“If we don’t get rid of the machines, we’re going to lose our country to the world,” Lindell told crowds, referring to voting machines which he previously claimed resulted in voting errors and a ‘stolen’ election.
CEO of MyPillow Mike Lindell is now due to address CPAC. Stay tuned as we bring you the latest updates.
Continue reading...An elite unit is on a mission to expel the illegal miners who devastated Yanomami territory during Bolsonaro’s presidency
For the last four years Brazil’s rainforests bled. “They bled like never before,” said Felipe Finger as he prepared to venture into the jungle with his assault rifle to staunch the environmental carnage inflicted on the Amazon under the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
Moments later Finger, a mettlesome special forces commander for Brazil’s environmental protection agency, Ibama, was airborne in a single-engine helicopter, hurtling over the forest canopy towards the frontline of a ferocious war on nature and the Indigenous peoples who lived here long before Portuguese explorers arrived more than 500 years ago.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Environment minister calls for ex-president to be held to account as she prepares to tackle illegal gold miners
Former president Jair Bolsonaro should be investigated for genocide, Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, has said, as she prepares an operation to drive illegal goldminers from the site of a humanitarian disaster on Indigenous land.
In the coming days, armed police and environmental protection agents will launch the first of a series of operations by plane and helicopter to expel thousands of miners, who proliferated in Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous territory during Bolsonaro’s administration, contaminating Amazonian rivers, wrecking the rainforest and spawning Brazil’s worst health crisis in living memory.
Continue reading...Senator says he was asked to get justice to make compromising comments on tape as Bolsonaro ‘sat in silence’
A close ally of Jair Bolsonaro has turned against Brazil’s former president, claiming that an aide to the far-right leader tried to “coerce” him into joining a conspiracy to annul the October elections and keep Bolsonaro in power.
Senator Marcos do Val claimed at a news conference on Thursday that he was invited to a meeting on 9 December with the then president by a fellow member of congress, Daniel Silveira, to discuss a plan to “save Brazil” .
Continue reading...Ex-Brazil president who has been in Florida since 30 December is being investigated for attempt to topple country’s government
Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing investigation as part of an inquiry into an alleged attempt to topple the country’s government, has filed a request for a six-month visitor visa to stay in the US.
The former leader is understood to have entered the US on an A-1 visa reserved for sitting heads of state, which would expire on Tuesday, 30 days from the end of his presidential term.
Continue reading...Movement to tackle lack of diversity within Brazil’s foreign office coincides with Lula’s return to power
More than a century after Maria José de Castro Rebello Mendes became, in 1918, the first woman to enter Brazil’s diplomatic service, the country’s female diplomats have launched a new push for equal rights and opportunity. Women make up less than 25% of Brazil’s diplomatic corps and just 12% of ambassadors.
“We are blossoming at this moment of democratic government,” said Irene Vida Gala, a senior diplomat who served as ambassador to Ghana and is now the president of the newly created Association of Female Brazilian Diplomats.
Continue reading...Brazilian president says predecessor emboldened wildcat miners which led to wrecked forests and disease and death among Indigenous people
Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has accused Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right administration of committing genocide against the Yanomami people of the Amazon, amid public outrage over a humanitarian catastrophe in the country’s largest Indigenous territory.
Lula visited the Amazon state of Roraima on Saturday to denounce the plight of the Yanomami, whose supposedly protected lands have been plunged into crisis by government neglect and the explosion of illegal mining.
Continue reading...Júlio Cesar de Arruda reportedly stopped police detaining suspected rioters who took refuge outside army headquarters
The head of the Brazilian army has been sacked by the country’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, after claims the commander tried to shield rightwing rioters from arrest after the 8 January insurrection in Brasília.
Gen Júlio Cesar de Arruda, who only took up the role in late December, was removed from his position on Saturday, nearly two weeks after supporters of the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro brought havoc to Brazil’s capital in what Lula’s administration called a botched coup attempt.
Continue reading...Bolsonaro supporters are also accused of armed criminal association and violent attempt to subvert democratic state of law
The office of Brazil’s prosecutor-general has presented its first charges against some of the thousands of people who authorities say stormed government buildings in an effort to overturn former president Jair Bolsonaro’s loss in the October election.
The prosecutors in the recently formed group to combat antidemocratic acts have also requested that the 39 defendants who allegedly ransacked the Brazilian congress building be imprisoned as a preventive measure, and that 40m reais ($7.7m) of their assets be frozen to help cover damages.
Continue reading...Lula’s government claims it has ‘absolute control’ after storming of capital by Bolsonaro supporters, but failed putsch is not over, say insiders
Sônia Guajajara should have been making history last Tuesday afternoon, being sworn in as the head of Brazil’s first ministry for Indigenous peoples at a ceremony at the presidential palace in Brasília.
Instead, with that building wrecked last Sunday by thousands of far-right extremists, she sat in her office overlooking Brazil’s similarly ransacked congress, reflecting on the stunning attempt to overthrow one of the world’s biggest democracies.
Continue reading...Former justice minister Anderson Torres was capital’s security chief when far-right rioters stormed government buildings
One of Jair Bolsonaro’s key allies, the former justice minister Anderson Torres, has been arrested in Brazil’s capital in connection with last week’s alleged attempt to overthrow the country’s new government.
Torres, who was Brasília’s security chief at the time of the attacks, flew back from Florida, where he had purportedly been holidaying, on Saturday morning and was arrested by federal police at the city’s international airport.
Continue reading...Former president shared a video questioning last year’s election result after his supporters stormed Brasília’s democratic institutions
Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro will be investigated as part of an inquiry into an alleged attempt to topple the country’s new government, the supreme court has announced.
Thousands of radical followers of the far-right populist marauded through Brazil’s three most important democratic institutions last Sunday, apparently convinced by a tsunami of fake news that last October’s presidential election – which Bolsonaro lost – was rigged.
Continue reading...Brazilian government overturns former president’s 100-year ban to publish credit card records
Brazil’s new government has released the personal spending accounts of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, revealing the far-right leader’s apparent penchant for expensive hotels, big meals out – and ice-cream.
Bolsonaro, who lost his re-election bid in October, once boasted he did not withdraw “a single penny” from the corporate credit cards given to him and his closest advisers.
Continue reading...Former president entered the US after his election loss and is staying in Florida
Dozens of Democratic lawmakers, including some of the top members of the House foreign affairs committee, sent a letter to Joe Biden on Thursday demanding former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s diplomatic visa be canceled in the wake of the rampage in Brazil’s capital by his supporters.
“We request that you reassess his status in the country to ascertain whether there is a legal basis for his stay and revoke any such diplomatic visa he may hold,” said the letter. It continued: “The United States must not provide shelter for him, or any authoritarian who has inspired such violence against democratic institutions.”
Continue reading...President vows thorough investigation and says ‘many people were complicit … the truth is the palace was full of Bolsonaristas’
The Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said he suspects hardcore supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro among the presidential staff facilitated the entry of insurrectionists who stormed his presidential palace seeking to overthrow Brazil’s government.
Speaking to a group of political journalists in Brasília’s Planalto palace – one of three buildings trashed by the pro-Bolsonaro mob last Sunday – Lula vowed to carry out a “thorough screening” of employees in the wake of the historic attack.
Continue reading...Congresswoman Ilhan Omar leads joint statement focused on Sunday’s riots in Brasília and January 6 insurrection
More than 70 progressive US and Brazilian lawmakers have condemned the collaboration between the Bolsonaro family and Trumpists in the US aimed at overturning elections in both countries, and called for those involved to be held to account.
“As lawmakers in Brazil and the United States, we stand united against the efforts by authoritarian, anti-democratic far right actors to overturn legitimate election results and overthrow our democracies,” said the joint statement, led by Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
Continue reading...Far-right activists loyal to ex-president have launched what the government called a botched coup attempt
Security has been stepped up in Brazil’s capital amid concerns that hardcore supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro were planning to mobilise again, three days after thousands of extremists launched what the government has called a botched coup attempt.
Reports in the Brazilian media said far-right activists had summoned “a mega nationwide protest to retake power” on Wednesday afternoon. On Tuesday night, members of the national public security force in black SUVs could be seen taking up position along the esplanade leading to Brazil’s congress, supreme court and presidential palace – the three buildings stormed and ransacked during Sunday’s turmoil in Brasília.
Continue reading...Alexandre Padilha says insurrection by Bolsonaro supporters was well-organized ‘act of terrorism’ aimed at toppling government
The insurrection that shook Brazil’s capital was a well-organised coup attempt that was thwarted thanks to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s swift and firm reaction, one of the president’s top ministers has told the Guardian.
Speaking at the presidential palace on Tuesday, the minister of institutional relations, Alexandre Padilha, said he believed Sunday’s far-right assault on the three branches of Brazil’s government was “an act of terrorism” designed to bring down Lula’s week-old government.
Continue reading...High-profile figures call on followers to help track down Bolsonaro supporters who stormed congress
High-profile digital influencers have joined pro-democracy politicians and Brazil’s law enforcement agencies in an attempt to identify insurrectionists who took part in Sunday’s attack on the Brazilian government.
Thousands of people stormed and ransacked the presidential palace, the congress building and the supreme court in support of former president Jair Bolsonaro and his pro-military, far-right movement.
Continue reading...The striking similarities between events at the Capitol and Brasília stem from links fostered by the former presidents and their families
In the days following the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol, a Brazilian professor and expert on disinformation, David Nemer, gave an interview predicting the same thing would happen in Brazil two years later.
Sunday’s insurrection in Brasília came just two days after the second anniversary of the Capitol attack. Nemer said his prediction was not the work of a seer, but was based on analysis of the close and growing symbiosis of the hard right in the US and Brazil – a bond that was built up around the Trump and Bolsonaro families and their entourages.
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