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DEMOCRACY ECONOMY EDUCATION LAWFARE OPINION SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

PEC 55/241: The End of the World Amendment

On October 10, non-elected Brazilian president and former military dictatorship official Michel Temer held a $30,000, publicly funded banquet for his allies in the lower house. The event commemorated the launching of a constitutional amendment called PEC 241- referred to as the “End of the World Amendment” by its critics- an enforced Austerity plan which […]

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BLOG DEMOCRACY FOREIGN POLICY OPINION UNITED KINGDOM

Brasil & Latin America have a friend in Jeremy Corbyn

The activist group Democracy for Brasil UK met with the Latin community and the leader of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday April 30th (eve of the May 1 Workers Day celebrations) at the Momentum Latino launch in London. It denounced the attempted Coup taking place in Brazil through a speech and meeting at a passionate event aimed at engaging the Latin Community with various social movements in […]

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DEMOCRACY EDITORIAL OPINION UNDERSTANDING BRASIL

Brasil’s Democracy Under New Siege

We should be looking for viable alternatives to an archaic, arbitrary, failing and schizophrenic system. The issue that we are seeing in Brasil today is a democracy where those who represent, or attempt to represent, ordinary people are demonised as if unfit to govern. This is a problem that is happening in other places such […]

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DEMOCRACY EDITORIAL OPINION POLITICS

Coup or no coup, the damage is done

That Brasil is currently involved in one of its most profound political and economic crises in recent history is no news to anyone paying attention to the country’s reports during the last few months.  It is still not clear what will come out of the undergoing investigations involving corruption scandals across the political spectrum and […]

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DEMOCRACY OPINION UNDERSTANDING BRASIL

Brasil’s Democracy & A Return To The Senzala

Lula da Silva is placed at the disposal of justice. A police apparatus was set up to coerce the former president to testify under the cross-hairs of the mainstream media, Globo, which supported the 1964 Coup and subsequent dictatorship. Pedro Serrano, professor at PUC-SP and constitutional law scholar notes that this action against Lula is […]

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DEMOCRACY EDITORIAL OPINION

13/3 Protest: Much, much, more of the same

At the March 13 Anti-Government protest, PSDB Opposition Politicians, São Paulo State Governor Geraldo Alckmin & defeated 2014 Presidential Candidate Aécio Neves, can surely only have expected a heroes welcome on Avenida Paulista. Their actually hostile reception from some demonstrators is a sign that the popular anti-corruption movement their side helped create & sought to […]

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DEMOCRACY LAWFARE OPINION POLITICS

There are times when making history is more important than commenting on it. This is one of them.

Those of you that have been following me for a while know that I often write about the need for serenity in politics. I have said countless times that It is not acceptable to treat political opponents as enemies. I have pointed out that violence undermines the political debate. This posture has always come naturally […]

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BLOG DEMOCRACY EDITORIAL LAVA JATO LAWFARE OPINION UNDERSTANDING BRASIL

Lula & The Trite Theatre Of Lava Jato

The depiction of Operation Lava Jato as an apolitical moral crusade, a new essentialist myth and a natural phase in the country’s development, is a divisive one in Brazil but nevertheless a narrative that Anglo media commentators have been almost unanimous in echoing. It is however becoming an increasingly difficult position to defend. The assertion that […]

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BLOG INTERNATIONAL MEDIA MEDIA OPINION

‘Carnaval Is Cancelled’ & 6 Other Brazilian Apocalyptic Favourites

Why is it that everything that happens in Brasil seems to be reported like an existential threat & why do foreign outlets so often get it so wrong? Here’s some examples from the past few years. (Ironically most of them received more media attention than the recent environmental catastrophe in Minas Gerais). 1. Carnaval is Cancelled Happens every […]

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DEMOCRACY LAWFARE OPINION POLITICS

Rousseff’s impeachment is a penalty searching for a crime

By Mauricio Savarese. Original article published here. I stopped writing about Brazilian politics for two months because of two different reasons. The first was the excess of work, which is likely to become a permanent feature of mine. The second was the complete unpredictability of how much the political and economic crisis could be aggravated. After […]