Brazil’s Supreme Court Gives OK to Open Probe of New President Temer

Brazil’s Supreme Court gave the green light to prosecutors to open a probe into corruption allegations tying President Michel Temer to a sprawling graft scandal centered on the nation’s state-run oil company.

Brazil’s Supreme Court Gives OK to Open Probe of New President Temer – WSJ

It’s like watching bull riding. A wild ride where you can’t help wonder how long this guy is going to last and who is getting bucked off next?

Singlish: the tension between the natural flow and evolution towards inclusion and convenience of communication and the less responsive formality of institutionalized language 

Most of Singapore’s population speak the unofficial language or dialect known as Singlish. But why would the government rather it went away? James Harbeck takes a look.

Source: BBC – Culture – The language the government tried to suppress

Slavery’s legacies | The Economist

American ideas cannot simply be transplanted to Brazil. Differences in how the two countries were colonised, and how the slave economy operated, led to distinct ideas of what it means to be “black”—and different attitudes to compensatory policies and whom they should target.

In Brazil, unlike America, race has never been black and white. The Portuguese population—700,000 settlers had arrived at the start of the 19th century—was dwarfed by the number of slaves: a total of 4.9m arrived. Portuguese men were encouraged to consort with African women. Since most came without wives, such unions gained some legitimacy. Their offspring, referred to as mulatto, enjoyed a social status above that of pretos. They worked as overseers or artisans, but also doctors, accountants and lawyers. A mulatto, Machado de Assis, was regarded as Brazil’s greatest writer even during his lifetime in the 19th century. 

…Both black and white Brazilians have long considered “whiteness” something that can be striven towards. In 1912 João Baptista de Lacerda, a medic and advocate of “whitening” Brazil by encouraging European immigration, predicted that by 2012 the country would be 80% white, 3% mixed and 17% Amerindian; there would be no blacks. As Luciana Alves, who has researched race at the University of São Paulo, explains, an individual could “whiten his soul” by working hard or getting rich. Tomás Santa Rosa, a successful mid-20th-century painter, consoled a dark-skinned peer griping about discrimination, saying that he too “used to be black”.

Though only a few black and mixed-race Brazilians ever succeeded in “becoming white”, their existence, and the non-binary conception of race, allowed politicians to hold up Brazil as an exemplar of post-colonial harmony

Slavery’s legacies | The Economist

hmmmm

Afghan boy’s hope of new life in Europe ends in suicide

SVANGSTA, Sweden (Reuters) – Mustafa Ansari’s journey ended one April morning in his bedroom in a quiet Swedish village. At around 7 a.m., staff at the young asylum-seekers’ center where Ansari was staying found him dead. 

…An autopsy found Ansari, who had no papers but was described in the autopsy as 17, had committed suicide. During nine months in Sweden, the authorities had not managed to carry out a single interview for his asylum application.

The young Afghan was a new kind of casualty in Europe’s migration crisis. While thousands have died on the journey to Europe, Ansari made it, only to become caught up in an overloaded system. His story highlights the limits on capacity even in a country like Sweden, which has one of the most open policies towards migrants and refugees. It also underlines the anxieties and risks faced by the more than 100,000 unaccompanied young asylum-seekers who have reached Europe since 2015.

…Processing times for asylum-seekers in the country have nearly tripled over five years to a median of longer than nine months, from just over three months in 2011. Care-workers have lost track of more than 1,000 unaccompanied minors, a third of whom are Afghan males, since 2014.

…Asylum-seekers are generally more likely to attempt suicide than the general population, studies have shown. They suffer high rates of depression, psychosis and other mental health conditions, largely because of the trauma they have fled. In Sweden, government and other groups have estimated that around a quarter of asylum-seekers suffer from mental illnesses like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Ansari had traveled alone. His autopsy report says he was suffering from depression and bipolar disorder. Friends say he desperately missed his family. He waited months for a meeting to process his claim, but the agency canceled one meeting and messed up the venue for the other. “He used to speak about his frustration,” said his fellow asylum-seeker, 18-year-old Afghan Mohsen Naghawi. “He saw himself as unlucky.”

…Like many Afghans, Ansari planned to bring over his family from Iran once he had won asylum.

…”You have to remember that it is a very big responsibility for these boys,” said Ansari’s 18-year old friend, Naghawi. “Their families have sold everything and this is on their shoulders.”

That sense of responsibility intensifies the moment the boys touch Swedish soil.

…As winter approached and the days darkened, extremist attackers in Paris were found to have entered Europe with refugees traveling through Greece. This was a provincial, conservative part of Sweden. Some of Ansari’s friends said they feared the Swedish authorities might be delaying their applications as a tactic to make it easier to deport them.

As spring neared, according to the migrant center staffer Kullberg, Ansari started to adopt European ways. He was accepting handshakes, even hugs, from female staff.

But he had yet to meet anyone from the Migration Agency.

He began to spend hours in his room. His smile disappeared, he stopped going to school and he lost weight, his friends said.

Afghan boy’s hope of new life in Europe ends in suicide

sigh…

Human beings suck!

Israel, Palestinians clash over settlements at UN

The Israeli and Palestinian leaders Thursday stood poles apart at the UN General Assembly Thursday, clashing over the cause of their decades-old conflict and Jewish settlements in the West Bank. 

Source: Israel, Palestinians clash over settlements at UN

Israel needs to knock it off, before they get everyone on the region killed. Go back within the ’67 borders you evil, inhuman, assholes!!!

Jets pound rebel-held Aleppo after army offensive declared: rescue worker, monitor

Warplanes targeted rebel-held areas of eastern Aleppo on Friday in a second day of heavy bombardment hours after the army announced the start of a military operation there, rescue workers and activists said. The Syrian military, which is backed by the Russian air force, said late on Thursday it was starting a new operation against the rebel-held east, which is home to at least 250,000 people and was also targeted in heavy air strikes on Thursday.

A fresh wave of bombing had started at from 6 a.m. (11:00 p.m. EDT), after heavy overnight attacks, he said. “What’s happening now is annihilation,” he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported at least 30 air strikes had targeted different areas of Aleppo from midnight.

Source: Jets pound rebel-held Aleppo after army offensive declared: rescue worker, monitor

What a fucking inhuman shit show.

Chibok girls: Nigeria’s Buhari calls for UN mediation 

Nigeria’s president calls for the UN to mediate with militant Islamist group Boko Haram to secure the release of girls it is holding captive.

Chibok girls: Nigeria’s Buhari calls for UN mediation – BBC News

sigh….

Wouldn’t it have been nice if he was so intent on helping these girls and willing to collaborate and cooperate a fucking year ago?

Colin Powell Called Benghazi ‘Stupid Witch Hunt’ In Email To Condi Rice

“Benghazi is a stupid witch hunt. Basic fault falls on a courageous ambassador who thoughts Libyans now love me and I am ok in this very vulnerable place,” Powell wrote in a December 2015 email to former Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, according to BuzzFeed.

Colin Powell Called Benghazi ‘Stupid Witch Hunt’ In Email To Condi Rice

hmmm

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson delivers incendiary maiden speech to Senate

Greens Senators have walked out of Pauline Hanson’s incendiary first speech to the Senate, where she claimed the nation was “in danger of being swamped by Muslims”.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson delivers incendiary maiden speech to Senate

Unfortunately the US does not have a monopoly on electing backwards, racist, pieces of shit.