...and if the above news isn't bad enough with respect to the environment, the Brazilian government has just approved a massive new hydroelectric project (Jirau) which will dam the second longest river, the Madeira. Construction will be done by the French utility giant, Suez, and will be finished by 2013. Who knows how many more of these, as well as nuclear electric plants will be constructed in Brazil?

What a pity. Brazil is destroying its own ecosystems when it has the world's largest supply of Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) which can be harvested more cheaply than hydroelectric potential can be with less investment per KW of capacity, lower lead time, and much closer to population centers.

How is it possible that concerned people everywhere (especially those with means and political power) reading this would not support development of the Atmospheric Vortex Engine? It is based on "solid science" according to a well-known NASA scientist specializing in vortex and atmospheric phenomena at U.Mich.

This technology can not only can supply carbon-free electricity without ecological consequences, it actually mitigates global warming directly allowing warm air to more easily rise to above the cloud level where the excess heat can be radiated back into space. See http://vortexengine.ca

AVE_fan--actively seeking "Angels" to support development of this "world-saving" technology. (apply at above website)

what is happening in the amazon is happening everywhere on the planet

humans have become the aids of planet earth

the corporations are leading us over the precipice and we follow like the lemmings/sheeple we are, no longer able to voice any concerns about anything anymore

our leaders -hic- lie through smiling faces and we allow it
nwo chokes our freedoms and liberties daily - we allow it

oil is like the crack cocaine of business

short term buzz - long term devastation

we need to think more about all of the destruction we are committing on planet earth amd we need to begin to cut back on our wasteful western lifestyles

we need to think more about the world we give to our children and the next generation

its clear the battle lines are drawn

oil/nwo/corporations/government vs we the people

Lula sounds like Obama: lots of pretty words to pacify the public, but then acting to benefit global polluters (nuclear, "clean" coal, mountain top removal, etc.) Add to this what is happening in the Peruvian portion of the Amazon: President Garcia is giving sweetheart deals to mining, lumber and drilling companies to rape the Amazon, and slaughtering the indigenous people who dare to protest peacefully. At last count, the death toll among the Indians from last week's massacre is over 80, according to humanitarian sources on the ground. We need the progressive political movement that is sweeping Central and South America to come to Peru and Brazil! Also, obviously, we need to become vegetarians!

Ahh, the influence of money on governments!

I hear Obama has a 'taste tester' to protect him from being poisoned. Maybe that 'taste tester' should have to eat a few of the pages of every speech that Obama gives.

Words and paper are so important. Observe their effect on the health of this volunteer.

I can remember not so many years ago when American burger corporations were the big goliath ensuring forests were torn up for quick-growing beef pattie profits, then when the areas were degraded/eroded away they just moved onto newly ripped out forest areas.

When Brazilian officials were asked about the long term effects of losing forests in this manner they simply answered, "If the world wants to save the forests then they should pay us."

For those in control in Brazil the forests are just a natural resource to plunder to them.

Despite authentic efforts by locals and others concerned, corruption, greed and violence is what they face often falsly dressed up in supposed legitimacy.

Sioux Rose

The problem is that money is taken as the measure of worth (or wealth). So long as that transitory medium is granted homage, things of lasting worth and beauty will be sacrificed. More tragic is that money itself has now given birth to its own bastard child, the dark progeny of gamblers, in the form of the derivative. With entire nations' economies leveraged against the equivalent of bets, lasting treasure is now being sacrificed to balance numbers that are inherently false and enacted on the basis of entirely false criteria. MOTHER nature is being sacrificed to those who have put Mammon (fake money) and Mars (warfare) first. The planet is dying in so many places, her seas polluted, littered in plastic islands, filled with vast dead zones; and now the last primal forests felled as mountain tops are care-lessly blasted away. Human beings divorced from a higher understanding of their symbiotic relationship with this wondrous being Gaia, are committing virtual suicide. Tragically, they are taking everything else, apart from insect armies and bacterial agents along for the deadly ride.

OK. I pledge to go completely vegetarian for the rest of this week (till Sat night). We can end ranching if we stop eating meat.

The UN Permanent Forum of Indigenous Issues was filled with Peoples throughout South America calling on the UN to press for the right to land and "prior and informed consent"when it comes to projects in Indigenous Territories.

Leaders are being criminalized, the REDD cap and trade is profoundly flawed, political will of nation states needs the voices from both north and south and the indigenous peoples are seeking just that.

Supporting Indigenous Peoples in the fight to prevent rapacious development is very important.

There will be petitions on line throughout the year.
Below is a link to the Pataxo Ha Ha Hae. Please take a moment and support them:

http://www.petitiononline.com:80/hahahae/petition.html

Rainforest Action Network has a brief article with email addresses for public action:

http://understory.ran.org/2009/06/07/send-an-email-save-the-amazon/

An open letter to President Lula from former Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva (who resigned from the Lula government and is now Senator Silva) was posted by CIMI, a member organization of the Forum for Defense of Indigenous Rights (FDDI)

DRAFT TRANSLATION Open Letter to President Lula from
Former Secretary of the Environment, Senator Marina Silva

original posting in Portuguese: http://www.cimi.org.br/?system=news&action=read&id=3900&eid=257
*
Yesterday the nation experienced an historic day and a landmark for the Amazon with the final approval by the Federal Senate of Provisional Measure 458/09, which deals with land regulation of the region. The objectives of establishing rights, to promote justice and social inclusion, to increase public governance and combat criminality, which I know to have been your motivation, were distorted and ended serving to reaffirm privileges and the execrable patrimonial bias that misses no occasion for assault on the public good, in an abusive manner and incompatible with the necessities of the Country and the interests of a majority of her population.

Unfortunately, after years of efforts against this type of attitude, we again have a history misconstrued, in the name of the people but against the people and against the preservation of the forest and the commitment that Brazil assumed to reduce persistent deforestation that that squanders a national heritage and makes an attempt on the efforts to counter global warming.

The greatest problem of the Provisional Measure are the breaches created to grant amnesty for those who commit the crime of appropriation of great expanses of public lands and now benefit from policies originally thought to attend only to those good faith owners, whose rights are safeguarded by the Federal Constitution.

The specialists that accompany the land question in the Amazon categorically state that MP 458, as was approved yesterday, constitutes a grave retrogression, as pointed out by the Federal Prosecutor from the State of Pará, Dr. Felício Pontes: “The MP no. 458 is going to legitimate land grabbing in Amazonia and throws out fifteen years of intense work by the Federal Public Ministry in the State of Pará, in combating the grabbing of lands”.

This is a situation that beaches like a ship on the shores of all States of Amazonia. And in its wake will bring more forest destruction, because as we know, land grabbing was always the first step in environmental devastation.

Thus Mister President, it is in your hands to prevent an error of grand proportion, incommensurate with the social duty promoted by your government and with the respect due to all those who have given their life for the forest and for the Amazonian people. Those are, Father Jósimo, Sister Dorothy, Chico Mendes, Wilson Pinheiro – for whom Your Excellency once framed the Law of National Security – who irrigated the land of Amazonia with their own blood, in the hope that one day, in a democratic and popular government, it would be possible to separate the chaff from the wheat.

In memory of them, Mister President, and in the name of the heritage of the Brazilian People and of our dream for a just and sustainable nation, I make this appeal that you veto the most damaging provisions of MP 458, which are itemized below.

Permit me also, Mister President, and with the same emphasis, to ask that especial care be taken that the committee for review and evaluation of implementation be characterized by independence and be assured the effective participation of civil society, notably the representative segments of the environmental movement and of the popular agrarian movement.

Thus, Mister President, I ask that Your Excellency veto the sections II and IV of article 2; article 7 and article 13.

With the respect and fraternity that unite us, sincerely,

Senator Marina Silva

https://secure3.convio.net/gpeace/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=446

Link to Greenpeace letter writing campaign to international shoe manufacturers using leather from Amazon cattle.

Education and alternatives along with hard work to reforest, will bring things back to the way they were.
Tasso Azevedo and Carlos Minc are currently implementing a plan to reduce deforestation by 70%. Also on watch is Sergio Leitao, who is trying to eliminate it completely.
In addition, reforestation is well underway. See:
http://nelsonwademagazine.com/project-10-to-reforest-the-amazon-through-amerisciences-as10-a-tree-for-every-case-sold
The battle is give and take but we aren't "losing the Amazon", nor will we ever lose the Amazon.

The Amazon is dying? Shit! The whole fucking world is dying! Has been all my life! Excuse me while I sit back and watch...

I'm just waiting for the green outside my window to turn red. It happens you know.

I'm with Fast Eddie. Wring your hands all you want. Nothing is going to change. Species go extinct all the time and the planet just goes happily on about its way. We are doomed. Let's party. Let's burn as much fossil fuel as we can. Let's see if we can make the atmosphere unbreatheable. And then let's ask the politicians if they think maybe they should have done something 50 years ago. Fuckit. I want a gas well in my back yard. I want to eat MEAT. I want air conditioning. I want an SUV. I want Africans and Asians to suffer so I can heat my hose to 80 degrees in the winter and cooled to 60 degrees in the summer. I am an AMERICAN goddammit and I am PRIVILEGED. I am EXCEPTIONAL, and the rest of the world should be GLAD to suffer for my cheap gasoline. Fuck them. I don't know any of them. Let them eat cake. (And I wonder how many of you really catch that reference and understand the meaning -- 10% max?). Human beings are as a rule a rather ignorant and arrogant species. We deserve to die off. What a selfish, brutish lot.

Rev 18, The merchants of the earth were great men who deceived all the Nations of the earth with their sorceries.

Those the cash register hasn't gotten to still lay in it's wake. The Golden Rule. Them with the gold make the rules, but that is only in this world.

Jesus returns in Rev 19.

Problem. Solution.

What happens between now & then is what happens.

Sit back & watch & help those one can help in the ways they are able.

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

More true today than when I first wrote this.Tony
FOOD CHAIN

Man, the top, the pinnacle, the key link in the chain of life of this planet that has a closed system, there is no where else.

Should not this give us pause and reason to be as caretakers and guardians because nothing is limitless?

When we take all the oil and gas out of the earth, which are our cushions, shock absorbers and we get changes what will give us a chance when all is so unmoving and rigid ?

Wood is useful, nice to look at but it does not produce oxygen to breath but trees do, will we over cut trees and cut our own throat to please our selves.?

This includes trees from all over the world , can we really believe that when we rape any part of the world, in this enclosed system , that we can escape the consequences?

Deserts , are they an ecological balance or are they what is left when we at the “ top of the food chain “ use the mantra of we will subdue ?

This is just part of the situation as it stands today . There is more .

17/09/04 Tony

Yes - the Amazon is key in the survival of Gaia as we currently know her, but we must be careful in our interpreations of the story told via UK/USA/MNC press ala the inflammatory headline: "THE AMAZON IS DYING. The Brazilian government is legalising deforestation and western superbrands are benefiting from it."

How about we substitute: "The World's Natural Forests Are Dying. Globalized MNC Fascism is profiting from oil exploration, lumber sales, and cattle grazing."

Placing the blame on Brazil's government is but an easy out for the bosses and players in the Global Casino. As much as our attention should be on other global forests, our actions should be centered on land-use issues in the US of A.

Props to the dude from Utah that Yes-Men'd the land sale. Props to all past that gave their lives defending the incredible natural resources of North America, ala Edward Abby who inspired this piece I wrote a few years back about America and the use of our own natural resources...

"UNFINISHED WORK

pork barrel dams and aluminum shined
subsidies strategically appropriated
for World War Two bombers
continue today ensuring aluminum cans
may litter our land calmly tossed
off concrete monoliths
to float
amongst salmon corpses
imprisoned in rivers
blocked stagnant for L.A. lawns
and the caramel carbonated nectar
of the corporate red on white on blue
that drowns the world.

Turning, unable to rest, Hayduke breaks
desert grave and screams Earth First!
legs gathering action step purposely long
solemnly pulling napweed and survey sticks yet
laughing to remember old times, friends

His actions inspire those of the land.
We with spirits entwined with the salmon,
souls wet with river currents
RISE to follow the ghost’s lead.

The procession grows
beating rhythmic chants,
spewing words, acting hard
collectively emanating power.

But action awaits.
Until the charges blow
And the dams fall
Hayduke’s sleep will remain disturbed."

-Cap Liberte

The Amazon is not dying. It is being murdered. And the killers have names and addresses.

Greenpeace's approach assures failure by neglecting the root cause of many if not most environmental problems: The supply-driven economy. In such an economy, the consumer doesn't make active demands. It is the producer who drives demand to excess, via over-capacity to lower the price artificially to addict the consumer to gluttony. This is not natural capitalism, which is bad enough, this is perversion capitalism, worst than cronyism, collusion, monopoly. Supply-drive is criminal. Markets should be demand-driven, by an informed and responsible population. Meanwhile, Greenpeace goes chasing all the symptoms of the problems all over the oceans in its sailboats. Only the far-left faces the music: We promote localism, which takes production out of the hands of these capitalist freaks and puts it in the hands of the people where it belongs.

Aussie Helen Caldecott, a prominent leader in the anti-Nuclear movement of the late 70’s-early 80’s, had frustration that created problems with her relations with her family. She got into meditation & had a more centered peaceful state of mind helping her relationships & was a more effective leader. Congressman Kucinich meditates. Environmental minded folk who say our species is evil and should go extinct are off center & need to look deeper within themselves. You become what you hate. In India and Southeast Asia in some large all agricultural areas only the Hindu yogi ashrams and the Buddhist meditation temples have woods around them. Buddha was born, enlightened and died in the forest. Meditators of all traditions have always loved the forest, the forest has a spiritual function with which our urban and agricultural society is badly out of tune. When life is just about consuming and breeding we become the craziest of the animals. But when we look deep within to transcend our self illusions we become divine. Thoreau, Muir, many of our US eco-pioneers had an understanding of the spiritual interrelatedness of all life.

They will undoubtebly throw up a few walmarts to stimulate the economy.

"We must also tackle the dirty industries that are driving deforestation" (home cheapo and lowes quickly come to mind)

~ Some people live their whole lives without ever waking up ~