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What We’re Watching: Brazil braces for “moment of truth,” British pound slides, Putin invites chaos, Snowden becomes Russian
Could Lula win it all in Brazil’s first round?
For months, mainstream pollsters have consistently shown Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro trailing his rival, left-wing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, by a margin of about 10 points. But a new study shows Lula now has nearly 50% support, the threshold for winning the election in the first round, which takes place next Sunday. How accurate are the polls? Support for Bolsonaro is consistently underestimated because many people are unwilling to admit openly that they’ll vote for him. Pollsters say that’s bogus and that they have a good track record of measuring public opinion over the years. Regardless of whether Bolsonaro and his supporters believe the polls, a more important question remains: will they believe the result if he loses? He has spent months fomenting doubt about the electoral system. Either way, as Brazil’s (pro-Bolsonaro) comms minister Fabio Fara put it to the FT: “the moment of truth is coming.”
Markets reject Truss’s tax plan
The shortest UK premiership to date was 119 days, but stay tuned ... The markets just sent newly installed PM Liz Truss a stark warning over her government’s plan to boost borrowing to fund a $45 billion tax cut. Truss says tax cuts should boost spending and economic growth. But thanks to sky-high inflation, prices are already soaring, and more spending makes those costs harder to tame. This runs counter to the Bank of England’s monetary policy, which aims to temper inflation by raising interest rates and slowing demand. With these approaches at odds, the British pound dropped to a 40-year low Monday, trading as far down as $1.035. The Bank of England responded to say it won’t hesitate to further up interest rates — it just raised the main interest rate last week by 50 basis points — if necessary. The OECD, meanwhile, has downgraded its UK growth forecast for 2023 to zero, and there are growing concerns that Truss’s plans could crash the British economy. Some Tory MPs, according to reports, are already mulling a vote of no confidence, but Eurasia Group expert Mujtaba Rahman says that’s unlikely unless the pound implodes.
GZERO spoke with former PM Tony Blair in recent days about the post-Brexit battle to pull Britain back from the brink. Hear his thoughts here.
Putin’s frantic choreography
Russia’s Vladimir Putin has proven again in recent days that he can set in motion chaotic events involving large numbers of people in multiple countries. His sham referenda, which invite Ukrainians in four regions to vote in favor of joining Russia, are coming to an end, and Putin could announce Russian annexation of them later today or during a speech on Friday. His “partial mobilization” of Russian reservists into the army continues. So do the protests and the rush for Russia’s exits it has unleashed. Anti-draft demonstrations are especially intense in the mainly Muslim Russian region of Dagestan, which has suffered a higher death toll than any other Russian province. The leader of neighboring Chechnya, the strongly pro-war Ramzan Kadyrov, has exempted his province from the draft in protest against Kremlin policies he says are too generous toward Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s counteroffensive continues, and Washington promises to continue new financial and military aid, and continues to warn the Kremlin of the consequences of using a nuclear weapon.
What We’re Ignoring: Citizen Snowden
As of Monday, Edward Snowden — the former US intel contractor who spilled the beans on massive US spying programs — is a citizen of Russia. Snowden has been in Russia for nearly a decade, ever since getting stranded at a Moscow airport while on the international lam from US prosecutors. He joins several other Western icons of varying quality who have become Russian citizens in recent years: martial arts action hero Steven Seagal parlayed the honor into eventually becoming Putin’s “special envoy” to the US. The tax-shirking French actor Gerard Depardieu also got himself a crimson passport from the Kremlin, but he evidently lost it for criticizing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine this spring. No word on whether the 39-year-old Snowden, now that he’s a citizen, will be forced to join that fight as part of Putin’s latest mobilization.This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Sign up today.
Netanyahu on the verge of losing power in Israel; US spying on EU?
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics this week:
Is Netanyahu's time as Israel's prime minister about to end?
It does look that way. Though of course, like with everything in Israel politics it's right down to the wire. Can they put this unity government, where the only thing they're unified on is everyone wants to get rid of Netanyahu, together by midnight Israeli local time. If they can it's the end of Netanyahu's term, 12 years tenure in office. Though the government's not going to last for long. They agree on absolutely nothing else. There's no policy that'll happen, maybe they get a budget together. That's about it. But my God, yes, indeed. It does look like Netanyahu's probably going to be out.
What's the deal with allegations of US spying on European allies?
Well, we've heard a fair amount of this coming out of the Snowden disclosures years ago. Now, further information about the United States government, the NSA in particular, working with the Danish government, a NATO ally, to engage in spying on other European countries, European officials, including Germany. Why the Danish government would agree with this, especially when they refuse to sell Greenland to us? I don't know. But it certainly is causing a lot of mistrust from key Europeans to the United States. When the US is saying, "We want to work with the Europeans on technology because the Chinese are to be mistrusted," the Europeans are mostly saying, "We'd rather hedge and go our own way. We don't know that we can trust anybody else." This does make it a little harder for the Biden administration.
What is next for Mali after a second coup within a year?
Well, they've been suspended from the African Union. That also happened after the first coup in the year but then when the civilian government came in, they reversed the suspension. This time around it might be tougher. It looks harder for civilian government to come back. When you are suspended from the African Union, you're really handling governance really badly. And the reason is Mali is an economically unimportant country, but strategically it does matter because of the fight against Islamist militants, some of which, many of which, are in the north of Mali, in the desert. The ability of other governments, both in the region as well as the French government, to work effectively with Mali if they have a military government that's completely unrepresentative and repressive, is going to be very low. And that means that you're likely to get more space for terrorist engagement opportunities for them to grow in the region as a consequence. Something we don't want to see.
Brazil players celebrate winning the Copa America 2019 against Peru with the trophy.
What We’re Watching: Copa America venue woes, Denmark-US Euro phone tap, Greenpeace vs big coal in Australia
Who will host the Copa América? Only two weeks before the first match, the Copa América, South America's biannual national football (soccer) tournament, has become — pardon the pun — a political football. The tournament was initially to be held jointly by Argentina and Colombia. Two weeks ago, however, the organizers dropped Colombia as co-host citing security concerns following mass street protests against the government's planned tax reforms. Now, as Argentina enters another national lockdown over rising COVID cases, they have decided to switch the venue to... COVID-ravaged Brazil. Brazil's embattled President Jair Bolsonaro has given the go-ahead, perhaps thinking that hosting the competition will help boost his rapidly declining approval ratings in the football-crazy nation. But the move — which is not yet final — immediately provoked strong criticism from Brazilians who think it will cause the deadly disease to spread even more, and the Supreme Court has agreed to review an urgent motion by the opposition Worker's Party to stop it. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro's supporters are calling out his opponents for rejecting a competition that will flush cash into Brazil's economy.
US-Europe espionage scandal: Pressure is mounting on Copenhagen and Washington to explain why Denmark helped the US National Security Agency spy on multiple European politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, from 2012 to 2014, according to a new report by multiple news organizations. Although this is not the first time America has gotten caught eavesdropping on European allies — NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden already exposed this scheme six years ago — what has really shocked the Europeans this time is that spooks from a fellow European nation reportedly allowed the NSA to access text messages and phone conversations by tapping into Danish internet cables. Interestingly, after the report surfaced Snowden tweeted that Joe Biden was "involved" in the surveillance scheme when he served as Barack Obama's vice president, and suggested that Biden better be prepared to address the scandal when he visits Europe next month for the first time as US president. No matter how well Merkel and Biden get along, spying is never well received — even by friends — and Biden will have a lot of explaining to do to smooth things over.
Greenpeace sued in Australia: AGL, Australia's largest electrical generation company, has sued Greenpeace for naming AGL as the country's top polluter in a satirical ad that included its logo. AGL — which gets 85 percent of its power from coal — is not disputing the claim, but says that Greenpeace's use of its brand breached copyright and trademark infringement laws. The environmental group, for its part, argues that the ad is clearly sarcastic, and that AGL is trying to intimidate Greenpeace into self-censorship to avoid the high cost of litigation against AGL, a large corporation with big pockets. The news from Australia comes as energy firms around the world are coming under increasing legal scrutiny over their responsibility in contributing to climate change: just last week, a Dutch court ordered energy giant Shell to cut its carbon emissions by 45 percent for violating the human rights of the Dutch people by extracting fossil fuels. That ruling could set a precedent for climate activists, but if AGL's lawsuit succeeds in getting Greenpeace to back off, energy companies may have found a way to fight back.