Brazil: Supporters of defeated right wing Bolsonaro Presidential candidate storm Congess, the Presidential Palace and other official Government buildings in Brazil

Supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro who refuse to accept his electoral defeat stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace in the capital on Sunday, just a week after the inauguration of his leftist rival, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Thousands of demonstrators bypassed security barricades, climbed on the roofs, broke windows and invaded all three buildings, which are connected through the vast Three Powers square in Brasilia. Some are calling for a military intervention to restore the far-right Bolsonaro to power.

Images on TV channel Globo News showed protesters roaming the presidential palace, many of them wearing green and yellow, the colours of the flag that also have come to symbolize the nation's conservative movement, co-opted by Bolsonaro.

Read more at: https://www.cbc.com

Russia - Putin Toppled? Could frustration in Russia lead to a Kremlin coup?

As Russia continues its assault on Ukraine, some are wondering if potential frustration within the Kremlin could lead to a coup and President Vladimir Putin’s ouster.

Dr. Leon Aron, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said if something along those lines were to happen, he would see it more as a “regime change.”

“Whether it’s a coup, or whether it’s some other way of deposing Putin, we don’t know. I also think that it will take time,” he said. “The polls show the diminution of the support — despite all the propaganda. But generally, the Russians tend to rally around the fl
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Read more at: Could frustration in Russia lead to a Kremlin coup?

Russia: Navalny Is Unlikely to Topple an Entrenched Putin - but Russian history proves otherwise

tens of thousands of people across Russia turned out for demonstrations to support the release of the activist Alexey Navalny, who had returned to Russia on Jan. 17 five months after being poisoned with Novichok, a military-grade chemical weapon. On landing, Navalny was immediately arrested and is currently being held in a Moscow prison facing extended incarceration on highly dubious criminal charges.

Yet Navalny is not sitting idle. Shortly after his arrest, his Anti-Corruption Foundation released a video purporting to show Russian President Vladimir Putin’s sprawling Black Sea palace. Immediately before that, the Anti-Corruption Foundation released a list of the top eight Russian nationals whom the West should sanction if it wants to combat the avarice of Putin’s circle. The widespread and blatant corruption of Putin and other Russian elites, the constant perversion of justice, and stagnating living standards have left large swaths of the Russian public disaffected with the regime, hence the massive turnout for demonstrations.

EU-Digest Notes: However those who are acquainted with Russian history know that Russia throughout the centuries has a knack of organzing very successful revolutions and that this one could also eventually turn into a success. Don't be surprized if also happens.

Read more at: Navalny Is Unlikely to Topple an Entrenched Putin

USA - Gun Control: ‘Guns are a way to exercise power’: how the idea of overthrowing the government became mainstream - by Lois Beckett

Josh Horwitz has been an American gun control activist for nearly 30 years. In 2009, he co-wrote a book warning that the idea of armed revolt against the government was at the center of the US gun rights movement.

Now, after a year that has seen heavily armed men show up at state capitols in Virginia, Michigan, Idaho and elsewhere to confront Democratic lawmakers over gun control and coronavirus restrictions, more Americans are taking gun owners’ rhetoric about “tyrants” seriously. Some of the same armed protesters who showed up at Michigan’s state house and at a pro-gun rally this summer were charged last week with conspiring to kidnap Michigan’s governor and put her on trial for tyranny.

Other members of the “boogaloo” movement have allegedly murdered law enforcement officers in California and plotted acts of violence across the country in hopes of sparking a civil war.

Read more at:
‘Guns are a way to exercise power’: how the idea of overthrowing the government became mainstream | US gun control | The Guardian

USA - A Nation Divided: The Republican Revolt Against COVID Science and Common Sense - by Jonathan Chait

Last October, the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security compiled a ranking system to assess the preparedness of 195 countries for the next global pandemic. Twenty-one panel experts across the globe graded each country in 34 categories composed of 140 subindices. At the top of the rankings, peering down at 194 countries supposedly less equipped to withstand a pandemic, stood the United States of America.

It has since become horrifyingly clear that the experts missed something. The supposed world leader is in fact a viral petri dish of uncontained infection. By June, after most of the world had beaten back the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S., with 4 percent of the world’s population, accounted for 25 percent of its cases. Florida alone was seeing more new infections a week than China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, and the European Union combined.

During its long period of decline, the Ottoman Empire was called “the sick man of Europe.” The United States is now the sick man of the world, pitied by the same countries that once envied its pandemic preparedness — and, as recently as the 2014 Ebola outbreak, relied on its expertise to organize the global response.

Our former peer nations are now operating in a political context Americans would find unfathomable. Every other wealthy nation in the world has successfully beaten back the disease, at least significantly, and at least for now. New Zealand’s health minister was forced to resign after allowing two people who had tested positive for COVID-19 to attend a funeral. The Italian Parliament heckled Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte when he briefly attempted to remove his mask to deliver a speech. In May — around the time Trump cheered demonstrators into the streets to protest stay-at-home orders — Boris Johnson’s top adviser set off a massive national scandal, complete with multiple calls for his resignation, because he’d been caught driving to visit his parents during lockdown. If a Trump official had done the same, would any newspaper even have bothered to publish the story?

It is difficult for us Americans to imagine living in a country where violations so trivial (by our standards) provoke such an uproar. And if you’re tempted to see for yourself what it looks like, too bad — the E.U. has banned U.S. travelers for health reasons.

The distrust and open dismissal of expertise and authority may seem uniquely contemporary — a phenomenon of the Trump era, or the rise of online misinformation. But the president and his party are the products of a decades-long war against the functioning of good government, a collapse of trust in experts and empiricism, and the spread of a kind of magical thinking that flourishes in a hothouse atmosphere that can seal out reality. While it’s not exactly shocking to see a Republican administration be destroyed by incompetent management — it happened to the last one, after all — the willfulness of it is still mind-boggling and has led to the unnecessary sickness and death of hundreds of thousands of people and the torpedoing of the reelection prospects of the president himself. Like Stalin’s purge of 30,000 Red Army members right before World War II, the central government has perversely chosen to disable the very asset that was intended to carry it through the crisis. Only this failure of leadership and management took place in a supposedly advanced democracy whose leadership succumbed to a debilitating and ultimately deadly ideological pathology.

For the compledt report click on this link:
The Republican Revolt Against COVID Science and Common Sense

Mexico - US Relations: Republicans threaten revolt, may block Trump's Mexico tariffs

Republicans are warning that President Donald Trump could face a shocking rebellion against him on the Senate floor if the president slaps Mexico with wide-ranging tariffs.

At a closed-door lunch Tuesday, two Trump administration officials laid out the president’s view: There is a crisis at the border and Mexico needs to stem the surge of migrants to avoid the new levies.

But White House deputy counsel Pat Philbin and Assistant Attorney General Steve Engel faced brutal push-back from the GOP, according to multiple senators, with some threatening that Trump could actually face a veto-proof majority to overturn the tariffs.

Read more: Republicans threaten revolt, may block Trump's Mexico tariffs

Britain-Brexit-Revolt: MPs seize control of Brexit process by backing indicative votes amendment - by Heather Stewart and Jessica Elgot

A second referendum - the best way to go

 MPs  today Monday seized control of the parliamentary timetable for a series of “indicative votes” on the next steps for Brexit – but Theresa May declined to say whether she would abide by the outcome.

An amendment tabled by former Tory minister Oliver Letwin passed, by 329 votes to 302, defeating the government, as MPs expressed their exasperation at its failure to set out a fresh approach.

Government sources confirmed that three ministers resigned from government in order to back the Letwin amendment: foreign affairs minister Alistair Burt, health minister Steve Brine and business minister Richard Harrington.In all, a total of 30 Tory MPs rebelled to vote for it.

After gathering Brexit-backing grandees at her country retreat of Chequers over the weekend and consulting DUP leader, Arlene Foster, and the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, on Monday, May concluded she could not yet win sufficient backing for her twice defeated deal.

The cross-party group – led by Letwin and Labour’s Hilary Benn – gave MPs a series of votes on the alternatives to May’s deal, such as a second referendum, softer Brexit or revoking article 50.


MPs seize control of Brexit process by backing indicative votes amendment

EU Parliamentary Elections: Hungary's Orban faces threat of exclusion from European Centre-Right Partners

Hungary's Orban faces threat of exclusion from European centre-right partners Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seeing growing opposition from partner centre-right parties in the European Parliament, a revolt that has the potential to impact upon May’s elections.

Read more at: 
http://www.france24.com/en/20190301-hungary-orban-european-epp-immigration-elections-juncker-eu

Venezuela: Protests in Caracas Venezuela civil unrest breaking point

Social unrest has simmered in Venezuela for the last few years, at times breaking out in widespread protests, and tensions have mounted this year, as an opposition-led legislature leads an effort to recall President Nicolas Maduro.

But a protest that broke out near the presidential palace in Caracas on Thursday indicates that the strife has reached a segment of the country critical to the government's popular support.

A group of Venezuelans waiting in line at a supermarket in Caracas made a run for Miraflores, the presidential palace, after they saw what appeared to be people affiliated with the government taking food they had been waiting for hours in the heat to buy.

According to The Associated Press, over 100 people ran down the city's main street, chanting "No more talk. We want food," before encountering riot police less than six blocks from Miraflores.

The protesters clashed with the police, striking their shields, as other Venezuelans leaned out of windows to yell insults at police and bang pots. Police eventually deployed tear gas against the demonstrators.

Read more: Protests in Caracas Venezuela civil unrest breaking point - Business Insider

Greece election: Tsipras promises ‘return to democracy’

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras stepped out to vote on Sunday knowing that he is likely to be swept from power in the country’s general election.

Voters were expected to give the anti-austerity Syriza party the parliamentary majority.
The left-wing newcomers have led opinion polls for months and are committed to cancelling many of the terms of Greece’s debt bailout package.

Samaras appealed to undecided voters to keep the country on a stable path.

But the 40-year-old Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras has won over many of them.

He promised that Sunday’s vote would see democracy return and the rich pay their share of taxes.
Vowing to force international lenders to write off more of the national debt, his party’s win is likely to send shockwaves through global markets amid fears Greece could be forced to leave the euro.

It is unclear whether Syriza will be able to govern alone or will have to form a coalition with a smaller party
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Note EU-Digest: EU austerity programs have made half the Greek population unemployed - but then again the Greeks are not known to be the most industrious and innovative people in the EU. If this changeover works, however, they will have been the first EU country to dent the capitalist grip of the financial industry on the EU without totally collapsing, and more EU countries could follow. Bottom line = austerity programs are not the answer to achieve progress.People will eventually revolt. It has happened in Greece.

Read more: Greece election: Tsipras promises ‘return to democracy’ | euronews, world news

Why Aren't US Students Rioting Over Crazy Tuition Hikes Like College Kids in Europe?

While London has been rocked by student protests over proposed tuition hikes, United States college campuses have been largely quiet. Tens of thousands of students in the UK have taken to the streets -- confronting police, storming the Conservative Party headquarters, even halting the motorcade of the British monarch Prince Charles.

In fact, all across Europe students are revolting. For months, Italian students have been protesting tuition cuts and budget reforms. Greek students have not responded kindly to IMF endorsed austerity measures. And proposed cuts to the pension system have driven French students, in typical fashion, apoplectic.

What best explains the dormancy on many college campuses is rooted in a national condition. The social value placed on universally accessible higher education has declined. College used to be dramatically less expensive because it was heavily subsidized by the state. The past few decades have seen “massive disinvestment”. In the accompanying time, the burden of financing higher education has shifted to the individual.

For more: Why Aren't US Students Rioting Over Crazy Tuition Hikes Like College Kids in Europe? | | AlterNet