Steve Caniço the French man killed by the police

Video shows the police crackdown

On June 21 France celebrates "La fête de la Musique" - Music's party.
This year policemen in Nantes has cracked down on those who were partying in Nantes next to The Loire river.
This video published by the newspaper "Libération" shows the brutality of the police maybe already addicted to severely hurt their fellow citizens each Saturday during the Yellow Vests protests.

Steve Caniço was among these people in the south of l'île de Nantes but he disappeared maybe among the seven who has plunged in the river during the crack down.
One month later his body was found in the river. Yes, it took one month to find his body.

There will be an involuntary homicide investigation, another one putting another death in the list of possible homicides by the French police.

This is Steven. RIP

Letter from Brazil 5

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.

Mary Magdalene by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Left: Mary Magdalene, Dante G Rossetti 1877
Right: Mary Magdalene, Dante G. Rossetti, 1867

I don't feel like saying anything about these paintings. I took a glimpse and found biographical references, historic background and some other articles that say nothing about the art or analysis that speaks more about the person who is writing than the artist's aesthetics.
Lately I feel like watching without the need of words.
If I wanted words I would read Rossetti's poems.

Aw! Trump and Bojo hand in hand

Have a great Sunday!

Brazilian prosecutor and Supreme Court Minister criminal talks with banks

PRIVATE CHATS REVEAL the extent to which Deltan Dallagnol, coordinator of Brazil’s Car Wash anti-corruption task force, sought to personally profit from the fame generated by his high-profile work as a prosecutor, raising ethical questions and provoking disagreements with colleagues.

In March 2018, Dallagnol received more than $10,000 to give a speech to Neoway Tecnologia Integrada Assessoria e Negócios S.A., a big-data firm that was under investigation by Car Wash for potentially corrupt contracts with a state-controlled oil company.

Three months later, Dallagnol was the featured speaker at a secret, off-the-record event with the most influential banks and investors in Brazil, organized by investment firm XP Investimentos. It’s not clear if he was paid for the event, but his speaking agent, who works on commission, negotiated the agreement with XP. Invitees to the talk included at least three banks that had been investigated by Car Wash: Itaú, Santander, and Deutsche Bank. The investment firm engaged Dallagnol for two other speaking events — both were public and well paid.

In an apparent bid to convince Dallagnol to take on the off-the-record speaking gig, the XP representative told the prosecutor in the chats that Supreme Court Minister Luiz Fux had already participated in a similar off-the-record event “and nothing came out in the press,” adding that two other Supreme Court ministers had also been invited to give private talks. Fux did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment and the other two ministers, Alexandre de Moraes and Luís Roberto Barroso, denied participation in such events.

The topic of the series of XP talks that Dallagnol and Fux participated in was the Car Wash investigation and the national elections that were scheduled to take place later that year. Invited guests included representatives from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Merrill Lynch, Citibank, UBS, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Natixis, Société Générale, Standard Chartered, State Street, Macquarie Capital, TD Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Itaú, Bradesco, Santander, Verde Asset Management, and Nomura Holdings. (emphasis mine)

(Read the entire article)

Homage to Rutger Hauer: RIP

"I am an Aquarius, which means you carry the water from one person to the next, that's a spiritual thing and that's exactly what I do. You know, there are many different levels to the spirit. Films always tell one story, but below that story there is another story and I'm really into that and I try and work on a few different levels. The hardest thing is to get the level you don't see, that it's not on the surface. I hate acting when I see it. I don't want to feel it, I don't want to see it, I want to be taken away with the story. I don't want the actor's ego in front of me. That's why I try to live when I do the work. The tongue-in-cheek stuff is sort of my favourite but it doesn't come along that much. I didn't do a lot of comedy, and I think I could handle the romantic side, it's underdeveloped still. And it's also drama that I'm interested in, it's the craft that I'm interested in. What draws me basically is the story and the people who do it. When you're an actor, you're like a string and the music gets played on you. I have a gift that allows me to make people understand what I am feeling even if they can't put it in words. I have a very strange power within me, I can feel it. The rest I guess is luck and talent, and it's all in the hands of what's-its-name, I call it fate. It's not just work. It's the urge to, let's say, fulfill a certain black hole in you and you just have to follow up on it if you want to get it done. I think the only form of happiness is fulfillment - it's what everybody wants but people translate it in different ways. And there is a cosmic tide that we do not know how to handle. And there is also a psychic understanding that we don't know how to handle. Those are very strong and very present elements in the way we work. Whatever you do, there's always an element of projected fate. You know, it's like you're doing it and you are following it at the same time. I'm not going to travel if I don't feel I'm being pulled...". (emphasis mine)
Rutger Hauer (source: his official site)

On Blade Runner:

"This is where the story originated and ultimately ends. In my opinion, Mr.DECKARD loses himself by deciding to fly into sunset oblivion with his new found “pretty looking” program. Even from beyond ROY's death I'd like to scream after him:

“DECKARD, YOUR PECKER DOESN'T LOVE YOU. YOU DO.”

Why droll into this Hollywood heehaa me-me-me-culture. What a phoney and typical Hollywood faked happy ending. WAKE-UP vibratorgods&goddesses!


I remember shooting BLADE RUNNER like yesterday. Let me tell you about ROY and show you where he lives/lived (did he ever)."

Film Tributes: (here)

Above is a picture from Ladyhawke. I have nothing to say. In my age I have already lost many family members and people I admire.
But it is always as if was the first time. RIP Rutger Hauer

Glenn Greenwald explains the leaks about Brazilian car wash operation

Just listen to the video. Understand Brazil situation. Image: Glenn Greenwald with Rio de Janeiro's Sugar Loaf (two mountains) landscape.

• 
  

Brazilian Congresswoman threats journalist Glenn Greenwald

Joice Hasselmann is an extreme right representative whose behavior is always provocative.
On her twitter account she wrote: @ggreewald tic-tac... sua hora está chegando (tic-tac... your time is coming.) threatening the journalist Glenn Greenwald.

Yesterday four men were arrested with the excuse they are the hackers that worked for Glenn Greenwald. 
It doesn't sound real for the government, Sérgio Moro and the mainstream media are not reporting the chats leaked by Glenn Greenwald but claiming that as he didn't say who was his source - a totally legal procedure in Brazil and in the world - the content is not true.
In case Brazil arrests Gleen Greenwald, which is not impossible since what is being done by this government - Sergio Moro is the Minister of Justice - goes against any logical behavior.

Every day there is a scandal. Brazil is a dictatorship or a absolutist monarchy.
  

Marvin Gaye, Mercy Mercy Me / Stamp dedicated to Marvin

Woah, ah mercy mercy me
Ah things ain't what they used to be, no no
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows
From the north and south and east

Woah mercy, mercy me, yeah yeah
Ah things ain't what they used to be, oh no
Oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas
Fish full of mercury
Hey mercy, mercy me oh
Ah things ain't what they used to be, oh no

Radiation under ground and in the sky
Animals and birds who live nearby are dying
Hey mercy, mercy me oh
Ah things ain't what they used to be
What about this overcrowded land
How much more abuse from man can she stand?

This version is very special for in the beginning Marvin sings without any instrument. Only his voice and it is so beautiful!

Monday, April 15th, 2019 11:12am

Chris Phillips on "The Jazz Club"

"The US Postal Service has unveiled that its new stamp will be dedicated to the memory of Marvin Gaye. The limited-edition print will commemorate what would have been the singer’s 80th birthday and features artwork from the famed designer Kadir Nelson. The news was revealed in a special ceremony a few days ago which featured Marvin’s family and friends including Smokey Robinson, Mary Wilson of the Supremes and Motown’s founder Berry Gordy."

Google algorithm censorship: blocking political viewpoints

Two years ago Google announced changes to the search engineering  to prevent the access of "conspiracy theories" - whatever they mean by this expression - and fake news (who judges what is fake news?)
The old excuse of "protecting the citizens" is showing its real purpose that is not even necessary to describe.
There is more under this good deed:

New Google algorithm restricts access to left-wing, progressive web sites
By Andre Damon and Niles Niemuth   27 July 2017
(Excerpt)
...."Just last month, the European Commission fined the company $2.7 billion for manipulating search results to inappropriately direct users to its own comparison shopping service, Google Shopping. Now, it appears that Google is using these criminal methods to block users from accessing political viewpoints the company deems objectionable."...
Entire article here.

This blog you're reading has already disappear in 2011. Both my blogs and google accounts were unavailable despite the fact that it is a diverse blog that approaches politics occasionally when the subject is too serious:

They appeared after the complaint above.

Now this blog who once had a certain number of visitors,especially about Art that is it's main topic, disappeared from the search.  I don't claim it was a huge success but it was far better from what is happening now.

Google used to put on the search all my posts. 

It has stopped. 

I don't want to become a success but blogs are still important as a tool to raise the questions, subjects and viewpoints not possible to find on the mainstream media.

But that's all right. What is being done to some YouTube channels is appalling. We keep going anyway.

URGENT: Bolsonaro puts the Army on the inauguration of Brazilian Glauber Rocha airport

Everything was planed for the inauguration of  the airport Glauber Rocha in the city Vitória da Conquista in the state of Bahia.
Glauber Rocha's daughter, the governor and the people were supposed to start the 
flights from and to the airport.
But someone appeared to spoil the party: Mr. Brazilian president decided to go to the event.
Glauber Rocha's daughter gave up and the governor is also not going.

It all started with displays of racism against the people of the Northeast of Brazil. This is the area less evolved of the country because of the droughts that made people migrate to the south of the country in search for working opportunities.

The right wing and some middle class people from the south has always discriminated those who are from Northeast.
Last week Bolsonaro have attacked those who are from Northeast and claimed that the governor of the state of Maranhão, who is very popular and loved by the people, was the worse governor.

With dignity Flávio Dino did reply but Bolsonaro is still atacking the Northeast.

Today is the time of Bahia governor. Bolsonaro is inaugurating the airport alone with people that is accompanying him and the army to protect him and have even called snipers.
It is a complete absurd.
The people from the city wants to enter the airport that was surrounded to prevent local people of Vitória da Conquista, Glauber Rocha's birth city, to be part of their inauguration.

This is Glauber Rocha a Brazilian filmmaker that depicted the Northeast of the country in his movies, was born in Vitória da Conquista and is the man who is honored.

Glauber Rocha died in 1981. His funeral was extremely moving.

I'm protesting all this absurd publishing Glauber Rocha's funeral and Darcy Ribeiro's words when he was over Glauber coffin:

"Uma vez, e eu não vou esquecer nunca, Glauber passou uma manhã abraçado comigo e chorando. / Once, I'll never forget, Glauber spend the morning hugging me and crying.

Chorando, chorando convulsivamente.
Crying, crying convulsively.

Eu custei a entender – ninguém entedia – que Glauber chorava a dor que nós devíamos chorar. A dor de todos os brasileiros.
I took me time to understand - nobody understood - that Glauber cried the pain that we had to cry. The pain of all Brazilians.

O Glauber chorava as crianças com fome.
Glauber cried over the hungry children.

O Glauber chorava esse país que não deu certo.
Glauber cried this country that didn't went right

O Glauber chorava a brutalidade.
Glauber cried the brutality.

O Glauber chorava a estupidez.
Glauber cried the stupidity.

A mediocridade.
The mediocrity.

A tortura.
The torture

Ele não suportava. Chorava, chorava, chorava.
He couldn't stand it. Cried, cried, cried

Os filmes do Glauber são isso. É um lamento, é um grito, é um berro.
Glauber's movies are all of this. It's a lament, it's a cry, it's a yell.

Essa é a herança que fica de Glauber.
This is Glauber's heritage.

Fica de Glauber pra nós a herança de sua indignação.
Glauber leave us the heritage of his indignation.

Ele foi o mais indignado de nós. Indignado com o mundo tal qual é.
He was the most indignant of all of us, indignant with the world the way it is.

Assim"
Like this"

(Darcy Ribeiro)

Letter from Brazil 4

China must avoid a role in destruction of Amazon: Beijing could be forever tarnished if it does ‘dirty business’ with the Bolsonaro government in Brazil

Indigenous people call for demarcation of lands in Sao Paulo in January 2019. People around the world have voiced concern over the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Photo: AFP / Cris Faga / NurPhoto

A deforested area in the middle of the Amazon jungle found in Para state, Brazil in 2014. Greenpeace said trucks carried illegally felled trees to sawmills at night, which were later exported. Photo: AFP / Raphael Alves

China must avoid a role in destruction of Amazon
By Pepe Escobar - July 20, 2019
Asia Today
Beijing could be forever tarnished if it does ‘dirty business’ with the Bolsonaro government in Brazil

"China is South America’s top trading partner. Together, China’s policy banks – the China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of China – are the top source of development finance for the whole of Latin America. 

Over the past few decades, the Brazilian government, leading national companies and multinational corporations have configured what Fernando Mires, already in 1990, defined as the “Amazon mode of production”: a terribly predatory, technological-intensive mode of production and destruction, including subjugation of indigenous populations in slave-based working conditions, with everything geared for export to global markets.

The Amazon is spread out over 6.5 million square kilometers covering two-fifths of Latin America – half of Peru, a third of Colombia, a great deal of Bolivia, Venezuela, Guyana, French Guyana and Suriname, and most of all, 3.5 million square kilometers in Brazil.

The original population diversity was staggering. Before the arrival of the Europeans in Brazil in 1500, there were no less than 1,400 tribes, 60% of them in the Amazon. Ethnologists marveled that nowhere else in the world compared to the linguistic diversity in tropical South America.

The Tupi-guarani tribe even constituted a sort of “empire”, occupying a huge territory from the Andes to the Pampas in southern Brazil. A sort of “proto-state” traded with the Andes and the Caribbean. This all laid to rest the Western-peddled myth of a “savage”, un-civilized Amazon.

Now let’s fast-forward to the current Western outcry over the Jair Bolsonaro government’s destruction of the Amazon.

Brazil, still under the second presidential term of Dilma Rousseff – later impeached under spurious charges – was a signatory of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change. Article 5 of the agreement rules that parties “should take action” to preserve endangered forests. Brasilia pledged to protect the Amazon by restoring 12 million hectares of forests by 2030.   

And yet under Bolsonaro, “should take action” metastasized into “reverse previous action.” The new mantra is “Amazon development.” In fact, a turbo-charged and even more predatory 2.0 version of the “Amazon mode of production,” much to the horror of Western environmentalists, who fear an imminent transformation of the Amazon into a dry savanna, with dire consequences for the whole planet.

Staggering natural wealth
The Brazilian Army is fond of noting that the Amazon’s natural wealth has been evaluated at a staggering $23 trillion. This is a 2017 figure announced by General Eduardo Villas Boas, who added: “Brazil is a highly endowed individual imprisoned in the body of a teenager. The Amazon is practically abandoned, there’s no national project and density of thinking.”

In fact, there is a national (military) project to “develop” the Amazon at breakneck pace, while preventing, by all means, the “Balkanization of the Amazon” and the action of Western NGOs.

In April this year, one of Bolsonaro’s sons posted a video of Dad engaged in a “surprising” conversation with four indigenous people in Brasilia.

Top anthropologist Piero Leirner – a specialist on the Brazilian military and their activities in the Amazon – explains the context. The Bolsonaro government carefully picked four natives involved in the business of soybeans and mining. They spoke for themselves. Immediately after, an official indigenous people association released a letter disowning them. “That was classic Divide and Conquer,” Leirner argued. “Nobody paid attention to the letter. For most of Brazil, the case was closed in terms of ‘social communication’ – solidifying the government’s narrative of NGOs fighting for the internationalization of the Amazon.”

Mining giants in Brazil would rather have indigenous peoples as spokespersons instead of the military. In fact, it’s a maze of interlocking interests – as in captains and colonels in business with mining entrepreneurs acting in protected indigenous areas.

What happened during these past few years is that most indigenous peoples ended up figuring out they cannot win – whatever the scenario. As Leirner explained: “Belo Monte [the world’s third-largest dam] unveiled the real game: in the end, the dam practically works to the benefit of mining companies, and opened space for Belo Sun, which will excavate the whole of Xingu in search of gold.”

So that’s the perverse project inbuilt in the “development of the Amazon” – to turn indigenous peoples into a sub-proletarian workforce in mining operations.

And then there’s the crucial – for the industrialized West – niobium angle (a metal known for its hardness). Roughly 78% of Brazilian niobium reserves are located in the southeast, not in the Amazon, which accounts at best for 18%. The abundance of niobium in Brazil will last all the way to 2200 – even taking into consideration non-stop, exponential Chinese GDP growth. But the Amazon is not about niobium. It’s about gold – to be duly shipped to the West.

Rolling down the river
Bolsonaro is keen to bring roads, bridges and hydroelectric plants to the most remote areas of the Amazon. Under the “sovereignty” mantra, he has promised to impose the hand of the state in the strategic Triple-A area – Amazon, Andes, Atlantic Ocean – thus countering the alleged intent of Western NGOs of creating an independent strip for environmental preservation.

So, how does China fit into the Amazon puzzle? A recent report addresses some of the hard questions. 

Since last year, Beijing officially started to consider the whole of Latin America as a “natural extension” of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as well as an “indispensable partner.” That was spelled out by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the 2018 China-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States Ministerial Forum.

All of BRI’s guidelines now apply – and that includes the Amazon: policy cooperation, infrastructure development, investment and trade facilitation, financial integration, and cultural and social exchange.

China’s internal green drive – restricting coal production, supporting solar panel factories, remaking Hainan island into an eco-development zone – will have to be translated into its projects in the Amazon. That means Chinese companies will need to pay extremely close attention to local communities, especially indigenous people. And that also means that the Chinese will be under intense scrutiny by Western NGOs.

Brazil may have ratified the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, known as ILO 169, which enshrines the rights of indigenous communities to be consulted by the state on decisions that directly affect them.

Yet with less than seven months of Bolsonaro in power, all that is in effect null and void.

There’s slim hope that an exhaustive set of guidelines for large projects in the Amazon established by the Center of Sustainability Studies at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo, linked to the World Bank, may be respected by the government. But no one is holding their breath.

Key projects with Chinese involvement include the Amazon waterway in Peru, which featured prior consultations with over 400 indigenous villages, according to the government in Lima.

But most of all there’s the $2.8 billion, under construction 2,500 km-long Belo Monte Transmission Line, with an installed capacity of 11.2 gigawatts. China’s State Grid is part of the consortium, with financing coming from the Brazilian National Development Bank. The first and second transmission lines directly affect the Amazon ecosystem and run near 10 conservation areas and an array of ethnic groups.



The “China in the Amazon” report correctly notes that “Chinese companies are not well attuned to the importance of direct engagement with local non-governmental stakeholders, and have faced repeated costs, work stoppages, and delays as a result. Chinese deference to host-country policies should extend to the commitments by host countries to international treaties and law, such as ILO 169 and its standard of free, prior, and informed consent for indigenous peoples. Indigenous organizations and civil society organizations in the Amazon region have a long and strong trajectory of actively participating in government decisions relating to the use of indigenous territories and natural resources.”

The report suggests establishing a “multidisciplinary working group comprised of NGOs, local indigenous groups, academics, and scientists to review existing principles and standards” for sustainable infrastructure projects.

The chances of this being adopted by the Bolsonaro administration and endorsed by the Brazilian military are less than zero. The Big Picture in Brazil under Bolsonaro spells out neocolonial dependence, over-exploitation of workers, not to mention indigenous peoples, and the complete expropriation of Brazilian natural wealth.

Only a pawn in their game
China may be Brazil’s top trade partner. But Beijing must tread carefully – and strictly enforce BRI guidelines when it comes to projects especially involving the Amazon.

There’s no way the UN Security Council, with climate change in mind, would ever sanction Brazil for the destruction of the Amazon. France and Britain would be for it. But Russia and China – both BRICS members – would certainly abstain, and the US under Trump would vote against it.

Brazil is now a privileged pawn in the most important geopolitical game of the 21st century: the clash between the US and the Russia-China strategic partnership.

The last thing Beijing needs in terms of global public relations is to be branded as an accomplice in the destruction of the Amazon.

URGENT: "The Intercept" leaks leaves Brazil ungovernable

It is Sunday and more dialogs are being leaked by "The Intercept".
Former judge Sérgio Moro, prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol and Brazilian Supreme Court is part of a consortium that have been on charge of so many crimes that for those Brazilians who are not indoctrinated by the mainstream media it is no longer possible to pretend something of extreme importance is happening leading the country ungovernable the way it is.

Something has to be done or the country will enter in a deep crisis, a crisis so serious that put more Brazilian people in a life threat situation.
Poor, black, women,politicians, homosexuals, transgenders, indigenous, old people  are already in the horizon of the fascist regime whose president Bolsonaro is the chief.

It is not a question of parties, left wing, opposition or those who disagree with this regime.
It is a very serious situation and reason, justice and common sense ought to be urgently restored in the country.
Otherwise it will be hell for everybody, the fascists included.
I'll update later with the details.
Refer to "The Intercept" for more info.

William Norman Grigg's article about UN Peacekeeping forces atrocities: Justice was not done

I wrote a post about Mr Grigg's article The Beasts in Blue in 2012 showing the picture that was brought to the jury attention during this trial (?) in Geneva in 2015. Justice was done according to the rules of this criminal world this earth has turned into: they were acquitted.

Here is the article The Beasts in Blue. I decided to copy it from the blog "Wrong kind of Green" because the links I left on the prior posts are not safer any longer.

Beasts in Blue Berets
September, 1997
by William Norman Grigg 

"We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money,” warned Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in the July/August 1995 issue of Foreign Affairs. Schlesinger had taken to the pages of the flagship journal of the Council on Foreign Relations to vindicate the dubious proposition that the United Nations military represents the thin blue line dividing peaceful civilization from savagery — in short, our planetary police. But what happens when the planetary police run amok and become the agents of bloodshed? When local police abuse their power, the abused have avenues of redress. From what body can those abused by the planetary police seek justice? The escalating scandal of unpunished atrocities committed by UN “peacekeepers” illustrates that the planetary police are beyond accountability.
“Perhaps our leaders should put the question to the people: what do we want the United Nations to be?” Schlesinger wrote. “Do we want it to avert more killing fields around the planet? Or do we want it to dwindle into impotence, leaving the world to the anarchy of nation-states?” Critics of the UN should eagerly embrace such a debate — provided that a copy of the above photograph is made available to all participants. First published in the United States on the cover of the June 24th issue of the left-wing weekly Village Voice, the photograph depicts two Belgian paladins of the new world order giddily holding a Somali child over an open flame. Other series of photographs depict UN soldiers kicking and stabbing a Somali, and another soldier apparently urinating on the Somali’s dead body; yet another shows a Somali child being forced to drink salt water, vomit, and worms. A second group of photos published in the July 15th Village Voice shows the dead bodies of bound Somalis — what appears to be the work of a death squad.One atrocity not caught on camera involved the “punishment” of a Somali child by placing him in a metal container and withholding water from him for two days; predictably, the relentless African heat killed the child. One Belgian UN soldier testified that it was a regular practice to use metal boxes as prison cells, and that other Somalis probably died similarly gruesome deaths.
Strangely Silent

One might expect the photographs and first-person accounts of such atrocities to arouse public indignation against the UN’s “planetary police,” just as the endlessly replayed videotape of the Rodney King arrest turned public opinion against the Los Angeles Police Department. Perhaps this is why the photographs have been all but invisible in the United States, and precious little media attention has been devoted to an examination of UN atrocities.

Village Voice reporter Jennifer Gould came across the accounts of the Belgian atrocities while doing an earlier story about sexual harassment of female employees at UN headquarters. “When I spoke with people at the UN, time after time I was told, ‘If you think it’s bad here, you ought to see what happens in peacekeeping operations,’” Gould told The New American. “I started looking into that issue and found that the abuses I reported were well-known and easily documented. They were all over the media abroad, and I was really surprised it hadn’t been written about over here.”

Belgian military authorities launched an investigation into the atrocities following publication of a front-page story by Belgium’s Het Laatste Nieuws. In early July, Privates Claude Baert and Kurt Coelus, the two paratroopers photographed dangling the Somali child over a flame, were acquitted by a military court, which ruled that the incident — described by Baert and Coelus as a punishment for stealing — was “a form of playing without violence,” according to prosecutor Luc Walleyn. And what of discipline from the UN, whose “Code of Personal Conduct for Blue Helmets” requires that peacekeepers “respect and regard the human rights of all”? Gould reports that a UN spokesman dismissed the acquittal of Baert and Coelus by insisting that “the UN is not in the habit of embarrassing governments that contribute peacekeeping troops.”

For its diligence in reporting unwelcome news, Het Laatste Nieuws was rewarded with a bomb threat. Reporter Lieve Van Bastelaere informed The New American that the man arrested for making the threat owned a local bar that is frequented by many people in the military, including veterans of “peacekeeping” missions. “He apparently had been angered by what he had read,” Bastelaere observed dryly. “We’ve enhanced our security here at the paper, and the police took the threat seriously, even though he may have been drunk when he made it. He claimed not to remember phoning in the threat when he was arrested.”

In September, another military tribunal will be held to investigate the actions of Sergeant Dirk Nassel, the soldier photographed forcing a Somali boy to ingest worms and vomit. However, the Belgian military system — which is deeply entwined with the UN “peacekeeping” apparatus — has yet to inflict substantive penalties for abuses committed in the service of the UN. Several years ago, according to Gould, “Belgian soldiers were also accused of holding mock executions for Somali children and forcing them to dig their own graves; though their officer was given a suspended sentence, the soldiers were acquitted.” It is thus firmly established in Belgian military jurisprudence that service in the new world army is a license to commit barbarities with impunity.

Canadian, Italian Atrocities

Nor was the Belgian component of the UN’s “Operation Restore Hope” uniquely barbarous. Three members of a now-disbanded elite Canadian paratroop regiment were tried and convicted of criminal charges in the beating death of a 16-year-old Somali boy named Shidane Arone; the three “peacekeepers” had been photographed smiling beside the bloody corpse of the boy, whose hands had been bound. The incident prompted the creation of a Canadian government commission to review that nation’s military and its involvement in “peacekeeping” missions; however, the inquiry foundered on the obstructionism of political and military bodies and produced what Canadian critics call an incomplete and inadequate report.

On August 8th, Italian military officials admitted that Italian soldiers assigned to UN duty in Somalia had also tortured and otherwise abused Somali civilians. According to the Washington Post, “Two generals who led the Italian forces to Somalia resigned in June following publication of graphic reports of sexual violence against a Somali woman, electric torture of a young man and allegations that an officer had murdered a young boy.” Drugs and prostitutes also were allowed to circulate freely among Italian UN troops.

The Italian government assembled a five-member commission of inquiry, which interviewed 145 people and traveled to Africa to interview Somalis who had been tormented by UN troops or witnessed the bestial acts firsthand. The panel’s 46-page report documented that “the criminal events were not just the result of ‘rotten apples’ that you may find in any structure, but were rather the consequence of a stretched line of command and amused compliance toward such high jinks by some junior officers.”

“Shocking as it is, the UN scandal in Somalia is no anomaly,” wrote Gould in the Village Voice. “[An analysis] of documents and reports relating to recent UN peacekeeping operations has uncovered incidents ranging from murder and torture to sexual exploitation, harassment of and discrimination against local women and children.”

The January 18th New York Times reported that 47 Canadian UN troops who served in Bosnia were accused of “drunkenness, sex, black marketeering and patient abuse at a mental hospital they were guarding.” The soldiers had been assigned the “humanitarian” chore of guarding a mental hospital at Bakovici in order to secure it for the staff’s return. “The hospital instead became the setting for heavy drinking; sex between soldiers, nurses and interpreters that violated regulations; black-market sales; and harassment of the patients….”

During the “frenzy of looting” that broke out in Liberia in the spring of 1996, peacekeepers used UN vehicles to make off with pilfered goods, according to the April 12, 1996 issue of USA Today. UN vehicles — and the troops responsible for them — have also been a boon to Balkan drug smugglers. The August 9, 1996 Washington Times reported that “U.S. and Bosnian officials suspect that high-ranking UN officials from Jordan based in the central Bosnian towns of Bugojno and Travnik have routinely provided UN vehicles to help smugglers get contraband past checkpoints. The officers appear to have received money and the services of prostitutes from the smugglers, led by Islamic foreigners who entered Bosnia with U.S. approval to defend the Muslim government.”

Significantly, the Bosnian narco-ring apparently received critical support from UN police monitors, who were stationed in the Balkans in order to facilitate the creation of a civilian police force dedicated to upholding “world law.” A Pentagon official told the Washington Times that such problems are predictable, given that “the international police task force [in Bosnia] is a compendium of people from diverse countries with different degrees of professionalism and training and different backgrounds in operations and ethics” — a fairly compelling explanation of why UN-style “world law” cannot work.

The UN’s “nation-building” mission in Cambodia — long touted as among the world body’s proudest achievements — added to that unfortunate land’s abundant history of lawlessness. In 1993, 170 residents of Cambodia protested the abusive behavior of blue helmet troops in a letter to Yasushi Akashi, who served as then-Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s representative in Cambodia. Prominent among the complaints was the mistreatment of women, who were treated to abuse and harassment by UN officials “regularly in public restaurants, hotels and bars, banks, markets, and shops.”

New York Times correspondent Barbara Crossette, whose primary beat is the UN, elaborated: “The bad behavior [of UN forces in Cambodia] was not limited to abuse of women. There were bar fights, brawls, and shootouts and a proliferation of brothels, stolen vehicles and general drunken boorishness. Geographical origins were no indicator of what to expect. While some Asian and African troops got out of line, it was the soldiers of a Bulgarian battalion who had the worst reputation. They went down in local legend as ‘the Vulgarians.’” Cambodia has descended again into murderous chaos, and Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, believes that “the mess that Cambodia finds itself in today is in large part a product of the UN’s failure to uphold the rule of law” in the course of its “nation-building” mission.

Nightmare in Rwanda

The same lawlessness infected the UN mission to Rwanda, which suffered a Cambodia-style genocide earlier this decade. Crossette noted that Rwandans accused UN troops “of illicit trading, hit-and-run driving, sexual harassment and criminal abuse of diplomatic immunity they have bestowed on themselves. The disruptive personal behavior of some troops has been a factor in Rwanda’s demand that all peacekeepers be withdrawn from the country….”

Also contributing to that demand is the fact that UN forces in Rwanda actually abetted the worst bloodletting in recent memory — the Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which a half-million Tutsis were annihilated in approximately 100 days. “Many of the mass murderers were employees of the international relief agencies,” testified Peter Hammond of Frontline Fellowship in Holocaust in Rwanda. In one incident recounted by Hammond, Belgian UN troops stationed in a heavily fortified compound in Kigali “deceived the [Tutsi] refugees by assembling them for a meal in the dining hall and then [they] evacuated the base while the refugees were eating. Literally two minutes after the Belgians had driven out of their base, the Presidential Guard poured into the buildings annihilating the defenceless Tutsi refugees.”

When the Tutsi-organized Rwandan Patriotic Front drove many of the worst Hutu murderers from Rwanda into the Congo (then called Zaire), the UN intervened militarily — on the side of the murderers. One year after the genocide, wrote Peter Beinart in the October 30, 1995 issue of The New Republic, “former [Rwandan] government militias, often armed and sometimes in uniform, control many UN refugee camps, terrorizing civilians and plotting to reinvade.” Janet Fleischmann of Human Rights Watch-Africa reported, “The UN clearly took the lead in assisting these refugees who were in uniform and armed … and that helped them establish control over the refugee camps.” This development provoked the renowned French humanitarian group Medecins sans Frontieres and several other charitable organizations to withdraw from militia-controlled UN refugee camps.

When the UN “peacekeeping” mission to Rwanda finally furled its blue banner in March 1996, the reaction on the part of Rwandans was one of unalloyed relief. “Hundreds of genocide survivors protesting outside the UN headquarters in Kigali cheered … as the UN flag was lowered to mark the end of the United Nations’ peacekeeping mandate,” reported a March 3, 1996 Reuters wire service report. Apparently, Rwandans would rather face the prospect of bloody anarchy than submit to the variety of “peace” administered by UN troops.

Follow the Brothels

The market in prostitution — including child prostitution — thrives wherever blue berets decamp. According to Gould, records of UN peacekeeping missions document that “brothels have sprouted nearby — and in one case allegedly inside — UN compounds. In the latter case, prostitutes were allegedly employed by the UN and were reportedly even shipped on UN planes to fornicate with a UN staff member in hotels paid for by the UN.”

Last December a UN study on children in war reported that blue berets had been involved in child prostitution in six of the 12 countries which had been studied. In country after country unfortunate enough to attract the UN’s “humanitarian” intervention, “the arrival of peacekeeping troops has been accompanied with a rapid rise in child prostitution,” the document reported. Following the signing of a peace treaty in Mozambique in 1992, for example, “soldiers of the United Nations operation … recruited girls aged 12 to 18 years into prostitution.”

However, as Jennifer Gould learned, the mistreatment of women is something of a UN tradition — the world body’s enthusiastic support for radical feminism notwithstanding. In a report published in the May 20th Village Voice, Gould described the plight of Catherine Claxon, a UN employee who filed the first-ever sexual harassment complaint against the UN in 1991. After Claxon filed her complaint, “Someone fired a shot through the glass window of a coffee shop by the United Nations” — just above Claxon’s head. “Another bullet shattered Claxon’s windshield as she drove home from her job at the UN one night on the Long Island Expressway.” On three other occasions, Claxon was nearly run off the road — at the same spot where she was nearly killed by the gunshot. According to Gould, “UN women describe a godfather-like institution” — a network of cronyism and corruption. “This is compounded by the fact that in some UN member countries, women are treated as chattel instead of as equals.”

Haunting Prophecy

Gould described the UN as “a bizarre universe of intrigue and outrage, where diplomats from 185 countries — stuffed suits simmering with regional, religious, and class-bred hatreds — try to promote world peace.” Such is the character of the institution whose masters crave the power to enforce “world law.” The essence of that abstraction is captured in the photograph of “peacekeepers” Baert and Coelus playfully swinging a Somali child over a fire: Unaccountable power employed mercilessly against the helpless.

More than seven decades ago, while the U.S. Senate was debating ratification of the League of Nations Covenant, Senator William Borah (R-ID) sought to cool the ardor of the League’s supporters by dousing it with a bracing shower of cold reality. Those who believed that a world army would consist of stainless champions of “world peace” were ignoring the unyielding facts about human nature. A world army, Borah declared, would consist of “the gathered scum of the nations organized into a conglomerate international police force ordered hither and thither by the most heterogeneous and irresponsible body or court that ever confused or confounded the natural instincts and noble passions of a people.” Can there be any doubt that the UN has vindicated Borah’s dismal prophecy?

[William Norman Grigg is the author of several books from a constitutionalist perspective. He was formerly a senior editor of The New American magazine, the official publication of the John Birch Society.]

Mr. William Norman Grigg died in 2017. May he RIP.