NEWS,12.11.2012

Brazil Violence: At Least 140 Murdered In Sao Paulo Over Past Two Weeks

 

At least 140 people have been murdered in South America's biggest city over the past two weeks in a rising wave of violence, Sao Paulo's Public Safety Department says.Killings in Sao Paulo began sharply increasing in September, a month in which 144 people were killed, the department's website says. It says a total of 982 homicides took place in the city during the first nine months of the year.The victims included 90 police officers, most of them gunned down while off duty.A Public Safety Department official said Saturday that the killings of police have been ordered by imprisoned leaders of an organized crime group called the First Capital Command in reprisal for a crackdown on the drug trade. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.The First Capital Command is one of Brazil's most notorious organized crime groups. Based in Sao Paulo state prisons, the group allegedly was behind several waves of attacks on police, government buildings, banks and public buses in 2006. Those assaults and counterattacks by police in the slums killed more than 200 people.With the latest violence, shops and schools in some Sao Paulo districts closed early this past week as rumors of gang-imposed curfews spread. "In view of the wave of violence in the city's south zone, the school's directors decided to send staff and students home early so as to assure their safety," Eliane Valerio de Souza, administrative assistant at a professional training school, told the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.Sao Paulo state authorities last week said incarcerated leaders of the First Capital Command suspected of using smuggled cellphones to order attacks and coordinate drug sales, murders of rival gang members and the purchase of weapons, would be transferred to a maximum security federal prison outside the state.On Thursday, one of the gang's lower echelon leaders was sent go a federal penitentiary in northern Brazil. Others are expected be transferred by the end of the month.

Greece Racist Attacks Increase Amid Financial Crisis

 

The attack came seemingly out of nowhere. As the 28-year-old Bangladeshi man dug around trash bins one recent afternoon for scrap metal, two women and a man set upon him with a knife. He screamed as he fell. Rushed to the hospital, he was treated for a gash to the back of his thigh.Police are investigating the assault as yet another in a rising wave of extreme-right rage against foreigners as Greece sinks further into economic misery. The details vary, but the cold brutality of each attack is the same: Dark-skinned migrants confronted by thugs, attacked with knives and broken bottles, wooden bats and iron rods.Rights groups warn of an explosion in racist violence over the past year, with a notable surge since national elections in May and June that saw dramatic gains by the far-right Golden Dawn party. The severity of the attacks has increased too, they say. What started as simple fist beatings has now escalated to assaults with metal bars, bats and knives. Another new element: ferocious dogs used to terrorize the victims."Violence is getting wilder and wilder and we still have the same pattern of attacks ... committed by groups of people in quite an organized way," said Kostis Papaioannou, former head of the Greek National Commission for Human Rights.As Greece's financial crisis drags on for a third year, living standards for the average Greek have plummeted. A quarter of the labor force is out of work, with more than 50 percent of young people unemployed. An increasing number of Greeks can't afford basic necessities and healthcare. Robberies and burglaries are never out of the news for long.With Greece a major entry point for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants seeking a better life in the European Union, foreigners have become a convenient scapegoat.Some victims turn up at clinics run by charities, recounting experiences of near lynching. Others are afraid to give doctors the details of what happened and even more afraid of going to the police. The more seriously hurt end up in hospitals, white bandages around their heads or plaster casts around broken limbs."Every day we see someone who complained of (some form) of racist violence," said Nikitas Kanakis, president of the Greek section of Doctors of the World, which runs a drop-in clinic and pharmacy in central Athens that treats the uninsured.Racist attacks are not officially recorded, so statistics are hard to come by. In an effort to plug that gap and sensitize a population numbed by three years of financial crisis, a group of rights groups and charities banded together to document the violence.They registered 87 cases of racist attacks between January and September, but say the true number runs into the hundreds."Most of the time the victims, they don't want to talk about this, they don't feel safe," Kanakis said. "The fear is present and this is the bigger problem."Frances William, who heads the tiny Tanzanian community of about 250 people, knows the feeling well."People are very, very much afraid," he said, adding that even going next door to buy bread, "I'm not sure I'll be safe to come back home."The community's cultural center was attacked several weeks ago, with amateur video shot from across the street showing a group of muscled men in black T-shirts smashing the entrance. Earlier that day, children standing outside during a birthday party were threatened by a man brandishing a pistol, William said.The recent elections showed a meteoric rise in popularity of the formerly marginalized Golden Dawn, which went from less than half a percent in 2009 elections to nearly 7 percent of the vote and 18 seats in the country's 300-member parliament in June.Campaigning on a promise to "clean up the stench" in Greece, the party whose slogan is "blood, honor, Golden Dawn" has made no secret of its views on migrants: All are in the country illegally and must be deported. Greece's borders must be sealed with landmines and military patrols, and any Greeks employing or renting property to migrants should face punishment.The party vehemently denies it is involved in racist attacks."The only racist attacks that exist in Greece for the last years are the attacks that illegal immigrants are doing against Greeks," said Ilias Panagiotaros, a burly Golden Dawn lawmaker who divides his working time between Parliament and his sports shop, which also sells military and police paraphernalia.His party is carrying out a "very legitimate, political fight . through parliament and through the neighborhoods of Athens and of Greece," he said.The party's tactics handing out food to poor Greeks, pledging to protect those who feel unprotected by the police are working. Recent opinion polls have shown Golden Dawn's support rising to between 9 and 12 percent.In late August, the conservative-led coalition government began addressing the issue of illegal immigration by rounding up migrants. By early November, they had detained more than 48,480 people, arresting 3,672 of them for being in the country illegally.Rights groups also warn that what started as xenophobic attacks is now spreading to include anyone who might disagree with the hard-right view. Greek society must understand that the far-right rise doesn't just concern migrants, said Kanakis."It has to do with all of us," he said. "It's a problem of everyday democracy."

U.S. To Become World's Largest Oil Producer, Exceeding Saudi Arabia, By 2020: International Energy Agency

 

The United States will become the world's largest oil producer by around 2020, temporarily overtaking Saudi Arabia, as new exploration technologies help find more resources, the International Energy Agency forecast on Monday.In its World Energy Outlook, the energy watchdog also predicted that greater oil and natural gas production thanks partly to a boom in shale gas output as well as more efficient use of energy will allow the U.S., which now imports around 20 percent of its energy needs, to become nearly self-sufficient around 2035. That is "a dramatic reversal of the trend seen in most other energy-importing countries," the Paris-based IEA said in its report. "Energy developments in the United States are profound and their effect will be felt well beyond North America and the energy sector."Rebounding U.S. oil and gas production is "steadily changing the role of North America in global energy trade," the IEA said.For example, oil exports out of the Mideast will increasingly go to Asia as the U.S. becomes more self-sufficient. That will increase the global focus on the security of strategic routes that bring Middle East oil to Asian markets. Tensions between Iran and Western powers have raised concerns that oil exports from the Persian Gulf could be blocked in a potential conflict over Tehran's alleged plan to develop nuclear weapons.The IEA added that global trends in the energy markets will be influenced by some countries' retreat from nuclear power, the fast spread of wind and solar technologies and a rise in unconventional gas production.The agency concluded that despite the rising use of low carbon energy sources, huge subsidies will keep fossil fuels "dominant in the global energy mix.""Taking all new developments and policies into account, the world is still failing to put the global energy system onto a more sustainable path," the IEA said.Global energy needs are forecast to increase by a third by 2035, with 60 percent of the additional demand coming from China, India and the Middle East.