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Bolsonaro promotes a demonstration criticized by the Legislative and Judiciary

Wednesday, March 11th 2020 - 08:46 UTC
Full article 10 comments
“If a politician is afraid of the street, he should get out of politics,” said Bolsonaro, a former army captain. “If a politician is afraid of the street, he should get out of politics,” said Bolsonaro, a former army captain.

Brazil's far-right president Jair Bolsonaro called on his backers to take to the streets next weekend to show their support for him, even as critics said such a demonstration would be anti-democratic.

“This is not a movement against the Parliament or the judicial branch, but for Brazil,” Bolsonaro said in northern Boa Vista state. The point of the March 15 demonstration, he added, would be to show that “it is the people who determine the direction the country should take.”

Bolsonaro provoked an outcry recently when he shared on the WhatsApp messaging system a video calling for the March 15 rally. The video was highly critical of both Parliament and the judiciary branch.

Leading lawmakers sharply protested, as did several Supreme Court justices.

Bolsonaro said at the time that he was merely passing the video along to a few friends. But later he openly embraced the call for what he said would be a “spontaneous movement.”

“If a politician is afraid of the street, he should get out of politics,” said Bolsonaro, a former army captain.

Pro-Bolsonaro demonstrations last May brought tens of thousands of people to the streets of Brazilian cities.

But pressure on Bolsonaro has grown amid an economic slowdown. Brazil's GDP grew a tepid 1.1 percent in 2019, his first year in office. That was its slowest pace in three years.

Categories: Politics, Brazil.

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  • DemonTree

    https://preview.redd.it/ty0n08u4opl41.png?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=6b853650dda148a7887ca6d7bdadd6b0e1806dd1

    Mar 11th, 2020 - 01:14 pm 0
  • Jack Bauer

    DT
    (Cont “Reedition of Kirchner's aggr policy..”)
    Probably Pedro I only thought abt independence after his father (João VI) returned to Portugal, when it became clear the latter was determined to keep on exploiting Brazil.
    Being 8 when he arrived, he identified more with Brazil than the Portuguese court.

    Sure, Cochrane had a strong personality ‘n didn’t condone corruption, so more times than not, he was at loggerheads with corrupt officials - becomes very clear fm dozens of letters in his “Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru, & Brazil, from Spanish and Portuguese Domination”…wasn’t paranoia, ‘n his suspicions were well founded.
    His personality didn’t change after being framed in 1814 (with the help of his uncle, in the Admiralty), just made him more determined. The names of two of his sons are dead giveaways.

    Borders in the Amazon region are virtually no-man’s land, quite lawless ‘n dangerous. The “bandeirantes” went west looking for gold, silver ‘n precious stones, so once there, why not claim the land ?
    Wars over territorial disputes were far greater in the south, where the “prizes” of war were far more obvious, ‘n where Spain’s ex-colonies were out to grab what they could.

    Rgdng Africa 'n it’s 100s of tribes, same tribes on opposite sides of a border are less likely to cause trouble than different tribes within the same border. It’s much the same in the middle east, where the various Muslim sects never agree on anything.

    “Seems to work better in the US & other countries formed by immigrants” ;
    W/O a doubt, people striving for the same ideals, will integrate better. Florida (US) is a good example : despite a majority of “Latinos”, they have embraced the American ‘way-of-life’.

    Perhaps the nationalist movements within the Austro-Hungarian empire contributed to their defeat 1918, 'n the ‘not-so-different’ cultures made post-war easier to deal with.
    In Africa, the colonizers couldn’t have been more different to those they colonized.

    Mar 14th, 2020 - 08:46 pm 0
  • DemonTree

    “Being 8 when he arrived, he identified more with Brazil than the Portuguese court.”

    Makes sense. And Brazil was already bigger and had a huge potential to grow. He ended up having to return to Portugal though, didn't he?

    Re Cochrane, shame those countries were already so corrupt right from the beginning. I thought it was quite cool he gave his sons the names of the independence leaders of Chile and Brazil, though.

    Not surprised the Amazon borders are lawless, some of them look almost impossible to get to. Did the bandeirantes find what they were looking for? By wars in the south, do you mean the one with Argentina over Uruguay, and the Paraguayan war?

    In the Middle East I think peoples being split between countries also causes problems. Eg Turkey attacking the Kurds in Syria because of the Kurdish separatists in Turkey, although both were opposed to IS and Assad.

    D'you think Brazil is better at integrating people than Europe? It certainly seems to have less of a problem with Muslim citizens going off the Middle East and joining IS, or carrying out terrorist attacks at home.

    “Perhaps the nationalist movements within the Austro-Hungarian empire contributed to their defeat 1918”

    I'd say they definitely did. And so did the Arab Revolt contribute to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. But the Arabs perhaps were still thinking of themselves more as separate tribes than as a nation, and anyway the attitude of the winning allies made a big difference afterwards; whether they believed a people deserved independence/self rule or not. They were all much influenced by racism at that time, since they used it as a justification for keeping their colonies.

    Can't reply on the other story; the comments have closed.

    Mar 15th, 2020 - 10:22 am 0
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