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The region has fallen off the radar with the recent UK shitstorm, but let's have a small update: -Brazilian courts forbade corrupt former Speaker of the House Eduardo Cunha to go to Congress, so he couldn't bargain with other corrupt congressmen for support to avoid being deposed. So he went straight to the interim president's house on sunday for a fancy dinner, to negotiate wholesale. -A Supreme Court minister was also seen having a 'fraternization' dinner with several political leader current under the crosshairs of investigations. I've been seeing this since birth, but even I am a bit hocked at how blatant it is. Then the reason for all the high-profile, awful-looking 'dinners' hit me. It's because they are all afraid their phones are tapped and the contents of their bargaining will besplashed on internet media the next day. Other general stuff: -With the interim government slashing programs left and right in the name of Austerity, the Judiciary is about to receive a 41% pay raise. the 'for services rendered' is left unsaid. -Uber-powerful but slightly ailing media conglomerate Globo received a blanket pre-emptive permission to get foreign investors/partners, and able to offer all of its regional concessions in the package. Rupert Murdock should just hop in that bed and make things official.
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Jun 29, 2016 16:51
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There is also the bit where Temer has prohibited the state run TV from covering his official travels, in the name of "austerity." Surely the fact that the first one they covered included a protest against him has nothing to do with it.
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Jun 29, 2016 17:46
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To be fair the judiciary pay raise was actually stalled and frozen for a long time and the unions fought a lot for that for years. The problem is that while the lower paid civil servants and paralegals really need it, the raise will also contemplate Judges who not only have insanely huge income already, they also have all sorts of benefits that make them a huge drat burden on the treasury.
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Jun 29, 2016 20:05
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Well Plutonis, let's be honest here, our beloved latin-american countries just host Olympics and World Cups and whatnot so they can justify moving around large amounts of money for "preparation", then steal about 90% of it. Then the organizing entities like FIFA or whatever steal a lot more money on top of that. It's a clusterfuck that only ends up draining money from the country and we should just stop loving hosting them.
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Jun 29, 2016 20:10
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Pochoclo posted:Well Plutonis, let's be honest here, our beloved latin-american countries just host Olympics and World Cups and whatnot so they can justify moving around large amounts of money for "preparation", then steal about 90% of it. Then the organizing entities like FIFA or whatever steal a lot more money on top of that. It's a clusterfuck that only ends up draining money from the country and we should just stop loving hosting them. I never doubted that at all yet I only want to point that despite the massive corruption and the various problems we face, we were able to host a nice and decent World Cup and will probably do the same on the Olympics, no matter what the overly self-loathing Brazilians and the condescending Americans and Europeans here and on the internet at large might say. Latinos inherited a culture that fosters corruption, but it doesn't make us more or less competent than other peoples and races.
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Jun 29, 2016 20:26
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At least you can take solace in the fact that FIFA, a very European organization, is at least as corrupt as the any South American government.
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Jun 29, 2016 20:33
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I don't care about what they talk about the Olympics, really. gently caress the Olympics, it's a huge waste of resources for a country that's going down the drain. But I can't help but laugh my rear end off about the idea of terrorist attack by ISIS in loving Rio.
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Jun 30, 2016 05:12
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ISIS hates brown people too you know.
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Jun 30, 2016 06:14
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I'm in Brazil for the summer (winter in Brazil, obviously) and I've been going to a few soccer matches. The funny thing is that people have been trying to sneak in anti-coup protests into the stadiums, but CBF and the stadium security force people to remove it. So people have been getting clever with it. One that I saw was a massive banner saying "lutar, lutar, lutar, Temer jamais." Roughly translated as "fight, fight, fight, never fear" (as Temer, the name of the interim president, is also the same word as the verb to fear). It took about 60 minutes for the stadium security to catch on. So this week in the latest match I went to, people got even more clever. Some friends bought seats right behind one of the goals, and whenever a team was attacking that side they'd stand up and remove their sweaters to reveal a t-shirt, each with one letter, that read "Globo Golpista." Don't know how well people could see it on TV, but it was pretty ingenious.
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Jul 1, 2016 05:42
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Torrannor posted:At least you can take solace in the fact that FIFA, a very European organization, is at least as corrupt as the any South American government.
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Jul 2, 2016 23:27
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At last a positive event in brazilian politics: bible bashing trump-alike and all around terrible person federal deputy Jair Bolsonaro was at a political rally this last friday, in which he reckoned he could show how cool and awesome he is and crowdsurf on his adoring supporters except nope he fell flat on his rear end and has to smile and wave and pretend it didn't hurt like hell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luuivjedXxA
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Jul 7, 2016 03:20
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Machado de Assis posted:At last a positive event in brazilian politics: bible bashing trump-alike and all around terrible person federal deputy Jair Bolsonaro was at a political rally this last friday, in which he reckoned he could show how cool and awesome he is and crowdsurf on his adoring supporters It's a good analogy for the support he think he has compared to the support he actually has.
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Jul 7, 2016 04:20
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Latinos inherited a culture that fosters corruption, but it doesn't make us more or less competent than other peoples and races. There's at least some low level of corruption everywhere but I'm curious why some countries/groups seem far more prone to it currently and how that changes. I know the US was a much more openly corrupt place during the (roughly) 1850-1920 time period. Outright bribery was accepted and political machines controlled entire states basically pre-deciding elections. What was the process that stamped out that corruption? How much does it still go on? Can any lessons learned there by applied elsewhere?
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Jul 7, 2016 06:16
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Hong Kong is another interesting example, although there you had a clear outside force helping drive things, but the change in Hong Kong government and policing culture between 1970 and the 1980s was immense. Interestingly it was basically the result of setting up an independent body within the police that was genuinely empowered to fight corruption and staffed with motivated individuals. Doing something like that within a sovereign nation is pretty loving tricky though since, as we've seen in Brazil, that independent body ends up needing to investigate the people that ultimately have the power to quash the investigations.
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Jul 7, 2016 09:17
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Ender.uNF posted:There's at least some low level of corruption everywhere but I'm curious why some countries/groups seem far more prone to it currently and how that changes. If this sort of thing interests you you may want to check out Francis Fukuyama's Origins of Political Order and Political Order and Political Decay. The second book addresses that exact question, but it may be a little hard to follow without reading Origins first. Its a little hard to summarize his argument (and I frankly don't remember all the specifics), but as I recall his position is that the institutions were strong enough, and the culture structured in such a way that allowed the US to "ride out" the very strong patronage system that existed during the transition to a more modern, professional state. The books can be a bit dry, and I don't buy all of Fukuyama's arguments, but the books are well worth reading if you are interested in the subject.
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Jul 7, 2016 16:58
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I think it's very disingenuous to say that corruption is a "latinos" thing. It's more like "being plagued by a military dictatorship for decades" thing. See Greece for example, it has a lot of historical parallels with Brazil and even the same "greek people are corrupt by nature" sentiment. Symbolic Butt fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 18:17
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Symbolic Butt posted:I think it's very disingenuous to say that corruption is a "latinos" thing. It's more like "being plagued by a military dictatorship for decades" thing. Oh, no, it's not a uniquely latino thing, I know that. We're just very, very good at it, masters in our craft. And yes, it's not because we're latinos, it's because our region has been exploited/sold off to foreign powers severely over the decades, and our governments have always been complicit, so everyone just gave up.
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Jul 7, 2016 18:43
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That's why I said it's an inherited culture yeah. As the colonial governments who ruled for centuries here were more interested on quick parasitical exploitation of resources rather than development, the oligarchies that followed them had little reason not to follow the same model
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Jul 7, 2016 18:52
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MrNemo posted:Doing something like that within a sovereign nation is pretty loving tricky though since, as we've seen in Brazil, that independent body ends up needing to investigate the people that ultimately have the power to quash the investigations.
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Jul 7, 2016 18:59
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Yeah, I'd say that a lot of factors contribute to make corruption so ingrained in society. I think there's a certain feeling of "unfairness" due to the high inequality in brazilian society that makes people think that it's not wrong for them to get advantage of the situation to help themselves. Or that if they don't, other people will. Or even that it's a required procedure to get anywhere in society. Another thing is that it's just so easy to get away with corruption in general.
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Jul 7, 2016 19:00
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Well, most employers in Latin America evade taxes by paying part of your wage under the table, so it's very hard to live in Latin America and not evade taxes. Funny fact, almost all Argentinian government employees (I'm talking regular admin office workers) get paid this way, so the largest tax evasor is the government itself. It's so commonplace that no one bats an eye, and in all honesty the vast majority of people can't reject a job for this reason. The employers justify themselves saying "since the competition is doing it, it'd be unfair to us not to, also the politicians will just steal it all". The sad part is that they're right in that last part, taxes really just end up in politicians' pockets.
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Jul 7, 2016 21:56
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Guess who else just quit in Brazil!
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Jul 8, 2016 04:12
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He did that to keep his congressman mandate and will continue to manipulate stuff from the back room since he has half the congress and temer's government by the balls
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Jul 8, 2016 04:14
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Regarding corruption, first it is less a matter of culture and more a matter of great structural inequality. You won't find societies with similar levels of inequality as most of Latin America that are substantially different in terms of corruption. Second, and related, a good chunk of the corruption especially in Brazil is because Brazil has some of the toughest laws in the world - on paper. A lot of the recent scandals wouldn't be considered a crime in the US (especially in light of the recent McDonnell ruling). These two go together because the tough laws are put into place like that because the powerful know it will never apply to them. Virtually everyone evades taxes in some way. Virtually every house and building violate construction codes in some way. But if you are rich, with the right connections, and caught red-handed, worst thing that will happen is you spend a lot of money on a good lawyer running out the clock on the statute of limitations. And if you are poor or inconvenient to the powerful in some way, there is bound to be something that can be used to incriminate you. Case in point, Cunha's resigning form speaker of the house is so that a new speaker, who will likely will be friendlier to him, will be elected, and he will likely be able to avoid losing his seat, transforming it all in just a suspension, even though the evidence against him is clear and conclusive. Or Aecio. In terms of damning evidence, its Cunha first, Aecio second. And yet we will likely see Lula being arrested before Aecio.
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Jul 8, 2016 05:37
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Ofaloaf posted:Didn't Romania recently set up an independent anti-corruption taskforce that ended up going after (some of) the people who helped establish them? They did, because the European Union is pretty good at forcing anti-corruption measures on member states. It was the same story with a lot of the Eastern European states that joined the EU before Romania did.
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Jul 8, 2016 06:15
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Brazil could use UK's slot to join the EU.
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Jul 8, 2016 06:21
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Temer is already stting us up to get hosed in the rear end by the TPP, no need for another free trade zone.
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Jul 8, 2016 06:27
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Ahahahahha speaking of assfuckings they want to bring back the 12-hour workday http://economia.uol.com.br/noticias/redacao/2016/07/08/industria-defende-novas-leis-trabalhistas-e-cita-jornada-de-80h-por-semana.htm
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Jul 8, 2016 23:53
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The US in the late 19th Century was - if anything - more corrupt than the average Latin American country today and it took a crazy dude shooting the President before we actually got off our asses and made a real Civil Service system.
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Jul 9, 2016 00:00
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Ahahahahha speaking of assfuckings they want to bring back the 12-hour workday Best part was Temer arguing that people on sick leave should work half period, using the example that someone suffering from depression will be even more depressed if they stay home all day.
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Jul 9, 2016 05:42
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Those measures are gonna do wonders to the 11.5% unemployment rate.
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Jul 9, 2016 05:44
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joepinetree posted:Best part was Temer arguing that people on sick leave should work half period, using the example that someone suffering from depression will be even more depressed if they stay home all day. Truly Brazil
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Jul 9, 2016 19:35
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joepinetree posted:Best part was Temer arguing that people on sick leave should work half period, using the example that someone suffering from depression will be even more depressed if they stay home all day. He's right!
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Jul 14, 2016 18:44
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Once again Whatsapp is blocked by the great judges of this country
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Jul 19, 2016 23:50
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Was the first time this happened last year or the year before? I wonder if judges just do it now because they know they can.
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Jul 20, 2016 00:06
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It does seem a little pointless when they unban it almost immediately.
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Jul 20, 2016 05:04
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But it does highlight how powerful judges are in Brazil. The lowest level federal judge can set orders that are binding nation-wide, and while the supreme court can overturn it, there is nothing that stops the next judge from issuing the exact same order. It is one of the reasons why judges are ridiculously well paid in Brazil, despite a federally mandated cap on public salaries.
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Jul 20, 2016 06:07
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In other news, apparently the largest newspaper in Brazil misled its readers (among others) by loving up a poll - deliberately or not - showing that people want Temer to continue being president.
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Jul 20, 2016 17:55
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quote:It is now evident that — whether through corrupt motives or utter ineptitude you guys know where I stand in this
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Jul 20, 2016 23:45
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Some ISIS chumps got arrested at São Paulo and Paraná planning to attack the Olympics
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Jul 21, 2016 16:16
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