 All right, big news out of Brazil. So over the weekend, large numbers of Brazilians basically rioted and then went into basically all three. As far as I can tell, again, hard to tell from all the news stories. But it went in and ransacked all three branches of government. They attacked the presidential palace. They attacked the parliament and the courts, and the Supreme Court, all in the city of Brasilia. In Brazil, Brasilia is the capital of Brazil. This was in response to claims by the right in Brazil, the pro Bolsonaro, the president, that the election was rigged, that the election was stolen, that Lula, the leftist president, is a corrupt gangster, which I actually agree he is, and the election was stolen. I'm skeptical about the case of stolen, but I'm no expert on Brazilian electoral politics. Anyway, there have been demonstrations ever since the election was held, large demonstrations in many of Brazil's cities. Over the last week or so, there has been a coordinated effort to rally people around and to get them to Brasilia. A part of the demonstrations, interestingly enough, and this is a big difference between Brazil and the United States, a big part of the demonstrations in Brazil have been centered around military bases, so military headquarters. So a lot of the demonstrations have been focused on trying to urge the Brazilian military to depose Lula and install Bolsonaro, or even a military regime, but anything, including a military coup, to get rid of Lula. Again, these are very large demonstrations. This is not a small portion of the Brazilian population. They are motivated and inspired, and it seems like well-funded. I find it interesting, and I don't think accidental, that all of this happened while Bolsonaro is out of the country. Bolsonaro himself is in Florida. He left on supposed vacation a few days before the inauguration of Lula, which happened I think on the 1st of January, and has been in Florida since, and as far as I can tell, staying in Florida. There are rumors, and again, I don't have any inside information, there are rumors that are indicating that he is afraid that if he returns to Brazil, he will be prosecuted and sent to jail, just like Lula was, we'll get to that in a minute, and that he might try to stay outside of Brazil while Lula is president. We'll see how successful he is. So the demonstrators are urging the military to get rid of Lula, and this is why they're demonstrating in front of military bases, in front of military headquarters. They were cleared out of all government offices yesterday, but they are still, I was just watching video, I assume it's real, it really is hard to tell about these things, but I assume it's real. They are still large demonstrations in Brasilia and potentially elsewhere in Brazil, all with the idea of, and I think this riot and breaking into government offices, all of this is intended, I think, this is my evaluation, all of this is intended to trigger the military to act, to trigger the military to actually engage and participate. Saio Amaral says on the chat, he says, we love America so much here in Brazil, we copy everything you do a few months, years later. I think there's some truth to that, but this is on a much larger scale than January 6th was, this is, I think, much better coordinated and but much better organized, and this is explicitly geared towards the military, explicitly geared towards getting the military involved and trying to induce the military to escalate this. Look, Lula himself, who is the president of Brazil right now, is a corrupt leftist, I don't think there's any question about this, he was a Marxist, he was president of Brazil before, he was ultimately prosecuted for fraud, I was in Brazil, I was in Brazil, and I can't remember the year, but I was in Brazil, and watched on Brazilian on a big screen at an event that I was at, I was speaking at a student event, and right after my speech finished, they put on a large screen, they projected the television onto a large screen just behind me, and on that screen, you could see Lula being arrested, literally being put in handcuffs and putting in the back of a police car. The audience and the thing erupted in tears, champagne was brought out, I mean, it was a massive celebration that Lula was going to jail. A few months later, Lula was released from jail by the Supreme Court. There's a lot of accusations about that this was corruption, this is an example of corruption, these are people who philosophically and politically aligned with Lula and released them from prison, and to everybody's, I guess nobody was really surprised, he ran again, and I think more than anything because of Bolsonaro's unpopularity, because Bolsonaro is so unpopular, I don't think the vote for Lula was primarily because people love Lula. I think what Bolsonaro lost was the middle class, the educated, but much of the middle class, I think was lost to Bolsonaro because Bolsonaro is such a, I mean, Bolsonaro is a mindless thug, you know, maybe on a lot of issues, he leaves people alone, at least he's not a leftist, and at least he's not, you know, he's a thug like I think Lula, but in the end, I think the middle class either didn't vote for Bolsonaro, they voted for Lula, and I think that's what really shifted, significantly shifted the tide towards Lula, not because people in Brazil love Lula, but people in Brazil rejected Bolsonaro. I think to a large extent, that power was the US, I don't think Biden won an election because anybody liked Biden, anybody respected Biden, anybody thought Biden's ideas were good ideas. I think people voted for Biden in a record turnout because they hated Trump and they despised Trump, and I think exactly, it's exactly the same in Brazil. I think people turned out to vote for Lula because they hated Bolsonaro. I think many other candidates could have beaten Lula. And indeed, what's interesting about Brazil, and what's interesting about Brazil, and this is different than what happened in the US, is that while Lula lost his political party, and many political parties who you would call classical liberal or conservative political parties that are on the right one parliament for the first time, when Bolsonaro initially got elected, he had a fight with parliament, he had a parliament that was opposed to much of what he represented, when Bolsonaro lost parliament, was swayed in his direction, and Lula is president now, and Lula is not gonna be able to get anything done because indeed the parliament, that Lula has working for him is dominated by people who oppose Lula. See, in Brazil, you've got divided government in both directions, when Bolsonaro won, it was against him, and now when Lula won, parliament is against him. So it's gonna be interesting what happens in Brazil. It's a little scary. I'm gonna be in Brazil soon, so hopefully all these demonstrations and everything are gone by then, and there's some resolution, some peaceful resolution. But there is a real possibility of a military coup, there is a real possibility of reprisals by the Lula regime against the Bolsonaro supporters, although I think that's relatively unlikely given the fact that Lula has to be very careful because the military doesn't like him, and his own parliament doesn't support him. So you've got a really, really sensitive and dangerous, I think, situation in Brazil right now. We'll keep watching it, I'll keep updating, and if I hear anything from my Brazilian friends, if I get any insight information that I think is worthwhile, I will pass it on to you. We have a lot of, it's interesting, that we have a lot of listeners to do on book show in Brazil, and I have, and as I said, I'm going to Brazil in March, at the end of March, so we might be able to get you some first-time information as well. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content, and of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. 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