Brazil's Supreme Court Places Bolsonaro Under House Arrest | Hacker News Reader

Brazil's Supreme Court Places Bolsonaro Under House Arrest

nytimes.com

Good!

Good?

What's he accused of? Something from 2 years ago? Why would he need to be under house arrest, just start the trial immediately you had forever to prepare. If you can't get the evidence in 2 years then maybe they didn't commit the crime or you should have a slam dunk obstruction of justice case.

He trial is happening. There's a bunch of proofs. He likely will get convicted next month at worse.

> What's he accused of?

The most serious accusation entails the creation of a "parallel intelligence apparatus" which was apparently keeping tabs on the supreme court judges. I don't doubt it.

He's also accused of ordering brazilian police to interfere in the elections in the northeast. I'm not sure if that can be directly attributed to him.

The "questioning of voting machines" and "incitation of protests" are just there to pad the list and insult our intelligence.

This is just continuing a disturbing trend of lawfare, censorship, and constitutional violations from Brazil’s top courts. Whether it is Trump doing it or Brazil’s courts, targeting political rivals this way is corrupt and can destabilize society.

If Bolsonaro was responsible for

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_January_Bras%C3%ADlia_attack...

how should a democratic society respond?

Brazil is not a democratic society, it's a dictatorship of the judiciary. Not a single brazilian voted for these judge-kings who also legislate and execute.

That "attack" was directly caused by the "activism" of these judge-kings on the eve of the 2022 election. They engaged in blatantly unconstitutional political censorship and disproportionately targeted Bolsonaro and his supporters. Journalists and online influencers were forced to seek political asylum in other countries.

It wasn't enough to make a mockery out of our constitution, they also had to brag about it in public. They actually went to public events to showboat about their accomplishments. "We defeated Bolsonarism!" -- Barroso, an "impartial" supreme court judge-king.

Perhaps you forgot to answer the question.

There's no point in answering a question whose premises are invalid. The question was predicated on Bolsonaro being responsible for it. He wasn't.

He straight up tried to stop those people. There were lots of protests prior to that so called "attack". I saw him trying to call them all off. Numerous times. People protested anyway. Because they understood that Brazil was not a democracy.

He is a coward. He did literally nothing while the judge-kings were silencing his supporters with no due process. While people were going to jail in order to protect everything he came to represent, he was in the USA enjoying a vacation as if nothing was happening. He betrayed every single person who ever supported him from the very beginning.

And yet people are still assembling in the streets to protest the political unelected supreme court. Whatever Bolsonaro may or may not have started, it's bigger than him now. His current usefulness is limited to the fact Trump apparently likes him enough to sanction the brazilian despots who are persecuting him.

> Whatever Bolsonaro may or may not have started, it's bigger than him now.

I mean, it's a pretty big deal if he started it or not.

Punish crimes or take the laws off the books.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230108201723/https://www.busin...

There are no laws against protests or the questioning of voting machines in Brazil. Quite the contrary, our constitution is quite explicit in defending political freedom of expression.

What are you supposed to do when the supreme court starts violating the law and the constitution? Who are you supposed to turn to?

Their abuses started in 2019 with a "fake news" censorship inquisition and by 2021 they were disproportionately censoring Bolsonaro and his supporters for "fake news". Suddenly everything they said was "fake news", even provably true statements. People started to understand the court answered to no one and had itself launched a silent coup against brazilian institutions. That's the "countercoup" messaging in the article you cited.

If I had to point out someone as the "mastermind" of all this, I would say it was the supreme court. Society is merely trying to react to their profoundly destabilizing actions.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44748869

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36543423

> What are you supposed to do...?

Well, you can

> ...[seek] to violently overthrow the democratically elected president Lula, who had been inaugurated on 1 January. Many rioters said their purpose was to spur military leaders to launch a "military intervention" (related to a misinterpretation of the 142nd article of the Brazilian constitution and a euphemism for a coup d'état) and disrupt the democratic transition of power.

> Several law enforcement officers assaulted and injured by rioters, at least 44 hospitalized [1]

You can have, in Donald Trump's words, "a day of love." [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_January_Bras%C3%ADlia_attack...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2024/10/29/nx-s1-5159868/2024-election-t...

If only he could claim responsibility for that. Like I said, he betrayed all of those people. By January 8th, he had already given up and was in the USA enjoying a "vacation". Those protests happened in spite of him.

Ah yes, absolutely innocent people usually flee to other nations minutes after losing an election and coincidentally also have a palace coup happen at the same time.

What's the part about this that's lawfare?

The part where the current president's former lawyer is one of the "impartial" judge-kings involved in the case.

"We defeated Bolsonarism!" -- Barroso, one of the judge-kings.

Is further proof necessary?

Yeah, you'll need more than that because the results of the investigations so far are pretty coherent with Bolsonaro's beliefs in democracy as well as all the people who surrounded him.

I wasn't condemning the investigations into Bolsonaro's affairs at all. I was condemning the court that's judging him. I have no doubt his sentence has already been decided regardless of evidence.

Proof of what? That your political position is "rambling incoherence"?

I merely pointed out the painfully obvious impartiality of the court. Nothing incoherent about it. Bolsonaro's guilt has already been decided, they're just going through the motions. Gotta look like a democracy.

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