On Tue, Jan 03, 2012 at 04:55:41PM +0100, Vincenzo Tozzi wrote:
> Alo,
>
> Il 10/11/2011 18:01, Felipe Fonseca ha scritto:
>> Well, in South America we work for free too. A lot ;) And there is oil
>> money, financial devils, managers who contribute to nothing and good old
>> cuts to cultural funds. There is also the other side where we stand
>> (free, open, friendly, collaborative, relaxed, welcoming), but it's
>> relatively a small part of the whole. Go to a shopping mall in a rich
>> area of São Paulo and the shit is all there (even more obscenely
>> ostentatious than everywhere else). This time is like that, let's live
>> in paradox.
>>
>
> When I was flying to Fortaleza in 2010 going to TEIA, the national
> meeting of "Pontos de Cultura", there were advertising in all seats of
> PricewaterhouseCoopers saying something like.. "Brazil is going to be
> the 5th economic power in the world.. What are you going to do whit
> this?"
>
> I believe that brazilian people, and social movements, did quite a good
> job to fight for their rights and freedom until some years ago (I
> suggest until the discovering of huge petroleum reserves). Since then
> Brazilian government started to play a bigger role in international
> affairs and does not care about internal problems a lot, couse they have
> money and resources to contain the social movements with some (little)
> prizes. In meanwhile, people and social movements are not prepared to
> fight efficaciously in the new international context. Government have no
> big counterpart for this topics.
>
> Abraço,
> Vince
>


Fascinating read for me, because when I wrote my thesis (on 'Third World
Multinational Enterprises') back in the mid-eighties, Petrobras was an upcoming
giant, welcome in certain progressive circles as a MNE different from the
'Northern' ones (Julius Nyerere: "multinationals from developping countries
serving the interests of developping countries" - owtte). I wrote that
Petrobras (and other 'emerging' MNEs) was more likely to develop into a big
sister like the seven other ones...

But then from what Vince writes I think Brail govt at least does it better than
the maffias in power in, eg, Algeria and Angola, who give nothing, not even
little prizes, to their people (Algeria a little bit more tgan Angola = zilch)

my 2 Cruzeiros/ 2m Kwanzas ;-)
Cheerio, p+3D!