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Saw that on a bike forum tonight. I haven't stopped laughing yet.
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Pity about the inevitable scratches to the bike.
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>> Pity about the inevitable scratches to the bike.
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Only on the right hand side though. The other side landed on his leg.
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>> Only on the right hand side though. The other side landed on his leg.
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i'm peein mesen here now and going to bed for a mega early start, going to be giggling like a schoolgirl half the night.
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There is some problem either with Fc's link or my computer. The link downloaded very slowly, bit by bit, which is annoying. When I tried to run it again hoping it would run through in one, it started doing the same thing again, then produced a sort of warning screen telling me I was going to see someone being shot. The only way to exit that screen was to turn the computer off.
I never did find out where the undercover policeman(if that's what he was) had sprung from. Naturally I don't mind an armed robber (even a young and innocent-looking one) being drilled - it's asking for it after all - but I really can't see what's funny about it. Just another killing in a damn rough place.
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I'm with John Dunne on this.
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
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>> any man's death diminishes me,
>> because I am involved in mankind.
>>
I think I am 'involved in mankind'...yet I couldn't give two hoots about the death of some gun toting punk.
Perhaps I'm not.
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Like I said, its one less at worst. At best it might change someone else's behaviour.
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One armed robber dies, at least one innocent person lives. Good riddance.
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While I can't rejoice at any untimely violent death to be honest, there was a certain inevitability to that young man's demise.
I spent a lot of time in Brazil in the late 80s and early 90s and there was certainly then a chronic problem with armed assault, robbery, kidnappings and hijackings of motor vehicles.
To a great extent it was partially fuelled by the then economic culture of raging inflation, mass unemployment, lack of state funding for education, welfare and medical care.
I used to spend many weekends in Rio, usually staying at the Sheraton at Ipanema. A semi-luxurious hotel but literally yards away from a favella ( cardboard city ) I remember standing on the balcony of my hotel room, drinking a cold beer more or less looking into the eyes of people who had less than nothing across the hotel compound wall on perched in their shanty structures clinging to the hillside opposite.
I can't say it sat well with me, I was not highly paid but being a young middle manager on a European salary I knew I was occupying a very different economic world to those people. What must they have thought of me?
My working weeks were in the south east of the country which required a flight to Porto Allegre followed by a drive inland to Novo Hamburgo and beyond. Often I'd be met at the airport by a Brazilian friend who worked with me. I remember the first time I had a lift in his car. I want to remember it being some kind of Pontiac coupe. Fast thing anyway but made even more so by the fitment of nitrous oxide bottles between the seats.
I asked him if he used it to compete in drag races or whatever but he just grinned humourlessly and told me it was there in case he had to outrun bandits.
There was a road in Novo Hamburgo you kind of had to use to get through town which was notorious for car jacking. Almost always at a particular crossroads where there were traffic lights but no local would ever stop for the red lights for fear of a gun being thrust in the window, keys, wallets and jewellery demanded and not twice...
Some American friends were driving out one night along that road to go to a restaurant in the city centre and made the mistake of pausing for the red light. They were shot at and two died. I guess they must have tried to argue with the muggers. I was driving another car some distance behind. We weren't shot.
The Brazilian people I got to know in that area who had jobs lived in pretty normal houses in pretty normal streets but the common factor was the high security fencing around their houses, the barred windows on their houses and the armed guard in a sentry box at the bottom of their drives.
Anyone who was suspected of being ramsomable or who had dependents who might be was acutely aware of their vulnerability. Most people I knew slept with a handgun within easy reach of the bed ( although I never did )
The lawlessness was redolent of the wild west or so it seemed to us naive Europeans. The police, it was alleged anyway, were "open to financial suggestions" although I can't say I ever came into close contact with them so that may just be rumour.
In any event, there was a lot of crime, much of it involving firearms but which was met with summary justice by the authorities as seen in the video here.
None of the above excuses the criminals of course and a primitive part of me agrees with the instant retribution dealt, but I can't help contextualising all of it with what I lived amongst for a while.
In our country, no matter how desperate one becomes or financially deprived or stifled, there are at least some safety nets in place. It may be different now in Brazil but back then anyway, there were those who simply stole or starved. Dreadful to be on the receiving end of their crime but also pretty dreadful to find yourself so desperate as to feel you have no option but to live like that.
It's not like here. Not even slightly. Or it wasn't anyway.
I could go on to tell you how the poor women and girls were treated but I guess you can figure that out for yourselves.
I could have stayed there permanently. There was plenty of work for me and the likes of me and my modest, but European pay made me rich in that environment but I never could quite square the imbalances in my head and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to try to raise a family in that area as it was then.
No, I too can feel little sympathy for the thief in the video, but it's not something I take pleasure in either. Not at all. In fact it saddens me in the wider view.
Last edited by: Runfer D'Hills on Tue 15 Oct 13 at 22:33
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Excellent post. We take so much for granted living in this country but most of us have no comprehension of the poverty violence and desperation that is normality for millions.
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Those perps weren't impoverished favella dwellers looking for their next meal Humph.
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I've been here for most of 20 years.
There's one thing which should be remembered, which explains an awful lot about the Brazilian philosophy on life and their behaviour.
The favella you were looking at was probably Cantagalo, and it is all that you describe. But if you had looked carefully at those home-made dwellings of the terminally poor, you would have noticed that the wooden and block built ones had bars on the windows.
It is not the poor and deprived fighting to survive against the ruling privileged, its a bunch of lousy scum bags who will steal from anybody and kill for a packet of cigarettes. And they will steal from, and kill, the poor as quickly as they will steal from the more well off.
There are no Robin Hoods or urban heroes.
The guy, and he was no favella dweller, trying to steal the bike needed to leave. His death will serve no other purpose, but it is one less.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Tue 15 Oct 13 at 23:35
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" its a bunch of lousy scum bags who will steal from anybody and kill for a packet of cigarettes. And they will steal from, and kill, the poor as quickly as they will steal from the more well off."
Undoubtedly - but how does a society generate these people? They weren't born scum-bags were they?
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I think that's all I'm reflecting on CG. I don't want to be misunderstood, and if I've infered any speculation as to where or how the criminal lived, or indeed his background that was not my intention.
I know nothing about him other than that he violently threatened the motorcyclist and stole his bike. As a result a police officer shot him. That's the beginning and the end of what I know about that individual.
I suppose if there was any point at all to my post, and I'm not entirely sure there was to be honest, it was just to share with others a point of personal perspective based upon experiences half a lifetime ago. I can't help but reflect on the irony that in the 20 years or so since I was last there, nothing much seems to have changed, children have been born into that society, grown up in it and subsequently died in it in circumstances we should perhaps look upon with an amount of regret rather than celebrate.
I feel no sympathy for him based upon what little we know of him and he most probably deserved all he got. But I can't find it funny. On the contrary in fact.
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Its not funny, but to our Northern European safe well off eye, there is a smugness that overwhelms us and we chirp "live by the sword, die by" "justice" etc etc.
But in truth, people like the perp involved do live by/ die by. They except the inevitability of the risk of what they do. Mexican drug cartels, American gang culture plenty of examples of how the nature of violence breeds little care for you own lifespan.
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I can highly recommend the Brazilian film "City of God":
www.imdb.com/title/tt0317248/
If you're interested in this subject and haven't seen it, it's a must see.
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>> The guy, and he was no favella dweller,
Why do you think so FMR? Doubtless you have your reasons. I'm just curious.
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Well its obviously just an assumption but I would guess he comes from one of the downtown areas near the Marginal. His clothing looks wrong also, bit too stylish even if they're knock-offs.
And too clean.
You'd never hang on to the bike he arrived on in a favella, and the Sao Paulo favellas are nasty. Really nasty. There's no honour in them, they fight and kill each other as fast as anybody else. I've been in some dodgy places in my lifebut the Sao Paulo favellas are the worst I've seen.
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Well, never been to Latin America so can't really say. But very rough boys from very rough backgrounds quite often strut about clean, with new haircuts, in the latest schmutter, in a lot of the places I've been.
Surely even in a favela they won't knock you off the bike and steal it when you are a notorious local hood with a big cannon down the back of your trousers? I must say I'd hesitate even if my seventeen nippers and their five mothers, all legally married under candomble law, were screaming the place down for food and sticking pins in wax images of me.
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>>Surely even in a favela they won't knock you off the bike and steal it when you are a notorious local hood with a big cannon down the back of your trousers?
The gun makes no odds one way or another. Any boy child over the age of 8 has access to a gun in the favella.
The groups, and individuals within those groups, are constantly vying for top spot. The true head of a gang rarely lives in the favella at all, so the best a guy is going to be is some kind of middle manager - and they change all the time.
Even then, someone would steal it and perhaps just kill him and claim the bike.
Last I knew is was US$200 to have someone killed but in the favella they would just do it themselves. Which about sums up the standards.
Someone, CG I think, asked how it'd got that way. Its very very complicated, as you would expect. But one thing is very noticable; here being part of a society is all about your rights, what you deserve and what you should get out of it. There is no understanding of duties, responsibilities or even compromise towards that society.
Undoubtedly that is the root of the issue, albeit not the cause.
An example; the traffic is nuts. The approach of the average driver would be this - If you see a gap, or an advantage, take it whatever the inconvenience to anyone else. If you cannot take that advantage, or it is not useful to you, then spoil it so that nobody else can take it.
I was cured of road rage living in Brazil, Venezuela and Columbia. They don't understand why you get annoyed, but if you make a thing of it you'll get shot.
I was just on the school run listening to someone giving advice for people thinking of travelling to Brazil for the World Cup. Anybody following that advice was going to end up poor, bored and disenchanted.
If anybody here, or anybody they care about, is thinking of going to Brazil for the World Cup, please do let me help and advise. Its a wonderful place and you'll have a wonderful time - if you do it right.
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p.s. a 12 yr old boy working as an armed lookout near a Favella drug gang will earn in a single Saturday about what the policeman he's looking out for will earn in a month.
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>> p.s. a 12 yr old boy working as an armed lookout near a Favella drug
>> gang will earn in a single Saturday about what the policeman he's looking out for
>> will earn in a month.
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Although nowhere near the level of Brazil, you've summed up the cause of much of the gang violence in the UK. The pointless and unwinnable "War on Drugs" means many youths on inner city estates earn far more from dealing in the stuff than they could ever hope to flipping burgers in McDonalds.
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Never in the history of man has anything been controlled by attacking supply and that includes drugs.
Did Prohibition teach nobody anything?
If you want to defeat drugs, but who really cares, then go for the demand. Legitimise and tax supply which will massively reduce the profits. Prosecute anybody who uses.
Personally I feel an unfettered drug trade which have a touch of the Darwinian about it.
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>> Personally I feel an unfettered drug trade which have a touch of the Darwinian about it.
WTF does that mean? WTF are you on FMR? Go for the demand indeed... WTF are you talking about? You seem quite sensible sometimes.
God what rubbish.
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Really?
Seems to me that the first stage is to decide whether or not you want a war. And I would decide not, but I can quite understand why some would.
Assuming you do wish to, then presumably you want to find the most effective method?
At the moment there is effectively no day to day competition, so prices reign unfettered. Because of that it is more cost effective for a farmer to grow poppies, a fisherman to smuggle drugs and a copper to turn a blind eye as well as facilitating the most enormous investment in supply chain.
If you brought the trade out into the open, then not only would there be side benefits of taxation revenue and Health & Safety, the price would drop massively. That would have the effect of reducing the infrastructure that the trade could afford; including its ability to use massive sums of money to subvert the system.
Equally the magnitude of crime required at the "using" or demand end would reduce since massive drugs habits could be supported more cheaply.
Conversely if one attacks supply then supply/demand pushes the price up causing a corrupt and illegal supply chain infrastructure to be easily affordable.
If one then maintains that a "War on Drugs" is required, then the best way is to reduce demand. That will further reduce profits causing more of the supply chain to fade away or diversify.
Attacking the demand side whilst allowing the supply side to function would further reduce price (and therefore profits and investment funds) because of the very function of supply demand.
Now, and as to how you attack demand and cause it to reduce, then the "war" on smoking would probably supply a fair few ideas.
Now, I understand why you might not agree, but why such an extreme reaction?
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I'm in full agreement with FM2R on this. Smoking has been more than halved over the past three decades by means of health awareness and taxation. All the banning of drugs has ever done is made some very nasty people very rich and shown a considerable number of youngsters that crime really can pay.
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U>> Never in the history of man has anything been controlled by attacking supply
Guns.
USA little restriction of supply
UK. Very tight restriction on supply
Which is most successful.
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Guns;
US High demand
UK Low demand
Which is the most successful?
US stable high demand
UK growing demand
Which has growing demand?
You don't need to worry about supply if you control demand, since supply is self-regulating.
If you try to control supply, demand will fight you.
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Are you saying it would be better and more effective to resolve the demands for guns in the UK by legalising their sale rather than restricting the supply?
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Oh CG, hardly worthy. Going to ask me if I've stopped beating my wife next?
You brought guns into this, my point is about drugs. I wasn't aware that the UK particularly had a guns problem whereas it seems to be accepted that it does have a drugs issue.
I'm saying that if one wishes to alter the current drugs situation then tackling demand would likely be more effective than restricting supply.
There would appear to be the wish to substantially reduce the drugs trade and resulting crime levels and I don't see how tackling supply is going to work. Lets be honest, it hasn't over the last 50 years.
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Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 16 Oct 13 at 21:14
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I was simply addressing your basic premise that nothing in the world has successfully been controlled by reducing supply. I think we have established this is fallacious and that guns are an example of control by restricting supply.
Whether this is possible with drugs is another matter.
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"I think we have established..."
Just how pompous can one person get? "We" haven't established anything.
It seems obvious that supply & demand drive the size of the trade. I advocate that changes in demand are more likely to impact the size of the trade than restricting supply.
You then ask me if changing Supply will resolve Demand.
Can you see where the two are fundamentally different? And where the second is silly?
Restricting supply increases the impact of demand, but doesn't alter the level of demand, up or down.
The UK and the US have different levels of gun presence because of the different levels of demand. Supply restriction has come in to try to combat the demand and has failed in both countries.
However between the two the country with the lowest demand remains the country with the lowest level of guns.
Again, I can think of no situation where restricting supply has worked.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 16 Oct 13 at 21:30
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"Just how pompous can one person get?"
Obvioulsy much much more.
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Obvioulsy.
I was just responding to your basic premise that I was wrong. I believe that we have established that was a fallacious assessment.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 16 Oct 13 at 22:54
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Justice for biker. - No FM2R
