World News

>Bolivia’s leftist President Evo Morales gave a press conference early Wednesday morning in which he warned that a right-wing coup attempt is being carried out so as to stop the full counting of votes, and annul the result of Sunday's elections if it gives Morales a first-round victory.

>“A coup is underway, carried out by the right-wing with foreign support...what are the methods of this coup attempt? They’re not recognizing or waiting for election results, they’re burning down electoral courts, they want to proclaim the second-place candidate as the winner”, Morales told journalists assembled.

>Morales pointed to the fact he is in the first place and reiterated his victory. However, he also stated that “we are just waiting for the electoral court to report the results, I'm nearly certain that with the vote of the rural areas that we will win in the first round, even though the preliminary results show that we’ve won, but we are respectful and will wait for the official results from the electoral court. I say to the international press, our triumphs have always been with the rural vote.”

>Morales also thanked the Bolivian people for giving his ‘Movement Towards Socialism’ party majority in the legislature, though pointing out that his party has so far fallen short of a two-thirds supermajority.

>Anti-government right-wing protests turned violent Monday with numerous violent attacks took place across the country as preliminary results indicated that leftist President Evo Morales is on course for a first-round victory. Attacks included the burning down of vote counting centers and assaulting Indigenous supporters of Morales.

>A US police officer who was fired after shooting dead an unarmed man was temporarily rehired so he could apply for a pension, local media report.

>legalize marijuana within 100 days of taking office
>nominate AG and HHS secretary who will work to end drug war
>vacate and expunge all past marijuana-related convictions, including those still in prison
>protect marijuana industry from being controlled by big corporations
>incentivize nonprofits
>institute market share caps to prevent consolidation and monopolization
>invest profits into communities hit hardest by drug war
>eliminate barriers to public benefits for those who were fucked by legal system

>The same Brazilian prosecutors who for years exhibited a single-minded fixation on jailing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are now seeking his release from prison, requesting that a court allow him to serve the remainder of his 11-year sentence for corruption at home. But Lula — who believes the request is motivated by fear that prosecutorial and judicial improprieties in his case, which were revealed by The Intercept, will lead to the nullification of his conviction — is opposing these efforts, insisting that he will not leave prison until he receives full exoneration.

>In seeking his release, Lula’s prosecutors are almost certainly not motivated by humanitarian concerns. Quite the contrary: Those prosecutors have often displayed a near-pathological hatred for the two-term former president. Last month, The Intercept, jointly with its reporting partner UOL, published previously secret Telegram messages in which the Operation Car Wash prosecutors responsible for prosecuting Lula cruelly mocked the tragic death of his 7-year-old grandson from meningitis earlier this year, as well as the 2017 death of his wife of 43 years from a stroke at the age of 66. One of the prosecutors who participated publicly apologized, but none of the others have.

>Far more likely is that the prosecutors are motivated by desperation to salvage their legacy after a series of defeats suffered by their once-untouchable, widely revered Car Wash investigation, ever since The Intercept, on June 9, began publishing reports based on a massive archive of secret chats between the prosecutors and Sergio Moro, the judge who oversaw most of the convictions, including Lula’s, and who now serves as President Jair Bolsonaro’s Minister of Justice and Public Security.

>The prosecutors’ cynical gambit, it appears, is that the country’s Supreme Court — which two weeks ago nullified one of Moro’s anti-corruption convictions for the first time on the ground that he violated core rights of defendants — will feel less pressure to nullify Moro’s guilty verdict in Lula’s case if the ex-president is comfortably at home in São Paulo (albeit under house arrest) rather than lingering in a Curitiba prison.

>But this strategy ran into a massive roadblock when Lula demanded that he not be released from prison unless and until he is fully exonerated. He wants to ensure that nobody — least of all Supreme Court judges who will rule on his appeal — feel relieved of their obligation to decide correctly by telling themselves that there is no need to take such a drastic step as nullifying Lula’s conviction given that he is no longer in jail but at home.

>“I won’t trade my dignity for my freedom,” the former president proclaimed in a hand-written letter “to the Brazilian People,” explaining why he would resist efforts to swap his home for his cage as his prison. “I’ve already proven that the accusations against me are false. It is [the Car Wash prosecutors and Sergio Moro], not me, who are now prisoners of the lies they told Brazil and the world.”