Bolsonaro’s illegal slush-fund financed social media campaign appears too sophisticated for his tiny political party to be doing on its own. By Brian Mier On the Friday before the October 7 Brazilian presidential elections, Brasil Wire ran two articles that proved to be prophetic. In the first I warned that the integrity of the election […]
The action lasted over 14 hours, leaving one dead, dozens of injured and thousands of angry citizens. As Rio de Janeiro’s military occupation reaches the 6 month mark, all analysis points to it’s colossal failure. Shootings have increased by 40%, there have been 2600 murders, and 736 people were killed by the police. The drug […]
Deaths in massacres have increased while arms apprehensions have dropped, according to data from the Candido Mendes University Center for Security and Citizenship Studies’ (CESeC) Military Intervention Observatory. Five months after the start of the Rio de Janeiro military occupation, a new study shows the resounding failure of the operation, which was decreed by President […]
“The images of children locked in cages remind us of Nazi concentration camps.” In April, 2018, The Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party/PT) became the largest Bloc in Brazilian Congress, with 60 representatives. Led by former student union leader and Rio Grande do Sul Congressman Paulo Pimenta, on the night of June 20, 2018, they issued […]
New data shows homicides increased during coup year of 2016. Most victims were Afro-Brazilian males. By Brian Mier Wednesday, June 6 marked the release of the most comprehensive annual study of national and state level homicide data in Brazil, the 2018 Atlas da Violencia, conducted by 12 researchers from the federal government’s Applied Economic Research Institute […]
When I first moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1991 tens of thousands of homeless families lived in cardboard boxes in Copacabana and locals would take a taxi to travel as little as one block to avoid being robbed by gangs of glue sniffing street children, many of whom would go on to be assassinated […]
The Central Unica de Trabalhadores (Unified Workers Central/CUT) is the largest union federation in Latin America, with around 8 million members. In January, working together with its social movement and union federation partners in the anti-coup coalitions Frente Brasil Popular and the Povo Sem Medo, it announced a general strike for February 19 against the […]
Lava Jato investigation Prosecutor/Judge Sergio Moro is embroiled in a million dollar cash for sentence reduction scheme. For the past 2 years some of the most prestigious newspapers and think tanks in the US and Britain have uncritically hailed Lava Jato investigation judge and prosecutor Sergio Moro as an impartial hero in the fight against corruption. […]
In an exclusive contribution to Brasil Wire, an established Rio de Janeiro journalist using the pseudonym Luiz Matheus exposes how the internal battle within the ruling national PMDB party is upturning decades of corruption within the Rio de Janeiro state government, adding another chapter on how privatizing public services around the World always results in […]
On May 18 as part of a corruption investigation that was not directly related to Operation Car Wash, Joesley Batista, a director of JBS, the world’s largest meat packing corporation, dropped a bombshell, announcing that his company had paid bribes to around 2000 Brazilian politicians including coup President Michel Temer and Anglophone media-backed 2014 presidential […]