Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalBrazil ex-President Bolsonaro will stand trial over an alleged coup plan. Here's what happens next
By GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA
Updated 12:18 AM CDT, March 27, 2025
SAO PAULO (AP) — A panel of Brazil Supreme Court justices unanimously ruled that former President Jair Bolsonaro and seven of his associates will stand trial on five counts, including attempting to stage a coup after the far-right leader lost the 2022 election.
The panel will review existing evidence, potentially gather new evidence and hear testimonies. Legal experts estimate that Bolsonaro could be sentenced to up to 40 years in prison, though his actual jail time — if convicted — would be less than that due to procedural considerations.
Here’s what to know about what will happen after Wednesday’s ruling:
What charges does Bolsonaro face?
Bolsonaro will stand trial on the counts of attempting to stage a coup, involvement in an armed criminal organization, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, damage characterized by violence and a serious threat against the state’s assets, and deterioration of listed heritage.
The five-justices panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled based on the indictment by Prosecutor-General, Paulo Gonet. His formal accusation came from a federal police investigation that placed Bolsonaro on the top of a criminal organization that had been active since at least 2021.
Gonet also accused Bolsonaro of supporting a plan that allegedly included poisoning his successor, current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and killing Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
More:
https://apnews.com/article/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-supreme-court-trial-80e98eba0b7868580f78916850200c8d
Is Bolsonaro the Trump of the Tropics or is Trump the Bolsonaro of the States?
https://grist.org/article/is-bolsonaro-the-trump-of-the-tropics-or-is-trump-the-bolsonaro-of-the-states/
sons of racist fascist Presidents
Inspired by Trump, Bolsonaro is far worse
By Maxine L. Margolis
Post date
April 20, 2021
U.S. anthropologist Maxine L. Margolis looks at the similarities between the far right leaders Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, and how the Brazilian has gone beyond the chaos wrought by his North American idol.
By Maxine L. Margolis
—Naomi Klein, 2019
Jair Bolsonaro, elected President of Brazil in January 2019, has often been called “the Tropical Trump,” an apt depiction of the authoritarian leader of the world’s sixth most populace nation. As a long-time student of Brazil and a politically engaged American I have been struck by the remarkable parallels between President Bolsonaro and former U.S. President Donald Trump in their policies, personalities, and ideology. Their mutual incompetence in dealing with the Covid pandemic is just one glaring example of this.
The backgrounds of the two men are markedly different. Bolsonaro is the son of an itinerant dentist in rural Brazil, a retired captain in the Brazilian military, and a multi-year member of Brazil’s National Chamber of Deputies. Trump? We all know that Trump is what Brazilians call a “filho de papai,” a spoiled rich kid.
Bolsonaro and Trump have promoted similar policies towards the natural environment. In this Trump is to coal mining and offshore oil exploration, what Bolsonaro is to gold mining and cattle ranching in the Amazon. Bolsonaro supports the miners regardless of the environmental damage their exploits may cause, just as Trump supported his embattled coal miners despite the costs to the natural world.
Both loosened environmental regulations and partially gutted agencies charged with environmental oversight, leading to drastic reductions in enforcement. In the Amazon, raids by wildcat loggers and miners who no longer fear government fines or retribution have resulted in the murder of several indigenous leaders attempting to defend their lands. In Bolsonaro’s first year as president, killings of indigenous Brazilians reached their highest levels in more than two decades.
More:
https://www.brasilwire.com/inspired-by-trump-bolsonaro-is-far-worse/
As you can see, too much has happened since the 2nd article was written, and all of it is hideous.
Students from the entire world, inchuding the US, have been educated in Cuba
The agreement calls for them to work for a period of time when they get home among the poor with people who couldn't have otherwise afford medical treatment.
Have been posting this information here, along with some DU'ers who have personal knowledge of this arrangement, since at least as far back as 2002.
The charge of "slavery" has been thrown against the Cuban government by the radical right-wing racist Cuban "exiles" who populated South Florida and New Jersey for many years, in an attempt to create hatred of the revolution, and Cuban doctors who have been doing medicine for the right reason from the first. Cuban doctors have been loved and celebrated all over the world, often being the first to areas hit by hurricanes, earthquakes, disease, serving in the areas conventional money-motivated doctors would refuse to visit, among the poor.
Here's one reference. You can find more information by simply looking for it on the "system of tubes", the "Internets", as the late Senator/idiot from Alaska once defined it, Senator Ted Stevens, proud Republican and major grifter.
~ ~ ~
Who are the Americans who are going to study medicine in Cuba?
Thursday, June 28, 2018
American Sarpoma Sefa-Boakye discovered that she wanted to be a doctor at the age of nine. Born in southern California, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, she says that on her first trip to Africa for a funeral in her parents' homeland she was moved by poverty.
"I thought one way to help would be to become a doctor," Sarpoma, 39, tells BBC News Brazil.
When it came time to enter the medical school - which is offered in the United States as a graduate student - Sarpoma enrolled in American universities, but instead chose a less usual destination: the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in the capital Cuban, Havana.
According to her, what weighed in the decision was the possibility to finish the course without debts, since the Cuban government offers scholarships to the American students.
"I thought, 'Am I going to be able to afford a course in medicine in the United States, which costs between $ 200,000 and $ 300,000?'" He recalls.
Sarpoma is part of a group of 170 American doctors trained by ELAM, most of them black or Latino.
It may sound strange that citizens of a rich country like the United States participate in a program aimed at young people from low-income communities. But in American, Black and Latino colleges account for less than 6% of medical graduates.
"Most black and Latino students can not afford to pay for the medical course in the United States," says Melissa Barber, a graduate of ELAM in 2007 and the coordinator of the program that selects American students for Cuban school to IFCO (Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, in Portuguese), in New York.
In contrast, 47% of Americans trained by ELAM are black and 29% are Latino. In exchange for the free course, they undertake to work in areas lacking medical services when they return to their country.
Founded in 1999 to provide free education to young people from poor nations in Central America and the Caribbean affected by hurricanes Mitch and Georges, ELAM today brings together students from 124 countries.
The first Americans arrived in 2001 after leaders of Congressional Black Caucus, the group of black congressmen from the United States, visited the island and reported the shortage of doctors in some minority areas in their country. The Cuban leader at the time, Fidel Castro, offered scholarships to low-income Americans.
The selection of candidates is the responsibility of the IFCO, an institution that opposes the economic embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba. The final decision lies with ELAM.
"Every year, we receive 150 applications on average, of which about 30 actually enroll, and 10 are sent to Cuba," says Barber.
The course lasts six years, two more than in the United States. There is also an additional year, at the beginning of the course, dedicated to preparatory classes focusing on science and Spanish.
Despite the tension in relations between the two countries, the ELAM-trained Americans guarantee that the program leaves politics out. "Some people think that students are going to be used as a political tool on both sides, but that's not true, we're only there to study medicine," says Sarpoma.
Injections on the first day
The scholarship includes dormitory accommodation, three meals a day in the campus cafeteria, books in Spanish, a uniform and a small monthly financial aid.
Students are warned about "Spartan" accommodations, unlike what they are accustomed to in their country, and difficulties such as an occasional lack of energy and little access to the internet. But what most surprised Sarpoma was the method of education, focused on prevention and interactions with patients from the outset.
"In the United States, schools use actors to play the role of patients, not in Cuba, you learn in the clinic."
Barber highlights the community aspect of the Cuban system. "Teams formed by a doctor and a nurse are responsible for a small geographic area, they know that community. Patients go to the clinic, and the professionals also go from house to house."
In making the diagnosis, doctors are encouraged to consider biological, psychological, and social elements. "You are looking at the full picture, what is happening in the life of this patient, including social and environmental factors, that can cause these symptoms," he says.
More:
https://members.nmanet.org/news/407131/Who-are-the-Americans-who-are-going-to-study-medicine-in-Cuba.htm
Stories of Resistance: Monsignor Oscar Romero, El Salvador's Bishop of the Poor
Assassinated by El Salvador’s military dictatorship 45 years ago in 1980, Óscar Romero remains an icon of the country’s working class.
by Michael Fox
March 21, 2025
His was a voice people waited for all week long. A voice of love. A voice of reason. A voice against the violence that had descended on the region and spread like the plague.
This was late 1970s El Salvador. A country on the brink of civil war, ruled by a brutal, authoritarian government.
US-trained death squads were killing roughly 800 people a month.
And Monsignor Óscar Romero — Archbishop of San Salvador, the bishop of the poor — would not shy from denouncing the violence.
He preached every Sunday. His words were carried over the airwaves. People across Central America tuned in.
But he wasn’t always so outspoken. He was moved by what he saw around him. By the killings and the violence at the hands of state forces.
In 1977, just a month after Óscar Romero became archbishop of San Salvador, his close friend Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande was killed alongside a boy and an elderly peasant.
Grande had preached liberation theology and helped to establish Christian base communities that worked for social change. He had spoken out against the injustices and the repressive government.
“I, too, have to walk the same path,” Óscar Romero would later say, when he saw his friend’s body laying in state at San Salvador’s cathedral.
More:
https://therealnews.com/stories-of-resistance-monsignor-oscar-romero-el-salvadors-bishop-of-the-poor
Political Violence Informing Trump's Grip on Congress
With the president smashing norm after norm, even lawmakers within his party have feared for their personal safety, and at least one has told confidants that it has swayed his decision-making.
By Gabriel Sherman
February 19, 2025
Germany’s extreme-right AfD party. On Saturday, Trump declared on social media: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” This Tuesday, Trump blamed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the brutal war that was launched by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. “You should have never started it,” Trump falsely said of Zelenskyy, when in fact Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The US president then doubled down on the feud Wednesday, calling Zelenskyy a “dictator.”
Democrats are in the minority in both the House and Senate, which means the federal courts and congressional Republicans are the only guardrails on Trump’s second term. So far the judicial system seems to be holding—though a Trump-packed Supreme Court is now destined to rule on all manner of alleged overreach in the coming months. (And it’s an open question as to whether Trump will actually abide by rulings that go against him.)
Republicans in Congress, however, have consistently folded—approving all of Trump’s Cabinet picks, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, with only a faint whiff of pushback on some of their boundary-scorching backgrounds. The confirmations predictably short-circuited many Democratic observers, but the rolling headlines of late have even some Republicans decrying the seeming erosion of checks and balances in recent weeks.
“These are the heirs of the Greatest Generation, and they turned out to be the worst generation,” says Stuart Stevens, who served as a chief strategist on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and has since left the GOP, joining the anti-Trump Lincoln Project as a senior adviser. “It’s tempting to compare Republicans to Prussian aristocrats in 1930s Germany. But Prussian aristocrats were more responsible. They were dealing with civil unrest and the threat of a communist takeover. Republicans today have historically low unemployment, a record stock market. What’s their excuse?”
More:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-congress-political-violence
Laser Mapping Uncovers a 2,500-Year-Old Lost Amazonian Cities--Older Than the Roman Empire!
Buried beneath the dense Amazon rainforest, an ancient secret has just been uncovered. Using laser mapping, researchers have revealed something far older and more complex than expected. The discovery is reshaping everything we thought we knew about early civilizations in the Americas.
Arezki Amiri
Published on February 25, 2025
Read : 3 min
Laser Mapping Uncovers a 2,500-Year-Old Lost Amazonian Cities—Older Than the Roman Empire! | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel
For centuries, the Amazon rainforest was thought to be a vast, untouched wilderness, inhabited only by scattered hunter-gatherer societies. But cutting-edge Lidar technology has just shattered that idea—revealing an ancient network of massive Amazonian cities that existed more than 2,500 years ago.
These lost settlements, buried beneath thick jungle in Ecuador’s Upano Valley, were home to tens of thousands of people, boasting wide roads, ceremonial centers, and sophisticated agricultural systems. The findings rewrite pre-Columbian history and prove that the Amazon was once the heart of a thriving civilization.
A Lost Urban World Beneath the Jungle
Using laser pulses that penetrate dense vegetation, archaeologists discovered an intricate network of ancient cities spanning 300 square kilometers. The settlements, described today in Science, which predate even Roman London, included five major cities and ten smaller settlements.
The roads that connected them stretched for over 12 miles, some as wide as 33 feet, showing a high level of urban planning. At the heart of these cities stood massive earthen mounds, likely used for ceremonial or communal gatherings, demonstrating an advanced level of societal organization.
. . .
A lidar map of the city of Kunguints in the Ecuadorian Amazon reveals ancient streets lined with houses. Antoine Dorison and Stéphen Rostain
More:
https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/02/laser-mapping-uncovers-a-2500-year-old-lost-amazonian-cities-older-than-the-roman-empire/
Trump's aid cuts will lead to a surge in propaganda and misinformation, say press freedom groups
From Ukraine to Afghanistan, independent media organisations across the world are being forced to lay off staff or shut down after losing USAid funding
Harriet Barber, Rebecca Ratcliffe and Deepa Parent
Tue 11 Feb 2025 00.00 EST
Donald Trump’s foreign aid freeze will lead to a decline in the number of independent media outlets across the world, causing a surge in misinformation and playing into the hands of state propagandists, media organisations have warned.
The US president has suspended billions of dollars in projects supported by USAid, including more than $268m (£216m) allocated to support “independent media and the free flow of information”.
A USAid factsheet, accessed by the press freedom campaign group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) before being taken offline, showed that in 2023 the US agency funded training and support for 6,200 journalists, assisted 707 non-state news outlets and supported 279 civil-society organisations dedicated to strengthening independent media in more than 30 countries, including Iran, Afghanistan and Russia.
RSF said Trump’s decision had sowed “chaos and confusion”. Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF US, said: “Non-profit newsroom and media organisations have already had to cease operations and lay off staff. The most likely scenario is that after the 90-day freeze, they will disappear for ever.”
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/feb/11/trump-usaid-cuts-freeze-press-freedom-ukraine-afghanistan-media-rsf
A Gas Giant 500 Light-Years Away Has the Fastest Winds Ever Recorded: A Staggering 33,000 km/h
The fastest planetary winds ever found are tearing across a distant gas giant.
Tibi PuiubyTibi Puiu January 24, 2025 in News, Space Reading Time: 3 mins read
Edited and reviewed by Zoe Gordon
Some 500 light-years away, a giant gas planet named WASP-127b is caught in a cosmic tempest. Winds howl across its equator at speeds of up to 33,000 kilometers per hour (20,000 mph) — nearly six times faster than the planet itself rotates. These supersonic jetstreams, the fastest ever measured on a planet, are so furiously strong they’re rewriting our understanding of weather beyond the Solar System.
“This is something we haven’t seen before,” said Lisa Nortmann, an astronomer at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and lead author of the study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
There’s more to this far-away planet. While slightly larger than Jupiter, WASP-127b has only a fraction of its mass, giving it a “puffy” nature that intrigues scientists.
A Puffy Planet with a Violent Heart
WASP-127b’s low density makes it an ideal cosmic laboratory for studying atmospheric dynamics on other worlds. The team used the CRIRES+ instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile to analyze how starlight filters through the planet’s upper atmosphere. They detected water vapor and carbon monoxide, but what truly stunned them was the speed of the atmospheric material.
More:
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/a-gas-giant-500-light-years-away-has-the-fastest-winds-ever-recorded-a-staggering-33000-km-h/
Catholic Church leads struggle against whitewashing of Argentinian dictatorship
Eduardo Campos Lima/Crux
January 18, 2025 at 4:00 pm
SÃO PAULO, Brazil – In Argentina, the Catholic Church is one of the most active institutions resisting President Javier Milei’s policy of dismantling efforts to memorialise the military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983), according to a leading sociologist.
Over the past few months, the libertarian Milei has implemented several measures to reduce the social relevance of state institutions created since the 1980s to safeguard documents and historical items connected to the regime, which claimed at least 30,000 lives.
Even the number of victims of the military junta that seized control of the South American nation in 1976 has been continually challenged by Milei since his presidential campaign. He argues that fewer than a third of the traditionally estimated 30,000 victims were actually killed.
Milei’s administration’s attacks on the pillars of the policy of memory, truth, and justice are not only ideological – with a fierce denial of the crimes perpetrated by the regime – but also material.
Over the past few months, he has dismissed hundreds of state employees working in agencies connected to preserving the memory of the regime’s horrors, such as cultural centres and state archives.
More:
https://catholicherald.co.uk/catholic-church-leads-the-struggle-against-dismissing-memory-of-argentina-dictatorship/
Trump swearing-in event: Brazil's Bolsonaro faces travel ban, sees off wife
PTI |
Jan 18, 2025 10:46 PM IST
Brazil's Supreme Court on Thursday denied Bolsonaro's request to temporarily restore his passport so that he could travel to the inauguration
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro accompanies his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro who will be attending Trump's inauguration(AFP)
Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro said Saturday that he is the victim of political persecution as he accompanied his wife to the airport in Brasilia to board a flight to attend US President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration next week.
Brazil's Supreme Court on Thursday denied Bolsonaro's request to temporarily restore his passport so that he could travel to the inauguration, determining that Bolsonaro currently holds no position that would allow him to represent Brazil at the event.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes also said in the ruling that the far-right leader did not adequately prove to the court that he had been invited.
Bolsonaro told journalists at the airport that he is “upset” and “still shocked” by the decision.
“Obviously it would have been really good for me to go. President Trump would have really liked it,” Bolsonaro said. “But I am facing enormous political persecution by one person,” he added, referring to de Moraes.
More:
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/trump-swearing-in-event-brazils-bolsonaro-faces-travel-ban-sees-off-wife-101737219407804.html
US Sanctions Policy: Frequently Asked Questions
Apr 9, 2024
By Michael Galant
Economic sanctions have become a go-to instrument of US foreign policy. In recent decades, the number of US-imposed sanctions has more than quadrupled, but the increased use of this form of coercion has taken place with little discussion of the enormous human cost. Today, a growing body of evidence makes clear that broad, unilateral sanctions often kill — as well as severely harm — innocent people around the world.
. . .
What Are the Impacts of Economic Sanctions?
The evidence that economic sanctions cause serious harm to civilian populations is overwhelming. Broad sectoral sanctions are known to stunt a country’s overall economic growth, sometimes causing or prolonging recessions and even depressions. Sanctions also hinder access to essential goods such as food, energy, and medicine; obstruct humanitarian assistance; and, as a result, generate additional poverty, hunger, disease, and high numbers of avoidable deaths. The harm caused by economic sanctions, as with most economic shocks, is disproportionately borne by women and other oppressed and marginalized communities. US economic sanctions can even obstruct multilateral responses to global crises. For example, when the IMF issued $650 billion in Special Drawing Rights to support the global economy in 2021, US sanctions on central banks prevented many countries from making use of their share of the allocation.
A recent literature review showed that 30 of 32 peer-reviewed, quantitative studies found that broad sanctions have a significant negative impact on measures such as income, poverty, mortality, and human rights. US sanctions on Venezuela are estimated to have contributed to tens of thousands of deaths in a single year. Sanctions on North Korea were estimated to have led to the deaths of approximately 4,000 civilians in 2018 alone. In short: sanctions kill.
These devastating economic and humanitarian consequences in turn drive civilians to seek better lives elsewhere, including in the United States. This link between sanctions and migration has been highlighted by leading economists, members of Congress, and foreign leaders.
Are the Civilian Impacts of Economic Sanctions Avoidable?
Many, including US Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA), when he served as Chair of the House Rules Committee, have argued that broad sanctions are imposed with the intention of targeting civilians, and with the implicit goal of inducing such widespread hardship as to lead affected populations to put pressure on, or overthrow, their governments: “The impact of sectoral and secondary sanctions is indiscriminate, and purposely so,” wrote McGovern in a letter to President Biden, calling for an end to the sanctions against Venezuela. “Although U.S. officials regularly say that the sanctions target the government and not the people, the whole point of the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign is to increase the economic cost to Venezuela … Economic pain is the means by which the sanctions are supposed to work. … It is not Venezuelan officials who suffer the costs. It is the Venezuelan people.”
More:
https://cepr.net/publications/us-sanctions-policy-frequently-asked-questions/
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