Judges are bought and sold in Brazil...why are you surprised. People who also got rich with him are not going to sell him down the river so he can turn on them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/world/americas/glenn-greenwald-brazil-cybercrimes.html Glenn Greenwald Charged With Cybercrimes in Brazil Mr. Greenwald is accused of being part of a “criminal investigation” that hacked into the cellphones of prosecutors and public officials. RIO DE JANEIRO — Federal prosecutors in Brazil on Tuesday charged the American journalist Glenn Greenwald with cybercrimes for his role in bringing to light cellphone messages that have embarrassed prosecutors and tarnished the image of an anticorruption task force. In a criminal complaint made public on Tuesday, prosecutors in the capital, Brasília, accused Mr. Greenwald of being part of a “criminal organization” that hacked into the cellphones of several prosecutors and other public officials last year. Mr. Greenwald, an ardent critic of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, is a deeply polarizing figure in Brazil, where his work is lionized by leftists and condemned as partisan and heavy handed by officials in the Bolsonaro administration. The news organization Mr. Greenwald co-founded, The Intercept Brasil, published articles last year based on the leaked cellphone messages that raised questions about the integrity and the motives of key members of Brazil’s justice system. The articles cast doubt on the impartiality of a former judge, Sérgio Moro, and of some of the prosecutors who worked on a corruption investigation that landed several powerful political and business figures in prison. Among those charged in connection with the corruption investigation was a former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a popular leftist whose conviction paved the way for the election of Mr. Bolsonaro. Mr. Moro was the judge who handled that case, and he is now Mr. Bolsonaro’s minister of justice. The charges against Mr. Greenwald raise concerns among journalists and advocates for a free press because journalists often rely on confidential or leaked information, sometimes obtained by whistle-blowers or hackers. Mr. Greenwald has been part of a team that won some of the most important prizes in journalism — the George Polk Award and the Pulitzer Prize for public service — for reporting on documents that described government surveillance. The documents were passed on to him by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor with the National Security Agency of the United States who later faced espionage charges in connection with the leak. In a statement Mr. Greenwald called the charges “an obvious attempt to attack a free press in retaliation for the revelations we reported about Minister Moro and the Bolsonaro government.” Mr. Greenwald, who has not been detained, said he intended to continue publishing and cast the case against him as a test of Brazil’s democracy. “We will not be intimidated by these tyrannical attempts to silence journalists,” he said. In a 95-page criminal complaint, prosecutors say that The Intercept Brasil, the news organization Mr. Greenwald co-founded, did more than merely receive the hacked messages and oversee the publication of newsworthy information. Citing intercepted messages between Mr. Greenwald and the hackers, prosecutors say the journalist played a “clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime.” For instance, prosecutors contend that Mr. Greenwald encouraged the hackers to delete archives that had already been shared with The Intercept Brasil, in order to cover their tracks. Prosecutors also say that Mr. Greenwald was communicating with the hackers while they were actively monitoring private chats on Telegram, a messaging app. The complaint charged six other individuals, including four who were detained last year in connection with the cellphone hacking. Legal experts and leftist politicians criticized the decision to charge Mr. Greenwald, calling the evidence outlined against him thin. Thiago Bottino, a legal expert at Fundação Getúlio Vargas University in Rio de Janeiro, said prosecutors had not described evidence that suggests Mr. Greenwald broke the law. “There’s nothing in the complaint showing that he helped or guided” the hackers, he said. Mr. Bottino said Brazil’s case law gave journalists broad protections. “You can’t punish a journalist for divulging a document that was obtained through criminal means,” he said. Gleisi Hoffman, the president of the Workers’ Party, the largest opposition party, called the charge an abuse of power. “They want a police state, with more farces, illegalities and arbitrary acts,” she wrote in a message on Twitter. Mr. Greenwald moved to Brazil in 2005 after meeting David Miranda, a Brazilian man whom he later married and who became a federal congressman last year. Mr. Greenwald first became widely known for his role in the release of classified national security documents leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. He co-founded The Intercept Brasil in 2016. Mr. Greenwald expressed concern last year that the authorities might charge him criminally as a reprisal for The Intercept Brasil’s reporting based on the leaked messages. Mr. Bolsonaro left little doubt that he would relish seeing the journalist punished. In late July, the president used a derisive term to refer to Mr. Greenwald and said the journalist “might wind up in jail.” Mr. Greenwald’s concerns were partly based on reports that federal officials were investigating his finances. Those reports led a Supreme Court justice, Gilmar Mendes, to issue an extraordinary order barring the federal police from investigating Mr. Greenwald’s role in the dissemination of the hacked messages. Prosecutors on Tuesday said they had abided by that order until they found audio messages which, they argued, implicated Mr. Greenwald in criminal activity. The charges came as a “huge surprise,” Mr. Greenwald said in an interview on Tuesday, because the Federal Police issued a report in December that cleared him of having engaged in criminal conduct related to the phone hacks. Mr. Greenwald said he had been methodical in his dealings with the source who gave him the leaked chats, mindful of the lessons he had learned in the Snowden case. “The one thing I could not do is give direction,” Mr. Greenwald said. “That’s crossing a line. I was very careful.” The prosecutor who filed the case, Wellington Oliveira, last month charged the president of Brazil’s bar association with libel for making disparaging remarks about Mr. Moro. A federal judge recently dismissed the case, ruling that Mr. Oliveira’s argument lacked a solid legal base. The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed alarm over the case against Mr. Greenwald. “Charging journalists with criminal activity based on interactions with sources sends a chilling message to reporters working on sensitive stories at a time when the Brazilian media is increasingly under attack from officials in its own government,” said Natalie Southwick, the program coordinator at the committee who monitors press freedom in Latin America.
agree, but don't agree with the explanation. It goes right back to spain and portugal, and the heritage of these countries, not to dna -- though to be sure the dna is there also..
Ha ha ha. Well, yes. But is it because they (we) were white? Probably not. I'm sure volumes can, and have been, be written on this topic. Volumes I have neither the time nor inclination to read. But I have always thought that religion would be a good jumping off place for research. And too, the impact of the thirteenth Century Magna Carta, as its impact spilled over to lands colonized by the English Crown, must be considered. Why is it that lands colonized by the Spanish and Portuguese experience more corruption today than those colonized by the English, the Netherlanders, the Scandinavians, or, lord help us, the French? (Here, I should confess, I am a hopeless Francophile.)
It's rather simple I think. The Portuguese and Spaniards came as conquerors, to rape, pillage, and steal. They weren't bashful about mixing w/the natives either as they did not bring families over. The culture of screwing over others to get to the top thus remains. A pretty rigid bureaucracy that answered to the crown meant greasing palms was probably the only way to get anything done. The British colonies were actual families trying to make it work in a foreign land. Sure there was plenty of stealing and pillaging from the natives, but there's none of them left to carry on that tradition. By and large it was building something from the ground up even if it was on the back of slaves. Latin America is littered with colonial palaces of government and church, monuments of those monarchies and their oppression, but very few actual retail buildings or old companies from those times remain....come to think of it, I can only remember big plantation "haciendas" from my travels.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56326389 Lula: Brazil ex-president's corruption convictions annulled A Supreme Court judge in Brazil has annulled ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's corruption convictions, opening a path to a possible run for the presidency in 2022. He was convicted following an investigation into a huge bribery scandal, dubbed Operation Car Wash,. But Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin said the court that had convicted Lula had lacked the necessary jurisdiction. The prosecutor-general's office said it would appeal against the annulment. Why does it matter? Lula, who governed Brazil between 2003 and 2010, is a towering figure in left-wing politics in Brazil and beyond. He is also the most senior politician to have been convicted as part of Operation Car Wash, the corruption scandal which brought down dozens of politician and business leaders across the country but which by some - including Lula - has been denounced as a political witch hunt. In 2018, Lula was the front-runner for the presidency even though he was in jail serving a 12-year corruption sentence. After his conviction was upheld on appeal, Lula was banned from the presidential race. The ban came just over a month before the first round of the election and the man who replaced Lula as the candidate for the Workers' Party, Fernando Haddad, did not have the same recognition or popularity and was defeated by the far-right candidate, Jair Bolsonaro. Justice Fachin's decision could clear the way for Lula to run for the presidency in 2022, where his main rival would likely be Mr Bolsonaro, who is widely expected to run for a second term in office. An opinion poll conducted by Ipec on Sunday suggested Lula would gain more votes than Mr Bolsonaro - the only politician to do so. A lot could happen between now and 2022 - no more so than in Brazil where courts famously go back and forth on the finer detail - but if Lula does run in 2022, it's set to be an explosive campaign - one that many experts feel has kicked off today. Jair Bolsonaro is expected to run for re-election and if Lula faces him, it would divide the country much like the 2018 elections. Although Lula couldn't run in the end, Bolsonaro was propelled to power by many Brazilians' hatred of him and his Workers' Party. Politics was - and still is - polarised. While Lula remains very popular, he's seen by his detractors as a symbol of corruption at the very top. The difference this time of course is Covid-19 - in recent months, Jair Bolsonaro has been heavily criticised for his handling of the pandemic and the economy is struggling - that might alter his chances of victory. No matter what, the two men are set to dominate politics in the months to come. Why was Lula's conviction annulled? Justice Fachin was responding to a request by Lula's lawyer who questioned whether the court that convicted Lula had jurisdiction to try him. Mr Fachin agreed with Lula's lawyers that the court located in the city of Curitiba, in Paraná state, should not have tried Lula because the crimes he was accused of did not take place in that state. At the time of the alleged crimes, Lula was president and resided in the capital, Brasilia. Justice Fachin said the cases against him should therefore be handled by a court in that city. He annulled four corruption cases against Lula and ordered they be retried in Brasilia. What does this mean for Lula? The 75-year-old is free to run for political office - for now at least. Despite Lula's lawyers saying the decision was a vindication "of his innocence", Mr Fachin did not make any kind of ruling on whether the former president was guilty or not of the corruption charges. It just means that the cases against Lula are going back to square one. So he could be convicted again. Can the decision be overturned? Yes, two things can happen. The appeal the prosecutor-general office plans to lodge could be upheld by the Supreme Court, leading to a reversal of Justice Fachin's decision. If Lula is convicted and that conviction is upheld on appeal before the presidential election in October 2022, Lula would again be barred from running for office. However, legal experts told BBC News Brasil that they deemed a reversal of Justice Fachin's decision unlikely as his arguments for declaring that the Paraná court had no jurisdiction were in line with previous Supreme Court decisions. Given the short time span between now and the election and the slow workings of Brazilian courts, it also seems unlikely that Lula would be convicted and that conviction confirmed on appeal before October 2022.
Ex-Felon beats fascist; the people have spoken: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/30/world/brazil-presidential-election