BRASIL: Newspaper Says WikiLeak's Assange May Seek Asylum In Rio; Lula Refuses To Extradite Italian Terrorist Cesare Battisti; Huge Tupi Oil Field Will Be Renamed After Lula.

BUZZFLASH/ NIKOLAS KOZLOFF /

   The Spanish newspaper El Pais reports that Julian Assange is considering Brasil as a new home and WikiLeaks base.
   Assange reportedly said: Brasil... "is sufficiently large so as to resist U.S. pressure; the country has the requisite economic and military means to do so." He added that Brasil "is not like China or Russia which are intolerant toward freedom of the press."
    Outgoing President "Lula" da Silva has defended Assange, calling him a champion of free expression. "I don't know if they put up signs like those from Westerns saying, 'wanted dead or alive.'The man was arrested and I'm not seeing any protest defending freedom of expression...Instead of blaming the person who disclosed it, blame the person who wrote this nonsense. Otherwise, we wouldn't have the scandal we now have."
     But that's Lula. What does president-elect Dilma Rousseff think about WikiLeaks and Assange?
   Also, as Kozloff explains, Brasil does not come off looking strong nor innocent in some of the cables, especially during the GW Bush years.

ALSO:  The media report that Lula da Silva will not extradite former Italian terrorist Cesare Battisti, posing a possible challenge to Brasil's ties with Italy.
    Brasil's supreme court ruled last year that Battisti should be extradited on murder convictions in Italy but gave the final decision to Lula.
    Battisti denies killing anyone and says he is being persecuted politically in Italy. He faces life in prison there for murders in the 1970s when he belonged to a guerrilla group.
FOR DETAILS, SEE:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/29/brazilian-president-extradite-cesare-battisti

ALSO:    Oil giant Petrobras has announced that it will rename its biggest offshore Tupi oil field after outgoing President Lula da Silva. Brasil's the crown jewel in the so-called subsalt oil fields will now be known simply as the "Lula." President Lula da Silva responded by saying : "I'm proud," he told reporters. "But it's not my name -- it's a (mollusk)."
FOR DETAILS, SEE:
http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFN2928116520101229

BRASIL: U.S. Exploited Internal Divisions To Stem Leftward Tilt.

BUZZFLASH/ Longish ANALYSIS and OPINION/ NIKOLAS KOZLOFF :
   "...Crucial to Washington's geopolitical effort in the hemisphere is Brazil, a nation which forms part of the so-called leftist "Pink Tide" but which nonetheless has stable relations with the United States. In recent years, the U.S. has sought to drive a wedge between leftist Venezuela and Bolivia on the one hand and so-called more "responsible" progressive governments like Brazil.
     Recent Wikileaks disclosures illuminate how the U.S. does business in Brazil: by cultivating high level contacts in the Brazilian defense establishment in an effort to counterbalance more hostile anti-U.S. diplomats at Itamaraty, the nation's Ministry for Foreign Affairs."