#outofthegarden

So, in (maybe NSFW-ish) news baffling even for Brazilian politics standards, yup, that was a thing.

A video has leaked of a mother-in-law of the mayor of Campina Grande, Paraíba, in the country's Northeast, snorting cocaine from a half-naked woman's backside, as well as kissing her on the lips.

It's been reported that Soraya Britto (the mayor's mother-in-law) might even be in an actual relationship with the woman in the video. Well, power to them, I hope they have a wholesome and happy relationship (but they really, really should ditch the cocaine, hope they get help for that).

But the ironic and comedic factor in this?

The mayor, Bruno Cunha Lima, is conservative and close with – and shares views with – the far-right, LGBT+phobic, war-on-drugs president Jair Bolsonaro and his family. Bruno claims his mother-in-law hasn't been in touch with his wife for over 10 years. Nonetheless, Soraya defines herself, in her own words, as "extremely Bolsonarist, evangelical, and conservative".

That Tom Phillips guy from the tweet? He's the journalist covering Brazil for The Guardian.

Yea, Brazil is definitely not for beginners.

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A sentence for two years in jail and a fine was given to him by the São Paulo Court of Justice (TJ-SP). In September 2020, in his program “Amigos do Leão” (’Lion’s Friends’) on YouTube, Gilberto Barros had said that he “vomits” when he sees two men kissing and that he would attack gays who expressed affection in front of him.

Formulated by journalist and activist William De Lucca, through lawyers Fernanda Nigro and Dimitri Sales, the complaint resulted in the first conviction for homophobia in Brazil, a historic and very important decision for the LGBT+ population.

The penalty was replaced by providing services to the community, while the fine that Gilberto will have to pay will be reversed in basic food baskets that will be donated to institutions that work with the LGBT+ community.

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Jorge José da Rocha Guaranho, the shooter, was not known by Marcelo Arruda, the victim. According to witnesses, Guaranho stopped his car outside the event, cussed at the people in the party while praising far-right current president Bolsonaro, calling him "mito" (a legend), and detracting the left-leaning former president and current candidate Lula, then pulled out a gun, pointed it at the guests still from inside the car, and vowed to come back and "end everyone". Beside him was a woman holding a baby.

According to other people who witnessed the attack, the perpetrator appeared to be under the influence of drugs when he indeed came back, by himself, around 20 minutes later.

Marcelo Arruda's wife, who is a civil police officer, presented her badge and tried to prevent him from entering, but Guaranho advanced against the birthday man and fired the first two shots. Marcelo, who had picked up his own gun after the first interaction with the shooter, retaliated and shot the Bolsonarista at least thrice. They were both taken to hospital, but did not survive their injuries.

“If Marcelo hadn't fought back”, says a witness, “it was possible that a massacre would've happened.”

Guaranho was a federal prison guard and fervent Bolsonaro supporter, with posts in support for the former captain on his social media profiles.

Marcelo had been a municipal guard for 28 years and a member of the Workers' Party, in which he served as treasurer of the municipal directory. In 2020, he ran in local elections as a candidate for deputy mayor nominated by the party. He also held the position of director of the Union of Public Servants of Foz do Iguaçu. He is survived by his wife and four children, including a one-month-old baby.

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On Thursday (July 21st, 2022), in an interview, Temer said that Dilma is “super honest” and that the impeachment took place because she had “difficulties in connecting” with Congress and society.

"Sometimes they talk about corruption, but it's a lie. She (Dilma) is honest. What I know, and I was able to follow, although I was on the sidelines of the government and although I was vice president, is that there is nothing that can label her corrupt.”, he said. “For me, she’s super honest. There were political problems. She had difficulties in her relationship with the National Congress, she had difficulties in her relationship with society and had the so-called 'fiscal pedaling' [an accounting maneuver to give the false impression that more money was received than was spent], an extremely technical thing, decreed by the Federal Court of Auditors. This set of factors is what led crowds to the streets."

"I didn't participate in any coup. When the procedure began in the Chamber of Deputies, I came to São Paulo and stayed in my office for several weeks for a reason that, I recognize, exists: that the vice-president is always the first suspect. I only came back in the last week, when everyone looked for me and warned that I needed to be in Brasilia, because the Chamber was going to vote on the indictment and then refer it to the Senate. What happened was compliance with the Federal Constitution."

"Whoever overthrows a president by impeachment is not Congress. It is the people on the street that influence. If there are no people on the street, there is not the slightest possibility of a negative manifestation in Congress.", he affirmed.

On the following day, Dilma Rousseff released a note in response.

“I would be grateful if Mr. Michel Temer would no longer seek to clean up his undisputed status as a coup plotter using my undisputed personal and political honesty. It is precisely this quality that despises, rejects, and repudiates an assessment that comes from someone who articulated one of the greatest political betrayals of recent times. It is completely innocuous to say that there was no coup, as this character offered himself as vice president twice.”

“I also remind that the 'difficulty of dialogue with Congress' is not a legal and constitutional reason for impeachment in a presidential regime, as he well knows. This 'difficulty' was a complete rejection of the practices of the president of the Chamber, deputy Eduardo Cunha, creator of Centrão who wanted to implement the 'secret budget'' with my consent."

Centrão, or Big Center, is a group of political parties in Brazil that do not have a specific ideological orientation but aim at ensuring proximity to the executive branch in order to guarantee advantages and allow them to distribute privileges through clientelistic networks.

Secret budget refers to a measure created by the Bolsonaro government named “rapporteur's amendment”, which allows the identification of the budgetary agency, the action that will be developed, and even the person benefited by the money, but not the deputy who indicated the destination of the money is hidden. The measure is used by the current administration as a way to obtain political support from Parliament and distribute public funds through parliamentary amendments.

“Finally, I remind you that history does not forgive the practice of betrayal. Mister Michel Temer doesn't fool anyone anymore. What is known of him is more than enough to avoid him, which is why I do not intend to debate this gentleman any longer.”, Dilma finishes her letter.

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Anderson Vagner Gois dos Santos's statements were in a text titled "Feministos & Feministas" (a mock word for male feminists and the normal word for feminists that usually feminine) forwarded in an e-mail list that includes members of the Federal Public Ministry (MPF), where he works, across the country.

“The feminist is usually a girl who had problems with her parents in the process of upbringing and carries a lot of hurt in her heart. She is normally a teenager in a woman's body. She is unaware of quality literature and has absorbed her knowledge through television and more recently through the internet.”, wrote Anderson Santos last Monday (July 18th, 2022). “Most of the time, her quest for empowerment is actually an attempt to overcome deep setbacks and unpleasantness with the male sex generated by her own choices of marital partners. Many are actually ashamed of the female condition. I believe that some time from now there should be an International Classification of Diseases (ICD) category for this mental disorder.”

“Progressivism has convinced us that the spouse has no sexual obligation to their partner, leading many to unnecessary cheating, pornography consumption, and divorce.”, Santos further wrote in a second message. “This is a drama experienced much more by men in the face of feminists or false conservatives. The wife who does not fulfill the marital debt must have a good explanation under penalty of dissolution of the union and loss of all patrimonial benefits.”, he defended.

He claimed that it is “of fundamental importance to recover the idea of conjugal debt in marriage” and made a biblical quote. “The husband pays to his wife what he owes her, and in the same way the wife to her husband.”, he wrote, quoting the book of Corinthians.

The messages provoked a reaction among prosecutors, especially female one, who defend the investigation of the case by the body's internal affairs department. For some members of the MPF, the thesis defended by the prosecutor Anderson Santos would legitimize "marital rape".

The Internal Affairs Office of the Federal Public Ministry published this Friday (July 22nd, 2022) an ordinance that institutes, in addition to an administrative inquiry, a commission to analyze Santos's conduct within 30 days.

The ordinance is signed by the Federal Prosecutor General of the MPF, Célia Regina Souza Delgado, and determines that the Deputy Attorney General of the Republic Denise Vinci Túlio, the Regional Attorney of the Republic Mônica Campos de Ré, and the Attorney of the Republic Edmar Gomes Machado must compose the Commission of Administrative Inquiry.

In his defense, Santos said to local media:

“It is not a case of requiring and demanding that women have sex. It is giving occasion, if repeated (the lack of sex), to the request for divorce. They actually think that I'm advocating rape of women. Of course, if I defended it, it would be an incitement to crime, more than a breach of decorum, it would be a case of public criminal action."

The prosecutor said that this discussion arose in the face of court decisions that still take into account the lack of sex to annul marriages. He said that the messages were sent to generate debate about monogamy and the criminalization of adultery among colleagues and that he didn't mean to offend anyone.

"The conversation was much longer and I pointed out that progressives really don't want to get married, because they don't want to take on the responsibilities of a marriage, such as monogamy and marital debt. So, they began to de-characterize the marriage so that they could have married status without the due burden. This caused a lot of anger.”

To other journalists, he said that he reiterated the content of the messages posted and that he is neither pro-president Bolsonaro nor pro-left-wing opposition Workers' Party. "What I perceive today in Brazil, within the institutions, is a large left-wing apparatus, which makes it enormously difficult for any government that does not agree with a series of agendas, among which the feminist, LGBT, racialist agenda, the extreme environmentalist agenda, which, in the end, prevents us from developing economically, and this causes a lot of discomfort." According to the prosecutor, the messages of repudiation of feminism are part of this "greater context". "I am demonstrating that there is a wing of our body, which, due to adherence to this agenda, does not accept that a conservative government is established."

Now that the case is under investigation, the MPF committee in charge must analyze within 30 days the functional responsibility of Anderson Gois in facts that, according to the official letter, violate articles of the Constitution, such as the one that provides for the defense of collective and individual interests by the Public Ministry, and article 5, which provides that everyone is equal before the law, without distinction of any kind. If found guilty, the prosecutor may face admonition, suspension, or even loss of public office.

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The politician and Youtuber Arthur do Val, also known as Mamãe Falei, has shown concerns regarding the consequences of his speech, according to parliament members

[Image description: Arthur do Val sits amidst bottles allegedly set to be used to fabricate molotov cocktails in Ukraine.]

The MBL (Free Brazil Movement) summit is analyzing this Friday (4th) a series of sexist audio messages allegedly sent by state deputy Arthur do Val (from the political party Podemos [We Can]), Mamãe Falei, during his trip to Ukraine.

In the audio messages, the pre-candidate for the Governor position in São Paulo would have stated that Ukrainian women are "easy" to get because they are poor - and that you can find more beautiful women in the line of refugees at the war zone than in some of the "best clubs in Brazil".

Arthur do Val is currently on a flight back to Brazil, according to the MBL, who also stated not having managed to get in touch with Arthur and that this is why he hasn't yet issued any comment on the subject. At least one deputy from the São Paulo Legislative Assembly, however, claims to have talked to him about the matter. Arthur would have expressed concerns regarding the consequences of his speech, according to the same parliamentarian.

In one of the audio messages attributed to Arthur, several statements are made regarding the beauty of Ukrainian women, who he calls "goddesses". "Bro, I'm sick. I'm sick. I'm over now, there are four customs barriers. There are two little houses in each country. Brother, I swear to you, I counted: there were 12 goddesses of police officers. Goddesses", says one of them. "Four of them were chicks who you'd be like... Bro, I can't even tell you. If she took a shit, you'd wipe her ass with your tongue. Unbelievable. Unbelievable, man. As soon as this war is over, I'm coming back here.", the recording continues.

"They look at me [Arthur] and, let me tell you: they're easy because they're poor. And here, man, my Instagram letter, full of subscribers, works great. It works great. I'll tell the story later in detail", he says.

Continue reading.