|
 Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said he's willing to withdraw his country's request to become full member of Mercosur because in his own words it's a mechanism "marked by capitalism and ferocious competition", according to an official news release.
Chavez arrived Saturday to Teheran for a "work visit" and was quoted stating that "we're not desperate to become members of an old Mercosur with no desire to change. If we can't make it to Mercosur because the Brazilian conservative right is stronger, then we simply quit".
"If they don't want us inside Mercosur, we have no problem. I'm capable even of withdrawing the request," insisted Chavez talking about the Brazilian Congress, which is expecting an apology gesture from Chavez following some offensive comments he made, before ratifying Venezuela's membership.
Earlier in the week Brazil's Foreign Secretary Celso Amorim said that Brazil was conditioning Venezuela's incorporation to Mercosur to Chavez' retraction regarding offensive statements about the Brazilian Congress.
"Nobody is asking for a self flagellation from Venezuela, but a positive gesture is needed regarding the Brazilian Congress", Amorim was quoted in an interview with O Globo.
Chavez called Brazilian Congress members "parrots" at the service of the US, and oligarchs, following a Senate committee condemnation of his decision not to renew the license to Venezuela's longest established television station, RCTV. Chavez accused RCTV of conspiring with the opposition to bring down his regime.
Brazil officially rejected President Chavez comments and members of Congress said they would not approve Venezuela's Mercosur Protocol of Adhesion unless he apologizes.
Chavez was absent from the latest Mercosur presidential summit which took place this week in Paraguay. He was away in Russia and Byelorussia shopping for arms, and Iran.
Venezuela requested full membership of Mercosur when early last year he walked out of the Andean Community complaining because its members were intent in signing free trade agreements with United States.
Mercopress
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
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. 
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.