South America culture and politics thread

I really didn't care much about the ministries being fused together mostly because I am against the government having a say on what is culture and what isn't along the massive amounts of money being spent in frivolous projects and professional useful idiots. Most liberal and progressive countries also lack a culture ministry to begin with so I don't even know why we need one. Specially since we have been spending more on "culture" than we have been spending with research grants and science.

Lula being elected again is a major set back for Brazil, seriously, if he does it will be 12 years of rule on the hand of a single man and through something that doesn't make him that different from other autocrats like Chavez and Putin. It doesn't erase the fact he was the one who propped Dilma to the presidency, which was a rather obscure Chief of Staff and one of the director boards of the Petrobras.

Those that do usually use it funding organisations such as Opera Houses, Orchestras, or for providing funding or assistance for film-makers (or running their state TV Networks).

Yeah ours does Culture, Media and Sport alongside a bit of tourism and leisure. But mainly on culture that just means ensuring that the museums are publicly funded and cheap or free.

edited 30th May '16 1:31:39 PM by Silasw

"So uh...is Venezuela about to collapse?"

Colapse? no, that is to quick for us, we are more like decomposing for the inside, is a fun as it sounds....

& Which is pretty much nice and virtually neutral, instead of the government allowance given to some of our "content producers", in spite of all this major public events received funding and still had an outrageous entry fee, allowed advertising and the organized could still reap the profits.

The Culture Ministry was broken as fuck but getting rid of it stroke some strings among a lot of people as if it was a maneuver to suppress our "culture" or to remove funding from underdog artists and producers. Which I can attest they weren't getting any funding to begin with.

The Ministry of Culture gets literal 0,1% (6% at its height) of the country's funding. It's not some outrageously expensive endeavor and even then it's a bit tiresome every time any sort of economic crisis undergoes the first reaction is "fuck culture straight in the ass who needs it amIrite".

Its main purpose is funding things like independant filmmaking, documentaries, cultural projects and whatnot. When it comes independant filmmaking for instance most of the projects get by, at the very least partially, on public funding.

edited 30th May '16 7:05:00 PM by Gaon

Here, it's 0.5% (with 0.3% being directed towards the public television station). And if what we already have here is fairly precarious in terms of funding cinema, museums, theater, and so forth, I wonder how harder it must be in your country...

edited 30th May '16 7:15:02 PM by Quag15

Link in portuguese: 4 siblings were attacked by taxi drivers after being mistaken with Uber drivers after leaving the airport.

Gee, no wonder everyone here dislikes or hates taxi drivers. Expensive, crappy and now violent, they are a credit to their kind.

Even if they were Uber drivers, there still wouldn't be a reason for this kind of action. This is precisely the kind of episode that undermines their point. I mean, I think I have never met a Taxi driver that would do such a thing and most of them were pretty nice to me, but stuff like this is exactly what makes me side with the competition because it makes me think that happens because some people don't know how to deal with their rivalries.

edited 1st Jun '16 5:55:57 PM by ShadowAbyss

I never had a reason to dislike taxi drivers. Even before my father became one

But seriously, at least my father's main complain is that Uber doesn't have to follow the same regulations taxi drivers have to, which makes the competition unfair. Personally, I already thought the national taxi system, if it's even can be called such, was pretty screwed up, since despite selling the right to own a cab being illegal it's omnipresent. After Uber and the surrounding controversy I was even surer. Of course, I'm no specialist, so I can't say my opinion about how it should work is actually how it should work. Nor I can say taxi drivers would (or would not, for that matter) like it.

@Ministry of Culture: Not being an economist, I can't really give a strong opinion on it, but I can easily agree with Gaon's point in regards to the economic benefit of closing the Ministry of Culture being minimal.

Taxi drivers here drive like assholes. Give me gray hairs, especially considering I drive 50 minutes to and from college every day.

I had only one positive experience with taxing a taxi and it was still expensive as fuck to pay 30 bucks for a ride that wasn't even 1Km long, it was twice as expensive as the buss ticked I paid for.

Now that isn't normal. I remember a time when paying for a Taxi used to be way cheaper, the value you should pay would just move 10 cents from time to time, then it went up to 15 and now it is 25.

But even with this difference, paying 30 bucks at the end of a ride of 1Km is too much. The only way I could picture such a thing should be if you got into one bad traffic jam.

edited 2nd Jun '16 10:24:59 AM by ShadowAbyss

My college is in a relatively small city, everyone jacks up the prices here because the students don't have much of a choice but to pay.

The taxi drivers just really like to do that, specially those near the bus stations.

edited 6th Jul '16 4:32:05 PM by AngelusNox

That's messed up. If this is true, then this is exactly why a lot of people prefer to use the Uber, some Taxi drivers are just that dishonest and are not making their cause any favors.

edited 2nd Jun '16 12:43:24 PM by ShadowAbyss

How come none of you guys have private hire? Basically a taxi where the price is pre determined, the whole thing is licensed, there's no requirement for a taxi medallion and they can't just pick you up of the street (having to be phoned or booked online first).

Because it needs a hefty license to operate public transportation which in turn, effectively turns those private hires into taxis...the informal market however is filled with motorbike drivers and van drivers willing to illegally fill the niche.

Then Uber, thanks to a legal loophole managed to threaten both by providing comfort, affordability and convenience, usually, while the taxi and irregular services more often than not forced you to pick one or none.

I am very well aware of the corners Uber cuts to get its profits, but between them and our regular services and them they managed to win a lot of the public support by doing something most of our service providers don't: a decent service with a fair price.

Meanwhile in the South of Brazil.

So Dilma through a couple of friends launched a campaign to crowdfund her travels around Brazil to speak against the coup a couple of days ago and it already reached 300K in "donations".

While I don't doubt there are a lot of useful idiots who'd give their money to someone who is more than able to afford those trips on her own terms, fuck me if this doesn't smells like money laundering.

According to one "philosopher" and Worker's Party member the Lava Jato is a ploy to give the Brazilian Oil reserves to the US and the Judge Sergio Moro was trained by the US to push for those plans.

And here is the take of 'O Cafezinho'^note another blog/alt news financed by the PT and acting as a propaganda piece for the party on the leaked documents of the supposed Moro's US training.

Yeah I read the documents, it was a training program and deals between the US and Brazilian justice systems to deal with terrorism and fiscal crimes.

I love how our left loves to complain how every media is biased and twists the facts but their own media venues are insanely dishonest and manipulative.

But hey just adding the " US is behind it" is enough to draw a bunch of total morons support without thinking through into supporting our government officials and the Worker's Party as a victim of "US Imperialism".

edited 5th Jul '16 12:51:42 PM by AngelusNox

"I love how our left loves to complain how every media is biased and twists the facts but their own media venues are insanely dishonest and manipulative."

The more I read about stuff from other parts of South America, the more I realize our countries are all the same.

That stuff is so silly and ridiculous they look like something that I can easily picture coming out of one of these stereotypes of hippies that live in a van writing about conspiracy theories. They are so exaggerated I just can't read that kind of stuff and keep a straight face at the same time, it would take a lot of imagination for me to actually buy any of these things. But I wouldn't worry that much about it if I were you, despite the fact there are some people that will take their word for it, this just sounds more like a desperate manouver to me.

edited 5th Jul '16 3:22:28 PM by ShadowAbyss

If you think that's ridiculous, look at this. And no, it's not a joke article.

Edit: link was broken, so I replaced it.

edited 5th Jul '16 3:43:25 PM by IFwanderer

Gawker helpfully lays out why the Rio Olympics are setting up to be a (literal) shitshow.

Oh boy, the Rio Olympics didn't even start and we're already failing spectacularly.

Do you guys want to place any bets? Dilma has been running publicity campaigns over how she and Lula were the Mother and Father of the Rio Olympic games, how long do you guys think it will take for her to attempt pinning everything on Temer after the Olympics prove to be a total and predictable clusterfuck?

Like the World Cup, the Olympics are another waste of untold billions gone into pretending that Brazil is a developed nation.