Obama Rising

Barack Obama’s election as the most powerful man on Earth has been interpreted as a historical mark for the United States and, why not, for the world.
He was not only an American candidate, but the world candidate. His election was celebrated in Europe, in the Middle East, in Latin America, and of course in Brazil. The world was indeed tired of Mr. Bush policies.
But who is Barack Obama?
Two years ago nobody knew anything about Barack Obama. Until now, we still don’t know much about Barack Obama.
We know something about his multicultural life history. We know he is a senator for Illinois. We have heard his speeches about change. But really, who is that guy?
Before answering that, there is an interesting phenomenon about the American election campaign to be discussed. Something we knew here in Brazil, but we didn’t believe it was possible in the US.
That phenomenon is called the end of journalism. Victor Davis Hanson wrote um article with this same exact title for the National Review. As he says:
"The media has succeeded in shielding Barack Obama from journalistic scrutiny. It thereby irrevocably destroyed its own reputation and forfeited the trust that generations of others had so carefully acquired. And it will never again be trusted to offer candid and nonpartisan coverage of presidential candidates. Worse still, the suicide of both print and electronic journalism has ensured that, should Barack Obama be elected president, the public will only then learn what they should have known far earlier about their commander-in-chief — but in circumstances and from sources they may well regret."
Obama was shielded the same way president Lula was shielded in Brazil when corruption scandals started to multiply in his administration.
The press had plenty to accuse him. They could have pointed out the way he mixed power and party, the suspicious enrichment of his son, the lobby activities of his brother, the assassinations of some of his party members, his alleged ignorance of the dirty money scheme of his own party and the dangerous liaisons of his party, the Workers Party with Latin America narco-terrorists. But not a single accusation touched him.
Why the press did protect him that much?
We have in Brazil something that can be called the leftist axis: press-university-show business. It has been dominated by leftist ideology since the 60’s. It’s Antonio Gramsci’s dreams come true.
Of course they couldn’t accuse Lula of anything, he was one of them. A man of the people, a worker that had become president.
Lula was cherished by intellectuals, artists and journalists as the man who would heal Brazil’s huge social gap.
In the United States, the axis worked in the same way. Obama had Hollywood, press and intellectuals all by his side.
Larry Rother, a long time correspondent of the New York Times in Brazil just released a book with his best stories for the NY Times. Rother was almost expelled of Brazil when he wrote about president Lula’s drinking habits. Rother was a good observer of what was happening in Brazil during the Lula years. Curiously, his newspaper wasn’t able to do the same in the US, when the subject was Barack Obama.
Investigating Obama’s past and also dangerous liasons was immediately dismissed by the press as a demonstration of racism of the wasp America. By instance, where did all that money from Obama’s campaign come from?
Likewise, investigating Lula was an act of reactionaries from the elites that ruled Brazil for five hundred years.
Melanie Philips, in her blog at the British magazine The Spectator wrote about Obama’s election: “this is a watershed election which changes the fate of the world. The fear however is that the world now becomes very much less safe for all of us as a result. Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of presidential elections – at the suspension of reason and its replacement by thuggery -- can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date.”
The silence of a press moved by ideological believes is however only a symptom of a much bigger issue.
Obama’s election represents the end of one ideal. An ideal born with that very Nation. An ideal conceived by the enlightened hearts and brains of America’s Founding Fathers, the ideal that every man shall be free to pursue his own happiness.
When McCain and Obama met Joe the Plumber, McCain talked about distributing opportunities. Obama talked about distributing money. Americans chose Obama.
Before, Americans always did their own thing, their business, their work, they didn’t care much about politics.
Now they want a saviour, a Messiah, someone to take from the rich and give to the poor. They want a European like super-state to take care of them, to tell them what to do, to make them happy.
That’s also the way Lula thinks. That’s the way every leftist liberal thinks. That´s the way to make individuals less individuals, an more herd like. A source of disaster.
The behaviour of the press, and the election of Obama makes the United States less American, more Latin American.
United States, in 2008 became an official Banana Republic.
And in 2008, the world saw the Olympic Games in Beijing and the worst economic crisis since 1929. It’s not a coincidence; it’s just the beginning of a new Era.
United States is no longer the headlight of the planet.
Obama rising, is China rising. Unfortunately.

Elections results

The results of Brazil’s municipal elections can give us some insight on Brazilian politics nowadays.
First of all, to understand the dynamics of the political process in this country, we have to think local.
Some of the political alliances going on the major Brazilian cities do not obey the same criteria all over the country. In some cities, opposition parties joined together with the government party just to win the election. Parties that are together in one city are on opposite sides in other cities.
One of the reasons for that is that very few political parties in Brazil have a clear ideology to separate them. Actually, they will do whatever it takes to win supporters, doesn’t matter where the support comes from. That is a long and bad tradition in our political life.
The best example of this is the very good results in this election of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party or PMDB (center left). It is the largest party in Brazil, and has never left the government side since the first free elections in 89. It is always in the government, always bargaining support for the control of ministries, state owned companies and pension funds.
However, these elections can give us some perspective for the presidential election in 2010.
Let’s see the results in the 3 biggest, richest and most important cities in the political scenario: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, all 3 in Brazilian South East region, the most developed in the country.
In São Paulo, the dispute was among:
Geraldo Alckmin, from Social-Democrat Party (PSDB, center left), former presidential candidate in 2006 and former governor of the State;
Gilberto Kassab, from the Democrats (DEM, center right), actual mayor of São Paulo
Marta Suplicy, from the Workers Party (PT, left), former mayor of São Paulo and former minister of president Lula’s government;
The DEM and PSDB have always been political allies since the Fernando Henrique Cardoso years, and the opposition force against PT. The city government of Gilberto Kassab was actually composed by members of the 2 parties, and the candidacy of Kassab was supported by the governor of São Paulo, José Serra, a big name in PSDB.
Serra was the presidential candidate of PSDB in the 2002 elections, when Lula won for the first time. In 2006 Geraldo Alckmin forced PSDB to accept his name as candidate, replacing José Serra who was leading the polls by at least the double of points.
Alckmin lost and Lula won his second term, despite all the corruption scandals in his government.
Alckmin again moved against José Serra to launch his own candidacy to the city hall, breaking the alliance with DEM.
He lost the bet, and so did Marta Suplicy, whose administration left the city’s finances in ruins.
Now Kassab is the elected mayor and his name is stronger then ever to dispute São Paulo state government in 2010.
In Belo Horizonte, the story is different. The governor of Minas Gerais state, Aécio Neves is from PSDB. The mayor of Belo Horizonte, Fernando Pimentel, is from PT, Mr. Lula’s party. The two of them decided to support a third candidate, Mr. Márcio Lacerda from the Socialist Party (PSB, left). What happened here was a frustrated political experience. There has always been this idea among the leftist intellectuals and media in Brazil that PSDB and PT should be together, and that the DEM is actually the enemy to be fought, because of their right wing philosophy. If this project in Belo Horizonte worked out as the two hugely popular Neves and Pimentel were thinking, that could be a road to the presidential election in 2010, with Aécio Neves of course leading the way. Well, electors did not buy it.
The victory that was certain for Lacerda in the first round. A second round happened and Lacerda finally won, but that alliance between PT and PSDB doesn't look so good anymore.
In Rio de Janeiro, President Lula and PT had a tough time. Some 4 different candidates where from the government’s base. They chose to support Marcelo Crivella from PRB (left), a party created by an evangelical church. Lula’s vice-president belongs to that same party. Crivella lost, and the second round in Rio was disputed by Fernando Gabeira from the Green Party (PV), a former guerrilla member (seen in the movie Four Days in September) and Eduardo Paes, former PSDB and now by PMDB.
Paes has been a fierce critical of PT when in opposition, but asked for the support of President Lula in his campaign.
Even with the victory of Paes, Gabeira has become a strong name in Rio. Despite his past as a member of urban guerrilla has become a sensed and honest political, admired by his pairs and by most of the educated elite from Rio. Despite his huge popularity, President Lula was not able to transfer that asset to his comrades. PT didn’t grow after this election, and worst of all, there is no viable name to replace Lula at the presidential election in 2010. Lula suggested himself the name of Dilma Roussef, also a former guerrilla member and now a Minister of his government, but the electorate is not responding to that suggestion. Let’s hope he will not fall in a bolivarianist temptation for a third term as president.
By the opposition, as the plans of Aécio Neves and Geraldo Alckmin did fail in this election, the name of José Serra is stronger than ever to be the next president of Brazil.

Crisis

The huge financial crisis turning stock markets and the banking sector upside down all over the world has been discussed and analyzed hundreds of times by now.
In Brazil, the leftist intellectuals had actually inundated the media with stupid statements like capitalism is over, neo-liberalism is dead and so on.
Well, farmers are still growing crops, industries still working, people still consuming. Capitalism is not dead.
I believe, like Delfim Neto, a former Brazilian Economy Minister, said: Capitalism actually brought us from the Middle Ages to the Internet Age in what? 150 years?
Of course there was trouble on the way, and there will be more trouble on the way, but the system learns from its own mistakes. Government intervention will be needed now and then to avoid (better) or to repair (worst) those mistakes.
There is no free market without confidence; there is no confidence without respect. Government should be there to assure everybody is being respected.
Brazil will be affected, like the whole world will be in the next couple of years, but because of the BRICS, the United States lost all that power to create a world disaster like in 29.
We’ll not grow as fast as we thought, but we’ll move on.

Bolivarianism

The recent conflicts in Bolivia are a portrait of Latin America’s degree of stupidity.
Evo Morales was elected president in 2005 with a Party called Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement towards Socialism), under which are different social movements and workers unions such as the “cocaleros” , or coca growers union.
Like other leftist movements in the continent, Morales blamed everything that was wrong in Bolivia on the old colonizers, the Spanish, and on what they think is the new Empire, the United States.
To start with the old enemy, the Spanish and their descendents, the white upper class that ruled Bolivia for the last 500 years, Evo’s government took measures to oblige every school to teaching Indian languages in order to “decolonize the mindset and the Bolivian State”. One of his ministers also suggested that Catholicism should not be the official religion anymore, but gave up his project under a massive protests of Bolivian catholics. Evo also wanted to start land reforms, which were particularly harmful to the farmers of Santa Cruz Department. But most important of all, Evo Morales wants a new Constitution for Bolivia, which will change democratic representation based on ethnic origins. So, in some regions a group of 20 indigenous people of some ethnic group will actually have the same representation than a group of 100,000 white men.
On his battle against what he calls US Capitalism, Evo Morales nationalized the Bolivian gas reserves and his soldiers took 53 installations of private gas exploring companies such as the Brazilian refineries of Petrobras. Brazilian leftist government gently agreed. Evo also nationalized Swiss metal company Glencore.
These past months, 5 out of Bolivia’s 9 departments revolted against La Paz. The opposition governments demand more autonomy for their regions and do not agree at all with Morales ideas for the new Constitution.
Up to 2005, department governments were appointed by the president. Today, they have limited power and even simple decisions as bus routes taken in La Paz. Evo’s government also changed the law the let the departments keep part of the royalties and revenues from gas exploration.
The conflicts on the departments provoked the death of 18 people; hundreds were hurt as Morales mobilized his unions against the opposition. Governor of Pando department was arrested, opposition responded bombing gas ducts, which had a direct impact on La Paz finances but on Brazilian industry as well.
When everything went wrong, Evo blamed the Americans (!) expelling the US Ambassador from Bolivia. In solidarity, Hugo Chavez did the same, threatened to send his army to Bolivia to help his friend and invited the Russian navy to some military exercises in Caribbean waters. Governments of Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina also expressed their solidarity to La Paz, in the same week the FBI proved that Hugo Chavez had indeed send money to help Cristina Kirchner’s electoral campaign in Argentina.
Evo was finally forced into dialogue when even the Military started to show some impatience and mistrust on his orders.
How justified could be his quest for social justice, Evo Morales, choose the wrong path, the same path called bolivarianism that created a dictatorship in Venezuela.
The fact that he has a majority support in his country, and the belief that he is acting in the name of the poor and the oppressed gives him the will of ignoring institutions and crushing any opposition. There is no future for democracy there.
His bolivarianism created chaos, death, racial division and will actually make Bolivia poorer than it is now.
Venezuela and Bolivia are lessons to the other leftist governments in the continent.
Even in Brazil there are several admirers of the bolivarianism, but fortunately Brazil has proven in the last years that it could resist such a threat.
Even with all corruption scandals from Mr. Lula’s Workers Party and his attempts to silence press and Congress, Brazilian institutions wouldn’t allow a situation like what is happening now in Bolivia.
Not because our leftists don’t want it, because they also have huge popular support, but because they can’t.
In the past years, since the redemocratization of Brazil, no government tried to change the fundamentals of the rule of law. A good heritage of our presidents before Mr. Lula.

Doha

Brazilian Foreign Policy, leaded by its Minister Celso Amorim is a disaster. Here goes a resumé of Amorim failures:

- Amorim indicated Luís Felipe de Seixas Corrêa to the presidency of the World Trade Organization in 2005. He lost. The only Latin-American country to vote in Brazil was Panamá;
- Also in 2005, he tried to put João Sayad in the presidency of the Inter-American Development Bank. Lost again. From its own partners in Mercosul, only Argentina voted for the Brazilian candidate;
- Amorim has been obsessed by the enlargement of the United Nations Security Council, and aimed for a permanent chair in the Council, something rejected by Argentina, México and Colombia;
- Lula, under the orientation of our External Relations Ministry travelled trough the Middle East, but didn’t visited the only democracy in the region: Israel;
- In 2005, Lula also organized a ridiculous Arab-South American Summit, uniting at the same table people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chávez;
- In 2006, Brazil voted against Israel in the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, but a year before refused to vote against the genocide leaders of Sudan, only because Amorim wanted Sudan’s support for his causes;
- Brazil also refused to consider the Colombian FARC as a terrorist organization, condemning Alvaro Uribe interventions and speeches against Ecuador and Venezuela;
- Brazil also recognized China as a ‘market economy’ when only about 30 countries did the same. Amorim was counting on China support for his ideas about the Security Council. Didn’t work.

The reasons for Amorim failures? Stupid anti-Americanism, arrogance, inferiority complex, leftist ideology, all that combined.
And now, the failure at Doha Round of the WTO.
Amorim put Brazil as a leader of the emergent economies of the G20, against the rich and protectionists G7 countries. Besides that, Brazil was betting all its hopes on the Doha Round. Under Amorim, the country didn’t negotiate separately with important markets as the United States or the European Union, like Chile and Uruguay did. We stayed behind, waiting for the WTO negotiations. Bad move.
In Genebra, at the conversations for the Doha Round, Amorim hastily approved Pascal Lamy’s final text for an agreement, turning its back to its major partners at the G20, Argentina, Índia and China. He sure did what he had to do. Brazilian agriculture representatives were sure that a bad agreement was better than no agreement at all.
At the end, that was no agreement and Brazil was seen like a traitor by the other G20 members. Amorim lost his bet. He declared after the end of the negotiations “God willing another September 11 will not be necessary”. What he means, is that the rich countries intransigence to negotiate causes misery in the poor countries, and the poor countries will react attacking rich countries with terrorism. And this man calls himself a diplomat.
The thought itself is a shine example of leftist stupidity that is dominating Brazilian internal and external policies. The victims of terrorism are actually transformed in the guilty ones, just like Brazilian drug dealers are treated as victims of an unfair society. It’s offensive to human intelligence and offensive the billions of Muslims that don’t use violence to achieve anything and the millions of poor Brazilians that work hard for their money without trafficking or kidnapping anyone.
If Brazil wants to continue as one of the major agribusiness commodities exporters in the world, we should lesson to someone that knows what he is talking about. Here are some advises of Pedro de Camargo Neto, former Secretary of Production and Commerce of the Agriculture Ministry and president of the Brazilian Pork Meat Exporters Association in an interview to Veja Magazine:
First of all, to invest (a lot) in health protection. US, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Canadá, the major import markets for agricultural products from Brazil are closed for health reasons. And that is an exclusive fault of Brazil, no one else’s. We are sure much beter now than 15 years ago, when we had 2.000 outbreaks of Foot and Mouth Disease per year for example. Now we have none. But that is a lot to be done, especially on the borders control, traceability and control of chemical residues. That only would open a lot of doors to Brazilian products.
Second, it will be easier to negotiate separately with business partners than in a meeting with over 150 countries.
Third, to invest in research. Brazil is producing 60% more of soyabeans per hectare now than in 1990, and 50% more ethanol per hectare than 20 years ago. Thanks to agriculture research.
So Brazil, despite of Doha, must go one producing. And while European and American producers get addicted to subsidies, Brazilian producers get more and more efficient and independent from governmental help. Time will tell which model shall prevail.

Indian land

There are about 350.000 NGO’s in Brazil, about 100.000 only in the Amazon region. Many of them are financed by European, American and Japanese governments, associations and companies.
Indians are the biggest land owners of this country. They are 0.2% of the population but own 13% of this country. Despite that, they live in poverty. It’s stupid to think that giving them more land would be the solution. It’s not. The solution is to fully integrate them in Brazilian economic and social life, specially trough education.
Of course, the NGO’s humanists think we should leave them isolated from the world, in their own land, living like their ancestors before Columbus, killing each other, burying their handicapped children alive, eating roots and fish.
Many of these NGO’s are working together with the Brazilian FUNAI (National Indian Protection Foundation) to delimitate new Indian land reserves.
By “coincidence”, most of the existing Indian lands are located exactly over Brazilian mineral reserves of potassium, manganese, niobium, nickel, aluminum...
Now, some NGO’s and the FUNAI want to declare a third of the State of Mato Grosso do Sul as Indian land. It’s an area bigger than Portugal. Under Mato Grosso do Sul is the Guarani Aquifer, largest single body of ground fresh water in the world. Another coincidence?
I don’t think so. All this Indian tribes, lead by NGO’s have the pretention of becoming independent nations one day, claiming cultural differences and historical oppression by the white man.
And then, this new nations will be ready to negotiate their riches with the ones who supported them.
Everything is happening just now, right in front of our government and Army’s eyes.
While Brazilian politicians can’t see beyond the next election, there are people out there thinking a lot ahead.

Ethanol: Brazil’s green fuel

At the very moment I write these lines, the oil barrel reaches $ 146, a historical record.
Many blame oil speculators for this all time high, but this is hardly an argument. Oil producers are pumping as hard as they can, and there are no rising oil stocks in the world.
But on the demand side, the growth of emerging countries is unstoppable.
For the first time, millions of people in Brazil, China, and India are getting out of poverty thanks to their economical growth. More and more can they afford to build a house or to have a car, a refrigerator and other consumer goods. India’s car manufacturer Tata just presented a car that costs $ 2.300.
And those humanists that drive a beautiful and expensive hybrid car come and say: Stop developing now or you will ruin the planet. Don’t buy this new cheap car, just keep taking your five children to school on that old rusty bicycle of yours.
I think that keeping millions of people in poverty to save the environment is not the solution.
Solution lies in alternatives for oil. Another reason to find an alternative is because most of the oil reserves are located in the most unstable countries in the planet. Would you like to have your country dependent for always on people like Hugo Chavez, the Saudis, Gaddafi or those guys in Nigeria and Sudan?
Brazil has found an alternative fuel in sugarcane, a kind of big sweet grass originally from South East Asia, taken by Portuguese and Spanish explorers to Canarias and Azores Islands and then to the New World.
Brazil has been exporting sugar from sugarcane since the 1600’s.
In the 1970’s, when OPEC provoked a world oil crisis, Brazilian government started a program to produce ethanol from the fermentation of sugarcane saccharose.
In 1978, when oil represented 46% of the total Brazilian import, the first ethanol powered car was ready.
In 1986, 76% of the cars produced in Brazil were ethanol powered. Brazil produced on that year 12,3 billion liters of ethanol.
After those good years, oil prices went down, sugar prices went up and the use of ethanol as fuel was largely diminished.
However, the technology developed on those years on sugarcane production was fundamentally important to the moment Brazil is living now.
Since 2003, automobile industry is producing flex fuel cars. Cars that can use ethanol or gasoline or both together in the same motor. Today, 85% of the sales in the automobile industry in Brazil are flex fuel cars. The high oil prices have convinced investors that future lies in biofuels and the new boast of sugarcane industry is no longer a government program but an initiative of the private sector.
Today, Brazil is the number one in sugarcane production. The country produces 19% of the sugar and 33% of the ethanol produced in the world. In 2006, 422,9 million tons of sugarcane were harvested giving $ 6.2 billion in sugar exports and $ 1.6 billion in ethanol exports.
Showing off this huge potential, Brazil has frightened some competitors and has suddenly become a target of criticism from the international community because of the increase in sugarcane production.
First, Brazil has been accused of destroying the Amazon rainforest because of sugarcane production. That is a big lie. Pick up a map and find the state of São Paulo. It’s right there in the south. About 60% of Brazilian sugarcane production comes from there, about 2.000km from the rainforest..
Second, they say Brazil is causing food prices to rise all over the world because we are replacing cereals for sugarcane. Another big lie. Cereals production in Brazil has never been so high. Sugarcane industry is recuperating wasted soil from pastures, renewing it and increasing its production. The same sugarcane plant can produce for 5 years in a row. Every 5 years it has to be replaced by other plant like beans or soya or peanuts for at least one year, so all the surface cultivated of sugarcane will also be producing grains.
Brazil has 355 million hectares of arable lands, 80% of those are still available. From those arable lands, only 1% is used to produce sugarcane.
In other places however, especially in the US and Europe, the story is quite different, and that is why biofuels are getting a bad name.
Europe produces sugar and ethanol from sugar beet, at a cost more than 6 times higher than Brazil. Brazilian sugar is heavily taxed to protect the EU market. United States uses corn to produce ethanol, also heavily subsidized. While 1 hectare of corn gives 3.000 liters of ethanol, 1 hectare of sugarcane gives 7.500 liters. And Americans are already using 64,8% of their arable land, 3.7% of it just to produce corn for ethanol.
Europe and the United states are also trying to produce biodiesel from plants like soya, sunflower and colza. Some days ago, British newspaper The Guardian showed a document from the World Bank saying that about 5 million hectares of land were used for those cultures instead of wheat in the last in the last 3 years.
The World Bank also estimated that the rise in food prices was in about 75% due to biofuels, especially because corn and soya are being used not as food anymore, but as fuel. But it also said that Brazilian sugarcane expansion was not causing it.
Oxfam also just release a report where they say from all kinds of biofuel, Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is the best. Rich countries should buy it instead of spending US$ 15 billion (only last year) in subsidies trying to produce their own biofuel.
So, instead of buying ethanol from Brazil (a suggestion from John McCain by the way) at a low cost, they make their tax payer pay subsides to their inefficient farmers to produce, pay again a higher price for their fuel and sugar and pay again if they want to export something. Of course, they don’t want to depend on other people for their sugar and fuel as much as they don’t want to depend on other people for their oil, but hey, Brazilians are much nicer people than Hugo Chavez or Gaddafi. And they want to continue that policy it’s ok, but don’t blame Brazilians if the world goes hungry.
Sugarcane is not making anyone hungry, protectionism is.
The other lie is that sugarcane is erasing small farmers from the map. Let me tell you a story that happened in my home town, Araraquara, state of São Paulo. A small farmer that received some land from the Brazilian Agrarian Reform Institute tried to do beans, watermelons, corn and was always losing money. He made a partnership with a ethanol industry that supplied him with plants, fertilizers and machines in exchange for part of his harvest. He had a profit of R$ 90.000 in 3 years, invested in poultry and has a farm with 21.000 birds. Other small farmers did the same. The Institute understood that the land should be used for grains and vegetables production, took the land back and gave to other landless peasants. There was a fight, people got hurt, houses were burn… That old socialist thinking of a small happy farmer family with a pig, a little cow and some vegetables is over. Small farmers have also the right to get income, doesn’t matter if it comes from sugarcane or soya or anything else.
Sugarcane industry gives more than a million direct jobs.
It produces ethanol and sugar.
The residues of the industry are burned to produce electricity, in a season where there is little rainfall and the reservoirs of hydroelectrical power plants are low.
Other residues from sugarcane industry are used as fertilizers in the fields.
Sugarcane plantations will take all the CO2 released by ethanol powered cars in the atmosphere.
It has been renewing wasted land and improving the income of millions of families in the Brazilian countryside.
It made Brazil self sustained in fuel.
Brazil can still increases its production of sugarcane, and beef and grains as well without destroying the rainforest.
In the developing world, finding oil in your country has been more of a curse rather then a blessing. Instead of been used to make life better for the people, it has been a great source of corruption, political power concentration and conflict. It’s the same in the Middle East, Angola, Nigeria, Libya or Venezuela.Brazil has found an alternative that good for the people, the land, the environment and it’s democratic. After all everyone here can plant some sugarcane. It’s a big sweet grass.

Amazon Wars

When you say “I’m Brazilian” to a foreigner, they will usually smile and try to say something funny like “samba” or “Pelé”. Yes, we used to have a good image in the rest of the world, or at least a happy image. Lately, after they say “samba” the smile fades off and then, with a worried face they ask me “but why are you destroying the Amazon rainforest?” I sight and think about how I’m going to explain the enormous complexity of this problem.
Amazon rainforest is about the size of Europe, 6.6 million km2. 65% of it are in Brazilian territory. Deforestation in Brazil took already 700 thousand km2, or 17% of the original area.
The deforestation process is simple. Loggers come and take the most precious trees. Other small loggers will take the smaller and less valuable trees. The non valuable tress will most likely become charcoal. The land then will be used for soya or rice plantations, or cattle raising.
Brazilian agriculture frontier has been pushing north since the sixties, when population growth in the south and new agronomic techniques turned possible the occupation of the large plains of Brazil’s Central-West region. Most of the guilt of deforestation has been put on the shoulders of farmers, but that’s not quite the truth.
In this Amazon farwest we have different groups of interest:

- There are the farmers and cattle ranchers, that see themselves as food producers, not forest killers. By a law passed in 1996, they should leave 80% of their properties as original rainforest. Before that, this limit was 50%. Farmers that acquired land before 96 are fighting for that limit and refuse to agree to the 80%.
- There are the loggers and charcoal producers. Most of the wood from the forest is sold with fake papers. Some loggers make more money selling papers than wood.
- There are big mining companies like Vale do Rio Doce, alone responsible for 85% of the total exports in the state of Pará and small gold miners.

- And Indians. Most mineral riches in the Amazon are inside Indian reserves. Indians are the biggest land owners in Brazil. They are 0.2% of the population but Indian lands are 13% of national territory. In the Amazon they own an area bigger than France and Spain together. Nevertheless they live in poverty, and often in conflict with farmers and miners. In 2004 in Rondônia, Indians of the Cinta-larga tribe massacred 29 miners because they were not paying enough for their diamonds. Other Indian tribes are well known for selling illegal wood. Despite the misery of their people, some Indian chiefs have their own airplanes and like to be seen wearing golden watches.
- There are also landless peasants, most of them supported by left wing organizations and the Marxist wing of the church. These peasants profit from Brazilian agrarian reform laws to get their own piece of land by invading non productive properties. The problem is that the Brazilian Institute for Agrarian Reform (Incra) considers forest as a non-productive land. So a farmer that owns a big property and leave part of it covered in forest will most likely become a target for these peasants organized attacks. And, these poor peasants will most likely get all the wood they can out of the farm and burn it to the ground.
- There are also different church missionaries protecting Indians. In a recent conference about the construction of a hydroelectric power plant, a engineer was attacked with a knife by a Indian. Later it came up that Church missionaries and NGO’s gave Indians knifes before they went to the meeting. Two years ago, American missionary Dorothy Stang was assassinated in a small town in the state of Pará. She was in conflict with farmers and loggers.
- There are also common bandits. In 2001 New Zealand’s yachtsman Sir Peter Blake was murdered by pirates in the Amazon river.
- There is also the Brazilian military, worried with the purchase by foreigners of large areas in the Amazon, the large demarcation of Indian reserves and the protection of Brazilian borders.
- And there are the NGO’s. There are about 100.000 NGO’s working in the Amazon, only in Brazil. There are NGO’s for everything. NGO’s for monkeys, indians, landless peasants. Financed by Europeans, by Americans, by Japanese, by leftists, by the Brazilian government. One of them called Cool Earth belongs to British-Swedish millionaire Johan Eliasch. Eliasch was called the green philanthropist when he bought sometime ago 160 thousand hectares in the Amazon. Last week he was fined in R$ 450 million for illegal logging of 230.000 trees.

From Al Gore to Sting, everybody has a different idea of what to do with the Amazon Rainforest. It’s a big messed up puzzle.
It is very easy to blame farmers for deforestation, while the truth is that deforestation is only possible because of the almost complete absence of the Brazilian State in the region. Only 4% of the properties in the Amazon have a valid ownership registration, which leads to a large number of agrarian conflicts. It is not a surprise that several places in the agriculture frontier, at the borders of the rainforest, are among the most violent cities in Brazil.
Finding the right person responsible for deforestation is also the major difficulty of IBAMA, Brazilian Environmental Institute whose 644 agents have to watch the whole forest.
According to the vision of some environment and anthropology hardliners, the Amazon should be closed liked a giant park. Some suggest even that the Amazon should be international territory (an old idea of Al Gore) since Brazilians are too incompetent to take care of it. Is it possible? No, it is not. It’s a ridiculous idea, and like some Brazilian journalists and politicians already answered let’s then internationalize some other things equally important to the world like Saudi Arabia oil reserves, the Louvre and the British museum, American nuclear arsenal and so on.
And if it was possible, imagine in the future some rich tourists visiting this Amazon International Preservation Area in a safari like tour to watch alligators and naked Indians killing each other and burying their handicapped children alive (a common habit between some tribes). On the entrance a board saying “don’t feed the animals”.
No, we can’t forget that the Amazon represents 60% of Brazilian territory and that 25 million Brazilians live there. This Brazilians need somehow to survive, to generate income, including Indians. The best way they have found to do so until now is logging and farming.
The most reasonable alternative is the challenge of bringing economic development to the region and preserving as much as possible the rainforest and this is possible. Brazilian government is pushing farmers to get ownership registration for their land, which is the most important departure point. Without registration farmers are already unable to get bank financing or to sell their properties.
The next step is to increase police control on logging and to stop closing the eyes to the violence promoted by left wing groups under the disguise of social justice.
Brazil should also think of ways of rewarding farmers that preserve the forest, what is already happening at least in the state of the Amazonas.
Loggers should learn ways of logging without destroying the forest, replacing old trees for younger trees.
Mineral riches should be explored, and Indian people should profit from it. Indians should be fully integrated into Brazilian economic and social life, and not be seen as a rare breed to be isolated, even because they have been in contact with white man for a long time now. A Brazilian newspaper asked Indians what they wanted most. On first place was a motorboat, on second a refrigerator and on third place a computer. If you think they want to be isolated think again.
Soya is being traded by large multinationals like Cargill, Bunge and ADM, and meat is being sold into international market by large slaughterhouses groups that are in the stock market. They all know how worried the consumer is about the environment nowadays, and they are all selecting their suppliers among those who respect environmental laws. No one in the stock market would like to be involved in illegal logging or destruction of the rainforest.
The solution for the Amazon lays both in a stronger presence of the State and in more capitalism. Not less state, not less capitalism.
As I believe the rainforest should be protected, I also believe that Brazilians have the right of getting out of poverty, and agribusiness has proven to be a enormous source of riches for our country.
Before putting on Brazil the blame for the rainforest destruction, global warming and the end of the world, foreigners, especially those of developed countries should take a look at their own forests and their own pollution.
An American produces in average 20 tons of CO2 per year, a British 10 tons, a Brazilian 1.8 tons.

Brasil para principiantes

O post abaixo é o resultado de uma parceria entre este blog e meus amigos da Scot Consultoria, um serviço de inteligência e consultoria em agribusiness.
Está sendo enviado como uma newsletter para contatos da Scot mundo afora.
É uma oportunidade para dar ao pessoal de fora que só escuta falar do Brasil em época de carnaval, copa e tiroteio, uma idéia melhor do que acontece por aqui.
Será publicada mensalmente com outros temas.
Quem sabe sirva também àqueles gringos desavisados que aparecem por aqui.

Brazil for Beginners I - The Phantom Menace

Having lived abroad for a long time, it was always interesting for me to discover how Brazil was seen trough foreigners eyes. It was flagrant how little was written or said about Brazil on European newspapers and television. Mostly, news were about carnival and football, or about some gunshot in a favela in Rio. People were often deceived when they had the chance to see me dancing or playing football, which was an important lesson to them about stereotyping Brazilians. Once I was asked if we had television in Brazil, or cars.
This series of texts doesn’t intend to be a lesson on all Brazilian complexities, but simply to give foreigners another perspective on what is happening in our country. And mainly, but not always, focused on my working field, agribusiness.
It has been a long time since Stefan Zweig wrote that Brazil was the land of the future. Always waiting for that brilliant future that never arrives, most Brazilians have confused sentiments about their own country, mixing sometimes blind patriotism and bitter resentment about their corruption, poverty and all those third world problems.
The future, at least in the agribusiness can show up sooner then we think. The whole world worries now about an imminent food crisis. Commodities prices are soaring. Brazil is already a big exporter of beef, poultry, soybeans, coffee, orange juice, fruits and many other agriculture products. We now want to supply the world with sugarcane ethanol (much more efficient than the American corn based ethanol), an alternative fuel in a moment where oil prices reaches $ 120.
And talking about oil prices, Brazil just discovered it has a huge oil reserve, which will make us a major oil exporter in the near future. Well, all that oil is still 5.000m under sea, but sooner or later it will come up.
Within 40 years we will have 9 billion people on this planet and they will have to get food somewhere. Brazil is the country with most available arable land left in the world. About 11% of our territory still can be used for agriculture and that even without cutting any tree from the precious Amazon rainforest.
After the dark years of military dictatorship, Brazil regained democracy and stabilized its economy during the 90’s. Reforms, mainly conducted by former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, included the creation of the new currency Real putting an end to inflation, and the privatizations of state owned companies.
Those reforms were crucial to assure the good moment Brazil is living now. Today we see giant Brazilian food companies like Sadia, Perdigão, JBS and others buying foreign companies not only in South America but even in Europe, in the USA and in Australia.
The recent investment grade Standard&Poor’s awarded Brazil was seen as a sign of the country’s reliability.
Is there a problem? Yes there is. It’s the leftist and liberal philosophy that is dominating political life in Brazil and Latin America.
With the notable exception of Alvaro Uribe in Colombia, almost the entire continent has fallen in the hands of socialists, ranging from the moderates Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Tabaré Vasquez in Uruguay, to the populist Kichner couple in Argentina, Alan Garcia in Peru, president Lula and his left-wing party, PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores or Worker’s Party) in Brazil, and the hard liners Evo Morales in Bolivia, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and last but not least, the biggest showman of all, Hugo Chavez from Venezuela.
The leftist movement in Latin America is coordinate by an entity called Foro de São Paulo, where political parties sit side by side with terrorist organizations like the Colombian FARC and senile dictators like Fidel Castro to discuss strategies of regaining in Latin America what was lost in Eastern Europe.
The consequences can already be seen almost everywhere in this continent. In Argentina, Cristina Kichner, elected with the help of Hugo Chavez money, is fighting farmers and the agribusiness industries, preventing commodities exports in a desperate tentative of controlling inflation. The official inflation index is around 9%, but it is manipulated by Argentinean government. Real inflation is closer to 25%. Evo Morales is about to provoke a civil war in Bolivia, where the Santa Cruz department wants to secede from the rest of the country. Ecuador is breaking contracts with international mining companies, like Bolivia did with the gas. And Venezuela, oh Venezuela…It’s really sad to see a land floating in oil plunge into misery. Hugo Chavez managed to transform Caracas in one of the most violent cities in the continent, Venezuela has become a haven for drug traffic and ordinary people can’t get basic food products like milk or eggs. Press and Congress are under Chavez police control. And yes, like the Interpol just confirmed, Venezuela and Ecuador actually were helping the FARC, an organization of drug dealers and kidnappers that cause misery to thousands of families worldwide but it’s seen by leftists as a social movement.
And in Brazil…Well, PT managed to put all their people into key positions in the government, in state owned companies and funds. They bought part of the Congress with dirt money. They financed their campaign with dirt money. They produced faked dossiers against their political rivals. They tried several times to diminish press liberty. They ignore crimes committed in the countryside by the MST (Movimento dos Sem Terra or Landless Workers Movement) for the sake of social justice. They will change the law to get control again of telecommunications companies, privatized by the former government. They deported Cuban dissidents back to Fidel. They created air traffic chaos because their appointed directors for the sector were absolutely incompetent, and about 300 people were dead in two horrible airplane accidents. There is plenty more. Several government officials are still involved in different corruption charges.
Most funny, Brazil is seen by other countries in Latin America as an imperialist power. Evo Morales took by force the Petrobras refineries in Bolivia. Lula and his government gently agreed. Now, Fernando Lugo, the just elected Paraguayan president wants to renegotiate prices of Itaipu power plant, and Paraguayan landless peasants are burning Brazilian flags in protest against the presence of Brazilian farmers in their country. The Brazilian government already announced it will negotiate energy prices with Paraguay. In fact, granting the demands of our neighbors, Brazil is helping to finance leftist governments in the continent.
Despite all the scandals from his two terms as president Lula remains very popular, specially among the lower income Brazilians. First because the economy is doing good. Actually, the best thing about PT government is that they choose to continue the economic policies of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso years. Second because of Bolsa Familia (Family Allowance), his biggest social achievement. Granting a extra income to the poorest families, the purpose of this program was to reduce the huge income gap in Brazilian society. In reality, the middle class tax payer is financing the perpetual misery of the lower class, which is becoming state-dependent to live.
With an oversized public sector and the enormous costs of Bolsa Familia to finance, there is little left to invest in basic education, transports and logistics, infra structure, security and other areas that could really generate richness, employment and a better quality of life.
I don’t believe Brazil can become a Venezuela like state. Not because PT doesn’t want it but because our institutions are solid enough to resist it and our civil society wouldn’t allow it.
But we must keep in mind that the real danger resides in the thought that socialism exists to create a bright and perfectly equal new world, and that in the name of this new world the socialist leaders are allowed to do whatever they want to do. Including getting rich with public money or praising dictators and drugdealers.