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Brazil town aspires to be champion of Bolsonaro vote

Photo: Nelson Almeida / AFP

| By AFP | Anna Pelegri |

On Holy Christ Avenue, in front of Bible Square, Brazilian businessman Gilberto Klais buoyantly hops out of an SUV decorated with a giant decal of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

Smiling in a denim shirt, the 39-year-old head of the local business owners’ association is a man on a mission: “On election day, the town of Nova Santa Rosa will cast more votes for Bolsonaro than anywhere else in Brazil,” he says.

The small town in the southern state of Parana already voted massively for the incumbent in Brazil’s first-round election on October 2, casting 82 percent of its ballots for Bolsonaro — the second-highest percentage in the country.

Now, as the president heads for a runoff Sunday against veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro backers are pushing for an even bigger win.

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But this small community of trim little houses surrounded by endless expanses of soy and corn fields has some tough competition, in one of Brazil’s most conservative regions.

The neighboring towns of Quatro Pontes and Mercedes finished third and fifth in the Bolsonaro love fest, voting 80 percent and 78 percent for the former army captain, respectively.

And the town of Nova Padua, in neighboring Rio Grande do Sul state,  cast the highest percentage for him  with 84 percent.

“Bolsonaro lit our flame for Brazil,” says Klais, who owns a local bakery.

Visitors don’t have to look far for proof: a sea of yellow-and-green Brazilian flags hangs from buildings — a symbol Bolsonaro has adopted as his own — and his smiling face beams from campaign posters all over town.

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Opponents’ criticisms of the president — Brazil’s 687 000 deaths from Covid-19, increasing hunger, destruction of the Amazon rainforest — are mute here.

Finding a Lula campaign sign is an impossible task.

Farming is king in these parts, and Bolsonaro, a close ally of Brazil’s powerful agribusiness sector, “has given us security to invest,” promotes “a strong economy,” and upholds God and family “as the supreme good,” says Klais.

“He’s just like us.”

Battle for Brazil’s soul

On his father’s farm, where a feed truck has been turned into a makeshift billboard with Bolsonaro’s slogan — “Brazil above everything, God above everyone” — Ricardo Lorenzatto is on a mission, too: convince at least 200 of the 800 residents who voted for Lula to switch sides in the runoff.

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Bolsonaro “promised to visit the city that casts the highest percentage of votes for him,” says the 35-year-old agricultural engineer, his blue eyes alight.

“My heart leaps just thinking about it.”

He is active on WhatsApp message groups rallying the faithful for pro-Bolsonaro events, such as an Independence Day motorcade on September 7, which, he proudly boasts, stretched four kilometers (2.5 miles).

Lorenzatto says ex-president Lula (2003-2010), who the far-right labels a “communist,” is a threat to his children’s future.

If Lula wins, “indigenous tribes could invade our land, force us to share our cattle,” he says.

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Holding her one-year-old grandson on her porch, Clarice Radoll agrees.

“I would feel very insecure if Lula won,” says the 60-year-old Evangelical Christian, who has Bolsonaro’s picture proudly displayed on the front of her house.

In this town of a dozen churches and around 6,000 inhabitants, Radoll repeats a line often used by conservative pastors: that Lula represents “moral perversion.”

“It’s every Brazilian mother and father’s fear,” she says.

Agribusiness hero

In Mercedes, just up the road, farmer Andre Fiedler admits Lula’s government also took care of the agribusiness industry during the economic boom of the 2 000s.

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“I don’t want to be a hypocrite,” he says.

But Bolsonaro’s administration has backed farming and agricultural exports like no other, “opening new markets for our products,” he says.

He brushes off international criticism over surging Amazon deforestation under Bolsonaro, which experts say is driven by agriculture.

“People say Bolsonaro is damaging Brazil’s image overseas… but that’s just a trade game — protectionism by France, Germany, the United States,” Fiedler says.

“Who’s the biggest soy producer in the world? The biggest poultry exporter? Brazil,” he says.

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“There are vested interests trying to hold us back.”

Bolsonaro, who took 43 percent of the vote in the first round to 48 percent for Lula, trails his leftist rival heading into the runoff — but by a narrowing margin, according to opinion polls.

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International

The Kremlin accuses the United States of throwing “firewood” by authorizing Ukraine to use long-range missiles

The Kremlin today accused the United States of “adding fuel to the fire” of the war in Ukraine by authorizing, according to the Western press, long-range missile attacks against Russian territory by Kiev.

“It is evident that the outgoing Administration in the United States intends to continue to add fuel to the fire and continue to cause an escalation of tension around this conflict,” said Dmitri Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, in his daily telephone press conference.

The spokesman stressed that if it is confirmed that the West has given the green light to Kiev, it will mean “qualitatively a new phase of tension and a new situation regarding the involvement of the United States.”

The authorized weapons are, specifically, guided supersonic missiles called ATACMS that can carry conventional or cluster heads and have a range of about 300 kilometers.

Biden authorized the use of missiles only in the Russian region of Kursk

US President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to use limited long-range missiles, for the moment, to defend its offensive positions in the Russian region of Kursk, where the Moscow army receives the help of thousands of soldiers from North Korea.

CNN and The New York Times report this unprecedented decision by the Biden administration, which will end its mandate on January 20, and which occurs when Moscow has deployed almost 50,000 troops in Kursk, the southern region of Russia where Kiev launched its surprise counteroffensive last summer.

The American network, which cites two officials from the country as sources, assures that the weapons are intended to be used, for the moment and mainly, in Kursk.

For its part, the newspaper highlights that Biden’s decision is an important change in American politics and has divided his advisors, since the measure occurs two months before his successor, the president-elect, Republican Donald J. Trump, takes office, after having promised that he will limit support for Ukraine.

Zelenski on missiles: “Those things are not announced”

Washington had refused to provide ATACMS to Ukraine during the first two years of the war, partly due to concerns about its manufacture, since the powerful missiles require time and complex components to produce them.

But Biden secretly approved the transfer of those missiles in February for use within Ukrainian territory. The United States delivered them in April, and has now allowed them to be used against Russian territory.

In his usual nightly voiceover, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, spoke about the information that appeared in US media about the authorization of the White House.

“The plan to strengthen Ukraine is the ‘Victory Plan’ that I have presented to our partners. One of the key points is about the long-range capabilities of our Army. Today there has been a lot of talk in the media that we would have received permission for these actions. But attacks are not done with words. These things are not announced. The missiles speak for themselves and there is no doubt that they will,” Zelenski said.

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International

The number of deaths rises to 111 in Gaza in one of the most violent days of the month

The Palestinians killed throughout Sunday in Gaza rose at the end of the day to 111, according to the local news agency Wafa, which makes yesterday’s one of the most violent days in the Strip in the last month.

According to the daily report sent by the Ministry of Health, the total number of deaths as of today amounts to 43,922 people and 103,898 the number of injured in 13 months of war.

This high number of deaths in the punished enclave is mainly due to the massacre with 72 dead committed by the Israeli Army when bombing several buildings in Beit Lahia, in the northern region of Gaza that has remained besieged for six weeks.

The Israeli offensive in the northern Strip

Beit Lahia has been the scene of two of the bombings with the most victims of the war in the last month, the result of the campaign of air raids and the ground incursion that the Israeli Army undertook there, as well as in Yabalia and Beit Hanoun, between October 5 and 6.

On October 29, another airstrike against a five-story building ended the lives of 93 Gazans, according to figures from the health authorities, although residents of the area said at the time that they had buried 103 corpses.

On the 20th, another bombing that according to the armed forces was “precision” killed another 73 people in Beit Lahia.

For more than six weeks, the Army has maintained a military siege in the north that has caused more than 2,000 fatalities, according to estimates by the Government of the Belt, and has drastically worsened the already deficient conditions in which its population lived, having limited access to humanitarian aid to the region to minimal levels.

In addition, the Army has besieged and attacked the three active hospitals in the north: Kamal Adwan, Al Awda and Indonesia, the latter having to cease its activity.

Israel attacks a “humanitarian zone” in southern Gaza

“We are without electricity, we only have four hours of generator operation and for three hours we use batteries, the rest of the day we have no electricity,” Mohammed Salha, acting director of Al Awda, denounced to EFE.

Salha warns that he has not received a shipment of fuel for 40 days that allows them to operate the generators to have electricity, since it is in the Kamal Adwan but has not managed to coordinate with the Army to allow the transfer of gasoline to Al Awda.

Last night, the Wafa agency collected a new bombing against Beit Lahia of which no victims have yet been reported.

In the south, an attack against the “humanitarian zone” where most of Gaza’s displaced people are (90% of the population at the moment) killed a couple and their two children, and seriously injured another daughter of the couple.

Israel established part of southwestern Gaza, along the coasts of Al Mawasi, Jan Yunis and Deir al Balah, as a “safe zone” for the almost 2 million displaced people because of its offensive, although it has been the subject of multiple attacks throughout the year.

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International

More than 20 dead and a hundred injured in several missile attacks against residential areas of Odessa and Sumi

At least 11 people have died and 89 others were injured in the Ukrainian city of Sumi by the impact of a Russian missile against a residential building last night, local authorities reported on social networks.

The Ukrainian first lady, Olena Zelenska, has condemned the attack and explained that among the fatalities are two children.

“It is an attack not only against Ukrainians but against the very concept of humanity. And against all those who believe that the enemy can be stopped with concessions instead of by force,” Zelenska wrote on her social network account X.

According to Ukrainian emergency services, there are eleven minors among the injured.

Sumi is located next to the border with Russia and is regularly attacked by Kremlin forces.

At least 10 dead in another missile attack against Odessa

A few hours after the daylight attack on Sumi, at least 10 people died, including seven policemen and a health worker, in a Russian missile attack against a residential area of the city.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has condemned this attack against Odessa on his social networks.

“Russian terrorists hit with a ballistic missile against Odessa, against a residential area,” Zelenski wrote on his Telegram channel.

According to the Ukrainian president, the missile has fallen into a park and has caused damage to a residential building, a university and an administrative building.

Zelenski added that it is not “an accidental attack” and described the bombing as “exemplary.”

Zelenski: Russia is only interested in war

“After the calls and meetings with Putin, after all these words in the media about his supposed ‘renunciation’ of the attacks, Russia shows what it is really interested in: only in the war,” Zelenski said in reference to the calls that the US president-elect, Donald Trump, and the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, would have had in recent days with the Russian president.

Zelenski asked the leaders participating in Brazil at the G20 summit to “listen” to the message sent by Putin’s attack.

Monday’s attacks follow a day, Sunday, in which Russia launched 120 missiles and 90 drones against several regions of Ukraine.

This massive combined attack in which hypersonic missiles and other types were used was directed against Ukrainian electrical infrastructure.

The destruction caused has forced the authorities to reschedule power cuts throughout the country.

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