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Brazilian police are looking into the possible existence of links between the ruling Workers Party of President Lula da Silva and a prison-based gang network, First Command of the Capital, (PCC) which has been responsible for a wave of violence in the country's main industrial and financial hub, the city of São Paulo.
Daily newspaper Folha de S. Paulo said the probe of possible links between the ruling Workers Party (PT) and the jail gang was being carried out by that city's police force and was based on court-authorized wiretaps in which allegedly PCC members can be heard talking about attacking non-PT politicians. The recordings were made on May 12, the day when PCC launched its first wave of attacks in São Paulo, which according to official figures claimed the lives of 133 people, 41 policemen and jail guards, 79 alleged criminals, four civilians and nine prison inmates. The leaders of PCC who run the organization's narcotics and extortion operations from inside the São Paulo prison system, launched a second wave of attacks in July with eight killed and six suspects shot in clashes with police forces. "Priority: blue (prison guards), higher than blue, politicians, any of them except for PT, you get it, man?" an alleged PCC member identified as "Magrelo" is heard on a recording telling another gang suspected "Moringa," reports the newspaper. Further on "Magrelo" argues that the main target must be politicians from the opposition Brazilian Social Democracy Party, PSDB, which rules in the state and city of São Paulo. "Members, officials and leaders of PSDB must be targeted" "Magrelo" orders other alleged gang members. Following the interceptions São Paulo police reinforced security for politicians during the May wave of violence, but despite efforts a PSDB councilman in a town west of São Paulo City was gunned down on May 13. PSDB is the party supporting Geraldo Alckmin, former governor of São Paulo during five years who stepped down March 31 to run in October's presidential election. Since May when the PCC began its attacks in São Paulo, PSDB leaders, including Alckmin, have claimed that the organized crime offensive had the political aim of discrediting his governorship of the state in the run-up to the presidential vote. Press reports at the time of the first wave of attacks indicated they were launched in retaliation for the transfer of 765 of the gang's members - including leader Marcos Williams Herbas Camacho, "Marcola" - from São Paulo to a maximum-security prison in the neighboring state of Paraná. São Paulo police department of organized crime plans to question alleged PCC members over the next few days, while the PSDB has said that it will not use the wiretaps for political ends during the current electoral campaign. According to the head of PSDB in São Paulo, Sidney Beraldo, PCC has "sympathy" for PT because that party's politicians have always been at the vanguard of the struggle to defend human rights. President Lula reiterated his offer to send the Federal Police and the armed forces to São Paulo to help control the violence, but he added that "the control of security in São Paulo is (in the hands of) São Paulo state". Alckmin and São Paulo state security secretary Saulo de Castro Abreu have insinuated that PCC attacks were tacitly backed by Lula's PT. The PSDB said "the PCC effect could have been a factor" in explaining Alckmin's recent drop in polls. Another presidential hopeful Senator Heloísa Helena Lima, running third in the polls said that Lula should have left "demagoguery" and sit down with the São Paulo state government and draft "an emergency public security plan." Residents of São Paulo continue to be held hostage by the gang, "while the president and the governor discuss who is responsible," said Helena. Mercopress
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The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
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. 
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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).
This just shows how HE and his gang are ready to do to keep power.
Corrupted through his teeeth.
Brazil became a Banana republic....where everything is trunked, faked and manipulated.