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MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA, marialuisam222 at gmail.com
Maria Luísa Mendonça, director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil said today: “As Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro visits Washington, D.C. this week, we must point out his record of racism, misogyny and homophobic views. Bolsonaro represents an extremist tendency that finds in Trump a strong ally. He has expressed support for the military dictatorship and its torturers, saying that Brazil’s regime at that time did not go far enough in killing political opponents. Recent investigations about the assassination of Rio de Janeiro state legislator Marielle Franco suggest links between Bolsonaro’s family and militia members accused of killing her.”

ALEXANDER MAIN, main at cepr.net, @ceprdc
Director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Main said today: “Venezuela will undoubtedly be at the top of the agenda in the meeting between Bolsonaro and Trump. The current U.S. strategy for regime change in Venezuela — based on supporting Juan Guaido’s claim to the Venezuelan presidency and trying to trigger a military coup against the Maduro government — has not been working.  The Trump administration’s single-minded goal is to persuade South American allies to join the U.S. in imposing crippling economic sanctions on Venezuela. There are also signs that Trump and his team — which now includes hawkish Iran-Contra hand Elliott Abrams — would like to see Venezuela’s neighbors, Colombia and Brazil, intervene militarily in Venezuela, with possible U.S. logistical support. While there exists resistance to these plans within Bolsonaro’s government, the Brazilian president, who is one of Trump’s biggest international fans, is likely to commit to taking on a much more aggressive policy towards Venezuela.”

See past Institute for Public Accuracy news releases on Bolsonaro.

LEILA SALAZAR-LÓPEZ, via Paul Paz y Miño, paz at amazonwatch.org, @AmazonWatch
Leila Salazar-López is executive director of Amazon Watch and just wrote the New York Times oped “Bolsonaro Wants to Plunder the Amazon. Don’t Let Him.”

She writes: “The rise of President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has put the environment and human rights in peril. His promises to open the Amazon for business could result in huge deforestation and the release of vast greenhouse-gas emissions. His threats to slash fundamental environmental and indigenous rights standards that help keep the Amazon standing are a threat to climate stability.

“Mr. Bolsonaro, however, wouldn’t be the only one to blame for devastating the Amazon. Companies that accept his invitation to reap profit from Amazon destruction, and the financial institutions that provide the capital, will also bear great responsibility. And those poised to benefit from Mr. Bolsonaro’s reckless policies include American companies and financial institutions.

“Two of the largest publicly traded agribusiness firms operating in the Brazilian Amazon — Archer Daniels Midland and Bunge — are American-based companies. Agribusiness, in particular soy and beef production, is a leading driver of forest loss and human-rights abuses in the Brazilian Amazon, and A.D.M. and Bunge are two of the largest soy traders in Brazil. As producers seek more and more land for growing crops and grazing cattle, they push ever deeper into the Amazon. According to a report published in 2014, an estimated 90 percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is due to agribusiness activities.

“Where would these powerful agribusiness companies get the capital they need to bulldoze deeper into the Amazon, if they should take Mr. Bolsonaro up on his offer to eliminate environmental protections?

“In no small part from American-based asset managers BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, which are shareholders in all five of the largest publicly traded agribusiness companies operating in the Brazilian Amazon.”

ANNE PETERMANN, anne at globaljusticeecology.org, @gjep123
In Chile since Nov. 22 and there until Dec. 16, Peterman is executive director of the Global Justice Ecology Project. She is able to speak to media and to connect media to local specialists.

She just wrote the piece “Human Rights in Chile and at Chile-Controlled COP25: Attack Children, Medics and Civil Society,” which states: “In a tragic irony, International Human Rights Day in Chile [on Tuesday] ended with a 15-year-old girl in the hospital in critical condition and several others wounded at the hands of the violent Chilean National Police (carabineros).

“Then, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg was named Time‘s person of the year, celebrating the power of youth. I wonder if either Time or Greta heard about the 15-year-old-girl in Chile put in the hospital with a critical brain injury by the same country running this year’s UN Climate Summit (COP25) — where Thunberg spoke, after receiving the award, about the importance of outrage.

“While Greta spoke about the power of outrage at COP25, Chile was ironically cracking down on dissent and ejecting civil society groups en masse over a non-violent protest of ongoing inaction and injustice. But why would this come as a surprise? Chile holds the Presidency of the COP and Chile has shown itself to be utterly intolerant of protest — demonstrated by the 350+ eyes lost in protests, and again yesterday with another violent crackdown to celebrate human rights day — definitely the most violent we have seen since arriving in Santiago. This includes attacking the Red Cross tent with their water cannons, which we videotaped.

“Why is Chile allowed to retain the Presidency of the COP in the face of endless human rights abuses? Where is the outrage?” See from the New York Times: “‘It’s Mutilation’: The Police in Chile Are Blinding Protesters.”

GARY HUGHES, garyhughes.bfw at gmail.com, @vozsilvestre
Hughes has worked for decades on forest, climate and energy issues, and is currently the California Policy Monitor with Biofuelwatch and spent five years in Chile. He is accompanying the Global Justice Ecology Project team in Chile, covering ongoing anti-government protests in defense of the environment and Indigenous rights and monitoring the situation in Chile and Madrid.

He said today: “By a narrow margin, Chilean President Sebastian Piñera has escaped being removed from office by the Parliament a day after his cousin, longtime strong man and disgraced ex-Minister of the Interior, was severely sanctioned by the Chilean parliament over violence to protesters. The fact that such controversy regarding human rights abuses is ignored by a COP25 that is striving to put a normal face on an extremely irregular situation is a clear signal of how totally out of touch with the real world the UN climate process has become.”

DAHR JAMAIL, dahrjamail at gmail.com, @dahrjamail
Author of The End of Ice, Jamail’s recent pieces for Truthout include “Alaska Is Already Irreparably Changed by Climate Disruption,” “The Amazon Is Dying and Bolsonaro Is Fanning the Flames,” “Scientists Are Stunned by How Rapidly Ice Is Melting in the Arctic” and “Scientists’ Advice to People Living in Coastal Areas? Move.”

Right-wing politician Jeanine Añez Chavez, upon declaring herself president of Bolivia, pronounced that “the Bible has returned to the government palace.”

AP reports that “Bolivia’s Evo Morales called for the United Nations, and possibly Pope Francis, to mediate in the Andean nation’s political crisis following his ouster as president in what he called a coup d’etat that forced him into exile in Mexico.”

See Twitter list on Bolivia for latest, including developing protests and the coup government minister of communication attempting to prohibit people who have sought refugee in the Mexican embassy from making political statements.

ANDRÉS ARAUZ, [in Mexico City] andres.arauz at comunidad.unam.mx, @ecuarauz
Also via Dan Beeton, beeton at cepr.net, @Dan_Beeton
Arauz is a former Ecuadorian central bank official and a PhD candidate at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. As a senior research fellow with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, he has closely tracked the recent Bolivian election and events since. See the group’s recent work on Bolivia.

The group did a statistical analysis of the recent election — before the coup — and found that Evo Morales did indeed win. This has since been backed up by an analysis done by Walter R. Mebane of the Department of Political Science and Department of Statistics at the University of Michigan.

KATHRYN LEDEBUR, kath.ledebur at gmail.com, @AndeanInfoNet
Ledebur is director of the Andean Information Network in Cochabamba and researcher, activist, and analyst with over two decades of experience in Bolivia. In her recent interview with The Real News, she stated: “It’s important to note that the OAS audit results stated clearly that Morales should finish his elected mandate until January 21 of 2020 and that the Bolivian constitution be respected. The opposition forces didn’t do this. And attacks on MAS [Movement Toward Socialism — the party that Morales was part of] officials, burnings of their homes, of ministers, of members of congress; attacks on family members; sacking, looting, threats, showed that their demand was not focused on a new election or a democratic demand, but in destabilization.”

See Jacquelyn Kovarik in The Nation from Bolivia: “Bolivia’s Anti-Indigenous Backlash Is Growing.” She writes: “Bolivia’s far right has exploited the power vacuum and stoked anti-indigenous sentiment. Since Morales’s resignation, many officials down the line of succession for the country’s presidency have resigned as well, to protect themselves and their families, leaving Jeanine Añez Chavez, a conservative opposition leader and second vice president of the Senate, poised to take over Bolivia’s presidency. (Añez is married to a leader of a Colombian conservative party with historic ties to paramilitary groups.) Luis Fernando Camacho, a right-wing evangelical lawyer from Santa Cruz who has largely led the opposition movement over the last three weeks, has spouted extremely violent and xenophobic rhetoric, to the point that he’s been dubbed the ‘Bolsonaro of Bolivia.’ After Morales’s resignation, Camacho entered the government palace in La Paz, and placed a Bible on the Bolivian flag. The pastor by his side then said that the Pachamama (the Andean Mother Earth goddess) will ‘never return to Bolivia. Bolivia belongs to God.’ …

“On Monday, Morales loyalists started burning police stations in El Alto, an act of retaliation after the police mutiny, but also in response to lowering and burning of the Whipala flag — which represents dozens of indigenous groups in Bolivia and throughout the Andes — by police forces at the Legislative Assembly in La Paz. (In 2009, Morales had instituted the Whipala as Bolivia’s second national flag.) Police personnel across other cities followed suit, ripping off and cutting [the] patch containing the Whipala flag out of their uniforms.”

NATALIA DE CAMPOS, ndcampos at gmail.com, @BrazilDemocracy
Natalia de Campos is with the New York City, grassroots group Defend Democracy in Brazil, which is organizing a series of actions on Brazil, Climate, the Amazon and the United Nations. The group states: “[Current Brazilian President Jair] Bolsonaro’s policies and pronouncements have led to a surge of arson in the Amazon rainforest, as well as the assault on indigenous territories and protected areas. These policies include non-enforcement of existing environmental protections, evisceration of the governmental bodies tasked with environmental enforcement, systematic attempts to weaken environmental laws and protections of indigenous territories, and installation of Ministers who are representatives of the economic interests destroying the rainforest.”

Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept recently wrote the piece “Military Build-up and War Contribute to Climate Emergency.”

DAVID SWANSON, davidcnswanson at gmail.com, @davidcnswanson
Swanson is director of World BEYOND War, which is taking part in climate actions with StrikeDC Monday. He states: “The U.S. military is one of the biggest polluters on earth. Since 2001, the U.S. military has emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the annual emissions of 257 million cars on the road. The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest institutional consumer of oil ($17B/year) in the world, and the largest global landholder with 800 foreign military bases in 80 countries. …

“As the environmental crisis worsens, thinking of war as a tool with which to address it threatens us with the ultimate vicious cycle. Declaring that climate change causes war misses the reality that human beings cause war, and that unless we learn to address crises nonviolently we will only make them worse.

“A major motivation behind some wars is the desire to control resources that poison the earth, especially oil and gas.”

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA, marialuisam222 at gmail.com
Maria Luisa Mendonça, co-director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil, is currently a visiting scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. She recently appeared on an accuracy.org news release: “Why is the Amazon Burning?” and was just interviewed by WNYC.

CHRISTIAN POIRIER, MOIRA BIRSS, via Rania Batrice, rania at amazonwatch.org, @AmazonWatch
Program director of Amazon Watch, Poirier said: “While the raging fires in the Amazon have rightfully grabbed the attention of the G7 leaders, we must ensure a long-term global response that lasts long after these headlines pass.”

“Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro must take immediate, comprehensive steps to not only extinguish these fires but also address the root causes of this environmental catastrophe: the roll-back of environmental and indigenous rights protections and the recklessness of the profit-seeking agribusiness industry.”

“This burden isn’t on the Brazilian government alone. We are all global citizens of our shared planet and must take shared responsibility for its preservation. As such, American and European corporations must take responsibility for their complicity in this tragedy by encouraging and funding deforestation in Brazil. We must keep the pressure on the Brazilian government to ensure the protection of the Amazon and its native peoples, who are on the front lines of defending the rainforest, and look inward to do our part in protecting our rainforests and planet for generations to come.” See his interview on The Real News.

Birss, Amazon Watch’s finance campaign director said: “Indigenous people of the Amazon have been sounding the alarm about risks to the rainforest for years and resisting the destruction — sometimes at the cost of their own lives. Now that the world is finally paying attention, it’s important to also understand that governments and companies around the world are emboldening Bolsonaro’s toxic policies when they enter trade agreements with his government or invest in agribusiness companies operating in the Amazon.”

Leila Salazar-López, the executive director of Amazon Watch, just co-wrote the piece “We are facing a global emergency in the Amazon. Here’s what we can do” for CNN.

See Amazon Watch’s recent reports: “Complicity in Destruction: How northern consumers and financiers sustain the assault on the Brazilian Amazon and its peoples” and Part II.

The group has called for a global day of action targeting Brazilian embassies and offices of corporations profiting from Amazon destruction on Sept. 5.

In January, accuracy.org warned in a news release that the far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro “Wants to Plunder the Amazon. Don’t Let Him.”

Now, under Brazil’s far-right leader, the New York Times is reporting Amazon protections are being slashed and forests fall as Sao Paulo, the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, is plunged into darkness during the day as thick smoke from Amazon wildfires blankets the city.

As environmental defenders — often while fighting agribusiness — are being violently silenced, National Geographic is reporting that a “world food crisis looms if carbon emissions go unchecked, UN says.”

Open Democracy is reporting: “Leaked documents show Brazil’s Bolsonaro has grave plans for Amazon rainforest.”

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA, marialuisam222 at gmail.com
Maria Luisa Mendonça holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of São Paulo, is co-director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil and is currently a visiting scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. She said today: “The international community needs to send a strong message to the far-right government in Brazil because its policies are stimulating unprecedented environmental destruction in the Amazon, with dramatic consequences to climate change around the world. Destroying the Amazon to open space for agribusiness will not bring economic development to Brazil because [its] agricultural system is a main cause of climate change. The expansion of mono-cropping of agricultural commodities is destroying soil fertility, biodiversity, wildlife and water sources. We need to preserve our natural resources and create an ecological agriculture system, protecting land rights of indigenous and small farming communities.”

ALEXANDER MAIN, main at cepr.net, @ceprdc
Director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Main has written extensively on Brazil and has been tracking movement on the issue on Capitol Hill.

On Wednesday, Rep. Hank Johnson wrote a letter signed by 12 other members of congress to Attorney General William Barr “asking the Department of Justice (DOJ) to explain the scope of its involvement in the tainted and politicized case against Brazil’s former president Lula da Silva, and Brazil’s broad ‘Lava Jato’ (Car Wash) corruption investigation.”

“There is strong evidence that Brazil’s former president Lula was the target of a highly political operation involving the current Justice Minister that was intended to keep him off the ballot in last year’s elections, which he almost certainly would have won,” Rep. Johnson said. “We need to be sure that DOJ was not party to this tainted process.”

Main and Mendonça have been on a series of accuracy.org releases about the increased authoritarianism in Brazil in recent years, beginning with an effective coup against Dilma Rousseff. In “Confessing to Brazilian Coup * U.S. Complicity,” in 2016, Main noted: “The Obama administration continues to celebrate and support the new, illegitimate rightwing government of Michel Temer which took power following the baseless impeachment of elected president Dilma Rousseff. On Sept. 22, Vice President Joe Biden met with Temer and ‘commended [him] for his commitment to maintaining Brazil’s regional and global leadership role during the recent period of political change in Brazil.’”

Today, Main adds that “the U.S. Department of Justice’s record of enthusiastic support for ‘Lava Jato’ prosecutors who — as an ongoing Intercept investigation has revealed — colluded with a corrupt judge (and current justice minister) to put Lula in jail and keep him off the ballot, raises serious questions regarding the extent to which the U.S. government has been involved in anti-democratic political interference in Brazil under the guise of judicial cooperation.”

NATO foreign ministers are scheduled to gather in Washington, D.C. on April, 4 2019 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the organization. There will be protests, news conferences and other events scrutinizing NATO.

DAVID SWANSON, david at worldbeyondwar.org, @davidcnswanson
Swanson is director of the group World Beyond War, which is helping organize the upcoming protests in D.C. and elsewhere with a host of other groups. See: NoToNATO.org.

On Tuesday, President Trump, while meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, said he intends “to designate Brazil as a major non-NATO ally — or, maybe a NATO ally.” While the Washington Post writes that “Trump misunderstands NATO so badly, he thinks Brazil could be part of it,” Swanson notes that in fact, Colombia is already a NATO partner. This policy was pushed by the Atlantic Council, which itself is funded by the U.S. mission to NATO as well as various weapons makers.

Swanson adds: “The pretense of North-Atlanticness was pretty well gone with the wars on Afghanistan, Pakistan. Libya.” Swanson also questions the depiction of Trump as “anti-NATO” while he has been “the biggest promoter of NATO ever” since his past comments have “already got most NATO members buying more weapons.”

See NoToNATO.org for information, events and critical background on NATO: “NATO is the largest military alliance in the world with the largest military spending and weapons dealing (roughly three-quarters of the world total) and nuclear stockpiles. While claiming to ‘preserve peace,’ NATO has violated international law and bombed Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya. NATO has exacerbated tensions with Russia and increased the risk of nuclear apocalypse. …

“War is a leading contributor to the growing global refugee and climate crises, the basis for the militarization of the police, a top cause of the erosion of civil liberties, and a catalyst for racism and bigotry. We’re calling for the abolition of NATO, the promotion of peace, the redirection of resources to human and environmental needs, and the demilitarization of our cultures.”

JANINE R. WEDEL, jwedel at gmu.edu, @janinewedel
Wedel is an anthropologist and University Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. She is author of Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted our Finances, Freedom, and Politics and Created an Outsider Class (2014).

She just wrote the piece “Dirty Populists” which states: “The election left one of the world’s largest countries deeply divided, handing the presidency to a military-loving, minority-bullying, media-bashing firebrand promising to smash a corrupt establishment. I am not talking about the 2016 U.S. presidential election that put Donald Trump in power, but rather the 2018 election in Brazil, won by the so-called Trump of the Tropics, Jair Bolsonaro, who was formally inaugurated on January 1.

“Bolsonaro joins the growing ranks of supposedly transformative leaders — including Trump, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and de facto Polish leader Jarosław Kaczyński — who won power by railing against the establishment and vowing to end systemic corruption. Will he also join Trump, Orbán, and to a lesser extent Kaczyński, in overseeing the spread of new kinds of corruption, while attempting to reshape governance to entrench his own power?

“Despite repeatedly pledging to ‘drain the swamp,’ Trump has enabled a level of corruption that is arguably unprecedented in American history, affecting large swaths of the federal bureaucracy. He has failed to fill open positions, slashed budgets, bypassed established bureaucratic procedures and protocols, and sidelined diplomats. He has largely spared the military, though here, too, he frequently denigrates his commanders’ expertise in favor of his gut feelings.

“When the state apparatus is eviscerated, governance can become more informal, policy more personalized, executive power more dominant, and loyalty to the leader more important. Trump has installed family members as official and unofficial advisers, placed senior aides in agencies to monitor loyalty, and issued more executive orders in his first year than any president in a half-century.”

Huffington Post reports: “Brazil Elects Far-Right Authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro As President.”

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA, marialuisam222 at gmail.com
Maria Luísa Mendonça, director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil said today: “We will have very difficult times ahead in Brazil with increasing intolerance, violence, racism, sexism, homophobia and repression against progressive movements, universities and indigenous communities, stimulated by a discourse of hate that characterizes Bolsonaro and his supporters. At the same time, we saw a new wave of hope for progressive politics in the campaign of Fernando Haddad and Manuela D’Ávila, which was built by the mobilization of millions of people. We saw a great deal of diversity in Haddad’s campaign, who received support from artists and intellectuals in Brazil and abroad. We need international solidarity to protect democracy and basic rights in our country.” See the piece in Ms. Magazine: “What’s at Stake for Women in Brazil.”

ALEXANDER MAIN, main at cepr.net
Director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Main was recently on an Institute for Public Accuracy news release: “Is Brazil Slipping Back into Fascism?“