What did the US government expect? The Brazilian government to carry out their wishes just because of US legal action in the US?
I submitted to HN and discussed all the major episodes of this saga. Here are the links if you'd like to know more.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44152909
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44188337
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44256169
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44613114
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44736860
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44793777
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44869353
Some of these have been flagged and my comments are almost always downvoted to oblivion but I don't care, I will continue speaking out because these are my honest opinions on the subject.
Under the pretext of protecting denocracy, the unelected, supposedly impartial brazilian supreme court waged an all out legal and political war against our "Trump equivalent". They have engaged in unconstitutional censorship and politically motivated arrests.
They have usurped the functions of the legislative and executive branches of government. They are essentially judge-kings and have transformed my country into a dictatorship of the judiciary.
One of these judges has been sanctioned by the USA under the Magnitsky Act, an unprecedented consequence that nobody thought would ever happen. I mean that literally: these judges publicly mocked the idea that they would ever be sanctioned for their actions.
Now they are apparently moving to defy the sanctions by ordering banks to continue providing services to the sanctioned judge despite the sanctions.
This will get our banks banned from the international banking system, isolating our country. The economic damage this will cause simply cannot be calculated.
Brazil is essentially the world's soy farm and we import like 70% of our fertilizer. They're going to sacrifice everything to protect these judges and display their non-existent "sovereignty", like a defiant child trying to stand up to its parent. Brazil is pretty much done for if this continues.
Is this going to be like the Russian sanctions?
The sanctioned judge has been essentially permabanned from the US financial system. Everything that touches US dollars is now banned from transacting with him. He cannot even have a brazilian bank account since they absolutely do business with US institutions.
This news is essentially them saying "Magnitsky is invalid here, you cannot refuse service to the judge unless we say so". It looks like they're going to force the issue.
This will immediately expose Brazil to secondary sanctions. All banks that comply with the supreme court will be sanctioned and cut off from US institutions. Every single brazilian will be affected.
This will no doubt cause foreign investment to flee the country as Brazil becomes high risk. It will also probably significantly reduce or destroy our USD reserves, indirectly devaluing our already devalued currency.
You're referring to the fact that the Trump administration is engaged in persecuting individual judges ruling on a coup attempt, hoping to intimidate them into submission to deliver the ruling they demand.
And you glance over this as a "permaban".
That protest was directly caused by the supreme court's profoundly destabilizing actions prior to the 2022 election. In 2019 they gave themselves powers to investigate, prosecute, judge and punish wildcard crimes against themselves encompassing the whole brazilian territory. Then they started engaging in unconstitutional political censorship targeting Bolsonaro and his supporters. I was there, I saw them do it. Any claims to the contrary are gaslighting.
I don't care about at what level of delusion you're operating.
If only you spent a fraction of that energy on self reflection...
My thoughts are all there in my comment. If you disagree, then just refute them. I'd love to have reasons to believe things are not as bad as they seem.
I believe there is a strong point to make. Not only are engaged in obsessive compulsive behavior but you are also leaning on alternative versions of reality/accounts to form your opinions.
You posted in other threads that you are going through therapy and your therapist already gave you directives regarding your obsession over this topic. I feel OP's point reiterate your therapist's feedback.
What is this supposed to mean? My view points are "alternative" and therefore wrong? No.
That's something you need to work out with your therapist, given that all the people reiterating that point to you in all those threads didn't seemed to get through to you.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I do hope I'm not being too much of a pain on dang's butt... My account is already rate limited to about 5 posts every two hours or so and I think that's absolutely fair. I emailed him once about it, he explained his reasons and I accepted them and the limitation. I hope HN's downraking of political threads neutralize any disruption these discussions could possibly cause.
I know I'm going to sound like a paranoid schizophrenic by saying this but please keep in mind that there's at least a possibility that the flaggings and downvotes are politically motivated.
People have created sockpuppet accounts here and called me out by name because of the views I express.
Those are both true. As a Brazilian, I'm politically motivated to engage with these lies that bring so much damage for a whole nation of 200million people.
Edit: Really, reading the links and the suppositions, I honestly recommend you to refrain from engaging in this kind of crusade. It does you no benefit and tech has a big list of smart developers that went crazy going a similar route.
Thank you for admitting to it.
> lies
Repeating it won't make it true. I've explained what I think and why I think it numerous times. I have no reason to think differently if you can't present strong counter arguments as to why I should.
You might want to check the sources from which we import those fertilizers, largest of which are Russia and China. While some do come from more US aligned sources, including the US itself, most of the names on that list have no problems ignoring US sanctions if it comes to that.
> They're going to sacrifice everything to protect these judges and display their non-existent "sovereignty", like a defiant child trying to stand up to its parent.
Our sovereignty is very much real and existent :)
> Brazil is pretty much done for if this continues.
Nope, we'll be fine.
Somehow I doubt it...
Trump has already imposed 50% tariffs, causing major economic losses. NATO has already threatened to impose 100% tariffs on us if we keep buying russian oil. And these are mere tariffs, not actual sanctions.
It's very hard to predict what's going to happen if things keep spiralling out of control.
> Our sovereignty is very much real and existent :)
Sovereignty must be backed up by military and economic power. We have neither. It's complete fantasy.
Do you really think the likes of China and Russia are going to defend us and our interests if push comes to shove?
Look at Ukraine. Gave up nuclear weapons because the USA promised to defend them if push came to shove. How's it going for them?
They'll use us like pawns and then turn us into their own backyard. Not that our relation with the USA is any different but personally I'd rather live in the USA's backyard than in China's backyard.
> Nope, we'll be fine.
Remains to be seen.
Maybe we're looking at vastly different numbers, but most analysts are expecting little to no impact from the 50% tariffs. The US only makes up 12% of our exports, and they've already cut down the scope so that only around 36% of those are even affected. Since we mostly export commodities, even those 36% can just be sold elsewhere.
The NATO claims are irrelevant: NATO is not a trade alliance and the US struggles to get it to comply even with its intended military goals. You can safely place the odds of the other NATO countries agreeing to their own tariffs at approximately 0%.
> Sovereignty must be backed up by military and economic power. We have neither. It's complete fantasy.
Not sure where you get this idea? We have both military and economic power. Just because we're not as large as the US or China doesn't mean we have nothing.
Also, I don't see why you think there's a possibility of this escalating to war. Trump already had to back down with large exceptions to his 50% tariffs due to the domestic political impact it would have, and war is extremely unpopular with the Americans these days, which is why they only fund Ukraine and Israel instead of actually sending soldiers to fight.
Even though the scope of the tariffs was reduced, we're still talking figures around hundreds of billions of BRL worth of immediate damage to the economy, with long term losses uncertain.
> Since we mostly export commodities, even those 36% can just be sold elsewhere.
There is no guarantee that there will be enough demand from alternative buyers to fully mitigate the long term damage.
> You can safely place the odds of the other NATO countries agreeing to their own tariffs at approximately 0%.
People told me the same thing about the Magnitsky sanctions. I realize that as of this moment it's all just threats but I won't doubt them.
> Not sure where you get this idea?
Well, from the fact Trump could order a single B2 Spirit to wipe Brasília off the map and there'd be nothing at all the entire brazilian military could do about it.
The USA can also effortlessly isolate our country via economic levers. There's no need to fire any bullets. Those levers are going to move some mountains if the supreme court keeps protecting the sanctioned judge.
> I don't see why you think there's a possibility of this escalating to war
I do think that's very unlikely. They'll probably keep leveraging their massive economy and USD hegemony against us.
What about Trump’s actions makes anyone think that Brazil will escape this fate if only it suborns its democracy to Trump’s whims?
Of the BRICS nation, the only one that isn’t being targeted by Trump is Russia. We don’t need to get into why that is.
India is being targeted purportedly for importing Russian oil which is obviously nonsensical considering Russia keeps escaping additional sanctions and other areas, such as China which imports more Russian oil and the EU which imports far more gas, don’t face sanctions for this reason.
China has been facing a whole set of sanctions for the past 6 months and other restrictions.
South Africa faced an escalation based on nonsensical claims of white genocide (South Africa has a massive crime problem…there’s no evidence it’s targeted towards white people and if anything the opposite seems true considering black South Africans are suffering more from crime than white SA)
And these are just BRICS. We haven’t even gotten to the Penguins yet.
The Trump administration is persecuting Brazil for bringing the perpetrators of a coup to trial, and went to the extent of threatening individua judges of the trial with sanctions if their ruling is unfavourable to Trump.
This has by no means any relationship with democracy or basic democratic principles.
This is your very personal version of reality, and one where you don't even stop to think about all the absurdities and inconsistencies it's built upon.
You seriously need to step away from the keyboard and reassess what you are doing.
Elaborate on every single one of them. Otherwise, there is no point in replying.
This personal opinion sounds awfully outlandish, and it's baffling how it leaves out the fact that the "trump equivalent" engaged in a coup and your wall of text boils down to "he is facing a trial for his coup attempt, and he is currently awaiting sentence".
In fact, each discussion you cited reminds you of this fact, but somehow you repeatedly posted outlandish comments, such as claiming that judges ruling over a coup attempt are somehow the ones perpetrating a coup?
Perhaps someone else from Brazil should chime in, as I feel your comments convey an alternative version of reality that doesn't reflect the majority of facts and instead leans heavily on unsupported and very emotional and partial interpretations.
Edit: while reading through the discussions you cited, I stumbled upon your comment discussing how you are going through therapy and your therapist already gave you recommendations on how you should modulate your behavior. Perhaps it's time to consider the recommendation.
That was merely a summary of my commentary on the matter over the course of many HN threads.
There's no point in engaging with you if you won't actually read those arguments.
You've clearly demonstrated you're not willing to actually discuss this. So I won't either.
I just care a lot. What's going on in this country deeply offends my sense of justice.
> ignoring everything multiple different people says
Nope, I try really hard to not ignore things. When I disagree, I explain why. If I can't rationalize it, then I must incorporate it into my world view.
I do ignore name calling, feigned concern and vague allusions to mental illness. You too have done this before. I won't engage with it.
A sovereign country has its own laws and the laws only apply within its territory. There are countries who try to be the World Police but, sometimes, with limited success.
They are judge-kings, of course they can order local banks to comply and order police to jail the bankers if they disobey. The point is if they do that the banks themselves will be sanctioned and every single brazilian will pay the price.
matheusmoreira•5mo ago
> Although the ruling did not explicitly mention the Magnitsky Act, a Brazilian court source told AFP that the ruling "in theory" invalidates the law in Brazil -- though Washington has already contested this interpretation.
They are moving to sacrifice the country's entire economy in order to maintain the despotic supreme court judge who got sanctioned under Magnitsky.
If they keep this up it's pretty much over for this country. Wow.