Thursday, December 20, 2007

On Rio’s mean streets, a rare credibility

On Rio’s mean streets, a rare credibility

Pentecostals’ message of transformation is helping Brazil's drug dealers give up their guns for Jesus.

By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor from the December 18, 2007 edition

Rio de Janeiro — He felt weak physically. But spiritually, he had never felt stronger. Alexandre dos Santos, a converted Pentecostal, fasted for two days in the favela, or slum, where he grew up, before getting on his knees to lead 18 others in prayer.

"God protect us," they chanted, before going to persuade a gang of drug traffickers in a violent struggle with the police to put down their arms and accept Jesus.

The group, named "Fishermen of the Night," had no idea what to expect that evening two years ago, Mr. dos Santos recalls. Since then, they have seen men killed. They have been threatened with death. But God has sent them as emissaries, they say, to stop the violence that is suffocating many of Brazil's poor communities.

"You cannot shake. You must demonstrate courage," says dos Santos.

"You cannot stutter," adds his wife Christiane in their modest home in Mangueira, a favela that winds up the side of a hill, where homes seem like blocks stacked upon one another. "You say, 'I am from Jesus.' There is no room for doubt."

The group's core purpose is not to fight crime, but to convert as many as possible. More law and order is often a byproduct.

In Rio's favelas,crowded with men and women on the margins, they find fertile ground. To outsiders they are called "the Evangelicals," and for the most part, people here don't challenge their missionary work.

In fact, Pentecostals – for theological, cultural, and personal reasons – have apparently won the respect of the same criminals who may think little of shooting a lifelong neighbor.

So in a city that is considered one of the most dangerous in the world, which registers 6,000 murders a year, and where the police and military are distrusted at best, Pentecostals are among the few who are facing up to organized crime.

"They are viewed as staying out of all the conflict that exists in the world. They live separate from the world, not inside the factions that are everywhere else," says Patricia Birman, an anthropologist at the State University of Rio De Janeiro. "They can intervene because of that."

In absolute numbers, Brazil, the region's biggest country, has more Pentecostals than anywhere else in Latin America. Over 10 percent of the population identified itself as Pentecostal in Brazil's 2000 census, double the figures from a decade earlier. According to a 2006, 10-country survey of Pentecostals by the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, nearly 21 percent of urban residents surveyed identified themselves as Protestant, the majority Pentecostal.

It takes only a trek into a favela on a Sunday night to understand the traction of the movement.

In the dark, winding alleys of the Mangueira favela, joyous music pours from Pentecostal churches, most of them drab cement structures on the outside but full of dance and song within.

To get to dos Santos's church, Assembly of God New Zion, visitors pass young teens with guns guarding homes and a local drug den where a pile of white cocaine powder sits on a table in full view. Before the church was founded seven years ago, it was an abandoned building.

One reason Pentecostals can approach drug traffickers is that so many of them were once violent felons themselves. Some have committed murder. Their pastors have served time. And, reborn, they now believe their calling is to bring the word of God to the same streets they once terrorized.

Dos Santos converted to Pentecostalism after more than 15 years dealing drugs and robbing passengers at knife-point on city buses. His pastor, Marcos Lourenço, served time for drug trafficking. Pastor Lourenço points to the man sitting to his left. "He just got out of jail; his wife is still there," he says. He rests his hand on the man to his right. "This used to be my No. 1 enemy."

On a recent night, Lourenço works his tiny congregation into a frenzy of "glorias" and "amens." Men and women squeeze their eyes shut as Lourenço, a squat man with a baby face, breaks into a sweat. They all dance to drums, a keyboard, and a tambourine, played by a group of teens. They are off-key, but no one seems to care or notice. "Oh gloria, gloria, gloria," shouts one young woman, clutching her chest.

"How can people change so much? I ask myself that all the time," muses Lourenço.

Many of today's Pentecostals were brought into the faith by other Pentecostals. But new converts also come on their own to the doors of churches or the homes of pastors. For those in gangs, who conclude that their only way out is death or jail, conversion offers a third option, says David Smilde who studies the phenomenon in Caracas, Venezuela, and is the author of "Reason to Believe," published this past summer.

"It's a way of stepping out of an impossible situation; they are no longer feared by the [criminal] network," says Mr. Smilde, a sociologist at the University of Georgia. Where there is little police presence or institutional support, he says, "Pentecostalism is one way out."

"The only path to live in peace is this path," agrees Thiago de Castro Cosia, a young convert from New Zion. "It's the only way to make your enemies your friends. It's the only way to be free."

It is a drastic mind shift, but it is supported by theology. Because many Pentecostals consider themselves "reborn," they are able to step away from their past sins, and reemerge with a new identity. They believe the devil's hand is behind urban violence and drugs, and often turn to exorcism to root out evil.

The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, says Ms. Birman, focuses on the larger idea of civic consciousness, such as drawing attention to the root causes of violence. But for people faced with crime every day, the response is often seen as institutional or out of touch.

Academics who study this phenomenon say that Pentecostals are able to penetrate areas where even census workers won't go, not just because they hail from the same tough neighborhoods, but because most churches are independent, grass-roots efforts – unlike the Catholic Church, which is run under strict hierarchy that starts at the Vatican.

"It works precisely because it is informal," says Clara Mafra, an anthropologist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. "They don't have to ask someone's permission. The Holy Spirit talks to them."

Pastors are largely autonomous, so an idea that comes to them in the middle of the night can be implemented the next day. It is a format that lends itself to a more local, and often more innovative, response.

"The Catholic Church is slow. They repeat the same model in different areas of the city, if you have a lot of violence or not," says Ms. Mafra. "The Pentecostals, they try different solutions and different arrangements."

Gang members leave Pentecostals alone because, although they don't necessarily practice any religious doctrine, they still overwhelmingly believe in God, say researchers. Catholicism has traditionally reflected the political elite here, who are seen as having done little to combat crime. Pentecostals are seen by the community as operating in a separate, uncorrupted sphere, says Birman.

If converting is a strategic way out for many young men, some question how deep and lasting their faith is. For every convert there is another who is leaving the religion, as backsliding is rampant. But Smilde says many do end up as long-term believers. Their entire sense of self and purpose changes, he says, whether they've converted to leave a gang, because their wives made them, or simply because they were drawn to God.

On a recent evening, a group of young men from the New Zion church sits in a circle sharing testimonials, the stories of their conversion. They are dressed in tennis shoes and running pants, not unlike the men outside carrying guns and dealing drugs.

They say the nerve they had as gangsters came from the devil. "I feel more courageous now; more like a man," says Hugo Leonardo da Silva, a 22-year-old with a young wife and daughter.

His path to Pentecostalism was not easy.

He tried to convert many times but says he lacked strength. Even now, he says the easy money and temptation of gang life is around him every day.

He deals with it by staying away, he says, "unless it is to spread the word of God."

That is where the two worlds converge for "Fishermen of the Night."

"Who are you?" barked a gang member, seeing dos Santos's group approaching them in the middle of the night, right at the spot where they used to carry out their briskest drug sales. Dos Santos stood in the front, and was pushed to the ground with the butt of a rifle.

"We come with the word of God," dos Santos said, suddenly surrounded by 40 men from the Red Command, one of the fiercest factions operating in Rio de Janeiro. The Pentecostals prayed, trancelike, as they called out for God to reach the gang. dos Santos says he doesn't remember what he was saying, or what was happening around him. He kept repeating, "You are not alone, you are with Jesus." Someone suggested they were spies for the police or a rival drug gang.

Dos Santos says he can stay calm in such situations because he carries the shield of God, but certainly his personal experience in a gang helps him.

He began using drugs at age 8, and quickly climbed the ranks of one of the local gangs. He and Christiane married when he was 16, she was 13. It wasn't until his life was threatened – by his own gang – that he converted.

He walks the same streets today, but now with a Bible in his hand. On a recent day he walked past the drug den he once protected. Nearby is an apartment that he rents out to tenants today. He and his wife, who have three young children, also own a popular hamburger joint at the edge of Mangueira. He still lives carefully – refusing to talk about the violence in his neighborhood while in public, even though he says he always walks with faith in God.

He doesn't know how long after he was shoved to the ground that the group's leader walked onto the scene, and held out his hand to dos Santos. "You aren't spies; if you were I'd kill you all. You are believers for real, you are welcome here any time," he said to him.

"One day I was in the same place," dos Santos explains later, when asked why he puts himself at such risk. "God got me out of this place."

That night they preached to the Lord. But not every intervention helps people put the thug life behind them. That gang leader was killed a couple of months later.

Few situations are as dangerous for the "Fishermen of the Night" as that night two years ago, but it's never easy. They say they intervene when God tells them to, which could be several times one month, none the next.

But are they having a lasting impact? John Burdick, an associate professor of anthropology at Syracuse University, says that pastors will take credit for reducing crime in their neighborhoods, but he says that no academic has been able to clearly show that this is an effective tool in the long run.

Still, few doubt that on a small scale they are making a difference.

Their mission is to convert as many Brazilians as possible, and the poor and disadvantaged are their perfect targets. Favelas, where many potential converts live, have traditionally fallen off the political radar, says Jurema Batista, the president of a government-run agency child and adolescent rights. In that sense Pentecostals are doing a job that the government is not. "They are filling a role that no one else is."

"They regard themselves as engaged constantly, as getting [nonbelievers] out of the drug trade, alcoholism, aggressive behavior, and all the things that lead to fights and violence," adds Professor Burdick. "And as they do convert, their behavior does change. They stop being involved in a whole array of things that generate violence, directly or indirectly."

They also offer hope to people who thought there was none left.

Dos Santos, who drives around in a 1991 brown Ford station wagon with a bumper sticker that reads "Exclusive Property of Jesus," says he often has little idea whether the criminals they preach to end up converting.

Probably most don't, he admits. But the work of the "Fishermen of the Night" has spread around town. And one letter he received gives him all the proof he needs to forge ahead.

It was a couple of years ago, on a Friday night. A gang member called his home, telling dos Santos that he felt he was going to get shot dead soon unless he quit. He asked dos Santos for help.

This time dos Santos had no time to fast, which the group usually does for two days to purify body and soul before setting out on an intervention.

He gathered as many people as he could. They arrived at 1:30 a.m., while the gang was still eating dinner near the spot where the drugs were sold. En route, Christiane, dos Santos's wife, says she had a vision of the gang member being buried.

When they arrived at the scene, she told the gang member about her vision, and he began to weep. They prayed for him for hours, and left him a Bible. He handed them his rifle.

Two months later, dos Santos received another call from the man. But this time it was to invite dos Santos to a new church.

The gang member had become a pastor. That was two years ago. "I still get goose bumps," dos Santos says, the flesh rising on his arms.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Socialist Gays Seek Punishments for Brazilian Christian Congressman

Socialist Gays Seek Punishments for Brazilian Christian Congressman

Guest article by Julio Severo

A radical homosexual group inside the Brazilian Workers' Party is requesting disciplinary action against Brazilian House Representative Henrique Afonso, a party member. According to the Setorial Nacional GLBT (a group of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites and transsexuals within the Worker's Party), Rep. Afonso, who is an evangelical, has allegedly been “offensive” to homosexuals, because he “has linked homosexuality to the destruction of the family environment”.

Afonso respects individuals living in homosexuality, but he believes that their behavior is immoral and opposed to God's sexual plan for the human beings.

So homosexual activists from the Workers’ Party are requesting the party’s National Secretariat for Popular Movements take measures against Henrique Afonso. It believes that he has violated party statutes because he is opposed to abortion and homosexual behavior.

Gay and feminist militants within the party are offended because Afonso has been demonstrating firm biblical conviction on the subject of abortion and homosexuality. They complain that the evangelical congressman signed an official paper on March 2, 2007 that outlines the decisive factors contributing to the destruction of the family environment, and the challenges that should be confronted (for instance, abortion, homosexuality, child prostitution, drugs, high divorce rates, social exclusion, media influence), aiming at the recovery of the true role that the family has in the construction of a just, compassionate, and fraternal society.

Rep. Afonso is the founder of the National Evangelical Campaign in Defense of Life and Family[1], officially launched in the Brazilian Congress on September 18, which had the participation of several evangelical leaders. The purpose of the effort is to discuss infanticide, abortion, homosexuality, pedophilia, as well as to discuss those who are persecuted for attacking these problems. They are individuals such as Márcia Suzuki, the renowned Brazilian philosopher Olavo of Carvalho, the Rev. Ademir Kreutzfeld, Cardinal Dom Eugênio Sales, Rep. Henrique Afonso, Fr. Luiz Carlos Lodi of Cruz, Dr. Humberto L. Vieira, Dr. Rozangela Justino, Rev. Silas Malafaia and Julio Severo.

In the past, Alfonso was a radical communist militant, but he is now increasingly a militant for Christ, despite his membership in the Worker's Party. The Workers’ Party is the socialist party of President Lula, a friend of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, and it openly promotes pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality policies.

Under Lula and the Workers’ Party, sodomy has been endorsed though aggressive public policies, especially the pro-homosexual propaganda campaign “Brazil Without Homophobia”, and has been introduced in three successive pioneer resolutions in the United Nations, where the Brazilian diplomatic delegation defended homosexuality as an unalienable “human right”.

Congressman Henrique Afonso had a strong experience with the Holy Spirit some months ago, and now he is firmly opposing the homosexual and abortion bills and agenda of his own party. He is taking his National Evangelical Campaign in Defense of Life and Family to every Brazilian state to make Christian and concerned citizens conscious about the perils of pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality bills and laws.

Currently, he runs the risk of being expelled from PT and losing his congressional seat.

[1] http://www.henriqueafonso.com.br/julio_severo.htm

See previous LifeSiteNews report on Julio Severo:

Interview with Brazil's “most discriminated against and persecuted” Pro-Life Activist
Julio Severo reveals details of lengthy struggle against attempts of UN and US organizations to corrupt Brazil society
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/aug/07082811.html

Source: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/dec/07121211.html

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Leftist government tries to stir up racial hate in Brazil

Leftist government tries to stir up racial hate in Brazil

Olavo de Carvalho

Matilde Ribeiro, Brazil’s Special Secretary for the Promotion of Racial Equality Policies, will be speaking on “Combating racism and discrimination: A Policy of Inclusion”, today, Tuesday, December 4, 2007, at the Simon Bolivar Room of the Organization of American States in Washington D. C.

Last March, in an interview to the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/reporterbbc/story/2007/03/070326_ministramatildedb.shtml), she explained the very special kind of anti-racism she defends: it consists of nothing else than overt and continuous anti-white hate, legitimized by a slavery history that ended more than a century ago.

As most Brazilian families (including mine) come from mixed race marriages, Ms. Ribeiro’s preaching tries to stir up hate among people who would prefer to love one another.

But her scandalous doctrine, promoting the hostility of mulatto children against their white fathers or mothers, is not an original product of her empty head. It is the passive echo of a long and very active cultural tradition. Since Stalin ordered the communist movement to exploit all possible racial conflicts, conferring upon them a sense of class warfare, perhaps nobody has obeyed that instruction in a swifter, more faithful and constant way than Brazilian “social scientists”.

Practically all our university production in this domain consists in a long and noisy effort to instill in blacks and mulattos a retroactive hatred directed not only against the slave masters and the descendants of slave masters, but against the white population in general, including those who fought for the liberation of slaves, those who married black persons, those who never said a single word against the black race nor did it any harm. According to the doctrine of our academic establishment, all these whites are unconscious racists, virtually as dangerous as Joseph Goebbels or the Ku-Klux-Klan. Even the blacks are a little racist against themselves. Truly innocent of the crime of racism are only the distinguished authors of these studies and the militants of organizations inspired by them. In other words: you either are one of the accusers or one of the culprits. There is no third possibility.

An incessant flux of Master and PhD theses, largely subsidized by the government and by billionaire international foundations, pours out from our universities in order to lend credibility to that lovely doctrine. It is founded upon the following eight methodological precepts.

1. Attribute to racial discrimination the difference in economic standing between blacks and whites, omitting the fact that, between the abolition of slavery and the beginning of industrialization in Brazil, more than 40 years went by, during which time the freed black population reproduced itself at a rate incomparably higher than the number of jobs available.

2. Portray black people as the main victims of violent crimes, without asking if they are not also predominantly the perpetrators of these crimes. Every murderer, white or black, is thereby considered a priori as an instrument of white violence against blacks.

3. In the same way, explain all police violence against blacks as a consequence of white racism, without considering whether the police officers who committed the violence were black or white.

4. Depict Europeans always as enslavers and blacks as enslaved, systematically omitting the fact that Muslim troops, filled with blacks, invaded Europe and enslaved millions of whites eight centuries before the arrival of Europeans in Africa.

5. Explain, therefore, internal slavery in Africa as a mere byproduct of European slavery, thus inverting the order of historic time .

6. Transform every race into a juridical person, a holder of rights, when black, and of penal responsibility, when white.

7. Take it as implicit that every white person is guilty of the acts of slave masters, even if he has not a single slave master in his ancestry and even if he has come to Brazil as an immigrant decades after the end of slavery.

8. Blame it all on the “Judeo-Christian civilization”, exactly the only one, throughout human history, to have done something in favor of enslaved races.

The word “bias” is too delicate and subtle to qualify the mental attitude that generates these studies. The sociology of races produced in Brazilian universities is pure propaganda material, deliberately misleading and calculated to legitimize the revolutionary violence against what former Sao Paulo (white) governor Claudio Lembo called the “white, cruel and selfish elite”. Social science in Brazil is a kind of organized crime .

Olavo de Carvalho, 60, is a Brazilian writer, philosopher, journalist and former university teacher presently living in the U.S. as a correspondent for Brazilian newspapers.

Website: www.olavodecarvalho.org

Monday, December 03, 2007

Brazilian President Convokes National Homosexual Conference

Brazilian President Convokes National Homosexual Conference

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

BRASILIA, December 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) — The First National Conference of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals received its official convocation on Thursday of last week by none other than the socialist president of Brazil, Luiz Lula, a first in the history of the country.

The president decreed that the conference would take place
May 8-11, 2008, “under the auspices of the Special Secretary of Human Rights of the Presidency of the Republic, with the objectives of 1. proposing the directives for the implementation of public policies and the national plan for promoting the citizenship and human rights of Gays, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals — GBLT, and 2. evaluate and propose strategies to strengthen the program Brazil Without Homophobia.”

Brazil Without Homophobia is a national program run by the Lula administration that teaches that homosexual orientation is unchangeable, and seeks to construct a “culture” in
Brazil that is “affirming” towards homosexuality.

With official government sponsorship, the conference will have a composition of 40% delegates from the government sector and the remaining 60% from among private individuals, according to MixBrasil, a homosexual website.

Organizer Julian Rodrigues is jubilant. “There are countries with more advanced legislation and policies, but this will be the first time that a federal government convokes a complete conference, with the participation of the majority of the organized movement, to define a national plan of public policies for almost 10% of the population, historically relegated to prejudice and discrimination,” he said.

Rodrigues’ statistic of 10% for the population of homosexuals is denied by scientific studies that show that homosexuals comprise between 3 and 5% of national populations at the most, but it is commonly cited by homosexual activists in the promotion of their cause.

“The first Conference is now created, and there is no turning back. We are going to pull up our sleeves and construct it in all of the states (of Brazil), mobilizing the greatest number possible of members of our community, discussing rights and affirmative public policies,” said Rodrigues.

Related LifeSiteNews Coverage:

Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay Launch Radical Homosexual Rights Initiative at UN
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/nov/07110808.html

Leader of Brazil Homosexual Movement Under Investigation for Pedophilia
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jul/07073011.html

Brazilian Priests Could Face Jail-time for Saying that Homosexuality is A Sin
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/mar/07031904.html

Brazil-Backed Treaty Seeks to Make Homosexual Sex a 'Human Right' in North and South America
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/dec/06121204.html

Source: LifeSiteNews

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Brazilian Homosexuals File “Hate” Charges Against Brazilian Christians

Brazilian Homosexuals File “Hate” Charges Against Brazilian Christians

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

SAO PAULO, November 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) — The Brazilian Association of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals (ABGLT) has lodged a criminal complaint against Christian activist Julio Severo and the National Vision for Christian Awareness (VINACC) for inciting “hatred” against homosexuals, and “homophobia”.

The complaint was made because Severo, on his website (
http://juliosevero.blogspot.com), regularly denounces homosexual behavior as immoral, and opposes the goals of the homosexual movement. VINACC is also accused because it reposts Severo’s material.

Luiz Mott, who is generally recognized as the leader of the homosexual movement in
Brazil, rejoiced at the news. “We are all proud of the ABGLT for filing charges against our archenemy, Julio Severo,” he was quoted as saying in a Yahoo homosexual email list. “I hope that he is condemned to perpetual imprisonment in Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Mott is a militant promoter of the “gay rights” agenda in
Brazil and an ally of the socialist regime of Luiz Lula. He is also an open promoter of the legalization of pedophilia and pederasty, a fact that Severo has helped to expose (see previous LifeSiteNews coverage at: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jul/07073011.html).

Severo denies promoting hatred of homosexuals. “I am opposed to the homosexual behavior, and this is very clear in my blog,” Severo told LifeSiteNews. “I think this behavior is harmful to gays and society, spiritually, mentally and physically. Yet, I do not hate people living in homosexuality, adultery, fornication, thefts. I hate their acts. By God’s Word, I love sinners and I try to lead them to Christ through the Gospel.”

The offending text that formed the basis for the complaint bears no hint of “hatred” of homosexuals, but strongly criticizes their behavior.

“The homosexual minority loses numerically to the vast Christian majority, but is growing in political, legislative, social, and media power, threatening a frighteningly oppressive domination,” he wrote. “The majority — composed of Christians, nominal or not — stand with their mouths open while the minority cries out for rights. Their cry is essentially, ‘Sodomy now! Down with sexual normalcy! Down with male-female marriage!’”

The text goes on to criticize liberal Catholics and protestants for supporting
Brazil’s socialist regime, which in turn supports the homosexual “rights” movement.

There is a significant possibility of a verdict against Severo and VINACC in the current political climate in
Brazil, which is extremely sympathetic to the homosexual cause.

VINACC was successfully prosecuted several months ago simply for denouncing homosexual behavior as sinful during a campaign to promote heterosexuality and family values. The offending act that resulted in conviction was a billboard that read “Homosexuality: And God made them man and woman and saw that it was good.”

As a result, VINACC was ordered to cancel its campaign and all related events completely. The organization complied (see previous coverage at
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jul/07073108.html).

Although no laws exist against denouncing homosexual behavior, liberal, activist judges in
Brazil often simply behave as if such a law exists, and issue verdicts against those who dare to speak out against sodomy. Homosexual activists, in league with the Lula regime, are attempting to pass legislation that will explicitly outlaw all opposition to homosexual behavior in Brazil.

“For a long time, gay militants have been trying to catch me,” Severo told LifeSiteNews. “Now they think they were successful, because they read my recent article that says Christians should repent. They should do it because their own sins hinder sinners in the world from repenting and help sin (homosexual and otherwise) spread throughout society.”

Related Links:

Julio Severo’s Contact Info (he speaks English):
http://www.blogger.com/profile/03079977728841299575

Julio Severo’s Blog in English:
http://lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com

Julio Severo’s Blog in Portuguese:
http://juliosevero.blogspot.com/

VINACC Website (Portuguese):
http://www.conscienciacrista.org.br/

Previous LifeSiteNews Coverage:

Leader of Brazil Homosexual Movement Under Investigation for Pedophilia
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jul/07073011.html

Brazil Attacks Against Family Defenders Backed by Pro-Homosexual Regime of Nation’s President
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jul/07073108.html

Julio Severo Interview
Introduction:
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/aug/07082811.html
Part I:
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/aug/07082810.html
Part II:
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/aug/07082901.html ;

Source: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/nov/07112805.html

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Robinson Cavalcanti: always a Socialist, never a conservative

Robinson Cavalcanti: always a Socialist, never a conservative

Edson Camargo

Anglican bishop Robinson Cavalcanti, one of the most prominent leftists in the Brazilian Protestant church, has been mistakenly taken as a conservative. A light approach, in the tone of his speech, to the conservative ideals was enough to get one of his articles published in a major conservative website in Brazil. But not only Brazilians were misled. In the United States, something similar happened. Therefore, here is a warning: no, gentlemen, Anglican bishop Robinson Cavalcanti is not a conservative. He is and has always been a socialist.

Cavalcanti has certainly noticed that he has been taken as a conservative, because of his article against homosexuality, but until now he has made no statement to undo such misunderstanding. Could he be acting strategically? Presumably so.

A former politician militant of PT (Workers’ Party, founded by socialist president Lula), a pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality party allied with Latin American leftist terrorist groups like Colombian FARC and Sendero Luminoso in the Foro de São Paulo, Cavalcanti, who is also a political scientist, was the mentor and founder of MEP (Movimento Evangélico Progressista — Progressist Evangelical Movement), a NGO composed of leftist Christian militants. He has said that he left PT because he was elected as an Anglican bishop and also because, in his view, the party softened its socialist speech:

Since 1997, I am no longer a member of the Workers’ Party, because I was elected as an Anglican bishop. I have positive memoirs of my past of fights for the democratic State, for national sovereignty and for social justice. I also have increasingly negative perceptions of the ideological and programmatic rupture of that party. (Ultimato magazine, September/October 2004)

During the Lula’s reelection campaign in 2006, in the same sense, Cavalcanti wrote:

After wearing out me traveling throughout Brazil in the 1989 and 1994 electoral campaigns, I am surprised by Lula’s admission: “I have never been a leftist… As middle-class public official, college professor, retired, democratic socialist and evangelical socialist, I had no more reason to vote for Lula. (Ultimato magazine, January/February 2006)

It is worth to stress that Robinson Cavalcanti is not a conservative even in theological terms. He is one of the major references in Brazil when the subject is Integral Mission Theology, a Protestant version of the Liberation Theology, through which socialist militants transformed thousands of Latin American parishes in mere think-tanks of the political subversion. The worsening of the gayzist agitprop has left Cavalcanti alarmed, but even so he did not abandon the socialist ideenkleid. Openly, he has not done it. And even if he did so, those who know the history of communism know that after the public rejection of his old and vile ideals, a former militant should be under attentive observation. In the case of Cavalcanti, such attention is unnecessary, for he has not denied anything of what is in his books, articles and speeches, in which he merges and associates socialism and Christianity.

Robinson Cavalcanti’s theology, and some of his positions regarding the family and sexuality, also affront not only conservatism, but also the historical Christianity. On monogamy, he affirms:

The ideal exists, but its historical manifestation may hurt other so many divine ideals: sanity, love, faith, because monogamy can be, in many cases, just arithmetic (1+1) and no qualitative. The maintenance of others divine ideals has led, in turn, to the need of non-monogamic models that make possible the preservation and the promotion of those other values and ideas against the historical and short-run impossibility of the simultaneity of all the values (for example, Israel in the Old Testament). (E-book Libertação e Sexualidade [Liberation and Sexuality, pages 71 and 72)

Of course, he overlooks the biblical passage where Jesus Christ restates to Pharisees the irrevocable divine commandment: Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his [one] wife: and they shall be one flesh. He also makes no mention of the pattern of Apostle Paul for bishops and deacons: husbands of one woman.

On the contrary, Cavalcanti’ concern is merely igualitarian, and it results in the assumption that God established impossible patterns of behavior which could not be lived throughout the History:

Is the divine ideal, from Eden, monogamic marriages? Yes, but for everybody. In other words, the requirement of that absolute model would be historically legitimate if, concomitantly, there were objective conditions so that everybody might enjoy it, leaving no one marriageless, just as, equally, the ideal couple in the Eden. It would not be theologically correct, or ethically honest, to require an aspect without taking into account the totality of the Creation order. (Liberation and Sexuality, page 72)

Here it is obvious the transposition of the “democratic socialist” mindset of Cavalcanti to the theological sphere, with all its spiritually and morally disastrous consequences. “It is not a sin only if everybody has a right to it”. But nothing supports that communistic reasoning in the Scriptures. “The social manifestations of sin, the perversions, as wars, epidemics, illnesses, accidents, inequalities and prejudices have made impossible the other side of that ideal”, the bishop declares in the following paragraph — as if the presence of sin in the world was able to relativize the divine commandment, the only source where one can understand the notion of sin itself. The irrationality of the assertion borders ridiculous.

That is the true and known Robinson Cavalcanti, although making good criticisms against the gay dictatorship (which, actually, he helped to build, for he always insisted that evangelical Brazilians had to support leftist candidates) and acknowledging that, ultimately, truth and absolute justice are in God’s hands. This is not enough to make him a conservative. In other words: he is an individual that makes compromises to ideologies, to the increasingly larger state interventionism and to the relativizing of spiritual and moral values. Cavalcanti is one additional example of those Christians that were influenced by the secular mindset in many of his positions.

A reprimand is left to the authentic conservatives: more attention, more discernment and more historical knowledge are necessary. Don’t believe immediately in any assertion of doubtful source, no matter how much it resembles the conservative postulates. The history of the world revolutionary movement is marked by hate and perversion disguised as charity and moral zeal. The left has no interest in speech, provided it is able to herd militants and sow the Gnostic and revolutionary urges in the soul of its listeners, with one objective: the revolution, the “new order”. Let us be attentive.

Translated by Julio Severo: juliosevero@gmail.com

Portuguese version: Robinson Cavalcanti: sempre socialista, nunca conservador

Posted in Last Days Watchman

Monday, July 30, 2007

Leader of Brazil Homosexual Movement Under Investigation for Pedophilia

Leader of Brazil Homosexual Movement Under Investigation for Pedophilia

Plan to Shut Down Blog of Brazil Pro-Family Leader Backfires

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

BRAZIL, July 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) — A recent attempt by Brazilian homosexuals to silence two weblogs failed when Google, the hosting service, restored them after blocking them for several days. Now the contents of the blogs have drawn the attention of Brazilian prosecutors, who are investigating Luiz Mott, the leader of Brazil's homosexual movement, for pedophilia.

The first blog, by the anonymous author Jael Savelli, was blocked for only a few hours several weeks ago, but the second, authored by Brazilian Christian activist Julio Severo and hosted by Google's "Blogger" service at http://juliosevero.blogspot.com, was blocked from July 16 to July 19.


The site's contents were removed and replaced with a statement that read: "This blog is being reviewed for possible violations of the Blogger Terms of Service, and can only be opened by the authors." Although Severo states that Google never informed him of its reasons for blocking the site, the removal occurred after a bitter campaign against him by homosexual activists on Google's partner service, Orkut.com. The service is widely used by Brazilians to socialize and exchange information, and became an organizing point for opposition to Severo and his site.

Three days after Severo's site was suppressed, the eminent Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho blasted the campaign against Severo in his regular column for the newspaper Jornal do Brasil.

"A group of militant gays has secured the removal of the site http://juliosevero.blogspot.com, " wrote de Carvalho. "The method was to spread through Google a storm of denunciations against the author of the blog, the writer Julio Severo, accusing him of preaching violence against homosexuals. 'He wants us to remain masked, without the right to defense,' bellows one of those who incited the attack in the Orkut community used as the headquarters of the initiative. 'He wants us to be subject to beatings without our aggressors paying for it.'"

The accusation is manifestly false," Carvalho continued. "Anyone who reads the blog without deformed lenses perceives that. Severo limits himself to arguing against homosexuality based on Christian morality, which doesn't command that anyone be beaten. I defy the militant gays to show where he affirms that homosexuals should subject to such violence without the right of protection of the laws."

Carvalho went on to point out that, if anyone had violated the laws, it was the homosexuals attacking Severo based on his religion: "It is they who committed against him the crimes defined in articles 240 and 251 of the Penal Code: publicly defaming and ridiculing a citizen because of his religious belief. They added to this the crime foreseen in article 138: false imputation of a crime."

De Carvalho encouraged protestant church groups to support and defend Severo. "Julio Severo, as a reprisal against his moral crusade, now has his social and professional life totally destroyed. He is the most discriminated against and persecuted of Brazilians. He cannot confront, alone, a gigantic mass movement subsidized by billionaire foundations, that, having made itself out to be a victim persecuted by a solitary and poor adversary, now shows a monstrous, cynical, and perverse dishonesty."

According to Severo, numerous individuals responded by submitting complaints to Google. The day following Carvalho's article, Google restored Severo's website, again without any explanation. The actions taken against the two blogs, however, drew attention to information contained in one of the blogs against Luiz Mott, the self-described "dean" of the homosexual movement in Brazil. The blog of "Jael Savelli" (the pseudonym of the blog's anonymous author), had published an article entitled "Pedophilia Now!", containing evidence that Luiz Mott is a pedophile.

The article, which was linked to by Julio Severo's blog and republished on another website called Midia Sem Mascara (Media Without a Mask), quoted an essay on Mott's own website, "Meu Moleque Ideal" (My Ideal Boy).

In the essay, which is displayed
at Mott's site at http://br.geocities.com/luizmottbr/cronica6.html, Mott states that, "fundamentally, all of us gays (and non-gays) feed in our imagination on a type of ideal person that we would like to love and have at our side...in my case, to tell the truth, if I could choose freely, what I would like for myself would not be a man but a boy, an 'adolescent' of the type that the nobles of ancient Greece said was the thing most handsome and pleasurable to be loved and [expletive]."

Mott's essay, noted Savelli's blog, is praised by users of the pedophile website Aescola.net, who call it "a marvelous text" and "Sensational. An article that manages to summarize my desires."

The same website contains another essay attributed to Mott ("Pedophilia and Pederasty") in which he says that, "in my opinion, the taboo and repression of sexual relations between adults and youth is supported by two prejudices, that sex has a particular legal age to begin and that every relationship between someone older and younger always implies violence and oppression. Studies prove that even in the uterus a baby already has an erection..." The essay goes on to give examples of children in sexual relationships with adults in various tribal societies, and advocates as a struggle against the "hypocrisy" of those who "deny the inalienable right of children and adolescents to receive respect for their free sexual orientation and their sexual freedom."

Mott also maintains what he calls Brazil's only "erotic museum", which contains various paintings and figurines depicting human body parts and sexual acts. As he discusses his "erotic museum" in a video displayed on YouTube, Mott stands next to a statue of a naked child, with his arm around its waist. During part of the video, as Mott continues to talk, the camera moves down and focuses on the genitals of the statue.

In the backlash against Mott's militant homosexual movement, information from Savelli's site has been given to prosecutors in the states of Bahia (where Mott lives) and Juiz de Fora.

The Christian Apologetics Study Center (CACP) reports that a prosecutor in the Federal Attorney General's office in the state of Bahia, responded to their complaint with an assurance that he would initiate procedures to begin a criminal investigation and to remove the offending sites from the internet: "I immediately decided to institute an Administrative Procedure to investigate and remove the site, as well as a representation for the opening of a Police Investigation against those responsible. Thank you very much."

Source: LifeSiteNews

Brazil Attacks Against Family Defenders Backed by Pro-Homosexual Regime of Nation's President

Part 2 of report on Brazil's aggressive homosexual movement

See Part 1 - Leader of Brazil Homosexual Movement Under Investigation for Pedophilia http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jul/07073011.html
By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

BRAZIL, July 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) — In recent months other Brazilians have been subject to the wrath of Brazil's pro-homosexual regime.

In June of this year a coalition of protestant church groups, the National Vision for a Christian Conscience (VINACC), was ordered to halt their campaign "In Defense of the Family", which displayed billboards that said "Homosexuality: God made them man and woman, and saw that it was good!" A court order decreed the removal of the billboards and the cancellation of a public event scheduled by VINACC to further the defense of family values, claiming that it was "homophobic".

On May 29th of this year, a Lutheran pastor in the Brazilian town of Rancho Queimado; the Rev. Ademir Kreutzfeld, was subject to a criminal investigation when he was accused of calling local businesses in an effort to inform them that a newspaper they were sponsoring was promoting the homosexual agenda. The homosexual activist who owns the paper filed charges against the pastor for "defamation".

Although no further steps have been taken against the minister as yet, homosexuals are agitating for his prosecution. "What have I done?" asks Kreutzfeld. "I just made some phone calls to shops, alerting that they were, without perceiving, sponsoring a newspaper of homosexual ideology. As a Christian committed to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, I could not fail to inform them. Of course, I am not 'homophobic'. As a Christian, I love sinners. I am also one of them. But I cannot remain silent before sinful practices".

Julio Severo, who is seen as the principal opponent of Brazil's militant homosexuals, and who has written a book called "The Homosexual Movement" warning against the political goals of the movement in Brazil and worldwide, states that, since he began his efforts against the homosexual movement in Brazil, he has suffered persecution and has been forced to flee his hometown. According to Severo, a homosexual government official used his refusal to involve his children with vaccines against him and had a court order to remove his children from their home (Severo and his family believe that vaccines are dangerous and often ineffective).

Severo states that others in the town also do not vaccinate their children, but he believes they were ignored in favor of him because of his stance against homosexual behavior. He now lives in hiding in another part of Brazil.

The attacks on Julio Severo, Jael Savelli, and others by the homosexual movement in Brazil are taking place within the political context of the strongly pro-homosexual regime of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has led Brazil's executive branch since 2003.

During its second year in office, the Lula regime initiated a program, "Brazil Without Homophobia" which teaches that homosexual orientation is unchangeable, and seeks to construct "a culture of peace and values for promoting human diversity". According to the program's charter document, this would include "the production of cultural goods and support for events with massive visibility for affirming sexual orientation and the culture of peace", "artistic productions that promote a culture of non-discrimination for sexual orientation", and preserving "the cultural, social, and economic values congruent with the participation of the Brazilian homosexual population in the process of development, based on its history and culture".

Since the initiation of Brazil Without Homophobia, the government has spent millions of dollars funding "Gay Pride" parades and TV programming, and is promoting pro-homosexual "education" programs in the public schools. Homosexual leader Luiz Mott is one of those who participated in the creation of the document, according to the credits listed at the beginning.

In addition, the Lula administration is promoting a new "anti-homophobia" law that would prohibit any expression contrary to the homosexual agenda, forbidding Brazilians "To practice, induce or incite discrimination or prejudice of race, skin color, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity…What is determined in this article involves the practice of any kind of violent, constraining, threatening or humiliating action, of moral, ethical, philosophical or psychological order".

Although the legislation has stalled in the Brazilian Senate, the issue will be taken up again this fall. The Brazilian legal system has also begun to allow homosexual adoptions (see http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jul/05071202.html).

"Brazil Without Homophobia" also promises to promote the homosexual agenda at the international level, a commitment that the Lula regime has fulfilled with a rare enthusiasm. In 2003, 2004, and 2005 it introduced resolutions in the United Nations to declare homosexual orientation as a protected "right", but failed in every case. In 2006, the Lula administration began pushing the resolution within the Organization of American States (OAS), although to date it has not passed in that venue either.

Those who wish to contact Julio Severo may do so through his email address which is found at http://www.blogger.com/profile/03079977728841299575 He speaks English. His English blog can be found at http://lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com, and his Portuguese blog's address is http://juliosevero.blogspot.com.

For more information about what is being referred to as the rise of homosexual "fascism" in Brazil, readers may contact the Brazilian philosopher Dr. Olavo de Carvahlo at olavo@olavodecarvalho.com

Source: LifeSiteNews

Sunday, July 01, 2007

The right to alert against homosexuality: for how long?

The right to alert against homosexuality: for how long?

Julio Severo

Freedom of speech entitles us to say that drugs are harmful. Although human laws decriminalize drugs, those concerned about the health of young people will continue warning them of their dangers.

When tobacco use was cool and trendy, it was fashionable in the upper classes and entertainers to smoke a cigarette openly, but some churches made an effort to help those imprisoned in tobacco addiction. The value of measures to discourage smoking has only recently been recognized, but many forget that the banner against tobacco had already been raised in many churches a long time ago. I remember that I myself used to distribute, in my teen years, evangelistic tracts against tobacco, when there was no state effort against that addiction. As ever, the secular forces, especially the State, always arrive late.

Therefore, many decades before government efforts against smoking, ministers and churches were alerting people to the danger. Church members were strongly advised to abandon that addiction.

Deliverance services aimed at people in need of solution and restoration in problems as alcohol, cigarette, adultery, drugs, homosexuality, etc. In the deliverance services of a Baptist church, my own mother was healed from a serious disease and delivered from her smoking addiction.

No cigarettes or alcohol manufacturer has ever intimidated, sued or persecuted any evangelical church for its radical positions against those addictions. No motel or condom manufacturer has ever intimidated, sued or persecuted any evangelical church for its radical positions against sex outside of marriage. No television network or publisher has ever intimidated, sued or persecuted any evangelical church for its radical positions against immoral soap operas and pornographic magazines.

Yet, the homosexuality promoters, advocates, propagandists and sympathizers brazenly threaten, with total state support, to do what no cigarettes, alcohol, immoral soap operas, condoms and pornographic magazine manufacturers have never done against Christ’s followers and their churches. They want nothing less than total and unrestricted freedom for the homosexual sin.

Christ’s followers are in the vanguard of the most important ethical and social issues and they have good reasons to educate their congregations and the general public regarding each one of those issues. In the Bible, everything that damages the human body is seen as harmful, because the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. And as Christ’s followers and citizens, we have all right and freedom to point out evils and addictions, and also the solution — which is in Jesus Christ, as the Gospel presents.

Jesus Christ came to the world to save sinners and deliver them from their sins. Without that essential truth, the Gospel is turned into a distortion of God’s grace, where Christ would be presented just as a good man or a good Master. But, for Christians, he is Savior, because only he can save human beings completely from oppressions and illusions that imprison the heart.

Christ’s followers are free, whether the secular State accepts or not, to say that Christ delivers men from adultery, pornography, drugs, alcoholism, cigarette, homosexuality, etc., and to establish religious services, groups and healing centers for each one of those sins. They have every right to say that those choices, although consecrated in law, are wicked and destructive. And the public is entitled to hear that message

Even though the Bible doesn’t condemn cigarettes directly, the opposition of Christians is based on the belief that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. And the current government opposition to the tobacco addiction just confirms that Christians are ahead the State in important moral and ethical issues.

With good biblical, medical, psychological and social reasons, Christ’s true followers believe and teach that homosexuality is sin, perversion and abnormal. They have always believed and taught this way. However, the same government that has arrived late in responding to other threats to public moral, corporal, mental and spiritual health now creates hindrances to Christ’s followers that are committed to alert the public to serious threats to health.

Continuing in a long track of initiatives, programs and bills that combat those that reject the homosexual sin, the Lula administration, in one more hostile gesture against the eternal values of the Bible, is manifesting itself against an evangelical campaign of information on homosexuality.

VINACC (Portuguese acronym for National Vision for Christian Conscience), an evangelical association based on Campina Grande, Paraiba, Brazil, had begun a June campaign to alert the population on the risks of an anti-homophobia bill in the Brazilian Congress, using billboards, addressing a subject that has been an obsession in the society, government and media: homosexuality. The VINACC billboards just said: “Homosexuality: And God made male and female and he saw it was good”. Many homosexual groups protested, and the federal government issued an official declaration condemning the VINACC campaign. The same government that uses the excuse of the secular State to block the inclusion of the Christian values in the public-square issues now issues an official declaration condemning an evangelical campaign that only states that homosexuality is not God’s ideal for human beings. And the campaign did not even refer to homosexuality as a sin!

Newspapers and TV news services throughout Brazil reported the campaign. Then a local female judge ordered VINACC to remove its billboards, to not have its public meeting in defense of family, and to remove its manifesto from the VINACC website. VINACC complied.

According to its detractors, VINACC billboards, the public demonstration and the online manifesto promote homofobia. In a TV interview, the president of the NGO National Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS said that the federal Ministry of Health sent them message directing them to take legal measures regarding the case. The Ministry of Health, the judge and the homosexual groups accused the campaign of violating human rights and offending the Brazilian Constitution!

The VINACC campaign aimed to inform the society of the perils of an anti-homophobia bill in the Brazilian Congress (See the article The criminalization of homophobia in Brazil and the Christian churches). Homosexual militants and state authorities in Brazil assure us that its approval will not criminalize Biblical opposition to homosexuality. Yet, the Bible-based VINACC campaign in billboards and Internet was forbidden for crime of “homophobia”. Furthermore, a Brazilian minister has been recently sued for the same reason.

Source: http://www.lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com

Monday, June 18, 2007

English-Language Media Wildly Overestimated Brazil Gay Pride Numbers, Underestimated Pro-Family March

English-Language Media Wildly Overestimated Brazil Gay Pride Numbers, Underestimated Pro-Family March

Brazilian Gay Pride March vs March for Jesus: A Comparative Analysis

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

SAO PAULO, June 14, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Some three million Christians marched through the streets of the Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paulo last week, only three days before the annual “Gay Parade”, chanting slogans against homosexuality and affirming their religious beliefs. The “March for Jesus”, held June 7th, was organized by a major evangelical protestant ministry in Brazil and included over thirty live bands playing religious music, many placed on top of flatbed trucks that rolled through the main avenues of the city.

One minister led the crowd, paraphrasing a traditional Latin exorcism prayer with “Vade retro, Satan!”, adding “Vade retro, homosexuality!” (Get back, Satan! Get back homosexuality!). Although the Associated Press, Reuters, and other English-speaking news services claimed that only a million people attended the march, the mainstream Brazilian press widely reported that three million attended, citing the Policia Militar (Military Police).

When questioned by the media, marchers denied hostility towards homosexuals, and expressed concern for their well-being. "Through the Bible, we know that God doesn't agree with what they do," members of one church group from the Vila Carrão neighborhood of Sao Paulo told the Brazilian news service G1. "We condemn their actions, and never the people. What we want is for them to know God."

Another pastor who brought a group from his church denied that the march had anything to do with the "Gay Parade", emphasizing the positive aspect of it: "This is a demonstration in the name of Jesus. The two have nothing to do with each other." No violent incidents were reported during the march.

Three days later, the nation's annual "Gay Parade" presented a stark contrast to the March for Jesus. Over one million homosexual men and women marched down the city's main thoroughfare, many without shirts and dressed in drag outfits or wearing feathers.

They carried huge banners with the rainbow symbol that has been adopted by the international homosexual movement, and demanded an end to "machismo, racism, and homophobia". Last year's march resulted in the creation of a bill, currently pending in the Brazilian Congress, to outlaw all condemnations of homosexual behavior as "homophobia". The Gay Parade organizers this year demanded that such measures be accelerated.

Unlike the March for Jesus, the Gay Parade was frequently marred by violence between participants, according to Brazilian homosexual news outlets. G Online (the web version of G Magazine, a Brazilian homosexual publication), noted that “the G Online team, which covered the event throughout the day and throughout the march route, investigated various unpleasant scenes along the avenue (see photo on left). Shoving, fights, drunkenness and thefts were common during the Parade.” The photo to the left showed a man covered in blood slumped against a car.

The Brazilian homosexual web portal, MixBrasil stated glumly that “this year, marked by violence between the parade participants, families disappeared” from the march. “Assaults, fights on every corner, thefts, pure violence…a tragedy.”

Although the mainstream media generally quoted the parade organizers' estimate of 3.5 million attendees uncritically, both Reuters (quoted in The Australian) and the Brazilian news service Ultimo Segundo stated that the police only counted one million, while admitting that thousands more probably remained uncounted on side streets.

Also in stark contrast to the March for Jesus, this year's Gay Parade enjoyed heavy support from government and affiliated business institutions in Brazil. Unlike Parades in years past, this year's event was sponsored by Brazil's state energy company, Petrobras, as well as the state-owned Caixa Economica Federal Bank.

Major government officials were present for the event, including the Governor of Sao Paulo state, Jose Serra, and the Mayor of Sao Paulo, Gilbert Kassab. The Sao Paulo city government spent over $200 million to support the event, although profits from tourists attending the event were only calculated at $67.5 million, yielding tax revenues of only $35 million.

Among the expenditures by the government was a flyer containing the program for the event, as well as advice on how to avoid diseases when using injected narcotics. At some point the organizers suspended the flyer's distribution, apparently due to controversy.

Source: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jun/07061501.html