Brazilian congress votes to impeach president Dilma Rousseff

[MowCowWhoHow III]

Source: The Guardian

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff suffered a crushing defeat on Sunday as a hostile and corruption-tainted congress voted to impeach her.

In a rowdy session of the lower house presided over by the president’s nemesis, house speaker Eduardo Cunha, and with 307 of the 513 deputies having backed impeachment, the government conceded it would not win enough votes to secure Rousseff’s position.

As the outcome became clear, Jose Guimarães, the leader of the Workers party in the lower house, conceded defeat with more than 80 votes still to be counted. “The fight is now in the courts, the street and the senate,” he said.

Watched by tens of millions at home and in the streets, the vote – which was announced deputy by deputy – saw the conservative opposition comfortably secure the two-thirds majority needed to advance the impeachment to the upper house.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/18/dilma-rousseff-congress-impeach-brazilian-president

[DetroitSocialist83]

1. Terrible.

[Recursion]

5. She could have probably survived if she hadn't tried to give Lula immunity

That appointment was absurd

[Odin2005]

6. That is what doomed her.

[Little Tich]

2. What a circus. n/t

[L. Coyote]

3. Corruption in politics, reminds me of Republicans in the 1990s.

[dhill926]

4. what a shit storm...

and with the Olympics coming up? Chaos....

[fbc]

7. Hey at least Hillary doesn't have to worry about being the first

female leader impeached.

[Codeine]

8. Sigh.

Posts like that are why we can't have nice things.

[fbc]

10. Odd post...

If Hillary becomes president, do you think she won't be impeached? Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with how it works. The House of Representatives decides that.

[malthaussen]

17. I'm not as certain of that as I once was.

I was sure the GOP would find an excuse to impeach Mr Obama. It's what they do. But it looks like he's going to escape that (still time left, agreed). So, if they don't think impeaching him is an idea whose time has come, then they might equally refrain from impeaching Mrs Clinton, especially if their standing in the House and Senate is reduced.

-- Mal

[Judi Lynn]

9. This article is something right-wing clowns should not speed read, and jump to stupid conclusions.

From the article published by the Guardian, written so simply even a US corporate "news" fan can grasp it:

On a dark night, arguably the lowest point was when Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right deputy from Rio de Janeiro, dedicated his yes vote to Carlos Brilhante Ustra, the colonel who headed the Doi-Codi torture unit during the dictatorship era. Rousseff, a former guerrilla, was among those tortured. Bolsonaro’s move prompted left-wing deputy Jean Wyllys to spit towards him

Eduardo Bolsonaro, his son and also a deputy, used his time at the microphone to honour the general responsible for the military coup in 1964..

Deputies were called one by one to the microphone by the instigator of the impeachment process, Cunha – an evangelical conservative who is himself accused of perjury and corruption – and one by one they condemned the president.

Yes, voted Paulo Maluf, who is on Interpol’s red list for conspiracy. Yes, voted Nilton Capixiba, who is accused of money laundering. “For the love of God, yes!” declared Silas Camara, who is under investigation for forging documents and misappropriating public funds. And yes, voted the vast majority of the more than 150 deputies who are implicated in crimes but protected by their status as parliamentarians.

[suffragette]

15. It is eye opening and very sad.

Glad the full story s being reported. Very different than what I've seen in the news here.

[floppyboo]

11. Sad. SA politics are fascinating. This 'coup' won't last. No real people behind it.

And Peru too. How many candidates on the progressive side were disqualified for bogus claims? Unfortunate fit of colonial past and western imperialism.

[Judi Lynn]

13. You're so right. Keiko Fujimori's campaign has bought votes, her dictator dad's in prison,

yet she remains to campaign on, as the leading candidate. What a nightmare.

Her father was torture-happy, and a death-squad user, and that seems to be where Peru is headed all over again, with help, no doubt, from fascists both within and outside Peru.

What a tragic crime.

[scottie55]

12. Imagine If Everyone Involved With The Corruption Went To Brazilian Prison

The bribers, and the bribees.

Like that's gonna happen.

They're almost as bad as us.....

[floppyboo]

14. Roussef was the cleanest politician in modern Brazilian history. FUCK!

[Judi Lynn]

16. If she were a thief and criminal like them she wouldn't have fought against them in her youth. n/t

[iandhr]

18. In the Financial Times there was a article about a new protest movement in Brazil.

It's called Out With Them All.

I think they want exactly that. Since the current corruption allegations in Brazil have ensnared people from across the ideological spectrum.

[Blue_Tires]

19. How much longer is Greenwald going to ignore this story

while he's constantly criticizing Washington from his ivory fucking tower??

[reorg]

20. Well, of course, he doesn't

After Vote to Remove Brazil’s President, Key Opposition Figure Holds Meetings in Washington

BRAZIL’S LOWER HOUSE of Congress on Sunday voted to impeach the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, sending the removal process to the Senate. In an act of unintended though rich symbolism, the House member who pushed impeachment over the 342-vote threshold was Dep. Bruno Araújo, himself implicated by a document indicating he may have received illegal funds from the construction giant at the heart of the nation’s corruption scandal. Even more significantly, Araújo belongs to the center-right party PSDB, whose nominees have lost four straight national elections to Rousseff’s moderate-left PT party, with the last ballot-box defeat delivered just 18 months ago, when 54 million Brazilians voted to re-elect Dilma as president.

Those two facts about Araújo underscore the unprecedentedly surreal nature of yesterday’s proceedings in Brasília, capital of the world’s fifth-largest country. Politicians and parties that have spent two decades trying, and failing, to defeat PT in democratic elections triumphantly marched forward to effectively overturn the 2014 vote by removing Dilma on grounds that, as today’s New York Times report makes clear, are, at best, dubious in the extreme. Even The Economist, which has long despised the PT and its anti-poverty programs and wants Dilma to resign, has argued that “in the absence of proof of criminality, impeachment is unwarranted” and “looks like a pretext for ousting an unpopular president.” ...

THE U.S. HAS been notably quiet about this tumult in the second-largest country in the hemisphere, and its posture has barely been discussed in the mainstream press. It’s not hard to see why. The U.S. spent years vehemently denying that it had any role in the 1964 military coup that removed Brazil’s elected left-wing government, a coup that resulted in 20 years of a brutal, pro-U.S., right-wing military dictatorship. But secret documents and recordings emerged proving that the U.S. actively helped plot that coup, and the country’s 2014 Truth Commission report documented that the U.S. and U.K. aggressively supported the dictatorship and even “trained Brazilian interrogators in torture techniques.”

That U.S-supported coup and military dictatorship loom large over the current controversy. President Rousseff and her supporters explicitly call the attempt to remove her a coup. One prominent pro-impeachment deputado who is expected to run for president, the right-wing Jair Bolsonaro (whom The Intercept profiled last year), yesterday explicitly praised the military dictatorship and pointedly hailed Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the dictatorship’s chief torturer (notably responsible for Dilma’s torture). Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, also in the House, said he was casting his impeachment vote “for the military men of ’64″: those who carried out the coup and imposed military rule.

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/18/after-vote-to-remove-brazils-president-key-opposition-figure-holds-meetings-in-washington/

Authors: Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Fishman, David Miranda

[Judi Lynn]

21. Your article should have its own thread.Please consider posting it in Good Reads&Latin America Forum

This is real information and it absolutely should be read, and remembered, by anyone who realizes he/she is aware we haven't been getting the truth from our corporate "news" sources.

It makes so much more sense for people to learn the truth now rather than waiting 20 years for the government to admit it, or even longer.

Excellent information. Thank you.