In 1993, Ronaldo Cunha Lima was Governor of the State of Paraiba. Before the eyes of several witnesses, he shot a political rival, Tarcisio Buriti, inside a restaurant. Buriti went into coma for several days; he didn’t die (he would die in 2003), but it is clear that the intention of Cunha Lima was to kill him.

Because Cunha Lima was Governor, Brazilian law says that his trial should be before the Supreme Court. After his term finished, he ran and was elected for Federal Deputy, who also can only be trialed by the Supreme Court (his son, Cunha Lima, was elected Governor of Paraíba). And because the law allows so many appeals (and because rich people have money to pay good lawyers who know all the loopholes in legislation), his case was ready for judgement only this year.

Today, when the Court was going to start the Judgement, Cunha Lima resigned to his mandate. Now that Cunha Lima is not a Representative any more, the case goes back to the first level of Justice (and from there, it must  climb up to Superior instances).

That means that Cunha Lima, who attempted to murder a rival, and has not been punished for 14 years, will have another 10 or so years of freedom.

In Brazil, rich people can get away with murdering.

The final result was: 40 votes for Renan; 35 votes against Renan; 6 blank votes. To condemn Renan, 41 votes (more than half of 81 Senators) were necessary.

The ballot was secret: nobody knows how each Senator voted, unless he/she declared the vote. More than that: the voting session was closed; only Senators and a few Deputies with a judicial injunction could attend the session; usage of laptops, cell phones and cameras was forbidden. Protected by secrecy, many Senators could vote more for personal and political conveniences than for the Nation’s interests (several polls showed that the vast majority of the population thinks Renan is guilty).

Journalist Ricardo Noblat prepared a list, yesterday, predicting how Senators would vote; the list shows 34 people voting against Renan, so it should be pretty accurate (notice: the voting was secret, nobody knows for sure how Senators actually voted). It is no surprise to see that most Senators of PMDB sided with Renan; Renan is affiliated with PMDB, a Party which was known for opposing the Military Dictatorship, but today is known for doing whatever it takes to be ally of the Government.

It is a little surprising, though, the fact that members of Worker’s Party, which used to be Herald of Morality, spoke vehemently in favor or Renan.

BBC Brasil had access to the full report and published some data about the Productivity in Brazil.

In 1980, a Brazilian worker aggregated US$ 15.1 thousand per year to the Economy; in 2005, that amount decreased to US$ 14.7 thousand.

(Attention: this information was published by BBC, but there seems to be some mistake in  calculations, or there is some data missing >> ) In 1980, the productivity of a Brazilian worker was 19% of an American worker; in 2005, it was no more than 5%.

In 2005, the American worker was the most productive in the World, with an annual aggregated value of US$ 63.9 K; Ireland was second, with US$ 55.9 K, and Luxembourg was third, with US$ 55.6 K. Other countries in South America with higher productivity than Brazil were Chile (US$ 30.7 K), Venezuela (US$ 26.1 K), Uruguay (US$ 25.4 K) and Argentina (US$ 24.7 K).

The region with the largest growth in productivity has been Asia. China’s productivity grew from 5% of America’s in 1980 to 12% in 2005 (US$ 9.8 K). South Korea’s, whose productivity has been growing 4.8% p.a. for 25 years, grew from 28% to 68% of America’s.

The low productivity is a consequence of the poor level of Education in Brazil.

The Attorney General filed a criminal suit charging 40 people of being involved with the scandal.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court accepted the charges against the 40 people; not all charges were accepted, but everyone of the 40 people had at least one charge accepted; the absolute majority of charges was accepted.

The Court took more than 30 hours to examine each one of the charges. With the Decision, the status of the charged people change from ‘indicted’ (indiciados) to ‘defendant’ (réus).

There is still a very long way to go very anyone is condemned. The Prosecutors will have to produce further evidences, and the defendants will use their lawyers to find ways to delay the proceeds. For example, defendants may list several witnesses each, and they will have to be found and heard by a Judge; in an attempt to speed up the process, President of the Supreme Court Ellen Gracie announced that she will ask for help of Judges and Courts of lower instances.

Nobody (including the Justices of the Court) expects a final decision in sooner than three years.

The best Vasco da Gama team of all times was:

1) Barbosa, the goalkeeper. Played for Vasco 12 years, in the decades of 1940 and 1950. He was the goalkeeper of the Brazilian team which lost the final of the World Cup 1950 to Uruguay; for the rest of his life, he carried the estigma of being responsible for the defeat.  He helped Vasco be State champion in 1945, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1952 and 1958, besides being South American champion in 1948. He was the best goalkeeper of his era, and the best definition of escape goat in Brazil. The fans of Vasco make him justice now.

2) Mazinho; was champion in the 1994 World Cup. Played for Vasco from 1986 to 1991. He used to be a left-defense in Vasco, but because he got many votes, and because there was not a better option, he was appointed by O Globo as the best right-defense of all times.

3) Belini. Captain of the Brazilian team which won the 1958 World Cup. Played for Vasco from 1952 through 1961.

4) Mauro Galvão. He was the fourth most voted player. Mauro Galvão played the 1990 World Cup. He arrived in Vasco in 1997 and played until 2000, when he was nearly 40 year old.

5) Dunga. Current coach of the Brazilian team. Played in the World Cups of 1990, 1994 and 1998. During most of his long career in the Brazilian team, he was the captain. Natual from Rio Grande do Sul, where he played several years for Internacional, Dunga spent only a brief period in Vasco, in 1987, before going to play in Italy.

6) Felipe. He started the career as left-defense, but thanks to his high dribling skills he moved to the mid-field. Stayed in Vasco from 1998 to 200, before going to other teams in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

7) Juninho Pernambucano. Born in Pernambuco, where he played for Sport Recife, Juninho came to Vasco in 1995 and stayed until 2000; this year, he moved to France and started a brilliant career, playing in Lyon. Juninho said that he dreams of being President of Vasco da Gama someday.

8 - Geovani. He stayed in Vasco from 1982 to 1988; he went to Italy, where he stayed for two years; he returned to Vasco in 1991 and played until 1993.

9) Edmundo. A controversial player, one of the bad-boys of football in Rio (along with Romário and Djalminha). Edmundo and Vasco parted and returned four times. He played in several other Brazilian teams, and, in 1998, after being the main striker of Brazilian championship, he had a very short season in Italy (from where he returned because he missed samba too much). Edmundo played for Brazil in the World Cup of 1998.

10) Roberto Dinamite. The greatest idol of Vasco, and also greatest scorer (698 goals according to Globo and 708 according to his official site). For nearly 20 years, from 1971 to 1992, Roberto Dinamite played for Vasco; he only quit for a brief period in 1979 to play for Barcelona in Spain and for two years to play for smaller teams Portuguesa and Campo Grande. Thanks to his popularity among Vasco fans, Roberto was elected for councilman of the city of Rio and for State Deputy of Rio de Janeiro.

11) Romário. Romário started his career playing for Vasco in 1985; he has parted and returned to Vasco several times since then. Romário was (along with Bebeto) the main responsible for Brazil winning the 1994 World Cup; against his will, he was left out of the Cups of 1998 and 2002. Until this date (August 2007), Romário, at age 41, is playing for Vasco; recently, he scored the 1000th goal of his career. As a recognition, Vasco placed a Romário statue in the São Januário stadium.

• August 17th 2007. Police arrests hackers who stole money from bank accounts.

The Police arrested today 29 members of a gang which stole about R$ 10 million (aprox. US$ 5 million) from bank accounts; the people arrested lived in the southernmost States of Brazil, namely Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná. The leader of the gang had already been arrested in 2005, but had been released.

The gang had a modus operandi well known in Brazil. They sent thousands of fake emails, using the name of institutions with high credibility in Brazil. For example, they sent an email pretending to be Receita Federal (the Brazilian IRS), saying that the recipient had tax debts; or a fake email from TSE, the Electoral Court, saying that the electoral document would be cancelled; or a mail from SERASA, a credit rating company, saying that the recipient would be included in a black list of debtors. In all cases, the fake email urged the recipient to click on a link to check out what the problem was.

Clicking the link would install a trojan. With the trojan installed, the hackers could sniff personal data of the users, such as bank account passwords. With the passwords, they had access to the bank account and transferred money to the account of another member of the gang.

Despite several warnings, from Receita, TSE, SERASA, the banks, the ISPs, the government, etc., many people in Brazil are still fooled by the hackers.

During the Games, the news announced that four athletes would have deserted. Two of them are starting new life and career in Brazil.

The other two deserters were boxing fighters, Erislandy Lara and Guillermo Rigondeaux Ortiz; both had World and Olympic titles; a German company called Arena Promotion announced on their website that they had a pre-contract signed with the boxers. Their desertion caused the rage of Fidel Castro, who threatened with prohibiting all Cuban boxers from travelling.

On August 2nd, the two boxers were found and arrested by the Federal Police of Brazil; they were in the city of Araruama, about 100 km north of Rio de Janeiro. On August 4th (two days after being arrested), they were deported to Cuba, in a jet paid for by the Government of Cuba.

The Cubans did not speak to any newspaper before being sent to Cuba. Everything that happened between the arrest and the deportation is known only through versions provided by officials who spoke with the athletes and the German entrepreneurs who were accompanying the athletes in Araruama; all news about the intention of the athletes, like this one, were based on such versions.

The Minister of Justice, Tarso Genro, said that the Cubans were offered asylum, but they returned to Cuba because they wanted to.

However, many parties suspect that, because Fidel Castro was upset with the athletes, and because President Lula has a declared sympathy towards Fidel’s regime, the deportation of the Cubans was made in a rush, disobeying the laws of the country and International Human Rights conventions signed by Brazil.

The Cubans didn’t infringe any Brazilian law. They had a visa to enter Brazil, and the visa was valid when they were found by the Police. The Germans were neither arrested, nor charged.

• August 10th. Human Rights Watch sends an open letter to Tarso Genro. HRW wrote that “We are very concerned that Brazil did not take sufficient steps to ensure that Rigondeaux and Lara were afforded the legal protections they may have been entitled to as potential refugees. “
• August 11th. The Consulate of Germany confirms that the Cubans had been to the Consulate asking for a visa to enter Germany (see report here, subscription required). The Consulate didn’t provide details, but confirmed the visit.
• August 13th. A Comission of the Senate summoned Tarso Genro to provide more explanations.
• August 23rd. Minister Tarso Genro and the directors of Federal Police came to speak to a Senate Commission today.

According to the Minister, the Cubans were in illegal situation in Brazil, because their visas were granted for the purpose of participating in the Pan Games; since they deserted the Games, their visas were no longer valid.

And would this be enough to send them home, in only two days? Tarso Genro said that there was nothing illegal in the case. The Cubans were lost, they had been deceived by the Germans; they called the Police; they said that they wanted to go home; it so happened (always according to Genro) that the Cuba Government sent an airplane on the Saturday (one day after they had been caught), and because they wanted to go home, the Federal Police saw no problem in escorting them to the Cuban airplane, to make sure they wouldn’t change their minds or get lost on the way. Why nobody else could speak to the Cubans? The media (the Federal Police has the habit of callind the media before an operation is started, so that the cameras can shoot the agents arresting suspects - this has happened tens of times over the last few years) didn’t talk to the Cubans, neither the Church, the Human Rights organizations, the Brazilian BAR Association, no other unbiased association could talk to the Cubans.

According to Genro, the Federal Police doesn’t have legal obligation to call any of these parties. This is right. There was not any formal illegality. However, Mr. Genro forgot to mention (and nobody reminded him) that the archives of the dictatorship are full of records describing people who were tortured or killed inside prison, and there is not any formal illegality either; several records show letters by prisioners where they ’spontaneously’ confess their crimes, and several others show forensic reports confirming ’suicides inside prisons’. It could be different if the media or other Humanitary bodies had access to the prisons then; it could be different now, if the media might have talked to the Cubans.

• August 9th 2007. Strike of doctors in Pernambuco comes to an end. After an strike which lasted almost one month, doctors of public Hospitals in the State of Pernambuco reached an agreement with the Government and will go back to work.

Strikes are not uncommon, but this one had some peculiarities. As usual, at the beginning, Government said that there was no money for substantial salary increases, and offered the usual 3-4% (the current annual inflation rate in Brazil).

Doctors refused the proposal, alleging too bad salaries, and too bad working conditions; due to the scarcity of health centers in Pernambuco, the major hospitals are always overbusy (simple cases, which could be looked after by a nurse in a local health center, are sent to the hospitals). After the second week, Doctors who were occupying managing positions (e.g, Chief of Orthopedics, Chief of Pediatrics) started to resign to the positions. After the third week, Doctors started to quit their jobs.

The Government gave up and conceded significant increases, of up to 36% in salaries and up to 66% in gratifications. However, salaries of doctors in public hospitals of Pernambuco (and in most States of Brazil) remain low. The minimum salary of a doctor is now R$ 1.900, or about US$ 1.000 (up from R$ 1.400, or US$ 750, before the strike). Doctors who work extended shifts (in Portuguese, the word is ‘plantão’) are paid R$ 1.000 extra (up from R$ 600 before the strike).

So, a doctor is being paid R$ 2.900 monthly, or about US$ 1.500, for working regular shifts and extended shifts.

By the end of June 2007, there were rumors that a professional football player would declare publicly his homossexuality. A director of Palmeiras, another major team in São Paulo, was being interviewed in a sports show. When the interviewer asked the director, José Cyrillo Junior, whether such player played for Palmeiras, he naively answered: “No, Richarlyson almost signed with us, but he ended up signing a contract with São Paulo”. The next day, Richarlyson’s name was on the headlines of all sports newspapers, referred to as “the gay player”.

Even though Cyrillo’s words hadn’t shown any prejudice (it was more like “ops, it escaped me”), Richarlyson decided to prosecute him,alleging crime against honor. In Brazil, the prejudice against homossexuals is not a crime (there is a draft of law about this subject being discussed in Congress, but it has a long way to go), so it would not be easy for Richarlyson to prove his claims.

The Judge, Manoel Maximiano Junqueira Filho, issued his sentence on July 5th. The full text (PDF) is here. Some excerpts of the decision:

“3A - If he isn’t homossexual, he shouldn’t care; he should go to the TV show and state his condition of heterossexual;

3B - If he is a homossexual, he should admit it, or silence. In such case, however, he should abandon the football fields…

All those who ever played football know that this kind of unfortunate conversation demand an immediate reply, on the spot, between the offender and the offended, tète-a-téte”.

To bring such episode to the Justice is nothing but attach exaggerated importance to an issue which is insignificant, compared to the grandness of Brazilian football.

….

5. … this Judge responds: football is a tough game, not for homossexuals…

…

9. Not that an homossexual couldn’t play football. If they want, do it. But create their teams and their own League. Set up games against those who want to play against them.

10. What escapes me is why the Gay Association of Bahia and some columnists attempt to bring homossexuals to the football fields.

…

17. That’s what I think… and because I so think, in my position of Magistrate, so I say.

…

”

The decision sparked a wave of indignation, not much because Richarlyson lost the cause, but because of the reasoning presented by the Judge. The decision was based not on the law, as should be, but on the personal opinions of the Judge.

On August 2nd, the National Council of Justice (read more about CNJ) determined that the Judge should present explanations of his conduct; an administrative investigation could be started. On August 3rd, the Judge lost his office. On August 7th, the President of the Association of Judges of Brazil said that the decision was illegal.

• August 12th. Richalryson declares to newspaper Globo that he is not gay, and says that, if he were gay, he would admit it.

• August 1st. 2007. Datafolha conducted the first survey after the air accident which happened in July.

According to this survey, the ratings were very similar to the last survey conducted in March of 2007. Datafolha says, however, that the number of people who rate Lula as Bad/Very Bad is higher (double than total average) among those people who use airplanes. The average grade given to the Government is 6.7 (6.8 among those who do not travel by airplane, and 5.4 among those who do).