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 The new President of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, visited Brazil this Wednesday, September 17, with the purpose of launching talks on a deal to give the landlocked country he leds a fairer share of the revenue for the electricity generated by a huge dam built across the two countries border.
After three hours of talks with Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, however, all they were able to do was to create a commission to further study the subject. "We are working with different numbers," said Celso Amorim, the Brazilian Foreign minister.
Despite stiff Brazilian resistance to changes in the distribution of power and profits from the Itaipu dam, (South America's largest), with contract terms dating back to the seventies when both countries were ruled by military dictatorships, Lugo said Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is willing to debate the issue.
"Who said you can't change a treaty?" Lugo told reporters in São Paulo before heading to Brazilian capital Brasília to meet president Lula. "I believe you can change anything when there's a will, when it doesn't fit the challenges of the modern world."
According to the Itaipu treaty, Brazil and Paraguay share 50/50% the 14.000 MW electricity generated but the second poorest country of the region satisfies its demand with only 5% of the volume, and under contract must sell the rest to its senior partner. And for this Brazil pays annually 300 million US dollars, at 1970s prices.
During his electoral campaign Lugo said the price must be reviewed and increased to the correct value in the range of 2 billion US dollars, which Brazil rejects.
That energy, plus Brazil's Itaipu share, provides Latin America's largest economy with 20% of its electrical power.
Mercopress
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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.
Noooooooooooo way !
If Brazil can enslave, they will.
They already have their whole population enslaved !
Is it not the trick to provide goods and foods with credit...at the WORLD highest interests rates such as 33 % on cars, 55 % on consumers credits and 163 % on overdrafts ????
Just read how Brazilians large farmers enslave their workers !!!!
NO DIFFERENCE !
Brazil understand ONLY when their goods are going higher, NEVER the other way around !!!!