I don’t plead with this community to read my diaries and act on my issues (With one exception, when Trump came to Mar-a-Lago for the first time after the electoral college failed their constitutional duty and installed a President when it was abundantly clear that he was incapable of doing the job). But I am today. Please don’t scroll down and look away because all of you can help and some of you can help more than others to protect the Amazon and marginalized communities throughout Brazil. I’ll tell you more about that if you let me.
I asked this community to share a Women’s March protest in West Palm Beach a couple of years ago, and wow, did you ever respond. That March went from a couple of hundred to thousands overnight and thousands marched in defiance of Trump. The FB share seemed to have been zeroed out in the linked diary, but IIRC, the share count was over 11,000. I thank you for that, this site proved that there was no safe place that Trump could hide and not face the Resistance.
But this moment in time is different, a very unusual dark and brutal evil has again shadowed the earth, and I am asking for your help.
See, there is a monster occupying the Palácio do Planalto in Brazil. President Jair Bolsonaro makes Donald Trump look like a cub scout in comparison if you did not already know that.
Let me share action items first if you don’t mind, as my diaries tend to be lengthy and I suspect some readers get overwhelmed, before providing an overview of the evil unleashed in Brazil. So let's get to it.
Change.org has a petition to protect Amazonia from destruction and genocide. Please share far and wide on your social media.
Stop Bolsonaro from destroying the Amazon!
If you or someone you know owns funds from BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, this is for you. Give them a call, email and let them know that if they do not act their reputation will suffer. “ If these influential companies don’t take a clear and principled stand against Mr. Bolsonaro’s promises to open the Amazon for business, they will also bear responsibility for abetting his plunder of the world’s largest tropical rain forest”. The Amazon is the earths lungs if Bolsonaro succeeds it will be game over for the climate.
Recommendations To the management of JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, and other financial institutions investing in Amazon crude: 1. Fully disclose, in mainstream financial filings, material climate-related holdings, loans, and investments, especially those related to fossil fuel infrastructure and exploration or extraction in the Amazon.89 2. Remove from all portfolios any financing of exploration or drilling of Amazon crude and do so on a public timeline. 3. Urge the Equator Principles Association to adopt new, stronger principles.90 To the customers, investors, and owners of private financial institutions investing in companies that explore or drill for Amazon crude: 1. Pressure the financial institutions with which you have relationships to effectively incorporate the full range of legal, environmental, political, and financial risks of investing in fossil fuel companies into risk analyses. 2. Urge the financial institutions with which you have relationships to align their practices with their stated values. 3. Demand that the financial institutions with which you have relationships fully divest from Amazon crude. 4. If the the financial institutions with which you have relationships do not make these changes, divest from them, let them know why, and invest in just renewable energy solutions
Leila Salazar-López: Bolsonaro Wants to Plunder the Amazon. Don’t Let Him.
Where would these powerful agribusiness companies get the capital they need to bulldoze deeper into the Amazon, if they should take Mr. Bolsonaro up on his offer to eliminate environmental protections?
In no small part from American-based asset managers BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, which are shareholders in all five of the largest publicly traded agribusiness companies operating in the Brazilian Amazon. As a group of researchers recently demonstrated, the “Big Three” asset managers hold 15 percent to 20 percent of all of A.D.M. and Bunge’s available shares (finance researchers call ownership above 5 percent of all shares “blockholding” and generally assume it to imply significant influence).
This means they have the potential to exert pressure on the very companies that could either moderate or enable Mr. Bolsonaro’s threats to the future of the Amazon – and the climate. Many Americans, in turn, have a direct relationship with those asset managers, since those firms manage many pension funds and retirement accounts.
I commit to you that I will continue to write and share as the situation unfolds.
A wheat-paste piece of street art by artist Luis Bueno shows pays tribute to the murdered Rio de Janeiro council woman Marielle Franco. A civil rights leader from Rio, Franco, 38, was a threat to the status quo. She was assassinated in a drive by shooting. The bullet casings were found to be from the Federal police. Black Kos covered her death here and here. - Breaking news; from Black Women Brazil: Recent corruption charges of president’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, and links to militias lead to a shocking possibility: Involvement in the murder of Rio councilwoman Marielle Franco RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - 2014/10/04: In a protest against homophobia, two scantily clad activists kissed in front of the Candelaria church in a mock crucifixion in downtown Rio on Saturday. The women have painted on their bodies the words 'Vote against Homo phobia'. The protesters demand that voters put aside religious issues when voting in elections this Sunday. The first anti-LGBT move made by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on his first day in office has left LGBT Brazilians “fearful but defiant,” according to Leandro Ramos, director of programs at international advocacy organization All Out. On the first day of his presidency Bolsonaro removed LGBT concerns from the remit of the country’s new human rights ministry. From The Daily Beast 2 A jaguar ambushes a giant jacare caiman high up on the Three Brothers River in the Pantanal in Mato Grosso, Brazil. The cat wrestled with the reptile for over twenty minutes in a death struggle witnessed by photographer Chris BrunskillThe climate and Amazonia. Will President Bolsonaro withdraw Brazil from the Paris Agreement? (commentary)
Jair Bolsonaro, who is often labeled the “tropical Trump,” is unpredictable in many ways, but one pattern that has become clear is his finding ways to work around any backtracking he may be forced to do on controversial topics. The end result is that his original agenda is achieved anyway. One example: dropping his promise to abolish the Environment Ministry but effectively eliminating its functions.
With the Paris Agreement, he may make good on his threats to withdraw if his demands for alterations in the agreement are not met, or he may stay in the accord and simply ignore the mitigation measures to which Brazil committed itself. Either path poses a danger to global climate and to Amazonia.
The Quilombo’s and genocide of Indigneous tribes.
Capoeira or the Dance of War by Johann Moritz Rugendas, 1825, published in 1835. Capoeira (Portuguese pronunciation: [kapuˈejɾɐ / ka'pwɐjɾɐ]) is an Afro-Brazilianmartial art that combines elements of dance,[1][2][3]acrobatics,[4] and music.[5][6] It was developed by African slaves in Brazil[7] at the beginning of the 16th century.[8] It is known for its quick and complex maneuvers, predominantly using power, speed, and leverage across a wide variety of kicks, spins, and other techniques. The most widely accepted origin of the word capoeira comes from the Tupi words ka'a ("jungle") e pûer ("it was"),[citation needed] referring to the areas of low vegetation in the Brazilian interior where fugitive slaves would hide. wiki 1During a speech to the Jewish community at the Hebraica club in Rio de Janeiro, Jair Bolsonaro stated that black quilombolas ‘do not serve for anything, not even to procreate’. The deputy also said that indigenous reserves and quilombos disrupt the economy
In a speech to about 300 people in the auditorium of the Hebraica club, in the southern zone of Rio de Janeiro, on Tuesday (4), federal deputy Jair Bolsonaro (PSC-RJ) again uttered controversial and offensive sentences.
According to the Estadão newspaper, the presidential candidate promised that he will end all indigenous reserves and quilombola communities in the country if elected in 2018.
Bolsonaro seized the moment to attack the traditional communities:
“You can be sure that if I get there, there will be no money for NGOs. If it depends on me, every citizen will have a firearm in the house. There will not be a centimeter demarcated for indigenous reservations or for quilombolas.”
Brazil's Bolsonaro moves to weaken environmental and Amazon protections
With deforestation on the rise, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed an executive order just hours after his inauguration on Tuesday that lets the agriculture ministry, which is swayed by the agribusiness lobby, regulate and create new indigenous reserves.
The indigenous agency Funai handles demarcation of indigenous lands; as part of the executive order, Funai is being moved from the justice ministry to a new ministry for women, family, and human rights, led by an ultraconservative evangelical pastor. In a tweet on Wednesday, Bolsonaro defended himself by saying "more than 15 percent of national territory is demarcated as indigenous land and quilombos. Less than a million people live in these places, isolated from true Brazil, exploited and manipulated by NGOs. Together, we will integrate these citizens." Quilombos are settlements in rural areas for descendants of former slaves.
Some of his quotes, be afraid, very afraid. The Resistance needs you.
“The mistake of the dictatorship was torturing and not killing.” (Jair Bolsonaro, in discussion with demonstrators on the Military Dictatorship of 1964-1985) “Pinochet should have killed more people” (Bolsonaro on the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, available in Veja magazine, edition 1575, of December 2, 1998 – page 39) “I would be unable to love a homosexual child. I’d rather have a son of mine die in an accident than show up with a mustache around here.” (Jair Bolsonaro in an interview on homosexuality in Playboy magazine) “I don’t rape you because you don’t deserve it” (Jair Messias Bolsonaro, to the federal deputy Maria do Rosário) “I do not run that risk, my children were very well educated” (Bolsonaro to singer Preta Gil, about what he would do if his children had a relationship with a black woman or homosexual) “The MP (Military Police) should have killed 1,000 rather than 111 prisoners.” (Bolsonaro, on the Carandiru Massacre in Rio in 1992) “I will not fight nor discriminate, but if I see two men kissing in the street, I’ll beat them.” (Affirmation of Jair Bolsonaro after mocking FHC (former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso) on his holding a flag with the colors of the rainbow) “You’re an idiot. You are an illiterate. You’re censored!” (Jair Bolsonaro’s irritated statement when interviewed by reporter Manuela Borges of Rede TV and the journalist decided to sue the deputy after the attacks) “Parliamentary should not go by bus”. (Declaration published by the newspaper O Dia in 2013) “Women must earn a lower wage because they get pregnant” (Bolsonaro justified the phrase: “when she returns [from maternity leave], she will have another month of vacation,