I could not help but notice the protesters signs. All In Portugese.

Contrast that to Iran.

VIVA FATHER EDILBERTO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

STOP ALL COMPANIES FROM EXPLOITING AND DESTROYING EARTH!!!

NO TIME LEFT!!

ATTACK THESE COMPANIES WITH ALL YOU WANT!!!

FOKM ALL!!

NO WAY BACK!!
LIKE IN PERU...WE HAVE TO GIVE IT FIGHT YALL!!!!

DONT STOP!!
DONT GVE UP!!

FIGHT THIS GREY SYSTEM OF MONEY POLITICS!!!

ONELOVE!!

Thanks to Moondoggy for the Homegrown Revolution Youtube information.

The strangeness of the vicious cycle is that there wasn't poverty as poverty is known now in this hemisphere until Columbus sailed, & the European's began arriving to set up their Mammon system upon the earth.

This hemisphere might still be one big natural national park, but that would be a divergent time line so how things would be is Columbus hadn't sailed, and the Europeans hadn't arrived is an unknown.

The cash register world is here now & of course going to eat up the people's of the rainforest slowly but surely for all the natural resources to continually feed the consumption of the cash register world so everyone on the planet is locked into the cash register world one way or the other.

Everything has to play out according to the prophetic word until Jesus returns in Rev 19. The globalist system of the Beast is being built, has been being built all through time, & will be built until it's conclusion.

There will be those who Spiritually Reject this world of themselves as it is God, The God of Israel & of All Creation who has already cast his judgment upon any who worship the Beast & the Image of the Beast.

The God of Israel casts his judgment upon the world while Jesus, The Son, executes the judgements of the Father when that day comes.

If Jesus were living in the rainforest the cash register world would come for him, too, as they don't care who they kill to get what they want in this world.

Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.

To all those people above who posted very thoughtful responses to this article and to anyone who happens to read my little post here, I want to share a 10 minute video that demonstrates how we all, no matter where we live, can fight corporate abuse and rainforest destruction without even leaving home:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCPEBM5ol0Q

It's called, HOMEGROWN REVOLUTION - Radical Change Taking Root

We can do something about it, eat good food and have fun at the same time.

Hmmm, some very thought-provoking Comments here. Think about it: the one common denominator despite people being from different nations is that we are all being exploited in one way or another by the same greedy big corporations. The laborers and the consumers are one in the same. As consumers we have become addicted to a way of life that is killing us, making us and our planet sick from stress and toxins. Then, we give back our hard-earned money to the same people that would deregulate safety controls on the food we eat and the cars we drive. They've got us coming and going. It's a win-win for them. We must become smarter consumers.

I am very suspicious of the news coverage of Iran. Why weren't the News Papers and Stations so intersted in Rwanda when all that carnage was occuring? It seems... like the US of A is really interested in another country when it is important to U.S. of A. It's disgusting. I am, in no way, denigrating any person's right to speak out in Iran, I am just saying we choose our people to support when it serves out interest. So like US.

There should be more Father Edibertos. Where are they?
I agree with the comments of theinitiate. Where do we begin? People are just so endoctrinated to believe they have to buy all this crap out there...even, and especially if it says it is good for nature...whatever that means. I wish I could just take a container and get a replenishment of shampoo or whatever...instead we have to schlep to the store ande buy more crap in plastic containers. There are just not enough hours in a day to deal with all the stuff we are confronted with. But, I feel all this stuff is related. I guess we all have to take our stand in our own small way. But, to tell you the truth, sometimes I feel like I'm pissing in the wind being a vegetarian, earth centered, spiritual person.
I heard yesterday of a doctor in Argentina who has pointed out birth defects caused by the use of Round-up in Argentina.I think it was Monsanto who was being mentioned. The soy crops there, apparently, "needed" their Round-up. This stuff affects everyone. How can we come together and speak against this? I just don't know how this, thank God it exists, discussion will bring about change??? Frankly, I think most people in the USA are dolts...and happy with their lives.

I guess I'm not done. I see on MSNBC, right now, a discussion on the protest in Iran. Chris Matthews is making the comment that what we are seeing is "modernity",those protesting are young modern and want change and modern thinking. A guest, is stating that he came to the US as an immigrant and he chose to come here because he could see that he could live a better life.

Well, my opinion is that the better life is could be debated. On one hand, yes, through Democracy, we do live a better life( or did before Corporations took it over). But on the other hand, the same topic I mentioned above, comes into play. That is the consumerism aspect. Does bing able to buy and have all the comforts of an American lifestyle, really mean that someone has a better life/ And if it does-AT WHO'S EXPENSE?

Rome's red hatted Fascists will soon take care of this compassionate human being like they 'removed' Oscar Romero.

The Amazonian people have got to feel the causal connection between the forest destruction and the deteoration in their lives. In Peru this connection has been dramatically made: first by the indigenous peoples and then by the rest of the Amazonian population. Cargill and the rest have little chance of getting in now. Santarem must take action: viva Padre Edilberto.

To "theinitiate" - You have GOT to read Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English's FOR HER OWN GOOD. Some of your comments about women out the kitchen and into the industrialized world are developed in this book. I think it will put the puzzle pieces together for you.

Fr. Ediberto exemplifies "honorable" at its truest and best. He needs our prayers. What we have for elected leadership in this world is disgraceful; they are all complicit in their self-serving destruction of the earth and its people. True leadership is not elected, but shows itself in the compassion and bravery of people like Fr. Ediberto.

We in the US will not make such a move... to rise up and say,"NO!" to corporate abuse... of our lives and the earth. Only a few of us will take up this battle. When those few do so, there are those that belittle them and label these people as "trouble makers" or "outlaws"

We are so spoiled with our life styles, that many of us veiw certain aspects of our lives as necessities. But most of what we think we NEED-are luxuries. Every time we buy a bottle of shampoo, conditioner, even a green cleaning product, we are doing so much harm. Yeah, we now recycle, but besides the fact that this (I am only guessing here) is probably a small portion that gets recycled, CO2 is produced even in this process. But we are still making and using more and more plastic every day.

What about being able to go to the store with the same container every time, and filling it from a large vat, that gets filled with naturally made shampoo and conditioner by small local businesses. Bulk food stoes should come back instead of large supermarkets selling plastic containers. The same goes for any product that we buy continually, which come in small plastic containers. There is a large "oceanfill" that is between California and Hawaii, that CD posted an article on a few weeks ago. It is twice the size of Texas. This is so disturbing. My point is that we depend too much on our needs or even luxuries to come from large corporations. These get shipped by oil etc, far distances.

Why can't we go back to providing much of what we want and need on a small scale? David Korten promotes this in his book "The Great Turning".
One reason many people won't do this is because the people around them aren't doing it. Plus, many people can't or won't give up their jobs in order to make and create their own needs, as in centuries past. So, we depend on the corporation to supply us with money, so we can buy corporate made products, to save us time, so we can work more and make more money to buy more products. We belived all the time that we are "living the good life." But instead we are getting sick from lack of exercise, lack of fresh living food and the pollutants we breath and drink. We are over stressed and under loved with all our time spent going off to work to create profit-for who and for what?

Woman worked hard to gain the right to make money of their own, giving them, hopefully, equal power in relationships with their spouses. In the past, men could use their financial power to rule over their wives, etc. (IN many situations, this is still the case of course.) So, now, woman need to buy products already made in order to save time, because we couldn't be in the kitchen as much or not at all.
I won't leave out the fact that PERSONALITY definitely factors in a woman's choice to make a career or go out to work. I was not, and still am not, the domestic type. I am an outdoor type, who also likes to study and read. So the point is that personality is another reason for woman to go out to work to be able to express WHO they are... not to fall into the stereotype of house wife and mother.

Where am I going with this? I'm not blaming woman, but possibly the shift of woman out of the kitchen was seen by business as a new kind of maket. What may have begun as slight innovation,to help, became an exaggeration to exploit the market. These are just my theories and only part of the picture, of course.

Again, what I'm trying to do here, is get to the bottom of what it is in our culture, our life style, that keeps us on the merry-go-round that is grinding us down in the ground. How can we break the cycle of exploiting our resources, just to make our lives easy, exciting and what ever else. Nature has her own special excitement, her own marvels and wonders. The earth can give us what we need if we would only take the time to learn, not be HELL BENT ON PROFIT.
Ok I'm done for now.

It was Father Couglin, in the 1930's who warned us that the
Banks and others were taking over the government in the USA.
The extreme lefties put the pressure on the pope and had him
removed from his Radio Program that was broadcast on Sunday afternoons. It was in 1975 that Congressman Wright Patman,
warned us about the Banking System out of control, unlike
our politicians of today, he spoke up, and he could not be bought off.

The article says, "A 2006 report by Greenpeace shows that deforestation in those parts of the Amazon surrounding Santarem leaped from 15,000 hectares in 2002 to 28,000 hectares in 2004", and I wonder if this is accurate. I took a look at the initial set of facts provided in the 64-page (plenty for large pictures) report and didn't notice a mention of hectares, but km; tens of thousands of square kilometers deforested on a yearly basis and there are many hectares in a sq. km.

28,000 hectares is a lot, but I think the deforestion of the Amazon is much worse than this. Or maybe this is 28,000 in one relatively small part of the Amazon, not representing all of the deforestion of it in Brazil. Over the past few years or so Greenpeace and/or FoE reported that around half of the Amazon had been deforested for soya cultivation and ranching for meat animals, beef I guess.

In any case, the Greenpeace report seems certainly recommendable. Among other things, it tells of [slavery]; real slavery. Some of the pictures showing soya fields are also impressive in terms of the scope or size of these fields, where there was once awesome jungle and a healthy environment. The report says that because of the monoculture cropping of soya, herbicides (and maybe, if not surely, pesticides) have to be used and this is poisoning the environment.

It's all wickedly insane, psychopathic, and the indigenous get not only forced, one way or another forced into slavery, some are also murdered for their land. Even without the human injustices, all of this would still be psychopathic, because it takes psychopathic people to destroy such crucial environment, the destruction of which is seriously contributing to climate change, too.

Re. Christian ministers and nuns who have been and are activists in So. American countries, working for the rights and dignity of the indigenous and poor, and for environmental sanity, there evidently have been a good number down there. I believe it's some nun from the U.S. who also was brutally murdered by ranch workers over the past several years down there too.

The only activist Roman Catholics I'm aware of in the U.S. and Canada are in the U.S., the Catholic Worker movement or organisation. Although I've have read little about them, it was still enough to learn that they're socially active.

This is not about the environment, but a documentary by John Pilger about U.S. actions in So. American countries includes some of the history, with live footage, on the activism of former Archbishop Oscar Romero and some nuns. It's entitled "War on Democracy" and there are (were just a few months ago, anyway) free copies online; I believe at Google and Youtube, both. Based on that documentary and having read that Pope John Paul II, with the influence of the present pope while he was cardinal, had ordered Oscar Romero to cease his activism, it seems he didn't obey them and continued his important activism, until assassinated. I think to recall that John Pilger explains precisely who the assassin was, too. And I assume that person has never been indicted, tried, ....

One lousy thing JP II said and which cies like Cargill would likely welcome is that the enviornment is supposedly not important, that only humans are important, which is a clear sign that he either didn't understand our dependance on Nature, or that he was really root'in for Cargill, Monsanto, open pit mining, etcetera. He said this during (I believe) fall 2002, when I first heard or read of him saying this, that is; and repeated it again not long before he died. He had come to correct himself later in 2002, or in 2003, but still repeated this absurdity further on.

Thankfully, So. Americans have good Christian representatives. And I can't see why the Vatican is opposed to Lib. Theology as So. American priests and nuns live it. Jesus said to be active, so he clearly supported Lib. Theology; without use of violence. And plenty of Roman Catholic Canadian priests have considerable respect for Karl Marx; just that they prefer to not preach use of guns, although without really blaming him for this point.

Yet another of the 3,500 or so reasons I don't eat meat.

"Edilberto is a Roman Catholic priest and a follower of liberation theology - meaning not only does he believe in teaching the word of God, but believes that he has an absolute obligation to fight poverty and bring justice to the poor."

That's always great to read and I wonder when priests in the U.S. and Canada will become such true disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. Here, they are [silent]; very. They like collecting the tithes and complaining when the government threatens to raise hydro-electric costs for churches, but are otherwise ... dead silent. "No wonder" the churches have [emptied] here.

of course the eia gives an inaccurate assessment.... cargill's lawyers' high paid jobs depend on their navigating their way through every conceivable loophole to do what they do best... facilitate cargill's gobbling up of ever more resources with as little renumeration or accountability as possible to keep their stockholders happy with the trickle up effects. free market capitalism. ya gotta love it.
"we have to be more aware and confront them"
speaking truth to power. bravery. decency. liberation theology. whatever you call it, this world needs more of that interconnectedness-spark that motivates father sena...percy schmeiser...raj patel...stan cox...frances moore lappe..... so many others waking up and working to be heard rather than just herded.

If history shows us anything we can count on one or all of the following:
1. the local bishop will be pressured by Rome to "reassign" the priest to take care of a convent in the middle of nowhere.
2. the local bishop will order the priest to be silent in return for a large donation from Cargill,
3. the priest will receive some middle of the night visitors who will threaten him or simple execute him.

Rome does not tolerate anyone who challenges the establishment.

I think Father Ediberto is a true man of God.