Oh, bother.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
They'd probably say "something something free market" and "taking back jobs from foreigners".
Edited by M84 on Nov 18th 2018 at 11:40:41 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
What's really funny is there are bolsobots complaining about this already, saying certain communities rely heavily on the cuban doctors and that this is being done for ideological reasons without consideration for how practical it actually would be.
It's been like that with basically everything he's done so far, despite all his actions being completely predictable.
Oh, bother.
And I'll bet they will still vote for him over the leftwing when push comes to shove.
That or they'll cast a blank vote.
Let memes die. Kill them, if you have to.
Stubbornness and sustained shortsightedness is one hell of a drug.
Don't catch you slippin' now.
The Fool
So, my parents like to watch Globo's Jornal Nacional on evenings and nights, and some weeks ago, it said that, after the withdrawal of Cuba's doctors, Bolsonaro's team set up some sort of application thing for brazillian doctors to apply to work in the locations that the former Cuban doctors worked in. The news said that it had gotten about 2000 applicants, but then got hacked and taken off air, but got repaired, and later managed to get well over 6000+ applicants.
What are your thoughts on this? And, perhaps more importantly, does anyone have a source on that? I find it a bit strange how it suddenly gained so many applicants out of nowhere, but I also recall that the news also showed Bolsonaro's team claiming that the Workers' Party under Dilma had intentionally barred brazilian doctors from applying and working, to make room for the Cuban doctors.
Sick of everything.
As far as I'm aware, only 3% of the positions formerly held by cuban doctors have been filled, and all of them are in major city centers. I can go look for specific data later if you want, but that number doesn't seem true to me.
The law in the night
The whole Brazilian doctors barred is horseshit.
As far as anyone is concerned, the application rate is high but the drop out is yet to remain seen as the program only confirmed the applications, but didn't have the applicants start for the program or present themselves yet.
And then, there is the issue of 40% of the applicants already having a work in the public health system
. Most of them in the districts they already are in, which means they aren't increasing the number of doctors as much as they are just exchanging one position for another in the same region.
Edited by AngelusNox on Dec 4th 2018 at 12:45:44 PM
Inter arma enim silent leges
How is the doctor supply in Brazil? Are there enough reputable medical schools within Brazil, with high enough educational standards graduating enough competent doctors to address the need?
Well... yes, strictly speaking, but... look, here's the thing: for a while now, Brazil has still had a bit of that rural mindset where the jobs that pay best and are most prestigious are usually doctor and lawyer. Because of that, lot of people go to university and enter medicine simply for the sake of earning a diploma so they can earn more as doctors. Which means that per year, the market for doctors gains another few thousand bad, improperly educated doctors, not necessarily because their medical schools were bad (there are several bad ones, but that's an education issue that I can discuss at length later), but because the majority of those students graduating are little Timmy, whose father paid for his medicine graduation so he can earn easy money, but who also thinks he's far too good for this shit and that the money is just going to drop on his feet when he's done.
In short, we do have a surplus of doctors, but not necessarily good ones, to the point where the market is saturated with bad professionals looking to make easy money who don't really want to leave their comfortable, big city apartments to go and actually perform the job.
Same thing applies in a slightly different fashion for the lawyers, but they're not who we're talking about.
Sounds like a problem with the certification process, where they are graduating doctors who arnt really qualified. Or possibly a problem with the labor market, where its easier to reach patients in an urban area. There may be an unmet need in the countryside, but its too hard to reach enough patients to make the kind of money you can in the city.
Possibly, I really dont know.
The Fool
Hah! I knew there was something suspicious about it. So it does seem like the news have basically gone full propaganda mode.
It's a lot of problems with a lot of things. Rabid capitalism, antiquated mentality, cultural issues, lackluster and uninvested education... I could go on for a long while here.
A good video about the military government and Bolsonaro, by youtuber Three Arrows
To elaborate, it discusses the particularities of the dictatorship as it compares to other South American countries, in particular how the transition prevented stronger movements for reform and, thus, weakened the memory of the Brazilian society towards the horrors committed. And how this all relates to Bolsonaro.
Edited by Heatth on Dec 7th 2018 at 3:01:22 PM
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has pneumonia - hospital
The condition was discovered after Mr Bolsonaro developed a fever on Wednesday evening, the Albert Einstein hospital said in a statement.
His antibiotics have been adjusted, the hospital added.
Mr Bolsonaro has been in hospital since an operation last week to remove a colostomy bag fitted after he was stabbed while campaigning last year.
Presidential spokesman Otávio do Rêgo Barros said it was not clear if the pneumonia would prolong the president's stay in hospital.
Mr Bolsonaro tweeted a video of his spokesman's statement, adding jovially: "Beware of the sensationalism. We are very relaxed and we remain strong."
Mr Bolsonaro had been due to be discharged by next Monday at the earliest.
He is continuing to perform breathing and muscle-strengthening exercises, doctors said.
Mr Barros said the president was still on a liquid diet and was looking forward to steak and chips when it was over.
The 63-year-old president was checked into hospital on 27 January in preparation for the surgery.
A colostomy bag is a small pouch used to collect waste from the body when the digestive system is no longer functioning a result of an illness, injury or other problem.
Well, he needed an excuse now that the colostomy bag was out.
Also, wow, we've been quiet on this thread, haven't we? It's been two whole months since the last post. Maybe we should at least start posting the news, even if there's nothing particularly worth discussing, just to keep the thread alive.
Edited by TheLovecraftian on Feb 7th 2019 at 11:07:21 AM
I personally find Brazilian politics fascinating, and I feel fortunate that we have some native Brazilians posting here to keep us informed and provide an insider context.
I'm not sure if this qualifies as "Brazilian Politics News", but Ricardo Boechat died today on a helicopter crash. Given he was a somewhat important news figure around, I thought it might be worth making a comment about his passing here.
To those unfamiliar with the man, Boechat was a famous radio and news figure in Brazil, and an important commentator on political matters, who was considerably respected, even by those who he sided against.
I'm sure that's saying little about him, but I didn't know enough about the man's carreer to properly regard it. Suffice to say he was a greatly accomplished person, and his loss is a big hit for Brazilian politics and journalism.
Edited by TheLovecraftian on Feb 11th 2019 at 3:32:07 PM
I didn't find any international news sites talking about this, so there's no article I can link to, but here's something that happened yesterday:
Brazil's Ministry of Education (MEC) sent a letter to every public and private school in the country, with instructions that, on the first day of class, the letter (which also included out current president's slogan of "Brazil above everyone, God above everything) should be read in front of the entire student body, who should then proceed to sing the national anthem in front of the school's flag (if one is available), and that the entire thing should be filmed and sent to the ministry.
You can imagine how well-received that was. But I can also tell you, which is more fun.
The entire thing was immediately and harshly denounced by just about everyone. Several governmental bodies and workers have accused the move of being an attempt to overstep the constitution, political movements and associations have declared this to be an illegal request, teachers, principals and parents alike have denounced the request, and law experts have had a field day pointing out the myriad of legal issues with such a measure.
The ministry, meanwhile, has first spoken out to clarify that the measure is "a recommendation, not a request", and then to backtrack completely and claim that the entire thing was a mistake by someone in the ministry itself.
The council in which the state secretaries for education gather claims to have been surprised by this, and called out the move, saying it "greatly interferes with the school and the federation's autonomy". Deputies of the state have declared their intent to sue the minister in charge of this action (who wrote the letter himself, by the way).
The action was also compared to a former law that was in place during the military dictatorship, which made it mandatory that the anthem be sung at school once every day.
So, y'know, good vibes right there.
Emboldened by Bolsonaro, armed invaders encroach on Brazil's tribal lands
Inspired by Bolsonaro’s vow to open more native territory to commercial development, the men, armed with machetes, chainsaws and firearms, had come to stake their claims.
A tense stand-off ensued with members of the Uru-eu-wau-wau tribe, who captured the January confrontation on a cellphone video viewed by Reuters. The trespassers threatened to set fire to their villages to drive them out, tribal members said. Tribesmen readied poison-tipped arrows in their bows.
The invaders retreated. But a bullet-riddled sign at the entrance to their sprawling reservation now serves as their calling card.
The placard is emblazoned with the acronym FUNAI, a federal agency charged with protecting indigenous land rights that is widely loathed by agricultural interests.
“It was a warning that they are coming back,” Awip Puré Uru-eu-wau-wau, a 19-year-old tribal member, told Reuters a few weeks after the encounter in the northwestern state of Rondonia.
The confrontation is part of a surge of threats and illegal incursions that tribes and indigenous rights groups say have accompanied Bolsonaro’s rise to power.
Land invasions have increased 150 percent since he was elected in late October, according to the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a Brazilian advocacy group.
On the night of Bolsonaro’s victory, a health post and a school were firebombed on Pankararu lands in northeastern Pernambuco state, CIMI reported. In midwestern Mato Grosso do Sul, the group said, convoys of farmers fired shots at the Guaraní Kaiowá community to intimidate the tribe.
Brazil is home to about 850,000 indigenous people representing roughly 300 tribes. Their vast reservations, accounting for about 13 percent of Brazil’s territory, have long been a source of conflict with outsiders looking to tap their natural riches.
Bolsonaro has railed against what he sees as excessive federal protections for these minorities. He compared natives on reservations to animals living in zoos, suggesting they would be better off assimilating and enjoying a cut of profits that could come from opening their holdings to farming, logging and mining. He has dismissed reservations as an impediment to agribusiness, one of his top supporters.
“If I become president, there won’t be one square centimetre of land designated for indigenous reservations,” he said at a 2017 campaign stop in the farm state of Mato Grosso.
Indigenous advocates say such rhetoric has stoked long-simmering resentment, putting native lives at risk.
“His campaign speeches ... became a license to invade indigenous lands,” said Ivaneide Bandeira, head of the ethno-environmental defence NGO Kanindé.
One of Bolsonaro’s first acts as president was to strip FUNAI of its role in setting reservation boundaries, passing that authority to the Agriculture Ministry, which is dominated by rural interests.
The official now in charge of land issues is Nabhan Garcia, a right-wing farming organizer who has fought reservations for decades.
“The amount of reservation land is monstrous and it’s in the hands of very few Indians today,” Garcia said in an interview with Reuters.
(For an interactive version of this story, see: tmsnrt.rs/2VBxLZV) TRIBAL ASSEMBLY
The Uru-eu-wau-wau were decimated by illness when farmers arrived in the 1970s with the opening of a road through Rondonia.
Today, their 150 survivors live on a reservation covering 1.9 million hectares near the border with Bolivia. It is an area larger than the U.S state of Connecticut.
While some tribal members wear jeans and use cellular phones bought with government welfare payments and sales of Brazil nuts and cassava flour, they live largely as their ancestors did, hunting tapirs and wild boar.
The Uru-eu-wau-wau have faced invasions by illegal loggers and farmers before. But January’s trespassers were different: They painted numbers on trees spaced out in precise intervals of 60 hectares (148 acres), a sign they were staking out plots for sale to future settlers.
The tribe called an emergency assembly of its six villages in late January. Chiefs and warriors painted their bodies, put on headdresses of macaw fathers and performed a war dance. They wrote a letter pleading for government protection, warning they would resort to their bows and arrows if forced to.
“We need this land and its forest trees standing to survive as a people,” Tangae Uru-eu-wau-wau, a village leader, told Reuters.
The assembly was attended by FUNAI’s new boss Franklimberg Ribeiro, a retired army general of Amazon Indian descent. He assured the Uru-eu-wau-wau his agency would protect their land.
“We will take action to stop these invasions,” Ribeiro told Reuters after meeting the tribal chiefs.
But weeks later, no one has been punished and the Uru-eu-wau-wau fear the worst.
The tribe shared their cellphone images with Brazil’s Federal Police, who caught one suspect trespassing on their land. But a judge refused to issue an arrest warrant.
Authorities said they are still looking for David Elias da Silva, a local farmer they allege led the January invasion.
Reuters visited his home just outside the reservation. His wife Suely declined to disclose his whereabouts. She said he was innocent and blamed tribesmen for the unrest.
“The Indians don’t work. They don’t do anything. And that is the cause of all this trouble,” she said. ATTACKS ON THE RISE
Conflicts with illegal miners and loggers have intensified in the Amazon region states of Pará and Maranhão, FUNAI said. With law enforcement stretched thin, some tribes have formed armed militias to protect their lands.
Court fights are brewing too. Brazil’s 1988 Constitution guarantees tribes rights to their ancestral lands.
The Brazilian Socialist Party, the PSB, on Jan. 31 filed a case with the Supreme Court challenging Bolsonaro’s decision to give the Agriculture Ministry authority to determine reservation boundaries. The high court has yet to rule.
Bolsonaro’s plan to assimilate Brazil’s indigenous people is a reversal of federal policy protecting their habitat, languages and customs, according to Cleber Buzzatto, the executive secretary of CIMI, the advocacy group. He fears the changes could lead to ethnocide.
Ethnographer Sydney Possuelo, a leading authority on isolated tribes, is worried too.
In December, he was in the Javari Valley reservation in the far west of Brazil, a region home to the highest concentration of uncontacted tribes in the world. Locals told Possuelo they had seen several hundred armed “white” men in boats enter the reservation on the Javari River, where they poached fish and turtles, cut down trees and prospected for minerals.
One night, some of them opened fire on the small FUNAI station built on the reservation. They were repelled by four policemen who happened to be there on an annual visit. FUNAI agents who spoke to Reuters confirmed the attack. No arrests were made.
“The situation of Brazil’s indigenous people has never been very good. But in 42 years working in the Amazon, this is the most dangerous moment I’ve seen,” Possuelo said by telephone.
“Loggers, miners, hunters, fishermen who invade reservations think the president is on their side now,” he said.
But sure, Bolsonaro's hate speech doesn't harm anyone!
I apologize if I am responding to every bit of news about this administration with cynic sarcasm but that's basically all I have left by this point.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Don't worry, you're not the only one.
Right now, the only two reactions to these kinds of news are either that or remarking on how everybody called that prior to him being elected.
Related to the dam collapse, I've been hearing that Brazil's inspectors have improved their competency enough that they have begun to document the management's specific failures. This is apparently an improvement over past performance?
I'm just wondering if the people supporting this action even bothered to ask this question. Too many people value spectacle over practicality.
Don't catch you slippin' now.