The BBC recently reported on how federal prosecutors in Brazil take on corrupt officials:

Federal prosecutors in Brazil say they have identified 137 politicians and more than 400 government officials involved in a corruption scandal.

What bastards. On the other hand, it may be hard to turn down an "offer" from gangsters whose other alternative may be to kill you, if one lives in a country where corruption is the daily order.

Today, Dagens Nyheter has published a fascinating article [Swedish] on how hard it is to get a job being a non-Swede, in Sweden. The article shows how four men apply for the same 367 jobs. Two of them have Swedish-sounding names, and the other two have Arabic-sounding ones. They all claim to have similar qualifications, applying for different types of jobs. The problem is that the persons who are not from Sweden are discriminated, almost every time. Only one potential employer has admitted to consciously lying to the non-Swedish applicants, saying their potential customers might feel their non-Swedishness to be a "disadvantage". Wonderful. That's regarding a job as a painter. Others just try to sneak out of their situation, blaming different factors, all very doubtful.

The most common "reason" the would-be employers have given to "explain" their lying to the Arab applicants, is stress; they were either stressed-out at the time they spoke with the applicants, or had too much work to do, to think clearly. Which of course is bollocks. This rarely happened when the Swedish applicants phoned. Some would-be employers even tried using "we already have enough immigrants working for us", which I somewhat doubt is a phrase they would use when referring to Swedes, and is, of course, highly irrelevant.

I like this kind of investigative journalism. Prejudice must be stopped.