Brazil leaders to meet as protests, violence grow
Source: AP-Excite
By JENNY BARCHFIELD and BRADLEY BROOKS
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) - Brazil awoke Friday to city centers still smoldering after a night that shocked the nation: 1 million protesters took to the streets in scores of cities, with clusters clashing violently with police during anti-government demonstrations.
President Dilma Rousseff, a standoffish leader who has been virtually mute in the face of the most violent protests in recent memory, called a meeting with top Cabinet members. She faced sharp criticism in Brazil's media for what many called her lack of any leadership.
It was not clear what action her government might take or if she would appear before the nation to give an address. There were growing calls on social media and in emails for a general strike next week.
Standing before the battered government building he presides over, Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota said he "was very angry" that protesters attacked a structure "that represents the search for understanding through dialogue." Patriota called for protesters "to convey their demands peacefully"
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130621/DA7252BO0.html
Protesters gesture to riot police as they stand in front of a burning barricade during an anti-government protest in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, June 20, 2013. More than half a million Brazilians poured into the streets of at least 80 Brazilian cities Thursday in demonstrations that saw violent clashes and renewed calls for an end to government corruption and demands for better public services. Riot police battled protesters in at least five cities, with some of the most intense clashes happening in Rio de Janeiro, where an estimated 300,000 demonstrators swarmed into the seaside city's central area. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)
= new reply since forum marked as read
21 June 2013 Last updated at 21:23 ET
Brazil protests: Dilma Rousseff unveils reforms
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has unveiled a series of reforms in an attempt to end days of nationwide anti-government protests.
In a televised address she said she would draft a new plan to benefit public transport and that all oil royalties would be used in education.
She also said that thousands of doctors would be drafted in from overseas to improve the national health service.
Earlier she held an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the protests
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She promised to meet the leaders of the peaceful protests saying she needed "their contribution, their energy and their ability".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23012547
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If you had been following this information you would have known she was a protester herself as a young woman, was tortured, imprisoned, and treated hideously. She is NOT someone who's going to screw protesters over.
You may notice the men in front of the camera are trying to hide their slimy faces.
Dilma Rousseff was tortured in prison for three years.
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as a guest of the US-supported right-wing military dictatorship.
She was tortured on their favorite device, the Parrot's Perch, "pau de arrara", a monstrous Dark Ages piece of equipment which they originally used to punish slaves in Brazil hundreds of years ago.
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""Tortura nunca mais" (Torture never again)
This is a monument constructed by the human rights group "TORTURA NUNCA MAIS." This monument depicts the atrocity of torture showing a victim of the "pau de arrara," the infamous "parrot's perch" torture rack, widely used in Brazil during the Military dictatorial regime in the late 60’s and 70’s."
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Wikipedia:
Torture technique
Pau de arara can also refer to a physical torture technique designed to cause severe joint and muscle pain, as well as headaches, and psychological trauma. The technique consists of a tube, bar, or pole placed over the victim's biceps and behind the knees while tying the victim's both ankles and wrists together. The entire assembly is suspended between two metal platforms forming what looks like a parrot's perch.
This technique is believed to originate from Portuguese slave traders, which used Pau de arara as a form of punishment for disobedient slaves. Its usage has been more recently widespread by the agents of the political police of the Brazilian military dictatorship against political dissidents in the 1960s and 1970s and it still believed to be in use by Brazilian police forces<1>, although outlawed<1>. The device was often used as a restraint for a combination of other torture techniques, such as water boarding, nail pulling, branding, electric shocks, and sexual torture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pau_de_Arara
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Dilma Rousseff: From fugitive guerrilla to Brazil's new president
By Helena de Moura, CNN
November 1, 2010 9:06 a.m. EDT
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When the military finally arrested her in 1970, Rousseff, now 62, says she was severely tortured in order to give up secrets. She told Istoe magazine in 2008 that as a prisoner she was often tied up to the infamous "parrot's perch," a torture device used by Brazil's military police in which the victim is suspended between two metal platforms.
"They gave me electrical shocks, a lot of electrical shocks," Rousseff told Istoe. "I began to hemorrhage, but I withstood. I wouldn't even tell them where I lived," she said. After her release in 1972, the military government forbade her to engage in political activities.
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During a congressional hearing in 2008, she silenced a senator and won applause for answering criticism that she broke the law in the 1960s for lying to the Brazilian police and for engaging in anti-military subversive activities.
"I was 19 years old, I was in jail for three years and I was barbarously tortured, senator," she said in her televised statement. "Anyone who dared tell the truth to their torturers would compromise the lives of their friends. They would deliver them to their deaths."
More:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/10/31/brazil.winner.profile/index.html
