In Sao Paulo, some 10,000 people spilled out along one of the city's broadest avenues...banging drums, waving red flags and carrying banners reading "Bush Go Home"...Demonstrators threw rocks, fireworks and homemade "potato bombs" - made from gunpowder wrapped in foil - at some of the 4,000 police patrolling the streets during Mr Bush's visit.

Three blasts have torn through a police warehouse used to store weapons in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, killing one officer and hurting three others.

Police in the Brazilian state of São Paulo summarily executed scores, possibly hundreds, of people in May of this year as part of their response to a wave of attacks by a criminal network against the state.

[A] commission will say the evidence shows many of these deaths were summary killings of people with no link to organised crime, apparently selected because they had previous police records or because they were residents of neighbourhoods long subjected to police violence.

By Daniel Howden | 11 August 2006

The uruku red lines painted on her cheeks change shape as she draws a sharp breath. Arms outstretched, she blows into the palms of her hands and lifts an invisible weight into the night sky. Katia Luisa Yawanawa is standing on an open ship's deck, thousands of miles upstream on the Amazon, where the great river divides into the black water of the Rio Negro and white water of the Solimoes.

Katia is offering a prayer called a Shuanka. It involves singing to the Yawanawans' ancestors for guidance and protection. Although only 26, Katia is among the most important members of her tribe. She is a wise woman, a xinaya, and the Yawanawan tribe's first female shaman.

Hundreds of landless Brazilian farm workers have stormed a congressional building in the capital, Brasilia...The protesters, carrying sticks and farm tools, smashed windows, tables and doors, overturned a car and clashed with police and security guards...They said they had planned a peaceful protest but the police had attacked them.

[img_assist|fid=178|thumb=0|alt=iwo jima- bolivia]

SAO PAULO - Move over the "axis of evil". The time is ripe for the "axis of gas". Meet the Gran Gasoduto del Sur (the Great Gas Pipeline of the South) - the South American entry into Pipelineistan, soon to join networks from Siberia to both Europe and Asia as well as the American-inspired Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. In terms of political will applied by the new axis of Caracas, Brasilia and Buenos Aires, the pipeline is already a done deal.

"AIDS campaigners have welcomed a decision by Brazil to turn down US funds because of a clause in the agreement condemning prostitution."

"A death squad has killed at least 30 people in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro. Authorities say they are looking at the possible role of what they call rogue police, in a potential act of reprisal for recent arrests of eight officers.

Rights groups accuse police of carrying out a 1993 massacre in the state.

Twenty-one people were killed."

"Rio de Janeiro. The murder of Dorothy Stang, a 73 year-old American nun who helped peasants engage in sustainable agriculture in the Amazonian rain forest, comes as oligarchic interests and the parliamentary right are on a political offensive against the government of Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva. This takes place as fissures are opening up within Lula's governing Workers Party while social organizations are mobilizing to demand the implementation of reforms Lula aligned himself with before he became president."

"In hopes of cementing what both Venezuela and Brazil have referred to as a strategic alliance and a model for South American integration, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Brazilian President Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva signed 20 agreements in oil and energy projects as well as in defense yesterday."

"Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was heckled on the stage at the World Social Forum [...] by the same international activists who hailed him as a saviour when he swept to office two years ago. The left-wing firebrand sat stony-faced on stage as he was booed before delivering the keynote address at the annual alternative gathering timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum at the luxury Swiss ski resort of Davos."

"Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva recently commented, 'Our solidarity is being tested by the Caribbean crisis in Haiti.' In truth, it is the solidarity of international activists with Lula's government that is being tested. As Brazil angles for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, many progressives around the world cannot help but wonder how much complicity with brutal repression Lula will countenance in order to look "credible" to Washington."

We pledge allegiance to the penguin, and the
intellectual property regime for which he stands. One nation, under Linux, with free music and open source
software for all. Welcome to Brazil!

ABC of Opportunism

By STAN GOFF

After a coup d'etat planned, coordinated, and executed by the most reactionary elements in Haiti, with the substantial material support of the governments of the United States and its ever-obedient Dominican Republic, the proud nation of Haiti is again under foreign military occupation. The shameful fact, however, is that this time the occupation is being carried out by not only by the French, whose savage imperial history there is well known, and by the Canadians (perennial handmaidens of the US), but by Argentina, Brazil, and Chile--three nations who have themselves been victimized by the covert operations establishment of the United States, and governments who are making the now-specious claim that they are "progressive."