6 ms·

Doesn't this sound like a dictatorship?

by bhk 3y ago

matheusmoreira 3y ago
It is. We brazilians are living under a judiciary monarchy of sorts. The supreme court basically does whatever it wants.
- archon1410 3y ago
  I think I once read an interesting term for "rule through courts" in reference to Islamic/sharia courts (which also had some tribal significance iirc) in Somalia who acted as the de facto after the central govt collapsed. I can't find it again.
  - dhoe 3y ago
    Kritarchy. Both the phenomenon and the word are pretty rare.
- forabolsonaro 3y ago
  [flagged]
- dancemethis 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    > Nah, there is equilibrium between the three powers. Not really. Judiciary is basically governing the country. Supreme court legislates by basically interpreting or ignoring laws however they want. This isn't just me either, actual lawyers have told me this to my face years ago. Only now do I fully appreciate the truth of those words. I mean, a supreme court judge just presented his "suggestions" for the censorship laws currently under discussion. The same guy who basically ran all over the constitution during last year's election over "fake news" in political campaigns. You gotta be kidding me. Every single day it's news like this one. Supreme court suspends Bolsonaro's law. Supreme court votes that same law back into effect. You'd think they're running the country... And they are. The stroke of a pen makes police do whatever they want so yeah. > You don't see them bickering with the current executive branch. Not anymore anyway. The supreme court judges are openly partial to the party currently in power. There's videos of them hugging Lula like they're close friends. Hell, I remember watching a video of one of these judges literally say out loud he was proud of being partial towards the communists. > Hearken back to like 12 years ago, before all those righty rats left the sewers. Much quieter times in the judiciary. Welp. I'm not sure if you realize you're proving my point.
    - jalbertoni 3y ago
      > The stroke of a pen makes police do whatever they want so yeah. You mean like when an order telling the police to remove people camped in front of military bases asking for a coup was signed in early December, but it took until the actual coup attempt in January for the police to actually do anything about it? Okay, no, let's be completely fair. The police was since December making sure the camped people didn't spill over into the street and block traffic. So yeah, the supreme court controls at least Judy Hopps. > Hell, I remember watching a video of one of these judges literally say out loud he was proud of being partial towards the communists. Assuming this is true, I'd really like to know what communists they were talking about. The current party in government was already considered in the 80s to be center-left, and they only mellowed more towards the center in recent years, with pretty much all internal factions that had moderately radical ideas leaving the party. Emphasis mine on the last line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_Party_(Brazil)#Factions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_Party_(Brazil)#Fact... - Workers' Cause (CO) – seceded from the party in 1990 as the Workers' Cause Party (PCO) - Socialist Convergence [pt] (CS) – seceded in 1993 as part of Unified Workers' Socialist Party (PSTU) - Workers' Socialist Current (CST) – seceded in 2004 to form the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) - Socialist Left Movement (MES) – seceded in 2004 to form the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) - Popular Socialist Action (APS) – seceded in 2005 and joined the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) - Tendency for the Workers' Revolutionary Party (TPOR) – Trotskyist faction that seceded in 1990 as the Workers' Revolutionary Party (POR) - Marxist Left (EM), the Brazilian section of the Trotskyist International Marxist Tendency. Marxist Left released a statement saying that "for the revolutionaries, there is no more room for the construction of socialist ideas within PT".
      - matheusmoreira 3y ago
        > You mean like I mean like when they walked all over the constitution by censoring Bolsonaro supporters left and right. Literal unabashed unconstitutional censorship, openly biased against Bolsonaro at that. There's plenty wrong with the literal concentration camp they set up in Brasília too. People imprisoned without any charges. Only recently did they vote to turn some of them into actual defendants. Not to mention the embarrassing videos that leaked recently that imply that whole "terrorist" thing was a false flag operation. Meanwhile they released PCC drug traffickers involved in the torture and assassination attempt against the Lava Jato judge and his family. It's comical. > I'd really like to know what communists they were talking about PT, obviously. The fact Lula is a communist is news? It's becoming a pain to have to constantly remind people of this. There's videos of him literally saying his objective is to install socialism in Brazil. Decades old videos. I have no reason to doubt the man's own words and his actions certainly don't leave any room for doubt. Whether the other communists think he's a real communist... Who cares, really?
- timeon 3y ago
  > judiciary monarchy of sorts Do they have mandates for life?
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Yes. Supreme court judge mandates are essentially lifetime. There's no fixed term, only way they leave is when they're forced to retire at 75 years old. They're just now trying to limit it to 8 years.
dancemethis 3y ago
It doesn't, really. It's specifically because Telegram failed to deliver all the requested information on certain nazi propaganda spreader groups.
- LewisVerstappen 3y ago
  Who defined nazi propaganda spreader groups? Who draws the line? First Nazi propaganda spreaders, then gay rights activists? Sounds extremely dangerous to have this kind of centralized control.
  - dancemethis 3y ago
    Sorry, but if one is directly stating nazi ideals, symbols, denying the ocurrence of hate crimes, spreading information on how to create weapons and more effectively invade schools to "go for the high score", one isn't a gay rights activist. It's a nazi. It's not a situation where people who just didn't get enough information (or downright wackos) can try and relativize the contents. It's quite, quite clear.
  - cjalmeida 3y ago
    The Telegram group is literally called “Brazilian Anti-semite Movement”. I don’t think they were sharing pot pie recipes there…
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    'First they came for the nazis', really?
  - sofixa 3y ago
    Ah, the great slippery slope argument. Assuming good faith, most developed countries have hate (and similar) speech laws, with Nazism being explicitly banned in most (all? maybe Spain/Portugal/Switzerland are exceptions) of Europe. Same goes for antisemitism, or in general racial/religious hatred/discrimination to various extents. It's not a slippery slope "oh what will they ban next", it's "this kind of thing has proven itself to be extremely dangerous and is detrimental to everyone, hence it's banned". And it has been for decades, and nobody has just added gay activists, including in very anti-LGBTQ countries like Poland. You might also want to look up the paradox of tolerance, it's a fun read.
jalbertoni 3y ago
Taken case by case, no. The absolute majority of those cases are used to get ISPs to block pirate streaming sites, or sites selling personal data. However, once every few years, a high profile case suspending something like Whatsapp, Youtube, LinkedIn or Facebook appears. They are usually thrown out of appeals court so fast there's no time for the block order to actually reach the ISPs. The ones that actually do result in a block have a police investigation behind it, making the whole bureaucracy more slow as there needs to be some back and forth between the police and the company. The fact that Telegram's entire team in Brazil is one lawyer might make this worse. For example, this particular incident may have come from a misunderstanding. The police asked for all available data on all users of a group chat called "Movimento Anti-Semita Brasileiro" and another with a similar name. I hope the translation should be obvious. What did Telegram deliver? The requested data of the group admin, not all users. So now they get blocked until they deliver all the data. Source for this incident, that is, the legal order for the block: https://www.conjur.com.br/dl/telegram-decisao-suspensao.pdf https://www.conjur.com.br/dl/telegram-decisao-suspensao.pdf
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
p-e-w 3y ago
The word "dictatorship" doesn't actually mean anything. Its sole purpose is to attack certain institutions and/or governments, while excluding other institutions and governments from criticism even though they share most or all of the same characteristics. Instead of asking whether or not XYZ is a dictatorship, ask "are they following their own laws and constitution?", "are they respecting universal human rights?", and "in whose interests are they acting?". The answers to those questions are absolutely enlightening and make the differences between countries commonly considered dictatorships and countries commonly considered democracies almost vanish.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > Instead of asking whether or not XYZ is a dictatorship, ask "are they following their own laws and constitution?" They are not. Censorship is unconstitutional in Brazil, especially that of a political nature. Yet I don't think it's been a month since I last saw news of some politician being banned from holding office because they posted "fake news" online or something. Basically the strategy now is to criminalize "fake news", accuse your opponents of spreading it and deplatform them because criminals can't hold political office. Show me the man, I'll show you the crime.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  You make many good points but this is absurd: The word "dictatorship" doesn't actually mean anything. Of course it does, you can quantify the degree to which a country is authoritarian even if it has nominally democratic institutions like North Korea or Iraq under the Ba'ath party. To be sure, the word is bandied about a lot in political discourse as in the comment you replied to, but it is well-defined.
  - p-e-w 3y ago
    > Of course it does, you can quantify the degree to which a country is authoritarian Really? How? I mean of course without resorting to what amounts to political opinions.
    - 3y ago
anigbrowl 3y ago
No, it sounds like a civil law country dealing with a recalcitrant business. I think the judge is reaching a bit but I don't know much about Brazil's legal code. Common law countries tend to be extremely accommodating of business entities because they're obsessed with procedure (imho) to the detriment of doing any enforcement. Civil law jurisdictions take the approach of 'we need compliance up front, we can quibble about legal liability afterwards.' Common law countries demand high levels of personal accountability but have elaborate mechanics for distributing accountability across organizations that (again imho) allow the creation of private quasi-sovereignty, and they maintain this in part because it attracts capital to those countries.
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > No, it sounds like a civil law country dealing with a recalcitrant business. That's assuming the judge actually followed the law and the constitution, which isn't obvious at all in this case.
xinayder 3y ago
Not yet but Congress is trying to approve a "fake news" package which tries to put more responsibilities on the hands of Big Tech regarding monitoring online content. When I put it like that it doesn't sound so bad, but then you read the text and find out the government and its judiciary institutions have the absolute power of determining if something is deemed as fake news or not. Then you can say it's actually good because it will prevent or reduce disinformation from spreading. Okay, I wouldn't mind anti-vax statements being blocked, but what if I have information that an authority is corrupt? They would try to censor me, it happened in the past, in 2018 I guess, where a reputable newspaper wrote an article that one of the Supreme Court judges was implicated in the major corruption scandal in Brazil, and a few days later the Supreme Court ordered the takedown of said article. When other mainstream outlets heard about this they just shared the original article to make it more difficult to censor this information. A couple of weeks later the Supreme Court initiated a long process in which it's the judgy, jury and executioner, a thing that lots of citizens protested, but if you did it back then you'd be called a "bolsonarista" or people would say you're supporting fake news.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > reputable newspaper wrote an article that one of the Supreme Court judges was implicated in the major corruption scandal in Brazil > a few days later the Supreme Court ordered the takedown of said article What scandal are you referring to? I'd like to read about it. Let's make some Streisand magic happen!
  - xinayder 3y ago
    https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2019/04/15/stf-censura-sites-e-e-manda-retirar-materia-que-liga-toffoli-a-odebrecht.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2019/04/15/stf-censura... https://www.intercept.com.br/2019/04/15/toffoli-crusoe-reportagem-stf-censura/ https://www.intercept.com.br/2019/04/15/toffoli-crusoe-repor...
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      Globo even called it censorship. How times change. Thanks.

Doesn't this sound like a dictatorship?

by bhk 3y ago

Doesn't this sound like a dictatorship?

It is. We brazilians are living under a judiciary monarchy of sorts. The supreme court basically does whatever it wants.

archon1410 3y ago
I think I once read an interesting term for "rule through courts" in reference to Islamic/sharia courts (which also had some tribal significance iirc) in Somalia who acted as the de facto after the central govt collapsed. I can't find it again.
- dhoe 3y ago
  Kritarchy. Both the phenomenon and the word are pretty rare.
forabolsonaro 3y ago
[flagged]
dancemethis 3y ago
[flagged]
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > Nah, there is equilibrium between the three powers. Not really. Judiciary is basically governing the country. Supreme court legislates by basically interpreting or ignoring laws however they want. This isn't just me either, actual lawyers have told me this to my face years ago. Only now do I fully appreciate the truth of those words. I mean, a supreme court judge just presented his "suggestions" for the censorship laws currently under discussion. The same guy who basically ran all over the constitution during last year's election over "fake news" in political campaigns. You gotta be kidding me. Every single day it's news like this one. Supreme court suspends Bolsonaro's law. Supreme court votes that same law back into effect. You'd think they're running the country... And they are. The stroke of a pen makes police do whatever they want so yeah. > You don't see them bickering with the current executive branch. Not anymore anyway. The supreme court judges are openly partial to the party currently in power. There's videos of them hugging Lula like they're close friends. Hell, I remember watching a video of one of these judges literally say out loud he was proud of being partial towards the communists. > Hearken back to like 12 years ago, before all those righty rats left the sewers. Much quieter times in the judiciary. Welp. I'm not sure if you realize you're proving my point.
  - jalbertoni 3y ago
    > The stroke of a pen makes police do whatever they want so yeah. You mean like when an order telling the police to remove people camped in front of military bases asking for a coup was signed in early December, but it took until the actual coup attempt in January for the police to actually do anything about it? Okay, no, let's be completely fair. The police was since December making sure the camped people didn't spill over into the street and block traffic. So yeah, the supreme court controls at least Judy Hopps. > Hell, I remember watching a video of one of these judges literally say out loud he was proud of being partial towards the communists. Assuming this is true, I'd really like to know what communists they were talking about. The current party in government was already considered in the 80s to be center-left, and they only mellowed more towards the center in recent years, with pretty much all internal factions that had moderately radical ideas leaving the party. Emphasis mine on the last line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_Party_(Brazil)#Factions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_Party_(Brazil)#Fact... - Workers' Cause (CO) – seceded from the party in 1990 as the Workers' Cause Party (PCO) - Socialist Convergence [pt] (CS) – seceded in 1993 as part of Unified Workers' Socialist Party (PSTU) - Workers' Socialist Current (CST) – seceded in 2004 to form the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) - Socialist Left Movement (MES) – seceded in 2004 to form the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) - Popular Socialist Action (APS) – seceded in 2005 and joined the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) - Tendency for the Workers' Revolutionary Party (TPOR) – Trotskyist faction that seceded in 1990 as the Workers' Revolutionary Party (POR) - Marxist Left (EM), the Brazilian section of the Trotskyist International Marxist Tendency. Marxist Left released a statement saying that "for the revolutionaries, there is no more room for the construction of socialist ideas within PT".
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      > You mean like I mean like when they walked all over the constitution by censoring Bolsonaro supporters left and right. Literal unabashed unconstitutional censorship, openly biased against Bolsonaro at that. There's plenty wrong with the literal concentration camp they set up in Brasília too. People imprisoned without any charges. Only recently did they vote to turn some of them into actual defendants. Not to mention the embarrassing videos that leaked recently that imply that whole "terrorist" thing was a false flag operation. Meanwhile they released PCC drug traffickers involved in the torture and assassination attempt against the Lava Jato judge and his family. It's comical. > I'd really like to know what communists they were talking about PT, obviously. The fact Lula is a communist is news? It's becoming a pain to have to constantly remind people of this. There's videos of him literally saying his objective is to install socialism in Brazil. Decades old videos. I have no reason to doubt the man's own words and his actions certainly don't leave any room for doubt. Whether the other communists think he's a real communist... Who cares, really?
timeon 3y ago
> judiciary monarchy of sorts Do they have mandates for life?
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Yes. Supreme court judge mandates are essentially lifetime. There's no fixed term, only way they leave is when they're forced to retire at 75 years old. They're just now trying to limit it to 8 years.

dancemethis 3y ago

It doesn't, really. It's specifically because Telegram failed to deliver all the requested information on certain nazi propaganda spreader groups.

LewisVerstappen 3y ago
Who defined nazi propaganda spreader groups? Who draws the line? First Nazi propaganda spreaders, then gay rights activists? Sounds extremely dangerous to have this kind of centralized control.
- dancemethis 3y ago
  Sorry, but if one is directly stating nazi ideals, symbols, denying the ocurrence of hate crimes, spreading information on how to create weapons and more effectively invade schools to "go for the high score", one isn't a gay rights activist. It's a nazi. It's not a situation where people who just didn't get enough information (or downright wackos) can try and relativize the contents. It's quite, quite clear.
- cjalmeida 3y ago
  The Telegram group is literally called “Brazilian Anti-semite Movement”. I don’t think they were sharing pot pie recipes there…
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  'First they came for the nazis', really?
- sofixa 3y ago
  Ah, the great slippery slope argument. Assuming good faith, most developed countries have hate (and similar) speech laws, with Nazism being explicitly banned in most (all? maybe Spain/Portugal/Switzerland are exceptions) of Europe. Same goes for antisemitism, or in general racial/religious hatred/discrimination to various extents. It's not a slippery slope "oh what will they ban next", it's "this kind of thing has proven itself to be extremely dangerous and is detrimental to everyone, hence it's banned". And it has been for decades, and nobody has just added gay activists, including in very anti-LGBTQ countries like Poland. You might also want to look up the paradox of tolerance, it's a fun read.

jalbertoni 3y ago

Taken case by case, no. The absolute majority of those cases are used to get ISPs to block pirate streaming sites, or sites selling personal data. However, once every few years, a high profile case suspending something like Whatsapp, Youtube, LinkedIn or Facebook appears. They are usually thrown out of appeals court so fast there's no time for the block order to actually reach the ISPs. The ones that actually do result in a block have a police investigation behind it, making the whole bureaucracy more slow as there needs to be some back and forth between the police and the company. The fact that Telegram's entire team in Brazil is one lawyer might make this worse. For example, this particular incident may have come from a misunderstanding. The police asked for all available data on all users of a group chat called "Movimento Anti-Semita Brasileiro" and another with a similar name. I hope the translation should be obvious. What did Telegram deliver? The requested data of the group admin, not all users. So now they get blocked until they deliver all the data. Source for this incident, that is, the legal order for the block: https://www.conjur.com.br/dl/telegram-decisao-suspensao.pdf https://www.conjur.com.br/dl/telegram-decisao-suspensao.pdf

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

p-e-w 3y ago

The word "dictatorship" doesn't actually mean anything. Its sole purpose is to attack certain institutions and/or governments, while excluding other institutions and governments from criticism even though they share most or all of the same characteristics. Instead of asking whether or not XYZ is a dictatorship, ask "are they following their own laws and constitution?", "are they respecting universal human rights?", and "in whose interests are they acting?". The answers to those questions are absolutely enlightening and make the differences between countries commonly considered dictatorships and countries commonly considered democracies almost vanish.

matheusmoreira 3y ago
> Instead of asking whether or not XYZ is a dictatorship, ask "are they following their own laws and constitution?" They are not. Censorship is unconstitutional in Brazil, especially that of a political nature. Yet I don't think it's been a month since I last saw news of some politician being banned from holding office because they posted "fake news" online or something. Basically the strategy now is to criminalize "fake news", accuse your opponents of spreading it and deplatform them because criminals can't hold political office. Show me the man, I'll show you the crime.
anigbrowl 3y ago
You make many good points but this is absurd: The word "dictatorship" doesn't actually mean anything. Of course it does, you can quantify the degree to which a country is authoritarian even if it has nominally democratic institutions like North Korea or Iraq under the Ba'ath party. To be sure, the word is bandied about a lot in political discourse as in the comment you replied to, but it is well-defined.
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > Of course it does, you can quantify the degree to which a country is authoritarian Really? How? I mean of course without resorting to what amounts to political opinions.
  - 3y ago

anigbrowl 3y ago

No, it sounds like a civil law country dealing with a recalcitrant business. I think the judge is reaching a bit but I don't know much about Brazil's legal code. Common law countries tend to be extremely accommodating of business entities because they're obsessed with procedure (imho) to the detriment of doing any enforcement. Civil law jurisdictions take the approach of 'we need compliance up front, we can quibble about legal liability afterwards.' Common law countries demand high levels of personal accountability but have elaborate mechanics for distributing accountability across organizations that (again imho) allow the creation of private quasi-sovereignty, and they maintain this in part because it attracts capital to those countries.

p-e-w 3y ago
> No, it sounds like a civil law country dealing with a recalcitrant business. That's assuming the judge actually followed the law and the constitution, which isn't obvious at all in this case.

xinayder 3y ago

Not yet but Congress is trying to approve a "fake news" package which tries to put more responsibilities on the hands of Big Tech regarding monitoring online content. When I put it like that it doesn't sound so bad, but then you read the text and find out the government and its judiciary institutions have the absolute power of determining if something is deemed as fake news or not. Then you can say it's actually good because it will prevent or reduce disinformation from spreading. Okay, I wouldn't mind anti-vax statements being blocked, but what if I have information that an authority is corrupt? They would try to censor me, it happened in the past, in 2018 I guess, where a reputable newspaper wrote an article that one of the Supreme Court judges was implicated in the major corruption scandal in Brazil, and a few days later the Supreme Court ordered the takedown of said article. When other mainstream outlets heard about this they just shared the original article to make it more difficult to censor this information. A couple of weeks later the Supreme Court initiated a long process in which it's the judgy, jury and executioner, a thing that lots of citizens protested, but if you did it back then you'd be called a "bolsonarista" or people would say you're supporting fake news.

matheusmoreira 3y ago
> reputable newspaper wrote an article that one of the Supreme Court judges was implicated in the major corruption scandal in Brazil > a few days later the Supreme Court ordered the takedown of said article What scandal are you referring to? I'd like to read about it. Let's make some Streisand magic happen!
- xinayder 3y ago
  https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2019/04/15/stf-censura-sites-e-e-manda-retirar-materia-que-liga-toffoli-a-odebrecht.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2019/04/15/stf-censura... https://www.intercept.com.br/2019/04/15/toffoli-crusoe-reportagem-stf-censura/ https://www.intercept.com.br/2019/04/15/toffoli-crusoe-repor...
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Globo even called it censorship. How times change. Thanks.