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Chile's main rock festival turned into major clashes and arson between protesters and police
Thousands of protesters armed with stones, sticks and Molotov cocktails clashed with police on Sunday as one of Latin America's biggest music festival opened, in the latest spurt of a four-month-old wave of grassroots anger over economic inequality and other woes. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesAnyone else wondering why people want to protest a rock festival? It's not exactly the G20.
Feb 25th, 2020 - 11:03 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Shicuréo...
Feb 26th, 2020 - 10:02 am - Link - Report abuse -1Felicitaciones por no haber cancelado el FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE LA CANCION DE VIÑA DEL MAR...
That gives us all the chance to hear..., again..., the voice of an awaken Chile..., in and outside the venue...
By the way..., Quė linda está la Bonbon La-fuerte...;-)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3rKFSRf-KBE
DemonTree & Estimado THINK
Feb 26th, 2020 - 05:44 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The festival in Viña has always been a moment of national pride and pastime, where people peacefully enjoy an eclectic mix of artists of which many are world famous. The disturbances did nothing to assist the public good and many small business people were financially ruined due to looting and arson.
The small business I'm referencing were kiosk vendors and small shops owned by humble lower income people that were uninsured and are unable to rebuild, much less restock their inventory.
I've finished my table grape harvest and awaiting a record avocado season. This has been an exceptional weather perfect growing season.
In part I understand the claim of the people of Chile but I also think that there are many anarchists in these claims. and people who just don't like the political party that won and I what know without any doubt. Here we have Maradona and CFK who talk about many nonsense from Cuba.
Feb 27th, 2020 - 01:45 am - Link - Report abuse 0Hipocritas que hablan de presos politicos , persecucion mediatica, judicial y represion policial y lo dicen desde cuba o venezuela
DT
Mar 02nd, 2020 - 04:51 pm - Link - Report abuse 0(cont of “IMF: Arg debt....” )
Judges shouldn’t need to impress people with hard-to-understand jargon...last year, Barroso actually criticized some of his colleagues because of it. Didn't make any difference....he, Fux & Fachin (‘n C.Lucia) explain their decisions in understandable language.
“Since Portuguese is descended from Latin…”…I’d say so, but only for those who studied Latin.
(Judges appointed before Lula) :Celso de Mello, by Sarney, an unknown quantity – never know which way he’ll go ; Marco Aurelio, much the same, appointed by his cousin, Fernando Collor ; G.Mendes, by FHC, became irrational +/- when Dilma was re-elected.
As strange as it sounds, 4 of the 5 appointed by Dilma seem to be serious, not influenced by party politics.
Afaik, Queiroz is alive ‘n kicking – don’t know for how long yet, but I think he’ll go down for corruption, not murder.
Maia, overall, did support the reform, but one could see that the support was never 100% for the right reasons…officially, always saying politically correct things, but his other actions – like now – reek of furthering his personal agenda. These guys aren’t stupid, they know Brazil needs the reforms, ‘n that Guedes’ plans are important, but they play difficult to negotiate advantages for themselves. Very selfless of them, “everything for the people”.
Congress would need to catch B breaking the law, to try to impeach him…being just ‘unpopular’ - (but not to all, by a long shot) - is not enough...but if they did, they’d end up with a General.
Flooding is common here during summer, but this year, in several States, rainfall was more than double the expected average.
Cool in São Paulo is around 15°C. A breakthrough to the vaccine could happen at any time…but suppose they'll demand a test period, during which I’m sure there'll be no lack of guinea pigs (in China).
“Judges shouldn’t need to impress people with hard-to-understand jargon”
Mar 02nd, 2020 - 06:58 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Agreed. The sort of people it impresses are idiots like Terry who think using long words and Latin phrases makes you smart, despite the fact they have no idea what they mean.
Re Dilma's judges, I'd say she's more of an idealist than Lula, and probably did try to appoint them on merit. But it came back to bite her in the ass.
“they play difficult to negotiate advantages for themselves”
Seems to be the way in Brazil. Why do people keep reelecting these politicians?
“Congress would need to catch B breaking the law, to try to impeach him”
True, but it doesn't have to be anything very serious. Impeachment is not like a real trial where guilt and innocence is decided based on evidence. The Deputies and Senators would vote based on politics and their own best interests, and they might prefer Mourão to B.
Flooding is not so common in the UK, but we also had more than double the expected rainfall in February. That's on top of my part of the country getting record rainfall in Autumn, meaning the ground was already saturated. I guess 15C really is cool. Can you still get sunburned in winter?
It's always the testing phase that takes the time for new drugs and vaccines. First they have to test it's safe, then they have to test it works. Probably they'll try and fast-track this one, and the virus is still spreading quickly outside China unfortunately, so there should be plenty of volunteers there or elsewhere.
DT
Mar 02nd, 2020 - 07:47 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Despite Dilma's faults, and they are plenty, I believe she does not represent pure evil, as Lula does. What led to her downfall (imo), was allowing herself to be manipulated by Lula...but that is why he chose her.
She tried to rebel once or twice, but he soon cut her wings.
“Why do people keep reelecting these politicians?”...for a certain percentage because votes are bought, and I know it's an old cliché, but mainly because the 'people' generally speaking, are idiots. What else ? same as asking why do people insist on hitting their head against the wall ?
“True, but it doesn't have to be anything very serious.”......of course it doesn't, there is no half-measure of breaking the law...either you do, or you don't. So far, B hasn't (committed any impeachable offense).
So you can understand it better : Dilma DID break the law. Congress could have ignored it, in that it could have voted to not impeach her. But besides breaking the law, she had screwed things up so badly, that it became political....and it would not have reached that point - i.e, there would not have been a vote - if she hadn't broken the law in the first place.
Mourão instead of B ? Up to now, impeachment is not possible, however, Mourão at least thinks (and pretty rationally) before he opens his mouth.
Yeah, you can get sunburned in winter, but as the Earth moves elliptically around the sun, in winter it's further away, which means it takes longer to burn. In a typical winter the days are cool and sunny. Best time of the year.
Reckon that in China, where the government is not particularly transparent, they'll start testing on people without them knowing...
I guess after all the protests, and the LJ and other corruption investigations, I expected people would want to throw out the old, corrupt politicians and try someone new. Maybe to a certain extent that did happen, but there are still a lot of familiar faces.
Mar 02nd, 2020 - 10:12 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Is any crime an impeachable offence in Brazil? B might've done something illegal already, there's a lot of laws in Brazil and they don't necessarily make sense. But anyway, Congress did ignore Dilma breaking the law for a while; Eduardo Cunha blocked her impeachment until (probably) he got worried about the corruption investigations and wanted a President who'd be more helpful about burying them. Didn't help Cunha himself, though.
It's just like in the US, where we all knew the Republicans in the Senate would never convict Trump. The evidence for and against was irrelevant. But if his popularity had been as low as Dilma's (or Temer's), you'd soon see them change their attitude.
Mourão being more rational and predictable is why I thought Congress might prefer him. But maybe they like a President who draws the attention of the press away from them.
Your weather sounds much more pleasant, but sunburn in winter would be annoying. In the UK there is basically zero UV for half the year, people who want a tan use sunbeds, despite the risk of skin cancer.
Also in the northern hemisphere the sun is actually closer to Earth in the winter. :) It's just too low in the sky to make it hot.
Re China, can believe they'd do that. They're not exactly big on human rights there.
DT
Mar 04th, 2020 - 05:04 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Perhaps now you’ll agree most voters are stupid…why insist on crap, if there are better (or less worse) options?
Was surprised to see many new faces in 2018 elections...'n interesting to know what profile of voter was responsible for them (education, social class etc).
Impeachable offences, tons of them, listed in the many chapters ‘n articles of Law 1079/50 : amongst the better known offences : treason, trying to effectively dissolve Congress, try to prevent free elections through violence or corruption (buying votes), effective abuse of power, promote corruption or tolerate it by those under you, disobey the LDO (budget law, voted yearly : use public funds in discordance with the LDO, taking loans from Federal banks without Congress’ explicit prior approval (what screwed Dilma, not to mention her attempted cover up)…all easy-to-avoid crimes, unless breaking the law comes naturally to you.
To impeach Dilma, even after her committing an impeachable offence, it required that someone, in Congress or not, or Congress, to actually accuse her…she would then have to defend herself.
I’m pretty sure that only those only in her inner circle (PT) and those she could easily fire (bank presidents), were aware of the extent of her malfeasance, but when it leaked out, other politicians used it to their advantage (to pressure her, such as Cunha) until she was no longer useful, and public opinion overrode the rest.
If Trump had been doing a lousy job overall, perhaps less Republicans would’ve stood up for him. But so far, so good.
Because Congress has no basis to impeach B, whoever pushed it would just look silly when the attempt backfired. The few that do insist on his impeachment, do so simply as a way to attract attention.
Our weather is usually free of extremes, although you do get hot spells in winter and vice-versa, 'n droughts. Feb rainfall was record breaking and so is March’s - in 9 of SP's coastal towns, it rained more in 12 hrs than the monthly average.
Depends what you call stupid. By definition 50% of voters are below average. I do think voters are easily mislead, though. Not many people can be bothered to do real research and just decide based on what popular tabloids/TV shows say.
Mar 04th, 2020 - 09:15 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“promote corruption or tolerate it by those under you”
That actually sounds hard to avoid for presidents in Brazil. If they throw out the corrupt from their own party, they'll decimate their supporters. If they try and interfere with the other parties' schemes, they'll never get enough cooperation to achieve anything. Best option is probably to remain ignorant of what's going on, as Lula claimed to.
Plenty of Americans think Trump is doing a lousy job, but they mostly don't vote Republican, so it doesn't affect those senators. They only have to please enough people to get reelected next time.
Extremes are bad, I wouldn't want to live in Australia where it regularly gets over 40C. UK weather is also free of extremes, it's just overall mediocre. Not warm enough in general and way too many cloudy days, plus it can rain all year round. But this year has seen record breaking weather in the UK, Brazil and Australia already. Seems like a new record is broken every year...
DT
Mar 05th, 2020 - 04:37 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Generally speaking, stupid can be defined as not learning from your mistakes....and I think 50% is rather modest.
“can’t be bothered to do real research” would be more serious in the UK, because most have the means to…in BZL, besides the ‘not-being-bothered’, many don’t have the means, and aren’t smart enough to see through the (rather obvious) false promises and lies during/after the campaign/election.
“If they throw out the corrupt from their own party”….IF they do, and a ‘few’ have been kicked out, it’s usually because their party doesn’t want to, or can’t afford to be seen as associated with corruption; honesty is motivation for very few.
It’s common knowledge that about 50% of Congress is corrupt, but when accused – even with ample proof, corporatism takes over and rarely is anyone punished. Even if it reaches the STF, and it rules they should lose their mandate (unusual), either house can overturn that decision.
Lula’s claim of ignorance was his best and only defense, plus “it’s not mine, it belongs to a friend of mine”…here you’ve got a man claiming to be the most honest in the world, yet he left a trail of unprecedented corruption ‘n damage to the country, behind him.
“Plenty of Americans…” right, and plenty, plus a bit more, think he’s doing a good job. Best measure of this will be the US elections.
“only have to please enough people…”..Isn’t that the name of the game ? instead of ‘enough’, why not go for the ‘majority’ ?....something few politicians do. It’s usually just more of the same shite…
Funny, today is a typical winter day…16C, and sunny….but by night it’s expected get colder, rain, and tomorrow reach 24C. The seasons have not been very well defined of late…anything happens at any time.
Don't most Brazilians have smartphones these days that they could do research on? Actually that probably makes it worse, Youtube and social media are a hotbed of fake news and bullshit. Doesn't look good for the future.
Mar 05th, 2020 - 08:43 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“It’s common knowledge that about 50% of Congress is corrupt”
Exactly, but the President has to work with them anyway. Would be pretty ironic for Congress to impeach one over it, though. :)
Do you really think anything is going to change there? Seems like they are pretty well protected to me and unlikely to suffer any consequences.
Re Lula, Brazil was always poor, and always corrupt. He made some big improvements and some of them have gone backwards now, but I'm not seeing how he made things worse than before. Brazil's economy isn't doing great, but honestly, which of the neighbours would you swap with?
According to the poll of polls, Trump has 42.8% approval rating, which is high for him. Since half of Americans don't vote, what their elections mostly show is disillusionment with the system. Brazil has too many parties, but America has too few for real choice; voters either feel no one represents them, or they dislike one party so much they would never switch, which is why the politicians usually don't bother trying to appeal to the majority, but concentrate on certain groups and those who already support them.
The weather is getting a bit crazy everywhere, it's probably due to climate change. Plus I read that cutting down too much Amazon is likely to make Brazil a lot drier. Not as dramatic as floods but very bad for farmers.
DT
Mar 05th, 2020 - 10:36 pm - Link - Report abuse 0They definitely do, but many don't have access to internet or don't bother. Don't know what % of Brazilians can be considered well informed on politics/politicians records, but I'm sure it's the priority of very few. And you have all the fake news...a report I saw recently on TV Globo, concluded, after analysing 5,870 messages on the internet, that 90% were fake news...so, it doesn't appear to be particularly reliable.
I don't see the politicians in Congress passing laws which would backfire on them, unless public pressure became so great that they couldn't afford to ignore it. While in office, besides immunity (relative), they have the corporatism, so the path to prosecute them only becomes free after they leave. They have structured the Law in such a way it is hard to get rid of them.
“Brazil was always poor, and always corrupt...”...rephrasing, 'an emerging economy and always corrupt'. If it had not been corrupt, had not had a long succession of nationalistic govts, things would be very different.
You insist Lula made “some big improvements”, but if they went backwards at the first sign of a crisis, obviously weren't very solid....or, were they as they say here, “só prá Inglês ver” ? ('just for the English to see', an expression coined in the 1900s, to do with the British financing tea plantations in SP, which means “fool me because I like it”).
Brazil always had corruption, but on a tiny scale compared to Lula's gang. He literally bankrupted PB, the BNDES, other State Cos, took corruption to an unprecedented level (USD billions per year), screwed investor and market confidence in the economy, caused unemployment, and you're not seeing 'how he made things worse' ???
At the moment, (swap economies), with none.
Discussing what's wrong with the political systems is like discussing the sex of angels...it's cultural, won't change any time soon. The system “guarantees” the permanence of those in power, making renewal very difficult.
AMZ's another story.
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