Well, countries will commit war on behalf of oil (and infrastructure) corporations, so doing the right thing won't happen until all the wrong incentives dry up. One interesting development out of Petrobras though is Lua, which is a great scripting language with lots of advanced features.

Please elaborate. I didn't quite understand what you said. What's societal stratification and why can it only be described as social apartheid? What are you talking about?

By way of clarification I guess I should explain that in Brazil there is a sizable segment of the population that lives in abject poverty. Frequently inhabiting tenement areas that are really no more than shanty towns, called 'Favelas'. High crime, few educational or employment opportunities, disease and hunger are all found throughout Brazil in these areas. There is also a racial component as well, as Blacks or darker skinned people are disproportionately represented in the impoverished class.

As these types of problems can lead to social unrest, which inevitably impacts politics and trade, I was intimating that the sort of reliance on Brazilian Oil that the author of the article implicitly postulates is unwise.

So it's unwise because Brazil has social problems? So reliance would be bad because it would be supporting those social problems? Is that your point?

No. My point is that the chances of trade disruptions due to social unrest in Brazil is uncomfortably high. Further, the chances of trade disruptions due to ... 'demagogue comes along and tells the impoverished masses that they are being ripped off' ... is a virtual certainty in the presence of oil wealth.

It is not the social problems that I take issue with, the Brazilians can run their nation as they see fit. It is the fact that these social problems have a high probability of developing into something that would adversely effect us if we were dependent on Brazil that I object to.