Originally posted by Greadius
He didn't say overthrowing governments, he said supporting FARC. Generalizing and breaking down the equivilances so you can say "Well... YOU TOO" as your explanation of Silvas (alleged) policy positions isn't much of a defense.
And the U.S. developed nukes 50 some-odd years ago. Its hardly rational to think FDRs policy position under the threat of WW2 and the impending Cold War can be equivical to Brazil's situation in 2002. The policies weren't identical; Brazil isn't fighting a world war.
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Definition of Proliferate:
To grow or multiply by rapidly producing new tissue, parts, cells, or offspring.
To increase or spread at a rapid rate: fears that nuclear weapons might proliferate.
Now, you understand that the policy of non-proliferation means between countries, not within.
So, can you explain at all how the U.S. dismanteling its nuclear arsenal would help stop other countries from developing nuclear weapons?
He said, and I quote:
This isn't some pee-poor country of Angola. This is Brazil, easily capable of building a bomb, overthrowing governments and installing leftist dictators. This is bad news for free people
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Nonetheless, if building nukes after WWII and under the threat of cold war was justifiable, keeping them after those threats are gone are just as revolting as building new ones.
But worst of all is your explanation of proliferation. I know what proliferation is, and I assumed that it referred to prevention of the proliferation of the very warheads, not the proliferation of countries possessing them.
If it is, as you believe, the second case, than that policy is even more hypocritical; Hey we have the most powerful tactical weapons of the world. We are keeping them, and we are good guys. But hey guys, you cannot have them too, or you will be mean and ugly.
Now, Nukes are too powerful. I agree that none should be build. And I agree in not building them in Brazil. But a nation that has a huge arsenal of them does not have moral grounds to criticize anyone who wishes to build them. Excuses that are 50 years old are not enough to justify the fact that those terrible weapons are being conserved.
USA is also not fighting a world war those last years.
Originally posted by Greadius
I don't believe you can't understand this, its really much too simple.
There is a difference between being afraid because of the existance of the bomb (your assertation), and being afraid because other people might get it.
I don't think the U.S. nuclear arsenal poses any realistic threat to me, so it is very difficult for me to be afraid of it. Contrary, my lack of fear of my own countries nuclear arsenal doesn't mean I would feel just as safe if every other country in the world had the same capability.
Ok, you brought this to individual level. What you said about your arsenal is the same about Brazils arsenal (that happens to be fictional at this moment). I am that much more afraid of each USA nuke than all nukes that Brazil can possibly build.
So, lets make a deal. You guys finishes your arsenal destroy/dismantle all the bombs and we dont build any. How does that sound?
Originally posted by Greadius
I'm not sure if straight up capitalism is the problem. I think the problem lies in the fact that one facet of Brazilian economic culture has remaind the same from Colonialism to dictatorships, and every manifest inbetween.
Wealth Disparity (1997):
lowest 10%: 1% (of wealth)
highest 10%: 46.7%
I don't think there is any way for modern capitalism to function under those conditions. That is the type of wealth differential we saw during the height of the guilded age and 'robber barons' type capitalism here in the U.S. It didn't do much for wealth creation either.
The problem with previous Brazilian governments was that attempt to do this shock therapy of becoming a developed capitalist nation. The model was simple: do whatever international investors want to get as much outside money into Brazil as possible. They tried so hard to please the IMF they failed to keep their own citizens happy enough.
The capital flight we're seeing now is the gittery investors that only put money on Brazil because they were lapdogs to IMF policies. There has been an 'overinvestment' in Brazil for a while now, and it was failing to produce either enough jobs for impoverished Brazilians or enough consumer goods to compete in the export market with other cheap labor nations (Brazil has a marginal export surplus). That problems just baffles me, but I'm guessing it has more do with domestic culture than systematic failures (or Brazil can't become Japan or South Korea because it is NOT Japan or South Korea).
Here you have some points. I wont dig in the historical detail as to many of the differences between Brazil and USA historical conditions, that goes as far as the models of colonization adopted in those two nations, and that created those deep differences in our systems of wealthy distribution.
But Yes, wealthy distribution is a BIG problem here. We are at top ten economies in the world, and still, we have many regions where people live with less than a dollar a day.
Originally posted by Greadius
You mean elect leaders the rest of the world hates? I thought we already did that...
It will only be the same when Lula at least gives the world an actual reason to dislike him. Maybe pass on one environmental protocol or two
Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
1. Brazil is still predominantly hardcore Catholic, so birth control, abortion, the sex education required for intellegent decision making are all still on the taboo side, especially for the poor, who reproduce alarmingly.
Almost that. I agree that a large chunk of our population is religious in the bad sense of it; meaning that they follow blindly outdated church positions. However, the governmental policy is actually controlling the births, and the numbers are beginning to get stable.
Most younger familes, even the poor, are settling with 2 to 3 kids now. Its getting harder and harder to find those families with 8 children as a decade ago, at least in the urban centers.
Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
2. In the absence of accomodating the poor the poor have long ago "helped themselves" to the hillsides and mountain tops of cities like Rio which were not at first accessible to advanced construction equipment. These favelas or shanty towns have grown massively (and actually are some times quite sophisticated with hijacked electricity and plumbing, etc.) and the only occasional response by the government has been to shoot the poor and bulldoze their shanty towns. Not conducive to class relations.
Yes, the favelas are a huge problem. They have two basic reasons:
1 A wrong conception of organization. A suburb here is considered a bad neighborhood. People all want to live near the centers. This called for an agglomeration in the industrial areas, and that is why we have such a huge cities as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
2 The policy of industrialization adopted by Getúlio Vargas in the 30s. It turned Brazil from an agricultural to industrial nation in a single decade. Well, there were people migrating by millions to the urban centers to get jobs in the new industries, and all the money that could be used to settle them was being invested in building even MORE industries.
Well, in the last debate in the day before the elections, Lula said that his project is to turn these favelas in actual neighborhoods. Instead of moving people to other places (what was tried and failed), actually making them good places. It was tried and succeeded in a number of cities lately (mine included) with an encouraging rate of success.
Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
3. Brazil pretends to first world independance but is really still a colonial sattelite of the only truly realized economies - USA, EU, and Japan. It is impossible for them to act in their own best interest by concentrating on feeding and housing people when their wealth is extracted to service foreign debt and cater to a small in-house elite. Grotesque to see starving people in rags in front of an armed guarded jewelry store but there you have it.
There is no country outside of the USA, Europe, and Japan that have been allowed to fully serve themselves because the trilateral nations depend on their grip on the wealth of others. When socialists like Nyerere in Tanzania try to make sure their people are fed and literate, agitators dangle the more advanced forms of wealth in front of the people on top to corrupt this path.
BTW this is what those people protesting the WTO and World Bank are upset about, in case you believed the reports that they were just insane rabble rousers.
What is the reason I refute any attempt to diminish Brazil due to its backwardness. We never were able to enjoy time of development based in our actual needs.
We became independent without war (Portugal was actually too weak at that time to wage one), but Our King was the Heir to Portugals throne. Also, there were pressure from England, the top dog at that time, to reverse the situation unless Brazil assumed all debts of Portugal (because Brazil was the only real hope of paying them anyway).
Well, since it was not smart to try and face England (we had too weak of an army, and it was our most important economical partner), we were born in debt already.
It took us long to pay, only to see it grows again in the policy of industrialization. But this one was useful and necessary to make brazil a modern nation, and we managed to pay it quickly, thanks to exportations to the allied nations in the WWII;
Thus in the 50s and 60s, life here was very nice. Probably better than in Europe at that time, as we have to this day many cities of European emigrants (Specially Italian and German).
But them came the military government, and it was disastrous in economy, creating the huge debt we endure up until this days.
Maybe when we manage to live without debt for at least two generations, we can finally turn into a modern nation.
Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
4. Brazil is the legendary over-bureacratized nation, full of red-tape, endless redundancy of agencies and agents, and the inevitable corruption that comes to balance that problem. Hopefully a "sea-change" government like Lula's can counteract this a bit but Brazil has had many such twists and turns and it seems to get mired deeper in certain kinds of trouble no matter what. This may not be the best course but it is still better than a military dictatorship which they suffered under for decades.
Military government is to blame again. Its them that developed this culture of ultra bureaucracy. Its beginning to get better now, but we still have plenty to work on that.
Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
Everybody I know who has worked in Brazil and really loves the Brazilian people are cheering Lula's election. Cardozo was not getting the job done. One thing about Lula - he will put Brazil's interests above those of the USA or any other nation, something every sane citizen of every country would demand of their leader.
This is not necessarily true. There are a few groups on the labor party that didnt follow Lulas lead into tempering the rhetoric to the middle. They were quiet during the elections, as they knew that their unreasonableness would hurt his chances.
No one doubts that Lulas intentions are the better for our nation, and few doubts that he is honest. But many fears that his lack of formal education and the pressure from his radical bases will turn him into a president that is more corporative than actually effective in a general and national sense.
If this turns to be true, His government will fall in inefficiency. We just hope that he achieved enough sophistication to know the difference between what is really good for Brazil and what is good just under an out-dated perspective of communism inspiration.
Anyway, I just hopes that, in the next four years, he can convince me to re-elect him and be proud about it.
I don't believe you can't understand this, its really much too simple.
