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 The censorship installed against the daily newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, one of Brazil's most traditional and respected publications, has completed 50 days this Saturday, September 19, as a black strip at the top of the paper's webpage reminds readers.
Federal judge Dácio Vieira has forbidden the newspaper to publish reports about the Federal Police (similar do Interpol) Faktor Operation, former Boi Barrica Operation, which investigates the president of Brazilian's Senate and former Brazilian president José Sarney.
The request for the prohibition has come from the businessman Fernando Sarney, José Sarney's son. The censorship imposed by Vieira, a good friend of the Sarneys covers not only the printed version of O Estado but also its Internet version on www.estadao.com.br.
Fernando Sarneys's lawyers accuse O Estado de S. Paulo of practicing crime when it has published pieces of telephone calls recorded with judicial authorization during the Faktor Operation.
They also argue that the publication of the data hurts the honor of the Sarney family. The records reveal the involvement of the Senate's president with the hiring of relatives and political godchildren in the government, what's illegal in the country.
Ricardo Gandour, director of content for the Grupo Estado says that the decision doesn't change the newspaper's conduct. "The Estado won't intimidate itself, as it has never done in its history. The newspaper respects the law, but uses lawful and ethical journalistic methods to bring information of public interest to the society," he says.
O Estado de S. Paulo was charged to pay a fee of nearly U$ 80,000 for each report that it publishes about the Faktor Operation.
The newspaper's lawyer, Manuel Alceu Afonso Ferreira, has taken several measures in order to suspend the censorship. Among them, is a request of exception of suspension (which means to take a judge away from a case, due to his involvement with one of the parts) at the Distrito Federal (D.C.)'s Tribunal of Justice.
Ferreira points to the bounds between judge Dácio Vieira and the Sarney family, besides Vieira's carrier as lawyer at the Senate. The requirements are still waiting for judgment.
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
After much hypocrisy concerning President Chavez and his treatment of the media, I really cannot find better words than these spoken in the US Senate;
Have you NO shame, sir? Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
In an election year,2010, let's see how far Brasilia is willing to go to cover up. Perhaps they should call Mr. Ahmadinejad or Mr. Kim Il Jung for campaign tips, seeing as Mr. Lula has already retained Mr. Obama's team.