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Lula Fires Brazilian Army Chief in Wake of January 8 Insurrection [1]

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Date: 2023-01-22

Surprised this hasn’t attracted more attention yet. Both the Guardian and Washington Post reported yesterday that Brazilian President Lula has fired the head of the Brazilian Army, Gen Júlio Cesar de Arruda, in the wake of the January 8 insurrection in which supporters of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro (currently still in “exile” in South Floridastan?) ransacked government buildings in the nation’s capital, Brasilia.

Lula was already upset with Gen Arruda over his role in preventing police from arresting insurrectionists who had fled to an encampment near the Brazilian Army HQ following their failed coup attempt, but according to

One prominent Brazilian journalist, Lauro Jardim, claimed the immediate trigger for Arruda’s removal was his refusal to obey an order from Lula to sack Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp, Lt Col Mauro Cid, who who was put in charge of a specialist army battalion near Brasília in the dying days of Bolsonaro’s presidency. “As the supreme commander of the armed forces, there was nothing else Lula could do,” Jardim wrote. “Either he sacked Arruda, or he could never again hope to have control of the armed forces.” … “Many people were complicit in this … many people in the military police were complicit. There were many people in the armed forces here inside [the palace] who were complicit,” the leftist political veteran told journalists in Brasília four days after the attack. “This chap has managed to pollute the entire armed forces,” Lula added of Bolsonaro, who flew to the US on the eve of the 1 January inauguration and has refused to publicly concede defeat in last October’s election. Lula has removed at least 80 military officials from their jobs in his administration in the last five days, according to the newspaper O Globo, in an apparent attempt to root out hardcore Bolsonaro backers.

Let's hope that Lula’s efforts to clean house in the Brazilian military are successful at preventing any future coup attempts in Latin America’s largest democracy.

Meanwhile here in the USA, though plenty of the foot soldier insurrectionists have been sentenced to significant prison time for their roles in our own January 6 auto-golpe from two years ago, we have yet to see any actual prosecutions of their political or financial backers.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/22/2148735/-Lula-Fires-Brazilian-Army-Chief-in-Wake-of-January-8-Insurrection

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