Samba corruption... bad trip

Just a couple of days before Carnival (2 days to be exact) the brazilian Supreme Court ruled out one conviction of racketeering on the worst corruption case of the '00 decade. You can follow the twitter thread of indignation of Brazilians that thought they were done with big thieves. I already made two post about the corruption, which saga really looks like a poor version of the Hangover (that is already not very good): 1, 2 and now the latest sequel which nobody wanted to hear. Now the only hope is that the man behind the original judgement, Joaquim Barbosa, decides to step down from STF to engage the presidency race!!!

FIFA missing one point with Brazil

Curitiba's stadium, Feb 2014...

Mr Blatter missed a very important point, that hopefully (for him) is not irreversible: he got angry at Brazilian people during the Confederation Cup when there are the only one that can help him put this World Cup together on time. Brazilian protests over corruption are exactly what he needs for cities like Curitiba to finish what needs to be finished on time. Now that he positioned himself and FIFA against the Brazilian people, nobody wants FIFA there. He should not put 200 million people against his organization it's dangerous. When a man thinks his organization is above the very own people he depends on, it is a sign of perverse deviation from the original philosophy of the company. Last April Mr Blatter apparently got cleaned of bribery accusation, by his own Ethic's Committee. Well, I leave you with the thought of that when Qatar is cleaning the Nepalese population with the 2022 World Cup, and Brazil has a death toll of five (true it's not a lot, but still, 5 persons over a pressurized leather skin sport!).

Accident in SP's stadium, 2 casualties

Patrick MacDonald is right here, but not only Human Right division should be hurting FIFA's feeling, also an audit team and an independent Ethic's Committee to check on both Blatter and his internal Ethic's Committee.
Conclusion: I will not watch the World Cup, I have decided long ago the boycott was a wise decision to hit where it hurts the most, the (FIFA's) wallet through not buying, not watching TV. Instead I will rent my flat in Rio and go to France, anyone interested?? :-)))




Addendum: Just one day after my post, Financial Times published this nice article. I guess this is what we can call telepathy!

Uhuru: because a Nation Spying them All kills globalization and brings back regionalization

French anti-virus Uhuru is just a reflex of the fear of the end of the virtual in the name of security (of one country). Unfortunately it comes late, but better late than never. Even the Open Source systems are mainly US-based companies (Linux, Firefox...) which mean they are vulnerable ultimately to US government intimations and intimidations. Europe has too few IP in the virtual World and needs to get back to the game. Is this a first step?

Brazilian creativity

I was with my wife walking back from some place I do not remember when we passed a place that smelled like a dirty homeless guy was sleeping somewhere, except we could not not see him (important point for this post, my wife is brazilian, I'm not). So my wife said "it is a ghost" which made me trip a bit but as I am not a 7 year old anymore (30 years ago I was) I quickly came back to Earth and told her the same thing I just told you. But she was convinced, so I strat to trip again... until I came back to my sences and asked what she meant. A ghost is actually the rag these guy used and that catches their smell, so when they are not here it seems they still are linging around but you cannot see them... a "ghost"! That reminded me that I was always impressed by the way the brazilian people I was hanging with always had that sort of game of contextual nicknaming, more than other cultures (USA, France... you name it). The game is to find the funniest nickname that would immediately have you understanding a fact by the context relating the two (in fact here, the "smeely" ghost and the homeless rag left which smell reminds the presence of the person). That creativity is hardly matched.

Yesterday I watched that documentary about creativity as well, and was interviewed Paulo Barros, the director of the carnival of the samba school União da Tijuca. He said that while he was doing something (irrelevant) he saw a truck with thousands of cooking panels that would go to trash, that gave him an idea as he had to create the carnival's car which was about Oz. The panels where used to create a huge tin man. 

Creativity is something that Brazil has a lot, maybe from the fact (e.g.) that they need to make something important (allegoric cars and costumes) out of not much every year for carnival, and it drags throughout the entire society. Counterpart is that they have trouble to monetize correctly that creativity, which seems to be more an north american quality.

Happy Carnival!!