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DEMOCRACY EDITORIAL POLITICS UNDERSTANDING BRASIL

Reality versus Red Scare

Losing elections isn’t easy, and Brasil’s anti-communist paranoia is almost as old as communism itself, but in 2014, the decades-old fantasy of a Marxist takeover of the country is being amplified by a small fringe of Brasil’s right. They have their mentor in astrologer & ultra-conservative philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, who is based in Richmond, Virginia. Their principal bogeymen are Foro do […]

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DEMOCRACY ELECTION GLOBO HISTORY MEDIA POLITICS UNDERSTANDING BRASIL

Brasil’s Citizen Kanes

Brasil has a healthy and noisy media landscape; from sophisticated daily papers and weekly magazines comparable to any in Europe, right through to trashy supermarket rags like you see across the United States. But at the top level there is a deep undercurrent of conservatism that often goes unnoticed, a conservatism that pre-dates any of […]

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DEMOCRACY ELECTION

SBT Presidential Debate

ORIGINAL DEBATE TRANSCRIPT TRANSLATED FROM CARTA CAPITAL This second debate, on SBT, and the first since Brasil Wire went live was slightly more nervous than the first on Band, which was in part down to the manner of the host, and perhaps as a result of the latest polls showing PSB candidate Marina Silva, who entered the […]

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DEMOCRACY ELECTION POLITICS

PMDB: Brasil’s invisible government

Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (PMDB formerly MDB) is Brasil’s largest political party, who control Congress & Senate and are currently in coalition with Dilma Rousseff’s PT. PMDB keep a curiously low profile, have not fielded a presidential candidate for 12 years, are absent from much public debate, unreported abroad, yet hold the vice-presidency, key ministries, and thus policy makers to […]