(Climate change will not be resolved, or at least humanity will not have any chance of negotiating the travails it will bring until it can understand how to thread a way through the political and economic malaise embedded in most activities, and so free ourselves from the damning self-interest and the perverse desire people have to personally financially profit from their activities – Robert McLean.)
Brazil’s Congress has witnessed some bizarre scenes in its time. In 1963, a senator aimed a gun at his arch-enemy and killed another senator by mistake. In 1998, a crucial government bill failed when a congressman pushed the wrong button on his electronic voting device. But the spectacle in the lower house on April 17th surely counts among the oddest. One by one, 511 deputies filed towards a crowded microphone and, in ten-second bursts broadcast to a rapt nation, voted on the impeachment of the president, Dilma Rousseff. Some were draped in Brazilian flags. One launched a confetti rocket. Many gushed dedications to their home-towns, religions, pet causes—and even Brazil’s insurance brokers. The motion to forward charges against Ms Rousseff to the Senate for trial passed by 367 votes to 137, with seven abstentions.
The vote comes at a desperate time. Brazil is struggling with its worst recession since the 1930s. GDP is expected to shrink by 9% from the second quarter of 2014, when the recession started, to the end of this year. Inflation and the unemployment rate are both around 10%
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Read The Economist story - “The great betrayal.”
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