Brazil sets new record for homicides
msn.com
msn.com
Drugs are not the only problem. We also have a lot of cargo/truck stealing, street-level robbery, an enormous black market of stolen mobile phones, etc.
We have some affluent startup hubs, there are innovation in e-commerce, payments, banking, HR and many more, but our tech elite is complete out-of-sync with our major problem: violence. Maybe a fresh HN discussion can put some light on the issue.
I hear about the crime in my country, but it seems unreal to me because in my area you'd never know there were dozens of murders last weekend.
Does this affect your life?
I've been robbed at gun point; I've woken up with someone inside my bedroom stealing my laptop; I've been followed home; The bus from the public transport system I used to take was stopped by criminals and set on fire; and so on.
It used to affect only the life of those living in the metropolitan areas, but now it is spreading.
The main reason why I moved to the US was because I was living in such a state that I was always tense. When I was robbed at gun point I almost got shot because the guy thought I was too calm and suspected I was a cop.
Living in the US I realized how much that was affecting my daily life and how life without worrying feels like.
That's how it affects your life.
Most people just play the numbers game. I, for example, have been robbed at gunpoint, with a knife, with 4 teenagers threatening to beat me up when I was 14 and I was even "lightning kidnapped" (I don't even know the term in English, but I was put in a car and bandits kept me for 8 hours and drove me around waiting for the banking hours to reset the withdraw money from ATM to take more form my account).
A lot of my friends, though, have never been robbed at all.
In general, we all know we are subject to that, but in the end it is mostly just bad or good luck. Just being in the wrong place in the wrong time.
From all the people I know, those that have never been through this just live life mostly normally. But once you've suffered that at least once, you can never really fully rest again.
The homicides problem on that news is actually not that relevant in that context because, as others have said, it is really concentrated in poor neighborhoods or slums, where the State basically is nonexistent.
For example, in a lot of violent slums, criminals take and sell access to pirated cable TV, energy and water, to the point where the official employees can be made to fix stuff when they go there to try and cut signals. That is how absent the state is in those places.
But when you see homicides numbers like that go up, probably the random crimes to the whole population is going up as well.
Waiting for the bus every day of the week for 15-30min, you're very exposed, and should be careful with your phone out, and some people learn your commute time, follow you, it's rare, but if you're not paying attention, it can happen.
I personally used to(don't live there anymore) double check every corner I step into to make sure there's nothing suspicious.
It's anecdotal of course but I've had three of my friends having their cellphone stolen in the same day, and at least one per day for a two week span.
My parents moved into a gated community which is supposed to be safer, only to have their house robbed their first month there, robbers get in facilitated by the staff.
I could go on with anecdotes for a long time, and just for the last year.
When owning a gun is criminal, only criminals will have guns and everyone else will be unable to defend themselves. If ordinary citizens had guns, at least in their own home, the criminals would think twice about breaking and entering because they won't know which homes are armed.
Have you seen what middle class houses look like in Sao Paulo? They have metal bars in all windows, tall spiked gates and tetra locks are fairly common.
But that doesn't stop thieves from being crafty and daring. They rob people at gunpoint at busy intersections and ATMs in broad daylight, do flash kidnappings, etc. There was even a raid at a police headquarters one time.
And we haven't even got to favelas, which are an entire different can of worms.
I've heard horror stories of people that got attacked by like 7 guys holding assault rifles when the wife was pulling into the garage. Your safety magnum in the bedroom isn't gonna do anything for you in that case, and chances are they are just gonna steal it from you if they find it.
Also, a lot of robberies happen on the streets. A middle-class person open-carrying a gun is just going to be a pickpocket target, and concealed carry is going to be vulnerable to two-team robbers (one approaches you, the hidden one shoots you from the back if you fight back).
In a favela, the drug gang would probably just raid your house and steal your gun, if you could even afford one. Or, more likely, your kid would end up joining the gang.
When was the last time you've heard of a gun-wielding vigilante saving the day in the US? Was he in his car with his family getting robbed by 3 teenagers at a stop light?
I lived in Brazil and I've been robbed and I've witnessed people being shot in gang fights, and I don't see how having a gun on me would've helped, so forgive me if I'm cynical of armchair vigilantism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VThEm-UhFIs
I suspect that the reason you don't hear about a "gun-wielding vigilante saving the day in the US" has more to do with the media sources you consume. Here is a scholarly article detailing how common defensive gun use is in the United States:
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewconten...
Estimates range from 100,000 to 2.5 million. Even at the very very low end of those estimates, there are at least 100,000 instances of a "gun-wielding vigilante saving the day in the US" every year that you never hear about.
I also suspect it's hard to understand how a gun would have helped you when you don't know how to use a gun, which I suspect is the case given your position on guns from this thread.
It's entirely possible for the average citizen to acquire the same firearm training as a police officer or soldier and therefore be capable of providing the same level of protection.
At the end of the day, while it's easy to say you yourself could've protected yourself (because macho power amirite?), it takes borderline sociopathic composition for someone to say with a straight face that their mother should not only carry a gun but also react to a robbery and shoot a living person if the situation calls for it.
> It's entirely possible for the average citizen
The average salary in Brazil is like $700 per month. You'd have to be quite privileged indeed to be able to afford something as extravagant as shooting classes.
Furthermore, I didn't even advocate for someone's mother to carry again. That's a weak strawman.
I'm advocating for responsible citizens to be allowed to purchase a gun for self defense. Not everyone needs one. The overwhelming majority don't need one and shouldn't be carrying one. Just a small minority of responsible gun owners that take time to train themselves in how to use their firearm would go a long way to acting as a deterrent. Register them. Require training. Whatever is necessary to ensure responsible people can carry them or at least keep them in their own home.
Many of my friends have been robbed at gunpoint in Brazil, including my girlfriend who was robbed about 1-2 years ago. The situation is completely out of control.
Here's another one from Brazil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S7SPrb6oj4
This kind of defensive gun use should be permitted.
Também, pare de tentar me educar sobre o meu próprio país.
Oh, but they do. Ask your housekeeper, your kid's teacher or if you want to be statistical, literally any random person on the street. Everyone I've ever talked to, from all walks of life, has a first-hand story or knows someone who does. To be fair, my experience is mostly from the Sao Paulo/ABCD area. Maybe things are not that bad outside of Sao Paulo and Rio, and if so, good for them.
> Também, pare de tentar me educar sobre o meu próprio país
If I came across that way, I apologize. That was not my intention.
I feel like it's fine to wish to have one more tool at your disposal if you are responsible and a financially well enough to get a gun for self-defense, but I also feel that it won't really help in the grand scheme of things, for the same reason that having a switchblade in your pocket is not the greatest idea right now. I knew a burly someone who was with his just-as-burly cop dad during a bank robbery. They -along with 30 other people- did not react, and later when he asked his dad why, his response was "well aren't you glad to be alive now". Maybe there are cases where a gun can help, but there are also cases where it won't and cases where legal gun ownership might just become another avenue for guns to get into wrong hands. There are an overwhelming number of cases where you just don't know what will happen. I'm not convinced pro-gun-ownership laws are going to be a net positive, precisely because things are so out of control, as you said yourself. You disagree, and that's fine.
> The overwhelming majority don't need one and shouldn't be carrying one.
Personally, with the idea in mind that I wanted to protect myself and not necessarily worry or care about the vast majority of the population, I took a route that I believe is far more effective to protect myself and completely orthogonal to the possibility that my political view might make things worse for those 200M+ people: I left Brazil.
Not that I am against the second amendment, I think some idealism in your constitution is great. Much better than the cynical heartlessness your country is ruled with today.
Another time, I heard a ruckus from my room and looked out the window to see a group of about 20 men shouting. I had no idea what it could be about, but later realized it was a public lynching. That is, someone who either did something bad or was just thought to have done something bad, was caught by the group. Usually in these cases, there's no stopping the mob (from collectively beating the person to death).
Despite my two comments in this thread about some of the negative aspects of living in Brazil, I was never robbed or anything. And, it goes without saying (or, perhaps it needs to be said), there are many reasons to love the country, culture and people. These very real extremes, of positivity and negativity, make it a confusing place to be.
Personally, and due to the mostly tropical weather, living in Brazil also means wearing simple clothes, nothing fancy (not that this was a derivation from my actual style). Some people apparently carry a stealable amount of money on them - possibly in a second wallet, in a place that can be easily reached for when/if held up.
A few years ago, I saw a news report about the popularity of an anti-theft accessory for the back of one's cell phone, connected to a ring that goes on the user's finger, so that no one can run by and grab it. Though when confronted with someone who stops you and wants your phone, it's best to just give it to them, cause they could be not only armed but on drugs (ex. sniffing glue). Plus, if you do react, it's possible - depending on your location, like downtown or the beach - they have several friends nearby.
Malls tend to be the de facto "public space" where teens hang out, due to a lack of actual safe public spaces.
I'm sure I could say a lot more but those are some general thoughts that come to mind. Most of my years in Brazil were spent in Rio, fyi.
I've seen three people being mugged in front of my place, and I don't live in a place locals would call "dangerous".
But that's just me. Besides some common practices that have become instinct, like not using your phone outside and looking over your shoulder in desert places (or avoiding these places altogether), I think the majority of the population got numb to this situation and just accepted it like it is normal.
The PT is a cancer in the country and has set the country back 10-20 years at least.
Assuming your government (the justice department at least) still functioning, electronic banking transaction MAY actually reduce random street robberies. Because those kind of transaction will almost certainly leaves some kind of trace behind, which gives law enforcement a chance to discover illegal activities.
There were only around 13,000 murders last year in the US, a number that used to be more like 26,000 during the crack epidemic 30 years ago. US population has increased by 10s of millions since then, but murders continue to drop.
Additonally, 90% of murders occur between people who know each other in some form, be it neighbors or classmates. Being robbed at gunpoint on the street or in your apartment and then shot to death is quite rare, especially if you arent in places like Memphis, Detroit, Chicago, NOLA, Cleveland, St Louis.
The USA certainly isn't perfect but I was thrilled to get a good price on a great apartment in what everyone else calls "the hood". I will take my chances that I won't be the unlucky 1 out of 11,000 people who is shot here every year.
That, and if you want to raise a family, what kind of role models and community surrounds your children is important.
I do care about rape, assault, and murder. I don't ever want to be caught up in that. So I was very glad to learn that though my small town has an above average murder rate, it's between people who don't associate with me.
A) A friend's sister who got addicted to crack and was murdered by a guy her bf pissed off. He was caught.
B) One of my previous bosses had a cousin murdered in a domestic terrorist attack.
I associate Col/Mex deaths with cartels warring over trafficking routes but what is happening in Brazil? Is it just street trade?
And 5% of those were in Chicago alone.
[1] https://www.thetrace.org/2018/04/highest-murder-rates-us-cit...
Yet mass shootings are becoming dramatically more common.
What I find curious is that while the Brazilian murder rate is about 6 or 7 times that in the US, the rate of firearm related deaths is 'only' double. Is firearm suicide dramatically more common in the US, or are a lot of the murders perpetrated in Brazil not firearm related? It just seems odd.
https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-america/ Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides.5 The U.S. gun suicide rate is eight times that of other high-income countries.6 Access to a gun increases the risk of death by suicide by three times.7 Gun suicides are concentrated in states with high rates of gun ownership.8 Most people who attempt suicide do not die—unless they use a gun. Across all suicide attempts not involving a firearm, less than five percent will result in death.9 But for gun suicides, those statistics are flipped: approximately 85 percent of gun suicide attempts end in death
Lots of the murders in Brazil are firearms related and it has very strong gun-control laws. The average citizen is not allowed to own a gun.
http://www.chicagonow.com/getting-real/2017/07/chicagos-safe...
It might be more appropriate to compare the most violent neighborhood in Chicago to the most violent neighborhood in a similarly-sized Venezuelan city. Just as you would compare the safest neighborhoods in both cities.
Imagine how bad Caracas is, given that the population is roughly the same (or a little larger than Chicago's). There are no official numbers for Caracas as the government "chose" not to report. But Chicago has a 15.65 murde rate vs. a +110 in Caracas (per 100 000).
I don't even want to think what's the rate for the equivalent of Engelwood in Caracas :(
So the city is in some cases MORE safe than the less urban areas, the main reason for this drop was a drop in gang violence based on the consolidation and dominant victory of a single gang. That gang is the PCC.
In areas where multiple gangs are still fighting for control the violence can be incredible.
I was giving context of what that number means. Not claiming Chicago is more violent than Caracas.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/09/08/homici...
Even in Brazil I bet a lot of this happens in communities, where they can try to justify violence due to some perceived slight.
And of course let's not forget that America's crazy gun laws are pushed by gun lobbies because they help increase sales by creating an easy way to funnel guns into South and Central America.
Much of the violence is there because of things like The School of the Americas and the work of US interests in promoting less democratic states to make it easier to gather resources (see the book: Confessions of an Economic Hitman). While it may not be directly related to the gang violence, those policies do spill over and make this sort of trend easier.
Could we please stick to facts? US gun laws have essentially no impact on this issue. Based on murder rates, it would seem like Brazil is the place with "crazy" gun laws. Shifting responsibility for Brazil's violence to US gun manufacturers is intellectually dishonest. Ultimately, Brazilians are pulling triggers and they're pulling triggers of mostly Brazilian weapons.
US gun makers sell a lot more guns to Americans than Brazilians, yet Brazil has 63,880 homicides? The US had 17,250 homicides and over 125 million more people. The idea that Brazilian homicides are because of US gun makers is just absurd.
Homicide rates don't directly correlate to gun availability. Mexico had 29,168 homicides in 2017 with a population of 200 million fewer people than in the US. And Mexico has some of the strictest gun laws anywhere. Venezuela has the third highest murder rate in the world and the influence of the US gun lobby is non-existent. Most weapons there have some sort of Soviet/Cuban/socialist origin. You won't find too many Smith and Wesson's on the streets of Caracas.
Venezuela passed the "Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law" with the stated aim of disarming all citizens, with prison sentences up to 20 years for even possessing a gun. And what happened? The homicide rate rose from 73 per 100k to 90 per 100k (despite Maduro being known from undercounting crime.) Correlation doesn't imply causation of course, but the point is that Venezuela's homicide rates have nothing to do with the US gun lobby. It's absurd to even make such a connection.
In Brazil, over 68% of guns seized by police were manufactured by Brazilian government subsidized firms including Taurus, Rossi, IMBEL and CBC. Most of these guns were purchased or stolen from Brazil. My 68% number comes from 2014, but here's a report from 2011-2012 that shows similar numbers: http://www.soudapaz.org/upload/file/relatorio_armas_do_crime...
The point is that some political cheap shot on US gun laws and the "gun lobby" isn't even relevant to this problem in Brazil. In terms of "assault" rifles, an AK-47 is more common in Brazil than US-manufactured weapons. So we could just as as much argue that leftist-government gun policies are just as much to blame since AK-47s are vestiges of the Soviet-Cuban-backed socialist revolutionary groups from the 1980s. But even that argument is weak considering the vast majority of weapons used in Brazilian violent crime are handguns of Brazilian origin.
The point is, Brazilian violent crime is a Brazilian problem. Dragging US gun laws into this debate is just ridiculous since such an assertion isn't backed by any actual data.
Strict gun laws don't necessarily equal less gun availability.
You have to look at how effectively those gun laws are enforced, how much corruption there is in the country, gun law loopholes, the viability of the black/gray markets, etc.
The US has a much lower level of corruption than a country like Mexico, so gun laws in the US have the potential to be much more strictly enforced. The US also has many more resources to devote to stamping out the black/gray markets for guns than Mexico does.
There's also infiltration by criminals of much of Mexico's government. It's a case of the fox guarding the hen house. No wonder their gun laws are not effective.
What? The Bill of Rights was that prescient? I assume it is our freedom of the press that’s responsible for the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf?
I reckon both cities are some of the cleanest safest cities in the world.
I grew up in Rio, left when I was 20. Still to this day I’ve got the street reflexe. My partner, who’s Swedish, finds it mostly amusing, sometimes rude.
For example:
I won’t sit with my back to a door or a hallway, corridor etc.
I don’t tolerate people walking behind me closer than 5-10 meters, I’ll literally turn around and pretend to tie my shoe laces or look at a shop window.
And I think most of all, I can tell immediately if someone is sussing me out, looking for a vulnerability, something of value I’m wearing, etc. I see the eyes, I hear the body language.
All of this from someone who grew up in a middle-upper class neighbourhood in Rio (Ipanema).
I’m wearing an Apple Watch and I’ve got an iPhone 8 Plus in my pocket atm. I often leave the house with a $2000 dollar Sony a7iii câmera just because I “might see something I want to photograph”. My friends in Rio simply wouldn’t comprehend...
I always think photographers are like heroes for the audacity to go out with good cameras in hand all the time.
"Thus, disarmament is effectively happening in Brazil,[12] as are massive gun confiscations,[13] notwithstanding its refusal by Brazilian people (at the referendum of 2005). Some argue that this will increase gun homicides. Other research shows that there is a decrease in firearm deaths correlating with disarmament.[14][15] However, 2012 marked the highest rate of gun deaths in 35 years for Brazil, 8 years after a ban on carrying handguns in public went in to effect,[16] and 2016 saw the worst ever death toll from homicide in Brazil, with 61,619 dead.[17] Only to rise again in 2017 to 63,880 a 3.7 per cent rise from 2016. [18] "
Doesn't seem like the gun laws are working out.
Acquiring a firearm legally is a ridiculously bureaucratic process where you must submit to psychological evaluations by the military and "justify" your "need" to own a gun. If you manage to get approved by that long process, your reward is an extremely limited selection of revolvers chambered in weak calibers that you can't carry with you outside your home or place of work. The weapon must be registered in a military database and tied to your name and those soldiers can suddenly decide to drop by and inspect your gear. There is a limit to how much ammunition you can purchase per year, so the only way you can practice with the guns is by making your own rounds. You can't even transport your weapon from place to place without notifying them and acquiring some kind of permit. Alternatively, you can become a gun collector who can own everything but can't legally fire any of the weapons, not even for practice.
Criminals don't care about gun laws. They just purchase weapons from the black market, no background check or psychological evaluations or anything. Burglars used to consider the risks before breaking into a home, but now they're sure they will be unopposed. Drug traffickers are much better armed than the police force that ought to stop them and have become so powerful in their domains they could be considered parallel states, with laws, judges and everything. Ironically, they often stop smaller crimes like robbery from happening because not having a safe environment for people to buy drugs in hurts their profits; photos of graffiti messages warning criminals they'll be killed if they get caught robbing people can be found on the internet. The entire disarmament thing assumes the police will do their jobs and keep people safe, but the police won't even enter these areas because they're outmanned and outgunned. That's why the government felt the need to use the military in order to regain control of Rio de Janeiro. They used armored vehicles to fight against people who are technically citizens of their own country.
Don't ever let the government take your guns away.
So it comes down to this: do you trust your government? I don't trust mine. I'd rather they decentralized public security instead so that people can at least try to do what they haven't been doing in decades.
Gun ownership is legal with a license. No legal discrimination of automatic/non-automatic weapons (though there is a never ending tragicomedy in national assembly over enacting automatic arms prohibition.) Province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa famously licenses private ownership of artillery pieces.
Yet, gun crime is the last issue one cares about here. A man with a steel pipe on a dark alley is by far a bigger threat. Most robberies are done by people in terminal stages of economic marginalisation. And for the few people who have more things to steal from than their immediate personal possessions here, a bigger threat is abduction.
But there is virtually nothing like "a random guy assaults another random guy in the streets"
Gun laws protect civilians against civilians. There are no school shootings here that I'm aware of for instance (exceptions are usually targeted events), despite all the other violence.
Homicides in Brazil are only investigated for upper class victims. Violence against marginalized communities are mostly shrugged off if not outright desired by part of the conservative populace. They take pride in saying "bandido bom é bandido morto" (good thief is a dead thief) and revel in the fact that our police is responsible for countless deaths and executions without any shroud of due process.
IMO the only viable solution is for marginalized people to have true opportunity other than slave wages or a short career in drug trafficking. However since 2016 we are set on the opposite direction, so expect violence to increase with up to 40 mil new unemployed people and no budget to speak of for welfare, education and health.
Here is an entire list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Brazil
As you can see, the vast vast majority of school shootings occur in the US, with China coming in at a distant 2nd place. There are only 4 school massacres in Brazil (of which only 2 involve a gun according to wikipedia), and Brazil is a country with a population of more than 200 million.
Gun violence in Brazil has historically been rampant, but school shootings there are in fact _extremely_ rare.
There are other factors that are much more important than gun control changes such as the political crisis, economical crisis and rise in gang violence filled by drug dollars.
However, all current and past statistics are questionable making assessment difficult.
'Making drugs legal' is frequently miss-understood. Treating addiction as a public health problem by decriminalising addicts and personal posession while keeping the trade in drugs firmly illegal, as in Portugal and now Norway, looks like the way to go.
The recent changes to the law in Norway are widely reported as 'decriminalising drugs'. That is highly misleading. They have decriminalised drug use and personal possession, but the drugs trade itself is still criminal.
There aren't black markets for things that aren't illegal. Often, the gang murders we thing of are "turf wars" where one gang is competing with another gang for the same sales territory.
So legalizing drug trade likely decreases drug gangs, which likely decreases murders. People might still die from drug use, but that becomes a separate problem.
Moonshiners started making it, and sometimes it created poison.
The police were corrupted where corruptible or killed when they didn't go the gangs ways.
The rich had parties and skirted the enforcement of the law.
I´m not sure if decriminalizing all drugs would change the equation much (there´s still smuggling, prostitution and other vices to lord over).
Are the homicides because of drug related issues? What about other drugs like cocaine and heroin?
80% of the crimes being linked to drug use means that most people will only care about the remaining 20%.
But, anyway, AFAIK, drug usage is not a crime in Brazil. Dealing is. And for dealing related crimes to go away, one has to legalize the entire production and distribution.
These stats, along with others, is the result of years of populism, corruption and neglect.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...
People are too powerless to influence the state in any meaningful way. At the end of the day the law/state is at the side of criminals. I wish Brazil would change ownership so policy could be changed.
This 63K killed/year figure seems to exceed some years of the Syrian civil war. Brazil is a larger country but the drug war is concentrated in a minority of the country. The one thing you're not getting is bombed out apartment buildings and mass population displacements.
Edit: I mean, "not Aleppo like" is true for some interpretation of the phrase but one certainly shouldn't view this a "no reason to worry if you haven't consciously entered the drug trade" or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Syrian_Civil...
After WWI, "total warfare" targeting the entire population and productive capacity of the enemy in a mechanized fashion seemed like the logical direction in which war would go. The reality has been somewhat different, with guerrilla warfare and other asymmetrical approaches making political dimensions important also, where on the one hand avoiding unneeded deaths is often a useful political strategy and on the other hand, if the enemy is essentially hardened guerrillas with rocket launchers hiding in caves and supported from outside, that enemy may not be sensitive to the mass destruction of the population and productive capacity of the area. Both these situation make "total war" a less effective strategy (witness the different casualty ratios of the first and second Chechen wars).
Not all that different, in the subsequent direct conflicts with full investment by same-tier powers on both sides. But you don't have many of those with major powers since then, WWII being the main one.
> making political dimensions important also,
The political dimension is always paramount even in total war; breaking the will to fight of the enemy population is the point of total war.
Can you give sources for that affirmations?
Brazil: Social services cuts ahead of 2016 Rio Olympics - Amnesty International:
https://www.amnesty.org.au/brazil-social-services-cut-olympi...
Brazil’s Government Cuts Social Programs to Subsidize Fuel:
http://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/rio-business/brazils-g...
Brazil Cuts 5 Million People from Its Popular Social Program Bolsa Família
http://brazzil.com/brazil-cuts-5-million-people-from-its-pop...
http://brazzil.com/brazil-cuts-5-million-people-from-its-pop...
The article mentioned police killings already being part of the problem. It's common to claim one solve the murder problem by unleashing the police but it is generally documented that police enmeshed in the drug trade and allowing more ex-judicial police murders will just make cops that commonly used enforcers for various drug gangs (a pattern also seen in Mexico where the army was then "leashed" to fight local cops and drug lords, and with no actual reigning in of corruption, you can expect army segments fighting each).
As other comments already clarified, 90% of the problem is drug-related, the correct fix would be the decriminalization of them.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/16/brazilian-army...
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/10/12/557099357/brazi...
And you said "destroy public education" like we had a good public education that could be destroyed in the first place.
Edit: I can't reply to the comments bellow, but, again, these are not sources for what you said before "destroy public education".
https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/20753/brazil-s-...
http://monitor.icef.com/2017/04/brazil-shutting-science-with...
https://www.imtj.com/news/brazil-dismantle-universal-healthc...
https://apnews.com/89afd8d964984eb69678129e7d4a16cc
"Meanwhile, budgetary pressures and the conservative policies of President Michel Temer are translating into cuts in social services. Among those hit is the Bolsa Familia — Family Allowance — program that gives small subsidies each month to qualifying low-income people. It’s credited with much of the poverty reduction during Brazil’s boom decade."
> "An Associated Press review of Bolsa Familia data found coverage declined 4 percentage points between May 2016, when Temer became acting president, and May of this year. Part of that may be due to a crackdown on alleged fraud that started late last year. Temer’s administration announced it had found “irregularities” in the records of 1.1 million recipients — about 8 percent of the 14 million people who receive the benefit. The infractions ranged from fraud to families that were earning above $150 a month, the cutoff to receive the benefit."
Data released to The Associated Press after a request was made under Brazil’s freedom of information law shows that most cities affected by cuts to the Family Purse program were based in the poorest regions of Brazil, the north and northeast. Those areas are strongholds of Temer’s adversaries, including former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Under-the-table abortions happen all the time, politicians and police are assumed to be corrupt, invading land to steal ownership is a thing, etc.
Guns are out of control in criminal hands, while population in general don't even have one at home. So, given that the cost of ammo is low (in black market), killing is used to gain territory or to send messages to drug users with debt or to general population.
The problem is simple.
1- It's quite impossible to leave poverty due to state regulations.
2- People are killed by robbers/murderers, or jailed by officers if they try to prepare/defend for themselves.
So both economics and justice are completely distorted towards inhumanity. There's nowhere to go.
That's a sad reality, and it's not a coincidence that Brazil has the strongest world-wide desire for libertarian philosophy, by students/youngsters.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0cpvcd
I tried resizing the window, zooming in and out, and disabling my ad blocker, but the page steadfastly refuses to show the right side of the text. I'm using Chromium and Linux.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
How that would help I'm not sure but it's like the government is isolated in their own safe island and they are in most cases untouchable, or just get a slap in the wrist. I'm surprised how in the poorest and uneducated areas you can get lynched or beheaded if someones yells "thief" or "rapist" (even if you're innocent) but there isn't any acts of organized violence against the government.
And this is reality in Brazil. Politicians are wealthy, they are paid well, they create monopolies for corporations (and get benefits from it whereas consumers pay the cost) and they may even be corrupt. Some may get caught, sure, but are replaced by others. But nonetheless, the slaves keep hoping for the "right slave owner".
Thus politicians, politics and the state are extremely successful.
In this perspective, a failing state would be one whose politicians are getting less wealthy, lose intervention power and so on. Strong individuals, weak politics is a failed state. But in this situation people are wealthy (contrary to the concept shown on wikipedia).
Another (somehow related) type of failed state are those whose population emigrates massively, therefore slave-owners have less slaves. Or when a secession occurs, where power get less centralized.
because its not relevant to the topic being discussed.
How the hell does that work?
Are going to blame colonialism for all the presidential corruption scandals as well?
So colonialism is the cause for the recent presidential corruption scandals?