One reason Lula's campaign has been dragged down in recent weeks is because of the unparalleled and filthy corruption scandal of the notorious Supreme Court judge, Alexandre de Moraes, whose Lula's allies on the court have shielded from investigation (we're talking tens of millions to his family from a now-collapsed bank that was Ponzi scheme).
In The @TheEconomist today, the journalist who did the most to break the story and then relentlessly and courageously pursue it, @malugaspar, explains the scandal. This concise paragraph is shocking in its weight. It's amazing that Moraes isn't in prison (he's imprisoned his political enemies for far, far less), let alone still on the Court. Read this paragraph:
Até quando vamos achar normal perder, pouco a pouco, a nossa liberdade?
O absurdo de um dia só consegue ser menor que o absurdo do dia seguinte:
primeiro, censuraram influenciadores de direita. Depois, censuraram o maior líder da direita, @jairbolsonaro. Agora, censuraram a maior emissora do país, a Globo. Faltam 2 dias para a mudança.
E a mudança é 2️⃣2️⃣✅. Vote pela sua liberdade de expressão, pela liberdade de ir e vir sem o domínio do crime e pela sua liberdade econômica.
It's hard to overstate how insane things in Brazil have become after Lula's polling lead over Flavio Bolsonaro -- held most of the year -- has largely vanished. The first round of voting is Sunday. The likely Lula/Bolsonaro runoff would be Oct. 25. Look at this:
Last night, Brazil's largest media outlet, Globo, was to hold the only presidential debate thus far. Lula refused to go.
Globo's rules (which Lula's party agreed to) are that any candidate who refuses to debate will have an empty podium with their name on it -- to highlight their refusal to debate for the voting public -- and the other candidates will be given time to state the questions they would have posed to the missing candidate. This is common.
But at the very last minute (just moments before it was to begin), a left-wing, Lula-aligned election judge issued a censorship order barring Globo from showing Lula's empty podium, and also banned Globo from allowing the other candidates to state the questions they had for Lula. So Bolsonaro pulled out over the censorship, and Globo canceled the debate in anger.
As Lula's campaign gets more desperate, the election (like the country itself) has come to be ruled by his allies on the Supreme Court and judiciary more broadly, using blunt, daily censorship (as they did when Lula barely beat Jair Bolsonaro in 2022) to ensure Lula's victory. Kind of amazing to watch how deeply into full-on lawlessness and tyranny they're plunging.
A ralé de selvagens que sitiou as instituições deve ter se frustrado ao perceber que a Rede Globo agiu com surpreendente altivez e não se submeteu à velhacaria jurisdicional.
🚨URGENTE - Relatórios gerados pela Polícia Federal a mando do delegado Fábio Alvarez Shor, e usados pelo ministro do STF Alexandre de Moraes como base para a prisão de Jair Messias Bolsonaro, incluíram frases montadas fora de contexto.
Os policiais federais usaram a busca global do WhatsApp de celulares de investigados ligados a Bolsonaro, bem como de aparelhos do próprio Bolsonaro, para pesquisar as palavras, termos e expressões que queriam, e assim criavam frases e parágrafos inteiros.
A Polícia Federal usou este modus operandi para pescar palavras fora de ordem e de contexto, em conversas com o mesmo contato e também em conversas com outros contatos não-relacionados entre si.
Desta forma, basicamente, montavam as frases que quisessem para usar como provas contra Jair Bolsonaro.
Para impedir que a defesa de Bolsonaro pudesse identificar isso, Alexandre de Moraes apresentava quantidades supermassivas de dados, e dava prazos curtíssimos para a defesa analisar (ex.: 70 terabytes em um dia). Além disso, muitos desses compilados vinham com partes dos dados originais faltando.