[-empyre-] AMAZON IS BURNING

Tue Sep 24 07:12:28 AEST 2019

Hi everyone,

I've been following the thread, and the reflections presented are of great
interest. Following the article published by The Intercept, mentioned by
Lucia Agra, about Bolsonaro's plans for the Amazon area, I believe it's
important to highlight its connection to the permanent strategic objectives
of the United States for Latin America, as pointed by ambassador Samuel
Pinheiro Guimarães:

1. to prevent state or alliance of states from reducing US influence in the
region; 2. to broaden its cultural / ideological influence on the
communication systems of each state; 3. to incorporate all the economies of
the region into the American economy; 4. to disarm the states of the
region; 5. to maintain the regional policy coordination and alignment
system; 6. to prevent the presence, especially military, of adversary
powers in the region; 7. to punish states that contradict the principles of
American hegemonic leadership; 8. toprevent the development of autonomous
industries in advanced areas; 9. to weaken the states of the region; 10. to
elect political leaders favorable to US goals.

Those are United States' objectives for Latin America in general, but apply
in particular to Brazil, the main state in the region by size of territory,
natural resources, population, geographical location. Also, since President
Lula's election in 2003, Brazilian domestic and foreign policy has opposed,
albeit not systematically, some of America's strategic goals.

>From this new situation in Brazil-United States relations and the growing
popularity of President Lula, the American strategy was:
· To mobilize the mass media in Brazil against government policies;
· Under the Brazil-United States judicial cooperation agreement, to
initiate *Operation Lava Jato* that would facilitate the achievement of the
US strategic objectives in particular 2, 8, 9 and 10, listed above;
· To initiate the political process of preparing impeachment of President
Dilma Rousseff;
· Directly and indirectly finance the formation of the MBL and *Vem pra Rua*
groups (popular anti-Lula movements)

The main objective of *Operation Lava Jato* was not the fight against
corruption, but to prevent the election of President Lula in 2018.
“Corruption” was countered by *Operation Lava Jato*, headed by Sérgio Moro,
a lower court judge who had the connivance and even the cooperation of
members of the High Courts and the mainstream press for a highly unorthodox
and illegal procedural conduct. All the illegal aspects of his conduct have
widely been unveiled by the secret files published by The Intercept.
However, no action has been taken so far by the High Courts to revert this
situation.

The United States of America has achieved its main strategic objective: to
elect political leaders favorable to US goals. And with Bolsonaro's
government they are achieving all the other goals listed above.

Besides the great films suggested by Fabi, I'd also add to the list the
recently launched "Bacurau", by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano
Dornelles. The film received the Jury Prize at Cannes 2019, and represents
a strong allegory about local resistancy in the present situation (
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/kleber-mendonca-filho-bacurau-brazilian-government-lawsuit-1202145457/
).

On the topic of local resistancy, I'd like to mention the relevance of
indigenous actions.

Gisela

On Mon, 23 Sep 2019 at 13:53, Shu Lea Cheang <shulea at earthlink.net> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> dear Oliver
>
> indeed, i never read about this connection you made here with HIV virus. I
> have myself done a scifi cyherpunk film about HIV virus mutation in the
> future. (http://fluidthemovie.com).
>
> "The rich biodiversity of primary forests might start resisting in
> completely unanticipated and catastrophic ways."
> This warning is alarming.
>
> AMAZON continues burning... just want to mention as we enter into the 4th
> week of our sejour here in -empyre-, but feel free to continue the AMAZON
> IS BURNING thread...
> closely watched.
>
> thanks lots
>
> sl
>
>
>
> On 23.09.19 18:33, Dean Wilson wrote:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
>
>
> Thanks for this razor sharp contribution to the slowly expanding awareness
> of what living beings innately understand. Hasn’t the rich biodiversity of
> primary forests been resisting in unanticipated and catastrophic ways for
> centuries? Are we not witnessing accelerated and conflated natural
> disasters? Not long from today, the word Sargassum, for example, may refer
> to phenomena that presently have no explicit meaning in the mode of
> empirical observation:
>
>
> DW
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 10:36 AM Oliver Kellhammer <okellhammer at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> The multispecies resistance can cut both ways once primary ecosystems are
>> parsed up with roads and exposed to globalized trade flows. Freed from
>> their predators or other ecologies of containment, some of the more protean
>> species will take this as an opportunity to explore new habitats, and with
>> viruses and microbes, that can be super bad news.
>> When the rainforest of equatorial Africa started getting fragmented by
>> resource extraction,  there arose the set of perfect conditions to allow
>> HIV to jump from its simian to human hosts - the bushmeat trade,
>> long-distance trucking, roadside sex trade workers, systemic poverty and
>> displacement. The result was an epidemic for which the world was completely
>> unprepared. I remember in the '80s (along with many others) trying to piece
>> together the epidemiology of how it was that friends in Toronto were dying
>> by the score of illness completely unknown a few years before. Who would
>> have guessed that it stemmed from roadbuilding, mining and logging in the
>> vast watersheds of the Congo?
>> The rich biodiversity of primary forests might start resisting in
>> completely unanticipated and catastrophic ways.
>>
>> O.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 22, 2019 at 1:38 PM margaretha haughwout <
>> margaretha.anne.haughwout at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>> Good morning -empyre-,
>>>
>>> And yes thank you so much Lucio for this insight, and for the link. It
>>> is very important. I believe I found the English version:
>>> https://theintercept.com/2019/09/20/amazon-brazil-army-bolsanaro/
>>>
>>> It does seem like it all starts with the roads. The roads introduce new
>>> species in the area as they get made, possibilities for logging come about.
>>> New edge effects are created and microclimates emerge that allow for a
>>> greater chance of fires, ultimately directing the landscape away from
>>> rainforest and toward savannah where the plantationocene can take hold --
>>> radically depleting species diversity and introducing new species that also
>>> exhaust the soil (cattle deplete nutrients in the pastures). The roads are
>>> resource frontiers, and also involve the process of 'making cheap' -- a
>>> process Jason Moore describes (and who is referenced by Escher in another
>>> thread). Perhaps we can pick up the epistemological question again in the
>>> future -- the question of distance, speed, and totalizing views (yes,
>>> creating the 'we' vision).
>>>
>>> On the ground, I am so interested in the foreign species that travel
>>> along these roads -- how invasive plant species *sometimes* give big ag
>>> grief and can often remediate the landscape, reintroducing nutrients and re
>>> texturing the soil, sometimes so the more native species can move back in
>>> (Oliver has many examples of this happening in North America) . I'd love to
>>> learn what plants could do such things along these new roads in Brazil.
>>> Also interested in species that help fight big ag in alliance with humans.
>>> In Argentina for example anti gmo activists throw amaranth into fields (a
>>> superweed, a spinach, a grain): PDF:
>>> https://read.dukeupress.edu/environmental-humanities/article-pdf/9/2/204/517303/204beilin.pdf
>>> (also see
>>> https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/rethinking-a-weed-the-truth-about-amaranth)
>>> A big shout out to multispecies resistance.
>>>
>>> -M
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> beforebefore.net
>>> --
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 2:19 PM Sergio Basbaum <sbasbaum at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>>> Thank you Lucio, for this account
>>>>
>>>> s
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 1:24 PM Lucio Agra <lucioagra at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>>>> Hi, everybody.
>>>>> I've been lurking until now, following the discussion and
>>>>> preferably trying to do not interfere.  Margaretha, though, has put a good
>>>>> point here.
>>>>>
>>>>> Today I waked up with a message sent by a colleague  through Whats Up,
>>>>> with a link to The Intercept ,where a young brazilian journalist, from
>>>>> their crew, grabbed some information about the plans that the Govern - and
>>>>> particularly the Army - have been preparing concerning Amazon area. The
>>>>> militaries basically reedited an ancient doctrine about security on the
>>>>> Amazon frontier. Among several conspiration theories involving the
>>>>> construction of an independent country for Yanomoanis in collaboration with
>>>>> Venezuela, and other klind of misconception there is an intention to get
>>>>> around ancient plans of roads construction in the region. There is already
>>>>> a road that connects Cuiabá (in the middle of the country) to Santarem. Up
>>>>> to this place, there begins the region known as Calha Norte, which was
>>>>> involved in disputes and projects since Military Dictatorship in the 70s
>>>>> and 80s. It gave raise to a rumorous situation that involved, in the past,
>>>>> some militaires and empresarios. Well, here they come again, projecting the
>>>>> occupation of Indigenous areas with mining and people brought from other
>>>>> parts of the country, with the aim to avoid a supposed "invasion" of
>>>>> Chinese immigrants that also supposedly have benn growing in Suriname.
>>>>> Several detais, including a presentation with maps and some audio
>>>>> registering the meetings done in the state of Pará, were disclosed by
>>>>> Intercept. The material is astonishing even to those of us who were born
>>>>> and in Brazil and to all that live here.
>>>>> Now I  arrive to the important point Margaretha sustained in her
>>>>> commentaries. The roads we see in the map, part of it, probably represent
>>>>> these efforts to open ways up to North Amazon, a place, as an specialst
>>>>> heard by Intercept says, so isolated that does not demand concerns on
>>>>> fronteer security. There is indeed a plan to occupy Amazon with roads and
>>>>> it is really important for some *tactical* reasons: first, because it
>>>>> increases petrol and cars lobby, second because it was one of the main
>>>>> politics of Dictatorship in the 70s, through the absurd project of
>>>>> TransAmazonica road. Nowaday it seems to be a reedition of ancient
>>>>> positions susteinad by  some falcons from the Army.
>>>>> If, from one side, says Margaretha, perhaps the world get information
>>>>> that constructs a "we vision" (from the standpoint of the ones who did not
>>>>> suffer colonization directly - "seeing from afar") , on the other there is
>>>>> an analogous situation concerning people that live in  in  southwest or
>>>>> south parts of the Country, which means also "seeing from afar".
>>>>> Nevertheless, the same network has been making it possible to have fast
>>>>> access to such an information as it was disclosed by journalist Tatiana
>>>>> Dias through Intercept today. Intercept uses the same Network that can
>>>>> either reinforce distances, either eliminate them. To use a cliché,
>>>>> information is a crucial tool to this very moment.
>>>>> Link to the story (I'm afraid it is only in Portuguese):
>>>>> https://theintercept.com/2019/09/19/plano-bolsonaro-paranoia-amazonia/
>>>>>
>>>>> Best
>>>>> Lucio Agra
>>>>>
>>>>> Em sex, 20 de set de 2019 às 11:13, margaretha haughwout <
>>>>> margaretha.anne.haughwout at gmail.com> escreveu:
>>>>>
>>>>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>>>>> Dear All,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hope your day of CLIMATE STRIKE! brings new energy and fresh
>>>>>> beginnings to the struggle.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Fabi thank you for your posts so full of energy and for a vision of
>>>>>> agroecology. I share your inspiration for this set of cultivation
>>>>>> practices, and worry deeply about the ways it can be taken up by
>>>>>> capital.... But perhaps as you suggest it is a way out, a tear on the edges
>>>>>> of modernity (Eduardo Gudynas argues the way out of modernity will be
>>>>>> determined by Latin America....)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have another question for you Fabi and for Dan. One of the striking
>>>>>> things about the arial images of the Amazon, are the fishbone patterns we
>>>>>> see as roads get developed. We can actually see the metabolic pathways of
>>>>>> capitalism in these patterns. But I'm wondering about the ways 'we' see the
>>>>>> Amazon from afar -- the technologies we use, and how they themselves are
>>>>>> implicated in colonial histories and colonial futures that have us leaving
>>>>>> earth -- could you comment. How do you use these mapping and satellite
>>>>>> technologies in your own practice?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In solidarity,
>>>>>> -M
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> beforebefore.net
>>>>>> --
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 1:21 PM Dean Wilson <dean at sundialforum.org>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> A lurker here ... thanks for the thread. "A thousand years ago"
>>>>>>> indeed. Even an eight year interval under the present exploding plastic
>>>>>>> inevitable airborne toxic event is a lost slave ship of failure. Pankaj
>>>>>>> Mishra's book review of David French scraped the bulbous lard of privilege
>>>>>>> and rummaged around thusly back in the day (2011):
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/a-curzon-without-an-empire/270145
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "Even stranger gaps exist in *India*, which, though subtitled *An
>>>>>>> Intimate Biography of 1.2 Billion People*, finds no place for the
>>>>>>> nearly 800 million Indians who still depend on agriculture for a living.
>>>>>>> The quiet catastrophe in rural areas—the collapse of water tables,
>>>>>>> spiralling debt, the poisoning of cultivable land, and tens of thousands of
>>>>>>> farmer suicides—is absent from *India*. French does talk to one man
>>>>>>> with a farming background at length; but the latter turns out to be an
>>>>>>> upwardly mobile adivasi at a Californian-style vineyard owned by Sula
>>>>>>> Wines. Claiming that Mahadev Kolis “normally prefer” Chenin Blanc and
>>>>>>> Madeira, he leads French into upbeat speculation about the “democratisation
>>>>>>> of wine-drinking” in India."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Parasamgate bodhi svaha.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> DW
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> empyre forum
>>>>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>>>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> *Lucio Agra*
>>>>> Prof. Adjunto • CECULT/UFRB
>>>>> Centro de Cultura Linguagens e Tecnologias Aplicadas
>>>>> <https://ufrb.edu.br/cecult/>
>>>>> http://contemporaryperformance.org/profile/LucioAgra
>>>>> Se vc tem urgência de falar comigo, me ligue no celular! É mais rápido!
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> empyre forum
>>>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> -- Prof. Dr. Sérgio Roclaw Basbaum
>>>> -- Pós-Graduação Tec.da Inteligência e Design Digital - TIDD (PUC-SP)
>>>> -- Coordenador Pós-Graduação em Música e Imagem (FASM)
>>>>
>>>> -- http://soundcloud.com/sergiobasbaum
>>>> -- http://soundcloud.com/pantharei <https://soundcloud.com/pantharei>
>>>> -- [:a.cinema:] <http://acinemaperformance.blogspot.com.br/>
>>>> ...sai dessa fila, vem pra roda festejar..
>>>> <http://soundcloud.com/sergiobasbaum/choror-bye-bye>
>>>> -- a.cinema <http://acinemaperformance.blogspot.com>
>>>> -- pantharei_tube
>>>> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXlPdYtxV5bj5uAQwXC-M_Q>
>>>>
>>>> B'H'
>>>>
>>>> "Do mesmo modo como a percepção da coisa me abre ao ser, realizando a
>>>> síntese paradoxal de uma infinidade de aspectos perspectivos, a percepção
>>>> do outro funda a moralidade (...)"
>>>> Maurice Merleau-Ponty
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://www.oliverk.org
>> twitter: @okellhammer
>> mobile: 917-743-0126
>> skype: okellhammer
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
> --
> Dean Wilson, PhD
> 1(609) 772-2719
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forumempyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.auhttp://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

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