Keep the Oil in the Ground

Humanity's survival depends on not burning two-thirds of our global oil reserves, so we must act now by limiting fossil fuel extraction. The highly biodiverse Amazon basin is a keystone area in combating climate change because it regulates our planet’s health and drives global weather patterns. Preserving regions most critical for our survival—from the Amazon to the Arctic—is the solution to avoiding climate chaos. That's why we are globally calling to KEEP THE OIL IN THE GROUND, starting with the Amazon.

amazonwatch.org

Amazon tribal chief’s SOS: the white man is destroying everything

The Brazilian tribal leader who enlisted Sting to help save the Amazon rainforest has accused the developed world of being intent on “destroying everything” and urged its citizens to fundamentally change the way they think.

Twenty-five years ago, Chief Raoni Metuktire, of the indigenous Kayapo population, shot to international prominence as his campaign against hydroelectric dams on the Xingu river galvanized The Police’s frontman. With the help of Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, Chief Raoni generated so much publicity he was able to defeat a series of proposed dams along the Xingu, a major tributary of the Amazon where this tribe lives, in the early 1990s. But the threat has resurfaced, and at a far greater magnitude, with proposals to build up to 60 hydroelectric dams now at various stages of development across the Amazon, including at least six on the Xingu. 

“The white man seems to be destroying everything. Try to change the way you think and tell your children while they’re growing up that it’s very important to respect nature, to respect indigenous peoples, and not to destroy everything, not to finish everything. “All over the world indigenous people are having problems with the destruction of their land and forest. Everywhere I look there is occupation and destruction of the natural balance. “We should be finding a solution together to preserve the forest for the future of our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. What’s going to happen when it’s all gone, when it’s all destroyed and there’s nothing left?”

More at The Independent

Chevron Cries: "Please Your Honor, Make the Cartoons Stop!"

Cartoons are dangerous. Did you know that? In fact, Chevron wants a US Federal Court to believe cartoons are even more dangerous than dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon and then suing the very people it poisoned. Suppressing free speech, crushing critics with legal attacks, and violating the 1st Amendment – also less scary than cartoons, according to Chevron.

Pulitzer Prize winning animator Mark Fiore discovered this when we pointed out that Chevron's latest legal filing in their bogus RICO action against the Ecuadorians and their supporters included these lines:
Chevron Has Suffered, and Will Continue to Suffer, Ongoing Injuries
...Chevron continues to be threatened with a variety of "real, immediate, and direct" injuries.
...they have already unleashed a barrage of near-daily press releases, letters to government officials and shareholders, web videos, and cartoons in an effort to extort a payoff from Chevron.

Fiore explains it on his blog in Part 1 and Part 2. He (@MarkFiore and @The_Donny_Rico) then created a Twitter-storm and it's been picked up by Salon.com among others. It was only a matter of time before he too joined the ranks of the "global conspirators" in Chevron’s eyes. Yep, Donny Rico nailed it! You see, the juiciest irony here is that the "cartoon" is a satirical parody of a mobster – Donny Rico – explaining how "he and Chevron" can show other corporations how to silence the critics of their environmental and human rights crimes.

Amazon Watch

Brazil acquits suspect in activist murders

Jose Rodrigues Moreira, a Brazilian man accused of conspiring to kill two environmental activists, has been acquitted, as two other men were found guilty. The jury set Moreira free on Thursday due to insufficient evidence, disappointing family members of the murdered married couple who claim he was the alleged mastermind of the attack and has enjoyed impunity.

Jose Claudio da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espirito Santo, had for years campaigned against loggers and ranchers who force slave labour to clear-cut large swaths of the Amazon. They had reported illegal loggers to police and federal prosecutors, and were killed in a May 2011 ambush near the Amazonian town of Maraba.

Two men, Lindonjonson Silva Rocha and Alberto Lopes do Nascimento, were found guilty of killing the couple and sentenced to more than 40 years in prison each. "This is a clear defeat for the families of the victims," said Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from the court. "This was the person they really wanted to see go to jail.

"There are about 100 people outside the court; family members, friends, acquaintances. They're all chanting 'justice' and 'crime'." Prosecutors vowed to appeal the acquittal of Moreira.

Video and more on Al Jazeera English

Amazon - Terra Preta

Amero-Indian impacts on their forest environment, and the modern situtation are covered. Startling discoveries in the Amazon are set to rewrite the history books; and - if we can learn to harness the 'dark earth' - bring about a paradigm shift in the way humans percieve their role on this planet. We had better make up our minds on success (fullfill our purpose as creatures of God's image) and tend a paradise garden for eternity... or fail!!

Amazon 'used neo-Nazi guards to keep immigrant workforce under control' in Germany

Amazon is at the centre of a deepening scandal in Germany as the online shopping giant faced claims that it employed security guards with neo-Nazi connections to intimidate its foreign workers.

Germany’s ARD television channel made the allegations in a documentary about Amazon’s treatment of more than 5,000 temporary staff from across Europe to work at its German packing and distribution centres. The film showed omnipresent guards from a company named HESS Security wearing black uniforms, boots and with military haircuts. They were employed to keep order at hostels and budget hotels where foreign workers stayed. “Many of the workers are afraid,” the programme-makers said.

The documentary provided photographic evidence showing that guards regularly searched the bedrooms and kitchens of foreign staff. “They tell us they are the police here,” a Spanish woman complained. Workers were  allegedly frisked to check they had not walked away with breakfast rolls.

More on The Independent

The evacuation of Belo Monte has begun!

You feel nothing? I understand, you do not know what is Belo Monte. What this country is Brazil, with a hypocritical society unable to put a stop to this policy rotten.  LETS STOP THE INSANITY IN OUR BEAUTIFUL BLUE GLOBE PLEASEEE!!!; Unfortunate examples such as the construction of the hydroelectric plants of Tucuruí (PA) and Balbina (AM), the last built in the Amazon in the 1970s and 1980s, there is evidence.

Displaced communities and flooded huge tracts of land and destroyed the fauna and flora of these regions. Balbina, 146 km from Manaus, meant flooding of the Indian reservation Atroari, fish killed, food shortages and hunger for local people. In contrast, it was the supply of electricity for the local population was not met. The disaster was such that in 1989, the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA), after analysing the situation in the Uatumã River where the dam was built, completed by his biological death. In Tucuruí it was not much different. Nearly ten thousand families were left without their lands, indigenous and riverine. Given this situation, in relation to the Belo Monte, one must wonder how anti-democratic as the project was being conducted, the cost-effectiveness of the work, the fate of energy to be produced and the lack of an energy policy for the country favors alternative energy.

Anonymous Website

Loggers 'burned Amazon tribe girl alive'

Loggers in Brazil captured an eight-year-old girl from one of the Amazon's last uncontacted tribes and burned her alive as part of a campaign to force the indigenous population from its land, reports claimed on Tuesday night.

The child was said to have wandered away from her village, where around 60 members of the Awá tribe live a primitive life in complete isolation from the modern world, and fallen into the hands of the loggers.

Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, told a Brazilian news website that they tied to her a tree and set her alight as a warning to other natives, who live in a protected reserve in the north-eastern state of Maranhão ."She was from another tribe, they live deep in the jungle, and have no contact with the outside world. It would have been the first time she had ever seen white men. We heard that they laughed as they burned her to death," he said.

Reports of the killing, which was said to have happened in October or November last year, were seconded by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a Catholic group

Telegraph

Bolivian road protest threatens to flatten Evo Morales's popularity

He came to office vowing to be a standard bearer for the dispossessed and excluded of one of South America's poorest nations. "The people are finally in power," Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, declared after his historic 2005 election victory.

But, nearly six years on, much of that hope has turned to recrimination as one-time supporters question Morales's true commitment and fears grow that social and environmental issues are taking a back seat to economic growth.

This week, more than 1,000 protesters are expected to arrive in Bolivia's main city, La Paz, to rally against plans for a controversial Amazon road through indigenous lands and voice concern that Morales, an Aymara Indian, is turning his back on the indigenous cause.

"Although Evo is of indigenous descent and was a peasant, he has not been willing to come to [meet us on] the march despite the fact we have been marching for more than 50 days," Rodolfo Lopez, one of the protest's leaders, said.

The Guardian

Slash and burn: Brazil shreds laws protecting its rainforests

Brazil has taken a big step towards passing new laws that will loosen restrictions on the amount of Amazon rainforest that farmers can destroy, after its lower house of parliament voted in favour of updating the country's 46-year-old forest code.

In a move described as "disastrous" by conservationists, the nation's congress backed a bill relaxing laws on the deforestation of hilltops and the amount of vegetation farmers must preserve. The law also offers partial amnesties for fines levied against landowners who have illegally destroyed tracts of rainforest. The legislation, which must still be passed by the Brazilian Senate and approved by President Dilma Rousseff, aims to help owners of smaller farms and ranches compete with under-regulated rivals in countries such as the USA and Argentina.

The Independent

New forest law in Brazil helps save the Amazon (WNF 2006) - Brazil’s politicians, NGOs and public have been voicing more criticisms about the proposed relaxing of the country’s Forest Law. Here’s a summary of recent developments… (WNF 2011)

Amazon tribe feared 'massacred'

The head of Brazil's indigenous protection service is to make an emergency visit to a remote jungle outpost, amid fears that members of an isolated Amazon tribe may have been "massacred" by drug traffickers. Fears for the tribe's wellbeing have been escalating since late July when a group of heavily armed Peruvian traffickers reportedly invaded its land, triggering a crisis in the remote border region between Brazil and Peru.

On 5 August Brazilian federal police launched an operation in the region, arresting Joaquim Antônio Custódio Fadista, a Portuguese man alleged to have been operating as a cocaine trafficker. But after the police pulled out, officers with the indigenous protection service (Funai) decided to return fearing a "massacre". They claimed that groups of men with rifles and machine guns were still at large in the rainforest. Reports suggest the traffickers may have been attempting to set up new smuggling routes, running through the tribe's land.

"We decided to come back here because we believed that these guys may be massacring the isolated [tribe]," Carlos Travassos, the head of Brazil's department for isolated indigenous peoples, told the Brazilian news website IG. "We are more worried than ever. The situation could be one of the greatest blows we have seen to the work to protect isolated Indians in decades. A catastrophe … genocide!"

More on The Guardian

More on Altino Machado's Blog

'Uncontacted' Amazon tribe found in Brazil

Government researchers in Brazil say they have found one of the world's last uncontacted tribes in a remote corner of the Amazon rainforest.

Aerial pictures revealed by the Brazilian government's agency of indigenous affairs (Funai) showed four large thatched huts fully surrounded by various crops in the Vale do Javari region. Aloysio Guapindaia, a Funai director, also said they would work to keep the tribe isolated and safe. The tribe is thought to belong to the Pano linguistic group that straddles the border between Brazil, Peru and Bolivia.

Al Jazeera

Amazon rainforest activist shot dead

Six months after predicting his own murder, a leading rainforest defender has reportedly been gunned down in the Brazilian Amazon. José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo, are said to have been killed in an ambush near their home in Nova Ipixuna, in Pará state, about 37 miles from Marabá.

According to a local newspaper, Diário do Pará, the couple had not had police protection despite getting frequent death threats because of their battle against illegal loggers and ranchers.

In a speech at a TEDx event in Manaus, in November, Da Silva spoke of his fears that loggers would try to silence him. "I could be here today talking to you and in one month you will get the news that I disappeared. I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment … because I denounce the loggers and charcoal producers, and that is why they think I cannot exist. [People] ask me, 'are you afraid?' Yes, I'm a human being, of course I am afraid. But my fear does not silence me. As long as I have the strength to walk I will denounce all of those who damage the forest."

More on The Guardian

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