How One Rich American Is Helping to Burn the Amazon rainforest for Profit

NowThis News

Published on 30 Aug 2019
One rich American, CEO Stephen Schwarzman, is responsible for much of the ongoing destruction of the Amazon — and he happens to be a top donor to President Trump and Mitch McConnell.

The indigenous Kayapo Indians of Brazil have protected their vast amazon homeland from illegal loggers, ranchers and gold miners with the help of NGOs, ecologists and a Canadian solar energy company.
The Kayapo Indians: Fighting For The Amazon Rainforest
Salt
by Barbara Zimmerman, Ecologist
article here.

Indigenous people only survive if they have land and the forest. Once the forest is gone they are extinguished. Ergo...

Unprecedented Burning of Amazon Forest under Bolsonaro's era

Brazilians are extremely concerned with brutality of Bolsonaro's "presidency" - it is hard to accept he is the president - in numerous levels.
He is destroying Brazil by giving our resources, ending educational system, health system... it is hell.
However, we don't need to be invaded like the Harvard teacher Stephen M. Walt proposed seconded by Paul Graig.

We also are quite aware that the 60% of the Amazon rainforest part that is in Brazil belongs to the country.
US want to take control of Amazon for a long time. During Lula's presidency he made quite clear that the Amazon is Brazilian but it seems that Trump must be remembered of that period.

It is quite convenient to US and it's allies the burnings that have been  deliberately happening. The discussion "Whose forest is this, anyway?" will be put on the table again.
This time we don't have Lula. He was imprisoned with the help of Washington because he was going to win the elections and surely would never let Brazil loses it's sovereignty and dignity.

Lula is a political prisoner, more precisely a US political prisoner.
After the car wash operation Washington helped to be conducted to put in the presidency a US poodle Brazil has a doormat in the presidency that will give for free what US wants.
It is just a battle. This will be a long war - the victims are poor people who is being killed in the most incredible rate during Bolsonaro's militia era. The number of deaths is higher than a country in war.
We will take our country back. Argentina is an inspiration to Brazilians.

What is behind Hong Kong protest: America’s “Hybrid War” against China has Entered a New Phase

America’s “Hybrid War” against China has Entered a New Phase
By Christopher Black
Global Research, August 15, 2019

(Excerpt)
"The latest phase in this hybrid warfare is the insurrection being provoked by the US, UK, Canada and the rest in Hong Kong, using tactics designed to provoke China into suppressing the rioters with force to amplify the anti-Chinese propaganda, or pushing the “protestors” into declaring Hong Kong independent of China and then using force to support them.

Mitch McConnell, an important US senator implicitly threatened just such a scenario in a statement on August 12th stating that the US is warning China not to block the protests and that if they are suppressed trouble will follow. In other words the US is claiming that it will protect the thugs in black shirts, the shirts of fascists. This new phase is very dangerous, as the Chinese government has time and again stated, and has to be handled with intelligence and the strength of the Chinese people.
There is now abundant evidence that the UK and US are the black hand behind the events in Hong Kong. When the Hong Kong Bar association joined in the protests the west claimed that even the lawyers were supporting the protests in an attempt to bring justice to the people. But the leaders of that association are all either UK lawyers or members of law firms based in London, such as Jimmy Chan, head of the so-called Human Civil Rights Front, formed in 2002 with the objective of breaking Honk Kong away from China, such as Kevin Lam, a partner in another London based law firm, and Steve Kwok and Alvin Yeung, members of the anti-China Civic Party who are going to meet with US officials next week."
(read entire article here)

Revealed: rampant deforestation of Amazon driven by global greed for meat

Investigation exposes how Brazil’s huge beef sector continues to threaten health of world’s largest rainforest
Source: The Guardian.

Transporting livestock in Terra do Meio, in the municipality of São Félix do Xingu, in the Amazon state of Pará. Photograph: Joao Laet/The Guardian
‘We must not barter the Amazon rainforest for burgers and steaks’

Animals farmed is supported by

About this content

Dom Phillips and Daniel Camargos in São Félix do Xingu, Andre Campos in São Paulo, and Andrew Wasley and Alexandra Heal in London

Tue 2 Jul 2019 14.01 BST

"The cows grazed under the midday Amazon sun, near a wooden bridge spanning a river. It was an idyllic scene of pastoral quiet, occasionally broken by a motorbike growling on the dirt road that cuts through part of the Lagoa do Triunfo cattle farm to a nearby community.

But this pasture is land that the farm has been forbidden to use for cattle since 2010, when it was embargoed by Brazil’s government environment agency Ibama for illegal deforestation. Nearby were more signs of fresh pasture: short grass, feeding troughs, and salt for cattle.

The vast 145,000-hectare (358,302-acre) farm is one of several owned by the company AgroSB Agropecuária SA – known in the region as Santa Bárbara. Located in an environmentally protected area, Lagoa do Triunfo is more than 600km (372 miles) from the capital of the Amazon state of Pará on the western fringes of Brazil’s “agricultural frontier” – where farming eats into the rainforest. To get there takes hours of driving along dirt roads and a ferry ride from nearby São Félix do Xingu, a cattle town accessible only by plane until a few decades ago.

AgroSB supplies cattle to JBS, the world’s biggest meat packing company and single biggest supplier of beef, chicken and leather globally, with 350,000 customers in more than 150 countries.

A joint investigation by the Guardian, Repórter Brasil and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that during 2018, the Lagoa do Triunfo farm delivered hundreds of heads of cattle to other farms also owned by AgroSB for fattening. Cattle was sent from those farms to slaughter in JBS plants.

Embargos are imposed for environmental violations, such as farmers or landowners cutting down trees and deforesting illegally, and serve both as a punishment and protective measure to allow land to recover. Between 2010-2013 at least 12 areas of land on Lagoa do Triunfo were embargoed, and Ibama fined AgroSB more than $18m (£14m) – at current rates – for deforestation on the Lagoa do Triunfo farm.

Our investigative team visited land clearly demarcated as embargoed on government websites, and found cows grazing there. A farm worker said cattle were allowed to roam in areas employees knew were embargoed. “You can’t cut down the vegetation,” the employee said. “The vegetation grows and we work the cattle inside.” The Guardian is withholding their name in case of retaliation.

Work by NGO Trase, seen exclusively by our team, this week reveals the extent to which the international demand for beef is driving deforestation, with thousands of hectares of Amazon being felled every year to provide meat for world markets.

AgroSB is a powerful farming empire owned by the Opportunity group, co-founded by Daniel Dantas, a controversial businessman Bloomberg described as the “bad boy” of Brazilian finance. It owns half a million hectares across Pará and has long attracted controversy. Over the past decade, AgroSB has been accused of illegal deforestation, keeping workers in slave-like conditions, and spraying a community occupying one of its farms with pesticides – accusations it has strongly denied.

Scandal has also surrounded JBS, which is supplied by AgroSB. In 2017, following an Ibama investigation, the meat company was fined $7.7m for buying cattle from farms with embargoed areas, including another farm owned by AgroSB. The company pledged to stop buying cattle from the farm.

That same year, Joesley Batista, CEO of its controlling company, almost brought down the government of President Michel Temer after secretly recording him appearing to endorse bribery – Temer was indicted but never tried and has always denied the charges, claiming the recording was edited. Joesley and his brother Wesley, then JBS CEO, admitted an extensive web of bribery in a plea bargain deal.

In an email, a spokesman for AgroSB said any deforestation had occurred before the company acquired Lagoa do Triunfo in 2008. “AgroSB does not carry out deforestation in order to increase its area, but rather it recovers degraded areas. This brings social and environmental progress for all, because in the same area it is possible to produce more, without deforestation, in respect to the environment,” the spokesman said.

“AgroSB’s business model is anchored in the acquisition of degraded open and pastured areas, which are fertilised, reclaimed and transformed into high-intensity pastures or grain plantations – which increases food production per hectare and also captures carbon dioxide (CO2) of the atmosphere in the plantations and in more than 250,000 hectares of forests (legal reserve) maintained on its properties.” He pointed out that: “There is no irregularity in the marketing/transfer of livestock.”

He said just 7% of the farm was embargoed, and added that as AgroSB have been successful in appealing against some of the other embargos on their land, the company believes it will also overturn the embargos on Lagoa do Triunfo.

The ‘wild west’ fringe of the Amazon rainforest

With a population of 125,000 and more than two million cattle, the town of São Félix do Xingu covers an area bigger than Scotland. Cattle farming fed its growth from remote Amazon outpost to busy town, and there are clear signs of wealth here.

Just outside town, big money was being splashed at a horse racing meet in a field full of 4x4s. As two jockeys spurred their horses down the rudimentary race track, a commentator bellowed and men waved wads of cash as their bets came in.

There was more than $35,000 in prizes over two days of racing, said Valdiron Bueno, owner of two agricultural supplies shops and the race organiser. Bueno built his business more than 20 years after arriving here with just the clothes on his back. “It wasn’t easy. I cried a lot,” he said.

São Félix do Xingu was mostly forest when Arlindo Rosa, now president of the town’s union of rural producers, arrived in 1993. “There was practically none of this farming … there was no highway, there was nothing,” he said. “People came from outside with the spirit to raise cattle,” said his vice-president, Francisco Torres, who arrived in 1987.

Both men were critical of what they saw as overzealous environmental controls. Torres criticised Ibama as a “fines industry”, borrowing a phrase from President Jair Bolsonaro, who has dismantled environment protection and enjoys support from farmers like these. “How are you going to work if you can’t deforest an area, principally a small one?” said Rosa.

But the embargos do not appear to have affected AgroSB’s business, the Guardian and Réporter Brasil investigation found.

A JBS spokesman said: “The facts pointed out do not correspond to the standards and processes adopted by the Company”, indicating an independent 2018 audit that showed that “more than 99.9% of JBS’s cattle purchases meet the company’s socio-environmental criteria and the ‘Public Livestock Commitment’” – a deal signed between big cattle companies and Greenpeace in 2009. It was followed in 2011 by an agreement JBS and other meat companies signed with federal prosecutors not to buy cattle directly from embargoed or illegally deforested areas.

A spokesman told the Guardian via email: “JBS has a responsible purchase policy for raw materials and does not purchase animals from farms involved in deforestation of native forests, invasion of indigenous reserves or environmental conservation areas, or that are embargoed by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama).”

The independent audit found the company had made impressive progress in tightening up procedures and shutting out farms with areas embargoed by Ibama. However, although the system excludes farms that have embargoed areas, the audit noted that other farms owned by the same company may still sell to JBS. It concluded that: “Indirect suppliers of cattle to JBS are not yet checked systematically, since JBS has not yet managed to adopt auditable procedures for its indirect suppliers.”

Official state documents seen by the Guardian and Repórter Brasil show that from January to October 2018, Santa Bárbara delivered at least 296 cattle from the Lagoa do Triunfo farm to its Espiríto Santo farm in Xinguara, in the same state.

Between July and December 2018, Santa Bárbara sent least 1,977 cattle from the Espiríto Santo farm to two JBS slaughterhouses in Pará. In January at least 936 cattle were sent from the Espírito Santo farm to JBS’s slaughterhouse in Redenção in Pará.

Throughout 2018, Santa Bárbara also sent at least 729 cattle from the Lagoa do Triunfo farm to be fattened at its Porto Rico farm in Xinguara. In April 2018, 36 cattle from the Porto Rico farm were sent to slaughter at JBS’s plant in Tucumã in Pará.

Growing international demand for beef has become a key driver in the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, with new figures seen by our team revealing the full extent of deforestation directly linked to a handful of major food corporations. Beef linked to deforestation is exported globally, including to key markets in the east Asia and Europe.

An investigation by Trase has uncovered how up to 5,800 sq km of forest is being felled in the Amazon and other areas annually to be converted into pasture used for cattle farming, with livestock from deforested areas found to be supplying abattoirs producing beef for global markets.

The latest data shows that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has been on the rise since 2012. Between August 2017 and July 2018, about 7,900 sq km was destroyed.

In the most comprehensive study of its kind ever produced, Trase used customs, agricultural, sanitary inspection, and deforestation data to map Brazilian cattle exports from the international markets which consume them back to the more than 3000 municipalities where the cattle were raised. Trase is an independent supply-chain transparency initiative, developed by the Stockholm Environment Institute and the UK-based NGO Global Canopy.

The analysis includes data on “indirect” suppliers, which are often intermediate farms that don’t sell directly to abattoirs, but supply other farms which may truck cattle to slaughter. This is a “previously invisible” part of the beef chain, say researchers, which is not monitored for deforestation risks.

The supply chain “map” was then cross-referenced with official datasets on pasture expansion, deforestation rates and figures on regional cattle production in order to calculate a deforestation “risk” associated with specific companies and the main international export markets.

Advertisement

Because of the high volume of Brazilian beef shipped to China and Hong Kong, these markets are associated with the highest amount of deforestation in total – between 17,400 and 26,400 hectares per year – according to the analysis. The EU also imports more than $600m worth of beef from Brazil each year. And that will increase if the EU and member states approve a new trade deal with Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay to gradually let 99,000 tonnes of low-tariff South American beef into Europe every year.

Erasmus zu Ermgassen, lead researcher at Trase, said that while some slaughterhouses monitor their direct suppliers, none monitor their indirect suppliers. “There is enormous potential to use land more efficiently and sustainably in the Brazilian beef sector, and to improve rural livelihoods by investing in cattle ranching on existing pasturelands.”

This article was amended on Monday 8 July to correct the figures for deforestation associated with China and Hong Kong

Chris Hedges - America - How the World sees US - 2011/2013

"The scars I carry within me are the whispers of these dead. They are the faint marks of those who never had a chance to become men or women, to fall in love and have children of their own. I carried these scars to the doors of Goldman Sachs. I placed myself at the feet of these commodity traders to call for justice because the dead, and those who are dying in slums and refugee camps across the planet, could not make this journey. I see their faces. They haunt me in the day and come to me in the dark. They force me to remember. They make me choose sides."
Chris Hedges

That's how this video starts. As always I'm moved, angry and ready to fight when I listen to Chris Hedges. His universe touches me, says a lot of what I feel and think. Below the origin of the article Chris wrote:

Finding Freedom in Handcuffs
Truthdig November 7, 2011
Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges, an activist, an author and a member of a reporting team that won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize, wrote this article after he was released from custody following his arrest last Thursday. He and about 15 other participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement were detained as they protested outside the global headquarters of Goldman Sachs in lower Manhattan.

Faces appeared to me moments before the New York City police arrested us Thursday in front of Goldman Sachs. They were not the faces of the smug Goldman Sachs employees, who peered at us through the revolving glass doors and lobby windows, a pathetic collection of middle-aged fraternity and sorority members. They were not the faces of the blue-uniformed police with their dangling cords of white and black plastic handcuffs, or the thuggish Goldman Sachs security personnel, whose buzz cuts and dead eyes reminded me of the East German secret police, the Stasi. They were not the faces of the demonstrators around me, the ones with massive student debts and no jobs, the ones whose broken dreams weigh them down like a cross, the ones whose anger and betrayal triggered the street demonstrations and occupations for justice. They were not the faces of the onlookers — the construction workers, who seemed cheered by the march on Goldman Sachs, or the suited businessmen who did not. They were faraway faces. They were the faces of children dying. They were tiny, confused, bewildered faces I had seen in the southern Sudan, Gaza and the slums of Brazzaville, Nairobi, Cairo and Delhi and the wars I covered. They were faces with large, glassy eyes, above bloated bellies. They were the small faces of children convulsed by the ravages of starvation and disease.

I carry these faces. They do not leave me. I look at my own children and cannot forget them, these other children who never had a chance. War brings with it a host of horrors, including famine, but the worst is always the human detritus that war and famine leave behind, the small, frail bodies whose tangled limbs and vacant eyes condemn us all. The wealthy and the powerful, the ones behind the glass at Goldman Sachs, laughed and snapped pictures of us as if we were a brief and odd lunchtime diversion from commodities trading, from hoarding and profit, from this collective sickness of money worship, as if we were creatures in a cage, which in fact we soon were.

A glass tower filled with people carefully selected for the polish and self-assurance that come with having been formed in institutions of privilege, whose primary attributes are a lack of consciousness, a penchant for deception and an incapacity for empathy or remorse. The curious onlookers behind the windows and we, arms locked in a circle on the concrete outside, did not speak the same language. Profit. Globalization. War. National security. These are the words they use to justify the snuffing out of tiny lives, acts of radical evil. Goldman Sachs’ commodities index is the most heavily traded in the world. Those who trade it have, by buying up and hoarding commodities futures, doubled and tripled the costs of wheat, rice and corn. Hundreds of millions of poor across the globe are going hungry to feed this mania for profit. The technical jargon, learned in business schools and on trading floors, effectively masks the reality of what is happening — murder. These are words designed to make systems operate, even systems of death, with a cold neutrality. Peace, love and all sane affirmative speech in temples like Goldman Sachs are, as W.H. Auden understood, “soiled, profaned, debased to a horrid mechanical screech.”

We seemed to have lost, at least until the advent of the Occupy Wall Street movement, not only all personal responsibility but all capacity for personal judgment. Corporate culture absolves all of responsibility. This is part of its appeal. It relieves all from moral choice. There is an unequivocal acceptance of ruling principles such as unregulated capitalism and globalization as a kind of natural law. The steady march of corporate capitalism requires a passive acceptance of new laws and demolished regulations, of bailouts in the trillions of dollars and the systematic looting of public funds, of lies and deceit. The corporate culture, epitomized by Goldman Sachs, has seeped into our classrooms, our newsrooms, our entertainment systems and our consciousness. This corporate culture has stripped us of the right to express ourselves outside of the narrowly accepted confines of the established political order. It has turned us into compliant consumers. We are forced to surrender our voice. These corporate machines, like fraternities and sororities, also haze new recruits in company rituals, force them to adopt an unrelenting cheerfulness, a childish optimism and obsequiousness to authority. These corporate rituals, bolstered by retreats and training seminars, by grueling days that sometimes end with initiates curled up under their desks to sleep, ensure that only the most morally supine remain. The strong and independent are weeded out early so only the unquestioning advance upward. Corporate culture serves a faceless system. It is, as Hannah Arendt writes, “the rule of nobody and for this very reason perhaps the least human and most cruel form of rulership.”Our political class, and its courtiers on the airwaves, insists that if we refuse to comply, if we step outside of the Democratic Party, if we rebel, we will make things worse. This game of accepting the lesser evil enables the steady erosion of justice and corporate plundering. It enables corporations to harvest the nation and finally the global economy, reconfiguring the world into neofeudalism, one of masters and serfs. This game goes on until there is hardly any action carried out by the power elite that is not a crime. It goes on until corporate predators, who long ago decided the nation and the planet were not worth salvaging, seize the last drops of wealth. It goes on until moral acts, such as calling for those inside the corporate headquarters of Goldman Sachs to be tried, see you jailed, and the crimes of financial fraud and perjury are upheld as lawful and rewarded by the courts, the U.S. Treasury and the Congress. And all this is done so a handful of rapacious, immoral plutocrats like Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs who sucks down about $250,000 a day and who lied to the U.S. Congress as well as his investors and the public, can use their dirty money to retreat into their own Forbidden City or Versailles while their underlings, basking in the arrogance of power, snap amusing photos of the rabble outside their gates being hauled away by the police and company goons.

It is vital that the occupation movements direct attention away from their encampments and tent cities, beset with the usual problems of hastily formed open societies where no one is turned away. Attention must be directed through street protests, civil disobedience and occupations toward the institutions that are carrying out the assaults against the 99 percent. Banks, insurance companies, courts where families are being foreclosed from their homes, city offices that put these homes up for auction, schools, libraries and firehouses that are being closed, and corporations such as General Electric that funnel taxpayer dollars into useless weapons systems and do not pay taxes, as well as propaganda outlets such as the New York Post and its evil twin, Fox News, which have unleashed a vicious propaganda war against us, all need to be targeted, shut down and occupied. Goldman Sachs is the poster child of all that is wrong with global capitalism, but there are many other companies whose degradation and destruction of human life are no less egregious.

It is always the respectable classes, the polished Ivy League graduates, the prep school boys and girls who grew up in Greenwich, Conn., or Short Hills, N.J., who are the most susceptible to evil. To be intelligent, as many are at least in a narrow, analytical way, is morally neutral. These respectable citizens are inculcated in their elitist enclaves with “values” and “norms,” including pious acts of charity used to justify their privilege, and a belief in the innate goodness of American power. They are trained to pay deference to systems of authority. They are taught to believe in their own goodness, unable to see or comprehend — and are perhaps indifferent to — the cruelty inflicted on others by the exclusive systems they serve. And as norms mutate and change, as the world is steadily transformed by corporate forces into one of a small cabal of predators and a vast herd of human prey, these elites seamlessly replace one set of “values” with another. These elites obey the rules. They make the system work. And they are rewarded for this. In return, they do not question.

Those who resist — the doubters, outcasts, renegades, skeptics and rebels — rarely come from the elite. They ask different questions. They seek something else — a life of meaning. They have grasped Immanuel Kant’s dictum, “If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.” And in their search they come to the conclusion that, as Socrates said, it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. This conclusion is rational, yet cannot be rationally defended. It makes a leap into the moral, which is beyond rational thought. It refuses to place a monetary value on human life. It acknowledges human life, indeed all life, as sacred. And this is why, as Arendt points out, the only morally reliable people when the chips are down are not those who say “this is wrong,” or “this should not be done,” but those who say “I can’t.”

“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,” Arendt writes. “For human beings, thinking of past matters means moving in the dimension of depth, striking roots and thus stabilizing ourselves, so as not to be swept away by whatever may occur — the Zeitgeist or History or simple temptation. The greatest evil is not radical, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over the whole world.”

There are streaks in my lungs, traces of the tuberculosis that I picked up around hundreds of dying Sudanese during the famine I covered as a foreign correspondent. I was strong and privileged and fought off the disease. They were not and did not. The bodies, most of them children, were dumped into hastily dug mass graves. The scars I carry within me are the whispers of these dead. They are the faint marks of those who never had a chance to become men or women, to fall in love and have children of their own. I carried these scars to the doors of Goldman Sachs. I had returned to living. Those whose last breaths had marked my lungs had not. I placed myself at the feet of these commodity traders to call for justice because the dead, and those who are dying in slums and refugee camps across the planet, could not make this journey. I see their faces. They haunt me in the day and come to me in the dark. They force me to remember. They make me choose sides. As the metal handcuffs were fastened around my wrists I thought of them, as I often think of them, and I said to myself: “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, I am free at last.”


Chris Hedges is a weekly Truthdig columnist and a fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.”

Federal Court Judge Wants to Transfer Lula from Curitiba to São Paulo

This event has raised many questions among them the security of president Lula. Brazil is facing a dark side in it's history where the state is turning into a land of laws created by judges according to their will not the codes, the constitution and the rule of law was forgotten. Lula's lawyers and politicians are working to stop this absurd for it was sudden without advising the lawyers and with no date.
In September Lula's habeas corpus will be appreciated by the Supreme Court. Why this sudden move? 
One of the reasons is the a kind of torture that Lula has been facing. One of his brothers died and they denied Lula to go to the funeral.
This is just another in a great number of deeds done to president Lula who shouldn't even be in jail for there is not a single prove in this whole conviction and former judge Sergio Moro, put Lula in jail, he even promised his father after his death that he would put Lula in jail, because Lula was going to win 2018 elections.
Bolsonaro who had promise Sergio Moro the Ministry of Justice won the election in a fraudulent way.

The Rio Times
By Contributing Reporter -August 7, 2019

"SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will be transferred from Curitiba to São Paulo. The order was signed by substitute judge Carolina Lebbos, of the 12th Federal Court of Curitiba, on the morning of Wednesday, August 7th.

The decision does not state where Lula will be held in São Paulo; rather, it will be up to the judicial authorities there to decide; similarly, the police must adopt the necessary security measures for the transfer, for which no date was fixed.

According to the decision, the transfer petition came from the Federal Police in Curitiba*, which alleged that maintaining Lula imprisoned in Curitiba generates damage to the public interest, and that the police headquarters were not appropriate for long-term prison sentences.

Specifically, the petition for transfer alleges that the “presence of antagonistic groups” around the Federal Police headquarters in Curitiba began to require permanent action by security agencies in order to avoid confrontation and ensure the safety of citizens and facilities.

The judge also took into consideration Lula’s defense counsel’s argument that, in São Paulo, Lula would be closer to his family and friends. The decision also states that “once under state tutelage, it is the duty of the State to guarantee his physical, moral and psychological integrity — as should be the case for any imprisoned citizen.”

The former president is currently serving a sentence of eight years, ten months, and twenty days in prison, after his conviction for the crimes of passive corruption and money laundering, in regard to a triplex apartment in Guarujá (SP).**

Lula’s defense counsel had opposed the Federal Police petition, claiming that transfer was not appropriate before his habeas corpus appeal to the STF had been heard, and that if he were transferred, it should be to a General Staff military prison, based on his status as a former president."

Corrections (mine):
* This petition was made one year ago and this judge just took it out of the drawer for reasons nobody understand.

** The conviction was made with no proves and followed political reasons as it is being proved with the leaks of chats of "The Intercept"

Paul Craig solution to stop decades of the Amazon rainforest deforestation: invade Brazil

Everything was going right when I started reading Paul Craig's article "Brazil’s Massive Crime Against Humanity".
Yes, for numerous reasons Bolsonaro was elected in a fraudulent election fact that Mr. Craig seems to have forgotten as well as the absurd that Bolsonaro is Trump's doormat and do what US tells him to do.
Bolsonaro wants his son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, to the Brazilian embassy in US.  
A scandal we are trying to prevent.
The ambassador candidate has already said: “We don’t think we’re going to do everything by ourselves in the Amazon.”

The American Department of Justice has helped former judge Sergio Moro in the Car Wash operation strategy that led the imprisonment of former president Lula who committed no crime but would win the election a result that Washington didn't want and Steven Bannon helped prevent.

It seems that Mr Craig forgot decades of destruction of the tropical rainforests with the help of US such as:

"US imports of crude oil from the Amazon are driving the destruction of some of the rainforest ecosystem’s most pristine areas and releasing copious amounts of greenhouse gases, according to a new report.

The study, conducted by environmental group Amazon Watch, found that American refineries processed 230,293 barrels of Amazon crude oil a day last year." Source: The Guardian.

Do I need to make the list of US economic  deeds that impacts the health of whole planet putting in danger the mere existence of earth? What about technocracy, the  surveillance, the food and medicines and other threat human beings to extinction?

 In the most diplomatic way Mr. Craig started to attack Brazilians:

"The idiot Brazilian population accepted this.  The fools believed their enemies."

Yes, the average Brazilian is easily brainwashed just like the average human being in other countries that I'll not name for it is not me who has to judge other people's population. 
As far as Americans are concerned I rather quote citizens from the country or choose carefully the adjectives.
I can call my fellow citizens names but not other nationality. It is a question of principles and common sense.

There are some Americans however, that I have to describe: those (called ugly Americans who behave in other people's country as special citizens) who think that the whole population of a Third Worldish country is stupid. I can't forget an American that I met on a virtual world that said to me: 

- "I'm amazed that you are Brazilian and know who James Joyce is." I was appalled listening such a statement and answered him asking if he liked Lawrence Sterne, Trevor Byrne... and others I knew he didn't ever heard about.

Finally in the end I came across with the final solution:

"It is such a massive crime that the countries on Earth should unite and give the corrupt gangster Brazilian government an ultimatum:  Stop the deforestation of the Amazon Rain Forest or be invaded and put on trial for crimes against humanity.There is no greater crime than to make the Earth uninhabitable. There is no better case for war than to protect the global climate and life on earth."

There are numerous solution such as Norway, chief foreign patron of the Amazon Fund, that stopped giving $70 to the fund; boycotts of Amazon products; demand a deforestation moratorium and enforcing it by a constant watch   but... Americans learn geography by invading other people's country and Mr. Craig is an American citizen predisposed to this solutions, it seems. I know many who aren't. Would he do the same to all rainforests?
There is a better approach here.

A freudian sleep revealing the imperialistic core of American minds?
I could suggest Mr. Craig a classical utilitarianism solution: nuke Washington or invade the empire since the role of US in the destruction of the planet if compared to other nations is on the top.
But the empire is about to collapse. Next: China! 

Names and Locations of the Top 100 People Killing the Planet

I wrote to Mr. Craig and his reply came in one sentence with no signature:
"It is your corrupt President whose policies is destroying the rain forest.  It is the Brazillians (sic) who elected him."

I'll stop here thou I have more to say. It is not worthy. 
Would Mr. Craig respond the same to a French person or... never mind...

Brazil URGENT: New Dialogs expose crimes committed by Sérgio Moro

Veja, a Brazilian magazine that is mainstream media and was part of the consortium to put former president Lula in jail, has published today a long article with dialogs leaked by "The Intercept".
Glenn Greenwald was part of the journalists who did the article.
The content of these leaks reveals numerous unlawful acts former judge Sérgio Moro committed to criminalize former president Lula.
This article alone must lead Sérgio Moro to resign the Ministry of Justice that Bolsonaro promised him even before his forger election.
It also must set Lula free today for it is more and more obvious that his trial was against the law, the Brazilian constitution and Moro's intentions were to imprison Lula no matter the means.

To be updated. 

Happening now: Ex judge Sérgio Moro under fire in the Congress

I'm watching now ex-judge Sérgio Moro in the Congress "answering" congressmen about his demeanor, ethics, partiality and other crimes that is more and more evident especially after "The Interception" leaks.
He avoids answering the questions and keep saying that the leaks were not real and were
done by hackers.
It's appalling his lack of character, morality and ethics.

Letter from Brazil

Do USA want to kill Lula?

US have been killing heads of state for a long time. Does the empire want another great politician to be killed?

Brazil is being ruled by USA

It's shameful, criminal, absurd but for those who know US foreign policy no news.
Brazil is upside down. 
I am indignant.

Image: Carmem Lúcia the Brazilian judge who rescheduled Lula's Habeas Corpus that would be appreciated tomorrow June, 25, 2019.

About justice

Michael Brooks interview Glenn Greenwald on the archives about Car Wash operation crimes

This is the free version of TMBS for June 11, 2019. Radio interview. Support Michael Brook.



Michael Brooks said "Lula Livre" (Free Lula) perfectly!
Thank you Michael!

Glenn Greenwald on the Leaked Brazil Archive Exposing Operation Car Wash

Glenn Greenwald explains the political scene in Brazil especially the imprisonment of Lula and it's reasons and the consequences of the leaking of the three archives of The Intercept.
The political consequences of the Car Wash operation done by the judge Sérgio Moro, trained in US to construct the prison of Lula without a single prove.
"Sérgio Moro is a liar."

Lula American Political Prisoner: not a single evidence of wrongdoing

Not a single evidence was produced by the ex judge Sérgio Moro during the whole trial.

You may say it is not up to a judge to produce evidences and you are right.

But this judge didn't respect any law or the constitution. He did what CIA instructed him to do.

Now the evidences of the crimes committed by Sérgio Moro are out in the open.

Free Lula NOW.

Hands of Brazil!

Lula for presidency: UNHRC demands Brazil to follow Brazilian and international law

From solitary confinement, Lula posted the following message on his social media today: "Today the world lost Kofi Annan. The first black man to lead the UN, Annan left a legacy of struggle against inequality in the world. Personally, I had the happiness to be President during his mandate and was able to witness his dedication towards harmony and dialogue between peoples."

Lately I've been focusing on Brazil because what is happening in my country and the whole South America is very serious.
Thank you.
The most important now is that former president Lula must run October's elections.

Today's UN Human Rights Committee ruling that Lula be allowed to run for President of Brazil is not a recommendation. Since 2009, when Legislative Decree 311 was ratified by Brazilian Congress, all decisions by the UNHRC are legally binding. If the government refuses to obey the order it will be in violation of both international and Brazilian law. Workers Party (PT) national president Glesi Hoffmann explains further in this official note that was just released by the party. 

Note from the Workers Party (PT): UN Decision Should be Obeyed

The government and judiciary can't rip up an international treaty which recognizes the UN's jurisdiction over political rights in our country. 

8/17/2018 – 7:29 PM

The preliminary ruling announced today, August 17th, by the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), demanding respect for president Lula's political rights, including the right for him to freely run for office, has to be obeyed in light of the international treaties signed by Brazil and in light of our legislation. 

On June 16th, 2009, Congress incorporated the United Nations Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights into our law, through Legislative Decree 311. Since then, obeying whatever is determined by the UNHRC is mandatory in Brazil. 
It is with indignation, therefore, that we witness a manifestation by the coup government's Justice Minister that there is “undue interference” by the UN. This cannot be treated as interference, but as a sovereign decision that we have the obligation to obey. It is embarrassing to Brazil that this Minister is accusing the world's highest human rights authority of political plotting. 

It is also with indignation that we received a note from the Itamaraty Palace falsely stating that, “the conclusions of the Committee are recommendations and therefore not legally binding.” This is another foreign policy sham committed by the coup government. 

The UNHRC, headquartered in Geneva, has been analyzing  Lula's lawyers' petition complaining of the judicial persecution that he has been victim of since September 2016. The complaints include arbitrary actions by the Federal Police and the Operation Car Wash Public Prosecutors, the curtailment of the defense, illegal wire taps, false plea bargain testimonies and Lula's conviction for committing “undetermined acts” in the rulings by Sergio Moro and the 4th Federal Regional Court, as well as a series of other human rights violations. 

After a long period of examination which including hearing the Brazilian government's arguments twice, today the Committee decided that Lula's political rights are indeed being threatened, and that he can not be prevented from running in the elections and having ample access to the media while there is no final sentence given after a fair trial.

The only thing that Lula has requested since the beginning of the hateful campaign against him was this: a fair trial. Unfortunately for the image of Brazil in the world, he had to appeal to the highest human rights court in the world so that this right could be finally recognized. 

There is no way of hiding from the world, the violence that has been practiced by sectors of the Brazilian judiciary in collaboration with Globo, the other big media companies and the coup government. Either obey the UN's decision or throw Brazil once and for all onto the list of nations that do not have the rule of law or democracy. 


Gleisi Hoffmann, National President of the Workers Party