Brazil under a psychopath presidency: "genocidal policies" against indigenous people

“If I become President there will not be a centimeter more of indigenous land, that is my answer.”

It was already during the campaign that Bolsonaro said some of his policies. Those who voted for him either agree or thought he was not serious.

Free Lula Vigil

The day Lula was imprisoned. He is in the center in blue shirt surrounded by the people that didn't want him to go.

"On April 7, a year was completed that former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is unjustly imprisoned – charged and convicted of a non-existent crime. Lula, one of the world’s greatest popular leaders, was the victim of an illegal and illegitimate trial that, far from representing any attempt to obtain justice, served from the outset as a procedural fraud aimed at preventing him from competing in presidential elections last year – in which he appeared as a frank favorite in all opinion polls. Lula represents a development model that distributes income and promotes social justice." (read the details here)

Since Lula is imprisoned in the Curitiba State people have surrounded the federal police headquarters where Lula is in prison.

Every morning they say together "Good Morning President Lula". In the afternoon and finally at night: "Good Night President Lula".

Not a single day after Lula's imprisonment this ritual didn't happen.

It is called "Free Lula Vigil". Lula can hear people's saying together as a chorus.

This is a very beautiful action among many that is happening for Lula and for the country for it was Lula who put the country in another level in the international scene which became the fifty economy of the world in his governments. Four million Brazilians were no longer below poverty line.

Know more about Lula here. 

URGENT: Amazon gold miners invade indigenous village in Brazil after its leader is killed

Another crime instigated by Brazilian's president Bolsonaro.
As a Brazilian I ask international institutions, human rights organizations, politicians, human rights tribunals and people around the world to condemn Brazilian president since our judiciary is following US orders that has as agenda the destruction of Brazil in numerous levels.
There has been too many people dying after five months of Bolsonaro's in the presidency.
Everyday there is a terrible news. We are being informed by the independent journalists while mainstream media keeps lying.
I don't know for how long Bolsonaro will be the president but he has to go for the country is being destroyed in numerous ways. He doesn't have the requirements to rule a nation and it seems he is either a psychopath or a narcissist, who knows a combination of the two.
There is no dignity.
US is behind it all. Glenn Greenwald's mother is very sick and the American embassy in Brazil has denied the visa to his two children to US to visit their grandma.
A touch or terror from US since Glenn is leaking the chats that reveals the Car Wash corrupted system.
We are being ruled by a genocidal gang. It has to stop.
Indigenous people are in risk of a second genocide.
I don't recognize my country anymore. We had achieved so many after the end of dictatorship and now we are going backwards.
Hands of Brazil US.

Amazon gold miners invade indigenous village in Brazil after its leader is killed
Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Sun 28 Jul 2019 06.00 BST
The Guardian 

Brazil’s police have been urged to investigate a ‘very tense situation’ in Amapá state

Dozens of gold miners have invaded a remote indigenous reserve in the Brazilian Amazon where a local leader was stabbed to death and have taken over a village after the community fled in fear, local politicians and indigenous leaders said. The authorities said police were on their way to investigate.

Illegal gold mining is at epidemic proportions in the Amazon and the heavily polluting activities of garimpeiros – as miners are called – devastate forests and poison rivers with mercury. About 50 garimpeiros were reported to have invaded the 600,000-hectare Waiãpi indigenous reserve in the state of Amapá on Saturday.

The men were spotted days after the murder of Emyra Waiãpi, a community leader, whose body was found near the village of Mariry early on Wednesday.

Indigenous people evacuated Mariry and fled to the bigger village of Aramirã – where shots were fired on Saturday. Indigenous leaders and local politicians have called for urgent police help, fearing a bloodbath.

“The garimpeiros invaded the indigenous village and are there until today. They are heavily armed, they have machine guns. That is why we asking for help from the federal police,” said Kureni Waiãpi, 26, a member of the tribe who lives in the nearest town of Pedra Branca do Amapari, two hours away and 189km from Amapá state capital Macapá. “If nothing is done they will start to fight.”

“We have a very tense situation,” said Beth Pelaes, mayor of Pedra Branca do Amapari, who said the tribe are very traditional and allow only authorised visitors.

The crisis was revealed on Saturday by Randolfe Rodrigues, a senator for Amapá state, who received desperate audio messages pleading for police and army help from Jawaruwa Waiãpi, a local councillor and leader. Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso was among those who shared the tribe’s appeal for help on Saturday.

“I ask the Brazilian authorities for help, in the name of the dignity of Brazil in the world, hear this cry,” Veloso said in a video recorded in Mexico City, where he is on tour.

Kureni Waiãpi said Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro had encouraged invasions like this. “It is because he, the president, is threatening the indigenous peoples of Brazil,” he said.

Senator Rodrigues blamed Bolsonaro’s repeated promises to allow mining on protected indigenous reserves, where it is currently prohibited, for the first invasion of Waiãpi land in decades. In the 1970s, the tribe was almost wiped out by disease after their land was invaded by gold prospectors. In 2017, the then-president Michel Temer moved to open the vast Renca reserve the tribe’s land falls within to mining but backed off after an international outcry.

“The Jair Bolsonaro government is encouraging this conflict, encouraging garimpeiros to enter. Their hands are dirty,” Senator Rodrigues said.

Recently Bolsonaro compared indigenous people living traditional lives on their reserves to “prehistoric men”. On Saturday he once again talked up the mineral riches in the Raposa Serra do Sol and Yanomami reserves – currently inundated with thousands of garimpeiros.

“I’m looking for the ‘first world’ to explore these areas in partnership and add value. That’s the reason for my approximation with the United States. That’s why I want a person of trust in the embassy in the USA,” Bolsonaro said on Saturday, according to the O Globo newspaper. His plans to appoint his congressman son, Eduardo, as Brazil’s US ambassador have caused an outcry in Brazil.

Kureni Waiãpi said the body of Emyra Waiãpa was found with stab wounds early on Wednesday morning in a river near his village of Mariry. On Friday, local man Arawyra Waiãpa and his wife spotted a group of men they believed to be garimpeiros at their plantation near the village. The community fled to the bigger village of Aramirã. Shots were fired near Aramirã around 6pm local time on Saturday but nobody was hurt. “I think the garimpeiros are shooting to scare the Waiãpi,” Kureni Waiãpi said.

Federal and Amapá police were heading to the area, a spokeswoman from Brazil’s indigenous agency FUNAI said. “For now there are no records of conflict, although a death has been confirmed, but no details of the circumstances. The place is difficult to access,” she said.

The state government of Amapá said it was “engaging all efforts to support federal police in the investigation” and had sent an elite troop of police to accompany officers sent to the area.

_______________
The Guardian has been publishing the indigenous situation under Bolsonaro. 

The uncontacted tribes of Brazil face genocide under Jair Bolsonaro

Fiona Watson

Mon 31 Dec 2018 12.00 GMT Last modified on Mon 31 Dec 2018 15.26 GMT

‘An ‘epidemic’ of goldminers have illegally invaded the territory of the Yanomami people to pillage its riches, bringing disease and death to the tribe.’ 

Read the article on The Guardian.

Once there was a world

... and now it's bleeding. I'm overwhelmed, appalled and perplex when I think about it.
That's why I'm not posting lately.
What about the future? I don't know.

The war on smoking: Too late to stop smoker's stigma

I came across with this article but I truly believe it is too late to stop stigmatization.
It is amazing how propaganda works and brainwash people in such a way that it borders fanaticism.
I have already heard that "smoking is a sin" not once or twice but many times. It would take another campaign to reverse it all but we know that it will not be done because what really matters is: profiting.


Let's Not Wage War on Smokers
Quitting smoking is good. Stigmatizing smokers isn't.
by Alice Robb

The praise being lavished on CVS in response to its promise to stop selling cigarettes is as profuse as it is predictable. When the drugstore announced last week that it plans to pull tobacco products as it continues to expand into the health care market, doctors, journalists and even the president applauded. “We came to the decision that cigarettes and providing health care just don’t go together in the same setting,” said CEO Larry J. Merlo. "I congratulate–and thank–the CEO of CVS Caremark, Larry Merlo, the board of directors, and all who helped make a choice that will have a profoundly positive impact on the health of our country," said Obama.

CVS’s decision is only the latest in a string of anti-smoking measures that have gone into effect with almost no pushback. In November, Michael Bloomberg’s bill banning the sale of cigarettes to New Yorkers under the age of 21 was met with near-universal support—even though his campaigns against soda and trans fats became fodder for national debates about individual rights and personal freedom. In December, the traditionally smoker-friendly EU voted to implement stricter anti-smoking regulations, including a total ban on the sale of flavored cigarettes.

The lack of resistance to these policies is a reflection of greater awareness of the health risks of smoking, but it’s also a sign of the stigma that’s come to surround cigarettes and the people who still buy them. Tobacco control policies have played a big role in slashing smoking rates—which have fallen from 56 percent of American adults in 1965 to 18 percent today—but they’ve also stigmatized smokers, forcing them to huddle outside public buildings, bars, and now parks. Stigma can be useful if it deters people from smoking, but it can have nasty side effects—like tempting smokers to hide their habits from their doctors, placing an added burden on already vulnerable populations, and making diagnoses of smoking-related diseases embarrassing (on top of life-threatening). Health care officials know this: that’s why they’ve fought to lessen the stigma attached to other conditions and behaviors, from AIDS to depression. “Stigmatization represented a profound psychological and social burden on those with AIDS or HIV infection and it also fuelled the spread of the epidemic,” wrote Jennifer Stuber and Ronald Bayer in a 2006 paper in the American Journal of Public Health. “Yet, in this instance, the concerns about the impacts of stigmatization have been given little consideration.”

Thanks to anti-smoking crusaders, “The fragrant has become foul,” wrote medical historian Allan Brandt in 1988. “An emblem of attraction has become repulsive; a mark of sociability has become deviant; a public behavior now is virtually private.” More recently, psychologists have found that smokers are seen as “outcasts” and even “lepers.”

For a recent paper in the Journal of Social Policy, Professor Hilary Graham of the UK’s York University charted the changing focus of anti-smoking campaigns.

In the US and the UK, health promotion campaigns were initially focused on the risks to the smoker…From the mid-1970s, the risks to others, and specifically to children born to pregnant smokers, were incorporated into government campaigns… Through the 1980 s and 1990 s, smoking was increasingly recast as a threat to the wider public, a shift in public health discourse that was particularly marked in the US.

In 2006, sociologist Hannah Farrimond and psychologist Helene Joffe asked 40 British adults what they thought about smokers. It wasn’t nice.

Non-smokers use terms such as ‘outcast’, ‘persecuted’, ‘lepers’, ‘under-class’ and ‘blacklisted’ to describe smokers’ status in society….Non-smoking participants associate smokers with a strong negative aesthetic. This comprises two aspects, smell (e.g. ‘reek’, ‘pong’, ‘stink’, ‘stale’, ‘old’) and negative appearance (‘stained yellow fingers’, ‘grey, dry, wrinkly skin’, ‘brown teeth’)…several non-smokers see smokers as lacking in cleanliness and engaging in poor self-care.

And in 2008, Stuber interviewed 816 current and former smokers in New York City.

Most respondents agreed that ‘‘Most people would not hire a smoker to take care of their children’’ (81%) and that ‘‘Most non-smokers would be reluctant to date someone who smokes’’ (72%). The prevalence of the perception ‘‘Most people believe smoking is a sign of personal failure’’ (21%) and, ‘‘Most people think less of a person who smokes ’’(39%), were endorsed less frequently but still indicate substantial stigma. The first two items measure social distance from smokers, whereas the second two items are measures of the devaluation of smokers

THE STIGMA’S WORSE FOR LOWER-INCOME SMOKERS

More educated smokers are better at rationalizing their behavior, while smokers of lower socio-economic status are more likely to internalize the stigma. “Smokers’ sense of the social disapproval they face varies as a function of socio-economic group,” Farrimond and Joffe found.

Higher SES smokers tend to challenge the ‘facts’ on which this stigmatization is based, whereas lower SES smokers internalize the stigmatized aspersions…Higher SES smokers also tend to use the pollution metaphor to their advantage to mitigate any perceived blame, by arguing that pollution caused by their personal smoking is equivalent or of lesser impact than other types of pollution…. Higher SES smoking participants also tend to argue that the health risk for passive smokers is relatively low, both in comparison to their own personal risk and in general.

LUNG CANCER PATIENTS FEEL STIGMATIZED—EVEN IF THEY’VE NEVER SMOKED

In 2004, a team of health scientists at Oxford interviewed 45 people with lung cancer and found that felt even more stigma than other cancer patients:

Participants experienced stigma commonly felt by patients with other types of cancer, but, whether they smoked or not, they felt particularly stigmatized because the disease is so strongly associated with smoking… Some patients concealed their illness, which sometimes had adverse financial consequences or made it hard for them to gain support from other people.

In fact, ten percent of lung cancer patients have never smoked, though they may have a hard time getting doctors to believe them: one patient the team interviewed said that doctors refused to believe he’d never smoked, in spite of his own promises and the testimony of his wife.

In a 2008 study published in the journal Clinical Lung Cancer, researchers administered a questionnaire to 172 cancer patients—96 with lung cancer, 30 with breast cancer and 46 with prostate cancer—and found “perceived cancer-related stigma” to be highest in the lung cancer group. “A belief that one caused one's own cancer,” they noted, “is correlated with higher levels of guilt, shame, anxiety, and depression.”

Savages vs US treatment of their enemies

"We came, we saw, he died."*
were the words of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton after the brutal murder without trial of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
She was cheering in a very happy disposition.
Libya was destroyed and 80.000 innocent civilians were killed, tortured and the chaos is installed.

It is obscene the way US government announces their crimes against humanity. Each invasion or manipulations to create chaos in a country is celebrated in the most amoral way.

Never in the history of humankind killing people was a reason of such joy and proud.
Not even in the Roman Empire.
Savages? No. On the contrary.
"In the book "Totem and Taboo" Freud makes an analogy between the savages and obsessive neurosis.
He did use the work of anthropologists and describe how savages treated their enemies. Take a look at this little excerpt:.


 THE TREATMENT OF ENEMIES

"Inclined as we may have been to ascribe to savage and semi-savage races uninhibited and remorseless cruelty towards their enemies, it is of great interest to us to learn that with them, too, the killing of a person compels the observation of a series of rules which are associated with taboo customs. These rules are easily brought under four groups; they demand 1. reconciliation with the slain enemy, 2. restrictions, 3. acts of expiation, and purifications of the manslayer, and 4. certain ceremonial rites. The incomplete reports do not allow us to decide with certainty how general or how isolated such taboo customs may be among these races, but this is a matter of indifference as far as our interest in these occurrences is concerned. Still, it may be assumed that we are dealing with widespread customs and not with isolated peculiarities.

The reconciliation customs practised on the island of Timor, after a victorious band of warriors has returned with the severed heads of the vanquished enemy, are especially significant because the leader of the expedition is subject to heavy additional restrictions. “At the solemn entry of the victors, sacrifices are made to conciliate the souls of the enemy; otherwise one would have to expect harm to come to the victors. A dance is given and a song is sung in which the slain enemy is mourned and his forgiveness is implored: ‘Be not angry’, they say ‘because your head is here with us; had we been less lucky, our heads might have been exposed in your village. We have offered the sacrifice to appease you. Your spirit may now rest and leave us at peace. Why were you our enemy? Would it not have been better that we should remain friends? Then your blood would not have been spilt and your head would not have been cut off’”[46].

Similar customs are found among the Palu in Celebes; the Gallas sacrifice to the spirits of their dead enemies before they return to their home villages[47].
Other races have found methods of making friends, guardians and protectors out of their former enemies after they are dead. This consists in the tender treatment of the severed heads, of which many wild tribes of Borneo boast. When the See-Dayaks of Sarawak bring home a head from a war expedition, they treat it for months with the greatest kindness and courtesy and address it with the most endearing names in their language. The best morsels from their meals are put into its mouth, together with titbits and cigars. The dead enemy is repeatedly entreated to hate his former friends and to bestow his love upon his new hosts because he has now become one of them. It would be a great mistake to think that any derision is attached to this treatment, horrible though it may seem to us[48].

Observers have been struck by the mourning for the enemy after he is slain and scalped, among several of the wild tribe of North America. When a Choctaw had killed an enemy he began a month’s mourning during which he submitted himself to serious restrictions. The Dakota Indians mourned in the same way. One authority mentions that the Osaga Indians after mourning for their own dead mourned for their foes as if they had been friends[49].

Source: Gutenberg Project.

*"We came, we saw, he died" is a parody of Julius Caesar's words:

"In May of 47 B.C., after Julius Caesar had left a pregnant Cleopatra, soon to bear their son Caesarion, Caesar defeated Pharnaces of Pontus near the town of Zela. Caesar claimed he routed and captured the enemy in 4 hours. To inform the Senate of his victory, Caesar succinctly wrote, veni, vidi, vici 'I came, I saw, I conquered'.

Jean Charles de Menezes: always on the heart of Brazilians

I'm Brazilian and it aches. Justice?

He is a commie and she, a lefty! Capitalism and democracy are safe words

Oh My God! What a terrible combination.
Please, how can it be that these words are still being used to put people in jail?
We remember the sixties and seventies and in my country "communist" was a word people
could not say aloud.
This is ridiculous. As if  "capitalist" assures us that no crime is committed and human rights are respected.
Capitalism and democracy are the two lethal words. It is under a capitalist democracy that US and allies
are committing the crimes against humanity in the name of humanitarian aid or safety.
This is hypocrisy.

What do you know about transgenders?

Calpernia Addams (Transgender Activist, Actress) gives expert video advice on: What is it like growing up transgender?; How did your friends and family react to you being transgender?; How did you change from male to female? and more...
Read the transcription if you don't want to listen, but please, try to inform yourself and understand. Some people know more about aliens than about human beings's complexity.

"How are transgender people treated in other cultures? Other cultures have dealt differently with transgender people than, sort of, modern America. There are cultures such as India who have the Hijira, which are people in the culture who are usually born male but adopt a female identity. Sometimes they don't have medical intervention, sometimes they do. In Thailand there are the Kathoey, I hope I'm saying that right, which is how Thailand identifies transpeople. It's in some ways a lot more accepted than it is here, because there are Kathoey (ladyboys) who are pop stars and actors and actresses and stuff, but the culture places them in sort of a third sex category more so than accepting them as women." (emphasis added)

Barry Winchell

Calpernia Addams: In 1999, while working as a performer, Addams began dating PFC Barry Winchell. Word of the relationship spread at Winchell's Army base where he was harassed by fellow soldiers and ultimately murdered.
Addams tells the story here.