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Judge orders Brazil's Lula freed on appeal
Source: BBC News
A Brazilian judge has ordered the release of ex-President Luiz Inacio 'Lula' da Silva.
The judge said the left-wing politician must be released from prison in Curitiba while an appeal process is carried out.
Lula, who led the country from 2003 to 2010, had been sentenced to 12 years and one month in prison for corruption and money laundering. He was jailed after a close vote, with six Supreme Court Justice in favour of jailing him and five against.
He has always proclaimed his innocence, saying the conviction was politically motivated.
Polls conducted before he was jailed in April suggested that Lula was the frontrunner for the presidential elections, which will be held in October.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44759692
Former Brazilian President Lula da Silva.
Arguably his country's most prominent detainee, he maintains a commanding lead in polls ahead of presidential elections this October.
10 replies
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The hard right in Brazil, the same element which wildly supported the Brazilian military dictatorship, along with its kidnappings, torture, murders, and has been publicly demanding its return in recent years in repeating demonstrations, attempted to overthrow Lula da Silva throughout his two terms as President, tried every possible angle to smear and attack him, then set its sights on his leftist successor, Dilma Rousseff, intending to place a virulently misogynistic, racist radical right-winger in the President's office.
Lula has an extreme lead over their fascist, racist, woman-hating candidate, and they intend to keep Lula da Silva out of the election.
Information not given honest coverage by the corporate media which completely has white washed the war against the left in Brazil, although it's no secret at all outside the U.S.:
BRASIL WIRE , MARCH 24, 2018
Violence Against Brazilian Left: Militias Attack Lula Rallies
In Rio Grande do Sul, right wing militia beats up four women during speech by Lula, blocks road to prevent people from arriving at event.
For the past four years, the US-government has collaborated on a political witchhunt, called the Lava Jato investigation, designed to destroy the legacy of former president Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva and other left wing politicians across Latin America to open up exploitation of natural resources for US corporations. During the course of prosecuting Lula for illegal reforms on an apartment he is unable to prove he ever owned or set foot in, US State Department-trained judge and prosecutor Sergio Moro has repeatedly broken Brazilian law, conducting illegal phone taps and leaking them to the media, illegally collaborating with the US Department of Justice, receiving government judicial rent subsidy while owning a penthouse apartment, and recieiving a monthly salary which is over double the legal limit for judges. Despite the constant barrage of harassment against Lula, which is exacerbated by a conservative, partisan media and now Netflix, he remains the most popular politician in the country and favored candidate in the 2018 presidential elections.
As conservatives grow increasingly frustrated with the left’s continued popularity, violence against labor union members, activists and leftist politicians is on the rise. Ten leftist activists have been assasinated in the last 5 months and last week, as Lula made a series of Caravan visits to towns in Rio Grande de Sul state, right-wing militias physically attacked men and women who came out to see him speak with brass knuckles, rocks and whips. The Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party/PT) congessional caucus issued the following public statement condemning violent suppression of the right to assembly.
In Rio Grande do Sul, right wing militia beats up four women during speech by Lula, blocks road to prevent people from arriving at event.
For the past four years, the US-government has collaborated on a political witchhunt, called the Lava Jato investigation, designed to destroy the legacy of former president Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva and other left wing politicians across Latin America to open up exploitation of natural resources for US corporations. During the course of prosecuting Lula for illegal reforms on an apartment he is unable to prove he ever owned or set foot in, US State Department-trained judge and prosecutor Sergio Moro has repeatedly broken Brazilian law, conducting illegal phone taps and leaking them to the media, illegally collaborating with the US Department of Justice, receiving government judicial rent subsidy while owning a penthouse apartment, and recieiving a monthly salary which is over double the legal limit for judges. Despite the constant barrage of harassment against Lula, which is exacerbated by a conservative, partisan media and now Netflix, he remains the most popular politician in the country and favored candidate in the 2018 presidential elections.
As conservatives grow increasingly frustrated with the left’s continued popularity, violence against labor union members, activists and leftist politicians is on the rise. Ten leftist activists have been assasinated in the last 5 months and last week, as Lula made a series of Caravan visits to towns in Rio Grande de Sul state, right-wing militias physically attacked men and women who came out to see him speak with brass knuckles, rocks and whips. The Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party/PT) congessional caucus issued the following public statement condemning violent suppression of the right to assembly.
In Rio Grande do Sul, right wing militia beats up four women during speech by Lula, blocks road to prevent people from arriving at event.
For the past four years, the US-government has collaborated on a political witchhunt, called the Lava Jato investigation, designed to destroy the legacy of former president Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva and other left wing politicians across Latin America to open up exploitation of natural resources for US corporations. During the course of prosecuting Lula for illegal reforms on an apartment he is unable to prove he ever owned or set foot in, US State Department-trained judge and prosecutor Sergio Moro has repeatedly broken Brazilian law, conducting illegal phone taps and leaking them to the media, illegally collaborating with the US Department of Justice, receiving government judicial rent subsidy while owning a penthouse apartment, and recieiving a monthly salary which is over double the legal limit for judges. Despite the constant barrage of harassment against Lula, which is exacerbated by a conservative, partisan media and now Netflix, he remains the most popular politician in the country and favored candidate in the 2018 presidential elections.
As conservatives grow increasingly frustrated with the left’s continued popularity, violence against labor union members, activists and leftist politicians is on the rise. Ten leftist activists have been assasinated in the last 5 months and last week, as Lula made a series of Caravan visits to towns in Rio Grande de Sul state, right-wing militias physically attacked men and women who came out to see him speak with brass knuckles, rocks and whips. The Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party/PT) congessional caucus issued the following public statement condemning violent suppression of the right to assembly.
Note of repudiation of the fascist violence against former President Lula’s speaking tour in southern Brazil
The Worker’s Party parliamentary caucus in the Lower House repudiates the fascist acts of right wing agribusiness actors in Rio Grande do Sul state during the caravan of the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which began last Monday, March 19.
Since de beginning of the caravan activities, in the city of Bagé, a group used paramilitary militia tactics to attack the entourage vehicles with stones and other objects. In addition, militiamen also assaulted PT supporters. A group attacked four women with fascist violence violence in Cruz Alta and others supporters of Lula in each city along the way.
From the first day of the caravan the local, state and federal authorities – including the state governor and the ministers of Public Security and Justice – were notified by the PT regarding the threats and violent actions of the militiamen. Despite this, the belligerence of the rural militias did not cease and, in some moments, even increased.
The climax of this violence occurred on Friday, April 23, in Passo Fundo, where the access road to the city was blocked and buses were stoned by the fascist mob that acted as a holder of the privileges of the lords of colonial times.
More:
http://www.brasilwire.com/ruralist-militias-attack-lula-rallies/
~ ~ ~
Most U.S. Americans are totally unaware that plantation owners in the U.S. American South moved to Brazil, after the Civil War, to continue their filthy ownership of people forced to live as slaves.
Confederados Took Their Slaves To Brazil
Brazil lured Confederate slave owners after the Civil War. Slavery was still legal there, and it was in wider swing than it ever had been in the US. About five million slaves had been sent across the Atlantic to Brazil—more than 10 times the number that had been sent to the US.For many Confederates, that was a selling point. Between 10,000 and 20,000 people moved from the US to Brazil under the promise that they would be allowed to keep their slaves. Some dragged their newly emancipated slaves with them to a land where the freedmen could be forced back into servitude. Meanwhile, other Confederates picked up new slaves in Brazil at discounted prices.Even today, there are little communities in Brazil that still revere their American slave-owning ancestors, called “Confederados” by the community that took them in.[6] Now 150 years later, the descendants of slavers still wave Confederate flags and speak with a Georgia twang.
More:
http://listverse.com/2017/06/21/10-ways-american-slavery-continued-long-after-the-civil-war/
. . .
Os Confederados: The Southerners Who Moved Still Further South
by Bill Izard
By mid-1865 the War was over and the South had lost—everything. Her cities and farmland were destroyed, political rights denied, the finest of her husbands, fathers, and sons dead or disabled. With Lincoln dead and Radical Republican revenge on the horizon, the occupied territory of the southern United States did not appear to be a promising place for the foreseeable future. Many Southerners decided to leave. Some resettled out west, others even relocated in the North, and some went as far as friendly England. But the most popular destination for expatriate Confederates was a country further south: Brazil, where summer is perpetual and the harvest year-round.
There was nothing random about the Southerners’ choice. At the war’s end Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil, a Mason, began an extensive recruitment campaign, primarily among fellow Masonic brothers, offering the world’s leading cotton-growing experts—American Southerners—some of the best cotton-growing land at twenty-two cents an acre, hoping to boost his own country’s developing economy. The South’s most respected Robert E. Lee and other leaders throughout the South urged Southerners to resist the offers: the South had lost too many of her best men already. Defeated and rejected in their own land, however, many Southerners responded to the warm welcome extended by the Brazilians, and Dom Pedro’s plan worked to the good of both parties. Over the next two decades as many as 10,000 Confederate refugees relocated to Brazil. Over half eventually returned to the United States and some succumbed to deadly tropical disease. But several thousand brave pioneers remained permanently, not only forging a new life in a strange land but succeeding in it and making valuable contributions to their new country.
In 1866 an ex-senator from Alabama, Colonel William Norris, became the first American settler in Brazil, purchasing land near the Quilombo River in the state of São Paulo. A year later many more Americans came to settle in or near the “Norris colony” and in other areas throughout Brazil. When new arrivals saw 100% returns on their first two-year cotton plantings, the success stories brought new waves of Southerners fleeing worsening conditions back home. In 1875 the Brazilian government built a railway station near Norris’s settlement—one hundred cars were needed to haul the popular watermelon crop alone in the late 1800’s—and the village that grew up around it soon became known popularly as Villa dos Americanos, “Town of the Americans.” At the opening of the twentieth century officials adopted the name Villa Americana, and today the city begun by Confederate Americans, with a population of over 200,000, is called simply “Americana.”
Americana is still home to about 20,000 direct descendants of these original Southern planters—Italian immigrants quickly moved in and outnumbered them—but there may be as many as ten times that number distributed throughout all of Brazil. They are in their fifth and sixth generations now. On the whole, despite English-sounding names and lingering Southern accents for some, these down-stream Confederados think, look, and act like other Brazilians.
Once a year, however, at the Festa Confederada, the South rises in their blood to celebrate their heritage. Proud descendants, most of mixed races, fly the Confederate flag—there is no racial stigma attached to it in Brazil. Women deck out as Southern belles, complete with hoop skirts, while the men don uniforms of Confederate gray, dance with the girls, and drink over the War. On the menu are Southern fried chicken, chess pie, and mouth-watering biscuits; “Dixie” plays in the background. Were it not for the Portuguese being spoken by participants, an observer might imagine himself in Mississippi or Alabama of a hundred and fifty years ago.
More:
http://porterbriggs.com/os-ponfederados-the-southerners-who-moved-still-further-south/
Pictures of the slave owner's descendants celebrating at their Festa Confederata:
https://i.cbc.ca/1.3607040.1464614364!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_1180/festa-confederada.jpg
Many more images of Brazilian US Confederate slavery proponents' descendants in their annual celebration:
https://tinyurl.com/y78tlc33
It shouldn't take anyone too long to grasp why Brazil and Argentina, and Paraguay, as well as Chile, and Bolivia, etc. were such magnets for German Nazis looking for new homes immediately after the Second World War.
A judge ordered that Lula be freed three times but was overruled, as Brazilians compared the drama to a World Cup shootout
Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
@domphillips
Mon 9 Jul 2018 11.27 EDT
Supporters of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s jailed former president, hope that he may soon be released from prison following an extraordinary legal skirmish that almost saw him freed at the weekend.
Lula – who is serving a 12-year sentence for money laundering and corruption – has consistently proclaimed his innocence, saying his conviction was a politically-motivated attempt to stop him running for October’s presidential elections.
The former president remains the country’s most popular leader in recent decades, and leads the election race, even though his conviction is widely understood to make him ineligible – although his party disputes this.
On Sunday, Rogério Favreto, a judge covering the weekend at an appellate court in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, ordered that Lula be freed three times following a legal move by three lawmakers from Lula’s leftist Workers’ party – who argued that his pre-candidature for October’s presidential elections merited his release.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/09/brazil-lula-supporters-hope-release-is-near-after-weekend-of-legal-drama
