During the past few months, I have spent my free time traveling around Brazil, spreading a campaign called Educação Já (Education Now). As in the time of the Diretas Já (Direct Elections Now), which mobilized Brazil for the end of the military regime, I am defending the idea that it is time for a revolution in the country through education.

On March 2, 2007, Brazzil magazine published the original article of this series of articles about Brazil and China: "Here Is Why Brazil Should Adopt the New Asian Currency." As a follow up to that article about the growing economic connection between both countries, we have a new four-part series of articles.

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. 

Agrofuel development has arrived on the global stage. Just this year, the number of declarations, dollars, and development plans that have gone to agrofuels are unparalleled in any other sector. An idea that languished for decades has suddenly become the darling of politicians, big business, international financiers, and the media.

Recently I visited the Cariri region, in the interior of Ceará State, to take part in marches for the "Educação Já" Campaign. While visiting the region, I listened to and conversed with the people and participated in demonstrations calling for a revolution in Brazilian education. At one event, State Deputy Ferreira Aragão, a great speaker, said, "We do not merely want to grow; we want to be great."

It shouldn't be a surprise that India is extending a widening presence in the Western Hemisphere. With Washington focused on Iraq and its "War on Terror" in other parts of the world, Latin America and the Caribbean have become candidates for meaningful political and economic relationships with a number of emerging global powers, like India.

The genocide that occurs in a continuous and silent manner in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, against the Kaiowá people is a reality constantly denounced by indigenous leaders, by representatives of movements in defense of human rights, by popular militants, by Indigenist supporters working in that region.

The Lord Mayor of the City of London, Sir John Stuttard, has been visiting Brazil, touting London as the world's leading financial center and trashing the New York Stock Exchange. He has been going for what he regards as New York's jugular - the Sarbanes-Oxley Act - which he described as a "nightmare" and claimed was causing some companies to de-list and putting off others from listing.

There is an old adage your mother may once have taught you about the neighborhood weirdo - commonly referred to in English Literature as the "village idiot" - which goes something like this: "poor people are crazy, rich people are eccentric."

Brazil and Portugal have signed a few orthographic (spelling) reform agreements in the past, but could never come to an understanding. Portugal enforces the 1943 agreement. Brazil goes by the one signed in 1945. If all Lusophone countries sign the new agreement now in gestation, it will be in effect in 2009.

Once again Latin America is confusing development with economic growth, and economic growth with increased investments and exports. These same ideas have come up again and again over the last 50 years, and although subjected to criticism to the point of losing credibility, they return again. To get beyond this confusion, it's necessary to review the various debates about development.

The long interview given by Brazilian President Lula to O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper on August 26th shows the enigma, the contradiction he and his government represent, in all its dimensions. Whether they agree with the government, or radically criticize it, from the right, or from the left, anyone can pick out some or other reply to confirm their own view.

"I'm also tired of people who only want to take advantage, of the traffickers' parallel government, of paying so many taxes for nothing, of so much impunity, of so much bureaucracy, of the aerial chaos, of the congressional investigative commissions that come to nothing, of seeing children in the streets and not in the schools, of prisoners talking on their cell phones, of corrupt businesspeople, of fear of stopping at a red light, of stray bullets, of so much corruption, of finding all this normal, of doing nothing." - Civic Movement for the Right of Brazilians

The main leader of Brazil's Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), João Pedro Stédile, defends the need for the Brazilian agrarian policy to prioritize income distribution. The MST considers classical land reform finished off and is proposing a new type of reform to the government. They believe the current model, which has been coopted by the Brazilian elite, is dominated by international financial capital.

The possible elimination of a 54 cents-per-gallon tariff on imports of Brazilian ethanol has become a vital issue in Brasília due to the country's potential economic, environmental, and social repercussions. Lifting the tariff would ultimately produce a surge in demand for Brazil's domestic bio-fuels in the U.S., where crude oil imports currently dominate the domestic energy industry.

Last week the Chamber of Deputies conducted an opportune debate around one question: "Why is education succeeding in other countries and not in Brazil?" The answer requires merely three words: "Because they're trying." And the question, therefore, is, "Why aren't we?"

The largest social movement on the continent, and one of the most important in the world, held its 5th Congress in mid-June 2007 in Brasília. Despite successful mobilization of masses of people and significant media impact, under Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government the movement faces strong challenges to activate its base against new enemies, such as agribusiness.

Episodic international criticism of Brazil's aviation system, as well as a huge triggering of public outcries over the recent crash of the TAM Airbus A320, has forced senior officials in the country to begin to take steps to implement, on an urgent basis, a series of changes. These come after one year of the country's airline system's mounting safety problems connected to São Paulo's main airport for domestic flights, Congonhas.

Brazilian emigration to the United States is directly related to globalization, international mobility, technological revolution and domestic economy. The phenomenon presents a long-short term impact on political, economic, socio-cultural, and technological developments in Brazil.

A couple weeks ago in the Santa Catarina city of Joaçaba, in southern Brazil, a young woman placed a recorder in front of me and asked, "What would you say to the father of a 16-year-old who says he or she has decided to become a teacher?" I replied, "I would say that I felt as though that young person had enlisted in the Army during wartime. The father has every right to feel frightened about the child's future but also has motives to feel proud of his or her patriotism."

At the recent Pan American Games, the world saw the flag of Brazil raised at the podium 161 times. To the surprise of many, our flag is different from the traditional model and bears a written text. In many countries, the television viewer did not have the slightest idea of what those two words meant. Many others, because they had different alphabets or were illiterate, did not even know that those symbols were letters.

Did you know that the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a very well-known international financial organization, gave money to the past Bahian government mostly used to buy fake sculptures and to use the name of a French museum (Musée Rodin)?

I recently went into a big supermarket in a down-market shopping center in São Paulo on a Sunday afternoon to buy a laptop computer. The place was teeming. On one side, families were queuing up at the cash desks with trolleys filled with food and other items. The electronics section, where I bought my computer, was so busy that I had to wait 45 minutes to get a receipt as sales staff were literally queuing up to type in their orders in the sales system.