Brazil’s Lula backtracks on Putin arrest safety at Rio G20

Brazil’s leader has withdrawn his personal assurance that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not be arrested if he attends next year’s Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, saying it would be up to the judiciary to decide.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also questioned Brazil’s membership in the United Nations war crimes court, saying on Monday that “emerging countries often sign things that are detrimental to them”.

Lula says Putin will not be arrested at Brazil G20 meeting

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said that Russian leader Vladimir Putin will not be arrested in Brazil if he attends the Group of 20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro next year.

Lula, speaking to the Firstpost news show at the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Delhi on Saturday, said Putin would be invited to next year’s event.

He added that he himself planned to attend a BRICS bloc of developing nations meeting due in Russia before the Rio meeting.

Bolsonaro diehards take to streets of Brazil to urge firing squads and coup

André Meneses made a gun sign with his hands to convey what he thought should happen to those who opposed Jair Bolsonaro’s project for Brazil.

“The right thing to do is put them on the wall and fucking … shoot them,” the 60-year-old protester declared on Tuesday morning as thousands of the Brazilian president’s most loyal supporters gathered in the country’s capital to celebrate their leader.

“They are traitors. They are traitors to Brazil,” Meneses said of the supreme court justices and leftist senators he claimed deserved to meet the firing squad for daring to thwart Bolsonaro’s plans.

Brazil: warning Bolsonaro may be planning military coup amid rallies

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his allies could be preparing to mount a military coup in Brazil, according to an influential group of former presidents, prime ministers and leading public figures on the left.

An open letter claims rallies that Bolsonaro followers are staging on Tuesday represent a danger to democracy and amount to an insurrection modelled on Donald Trump supporters’ attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.

Why Brazilians Elected an Aspiring Dictator

Jair Bolsonaro isn’t big on democracy. The newly elected president has dismissed the notion of human rights as a “disservice” to Brazil. He has bemoaned the fact that its police force, one of the deadliest in the world, does not have the right to kill more freely, promising to give it “carte blanche” under his administration. He once proposed using a helicopter to drop pamphlets warning drug dealers to leave poor communities, or be fired upon indiscriminately.

Embattled Michel Temer deploys troops to streets

Brazil's president ordered federal troops to restore order in the country's capital, Brasilia, after some ministries were evacuated during clashes between police and protesters seeking Michel Temer's ouster.

Temer is struggling to retain power after the release of a recording that appears to capture him approving hush money for a convicted former politician. Brazil's top court is investigating him for alleged obstruction of justice and involvement in passive corruption. The president is resisting calls to resign and has said he will fight the accusations.

Brazil's president struggles to retain power as political crisis deepens

Thousands of protesters have called for Brazil’s president, Michel Temer,to leave office as he lost yet another key adviser amid a deepening political crisis.

Scuffles between police and protesters broke out as the demonstrations neared Congress.

Temer is struggling to retain power after the release of a recording that appears to capture him approving hush money for a convicted former lawmaker. The president is resisting calls to resign and has said he will fight the accusations. Brazil’s top court is investigating him for alleged obstruction of justice and involvement in passive corruption.

Michel Temer 'taped approving Eduardo Cunha bribe'

Opposition politicians and protesters have called for the removal of Brazil's President Michel Temer following reports that he recorded discussing payments to silence testimony by a potential witness in the country's biggest-ever corruption probe.

A recording of the alleged conversation was presented to prosecutors by the chairman of JBS, the world's biggest meatpacker, as part of plea bargain negotiations, the O Globo newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Brazil judge rules Uber drivers are employees, deserve benefits

A Brazilian judge ruled that a driver using the Uber ride-hailing app is an employee of the San Francisco-based company and is entitled to workers’ benefits, adding to the global debate over labor rights for drivers on the platform.

Uber said on Tuesday it would appeal the decision by Judge Marcio Toledo Gonçalves, who issued the ruling late Monday in a labor court in Minas Gerais state.

Terrorized by Police Raids and Mass Displacement, Rio Prepares for Olympics

At least 77,206 people have already been displaced from Rio de Janeiro as the city prepares to host the Olympic Games on August 5-21, and police raids -- predominantly against Black youth in favelas and working class neighborhoods -- have intensified.

According to Larissa Lacerda, a member of the Rio Cup and Olympics Popular Committee, since the start of 2016, police raids in the favelas have provoked mass killings of poor, Black youth. Lacerda's organization is a collective that brings together unions, NGOs, researchers, students and impacted communities. She said she expects the situation to only get worse in the final days before the start of the Olympic Games, just as abuses worsened before the Panamerican Games and the World Cup.

Amidst Constant Crisis, Michel Temer Appears Ill-Equipped To Lead Brazil

BRASILIA, Brazil — Earlier this week a source close to Michel Temer and member of the interim president’s PMDB party candidly admitted: “There is a new crisis every day. If the government makes a drastic decision every time there is negative news, it would all be over in two weeks.”

Imperialism’s Junior Partners

On May 12, Brazil’s democratic government, led by the Workers’ Party (PT), was the victim of a coup. What will the other BRICS countries (Russia, India, China, and South Africa) do?

Will they stand by as the reactionaries who took power in Brasilia pivot closer to Western powers, glad to warm Dilma Rousseff’s seat at the BRICS summit in Goa, India in five months’ time?

We’re Starting To Get A Bad Feeling About Brazil’s New Interim President

After just one week in office, Brazil’s unelected, interim President Michel Temer has begun hacking away at three decades of social progress, fielding a leadership team composed entirely of 21 white men — including a congressman under investigation for attempted homicide — to take the reins of a government bogged down by a far-reaching corruption scandal.

Temer’s apparent disregard for diversity contrasts sharply with a regional trend that has seen women, indigenous people and Afro-descended people rise to increasingly high elected offices in Latin America in recent years.

'A lot of testosterone and little pigment': Brazil's old elite deals a blow to diversity

Brazil’s image as a socially liberal, multi-ethnic democracy may always have been more myth than reality, but any lingering illusions of this type have been swept away by interim president Michel Temer’s appointment of the country’s first all-male cabinet since the end of dictatorship in1985.

After conspiring to suspend Brazil’s first female president, his former running mate Dilma Rousseff, the 75-year-old patrician quickly showed his conservative instincts with a mostly white lineup of ministers that also included a soy baron in charge of agriculture, and a finance minister who immediately declared the need for sweeping cuts.

Brazil’s First Female President Has Just Been Suspended, And The New Cabinet Is All Men

On Thursday, Brazil’s Senate voted after an all-night debate to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and begin an impeachment trial. Rousseff, the country’s first female president, has been replaced by Vice President Michel Temer, who immediately unveiled a new cabinet entirely devoid of women or people of color.

Although Brazil is hardly a leader when it comes to female representation — women are less than 10 percent of lawmakers — Temer’s cabinet marks a decided step back in representation for the country. Brazil has more female than male voters, and in a 2010 census, 50.7 percent of Brazilians defined themselves as black or mixed race.

Brazil’s Democracy to Suffer Grievous Blow Today as Unelectable, Corrupt Neoliberal is Installed

In 2002, Brazil’s left-of-center Workers Party (PT) ascended to the presidency when Lula da Silva won in a landslide over the candidate of the center-right party PSDB (throughout 2002, “markets” were indignant at the mere prospect of PT’s victory). The PT remained in power when Lula, in 2006, was re-elected in another landslide against a different PSDB candidate. PT’s enemies thought they had their chance to get rid of PT in 2010, when Lula was barred by term limits from running again, but their hopes were crushed when Lula’s handpicked successor, the previously unknown Dilma Rousseff, won by 12 points over the same PSDB candidate who lost to Lula in 2002. In 2014, PT’s enemies poured huge amounts of money and resources into defeating her, believing she was vulnerable and that they had finally found a star PSDB candidate, but they lost again, this time narrowly, as Dilma was re-elected with 54 million votes.

Brazil’s Democracy to Suffer Grievous Blow Today as Unelectable, Corrupt Neoliberal is Installed

In 2002, Brazil’s left-of-center Workers Party (PT) ascended to the presidency when Lula da Silva won in a landslide over the candidate of the center-right party PSDB (throughout 2002, “markets” were indignant at the mere prospect of PT’s victory). The PT remained in power when Lula, in 2006, was re-elected in another landslide against a different PSDB candidate. PT’s enemies thought they had their chance to get rid of PT in 2010, when Lula was barred by term limits from running again, but their hopes were crushed when Lula’s handpicked successor, the previously unknown Dilma Rousseff, won by 12 points over the same PSDB candidate who lost to Lula in 2002. In 2014, PT’s enemies poured huge amounts of money and resources into defeating her, believing she was vulnerable and that they had finally found a star PSDB candidate, but they lost again, this time narrowly, as Dilma was re-elected with 54 million votes.

10 Reasons Why Vice President Michel Temer Won’t Be Brazil’s Next President

On Sunday, April 17, right after the lower house of Congress voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, I wrote that the Workers’ Party was over.

That doesn’t mean, however, that Vice President Michel Temer will become the next president.

The Hypocrisy Underlying Brazil’s Impeachment Movement

Beleaguered Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff struck a defiant tone on Tuesday, two days after 367 members of Brazil’s lower house of Congress voted to advance impeachment procedures against her.

Speaking with reporters, Rousseff described the move as “a coup” and vowed to defend herself before the Senate, which will begin impeachment hearings on April 26.

Eduardo Cunha: Brazil president's chief accuser faces allegations of his own

After the impeachment vote against Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, attention is shifting to her accuser-in-chief, who is charged with greater crimes – but looks more likely to escape justice.

The lower house speaker, Eduardo Cunha, an evangelical conservative and conspiratorial mastermind, started and steered the drive to remove the country’s first female leader from power as a means of reducing the risks to himself from investigations by a congressional ethics committee and prosecutors for alleged perjury, money laundering and receipt of at least $5m in bribes.