Photo: Rainforest Trust
As of September 29th, Brazil’s Bolsonaro government has fired the civilian-run National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which has monitored the Amazon rainforest for the past three decades. INPE is being replaced (drumroll please) by the Brazilian military as the new watchdog over the world famous rainforest. Voila, worldwide concerns about deforestation are… ah… indeterminate, vague, unspecified.
The United States is not alone in the insanity concerning the efficacy of masks against COVID-19 infection. Here in Moscow, Russia, the pattern has been in place that about every two or three weeks, businesses insist that their patrons wear a mask when entering the store. This applies to grocery stores and shopping center stores alike. In most local shops, the restriction sticks strongly for a few days, and then dies out. The sense is that there are more new cases cropping up in Moscow that the reported numbers, which stubbornly refuse to crack 700 on the high side and 600 on the low side.
Amazon Day, a day of celebration for over 100 years on September 5th, has passed. Amazon Day commemorates the year 1850 creation of the Province of Amazonas, encompassing 60% of Brazil and extending into Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela, and French Guyana.
Meanwhile, illegal fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest rage on, and on, and on stronger than ever. Nowadays, in spite of the spirit of Amazon Day, suicidal spates of lawlessness rule Brazil’s precious rainforest.
As a coup de grâce to the Bernie Sanders campaign Joe Biden declared that he would veto Medicare-for-All. This could drive a dedicated health care advocate to relentlessly pursue Med-4-All as a final goal. However, it is not the final goal. It should be the first step in a complete transformation of medicine which includes combining community medicine with natural medicine and health-care-for-the-world.
In October 2019, Ecuador’s president Lenin Moreno announced a new round of austerity measures. As the cost of gasoline, diesel, transport and food skyrocketed in the wake of his announcement, the national strike quickly transformed into mass protests. I was in the heart of Ecuador’s capital, Quito, as riot police, tanks, untold amounts of tear gas, and the full gamut of the security apparatus was deployed against demonstrators.
On 5 August, 2020, the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered President Jair Bolsonaro to institute measures aimed at protecting indigenous people from the Covid-19 pandemic. This ruling is the legal recognition of the totally disastrous anti-indigenous policies of the Bolsonaro government. Like other indigenous people living in the Peruvian jungles, eastern Bolivia, the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Colombian Amazon, Brazilian collectivities[Read More...]
A look at the social and economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, with a specific focus on the incompetent state responses of the UK, Brazil and the United States.
Featuring an interview with anarchist writer Peter Gelderloos, author of Diagnostic of the Future: Between the Crisis of Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy.
After the Revolutionary War thousands of traitors and their families and slaves-- so-called loyalists-- fled to Canada, the Caribbean and Britain. Eventually some snuck back into the country. Decades later, some helped foment the American Civil War. After the reactionaries lost that one, a great many fled the U.S.-- mostly without their slaves, who were now freemen-- for Brazil.
