South America culture and politics thread

Kinda. Though not in the same way as Santa Muerte:

edited 9th Nov '15 8:30:55 PM by Quag15

God damn it Marquis I did a whole elaborated post about Candomblé in the other thread. WHY WON'T YOU NOTICE ME MARQUIS SENPAAAI.

But yes Angelus got it all fixed.

In particular, the specific "DEAAAATH" aspect of Exu is ascribed to "Exú Caveira" (or in english "Skull Exú", he has many faces and aspects in Candomblé, Exú Caveira being one). There's even a jaunty tune about Exú Caveira.

Its lyrics roughly being:

edited 10th Nov '15 5:51:44 AM by Gaon

Reminds me of BOPE screaming "caveira!". Is he just a reaper doing his job or genuinely a malevolent force?

Well that depends on who you ask.

In traditional Candomblé he's a benevolent entity. Terrifying, fearsome, and will fuck you up if you cross him, but in general a decent fellow.

In Christianity (and subsequently the more Christianity-influenced sects of Candomblé), he tends to be viewed as a darker entity, asosciated with Satan.

The congress takes down Dilma's veto of the printed vote

Meaning that for each electronic vote, a small card with the registered vote is printed and deposited in a ballot to be counted along the e-voting results.

Our Superior Tribunal Misters are buttmad about the decision and only the Worker's Party voted against it.

This along upholding the ban on private funding of political campaigns.

edited 20th Nov '15 7:50:23 AM by AngelusNox

For a while now I've been convinced that printing your votes is a good idea since in theory it allows you to check if your vote was counted correctly. I know you can check your vote at the Tribunal Eleitoral where you voted or something like that (I have never voted yet), but that might not be helpful when dealing with mass fraud. On the other hand, we have a long story of coronelismo. The implementation is key, and that's what I'm worried about.

Banning private funding of political campaigns is great, but it doesn't stop it from happening illegally (in many countries, such as Spain). I've joked before they should make it legal, but force political ads to show "sponsored by" messages. Then I was told it'd look like this: "Dilma; sponsored by Odebrecht. Aécio; sponsored by Odebrecht. Marina Silva; sponsored by Odebrecht. Odebrech likes giving you options *wink*"

I still consider the risks better than the blackbox we have and less fraud prone than just using e-voting or ballot voting alone.

I never thought Odebrecht had that kind of huge influence. Then again, the conglomerate does generate billions in revenue (31 billions in US Dollars is how much in Reais?)

At the moment it is 114.83 billion Reais, and possibly increasing (At some point earlier this year 1 dollar was equal to 4 reais, I believe, and that prompted a lot of "homeless man finds a lost dollar on the street and becomes a millionaire"-style jokes) Though plenty of companies have their share of influence over the government. The agribusiness, the auto industry, etc.

True, but again, execution. I certainly wouldn't want coronelismo to regain its power (if it ever even lost its power).

The issues with Coronelismo still happens in small towns and regions like Mato Grosso and the whole North East, but instead of someone just taking your ballot and taking a good look at it, it's just a handyman throughly escorting you to the voting bin.

Thankfully most of the votes are in metropolitan regions, where this is would be much harder to pull.

Having a printed ballot to be counted would be a good way to check for frauds if the discrepancy between the electronic results and ballot cast votes is beyond the error margin.

edited 20th Nov '15 8:58:58 PM by AngelusNox

So Odebrecht is you guys' fault, I have nothing but contempt to give thee.

It is our version of Halliburton but much more incompetent.

That specific method sounds like voto de cabresto. And I'm not strictly denying its existence anymore. It's just that there are sociologists that theorize the new social politics are killing coronelismo, while there are others which theorize it's just causing it to adapt by presenting the coronel as an ally of the government. Sadly we didn't delve too much into it in sociology class.

Don't worry, there are also plenty of other national and international companies with influence over here (though admitedly, I mostly know which lobbies are the most influent). It doesn't help they've been privatizing state-owned companies since the nineties.

I'd say both, thanks to the urbanization we went through and the old powerful land owners becoming involved in politics rather than owning the only way to make a living or the lands.

Maranhão under the Sarney and Alagoas under Collor, still display the hints of Coronelismo but instead it is more subtle, with their groups and families deciding to enter the political arena rather than exert control over the population directly, instead they pretty much own the journals and news in oder to use them as propaganda tools.

But the decline of the large estate farms allowed people to become less dependent of the local land owner for a living and thus became less vulnerable to coercion, of course in smaller cities where the social assistance is entirely on the hands of the mayor, the issues with coronelismo still stand, but for lager scales like major cities, state and country sized voting, its influence drops down significantly.

The electronic voting with printed votes would allow to find voting fraud by making harder for the printed votes to match the electronic votes.

Besides Brazil is the only country using electronic urns without the printed votes and everybody else who was using electronic voting only stopped using so, because of reliability issues. That along the software being a blackbox and the government refused to allow an auditioning to verify the software running on the urns.

I meant they colluded with Ricardo Martinelli to sell us overpriced city renovations and other civil constructions.

edited 21st Nov '15 4:24:34 PM by vandro

So overpriced half-assed contracts. Totally BR Halliburton.

For those who think the US police is too violent, Rio de Janeiro cops execute 5 teens in cold blood. One of them was surrendered and executed while laying down on the ground.

this was something my brother was discussing with me sometime ago.

basically, our police is still militarized as an artifact from the dictatorship period, and this isn't really a good thing.

It also doesn't help that places like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo have their pocket war zones inside them.

Using guns result in death?

What madness is this?

Well, at least 5 of the cops were arrested, while this whole mess is being investigated.

...

They're not gonna be fired and the investigation is gonna be archived, right?

Probably, police death squads got scot free even with evidence of their wrongdoing. After the whole thing settles down probably the verdict will settle for something like unpaid leave or discharged from the force without benefits.

Like a slap on the wrist for their crimes.

It is habbening! IT IS HABBENING

The impeachment process was approved by Eduardo Cunha on congressmen chamber.

The only english link I could find

edited 2nd Dec '15 2:50:06 PM by AngelusNox

Oh it's a dangerous game to play. An impeachment could open up several possibilities, and many of them not very positive.

If Cunha assumes as an interim president, I am rage quitting this country, but he is so deep in shit the will probably be impeached right away.