South America culture and politics thread

*Sigh*

Probably he was paid by land traffickers who want to destroy the lines to have more land that they can "sell" to invaders.

edited 3rd Feb '18 9:25:27 AM by raziel365

I'm really terrified of what will happen if Bolsonaro gets elected. I really want to get out of Brazil as soon as possible, both to no longer live in what's tantamount to hell, to completely distance myself from my parents, and to achieve my dreams of pursuing college education in Canada. But if he gets elected(and he will), I'm pretty sure this will lead to a massive brick wall in my desires to get out. Not to mention that everyone who can't get out will be stuck in a totalitarian hell.

The despair is real.

So, one of our Christian representatives is pushing for a Law Project, that will include the study of the Holy Bible as a part of the mandatory curriculum in Brazilian schools.

Separation from the Church and State motherfucker, do you know it?

It's fine so long as he makes kids study the whole thing. Don't stop at Jericho's walls falling, tell them about the next bit. Tell them about Abraham and Esther. Tell them about the Arch of the Covenant. Compare teachings with how Christians behaved and are behaving in Brazil. Tell the kids about the history of Christianity and Christian dogma, about the Nicean Creed, how the Bishop of Rome proclaimed himself Pope, and how doctrine and folklore evolved over the centuries.

Basically, I'm okay with state-sponsored religion classes so long as they go where the Church(es) won't. I find that people in the modern day who are ignorant of religious realities have a very severe blind spot in understanding where the vast majority of mankind is coming from, and going to.

Except this is another push by our Evangelists to proselytize public schools even further. It is being done by the same people parroting gays go to hell, atheist are immoral and this is one nation under god bullshit. It is also written by a fucking asshole defending the Military Intervention and the dissolution of the congress.

They want to make the study of the New Testament obligatory and nothing else, while at the same time blocking other forms of religion from gaining the same space in public schools. The law also makes it obligatory to attend the Holy Bible classes, so pretty much if you are from another religion, you still have to spend your time learning tales of an outdated bullshit fantasy book than actually learning something useful.

Optional religion classes are already allowed in Brazil, but this jackass wants to make the study of the Holy Bible and only the Holy Bible specifically mandatory and we already have to deal with the law revision allowing for religious studies being used by Evangelist teachers to proselytize and convert students.

Not to detract from your justified anger, but:

Most religions do have their holy books. And you'd probably call them the same thing you've called the Bible, even though: a) all holy books have at least a few teachings which still stand true and/or necessary in this day and ag; and b) either studying the major religions from a general viewpoint or one religion in a more detailed manner is something valuable, in order to make an informed, complex - not simplistic - judgement or philosophical reflection (regardless of where one stands on the matter of religion as a whole). Now, Brazilian atheists and members of other religions will have a hard time, if that thing the evangelicals proposed goes through, sure.

That being said, it'd probaly be best for a school to have optional classes for people of different religions (provided there are enough people and a teacher available, of course), or a class for one religion, instead of going to one extreme (no religious classes - or classes about religion - allowed in school, period) or to the other extreme (only [X religion] classes, and they must become mandatory).

In the high school I went to, there were two optional religious classes: the Catholic one (Educação Moral e Religiosa Católica) and a Bahá'í one (where, presumably, the role and philosophical teachings of the ones they call Manifestations of God ^note e.g. Zoroaster, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed) would be explained. Looking back on it, I don't regret about the former one (it helps that I had a good teacher who talked about stuff like morals and ethics in a way that was not overly preachy or overly narrow-minded).

edited 21st Feb '18 4:25:48 PM by Quag15

How about a general Religions course like they gave us in Spain, where you get to learn about all religions, especially the big ones?

That’s what I had attending a Church of England school in the UK, the only thing I remember was the visit to a Sikh Gurdwara.

The reason why I am really against, even the optional classes, is exactly because of who is promoting them. It is the same branch of parties and politicians that want to make Brazil into their religious fundamentalists by indoctrinating the young as early as possible to reach that goal.

Religious education was never an issue in Brazil, Catholics had their own religious schools the children could attend in the weekends after prayers and the Evangelicals could still teach whatever they wanted in their temples.

The problem with the optional classes being allowed by law instead of being something that schools could opt in or out, was in essence, made to allow the encroachment of the religious political wing inside the schools.

The way the law is written pretty much implies that while the religious teachings will be, mandatory or not, the curriculum will be up to the principal or the teacher, which pretty much means the religion that is endorsed by the teacher or the school board will be what is going to be taught. With no government or school oversight over what is being taught in the classrooms, something that the Evangelists are already taking vantage off by urging the Evangelic teachers to preach to the children.

The laws regarding the teaching of religion in Brazil aren't meant to include any other religion outside of what is considered the mainstream religion, which in Brazil means either Catholic or Evangelic Christianity, so Judaism, Spiritism, Islamism, African mysticism and religions, Native American religion, Buddhism and everything else is practically going to be a No No, specially with how religious conservative the poor and middle class in Brazil is, you can also expect them to follow a demonization of anything that isn't considered Christian.

I've had religious classes in Public school and they were mostly learning about the myth of creation, the Easter and Jesus without any sort of analysis or reflection other than Jesus is good, praying is good and god is good. Essentially it also meant that other religions didn't exist and I recall more than a few negative comments about Candomblé and African religions being in the wrong because they are treated as a nuttjob sects or black magic.

Also in another fucking great piece of news, the military intervention in Rio de Janeiro, with the military being allowed to use a collective search warrant in poor communities, is a massive breach of legal and constitutional rights.

Which means that the Army as the authority to search houses and people for whatever connection to the organized crime, automatically presuming guilt, which violates the fifth article of the Brazilian constitutions in several ways.

edited 21st Feb '18 6:36:22 PM by AngelusNox

The memories of a certain miserable, miserable time are coming up and it is not pleasant.

Remind me: how much were the Brazilian religious right involved with the juntas?

edited 21st Feb '18 7:38:53 PM by TheWildWestPyro

Mostly fine with it because they could preach their shit and be anti-communist all they wanted.

attempt against Luis Inacio da Silva AKA Lula, shots have been fired at his caravan and it is being treated as a murder attempt by the police.

For the fucks sake, I am not a big fan of him, but this a murder attempt is far too much and the dipshit of Bolsonaro is making pistol hand poses on press conferences right after the happening.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of sentencing Lula to jail after the decision to jail Lula in second appeal was sustained.

He has now 12 days to surrender to police authorities and 9 days left to contest the decision.

However the Superior Electoral Courts are still deciding if he still able to run for the presidency or not. In case his final sentencing is filled before period where the candidates for the presidency are allowed to present themselves and be approved to run, this will leave the next election in the hand of Geraldo Alckmin, Marina Silva, Ciro Gomes and...Jair Bolsonaro.

edited 6th Apr '18 7:33:50 AM by AngelusNox

So, Lula is going to jail?

That's good I guess

It's terrible. He's the only person left whose approval outmatches Jair Bolsonaro. Everyone else Angelus mentioned barring maybe Ciro Gomes would drop like a sack of potatoes against him.

In summary, basically the Lesser evil is out and left the path for the greater one.

Right? I don't know shit about Brazilian politics except that they're even more corrupt than Peru

I've said this elsewhere but if Bolsonaro wins the election we're basically going to become the south american russia, if not worse than that. I might be living in a dictatorship until my 40's, if not longer than that.

From my, highly limited, understanding, this guy is like Trump...in a country with far fewer powerful institutions and norms to restrict him from dismantling the rule of law.

The comparison is spot on but he's actually worse than Trump; in Gaon's words he's like a fusion of Trump, Mike Pence and Dick Cheney into an unholy abomination. Trump might be a white supremacist but he's extremely capricious, buffoonish and incompetent; if he wasn't so horrible he would be hard to take seriously.

Bolsonaro on the other hand is not only monstrously unhinged but completely devoted to his sexist, racist, elitist, homophobic and fascistic ideology. If you want to really understand what we're dealing with, have a look at both Ellen Page (yes, that one) and Stephen Fry's interviews with him (fair warning, both are chilling).

Not only that, but yes, it's worse here. Everyone was afraid that once Trump got elected he would be able to dismantle democratic institutions and turn the country into an illiberal democracy; while those were completely understandable fears, it's turned out that it wasn't that simple because the US's democracy, however flawed and gerrymandered it may have been, was not so weak that everything about it could be subverted that easily.

However, Brazil has already been in dictatorships multiple times, and our current period of democracy has only been going on since the 80's, so it's still pretty fragile. Notably Bolsonaro is an apologist for the military dictatorship (one of the most heinous and cruel regimes of the last century) and in fact even denies that it was a dictatorship at all. That's why I said if he gets elected we'll basically become Russia for the next 20 or so years, if not even more oppressive and cruel . I have faith that democracy can eventually be restored but the price we'll pay in the number of innocent lives, further degradation of an already weak democratic culture, intellectual and moral decay, etc will be so great it will take a long time to fix, if it even can be fixed.

I'm actually in a pretty privileged position where I don't have to worry too much about me or my immediate family unless something goes south all of a sudden. My only real concern is getting into trouble with the police or the military since my autism can cause me to behave in ways that they'd probably consider weird or suspicious, and I'm not too good at controlling my fidgeting or other odd quirks.

However I know many other people who aren't so lucky.

edited 6th Apr '18 1:20:47 PM by Draghinazzo

Let's put it this way: people agree or disagree on whether Trump is a fascist (I, myself, disagree).

Bolsonaro, however? Dude made apologia for the dictatorship in the past.

This. Very much this.

edited 6th Apr '18 1:10:23 PM by Quag15

Bolsonaro, unlike Trump, doesn't have a strong power base in the congress. As rotten as our political class is, most of the right and left wing parties outright refuse to deal with him. But I am sure more opportunistic parties like PMDB would be all over him, I don't really know if PSDB would be stupid enough to ally themselves with Bolsonaro, but given its current adventures with Michel Temer and the PMDB I am not so sure. But outside of the conservative Evangelical groups, the rest of the Brazilian parties loathe Bolsonaro, since they not only despise him as a person but see him as a type of threat to themselves for both selfish and practical reasons.

Lula's candidacy had problems on its own, not only with dealing with an even more polarized voter base, due to a lot of grievances but at the rhythm the Lava Jato was moving, there was no way he could avoid being sentenced before the elections.

There is a silver lining on Lula being ruled out, it certainly increased the chances of Ciro Gomes by a wide margin and Ciro is insofar the only one who actually has a decent government and economic plan and the political outreach to act on it. Bolsonaro also is also fairly hated among at least anyone who isn't middle-high class and by a decent share of the academic circles, the issue is to see if the Workers Party will still beat a dead horse and support Lula or remove their heads from their asses and support Ciro.

On the legislative perspective this was an extremely interesting event, all my Law teachers are excited and looking forward on the developments, since inside the legal branches someone like Lula was considered to be untouchable but that ruling proved that even political Juggernauts like Lula can be trialed and convicted, which opens up the path for politicians like Michel Temer, Acecio Neves, Malafia and all the other powerful scum to also be trialed in Civil Courts after they lose their legal immunity from the civil courts (as our politicians can only be judged and trialed by the federal court).

And if Lava Jato still keeps the same rhythm, then it is a matter of time until the next one is either Temer or Neves, since the Federal and Civil investigators and judges have been collecting a lot of dirt from those two.

edited 6th Apr '18 10:55:00 PM by AngelusNox

I'm pretty angry about the whole thing with the general who threatened a coup if the court voted to free Lula. That's completely unacceptable in a democracy.

Guess we better hope Ciro wins. The world does not need another asshole strongman running a country.

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's Donald Trump and Presidential frontrunner, hospitalized after stabbing, lost 40% of his blood.

No ill-wishing in this thread, please, beyond devout hopes that he loses the election.

Well...

Fuck.