International Events IX: I feel like a mushroom

[Zorral]

Our Brasilian friends are depressed and anxious: Bolsonaro carrying the next round is frightening not only for them but for us all: It will make a t-rump, Bolsonaro, Putin axis.  Not good for any of us, not good at all.

[DireWolfSpirit]

9 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So Chomsky using the Tu Quoque fallacy?

Not certain of much on it since the controversy is years ago and havent read any recent ctiticisms. But i do remember well his bone of contention with the coverage over the 2 genocides.

Of course this excuses neither of the genocides. I think his point was the media was willing to look the other away at an allies bad behavior (Carter had an arms deal with Indonesia), while thier behavior was nearly as atrocious as the Kmer Rouge's.

[Winterfell is Burning]

4 hours ago, DMC said:

So, with Lula winning 48 to 43 in the first round, have a really hard time seeing Bolsonaro actually winning the runoff.  Seems now the worry is almost entirely him Trumping it.

 Thing is 33 million people that didn't vote, and that percentage of abstentions (20,95%) was the highest in the 21st century. If they return to a normal rate, there's a lot more votes there in contention.

Also against Lula is that people who are illiterate in Brazil can vote, but it's not mandatory for them, and that's a group that tends to favor him overwhelmingly.

And people can of course change their votes- it's purely anecdotal, but the doorman of my building told me today he and his wife were going to vote for Lula, but after his poor performance in the last televised debate Thursday- at TV Globo, which has more audience than all the others combined- they switched to Bolsonaro (I don't know why he didn't switch to one of the other candidates considering Bolsonaro's performance was at least as bad, though).

That said, the normal thing would be for Lula to win by a decent amount. But I don't know if there's much normal anymore, in Brazil or elsewhere.

 

4 hours ago, Padraig said:

And Bolsonaro says he admired Trump and Putin.  That is politics.  If people don't like those positions, they will vote against them.  Given Lula got more votes than Bolsonaro (so far), it hasn't worked against him.  But Bolsonaro's position didn't kill off his hopes either.

You can certainly be worried about Lula's democratic credentials but Bolsonaro seems to be worse on that score.  From this external position anyhow.

Given people didn't expect Lula to win via the first round, it sounds like the polls got Lula's percent reasonably well but underestimated how well Bolsonaro would do.  But when you have 2 unpopular candidates, its certainly possible that a lot of the "undecided's" ended up swinging to one candidate.  Bolsonaro in this case (I think that is what happened in the US in 2016).  Thus the polls seem off.

You'd know better who does polls.  But deliberately exaggerating a lead in a poll may work against you.

https://www.as-coa.org/articles/poll-tracker-brazils-2022-presidential-election

The above links suggests a 8% point lead before the election.  Ended up 5% points.  Not wildly out.  But makes sense for Bolsonaro to make a big deal out of it I suppose.

Edited: When I contrasted this with the 2020 US election, it wasn't based on political positions.  Instead, both are course correction elections but Biden brought a certain amount of desired normality back to politics in the US.  Lula doesn't.  He is just different from Bolsonaro.

Polls not only were off generally speaking- but they were off by ridiculous amounts in many places, particularly in senate and government races- we're talking about 15/20 points differences in some cases.

Also, the press did a roundup of the difference between Lula and Bolsoaro every major institute on their last poll- in the election, the margin was of 5,23%:

IPEC 14,00%
Datafolha 14,00%
Ipespe 14,00%
Quaest 11,00%
Atlasintel 9,20%
PoderData 10,00%
Idea 11,00%
MDA 8,60%
Paraná 7,10%

Only the last one's was in the margin of error.

The "democratic credentials" of both are very few. Difference is that Bolsonaro was an idiot screaming because he thinks it makes them look mainly- and of course, he has command of the Army now, but I don't think he has the support or the capacity to pull off- he enjoys work and think things through as much as Trump does.

Meanwhile, Lula never came publicly supporting a 3rd term after he was reelected...but some members of Congress that support him did, and after poor reaction by the public and Congress, no one raised the idea. He and Dilma also never expressed willingness to use the military to crush protests against her...but the commander of the Brazilian army said (after she had been out of office, to not throw more fuel to the fire) he was sought by members of their party to see if he was willing to use the Army against those protests, and he refused. Now, it's entirely possible those were actions of individual players without his consent, but I doubt it. His party is not like the Democrats or Republicans, with tons of independent players vying for power, he controls it all and anyone that challenges gets sidelined or leaves.

The thing is that I think people are right to dislike, distrust and hate Bolsonaro, but the problem is that this often leads to people whitewashing anyone that opposes him. Hell, that sort of thinking against Lula and PT is what got so many people to vote for him in the first place, people thinking "oh, he's bad but he can't be worse than that guy".

[DMC]

38 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Thing is 33 million people that didn't vote, and that percentage of abstentions (20,95%) was the highest in the 21st century. If they return to a normal rate, there's a lot more votes there in contention.

I was just going off of what I saw on Reuters dude.  And they said it was about 99% in at the time.

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So Chomsky using the Tu Quoque fallacy?

I don't know much about this fallacy, but its cousin, the two cock fallacy, is certainly one to consider. Because one person is being a cock, it means the other person can also be a cock. Bollocks!

Sorry.

[Padraig]

2 hours ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Hell, that sort of thinking against Lula and PT is what got so many people to vote for him in the first place, people thinking "oh, he's bad but he can't be worse than that guy".

It would be interesting to know how many votes for Lula are really votes against Bolsonaro (and vice versa).  I imagine if Lula does win, he wouldn't have much of a honeymoon period.  People are too aware of him.

And yes, that polling data you report does look odd.  And very different from the link I showed (where there as only a 4% point gap on the 13th Sept before it increased again).

[Rippounet]

6 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So Chomsky using the Tu Quoque fallacy?

Much of Chomsky's work has been to denounce selective indignation and the use of misperceptions in the media to serve the purposes of US governments. It is often seen (by people who don't like him) as an attempt to minimize some crimes, but that is bollocks : he was always extremely clear that his views are based on the idea that all human lives are equal, and that we should always be shocked and outraged by crimes against humanity.

His analysis of Cambodia can be found for example in Manufacturing Consent (pages 260 to 296 in my edition). It is safe to say that the people here who sully his name have probably never bothered to read what he wrote, certainly never undestood him.

Funnily enough, part of his conclusion on Cambodia, already at the time, was that "left-wing skepticism" about the Pol Pot atrocities had been reconstructed. On this he concluded:

Quote

[...] the wide acceptance of this thesis, despite the quality of the evidence provided and its manifest absurdity, counts as yet another example of how readily the most implausible contentions can become doctrine, as long as they are serviceable.

[Winterfell is Burning]

15 hours ago, Padraig said:

It would be interesting to know how many votes for Lula are really votes against Bolsonaro (and vice versa).  I imagine if Lula does win, he wouldn't have much of a honeymoon period.  People are too aware of him.

That's the main point, and one that I imagine both Lula and Bolsonaro supporters, and maybe even the candidates, will struggle to understand. Whoever takes office will have the highest rejection a presidential winner ever had, and win mostly because people thought the other one was even worse. There will be no honeymoon period.

In Lula's case, he will face a Congress that will be in large part hostile to him. Mind you, in Brazil, the average Congressman and Senator is like Varys, Pycelle or LF, supporting whoever is in power, but there was never this large amount of people elected with a conservative, anti-Lula platform before.

 

[Padraig]

19 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Funnily enough, part of his conclusion on Cambodia, already at the time, was that "left-wing skepticism" about the Pol Pot atrocities had been reconstructed. On this he concluded:

[...] the wide acceptance of this thesis, despite the quality of the evidence provided and its manifest absurdity, counts as yet another example of how readily the most implausible contentions can become doctrine, as long as they are serviceable.

And by the way, can anyone explain what this means?  Way over my head.

[The Anti-Targ]

I'm guessing some left wing personalities complained about how the MSM reports similar atrocities differently (or not at all), and that then got reported by the same MSM as the left-wing personalities claiming the most widely reported atrocities weren't really all that bad. The in the collective consciousness then became that these left wing people are apologists for regimes that commit crimes against humanity.

It's probably best to not interpret anyone's words or intent through the lens of interpretive commentary by media, but rather read the words of the person in question and come to your own conclusion.

Unless of course you believe that media and politicians never misconstrue words, actions and events to fit the narrative they want to create.

[Winterfell is Burning]

Today Bolsonaro received a fantastic gift for the 2nd round- Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega took some time from imprisoning his opposition, including priests, to pen a letter of support for Lula. Watch him exploit in endlessly during his campaign (particularly the priests in prison part), particularly as Lula will probably do his best to dodge when some asks him about it.

 

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

Ortega not doing a great job of reading the Brazilian 65% Catholic, 87% Christian room, I'm guessing.

[Winterfell is Burning]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Ortega not doing a great job of reading the Brazilian 65% Catholic, 87% Christian room, I'm guessing.

As Putin showed, dictators are not very good at realizing how people outside their borders feel about them.

[The Anti-Targ]

17 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

As Putin showed, dictators are not very good at realizing how people outside their borders feel about them.

If you never hear from your advisers that a lot of people think you're a dick, then you are unlikely to know that a lot of people think you're a dick. And why would a dictator's advisers ever want to tell the dictator that people think they're a dick?

I believe it's covered in the third chapter of the self-help book of the basic rules for how to get along in the world 'Don't be a Dick'.

[Corvinus85]

5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

If you never hear from your advisers that a lot of people think you're a dick, then you are unlikely to know that a lot of people think you're a dick. And why would a dictator's advisers ever want to tell the dictator that people think they're a dick?

I believe it's covered in the third chapter of the self-help book of the basic rules for how to get along in the world 'Don't be a Dick'.

You know a dictator is just a potato with a penis.

[The Anti-Targ]

Speaking of dictators, the dictators of oil prices have decided in their wisdom that now is the right time to cut oil output and push up oil prices, which will 1) screw with almost every countries' attempts to deal with inflation, the main response being to increase interest rates, while increasing interest rates will have exactly zero effect on the price of oil, except to increase it further, possibly, and 2) put more money in Russia's coffers to keep prosecuting its war in Ukraine.

Nice one OPEC. No one will ever accuse you of having the interests of ordinary people in mind, you wouldn't want that, no sir.

I do hope, however that this sort of behaviour will act as even stronger motivator for non-OPEC nations to accelerate measures to reduce their economic dependence on oil. The less I have to care that the price of oil affects my purchasing power the happier I am. 

[Luzifer's right hand]

7 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Speaking of dictators, the dictators of oil prices have decided in their wisdom that now is the right time to cut oil output and push up oil prices, which will 1) screw with almost every countries' attempts to deal with inflation, the main response being to increase interest rates, while increasing interest rates will have exactly zero effect on the price of oil, except to increase it further, possibly, and 2) put more money in Russia's coffers to keep prosecuting its war in Ukraine.

Nice one OPEC. No one will ever accuse you of having the interests of ordinary people in mind, you wouldn't want that, no sir.

I do hope, however that this sort of behaviour will act as even stronger motivator for non-OPEC nations to accelerate measures to reduce their economic dependence on oil. The less I have to care that the price of oil affects my purchasing power the happier I am. 

With will happen is more fracking I suspect.

[Winterfell is Burning]

In the Bizarro World that is the Brazilian presidential campaign, Bolsonaro gave Lula a big gift by saying that he only won in the Northeast area of the country because the region is full of illiterate people (it's the area of the country with the biggest illiteracy rates).

Lula decided to return the favor by saying the only reason the area has high illiteracy rates is because Brazil never had in it's history a government that cared about education, which is a refreshingly honest argument for a guy that ran the country for eight years and had his hand-picked successor in charge for five, specially considering he was campaigning next to a guy that was their Minister of Education for years.

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Iran protests… still going:

 

[Zorral]

Letter from India
October 17, 2022 Issue
When the Hindu Right Came for Bollywood
The industry used to honor India’s secular ideals—but, since the rise of Narendra Modi, it’s been flooded with stock Hindu heroes and Muslim villains.
By Samanth Subramanian

October 10, 2022

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/17/when-the-hindu-right-came-for-bollywood

Quote

 

.... Filmmaking thrives in plenty of other cities in India, but “Bollywood” has become shorthand for Indian cinema as a whole, and for the thousand or so movies that the country releases annually. For nearly a century, Bollywood has also worn the warm, self-satisfied gloss of being a passion that unifies a country of divisions. Not only are its audiences as mixed as India itself, filmmakers will say, but Bollywood is a place where caste and religion don’t matter. The most piously presented proof of this is the fact that, in a Hindu-majority country, a Muslim man named Shah Rukh Khan has been the supreme box-office star for decades.

Even if Bollywood possesses this liberal fibre, the rightward swing in Indian politics has gnawed away at it. In Mumbai, people divide recent history into pre-“Tandav” and post-“Tandav” periods, reading the show’s fate—its bitter legal battles, its suspended second season—as a lesson in what can and cannot be said in Modi’s India. Their nervousness manifests in absurdities—in, for example, how Amazon Prime now discourages characters who share their names with Hindu deities—but also in decisions to put audacious film and TV projects into cold storage. Other filmmakers embrace genres that match the B.J.P.’s tastes: dubious historical epics that glorify bygone Hindu kings; action films about the Indian Army; political dramas and bio-pics, dutifully skewed. These productions all draw from the B.J.P.’s roster of stock villains: medieval Muslim rulers, Pakistan, Islamist terrorists, leftists, opposition parties like the Indian National Congress. Through Bollywood, India tells itself stories about itself. Many of those stories are now starkly different, in lockstep with the right wing’s bigotry.

Governments have tried to control Indian cinema in the past—mostly through the Central Board of Film Certification (C.B.F.C.), a state authority that can order alterations or essentially ban movies by refusing to certify them. But the B.J.P.’s disdain for Bollywood registers as something deeper—as an echo, in fact, of its animus toward the Congress and other rival parties. When Modi came to power, in 2014, he decried national politics as an élite club: upper-class, upper-caste, English-speaking politicians, activists, and journalists, all cozied up to one another in the plush pockets of central Delhi. In the eyes of the B.J.P., Bollywood, too, is full of liberals disconnected from the real India. And if the film industry is full of “nepo kids”—the children of actors, producers, and directors—then Rahul Gandhi, the Congress’s aspirant Prime Minister and the son, grandson, and great-grandson of earlier Prime Ministers, is the foremost nepo kid of all. “People like us—we’re hated,” the director Nikkhil Advani, the cousin and grand-nephew of producers, told me. ....

.... Earlier this year, Banerjee sent me a Vimeo link to his finished film, which confronts the bigotry infecting India. Banerjee approaches his theme slowly and sideways, through the story of one Muslim family. The family’s first generation, living in Kashmir during the unrest in 1990, finds itself sundered from its Hindu friends. In the second generation, a young woman wants to buy an apartment in present-day Mumbai, but no one will sell to her. (Muslims in Indian cities commonly struggle to find places to live, a form of discrimination practiced by Hindu homeowners and residents’ societies.) In 2042, the woman’s son, a novelist, lives in an even more ghettoized Delhi—a geofenced city where the state machinery determines what people can do based on their social-credit score. The wretchedness of this future spills out of the movie; later, I seemed to remember every frame as being gloomy and grim, even though several scenes are brightly lit. “We’ve lived through enough history to understand what’s going on now,” Banerjee said. “Now we can extrapolate, which is what my film does.”

During the years that Banerjee wrote and shot his movie, the takeover of Bollywood quickened. By 2019—an election year—new power brokers had emerged in the industry, seemingly from nowhere. One of them, the son of a legislator allied with the B.J.P., directed “The Accidental Prime Minister,” which pilloried the Congress leader who had governed India before Modi. (“It felt like propaganda even as I was making it,” Arjun Mathur, one of the film’s actors, told me. “I really regret doing it.”) Another produced a fawning bio-pic of Modi. One director told me about Mahaveer Jain, a producer who “was a nobody” but who now partners with some of Bollywood’s biggest studios and filmmakers. Jain, who said that he couldn’t meet me because he was unwell, is often described as the B.J.P.’s chief Bollywood liaison. In January, 2019, he helped choreograph a meeting between Modi and a band of A-listers, which yielded a selfie that blazed through the Indian Internet. Conspicuously, not one person in the photo was Muslim.

Sometimes there are more deliberate flexes of muscle. In the summer of 2020, under the pretext of probing an actor’s suicide, federal authorities launched an investigation into the drug habits of some of Mumbai’s most famous stars. Among them was Karan Johar, the city’s most influential filmmaker—a director who runs a sprawling production firm, a TV host who jokes on his talk show with his Bollywood friends, and, as the son and the nephew of famous producers, a twenty-four-karat nepo kid. Kshitij Prasad, a young executive producer who was then with Johar’s company, was called in for questioning, and he later said that the officers seemed keen to pin something—anything—on Johar or on another celebrity. “They kept insisting I was supplying drugs to the industry,” Prasad said. (The investigating agency has denied Prasad’s version of events.) When Prasad refused to coöperate, he was sent to prison for ninety days, then released on bail. The threat of a tax raid has also become a weapon, one director told me. When he was raided himself, investigators noticed that he’d been donating small monthly sums to news sites like Scroll and the Wire, which often criticize the government. “They said, ‘Don’t contribute to any of these publications,’ ” he said. “So I had to stop.” ....

 

Much longer piece.  Bodes badly for the world at large, as does so much coming out of nationalist, religious, authoritarianism around the world, including our own nations.