Analysis Breaking

Lula reverses Bolsonaro’s cuts to Brazilian health

Left-wing president shows what can happen with political will to do what’s right for ordinary people

Lula presidential campaign image by Ricardo Stuckert

New Brazilian president Lula da Silva is reversing the cuts to Brazil’s health programme imposed by right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Da Silva, who won the presidential election at the end of October despite extensive right-wing attempts to rig votes and intimidate voters – the third time he has won the presidency – will restart his ‘More Doctors’ programme to give all Brazilians access to a doctor. The scheme had been cancelled by Bolsonaro, whose disregard, at best, for the health of remote and indigenous communities has been well-documented.

Nesio Fernandes, Secretary of Primary Health Care of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, confirmed that:

We want to place doctors in all Brazilian municipalities in a short period of time.

Lula’s decisive intervention for the health of Brazilian communities puts to shame the UK Labour party’s attitude to health and Tory cuts. Keir Starmer and his health spokesman Wes Streeting – who have both accepted large donations from private health interests – are offering as their supposed solution to an NHS in collapse, after thirteen years of Tory cuts, fragmentation and privatisation, only further privatisation with no additional funding.

Lula’s immediate overturning of right-wing health cuts shows what UK people have been robbed of in a political system where the only choice on offer is the rosette colour of the right-wingers who govern.

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12 comments

  1. ‘Olé, olá, Lula!’

    With the death of Pelé – Lula is, now, the most important Brazilian, in the world, and after one week, he’s started as, I hope, he means to go on.

  2. To show willing to give the people a Health service,shows that the new government are sincere in their politics and gives hope for the future of Brazil’s working class.IF only Britain had shown the same faith in their Opposition leader….unfortunately they didnt leaving Britain with no longer any Opposition or any Hope and dreams of a better fairer society….IT will be a long time before a true democratic party rises from the Neo liberals roundabout.and it will not be the Labour party..
    The will of the people will not be defeated and the “Struggle” continues .across the water.

  3. Meanwhile his opposition and general Scumbag in Chief Bolsonaro trashed the Presidential Palace before he left and is now firmly ensconced in his multi million dollar Miami mansion. Right next door to Zelensky’s.

  4. BRICS and their ambitions got a lot stronger with the return of Lula.

    I believe this will be the first of many gestures towards a better way

  5. This is one of the seemingly rare posts these days that allows us to comment and since the post later today about Rachel Reeves cozying up to George “Damien” Osborn doesn’t I’ll put this here:

    Well what do you expect from someone who openly despises the poor & benefit claimants and is quite happy to have her office running costs paid for by not one, but TWO gambling companies! This is an industry New Labour allowed to run riot through poor communities with their deregulation of gambling laws. The sainted Tessa Jowell was responsible for that one. I shudder to think what stunts they’ll try to pull in office…

  6. Timfrom.. “..Family friendly “thats the lie that the gambling industry peddled under new labour and put change of use under planning laws under pressure from a greedy Labour government.teamed up with the corrosive effect of gambling on our crumbling High streets….Councillors were put under pressure to allow the gambling industry into the high street by the labour government and has per usual the working class were the target and have been bled dry by the industry.under the banner of family friendly and open to even kids in pushchairs.so mommy and daddy can have a coffee and cake whilst gambling away their lives and future generations.
    I looked upon the front page comments ….in the Racing post on me personally as “most bigoted councillor” in England and self appointed guardian of morals as a badge of honour on the planning committee when we refused the application for the betting shop in the pedestrian High street in horley Surrey
    .Labour were responsible along with the retention of the hated Trust hospitals for the direct attack upon the working class
    .Timfrom you are entirly correct to highlight the part new labour played in the rundown of society and what to expect of another new labour government.

    1. “Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult…. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And when they become discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontentment led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.”

      – George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

  7. Just came across the following Times of Israel article from May 2nd, 2019, a couple of months before the Panorama programme aired (which I assume was in the process of being made at the time). Here are some passages from it:

    {Izzy} Lenga was participating in a first-of-its-kind “emerging leadership conference,” part of this year’s March of the Living events in Poland. She is among a select group of 20 youths from around the world — chosen for their leadership capabilities — who gathered in Krakow ahead of Thursday’s march in Auschwitz.

    During the ceremony, Lenga spoke about anti-Semitic abuse she suffered when she studied at University of Birmingham. She said she constantly saw swastikas painted on walls and stickers distributed saying “Hitler was right.” When she took to Twitter to condemn the sticker, a torrent of anti-Semitic comments and threats forced her to get police protection.

    Speaking later with The Times of Israel, Lenga said that was just one example among many during her studies, adding that she had also experienced many anti-Semitic incidents and received slurs within the Labour Party — online, in party meetings and in person.

    She also said she had personally heard of many instances in which Labour MPs — some, but not all, of which are no longer in the party — peddled anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, failed to speak out against anti-Semitism, or were complicit in Corbyn’s actions.

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/young-jewish-uk-labour-leader-extremely-hard-to-back-party-in-elections/

    I wonder who she heard them from??? And who the MPs were?!

    I see from her Linkedin profile that she was at the University of Birmingham from 2013 to 2017, and it is of course just coincidence that the first time we hear about anything anti-semetic happening there from Lenga is at the end of October 2015, just six weeks after Jeremy was elected leader. And then, just over ten weeks later, the first major A/S story breaks in relation to the LP about the Oxford University Labour Club.

    Hmm…..

    1. The following was linked to in a skwawkbox article a few days ago:

      Corrections and Clarifications

      The BBC’s responses to editorial, technical and corporate issues.

      Is Labour Anti-Semitic?

      Panorama, BBC One, 10 July 2019

      The programme contained an interview with Izzy Lenga who had experienced antisemitism after she became a student activist. Viewers heard her discuss her experiences:

      I’m Izzy Lenga, I joined the Labour Party in 2015… The antisemitic abuse I received was what I was subjected to every single day… Telling me Hitler was right, telling me Hitler did not go far enough…

      In Labour Party meetings… we’ve seen people engage in Holocaust denial… and that’s terrifying for Jewish members… It absolutely breaks my heart to say but I do not think the Labour Party is a safe space for Jewish people any more.

      If the programme were to be re-broadcast, we would include some additional comments (in bold below) from Ms Lenga’s original interview to give viewers further context around her experiences:

      I’m Izzy Lenga, I joined the Labour Party in 2015… When I was a student… being quite a high profile Jewish woman student, I was subjected to quite a lot of like nasty vitriol and abuse… The antisemitic abuse I received… was what I was subjected to every single day… Predictably a lot of it came from the far right… neo-Nazi abuse… telling me Hitler was right, telling me Hitler did not go far enough and even more… What absolutely baffled me, was at the same time, I was receiving… very similar and almost often the exact same tropes and anti-Semitic abuse… from the far left.

      In Labour Party meetings… we’ve seen people engage in Holocaust denial… and that’s terrifying for Jewish members… It absolutely breaks my heart to say but I do not think the Labour Party is a safe space for Jewish people any more.

      14/12/2022

      You can be 100% sure that the ‘additional comments’ were added (and concocted and contrived) just prior to the BBC posting the update on their C&C page.

      And I wonder who the ‘we’ is that saw people engage in Holocaust denial???

      Yerse, it’s just the sort of thing people would engage in at CLP meetings, isn’t it!

    2. The following are some clips from an article posted by JVL a couple of days ago:

      John Ware says…

      Meanwhile, on 15 December 2022 [the day after the BBC posted the update], Ware commented on Lenga’s antisemitic “experience[s] on campus”. This was in an article about Al Jazeera‘s Labour Files for Jewish News. He also discussed Panorama‘s editing of her comments. Ware said that:

      As Lenga explained, the attacks from both left and right were “very similar… and almost often the exact same tropes”. Through no fault of her own, the fact they were similar meant these comments became mixed up in the editing and we should have made that distinction – Hitler from the Right and Holocaust denial from the Left – clearer.

      A relatively minor slip, yet Corbynites have banged on and on about this….

      Yes, of course, it’s perfectly understandable that such a minor slip – and mix up – could be made when making a programme called Is Labour Antisemitic. The odd thing is that Izzy Lenga herself didn’t notice it when they filmed HER segment. Or is he saying that they cut all the ‘additional comments’ AFTER they filmed her segment, and it was just purely accidental that it just happened to have her saying ‘I’m Izzy Lenga, I joined the Labour Party in 2015. The antisemitic abuse I received was what I was subjected to every single day. Telling me Hitler was right, telling me Hitler did not go far enough…’ .

      Anyway, it’s a relief to know that only the Holocaust denial was from the left.

      Keep on digging y’all!

      1. I just did a search on youtube re izzy lenga and found the following, posted on May 20th, 2019, in which she gave a speech. And if you open the ‘Show more’, you will see that it’s divided into five chapters:

        Izzy Lenga – 2019 March of the Living Emerging Leadership Conference [which ended on May 2nd]

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKQ2FgQBKdo

        The odd thing is, that although the conference took place just 9/10 weeks before the Panorama programme aired, she says not a dicky-bird about the A/S abuse she was (allegedly) subjected to at her local Labour Party meetings. And I would imagine that the programme was completed at least a week or two before it was aired, and Izzy Lenga’s segment filmed at some point in the weeks before that.

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