Chouard for a new Constitution empowering citizen-initiated referendums — in short, a 
> peaceful democratic revolution.
> 
> But how to get there? Overthrowing a monarch is one thing, but overthrowing the power of 
> international finance is another, especially in a nation bound by EU and NATO treaties. Personal 
> animosity toward Macron tends to shelter the European Union from sharp criticism of its major 
> responsibility.
> 
> A peaceful electoral revolution calls for popular leaders with a clear program. François 
> Asselineau continues to spread his radical critique of the EU among the intelligentsia without 
> his party, the Union Populaire Républicaine, gaining any significant electoral strength.
> Leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has the oratorical punch to lead a revolution, but his
> popularity seems to have suffered from attacks even harsher than those unleashed against Jeremy
> Corbyn in Britain or Bernie Sanders in the U.S. With Mélenchon weakened and no other strong
> personalities in sight, Marine Le Pen has established herself as Macron’s main challenger in the
> 2022 presidential election, which risks presenting voters with the same choice they had in 2017.
> 
> Asselineau’s analysis, Yellow Vest strategic mass, Mélenchon’s oratory, Chouard’s institutional 
> reforms – these are elements that could theoretically combine (with others yet unknown) to 
> produce a peaceful revolution. But combining political elements is hard chemistry, especially in 
> individualistic France.  Without some big surprises, France appears headed not for revolution
> but for a long frozen combat.



Redacted Tonight: Still the only comedy news show worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/user/redactedtonight/videos -- past show archive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9p7xInsU2E -- The most recent (as I type this) episode.

Redacted Tonight is a great set of pointers and humor on other stories with a proper focus against 
war, against killing, and repeated (drumbeat) critiques of capitalism. A clear departure from every 
other news comedy show on terrestrial or cable TV.




Economy: Maybe it is good to give poor people more money! Huh. Imagine that.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/longevity/477423-raising-the-minimum-wage-by-1-could-decrease-the 
--

> Raising the minimum wage by just $1 per hour could lower suicide rates between 3.5 percent and
> 5.9 percent among those with a high school education or less, according to a new study.
> 
> Researchers estimated that an extra dollar an hour could have prevented almost 14,000 suicides
> after the Great Recession, Business Insider reported Wednesday.
> 
> Suicide is on the rise as a cause of death in the United States, increasing 33 percent in
> prevalence from 1999 through 2017. To examine the relationship between suicide and hourly pay,
> the researchers compared the effects of 478 changes in state minimum wages from 1990 to 2015.
> Though the federal minimum wage hasn’t changed since 2009, states are able to make changes on
> their own.
> 
> The researchers found a correlation between increased wages and lower suicide rates, an effect
> that was strongest during periods of high unemployment.
> 
> "Our findings are consistent with the notion that policies designed to improve the livelihoods of
> individuals with less education, who are more likely to work at lower wages and at higher risk
> for adverse mental health outcomes, can reduce the suicide risk in this group," the authors
> wrote.
> 
> Increasing the minimum wage has emerged as a prominent issue in the 2020 presidential race, with
> many Democratic candidates proposing an increase of the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.
> The recent findings suggest that such a change could help reduce the number of suicides by
> lifting more Americans out of poverty, but other studies have estimated it could also result in a
> loss of jobs.





Economy: Could we do something besides killing with all that money?

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/US%20Budgetary%20Costs%20of%20Wars%20November%202019.pdf 
-- Cost of War study from November 2019.

That's $3.8M per hour or $640,000 per minute.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on-middle-east-wars-since-2001-study.html --

> American taxpayers have spent $6.4 trillion on post-9/11 wars and military action in the Middle
> East and Asia, according to a new study.
> 
> That total is $2 trillion more than the entire federal government spending during the recently
> completed 2019 fiscal year. The U.S. government spent $4.4 trillion during the fiscal year that
> ended Sept. 30, according to the Treasury Department.
> 
> The report, from the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University,
> also finds that more than 801,000 people have died as a direct result of fighting. Of those, more
> than 335,000 have been civilians. Another 21 million people have been displaced due to violence.
> 
> The report comes as the Trump administration works to withdraw the U.S. military presence from
> war-torn Syria. Last year, President Donald Trump went through a similar debate over whether to
> withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, ultimately agreeing to keep them there but only after
> repeatedly raising questions about why they should stay.
> 
> The $6.4 trillion figure reflects the cost across the U.S. federal government since the price of
> America's wars is not borne by the Defense Department alone, according to Neta Crawford, who
> authored the study.
> 
> Crawford explains that the post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria have expanded
> to more than 80 countries — "becoming a truly global war on terror."
> 
> The longer wars drag on, more and more service members will ultimately claim veterans benefits
> and disability payments, the study points out.
> 
> "Even if the United States withdraws completely from the major war zones by the end of FY2020 and
> halts its other Global War on Terror operations, in the Philippines and Africa for example, the
> total budgetary burden of the post-9/11 wars will continue to rise as the U.S. pays the on-going
> costs of veterans' care and for interest on borrowing to pay for the wars," Crawford writes.
> 
> In March, the Pentagon estimated that the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have cost each
> taxpayer $7,623 through fiscal 2018.






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIEUGgSGVEo -- Newly appointed Grenfell inquiry figure has links to 
cladding firm.
https://vocalviews.com/blog/2020/01/16/grenfell-tower-inquiry-families-raise-conflict-of-interest-concerns-with-pm/

RT's report on the continuing Grenfell inquiry tells us:
- 315 buildings are still wrapped in flammable material according to the Ministry of Housing.
- 72 died in the Grenfell building fire 31 months ago on June 14.
- Benita Mehra is a civil engineer who was appointed to the Grenfell inquiry shortly before 
Christmas (2019) by PM Boris Johnson but Mehra ran a charity that received funding linked to US firm 
Arconic, which supplied the cladding that helped the fire spread, a conflict of interest.

Related: https://on.rt.com/a5sf -- similar story with a principal Grenfell Tower contractor being 
awarded a new contract worth almost £100 million to redevelop a London council estate (from November 
2019)






Labor: United States-Mexico-Canada pact (USMCA) (also called "NAFTA 2.0" chiefly by objectors) 
passes the Senate, of the Democrats running for president in the Senate, only Sen. Sanders voted 
against the bill, Sen. Warren voted for the USMCA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UImjWJybYZM -- Jimmy Dore & co. coverage including critical coverage 
of how Sen. Warren "is your enemy" and the Democrats and Republicans agree to support this bill (as 
Sen. Durbin says below, "it's truly bipartisan").

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/16/senate-north-american-trade-deal-usmca

> One day after signing a new trade deal with China, Donald Trump received a second victory for his
> trade agenda as the Senate passed a new North American pact.
> 
> As as lawmakers prepared to read aloud charges against Trump in his impeachment trial the Senate
> voted 89 to 10 pass the revised United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Trump is expected
> to sign the deal next week.

[...]

> Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, marveled on Wednesday at how leaders of organized labor and farm
> groups in his state appeared together to support the pact.
> 
> “They both agree that this USMCA trade agreement is a step forward, an improvement over the
> original Nafta,” Durbin said. “I think we’ve added to this process by making it truly
> bipartisan.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) voted against USMCA.






Coverage by the media: Drone warfare piques the attention of a UK watchdog

https://dronewars.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/InTheFrame-Web.pdf -- the report.

 From https://dronewars.net/category/uk-drones-targeted-killing/
> Our new report looks at UK involvement in drone targeted killing and in particular at media 
> coverage of British citizens killed in such strikes. It argues that the government’s refusal to 
> discuss key details or policy issues around these operations has helped to curtail coverage, 
> creating a climate where targeted killing has become normalised and accepted, eroding human 
> rights norms.
> 
> In recent days, we have seen exactly how far the US is willing to take targeted killing by armed 
> drone. The jump from targeting members of non-state groups classed as terrorists to the 
> assassination of top military personnel of a state that US is not at war with may appear huge in 
> terms of strategy and legality. Unfortunately, however, it is also inevitable. Drone Wars UK has 
> consistently argued that drones – with their particular capabilities to stay airborne long 
> periods, hovering over targets, able to track them undetected before firing ‘precision’ missiles 
> – were always likely to be used in provocative ways that blur the boundary between war and peace 
> and cause further destabilisation in international relations.
> 
> In 2015, the UK military joined the small (now expanded) club of states who have engaged in
> drone targeted killing. The first target was Reyaad Khan, a British member of ISIS, who was
> killed alongside Ruhul Amin, another UK member of ISIS, and a Belgian national. The reason given
> was the threat of an imminent attack orchestrated by Khan, someone who was part of a terrorist
> group that could not be negotiated with. These are much the same reasons used to justify the US
> targeting of Soleimani, which exemplifies how easy the jump from unknown non-state actor to major
> military commander is in the ‘war on terror’, of which armed drones are a central component.
> 
> Although UK commanders insist that armed drones will only be used in the same way that any
> weapon system would be, subject to the same international law and rules of engagement, it is
> clear that drone targeted killing is attractive for domestic governments. It is seen as a
> relatively risk free way of securing foreign policy goals without engaging in difficult and messy
> diplomacy or troop deployment. As a form of military engagement it has been shown to have less
> public resistance and the risks of conflict escalation are very real.
> 
> Conversely, it has also been shown that public understanding and critical engagement with issues 
> of peace and war can be increased by comprehensive media coverage. Unfortunately,  however, over 
> the past few years, as we have become increasingly familiar with the concept of armed drones 
> “hunting down” terrorist suspects, debate on the issue remains severely hampered. This is
> largely a resulted of media reports containing carefully controlled government messaging, whilst 
> ministers and officials refuse to engage in discussions about policy and legality, giving vague 
> answers to MPs’ written questions and deploying the ‘we never discuss intelligence matters’ 
> line.
> 
> In the first study of its kind in the UK, drone Wars has conducted research on media coverage of 
> UK drone targeted killing to see how far public understanding and debate have been enabled or 
> hindered by the way government have engaged with media.

Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEe9bseVePc -- RT report on drone media coverage report 
above. The report mentions how drone warfare is carried out, drone casualties, the high degree of 
government secrecy about who is assassinated, and the cooperative media which can be relied upon to 
never scrutinize the killings while employing "carefully controlled government messaging". This 
messaging repeats claims that the victim was about to launch a terror attack with no evidence given 
to back the claim (very much like the lies that ostensibly justified killing Iran's Gen. Suleimani).

Drones are cheaper than traditional bombers, remotely-controlled (and thus "safer" for those 
controlling them than traditional bombers and "boots on the ground"), and drones can hover in the 
clouds for long periods of time allowing surveillance before, during, and after a strike.





OPCW leaks continue, OPCW's reputation continues to fall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IztEGCaVBro -- RT's report based on WikiLeaks-leaked meeting minutes 
from OPCW engineers that according to a toxicologist, a pharmacologist, and a bioanalytical chemist 
who were present in that meeting to discuss the evidence from the alleged Syrian "gas attack":

> It was agreed among all present that the key 'take-away message' from the meeting was that the
> symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate
> chemical causing the symptoms could be identified.
And what of the claim that the gas canister photographed on a bed was dropped from above (as one 
would expect in a gas bomb attack, and as was claimed by the US and its allies before any 
investigation even took place)? Analysis of the best available evidence says that did not happen 
which means that canister was placed, not dropped, on the scene.

Someone who had "unhindered access to the site and a fully rebel-controlled area". The OPCW tried to 
cover this up including expunging evidence to the contrary from their database (per an order from 
Sebastien Braha, Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW, in an email which was also leaked):

> Please get this document [Henderson's report] out of DRA [DocumentsRegistry Archive] and please
> remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA.

RT also mentions that the leaked reports contain feedback from the OPCW chemists where the chemists 
question the "professionalism of the investigation in which chemists apparently had less authority 
than American intelligence agents. So much so that even a former Director-General of the OPCW (Jose 
Bustani, OPCW Director-General from 1997-2002") felt like writing a letter to the body he used to 
steer." Bustani did write that open letter wherein he called on the OPCW "to allow all members of 
the FFM [Fact-finding Mission] team to speak freely and without censure".

WikiLeaks published 4 batches of leaked documents relating to the Douma chemical attack including 
e-mails, fact-finding mission reports, and whistleblower testimonies. Only one OPCW team member who 
took part in the final report was in Douma. A leaked memo reads:

> The FFM [fact-finding mission] report does not reflect the views of all the team members that
> deployed to Douma. Only one FFM team member (a paramedic) of the so-called 'FFM core team' was in
> Douma. The FFM report was written by this core team.
So the best available evidence from those on-the-ground tell us this alleged attack was a phantom, 
those who know best were purposefully ignored, and the official report was written overwhelmingly by 
people who weren't there and took their narrative from American intelligence agents. That's the 
basis of the US/UK/French coordinated rocket attack into Syria.







Shades of Assange: Glenn Greenwald charged with crimes in Brazil, allegations of "hacking" 
reminiscent of what the US claims about Assange

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd0N5wa86bY -- RT's report.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/01/glenn-greenwald-charged-with-cybercrimes-in-brazil-for-publishing-leaked-chats/ 
-- Condé Nast's report.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/world/americas/glenn-greenwald-brazil-cybercrimes.html -- The New 
York Times report includes:

> Citing intercepted messages between Mr. Greenwald and the hackers, prosecutors say the journalist
> played a "clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime."
> 
> For instance, prosecutors contend that Mr. Greenwald encouraged the hackers to delete archives
> that had already been shared with The Intercept Brasil, in order to cover their tracks.
> 
> Prosecutors also say that Mr. Greenwald was communicating with the hackers while they were
> actively monitoring private chats on Telegram, a messaging app.

Glenn Greenwald recently published an exposé series in The Intercept based on the "Operation Car 
Wash" leaked documents.

What is Operation Car Wash? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Car_Wash

> Operation Car Wash is an ongoing criminal investigation by the Federal Police of Brazil, Curitiba
> Branch. It began in March 2014 and was initially headed by investigative judge[a] Sérgio Moro,
> and in 2019 by Judge Luiz Antônio Bonat [pt]. It has resulted in more than a thousand warrants of
> various types. According to the Operation Car Wash task force, investigations implicate
> administrative members of the state-owned oil company Petrobras, politicians from Brazil's
> largest parties (including presidents of the Republic), presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and
> the Federal Senate, state governors, and businessmen from large Brazilian companies. The Federal
> Police consider it the largest corruption investigation in the country's history.
> 
> Originally a money laundering investigation, it expanded to cover allegations of corruption at
> Petrobras, where executives allegedly accepted bribes in return for awarding contracts to
> construction firms at inflated prices. This criminal scheme was initially known as Petrolão
> (Portuguese for "big oil") because of the Petrobras scandal. The investigation is called
> "Operation Car Wash" because it was first uncovered at a car wash in Brasília.
> 
> The aim of the investigation is to ascertain the extent of a money laundering scheme, estimated
> by the Regional Superintendent of the Federal Police of Paraná State in 2015 at R$6.4–42.8
> billion (US$2–13 billion), largely through the embezzlement of Petrobras funds. It has included
> more than a thousand warrants for search and seizure, temporary and preventive detention, and
> plea bargaining, against business figures and politicians in numerous parties.
> 
> At least eleven other countries were involved, mostly in Latin America, and the Brazilian company
> Odebrecht was deeply implicated.
> 
> Investigators indicted and jailed some well-known politicians, including former presidents
> Fernando Collor de Mello, Michel Temer and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The scandal seemed to
> challenge the impunity of politicians and business leaders and the structural corruption in the
> political and economic system that had prevailed until then. This was initially thought possible
> because of the independence of the judiciary.
> 
> However documents leaked in June 2019 to Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept suggest that Judge
> Sergio Moro may have been partial in his decisions, passing on 'advice, investigative leads, and
> inside information to the prosecutors' to 'prevent Lula’s Workers’ Party from winning' the 2018
> elections. Several top jurisprudence authorities and experts in the world have reacted to the
> leaks by describing former President Lula as a political prisoner and calling for his release. Da
> Silva was ultimately released on November 8, 2019.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4edeJiqY41E for a brief, 14m40s, summary from Greenwald himself.

There are still more documents to come out, according to The Intercept.

Brazil's governmental reaction is very much like the strategy the US is using against Julian Assange 
for publishing clear evidence of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan (the subject of the US case 
against Assange for which the US wants England to extradite Assange to the US).

This will, undoubtedly, become another case we'll have to watch closely.

-J