Original Peoples

The end of January a news article appeared, “Ecuador To Sell A Third Of Its Amazon Rainforest To Chinese Oil Companies,” and has resurfaced again and again on the internet. Posted on progressive websites such as Reader Supported News, Daily Kos, “The PeoplesVoice.org,” “ThinkGlobalGreen.org,” the story often comes with maps of the affected area, and include pictures of indigenous peoples living peaceably with nature or protesting against oil drilling.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has ordered Paraguay’s government to protect an uncontacted tribe from being wiped out.
In a highly unusual decision, the Commission, part of the OAS, has demanded that the authorities intervene to stop cattle ranchers illegally destroying the Paraguayan Chaco, a uniquely biodiverse area that is home to the last uncontacted Indigenous people outside the Amazon.

“A” Is for “Asininity”
That’s a particular kind of stupidity.
All of us can be stupid at times.  (Ever see that picture of Einstein with his tongue hanging out like an aardvark’s, clowning—one supposes—for the camera?)
It’s in our genes to be stupid at times.  Looking back on the Vietnam War—which ultimately took his own son’s life—Secretary of Defense McNamara attributed his own stupidity to the “fog of war.”
I would rather call it “asininity.”

On January 19, 2016 a great convergence took place, the substance-free world of “reality’” entertainment that epitomizes the great American fantasy came full circle and the wall between reality and illusion came crashing down. On that day Presidential candidate Donald Trump, standing in front of a wax likeness of John Wayne, received the endorsement of Wayne’s daughter Aissa who proudly declared to Trump that her father would have been very proud of him.

In her first public appearance as Federal Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Kwakwaka’wakw, publicly spoke to the letter I sent on January 4th, 2016 to both her and the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau calling for a National Inquiry into the Ts’Peten/Gustafsen Lake Standoff 1995. She was asked three times by three women, to take action, to call this Inquiry and to address the ongoing genocide that is taking place on our Territories.

NOTE: The final event will be a panel discussion at Georgetown University, Friday, January 29 from 6 to 8 pm at the White Gravenor Building, Room 211. This event is free and open to the public. Georgetown University is located at 37th and O Sts NW Washington, DC.

On 26 January, one of the saddest days in human history, will be celebrated in Australia. It will be “a day for families”, say the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Flags will be dispensed at street corners and displayed on funny hats. People will say incessantly how proud they are.

Tribal children in the African rainforests have been paid in glue to sniff, and alcohol, in return for menial work, a new Survival International report has revealed.
The report found instances of market traders in the Republic of Congo plying children from the Bayaka tribe with glue in 2013, in exchange for cleaning out latrines.

US threatens further naval incursions despite furious reaction from China
— Guardian

“Out! All of you!” That’s, more or less, a proper translation for the title of this article. It was the insurgent yell of the Argentine people directed at “their representatives,” all of them, when taking the streets in December 2001.
Yet, I don’t want to write about Argentina here, a country of which I empirically know only but a few areas. What I want to deal with is the country that I know best. More deeply than any other where I’ve been, worked and lived: Brazil.
“What is, or how is Brazil?”