Roman emperor Caligula once appointed his horse to the Roman Senate but Jair Bolsonaro’s nomination of his son as Ambassador to the US has a potential to cause more damage. In “The Life of the Twelve Caesars” the Roman historian Suetonius says that Emperor Caligula, known for his balance and temperance, had a deep, paternal […]
In São Paulo, funk singer MC Reaça, who composed misogynistic jingles for Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign, attempts to beat pregnant girlfriend to death then kills himself. Cynara Menezes writes that, to Bolsonaro and his minions, MC Reaça represented an ideal image of masculinity. By Cynara Menezes Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had a masculine ideal of the […]
Some media voices played off the calls for shutting down Congress and the Supreme Court as protests against old fashioned politics but the core of the demonstrations was antidemocratic. Under the excuse of fighting old fashioned politics and “corruption”, their goal was to abolish or starve all democratic institutions and establish a police state. by […]
Bolsonaro ally Governor Wilson Witzel’s Military Police are now killing 5 people a day. Most victims are Afro-Brazilian youth. Many are being killed execution style with gunshots at close range to the back of the head, or by helicopter snipers. On February 8th, in Fallet Favela near downtown Rio de Janeiro, members of the military […]
In move reminiscent of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship, former Lava Jato judge/prosecutor Sergio Moro calls National Security Forces to Capital in advance of Indigenous and anti-pension privatization protests. Brazilian Justice Minister Sergio Moro issued an order on April 17 for National Security Forces to patrol the federal ministries parkway and the capital square in Brasilia […]
On March 31, extreme-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has called for the Military to commemorate the Coup of 1964, a Coup which he insists was nothing of the sort. Such commemorations were outlawed under Dilma Rousseff in 2011, and for the Brazil of 2019 to celebrate the anniversary in any form is horrific. It is also unsurprising, […]
On March 18, Brazil’s extreme-right President Jair Bolsonaro made history. Outside the official agenda of his first official trip to the United States he paid a visit to CIA Headquarters, becoming the first ever Brazilian President to do so. In contrast, Bolsonaro has never visited ABIN, Brazil’s moribund equivalent of the CIA. On the agenda, it is […]
On March 19 2019, extreme-right President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro will meet President Donald Trump in Washington DC, on official invitation to the White House. Whilst Trump sidemen John Bolton, Mike Pompeio, Mark Rubio, and rehabilitated war criminal Elliot Abrams, manipulate, confect and pontificate about the situation in Venezuela, they will entertain a man who […]
Do not expect rationality and political pragmatism from a government based on Christian fundamentalism and neofascism. Do not expect democratic governability and republicanism from those who promise to exterminate their opponents. by Marcelo Zero It is touching to see the anxious expectation with which the press and certain political sectors expect some conciliatory, republican gesture […]
On the 50th anniversary of Institutional Act 5, the 1968 “coup within the coup” which ushered in an even more brutal and repressive phase of the Military dictatorship, historian Fernando Horta explains how its malign influence never went away, and is now again casting a shadow over Brazilian society. by Fernando Horta. It has been said […]