Lula’s Oil Dream
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on September 18th, 2008 4:28 am by HL
Lula’s Oil Dream
SAO PAULO, Brazil — In the United States, offshore drilling is so controversial that it has become the stuff of heated presidential campaign debate. But in Brazil, it is so popular that everyone wants a piece of it. The Tupi oil field, an underwater formation discovered in Brazil’s Santos Basin at the end of last year, contains some of the world’s largest known reserves. And it is fast eroding some myths about Brazil. The Brazilian government owns the majority of the voting shares in Petrobras, the company that discovered Tupi, but about 60 percent of the total shares are traded publicly. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his supporters are not happy with the idea that Petrobras should get its hands on the Tupi reserves because much of the profits would go to private investors. They want a new state-owned energy company to own and exploit those reserves.
The Book-Banners Hollywood Ignores
Have you ever heard Hollywood liberals talk about suspected Islamic jihadists the way they talk about suspected Republican “book-banners”? The September 11 terrorist attacks didn’t turn celebrity leftists into hawks. But the minute they started reading false rumors about Sarah Palin restricting unfettered access to “Daddy’s Roommate” and “Heather Has Two Mommies” in her hometown library, Tinseltown’s docile doves became militant warmongers. Actor Matt Damon, parroting left-wing Internet lies about Sarah Palin censoring novels while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, took a defiant stand against the “terrifying possibility” of a McCain-Palin victory. “We can’t have” book-banning, he inveighed.
