|
 Brazil's acting president, José Alencar, told Brazilian reporters that's he in favor that Brazil build its own atomic bomb. For him nuclear weapons are an important dissuasion factor and would give Brazil more respectability.
"A nuclear weapon used as dissuasive instrument is of great significance for a country that has 15,000 kilometers (9,300 miles) of borders in the west and has a territorial sea and, now, there's this pre-salt sea with an area of 4 million square kilometers (1.4 million square miles)," said Alencar.
All the recent oil findings by Brazil should be reason for caution, he argues: "This stirs international greed. Now everything is all right, but we don't know what tomorrow will bring. It costs a lot, but readiness is costly."
Alencar, who is the acting president while president Lula is in the United States for several commitments, including taking part in the Pittsburgh G20 summit, reminded the case of Pakistan, which is part of several international organisms not because is a big country, but because it has the A bomb.
For Alencar, India and Pakistan, although living in conflict, don't go to war against each other and prefer to sit down and negotiate because both possess nuclear weapons.
"We, Brazilian, sometimes are too laid-back," said the Brazilian vice-president. "We master the nuclear energy technology, but nobody here has the drive to advance in this field. We have to go forward in this matter".
According to Alencar, Brazil would use its nukes only for peaceful purposes, only to protect the country from international attacks. "We have to waken up to the idea that Brazil needs to advance in this field to become a really strong country."
During his talk to reporters in his cabinet in Brazilian capital Brasília, Alencar, who once was Defense minister, also defended the allocation of more resources to the Armed Forces. He wants the defense budget to be linked to the country's GDP. "We need a GDP percentage between 3% and 5%, which would give much might to the defense's system that needs care and has been abandoned for ages."
The acting president stressed that he is a pacifist and that his opinion about the need for the A-bomb is given as a common citizen and not as the second in line of succession.
Alencar added that he was not saying what Brazil is going to do and what road the country will take: "I'm not saying that Brazil is going to do this or not and I don't even want to say if I want this or not. I'm making an analysis as a Brazilian. The country's reputability would grow a lot. We have that saying "might is right and justice is the power of the strongest," he continued.
It's not the first time that Alencar defends development of nuclear weapons. He is not the only Lula aide to have such thoughts either. A few years back, then Science and Technology minister Roberto Amaral, declared:
"We are against nuclear proliferation, we are signatories of the nonproliferation treaty signatories, but we cannot renounce the scientific knowledge."
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
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.
A death wish, I presume.