Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 11

Watch: The Stunning Rise of Brazil’s Far Right and What It Shows About Western Democracies

Glenn Greenwald discusses Brazil’s election with The Intercept Brasil reporters Bruna de Lara and Victor Pougy.

Most Western news consumers are aware that, in Brazil, far-right presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, came close in Sunday’s national election to winning 50 percent of the vote needed to win without a runoff (he received 46.2 percent). Bolsonaro is now highly likely to prevail on October 28 against his opponent, the liberal Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad, who finished...

Brazil’s Bolsonaro-Led Far Right Wins a Victory Far More Sweeping and Dangerous Than Anyone Predicted. Its Lessons Are Global.

Flavio Bolsonaro, right, stands with his father, Jair Bolsonaro, who gestures after casting his vote at a polling station at a school in Vila Militar on Oct. 7, 2018.

Photo: Fabio Teixeira/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

For the past thirty years, Congressman Jair Bolsonaro was a fringe extremist in Brazilian politics, known mostly for outlandish, deliberately inflammatory quotes in which he paid homage to the most notorious torturers of the 1964-1985 military regime, constantly heralded the...

Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9” Aims Not at Trump But at Those Who Created the Conditions That Led to His Rise

Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts during the 58th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., on Jan. 20, 2017.

Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP

“Fahrenheit 11/9,” the title of Michael Moore’s new film that opens today in theaters, is an obvious play on the title of his wildly profitable Bush-era “Fahrenheit 9/11,” but also a reference to the date of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 election victory. Despite that, Trump hi...

Glenn Greenwald Interviews Kerri Harris: Can the Insurgency Now Defeat a Centrist U.S. Senator?

Delaware Democrats go to the polls on Thursday in what has suddenly become a much-anticipated primary matchup between Sen. Tom Carper, who has been serving in public office since 1976, and Kerri Evelyn Harris, a black, LGBT Air Force veteran and community organizer who wasn’t born by that time.

While several insurgent candidates have unexpectedly defeated House incumbents in 2018 primaries — including Ayanna Pressley’s win Tuesday night in Boston against 10-term House incumbent Mike Capuano —...

Watch: Interview With One of Brazil’s Leading Presidential Candidates, Ciro Gomes

Brazil’s October 7 presidential election is rapidly approaching, and perhaps its most remarkable aspect is the utter lack of clarity about the likely outcome. The world’s fifth-most populous country is mired in so many sustained and entrenched crises — economic, political, judicial, cultural, and an endless corruption scandal — that all previous rules for understanding political dynamics seem obsolete. And for that reason, and several others, the dynamic of Brazil’s presidential race has inte...

CNN, Credibly Accused of Lying to its Audience About a Key Claim in its Blockbuster Cohen Story, Refuses to Comment

CNN’s blockbuster July 26 story – that Michael Cohen intended to tell Special Counsel Robert Mueller that he was present when Donald Trump was told in advance about his son’s Trump Tower meeting with various Russians – includes a key statement about its sourcing that credible reporting now suggests was designed to have misled its audience. Yet CNN simply refuses to address the serious ethical and journalistic questions raised about its conduct.

The substance of the CNN story itself regarding...

Brazil’s Disastrous 2018 Presidential Race Teaches Key Lesson For All: Demagogues Thrive Only When Establishments Fail

Brazil’s media, legal, judicial and corporate factions have spent the last three years righteously insisting that systemic political corruption is the nation’s gravest problem. They were so terribly upset about corruption that, in 2016, they united, with almost no dissent permitted, in support of the most drastic step a democracy can take: removal of the elected President, Dilma Rousseff, before her term expired.

That indignation over corruption and criminality was their pretext for impeachme...

Photo of Kissing Gay Couple Sparks Controversy at One of Brazil’s Most Important and Iconic Tourist Sites

Every year, close to 2 million people visit Rio de Janeiro’s Sugar Loaf Mountain, making it the city’s second-most frequented tourist site after Christ the Redeemer. Since 1912, families have traveled from all over the world, and from within Brazil, to ride the storied cable cars to the mountain’s peaks and enjoy the breathtaking panoramic views of one of the planet’s greatest and most beautiful cities.

But now, beyond majestic vistas, the throngs of visitors to Sugar Loaf see something else,...

Ecuador Will Imminently Withdraw Asylum for Julian Assange and Hand Him Over to the U.K. What Comes Next?

Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno traveled to London on Friday for the ostensible purpose of speaking at the 2018 Global Disability Summit (Moreno has been using a wheelchair since being shot in a 1998 robbery attempt). The concealed actual purpose of the president’s trip is to meet with British officials to finalize an agreement under which Ecuador will withdraw its asylum protection of Julian Assange, in place since 2012; eject him from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London; and then hand over th...

Ecuador Will Imminently Withdraw Asylum for Julian Assange and Hand Him Over to the UK. What Comes Next?

Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno traveled to London on Friday for the ostensible purpose of speaking at the 2018 Global Disabilities Summit (Moreno has been using a wheelchair since being shot in a 1998 robbery attempt). The concealed, actual purpose of the President’s trip is to meet with British officials to finalize an agreement under which Ecuador will withdraw its asylum protection of Julian Assange, in place since 2012, eject him from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and then hand over...