Over the weekend a group of armed gunmen invaded a five-star hotel in Rio de Janeiro, sparking a fatal shootout that lasted over three hours and left one woman dead and a police officer wounded. The group of 10 heavily armed men managed to escape police by running to the hillside shantytown of Rocinha, Brazil’s largest slum.

The incident is expected to trigger a further police crackdown on Brazil’s most popular tourist destination; as Rio gears up for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, there will be little lenience when it comes to ridding the city of its less desirable elements. Favelas like Rocinha are likely to be targeted by a recent government scheme of ‘pacification’ – the installation of police units on a permanent basis in Rio’s slums.

Since last year, the Police Pacification Unit (UPP) has occupied up to seven of Rio’s 1,000 or so favelas, including the Morro da Providência, Ladeira dos Tabajaras, and the City of God favela, made famous by Fernando Meirelle’s film.

Presidential hopeful Dilma Rousseff has commented that the shootout outside Rocinha is proof of the need for more pacification units. By the end of this year, according to Rio’s authorities, the police force will occupy up to 59 favelas, which they say will liberate some 210,000 residents from the rule of Rio’s drug lords.

But police are unlikely to receive a warm welcome from the people of Rocinha – at least, to start. Like most of Rio’s favela-dwellers, the community has a rocky history with the long arm of the law due to the high death toll from police raids on drug-traffickers, which often leave residents caught in the crossfire.  From 1998 to 2009, it was estimated that over 10,000 people were killed in Rio state from deadly police confrontations – on average, 2.4 deaths per day.

There is a worry that a permanent police presence will lead to more killings as the drug lords battle to reclaim their lost territory, but there are others who say that the situation could not get much grimmer anyway. Rio’s favelas, which account for some 20 per cent of the population, are generally ruled by Brazil’s three main drug gangs. Though, a more recent phenomenon has seen slums across Brazil come under the power of ex-cop vigilantes who have decided to administer their own controversial brand of justice. Which option is more dangerous for slum-dwellers, the drug lords or vigilante police, is hard to tell. After decades of violence, the pacification units may be a step forward.

So far, the majority of those living in favelas where the police have been placed report positive changes to their security situation. However, there have also been accounts of heavy-handed police searches and conflicts with residents accused of links to drug gangs. Meanwhile, other measures have been condemned by human rights groups, such as the prohibition of electronic funk parties.

Only time will tell if the new pacification scheme will have a lasting effect on Brazil’s infamously dangerous favelas. But already officials have pointed out that the key to its success will rest on one primary consideration: whether president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s replacement after the 3 October elections will be committed to bolstering the programme with other social projects, job growth and investment in the police force itself.

Earlier this month, Mexico’s conservative president Felipe Calderón’s last resort suggestion to tackle the drug lords and help his country’s flailing economy was to legalise marijuana.  Mexico may be more optimistic about  green shoots on the horizon – with a 7.6 per cent year-on-year rise in GDP reported in the Financial Times on Friday – but perhaps it won’t be the only green to emerge in Mexico’s economy.

Last year, Mexico’s former deputy agriculture minister, Jeffrey Jones, told some of the country’s farmers that they could learn a thing or two about supply and demand from the drug traffickers – he was later forced to resign. But many have quietly agreed with him.

The Mexican illegal drug market is one of the most successful businesses in the country. Last year, it employed up to 450,000 people, and according to the Wall Street Journal, accumulated up to US$20 billion in sales, just behind the oil and automotive sectors in revenue. In 2009, Forbes counted infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman as one of the world’s billionaires. If brought under the government tax system, arguably, the sale, production and distribution of drugs could provide a substantial source of income.

The US recession, swine flu and a spiralling war with the drug lords has seen Mexico take a major beating in the market; last year ended with a 6.5 per cent decline in economic activity.

Calderón has toyed with the idea of bringing marijuana under government control, as it accounts for half of the income of Mexico’s drug gangs. Though his conservative supporters may be wondering what he’s been smoking.

A staunch opponent of the narcotraffickers, many were shocked with his announcement at a security-focused round-table on 3 August calling for “a fundamental debate” on legalising cannabis.

Former president Vicente Fox quickly followed suit. Legalisation “does not mean that drugs are good… rather we have to see it as a strategy to strike and break the economic structure that allows mafias to generate huge profits in their business, which in turn serve to corrupt and to increase their power,” he was reported as saying by the Economist.

But others are not so sure. Former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda told reporters, “how would you continue with a war on drugs in Tijuana, when across the border grocery stores were selling marijuana?”

Since Calderón took office, some 28,000 people have been killed in Mexico’s narco-wars. The army has been deployed to handle what has become a national crisis, with no end in sight.

Given its vast trade links to its northern neighbour, a big question is whether Mexico’s economy can bounce back from the turmoil that has abounded since the recession in the US, and if legalising marijuana would help or hinder that process.

A further consideration is that – while perhaps not attracting the most desired clientele – Mexico’s tourism sector would certainly see a boost if legalisation were to go ahead. Few Americans are likely to book pricey getaways to Amsterdam with legal marijuana in their ‘own backyard’.

Can life for Haitians, most still living amid the rubble, debris and skeletons of the January earthquake, become any more nightmarish? It appears that it can, as the devastated country may soon fall into the hands of former Fugees singer and pop star Wyclef Jean- whose first policy will be to name Haiti’s towns after food stuffs.

The Haitian-born musician has cast his bid for the presidency in the country’s first elections following the earthquake, due 28 November. Jean has played a major role in delivering emergency aid to Haiti and has garnered huge popularity in his native home for his musical success.

But the prospect of the US-based rapper – who left Haiti at age 9 and has no prior political experience – guiding this broken country out of the ashes is little more than farcical. Is fame and money enough to secure a free ticket to Haiti’s crumbling presidential palace? The idea is offensive to the millions of suffering Haitians who have surely reached their height of tolerance  for the cruel absurdities that fate has thrown at them.

Though you can’t fault Wyclef Jean for caring at least – a characteristic not exactly shared by another celebrity who made a strange appearance in the politics pages of the news this week for her part in the war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor.

US supermodel Naomi Campbell told the judge, as she testified against Taylor who allegedly gave her blood diamonds as a gift, that giving witness at the international war crimes tribunal was “a big inconvenience”.

But while Campbell begrudgingly entered the political sphere, many more celebrities are finding a new outlet for their creative souls that even beats yoga. Musicians like the Pixies and Elvis Costello have protested the Gaza flotilla incident by refusing to play in Israel, Oliver Stone has stuck it to the US with his new film, South of the Border, displaying his Stone-esque (mis)understanding of Latin American history and politics, and Madonna has continually made headlines through her attempts to raid African countries of their offspring.

Jean will not be the first celeb to dabble in politics; Venezuelan beauty queen Irene Saez competed against Hugo Chavez in the 1998 presidential race. And while not qualified for the US presidency due to his Austrian background, action film hero Arnold Schwarzenegger became the governor of California in 2003.

It has still not been determined whether Jean will be able to run for the presidency under the rules of the constitution, but if the pop star is given a shot at the race, it will be up to Haitians to determine whether a hip hop president is what the country needs.  Haiti has fewer options than wealthier countries, and there is no doubt that it’s low GDP makes it easier for anyone with a limo and the right passport to run in the polls.

But it is up to the Haitian people to cut through the celebrity culture and misplaced idolisation, which is responsible for bringing a new breed of famous, wealthy and unqualified people into the political arena.

If Wikileaks has ‘blood on its hands’ than I hate to think what the leaders of the UK and US are covered in.

The website which “publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct” headed by Julian Assange, has come under fire in recent days for leaking thousands of documents providing detailed first-hand accounts of the war in Afghanistan to newspapers, the Guardian, the New York Times, and Der Speigel.

The Pentagon has come out saying that Wikileaks’ decision was irresponsible, and the lives of military personnel and Afghanis who colluded with the military are now under grave risk.

US admiral Mike Mullen was reported by the Guardian as saying: “Mr Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family.”

WikiLeaks had withheld about 15,000 intelligence reports to protect the identity of informants, according to the Guardian. But some of the published documents do contain information about Afghanis who cooperated with coalition forces.

Perhaps Wikileaks could have taken more precaution to strike the names of informants from the documents. But then again, couldn’t the Guardian, Der Speigel and the New York Times have done the same?

Funny, how the major media publications responsible for bringing the secret war logs into the public eye have not heard a peep of disapproval from US authorities. Yet the small, somewhat unknown media site with far less resources, cash and prominence shoulders all of the blame.

Their security policy may have been dealt a blow, but the US military’s PR strategists are savvy enough to focus  their efforts on discrediting Assange, a much easier target than the respectable news sites that, just like Wikileaks, published documents that were leaked to them.

Meanwhile, the US government has failed to acknowledge the hundreds of unreported civilian deaths that have been revealed by the documents, and Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has made no official statement concerning claims that two UK military units had caused an ‘exceptional’ amount of civilian casualties.

In November 2007, civilians were shot on four separate occasions in Kabul by a newly deployed detachment of Coldstream Guards. Royal Marine troops are also alleged to have shot civilians who came ‘too close’ to convoys or patrols on eight occasions in Helmand province during a six-month period in 2008. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported 828 civilian deaths in the same year as a result of “pro-government forces”.

UNAMA says that these incidents, “are of continuing concern”, where unarmed drivers, car passengers and motorcyclists continue to come under fire.

It is pretty rich for the US military, UK military and their political leaders to single out Wikileaks as having responsibility for the deaths accruing in Afghanistan. If the military did not have such a shocking record of civilian casualties to hide, then such ‘leaks’ would have far less gravitas, and would not need to happen.

BP, the current whipping boy of US public opinion after the Gulf of Mexico disaster, has managed to ingratiate itself even further into America’s bad books for its alleged lobbying campaign over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – the only man to be convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

As the spluttering British oil giant gasps for breathing space, some on the other side of the Atlantic question whether the US interrogation and media storm is justified.

Megrahi was released from prison last year by the Scottish executive on compassionate grounds, as it was believed that the Libyan national had only three months left to live. Today, he is still alive. And Washington, which was far from pleased with the decision at the time, is now even less pleased. To add insult to injury, the oil company responsible for destroying the entire Lousiana coastline supposedly had a hand in Megrahi being set free, admitting that it lobbied for a fast-track approach for a prisoner transfer with Libya to promote its commercial interests in the country.

The story does not exactly leave BP smelling like roses, but it does beg a much bigger question about the role of private companies in politics and whether lobbying a government over political decisions for commercial gain is fair play. It also brings into question whether this blame game, in light of the evidence that Megrahi may have been wrongly convicted, is justified at all.

This matter aside, there is still the point that a. lobbying is not, and is unlikely to ever become, illegal and b. the US would never have cared about BP’s ties to Libya were it not for the black slick covering its once-pristine beaches and oiled pelicans blasting the front page of the papers for the past three months.

“If that [lobbying for the prison transfer] is the extent of BP’s involvement, it has no reason to apologise,” writes Daily Telegraph commentator Tracy Corrigan. “In fact, as oil-industry lobbying goes, this seems a rather benign example. Oil is a particularly political industry. Many big oil companies are an arm of their respective governments, and energy security is a legitimate national interest.”

Though, the argument swings both ways. If an oil company has enough political clout to act as an “arm of its respective government” then surely it has the potential to become a more dangerous adversary? This feeds into the thinking in the US, as the scandal has led to an investigation into BP’s dealings with the ‘rogue state’ and its role in Megrahi’s release.

The former MI6 officer Sir Mark Allen, a special adviser to BP after leaving the intelligence services, has been summoned by the Senate to give evidence over BP’s role in the prisoner transfer, and BP executive and America’s most hated, Tony Hayward, has also been asked to appear.

While hardly rallying to the defense of big oil, holding BP accountable for its alleged support for the release of Megrahi at the very least lacks consistency. In the US, where lobbying is the cornerstone of its free, fair and industry-financed elections, America’s agenda toward BP seems about as clean and clear as the Gulf waters.

As 60,000 barrels of oil continue to spew into the Gulf of Mexico per day, BP is likely to face a cold reception across the Atlantic as it looks to gain access to Brazil’s prized pre-salt oil reserves.

Only a month before the Deepwater Horizon well explosion, BP’s prospects were promising. The British oil giant had managed to secure a deal with Devon Energy to acquire 10 exploration blocks in the ‘pre-salt’ basin – so called because the oil fields are buried beneath 2,000 metres of water, and a further 5,000 metres of rock, salt and sand below the seabed.

That was in March. Since the signed agreement, BP has faced the biggest PR nightmare imaginable for an oil company, with the media, environmentalists and the entire US population blaming the British operator for one of the world’s greatest oil spills.

Brazil may not have as much venom for BP as the US, but there is no doubt that the government, environmental agencies and oil and gas regulator, the ANP, will look at BP’s plans to set up shop in Brazil with new eyes. And much greater caution.

The ANP, which is tasked with approving new operators in the country, has said that it will review the BP Devon deal with the BP spill in mind. Even if the regulator wants to give BP the green light, it cannot ignore the huge political pressure to reconsider, and politicians are expected to call on the ANP to explain its decision – prolonging what is already likely to be a lengthy process.

But Brazilian lawyers say that the oil regulator – certain to evaluate the operational capabilities of the troubled company with a fine-tooth comb – should not expect to go beyond its remit without facing possible legal repercussions. That is to say, if the ANP rejects BP for being unable to meet its financial requirements for drilling in Brazil, it could face a court battle.

This comes after the regulator was reported to have been concerned with BP’s finances due to billions of dollars lost to the spill fallout. However, the ANP head, Haraldo Lima has since denied that this is a consideration in its investigation.

Whatever its decision, the ANP is facing a tough battle – as the BP accident must be weighed in consideration of the huge challenges already facing operators in the pre-salt. The reserves are much further from shore than the Gulf, and nearly twice as deep, making drilling much more difficult.

But for many international oil companies, the rewards far outweigh the costs. The pre-salt, discovered in 2007, is believed to contain up to 50 billion barrels of oil. And with the Gulf effectively out of commission, the value of having access to Brazil’s oil goldmine has just gotten bigger.

BP was one of the lucky ones to have gotten in before the government looks to place a cap of its own on foreign-run oil projects, as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva plans to reform the current concession regime and replace it with power-sharing agreements – expected to give the government greater control over oil rights in the pre-salt region.

Of course, much has changed since the British company first made inroads into Brazil, and BP’s luck has most certainly run out.

Economically-thriving Brazil is the modern success story – and one that few people could take fault with. While not as right-wing as its neighbors in Chile and Colombia, it doesn’t raise the blood pressure of Washington like the firebrand Venezuela. It is the paradigm of centrist politics, and the main candidates in Brazil’s upcoming elections appear to be cut from the same cloth.

As the Guardian commentator Conor Foley writes, “it would be difficult to squeeze a credit card between the politics of Serra and his opponent Dilma Rousseff.”

The former São Paulo governor, conservative candidate José Serra promises to do more for business in Brazil than his rival Rousseff. But the Brazilian Social Democratic party (PSDB) leader – once a Marxist in his youth fighting against the Brazilian dictatorship – is not planning on doing much differently than his counterpart on the ‘left’. Both candidates promote a middle-ground between state capitalism and neoliberalism, and neither plan to alter the legislative landscape of Brazil’s economy with any real substantive reforms.

International markets, of course, are having a field day. Few elections are so predictable, stable, and guaranteed to keep the herd in toe, no matter the outcome.

The only area where there is any (industry) cause for concern is perhaps the oil sector. In August last year president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva proposed a reform of the country’s current Oil Law for its deepwater reserves, replacing the concession regime – which awards leases to international oil companies granting them rights over oil production – with power-sharing agreements (PSA) that would put the government in control of the reservoir. Under the proposed PSA regime, state-owned oil giant Petrobras will become the sole operator in the pre-salt basin, and will be granted a minimum 30 per cent participation in the remaining un-leased blocks. The pre-salt region, which is believed to hold 50 billion barrels of oil, is lauded as a goldmine for future drilling – and up to 72 per cent of the exploration blocks have yet to be leased.

The legislation was delayed in Congress last week, and is due to be voted on after the presidential elections. If Serra wins, he will scrap the PSA proposal. If Rousseff wins, the former energy minister under Lula’s administration will most certainly push ahead with the bill. The reform is seen as a major blow to international oil companies, and has given them a stake in the election result.

But the oil companies would rather see the PSA regime come into effect quickly than continue to wait for new bidding rounds – as the government will not allow auctions to take place until the reform bill is decided. Even if Rousseff wins, the legislation is likely to be approved swiftly and allow bidding rounds to re-start, which is wholly welcomed by investors.

Rousseff and Serra also share another characteristic which makes them investor-friendly:  if their election campaigning is anything to go by, they are uncharismatic, deeply boring, public speakers. And their rhetoric is unlikely to move markets.

The successor to Colombia’s right-wing president Alvaro Uribe, former defense minister Juan Manuel Santos, has won the presidential race by a landslide. But while Colombians can count on another four years of ‘security’ in the war against the leftist FARC guerilla group, what will this mean for the country’s growing displaced?

Colombia’s refuge crisis has been largely overlooked on the campaign trail; the issue was only mentioned once out of more than six televised presidential debates.

This lack of coverage is shocking when you consider that up to 3.3 million Colombians have been forced from their homes in the last 30 years, putting Colombia only second to Sudan in its number of internally displaced people (IDP).

Human rights activists say that the problem of Colombia’s displaced is the lack of visibility. In Bogotá, a city of eight million, most refuge families live in the hilltop slums where they are barricaded from their wealthier northern neighbours, and rarely interact with one another.

“In Colombia, there are no huge refugee camps like in Sudan. Here displacement is very invisible,” a Colombia researcher at Amnesty International, Marcelo Pollack, was quoted as saying in the Reuters Alertnet bulletin.

Meanwhile, as refugees pack into the urban shanty towns, a new rural exodus has also begun.

Under Uribe, the military has stepped up its offensive in FARC strongholds in the jungle provinces near Colombia’s border with Ecuador, and the communities living there – mostly comprised of Afro-Colombian and indigenous groups – are often caught in the crossfire.

A whopping 300,000 people were added to the displaced list in 2008, up from 230,000 four years earlier, according to government data.

“The dynamics of the conflict have changed,” says Pollack. “It has dispersed away from the urban cities to the peripheries were many Afro-Colombians and indigenous groups live, making them more vulnerable and increasingly hard hit.”

The fall in kidnapping and murder rates as a result of Colombia’s tough security policy has given former president Uribe unprecedented popularity at home (around 60 per cent approval ratings), and Santos is expected to carry the mantle, winning nearly 70 per cent of the vote. But the wealth gap and human rights have taken a backseat in the domestic political arena as a result.

The annual budget for displaced persons has increased more than five-fold in the last decade, but human rights groups say that this has not significantly improved the lives of refugees.

Nearly half of Colombia’s population of 45 million lives in poverty. A displaced family of five typically lives in abject poverty, surviving on less than US$10 a day.

The Colombian constitutional court has ruled that the government has failed to fulfill its legal obligations to provide housing, job opportunities and training for displaced families.

On 7 August, Colombia’s new president, a devoted conservative with a background in economics, is due to take the reins. But it is unlikely that Colombia’s invisible people will make an appearance on Santos’s priority list.

I wake up and it’s the first thing I do after lurching myself away from the warmth of my pillow. I go to work and continue using it for eight hours until the end of the day. Hop on my bike, head home, and back again to gorge on news sites, Facebook, emails and blogging. The signs are all there, the level of usage is staggering. Have I become a webaholic?

Losing my laptop for a month while it was being repaired in April nearly drove me over the edge, and has left me wondering whether modern technology is becoming a modern addiction.

In the US, computer users at work change windows or check e-mail or other programs nearly 37 times an hour, while at home people consume 12 hours of media a day compared to five hours in 1960, according to researchers at the University of California.

The launch of mobile devices connected to the web, the growth of social media networks and the 24 hour news cycle has catapulted us into an era where the internet is no longer a recreational or work-time activity – it is an appendage.

We are pumped information through a Google feed and bombarded by Apple Apps that make real life extraneous. Why sit by a pond when you can listen to the ripples bounce off your finger on the iphone’s virtual Koi Pond? Or meet someone by chance when the StreetSpark app can find your soul mate for you?

Of course many of these services are too gimmicky to have a lasting impact on society (one hopes!), but there are some worrying real-time affects caused by internet overload.

Scientists have found that the deluge of information can change how people think and behave; our ability to focus is undermined by rapid bursts of information.

“These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored,” explains Matt Richtel in the New York Times.

This makes it difficult to concentrate and process information coherently – a symptom that I am all too familiar with, having not read a full book in months and unable to focus on writing without a Facebook break every five minutes. And then there is the stress. That ‘addictive dopamine squirt’ can also make it difficult to unwind after a long day. The internet has made us all multi-taskers, and we are great for keeping the balls juggled, but there doesn’t seem to be an off switch.

According to health experts, this can make it difficult to shut out irrelevant information and lead to fractured thinking. (Ahem, time for a quick Facebook check…)

So the answer is yes, I am addicted to my computer and it is decidedly not good for me to spend my waking life on the internet. I wonder if there is an app for kicking the habit…

If the world’s top business leaders and politicians meet in a forest, and no one is around to hear what they say…

Then we’re all pretty screwed. Or at least, that is the opinion of Charlie Skelton, one of the few journalists that even know what Bilderberg is (I confess, I too was in the dark).

“I’ve spoken to countless news agencies and outlets in the last few weeks, and the most common response, from journalists, editors and commissioners, is: ‘I’m sorry, the Bilderberg what?’”, writes Skelton in the Guardian. “Seriously, if you work on the foreign desk of a major news corporation and you’re at the “Bilderberg what?” level of political awareness, you need to think about getting a different job. Get with the programme. Shimmy up a pine tree. Take a leaflet. Resign. You’re not helping anyone.”

Bilderberg is the annual meeting of the world’s top CEOs, politicians, heads of international financial organizations and media moguls – but the level of secrecy surrounding the event has kept it largely unknown to the public for years. You might be reading the aforementioned sentence and think, “wait a minute, she did mention media moguls, right?” Evidently, they have a vested interest in keeping the story off the news agenda too.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped Bilderberg from slowly seeping out to democracy activists and protestors, those pesky types who think that the world’s movers and shakers should let us know where we’re going (no, its not Disney Land) and just maybe, give us a say.

As more people have become aware of Bilderberg, the media blackout on the conference is gradually evaporating. This week, the summit is going on in Sitges, and Al Jazeera, The Times, the Today Programme and Russia Today are among the media agencies already on the scene.

There is still the heavy handed police deleting camera footage from protesters, and delegates entering the hotel through underground entrances to avoid being spotted, but it may only be a matter of time before the brains behind Bilderberg concoct a better PR strategy.

It does not take a rocket scientist to work out that shrouding a high-level summit in secrecy is the best way to get people interested. Sometimes the best kept secrets are hidden in broad view. Britain has perfected this strategy swimmingly.

Only in the UK could a cross-examination of the key decision-makers behind the most controversial war in the country’s history evoke not so much as a whimper from the British public. And the Iraq Inquiry was filmed live, I repeat, FILMED everyday of the hearing. Anyone could tune in and watch Sir John Chilcot politely inquire about Mr. Blair’s thoughts on the war – most gave up after 10 minutes to do something more stimulating, like paint their nails or brush up on 9th grade Algebra.

What’s clear is that the veil of secrecy may be lifting, but the veil of ignorance on Bilderberg is still very much intact. As one reader commented on Skelton’s post, “Why should I care if a bunch of businessmen meet for a conference?”

The question is akin to asking why anyone should care about the contents of the FBI’s top secret files. It could be a very elaborate strategy to beat Sudoku. But if the small elite who run the world feel the need to keep it hidden, damned if I wouldn’t want to know about it!