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Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is already in New York where he came for the UN's General Assembly opening session. Following an old tradition the 61 General Assembly will again be opened with a speech by a Brazilian chief of state.
According to Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim, Lula will repeat his constant message against hunger and poverty in the world. He will also debate themes as the UN's reform and the need for the rich nations to stop farm subsidies.
But while the Brazilian president will be acting as an international statesman in New York, a tempest has been brewing back home. Two scandals have erupted in the last few days at the eve of the October 1st, election, in which Lula is candidate to the reelection. In one, a close aide to Lula is charged with buying a dossier that would link the opposition party PSDB with the Bloodsuckers Scheme, an ambulances Mafia involving dozens of congressmen and mayors. The other scandal has to do with the finding that the National Election Board's telephones were being tapped. The president, however, seems to feel invincible due to repeated opinion polls showing him winning reelection in the first round. Lula seems so self-assured in fact that in the last few days he started attacking the opposition with some harsh words. Talking in Belém, capital of the northern state of Pará, for example, he referred to toucans (the symbol of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso's opposition party PSDB) as predators who eat the eggs and the nestlings of other birds. "What have they done for the people?," he asked during a rally and answered his own question: "They limited themselves to have a government for only 35 million Brazilians." On Saturday, September 16, in Salvador, state of Bahia, he called the local PFL (Party of the Liberal Front) chief "the Northeast's hamster." This chief, senator Antonio Carlos Magalhães, is still considered a powerful figure in Bahia politics and is still called by some the Lion of Bahia. Without mentioning the senator's name, Lula said that "an old politician from Bahia used to hit on the table" to be received by presidents. "This doesn't work with me. I'm not afraid of meanies. If he wants me to receive him he will have to respect me. For me he is not the Northeast lion as he was already called, but a hamster." Monday, finally, the old lion roared back in no uncertain terms. ACM, as Magalhães is also known, called the president a "fat and boozing rat, whose thefts in the Palácio do Planalto (the presidential office) I have been denouncing in the National Congress". According to Magalhães, the president has no idea what a hamster is although "he's truly a rat." And the veteran senator went on: "I consider myself more a hunting cat of a rat who steals public money than a hamster. I don't know any hamster. I've just heard about them. Among other reasons because I'm more used to fight big rats. And every passing day it becomes more evident that Lula is an implacable, uncontrollable rodent for himself and his own family."
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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.
Afterall they are ALL stealing YOUR money.
But Brazilians electors are so smart that they elect and re-elect the worst of ALL the
Boozing Rat !
Not very clever.....in my view. This give Lula a legal right to steal even far more....during his second mandate !
Therefore you already know what is going to happen in Brazil Between 2007 and 2010 :
again the worst economic growth rate of ALL developing nations and even lower than 90 % of the poorest countries.
The sad reality is that Lula performances is only equal to Sub Sahara Countries.
Also equal to the same countries for the corruptions.
The facts are that Brazil is simply a Banana Republic !
A Tropical Hell !