A Tragedy, Really

 

1. Maybe the UN could step in and manage the food program for them? 

   Posted by Oink       03/22/2005  at  07:31 AM  



2. Hey Vilmar, how do Brazilians come up with their pseudonyms like Pelé and Xuxa (DAMN she’s cute!)?

   Posted by Macker       03/22/2005  at  09:09 AM  



3. Macker, the same way we do with our little nick names for people.

   Posted by Vilmar       03/22/2005  at  09:39 AM  



4. "It’s such a shame because if Brazil could lick these problems they truly could be a world power to contend with. “

   You know, more than a few examples of older science fiction that I have read that has Earth with independent countries have had Brazil in the list of those powerful, spacegoing countries, along with the U.S., China, the USSR, Japan, the U.K., and usually some sort of European union. And I don’t read very much old science fiction.

   Says a lot about the potential writers used to see in Brazil. Don’t see any of that now, though.

   Posted by Dac       03/22/2005  at  03:38 PM  



5. John Gunther, in ”Inside South America” (New York:  Harper & Row, 1966) noted Brazil’s superpower potential; in fact, he noted that it was the only South American country of which superpower potential could be expected.  In summing up his observations, he noted:

   “...The struggles for power are...between the federal government and the states, between the army and civilian interests, between the landlords and the peasants, between conservative industrialists and the experimentalist technocrats, between the plutocrats and labor, between stand-pat forces in general and impulses toward reform, development and renovation.

   “The major theme is development, and against formidable obstacles this has been prodigious.  But a great deal more needs to be done.

   “Brazil needs democratization, honesty, education, clarity, vision, better organization, and a redistribution of economic power--in a word, to get all the way into the twentieth century...”

   From your descriptions, Vilmar, it sounds as if (unfortunately) things haven’t changed very much since 1966.  But given prospects that were once bright, exactly who wrecked Brazil’s prospects, the way Peron wrecked them for Argentina?

   Posted by Tannenberg       03/22/2005  at  08:18 PM  

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