|
Brazil's Congress will for the first time investigate alleged corruption cases in the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva following a congressional agreement between the opposition and some groups of the ruling coalition.
The Congressional Investigation Committee will look into corruption claims in the government managed Brazilian Post Office where several of President Lula da Silva's cronies have been named in the top jobs. The creation of the committee represents a new Congressional defeat for the Lula da Silva administration since his Workers' Party was unable to prevent several of its members voting the investigation. At least 236 Deputies and 52 Senators agreed to the special Committee when only 171 and 27 votes respectively were needed. In related news the international environmentalist group Greenpeace included Brazilian president Lula da Silva as one of the main candidates for this year's "Golden Chainsaw Prize" which honors the "Brazilian personality whose talent, action or inaction" were decisive for accelerating the destruction of the Amazon basin rain forest. Other candidates include José Dirceu, Cabinet chief; Antonio Palocci, Finance Minister; Roberto Rodrigues, Agriculture Minister; and the Mato Grosso and Pará state governors, Blairo Maggi and Simão Jatene. Last week, a report from the Brazilian government revealed that in 2004 the Amazon forest lost 26,130 square kilometers, the largest deforestation since 1995. "The nominees have been indicated as the great defenders of the destruction of rain forests at a rate equivalent to 8,600 football fields per day", underlined Greenpeace. The winner of the Golden Chainsaw Prize will be revealed next June 6. Almost 20% of the tropical forest that is home for 30% of the world's animal and plants species has been destroyed to advancing farms and sawmills according to the Brazilian government report. "If deforestation continues at the current rate, the Amazon jungle area by 2050 will become an enormous dry savannah," says Greenpeace. This article appeared originally in Mercopress - www.mercopress.com.
 |
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.