How true is City of God?

[Pekka]

sports are good. But not just one sports.. make some options.. give them free gear, free team with free coach. Make them play same leagues as everyone else, no need to establish new league for them. Equal opportunity in sports. One option is to make these parctices available at night, so kids don't have the excuse of nothing to do. Clear rules. Good devoted coaches, who are like fathers too and care for the players. Also free teams for not so competitive ones, so no one has to drop out because they're not so good, or because the training is too hard and competitive.

Plus some devoted person to drive the kids and pick them up. No excuses for not being able to come because of the busses and what not. Take a big ass van and pick them all up.

[Alex]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Alex: I'm confussed. How does the colonization of two centuries ago effect current Brazilian economic conditions?

Actually, that would be four centuries.

A complete explanation would demand a lot of time, so I will give you the short answer: the Portuguese (who colonized Brazil) wanted, at first, only to extract the riches they could find here and return them to Portugal. They were not interested in forming a society here. This exploration model is one that still influences how things are managed here.

We had slaves, just like the USA, and no, Speer, they were not the "majority" of the population. But, while in the USA the more advanced model of industrial development (North) triumphed over the backward model of agriculture w/ slaves (South), in Brazil there never was an industrial development until 1940s-1950s. The exploration model found its way into collective consciousness, and infiltrated all kinds of public institutions, leading to massive corruption and a general disregard with anything that could be viewed as a "national project", or building up the nation for the future generations.

Of course, there are other reasons and branchings...