Stephania Grani

Lula came back promising to save the poor, and Brazil wanted to believe him one more time. But instead of building anything, he opened the treasury and spent like a man playing with borrowed money. Handouts to buy loyalty, a bloated government to buy silence, and a bill that the poor would end up paying. Now look at what that left behind. Food costs more. Jobs are disappearing. Shops have been shrinking for 17 months straight. A family now loses almost a third of its salary just to service debt, and if they dare to use credit, they are charged 62% interest to stay alive. Interest rates sit at 13.75% while inflation runs at 4.63%, the whole country is trapped in expensive money and shrinking hope. That is Lula economics. Not growth, just redistribution of poverty. And when it started to fall apart, Lula did what he always does. He didn't look in the mirror. He didn't question his formula. He pointed everywhere else. He blamed Bolsonaro for the mess he inherited, the courts for not obeying him, the farmers for producing too much, the banks for being greedy, Trump, America, social media, even the weather. Everyone was guilty except the man holding the pen. Because in Lula's world, socialism never fails. Only people fail socialism. So while ordinary Brazilians struggle to afford food, to keep a business open, to live with dignity, Lula is in Manila posing for photos at ASEAN, smiling as if Brazil is thriving. And at home, the opposition is being hunted. Flavio Bolsonaro didn't run because he was afraid. He ran because his passport was seized, investigations were piled on him, and the Supreme Court had been turned into a weapon against the family that dared to challenge Lula. That is not democracy. That is a dictatorship wearing a smile. Three terms in power. Same promises, same excuses, same debt, same poverty. It is the old playbook we know too well from Zimbabwe under Mugabe: spend, borrow, print, blame. And it always ends the same way. Lula is not the victim of Brazil's crisis. Lula is the author of it.

Everyone is forced and expected to believe a lie. That the Nigerian government, with the biggest army in West Africa, with drones, with satellites, with billions in the security budget, cannot stop teenage village boys turned into Islamist fighters. Boys from poor families. No education. No shoes. No food. Boys with rusty guns. We are told they are too powerful. Too hidden. Too many. That the forest is too big. That the north is too far. That is a lie. The same Nigerian government can track a coup attempt in hours. It can tap your phone, follow your WhatsApp, and arrest a journalist before he finishes typing. The same government can crush a protest in hours. It can bring out water cannons, tear gas, and soldiers, and clear Lekki Toll Gate before sunrise. It can shut down the internet in a whole state overnight. It can find a separatist leader in Kenya and fly him back in a private jet. It can find a critic in London and threaten his family in Lagos. But when it comes to protecting women and children in Zamfara, Borno, Kaduna, and Plateau, suddenly it is blind. Deaf. Helpless. Nowhere to be found. The politicians are clearly complicit. Either they are protecting the terrorists because they share the same Islamist ideology: the same dream of a Sharia-ruled north, the same hatred for Christians, for Western education, for girls going to school. Or they are protecting them because it is profitable. War is business. Security votes disappear. Contracts are awarded for guns that never arrive. Ransom money is shared. Villages are emptied so land can be taken for grazing, for mining, for politics. Either way, the boys are not the problem. The boys are the product. You take a 14 year old boy who has never been to school, whose father is dead and whose mother is begging. You give him a gun, a motorbike, and 50,000 naira, and you tell him God wants him to kill. That boy is not a mastermind. He is a victim turned into a weapon by men in suits in Abuja. The real terrorists are not in the bush. They are in the Senate. In the governors' lodges. In the mosques where hate is preached with protection. In the ministries where security money is looted. If Nigeria wanted to end this tomorrow, it would end tomorrow. It has the men. It has the weapons. It has the intelligence. It just doesn't have the will, because the blood of the poor is paying for someone's power. Don't tell us the government can't stop them. Tell us why the government won't stop them. t.me/fmazhindu

The chaos in El Salvador before Bukele was never an accident, and the chaos in Haiti today is not an accident either. The media told you that the gangs were just poor boys who went bad on their own, but that story falls apart the moment you ask one simple question. Where does a poor sixteen year old boy living in a slum with no job and no money get an AK-47 and an AR-15 and a Glock and thousands of rounds of ammunition, and where does he get a brand new Toyota Hilux and motorcycles and speedboats and drones and encrypted phones and bulletproof vests and night vision goggles, and who pays his monthly salary and pays for his safe house and pays his lawyer when he is arrested and pays the police and the judge and the prison guard to look the other way, and who pays his family when he dies? A poor boy cannot afford even one bullet, so someone else is paying for all of it. That someone is the multimillionaires and the billionaires and the wealthy entities who profit from chaos, because chaos is a business and a broken country is the most profitable business in the world. When a country is in chaos its land becomes cheap so they can buy it, its gold and its drugs and its resources can be stolen without anyone asking questions, its government becomes weak so they can control it, and its people become so scared that they obey anyone who promises them a little safety. In El Salvador the gangs were not fighting the system, the gangs were the system, paid to keep the poor terrorized so the poor would never rise up and demand a better country. In Haiti it is the same story, the gangs are not independent, they are funded and armed and protected by rich families and foreign businessmen and foreign NGOs who want Haiti to stay weak so they can keep stealing its ports and its gold and its labour. And when a man like Bukele comes and says I will lock up all the gangs and end this in two years, who attacks him? It is the same people. The same billionaires who fund the gangs fund the media that calls Bukele a dictator, the same wealthy entities who arm the gangs fund the NGOs that cry human rights for murderers, the same people who profit from chaos fund the political voices that hate real help in Haiti and sabotage anyone who is actually capable of doing it. Look at the pattern and it becomes clear, when a gang kills a hundred innocent people there is silence, but when a leader kills a hundred gang members there is outrage. When a gang rapes children there is no campaign, but when Bukele locks up rapists there is a global campaign against him. That is because the media is not independent, it is owned by billionaires, the NGOs are not independent, they are funded by billionaires, and the politicians are not independent, they are bought by billionaires. They do not want Haiti saved and they did not want El Salvador saved, they want them broken, because a broken country is cheap to buy and easy to control. Bukele exposed them, he proved that gangs can be destroyed in months if you have the will, and that terrified them, because if El Salvador can be fixed then Haiti can be fixed, and if Haiti can be fixed then Africa can be fixed, and if Africa can be fixed then the billionaires lose their business. That is why they demonize Bukele, that is why they sabotage Haiti, that is why they hate any man who actually helps the poor.

We were told Nayib Bukele is "invading" Haiti. We were told he is a dictator. We were told to be worried. We were told to condemn him. And right now he is the hottest thing in Haiti. Crowds are in the streets in Port au Prince chanting his name. People are calling him father. He has done more in under two weeks than the Haitian government and the United Nations have done in six years. Bukele sent 2,500 soldiers to Haiti. He did not come to make money. He said it himself. No one is paying El Salvador to do this. El Salvador is paying for 90% of it. He came to fight against the wicked. He came after four Salvadoran technicians were ambushed and kidnapped. He gave the gangs an ultimatum. They did not listen. So he destroyed the house of Lanmo San Jou, leader of the 400 Mawozo gang. He bombed their headquarters in Croix des Bouquets. The gangs ran without even trying to fight. The people said thank you Bukele. His approval is skyrocketing in Haiti like it is in his home El Salvador, where over 91% admire him. In El Salvador he took a country controlled by gangs and made it safe. In Haiti he is doing the same thing. The media calls it an invasion. The people call it liberation. t.me/fmazhindu