Rio’s evangelical new mayor to celebrate victory in Israel

Marcelo Crivella to meet with Netanyahu and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat next week, Brazilian media reports

JTA

Comment by Julio Severo: Mr. Crivella, who is a former bishop of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), was never able to show a solid stance against anti-“homophobia” bills and he was very close to the former socialist President Dilma Rousseff. And his denomination is shamefully known for being pro-abortion and, as far as prophecies and revelations are concerned, cessationist. I hope Crivella may have changed and be now a “black sheep” in the UCKG. But, despite of weaknesses, he has a good quality: He is pro-Israel. The known conservative website Breitbart reported about Crivella’s intent to celebrate his victory in Israel. Breitbart mentioned a report from the Israeli newspaper Times of Israel, fully reproduced below:

RIO DE JANEIRO — The mayor-elect of Rio de Janeiro, a prominent evangelical leader, reportedly will be going to Israel to celebrate his victory.

Marcelo Crivella, who was elected Sunday, will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat next week, several Brazilian media outlets reported, citing the mayor-elect himself as the source. However, the information has not been confirmed by Israeli officials.

“Marcelo Crivella, who has been to Israel nearly 35 times, is a great friend of the Jewish community and the State of Israel,” Israel’s Rio-based honorary consul Osias Wurman, a former president of Rio’s Jewish federation, told JTA. “I hope he will strengthen a lot of the cooperation between Rio and the State of Israel, in particular in the areas of security, culture and technology.”

Brazil’s most influential weekly magazine reported Monday that the Jewish vote from one of Rio’s wealthiest neighborhoods was key in electing Crivella. The massive support could have been a reaction to Crivella’s opponent’s party members, who recently referred to the late Israeli President Shimon Peres as an “ideologue of terrorism” and, a year ago, burned the Israeli flag in public.

Crivella easily beat his far-leftist opponent Marcelo Freixo with 59 percent of the vote in the municipal runoff election in Brazil’s second largest city.

In January, when Brazil rejected Israel’s choice of a former settler leader as ambassador to Brasilia, Crivella said it conveyed a pro-boycott message. The position has since remained vacant.

“Rejecting the ambassador can convey a message that Brazil supports BDS,” Crivella wrote in an op-ed published in the influential Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, referring to the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. “Leaving Israel without an ambassador won’t help anyone.”

Crivella called Dani Dayan “a prepared diplomat selected legitimately by a friendly country. The fact that he defends settlements in the West Bank is a weak motive for such discourtesy and so much political inability.”

In his article, Crivella noted the deep ties between Brazil and Israel, recalling that Brazilian diplomat Oswaldo Aranha presided over the United Nations session that created the State of Israel in 1948.

In November, the senator joinedsome 1,500 demonstrators at a pro-Israel rally in Rio de Janeiro. Days before, during a major TV show, he had called for “all friends of Israel” to attend the rally.

Crivella is a nephew of Edir Macedo, founder of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God some 40 years ago. He also has played a pivotal role in the church gathering some 5.2 million followers at 13,000 temples across Brazil and worldwide. The church owns the second-largest TV station in Brazil, as well as a broad conglomerate of newspapers and radio stations.

By assuming the chair of mayor of Rio on Jan. 1, Crivella will interrupt his second eight-year term in the Senate.

Brazil, which has the world’s largest Catholic population — some 65% of its population of 204 million — is home to some 120,000 Jews.

Source: Times of Israel, via Last Days Watchman

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The lesson for U.S. in fall of Brazil regime

Joseph Farah

Americans have their hands full with a presidential election, societal strife, terrorism, a bad economy, corruption in government and political parties that seem tone deaf.

So why should we care what just happened in Brazil?

Because the impeachment of the nation’s first woman president, Dilma Rousseff, reveals some striking parallels between conditions in Brazil and what’s been happening in the states. It may even provide a glimpse of where the U.S. is headed should Hillary Clinton win the presidency.

First off, the Brazilian Senate voted 61 to 20 to convict Ms. Rousseff on charges of manipulating the federal budget in an effort to conceal the nation’s mounting economic problems. More to the point, the central charge was that she employed budgetary tricks to conceal gaping deficits.

Sound familiar? That’s exactly what Barack Obama has been doing for the last eight years.

I would suggest to you that the political downfall of Rousseff’s leftist Workers Party occurred because Brazil is about five years further down the road of socialist chickens coming home to roost.

Socialism is an appealing idea as a theory, and it can appear to work in the short term as the government confiscates wealth and redistributes it. But, sooner or later, the wealth dries up. No more is being created.

That’s what happened in Brazil and everywhere else socialism has been tried throughout history. We’ve had eight years of socialist rule in the U.S., without serious opposition. It took 15 years in Brazil for the house of cards to fall.

But the lessons of Brazil go beyond that.

The economic crisis was coupled with leadership that was arrogant, corrupt and lacking in both charisma and humility.

Sound familiar?

It’s just what American leadership will be like in a Hillary Clinton administration – socialist, out of touch, corrupt, arrogant and lacking in charisma and humility.

Rousseff outraged the public in Brazil with what has been described as “colossal graft schemes” that included bribes and illicit campaign financing.

Again, sound familiar?

Rousseff, like Hillary, had a long history of radical political activities. She was involved with the Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard, an urban guerrilla group, in her youth. Clinton was a disciple of Saul Alinsky in hers.

Rousseff is 68 and white, but appealed politically to Afro-Brazilians. Hillary Clinton is 68 and white and appeals politically to Afro-Americans. Her husband, a white man, relished descriptions of him as “the first black president.”

The Brazilian Workers Party is perfectly synonymous ideologically with America’s Democratic Party.

So the question on the table for Americans is very simple: In 2016, do we want to set the stage for political upheaval, corruption, colossal graft schemes and economic calamity by electing Hillary Clinton president?

There is one big difference between Brazil and the U.S. revealed in this political crisis. It appears that Brazil operates more democratically and with political opposition that holds leaders accountable to its constitution.

We haven’t seen that in the U.S. for the last eight years.

So we may actually be worse off five years from now unless there is a political realignment – the kind Donald Trump may bring if he is elected.

Will he do it? Will he be able? Who knows?

But the alternative is no change from the status quo.

We’ll continue going down the same road – socialism, government power grabs, less individual liberty, more open corruption, more divisive racial politics, less accountability to the rule of law, one standard for the gilded elite and another for the average citizen.

Take your pick.

Learn the lessons of Brazil.

Source: WND

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Were Brazilian Protests an Anti-Marxist Counter-Revolution?

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Lula, the Ugliest Face of “the Brazilian Way of Doing Things”

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