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 The Indians of the Javari Valley in the Brazilian Amazon have warned that rates of malaria and hepatitis in their communities are spiraling out of control, and that uncontacted tribes in the area are in grave danger.
Ninety percent of Indians in the area suffered from malaria in 2006. A recent study of 306 Indians revealed that 56 percent were carrying the hepatitis B virus; the level considered 'acceptable’ by the World Health Organization is two percent.
A staggering 85 percent of the Indians had had contact with the hepatitis A virus, and 25 percent were carrying hepatitis C.
The Javari Valley is the second largest indigenous territory in Brazil. It is home to the Kanamari, Kulina, Marubo, Matsés, Matis, Korubo and Tsohom Djapá tribes, and at least six uncontacted tribes are known to live in the remote region near the Peruvian border.
The local Indian organization has said in a letter to the Brazilian government, "The situation of the isolated Indians in this region is no less serious.... Illegal and predatory invasions... aggravate the health situation and make these peoples even more vulnerable.
"These factors threaten their physical and cultural survival, contravening Article 231 of the Federal Constitution, which determines that the State will protect customs, languages, and traditionally occupied territories."
The Indians say that the Brazilian authorities responsible for indigenous health care have taken insufficient action to combat the crisis. Indian leaders have been speaking out about the situation for fifteen years, but the crisis has worsened in the last five.
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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.
The answer is simple. Fighting the human need to "believe" in a religion is dificult. I suggest we spend billions of dollars a year educating the world political and religious leaders on the important of population REDUCTION for the next 200 years and beyond, or we will destroy the earth, just as bacteria will eat all nuitrients when placed on a petri dish. They will multiply and consume all nutrients and die in their own excrement. We are no different, but we can be.