Brazil/The Ravaging of Amazonia

Updated Aug. 25, 2019, The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/24/opinion/sunday/amazon-fire.html

By Vanessa Barbara*

A global treasure lies at the mercy of the smallest, dullest, pettiest of men.

São Paulo, Brazil — When I first set foot in the Amazon rain forest, in the Anavilhanas Archipelago, northwest of the city of Manaus, I experienced something that can only be described as awe: an overwhelming sense of connection with the universe. Cheesy, I know. But this is something that we rarely feel — only upon seeing a clear tropical night sky, or the ghostly flickering of the northern lights or even the vastness of a French Gothic cathedral.

Image

A protestor against the deforestation of the Amazon outside the Brazilian embassy 

in Mumbai on Friday.CreditIndranil Mukherjee/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

From the outside, the Amazon is a massive, undistinguished canopy of trees, but once you’re inside it, it is indeed a “monumental universe,” in the words of the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. It has a strikingly layered structure: The soil lies beneath an entanglement of roots, mosses and decomposing leaves; pale trunks appear and disappear as they climb up into the lush foliage. The tallest trees can reach up to 200 feet, almost the height of the towers of Notre-Dame. And now it is their turn to burn.

The first sign that the Amazon would not have a good year came this month, when the government sacked the head of the National Institute for Space Research, the physicist Ricardo Galvão, who was unpatriotic enough to release data showing a 278 percent jump in deforestation in July compared with the same month the

Mercosul, Brazil/‘Tropical Trump’ sparks unprecedented crisis for Brazilian science

01 August 2019, Update 02 August 2019, Nature (UK) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02353-6#correction-0

Jeff Tollefson

FOTO DESMATAMENTO A dispute over the rate of deforestation in Brazil's Amazon (pictured) is the latest sign of tension between the country's researchers and its president.Credit: Nacho Doce/Reuters

Tensions are rising as Jair Bolsonaro’s administration questions the work of government scientists and institutes debilitating cuts to research funding. 

A dispute over the rate of deforestation in Brazil's Amazon (pictured) is the latest sign of tension between the country's researchers and its president.Credit: Nacho Doce/Reuters

When neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro presented a preview of a report on the dire state of research in Brazil at a meeting of a major scientific society on 23 July, several government soldiers entered the room and began filming. Some in the audience took the soldiers’ actions as a show of intimidation.

“Maybe these guys were just soldiers who want to learn about science,” says Ribeiro, a researcher at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal. He coordinated the analysis on behalf of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC), which hosted the meeting and commissioned the report. But it didn’t look like they were there out of curiosity, Ribeiro says.

The incident is the latest example of the rising tensions between the country's scientists and President Jair Bolsonaro's administration. Since Bolsonaro took office in January, Brazil’s researchers have faced funding cuts and repeated attempts by the administration to roll back protections for

Brasil/Deforestation in Brazil has rocketed since Bolsonaro became president

22 July 2019, New Scientist Environment https://www.newscientist.com/article/2210621-deforestation-in-brazil-has-rocketed-since-bolsonaro-became-president/

Recently exposed soil (orange) and cattle ranches (light green) around the Juruena River in Brazil

Oton Barros/DSR/OBT/INPE

By Adam Vaughan

Satellite images suggest that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has shot up since Jair Bolsonaro became president in January, despite his claim on Friday that the data “lies”.

More than 3700 square kilometres of forest has been deforested this year, an area about a fifth the size of Wales, preliminary satellite data indicates. Even before figures for the whole of July are in, the losses for the first seven months of the year are up 16 per cent on the recent high of 3183 square kilometres in 2016.

The world’s greatest rainforest is not only home to a rich diversity of species and around 400 indigenous groups, but is also a vast store of carbon that is vital for tackling climate

Brazil and the US – a Neoliberal Alliance Under Bolsonaro and Trump

July 19, 2019, Strategic Culture Foundation http://www.strategic-culture.org (Russia) https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/07/19/brazil-and-us-neoliberal-alliance-under-bolsonaro-trump/

Ramona Wadi*

Brazil’s shift to the right-wing has been lauded by the US, which is still not over its penchant for foreign meddling in Latin America. Jair Bolsonaro, who has made news headlines for all the wrong reasons, notably disregard for climate change, indigenous rights and education, has altered the previous diplomacy by prioritising global investment over regional ties, thus facilitating the country’s exploitation.

For the US, of course, this is welcome news. An unnamed US official declared, “Even the friendliest of Brazilian governments was never really that friendly. Here we have now a government in Brazil we truly consider an ally.”

The tactics may have changed – there is enough history of US-backed dictatorships in Latin America to have fomented fractured societies, to the point than a shift to the right-wing through elections was only a matter of time. Brazil was no