Friends of the MST

[03/01/08] Food & Energy Sovereignty Now: Brazilian Grassroots Position on Agroenergy

A New Report From the Oakland Institute & Terra de Direitos by Camila Moreno with Anuradha Mittal

[01/28/08] Biofuels a Lose-Lose Strategy, Critics Say

By Stephen Leahy U.S. biofuels production is driving up food prices around the world, giving billions of poor people a very good reason to hate U.S. policy, say environmentalists. "The U.S.

[01/27/08] Interview with Joao Pedro Stédile: ‘The WSF Has to Agree On Common Actions Against Common Enemies’

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 24 (IPS) - Joao Pedro Stédile thinks that the World Social Forum (WSF) should remain a debating arena for civil society, because with all its breadth and variety, to attempt to agree on resolutions is "an illusion." The Brazilian landless movement activist is also in favour of holding the WSF every three years, instead of annually, he said in an interview with IPS correspondent Mario Osava. A member of the group that founded the WSF in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001, Stédile is regarded as one of the main theorists of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), and he belongs to the local chapter of Vía Campesina, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO).

[01/16/08] MST Informa #148: For Fair Tax Reform

We begin this year by taking on an important battle for the development of our country around Tax Reform and reform of the current economic policy.

[12/31/07] MST Informa #147: In 2008 we will continue to struggle and to make the impossible possible!

Esteemed Friends of the MST,

[URGENT ACTION NEEDED] Stop the São Francisco River Project, Support Bishop Luiz Flavio Cappio's Hunger Strike. ACT NOW

Dear Friends of the MST, As we conveyed in the most recent MST Informa, many NGOs and social movements in Brazil are against government's plan to redirect water from the São Francisco river.

[12/15/07] Catholic Hierarchy Backs Bishop’s Hunger Strike

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 14 (IPS) - The upper echelons of the Brazilian Catholic Church have decided to lend their support to Bishop Luiz Cappio, who is on hunger strike against the diversion of water from the Sao Francisco river, after the government confirmed it would go ahead with the project.

The authorities argue that the work is essential to provide water for millions of poor people in the semi-arid northeast, the country’s poorest region.

The decision by the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB) was announced after a meeting between high-ranking Church representatives and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who told them that the project would continue, and that it was the Church’s own responsibility to intercede with Cappio to give up his fast, which he began on Nov. 27.