The #panelaço is back in Brazil; on Twitter, hashtags like #ForaBolsonaro (Bolsonaro out), #ActForTheAmazon and #MacronLies gain traction

Several Brazilian cities had protests during President Jair Bolsonaro's national television and radio address, made last night. Bolsonaro spoke about the government's plans to fight fires in the Amazon region.

People went to their windows and hit their pans (that is known in Brazil as "panelaço"), exactly as happened during the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff. This demonstration points out that part of the middle class, which voted for Jair Bolsonaro, is very unhappy with the current government.

Brazil was also the scene of several street protests. Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Brasilia had thousands of people on the streets speaking out against the government's current environmental policy.

According to the agency Lupa, the largest fact-checking agency in Brazil, in its pronouncement on national television yesterday, Jair Bolsonaro, contradicted itself several times.

Bolsonaro said, at 21 of August, that "Spreading unfounded data and messages, inside or outside Brazil, does not help solve the problem and lends itself only to political use and misinformation." However, the Brazilian president himself accused, without any proof whatsoever, that Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are behind the fires currently occurring in the Amazon. All environmental protection experts in the country believe that this statement by the president was, at the very least, irresponsible, as it criminalized all organizations that have been fighting for environmental preservation for decades.

According to Lupa, the next day after making such a statement, Bolsonaro admitted that he had no proof, but still insisted that the NGOs were responsible.

Bolsonaro also said his government has "zero tolerance for crime and in the environmental area will be no different," but in April 2019, Bolsonaro himself criticized Ibama inspectors, the body responsible for environmental protection in Brazil.

Bolsonaro even exonerated an Ibama server who fined him for irregular fishing in 2012. The fine imposed on Bolsonaro was canceled in December 2018.

According to Veja magazine, loggers are using Bolsonaro government speeches to intimidate Ibama inspectors in the Amazon region. According to Veja, an example of this change in behavior occurred in the city of Espigão d'Oeste, in Rondônia. Where hooded men stopped an Ibama tanker truck, beat the driver and then set fire to the vehicle, which carried 8,000 liters of fuel. The cargo would serve to fuel a helicopter that would fly over indigenous reserves in the region, where timber theft was suspected.

The issue is also producing a genre of narratives in Brazilian social media. While the worldwide movement against the environmental policy of the current Brazilian government grows, there are a number of Internet users who continue to defend Bolsonaro. These defenders accuse French President Emmanuel Macron of lying about the burning of the Amazon.

Paradoxically, these Bolsonaro supporters, who accused Brazil of becoming a socialist country during the PT rule, are now in open confrontation on social media with the western world that they praised so much. Only this week, the Finnish government decided to study the possibility of a boycott of Brazilian meat. France and Ireland oppose the Mercosur and European Union agreement. The problems of burning in the Amazon region will be discussed during the G7 meeting. Norway and Germany have cut funding to the Amazon Fund. British Prime Minister Conservative Boris Johnson said he was "deeply concerned" about the current situation in the Amazon. Contradictorily, the Brazilian extreme right that supports Bolsonaro and called itself pro-Western is now calling Western European leaders liars.

Protests in front of the Brazilian embassies in London, Berlin and Madrid call for the preservation of the Amazon; in Brazil, Bolsonaro calls emergency meeting with eight ministers to discuss the issue; Finland studies banning imports of beef from Brazil

European protesters call on Jair Bolsonaro's government to defend the forest. The wave of burning in the Amazon has become a global issue, especially after French President Emmanuel Macron said that burning in the Amazon is an “international crisis.” He called for the issue to be discussed this weekend at the G7 meeting, a group formed by Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

There are protests against Jair Bolsonaro's government in European cities such as Paris, London, Berlin, and Madrid.

The international pressure has prompted Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to call a ministerial meeting to discuss ways to combat the burnings. The Brazilian president also signed yesterday an order that all his team of ministers adopts measures to combat the burning in the Amazon rainforest.

Yesterday, Eduardo Bolsonaro, the senator and son of the Brazilian president published a video that offended the President of France. Eduardo was nominated by his father for the position of Brazilian ambassador in Washington, USA. However, work by the Brazilian Senate indicated that this measure constituted nepotism. Now, Brazilian senators will vote to decide whether or not the president's son can take office.

Today, Finland called for the European Union to consider banning imports of Brazilian meat following the burning of the Amazon

After saying that he didn't need the more than 250 million reais sent by Germany and Norway to protect the Amazon, the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro says Brazil doesn't have resources to fight Amazon fires

After saying that he did not need the R$ 155 million from Germany and R$ 133 million from Norway to go to the Amazon Fund, President Jair Bolsonaro went public today, according to Reuters, to say that the Brazilian government doesn't have enough resources to fight a record number of wildfires burning in the Amazon rainforest.

Leaving the presidential residence today, Bolsonaro tells reporters that “the Amazon is bigger than Europe, how will you fight criminal fires in such an area?" According to Bolsonaro, Brazil "do not have the resources for that.”

A few days ago, Bolsonaro sent Chancellor Angela Merkel to use the millions the German government would send to the Amazon Fund to reforest Germany. He then criticized the Norwegian government, which also used to contribute to the Amazon Fund, and decided not to send funds anymore because of the current Brazilian government policy.

Today, several Brazilian newspapers have published information that Brazil is using money already sent by Germany and Norway to the Amazon Fund to fight fires. Contracts of R$ 14.717 million with the Amazon Fund, donated by the two European countries, was signed in June 2014 by Ibama.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro accuses the NGOs without proof of being responsible for the Amazon burning; Environment Minister Ricardo Salles booed at event in Bahia; #PrayForAmazonas: Burning becomes the most talked about Twitter topic in the world

Without presenting any evidence, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro accused NGOs of being responsible for the Amazon burning.

In his Twitter account, opposition deputy Marcelo Freixo said: "Bolsonaro is a cynic. But you can't just attribute cynicism to the statement that NGOs are burning the Amazon. The president's goal is to disqualify and criminalize organs and movements of environmental preservation. Burning paving the way for barbarism".

The statement was very much criticized. In Salvador to attend Latin American and Caribbean Climate Change Week, Greenpeace senior forest strategist Paulo Addario said that "criminalizing NGOs is criminalizing citizenship". WWF-Brazil Executive Director Mauricio Voivodic said that Bolsonaro's speech "it does not support itself at all."

Paradoxically, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, in a post on his Twitter on the 20th, said that the fires that hit the Amazon are due to drought, wind and a strong heatwave in the region." Salles, by the way, was booed yesterday at the same Latin American and Caribbean Climate Change Week Climate Week in Salvador, Bahia.

In an interview with BBC Brazil, Professor of the Environmental Sciences Department of the Institute of Forests of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), Jerônimo Sansevero, said that Brazil will take at least 20 years to recover the destroyed part. But there are, he said, other "areas that have already lost their [recovery] capacity because they already have large-scale deforestation."

Yesterday, the hashtag #PrayForAmazonas has become one of the most talked-about topics on Twitter worldwide, even topping the list with hundreds of thousands of publications on the topic.

It is undeniable, however, that the arrival of Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency was accompanied by the also undeniable growth of burning in the Amazon. For many analysts, Bolsonaro's talk about the legalization of mining in the Amazon and indigenous lands, his undeniable proximity to the ruralists, his defense of landowner weaponry increase one right goes all in the region.

Know which state companies the current Brazilian government intends to privatize

According to the website Poder360, the current Brazilian government announces the list of companies that it intends to privatize to strengthen the federal cash and reduce the public deficit. The companies are:

1. Emgea (Empresa Gestora de Ativos);
2. ABGF (Agência Brasileira Gestora de Fundos Garantidores e Garantias);
3. Serpro (Serviço Federal de Processamento de Dados);
4. Dataprev (Empresa de Tecnologia e Informações da Previdência Social);
5. Casa da Moeda;
6. Ceagesp (Companhia de Entrepostos e Armazéns Gerais de São Paulo);
7. Ceasaminas (Centrais de Abastecimento de Minas Gerais);
8. CBTU (Companhia Brasileira de Trens Urbanos);
9. Trensurb (Empresa de Trens Urbanos de Porto Alegre S.A.);
10. Codesa (Companhia Docas do Espírito Santo);
11. EBC (Empresa Brasil de Comunicação);
12. Ceitec (Centro de Excelência em Tecnologia Eletrônica Avançada);
13. Telebras
14. Correios
15. Eletrobras
16. Lotex (Loteria Instantânea Exclusiva);
17. Codesp (Companhia Docas do Estado de São Paulo).

The government of Jair Bolsonaro, therefore, intends to sell assets to cover a deficit such as social security. In fact, this means giving up capital to pay current expenses. Privatizing to clean up public accounts is a mistake.

However, privatization is currently a necessity as the Brazilian state has no money to make investments, which is being consumed by current spending.

If privatizations were aimed at a national development project debated and agreed between the government and the population, privatization would not be a problem, but in Brazil, the issue is that privatization is often done without a clear definition of the role of capital. foreign capital, the national capital and state capital in the economy of the country. Privatizations are always done in a crisis environment, where the country loses much of its negotiating capacity and ends up selling assets below or their real value or without the guarantees necessary for the agreement to work.

Eletropaulo, for example, a power distribution company serving the metropolitan region of São Paulo, has already been sold twice, first to the US group AES, and then to the Italian Enel. In the first privatization, the US company, to increase productivity, cut costs that eventually hurt the company. Of the 27,000 employees, only 4,000 remained. This has reduced the company's ability to do network maintenance work, thereby harming the population using the service.

Amazonia is burning! Number of fires in the Brazilian region grows scary 70%, in 2019

According to a research by the Programa Queimadas (Burning Program) of Inpe (Brazilian National Institute for Space Research), which measures the number of fire outbreaks in Brazil, the number of fires grew a staggering 70% in 2019 compared to 2018. 

The Amazon is by far the most affected biome as it accounts for over 50% of fires. The Brazilian Cerrado biome, in turn, is the scene of 30% of fire outbreaks. 

Most of the fires are produced by ranchers who want to turn the forest into an area for beef cattle production. The current drought in the region greatly facilitates the spread of fire.

Meanwhile, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, during an event in the interior of São Paulo, said that much of the responsibility of the fires are of the state governments, which do not make the ideal control of fire outbreaks.

However, the Mato Grosso Fire Department, one of the states most affected by the fires, said it needed more support from the federal government. The Fire Department of Mato Grosso also said to see with concern the blockade of the Amazon Fund that, until this year, has invested R$ 12 million in structure to combat fire in the state.

The current government has refused to receive millions of reais sent from Germany and Norway to the Amazon Fund. President Jair Bolsonaro even said that Chancellor Angela Merkel should use the money to reforest Germany.

A possible global recession could produce the perfect storm for Brazil's already weak economy

Brazil's economy is suffering from very poor performance, with GDP growth for 2019 expected to be around 0.83%. However, due to the emergence of a possible risk of a global recession coupled with a change in Argentina's political landscape (moving from a neoliberal government, Mauricio Macri, to a more developmental government, Alberto Fernández).

With the global economy slowing down, Brazil must face even greater difficulties to get out of the scenario of extremely high unemployment (over 12 million unemployed people) and very little economic growth.

Even with the Pension Reform and the Tax Reform walking the Brazilian National Congress, which decided to act almost independently of the executive power, which through the often absurd speeches of President Jair Bolsonaro greatly harms any political coalition, the country will face economic difficulties to get out of the crisis scenario in which it finds itself.

In recent days, the outflow of foreign capital from the São Paulo Stock Exchange is higher since the one recorded in the global crisis of 2008. According to the website Terra, until the 15th of August 2019 (most recent data), the volume was negative in R$ 19.1 billion. In 2008, the red balance recorded in the year to the end of August was R$ 16.5 billion.

A direct consequence of the search for global security, this outflow of resources from the country will further weaken the Brazilian economy. To make matters worse, studies released this week indicate the collapse of investments in Brazil. Capital used to expand production in the country fell to the lowest level in 70 years in some sectors.

German media (Der Spiegel and Die Zeit) talk of imposing sanctions against the Brazilian government over Jair Bolsonaro's environmental policies

Der Spiegel magazine and weekly newspaper Die Zeit, two of Germany's leading publications, said it was "time for sanctions against Brazil" over the environmental policy of the current government-run by Jair Bolsonaro.

According to a report published today in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, the largest in Brazil, Der Speigel magazine states in its pages that “Europe should not be idle while a hateful skeptic of science sacrifices vast areas of the forest for ranchers and soybean plantations ”.

At the beginning of August, the British magazine The Economist, in its cover story, drew attention to the fact that the Amazon was in danger of dying. The publication also called for global vigilance and stated that "the world must make clear to Bolsonaro that it will not tolerate its vandalism."

According to the newspaper, Folha do Progresso, in Novo Progresso, Pará, the producers, feeling "supported by the words of President" Jair Bolsonaro, coordinated a collective action to burn pasture and areas in the process of deforestation. The goal, according to one of the leaders heard under anonymity, is to show the president that they want to work.

Meanwhile, the São Paulo Public Prosecutor's Office opened an inquiry to investigate suspicion of illicit enrichment by Environment Minister Ricardo Salles between 2012 and 2017, during which time he alternated his legal activity with the positions of Private Secretary and Secretary of the Environment of the São Paulo Government.

Smoke from Amazonian and Pantanal fires darken Brazil's Midwest and Southeast cities; São 16h (It's 4pm) becomes a trend on Twitter in Brazil

The city of Sao Paulo has become an apocalyptic movie set today. The CGE (São Paulo City Hall's Climate Emergency Management Center) explanation for the darkness is related to the weather and the burning that take place in the country. The Civil Defense has warned of heavy rain in some parts of the metropolitan region of the city and winds that have brought particulate matter originating from burning in Paraguay, on the border with Mato Grosso do Sul, and other regions in Brazil, turn the sky black.

The unusual darkness of the sky in the middle of the day frightened residents of São Paulo and other large cities in southeastern Brazil.

The subject took over social networks in Brazil. On Twitter, the "São 16h" trend has produced thousands of comments and photo posts from the completely dark sky in the middle of the day in São Paulo and other cities.

Focus Survey indicates positive Brazilian financial market expectations for Brazilian economy despite the risk of a global economy crisis

According to Reuters, the market's expectation for growth in the Brazilian economy has risen again for 2019 and 2020. The Focus survey released today by the Central Bank indicates that Brazilian economists have come to see the possibility of growth in GDP. 0.83% in 2019 and 2.20% in 2020, compared to 0.81% and 2.10% respectively in the previous week.

This reading seems to be detached from global and regional reality. In the world last week was marked by fear of the world going into recession; In Argentina, the economy minister fell and the current president Mauricio Macri, with fear of losing the elections, decided to adopt a completely populist agenda in the economy.

It will be very difficult for Brazil's economy to grow, which Focus indicates today if these scenarios of global recession and the certainty of the continuing crisis in Argentina, Brazil's main regional economic partner, are confirmed.

Again, as when the election of Jair Bolsonaro occurred, the Brazilian financial market takes a stance much more closely linked to political ideology than the rational readiness of global and regional economic indicators.

While trying to criticize Norway, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro ends up releasing a video from Denmark

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has again associated Norway with killing whales in retaliation for the Scandinavian country's decision to suspend the transfer of 133 million reais to the Amazon Fund. On Sunday night, August 18, Bolsonaro posted a video to his Twitter account with images of mammal hunting that would have occurred in the Norwegian Sea. There is evidence, however, that the cases depicted occurred in the Faroe Islands, which belong to Denmark.

This episode is another demonstration of the complete lack of political and negotiating skills of the Brazilian president, who always behaves raising the tone of the conversation and, often, with misinformation.

Such behavior by the Brazilian president and some of his ministers creates insecurity and alienates foreign investors and possible economic deals like the one between Mercosur and European Union. Because of that, even after the Social Security Reform was approved, despite the president's constant unwelcome statements about the reform, international investors are still reluctant to invest their capital in Brazil.

The attacks that President Bolsonaro has made in recent days against the German chancellor Angela Merkel, the candidate leading the presidential race in Argentina Alberto Fernández, and also against the Norwegian government only reinforce this fear in international investors.