Since 16 February an army general has been in charge of policing and security in the state of Rio de Janeiro. This is the effect of a surprise decree issued by President Michel Temer, since approved by both chambers of the Brazilian Congress. This is the first time since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985 that power...
São Paulo, 26 January 2018. Not only was Lula’s appeal rejected and his sentence increased to twelve years by the court in Porto Alegre on 24 January, but in Brasilia another judge banned him from travelling to Ethiopia on a previously planned trip to take part in a FAO conference on food, to prevent him ‘asking for political asylum’.
Lula’s...
A week on from the general elections held in Honduras, on 27 November, there is still no definitive result. The main candidates are presidential incumbent Juan Orlando Hernández, referred to locally as JOH, of the right-wing National Party, versus Salvador Nasralla of the Opposition Alliance, which brings together sectors from the political left and centre ground. The political environment...
In this video, posted on 1 December Gregory Wilpert of Real News interviews Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington to analyse the Honduran elections.
Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission has still not declared the official results. After massive protests in Tegucigalpa and other cities by supporters of the opposition candidate, Salvador Nasralla, the government...
1 December 2017. Just over a year ago, Rio was on a roll, basking in post-Olympic glory, applauded all over the world for a successful Games. Now the arrest of its most prominent politicians has exposed the rotten underbelly of the ‘cidade maravilhosa’, the beautiful city. They are facing accusations of blatant, scandalous corruption schemes that have been ripping...
This report by Nasim Chatha for Truthout was first published on July 22 2017. You can read the original here.
The new federal penitentiary in Santa Barbara, Honduras, occupies a strip of land between a highway and cloudy, forested hills. "El Pozo," or The Pit, as it's known, is surrounded by barbed wire and has two additional checkpoints beyond the...
The small town of Quedas do Iguaçu, in southern Brazil close to the border with Paraguay, awoke to the sound of helicopters on November 4 last year. After eight months, a police investigation aimed at an alleged criminal conspiracy within the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) was about to come to fruition. Sixteen arrest warrants were issued - 14 of them against...
Sāo Paulo, 16 September: Like a tropical King Canute, president Michel Temer defies the waves of accusations battering his government, even when they are presented by the chief prosecutor himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR2ZsDt9SPk
credit: Metropoles.com
In a 240-page indictment, Rodrigo Janot, the chief prosecutor, has accused the president, his closest ministers and allies, all members of the PMDB, of forming a ‘quadrilhão’ – big criminal...
Vitória lives in a small two-room house with her baby son Lucas and mother Laura in Jardim Guarani, on the northern periphery of São Paulo, Brazil. She welcomes us for a coffee in her small kitchen that also serves as a lounge. The family store their belongings next to a bunk bed in the only bedroom, where they all...
This article was originally published by Mongabay on 28 July 2017.
This week, Brazil’s internationally recognized Landless Workers Movement (MST) launched a coordinated protest against corruption, with thousands of its members occupying six farms affiliated with government officials and Brazil’s wealthy elite.
Farms were occupied by hundreds of protesting landless families in the states of Mato Grosso, Piauí, Rio...