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September 2007
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Members : 17360
Content : 3757
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Content : 3757
Content View Hits : 29521382
What do you get when you fuse the most brutal landowners of the Global South
with some of the most powerful corporations of the North, such as Monsanto,
DuPont, British Petroleum and Morgan Stanley? You get transnational corporations
that reap billions of dollars in profits, Brazil's landowning elite with a new
lease on its degenerate lifestyle, the devastation of Brazil's precious
ecosystems. 
An old adage stated, "Brazilian, profession hope." Today, it would be more
correct to say, "Brazilian, profession prisoner." Prisoner of transit, in cars
that are ambulatory cells in slow march, wasting their passengers' precious
time. Some in armored cars, the darkened windows closed, impeded from seeing the
city in its reality, obliged to risk running red lights to avoid assault, death,
kidnapping on street corners.
Given that the two American pilots of the Legacy 600 are now on trial, in
absentia, on criminal charges that carry prison time in Brazil, it's interesting
to see how conventional wisdom has finally evolved in Brazil to accommodate
realities that were violently in dispute for many months after the September 29,
2006, crash.
On a Tuesday, a regular day, it is virtually impossible to walk along 25 de
Março (25th of March) and its neighboring streets. Pedestrians are the ones who
run over cars, and not the other way around, such is the amount of people.
Street vendors compete for the loudest screams, and shopkeepers put all of their
employees on the streets to attract people. 
Brazil's senators showed their contempt for the people who elected them by
spitting in their faces when they absolved the chairman, Renan Calheiros, of
unparliamentarily procedure on September 12. The entire 81-member Senate
turned up and voted by 40 votes to 35, with six abstentions, not to accept the
recommendation of its own ethics committee and force Calheiros to stand down
over allegations that his personal expenses had been paid by a lobbyist for a
construction company.