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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe myth behind Brazil's Lula is crumbling
The mass protests across Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo and the capital, Brasilia, forced President Rousseff to address the country on national television late Friday in an attempt to head off a deepening government crisis.
Following the storming of a foreign ministry building in the capital on Thursday (20.06.2013), the government clearly feared an escalation of violence in the midst of the high-profile Confederations Cup soccer tournament.
"Dilma is living through a political inferno," says Adriano Diogo, a state parliament member in Sao Paolo for Rousseff's governing Worker's Party. It is no accident, he maintains, that the president was booed at the Confed Cup opening ceremony in Brasilia's brand new stadium. There are many political forces at work in Brazil that would like to prevent her re-election in October 2014, he said.
http://www.dw.de/the-myth-behind-brazils-lula-is-crumbling/a-16900223
David__77
(23,598 posts)The right cries about taxes just like in the US. The left needs to steer this, and ensure that the Workers Party return to its roots, reject neoliberalism, and redirect public funds toward generating real economic development.
Response to David__77 (Reply #1)
Recursion This message was self-deleted by its author.
flamingdem
(39,335 posts)Very intense and in so many cities, and very little reporting in the US
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)someone should have done a little research on brazil and it`s cities.
They've had the World Cup before. What about Brazil is unsuitable for the World Cup? It's the 7th largest economy in the world.
hack89
(39,171 posts)keeping everyone safe is going to be a monumental task.
But the country still has an alarmingly high murder rate, and knife- and gun-point muggings, carjackings and armed robberies continue to be facts of daily life. Rio alone has seen a spate of recent incidents, including the March gang rape of an American student aboard a public transit van and the shooting last Saturday of a Brazilian engineer who, because of faulty signs, took a wrong turn and drove into an unpacified favela.
http://news.yahoo.com/crime-doubts-persist-brazil-ahead-events-082227963.html
BainsBane
(53,112 posts)in the favelas of Rio, not in Salvador. I'm not sure about crime patterns in Sao Paulo.
hack89
(39,171 posts)BainsBane
(53,112 posts)the question is the distribution of it, where it's located in relation to the stadiums. I've never spent time in Sao Paulo.
BainsBane
(53,112 posts)His election was a huge accomplishment and he did implement policies that started to bridge the gap between rich and poor. I would assert that the fact you have these protests shows that Brazilians believe a better life is possible.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)BainsBane
(53,112 posts)Compared to what? Compared to Castro, Allende or Goulart--yes. Allende and Goulart, however, both were ousted by the military and killed. More than twenty years of right-wing authoritarian dictatorship following Goulart in Brazil. Lula was head of the steel workers union and helped to bring down the dictatorship. He twice unsuccessfully ran for president as a socialist against the right-wing and scandalously corrupt neoliberal Fernando Collor and the more moderate neo-liberal Fernado Henrique Cardoso (an intellectual who wrote about dependency theory). When Lula was elected in 2002, he moderated his approach and came to power with the backing of some of Brazil's financial elite, who had come to recognize that the existing model of economic development that targeted a small percentage of the population was not working for Brazil, not even for the elite. Lula did not challenge neoliberalism but he softened it. His administration widened the percentage of the population that benefited from economic growth and increased Brazil's middle class. Brazil's economy grew and the poor became less poor, rather than more poor as had always been the case in periods of economic development. Now the economy has begun to retract and the Brazilian middle class expects more. That Bahians are protesting tells me a lot has changed and that people now expect a better life.
As historian EP Thompson demonstrates, protests rarely take place at the depths of poverty, during periods of extreme hunger. They tend to occur when people expect more, when economic change invokes a sense of moral outrage, what Thompson calls a "moral economy" of the crowd. I believe this is what we are seeing in Brazil.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)BainsBane
(53,112 posts)I elaborated on it quite clearly. If I misunderstood your point, you might rephrase it in a complete sentence.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)BainsBane
(53,112 posts)from knowledge of Brazilian history. Of course given the way you wrote the post, it's a bit difficult to know if I followed your meaning. You could express it in a complete sentence or two, yet I have noticed an unfortunate resistance or inability on your part to clarify your ideas. I don't really know why.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)reform v. actual left revolution, what's so difficult?
BainsBane
(53,112 posts)Who imagined it was? He was elected. It wasn't even an electoral revolution. I have never heard anyone claim it was a revolution. He was a change from Fernando Henrique and Collor.
Brazil has never had a revolution. Even their independence movement was relatively peaceful, the principal battle being at Bahia where the Portuguese navy held on until July 2, 1823.
These protests are a major deal. Whether they will constitute a revolution, it's too soon to tell.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)thanks for the schooling teach but you haven't told me anything i don't already know yet.
and regardless what the fruits of the protests are, they won't be any fundamental change either. just more of the fucking same.
BainsBane
(53,112 posts)You wouldn't have used the word revolution. Your continued rudeness is noted. Why everything has to be a battle for you, I have no idea. You seem to object to the fact someone writes more than one sentence.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)revolution.
everything isn't a battle for me.
i have no objection to people writing more than one sentence, in fact, i often do the same.
you are the rude one. you make assumptions and act on them as if they were certainties. but they're not, they're just your assumptions, and most of them are wrong.
BainsBane
(53,112 posts)quite obviously.
I cannot help the fact that you writing is unclear. You did not use the revolution in your first post. I am not a mind reader. If you want people to understand you, you have a responsibility to express yourself clearly.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,405 posts)Yours, however, have been short phrases, frequently ungrammatical, and pretty much useless.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)BainsBane
(53,112 posts)Brazil is in South America. Portugal is in Europe, on the Iberian Peninsula. They are not the same country.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)BainsBane
(53,112 posts)and value knowledge and education.
alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)You, on the other hand, have actual knowledge. So, of course you're going to get empty responses tinged with contempt. You know more than the person you're discussing things with, and that person wanted to just make a claim and dance away.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)Agree with the Thompson position though. At least in most cases. The masses of people have to know what they have to lose before they get pissed off about losing it.
BTW, HiPoint if I misunderstood your point, I apologize.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)it metastasizes again.
lol - comrade!
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)BainsBane
(53,112 posts)enacting socialist reform wouldn't have been possible, particularly since he had to put together a parliamentary-like coalition to maintain power given the nature of Brazil's party system.
Brazil is a country with an enormously wealthy and powerful elite.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)team members, which is what this is about.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)Sparky 1
(400 posts)BainsBane
(53,112 posts)for your kindess
byeya
(2,842 posts)the fact that there is a long way to go for a semblance of economic justice about the time Lula gave more than lip service to the World Bank, WTO, etc.
Lula raised expectations and couldn't meet them in a short period of time. Dilma faces this problem and the problem of political survival which should be the #1 priority. The Left needs to continue consolidating power.
and I wish the Brazilian people the very best in making that happen.
byeya
(2,842 posts)and except for Honduras and Colombia and Paraguay, Central and South America is more free from northern interference then it has been for generations.
Lula developed trading partners to counterbalance the USA and the current leadership needs to work with the new Western Hemisphere organization of states - with the USA and Canada excluded - to formulate regional alliances for the benefit of the working people and those that want to work.
Perhaps, they will even be able to rid themselves of the - for them - counterproductive "war on drugs"
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)possibly each with their own agenda.
See Ocpagu's post here in the Latin Forum : http://www.democraticunderground.com/110819560#post4
ocpagu
(1,954 posts)... is absolutely clueless.