(Another) Brazil environmentalist shot in rain forest

[struggle4progress]

24 Feb 2005 00:33:04 GMT
Source: Reuters

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Feb 23 (Reuters) - A Brazilian environmentalist was killed in an Atlantic rain forest on Tuesday night, only 10 days after a U.S. nun and activist against illegal logging was murdered in the Amazon jungle.

Dionisio Ribeiro Filho, 59, was shot in the head with a shotgun at the Tingua federal reserve, about 19 miles (30 km) from Rio de Janeiro city, after he defended it for over 15 years from poachers and illegal palm tree cutters, police said on Wednesday.

"We suspect some of those people he opposed may have murdered him," local police superintendent Roberto Cardoso told Brazil's O'Globo national television network. <snip>

"This business of shutting up ecologists and environmentalists with violence, it's not going to stop," said Edson Bedin, head of Brazil's federal environmental agency IBAMA in Rio de Janeiro state, which operates the reserve. "Threats against agents, workers have become routine." <snip>

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N23649061.htm

[Canuckistanian]

1. The only solution is to cut off the profit margin

Stop buying exotic woods and wood products!

[whistle]

4. They'll just burn them up, it's the land Brazil wants cultivated...

...for orange trees and shit who knows what other agro-business they want to exploit. Very short sighted. Imagine the wealth in rain forests that is being destroyed.

[burrowowl]

6. Rain forest have

very little soil. You can only grow other things for 2 years and then desert.

[count_alucard]

2. I see that Freepers are active in Brazil too

[whistle]

3. Microbiologists, environmentalists, what other high risk....

...occupations are there that the fascists and neo-conservatives do not want to have nosing around?

[joefree1]

5. Any Eco Pagans up for arming and heading to Brazil?

Time for some Earth haters to taste some dirt, ... six feet under.

[BreweryYardRat]

10. Oh hell yes...

Hang a few skinned corpses of loggers and farmers from the trees a la Predator and the rest should get the message pretty damn quick.

[hatrack]

7. Don't worry!

Soon the Brazilian government will issue a position paper and new regulations that will protect the rain forests from being flattened to produce even more beef and soybeans by . . . uh . . .

They'll be NEW regulations! Yeah, that's it, they'll be NEW, and they'll have gold trim around the edges of the pages, and they'll be signed by Lula!

[Blue_Tires]

8. this is getting serious

the powers that be are definitely trying to send a message here

[lovuian]

9. Somebody needs to go in there and STOP Brazil from destroying

Mother Earth!!!... these poor people!!!

[Algomas]

11. Do American corporations have a hand in this?

[Judi Lynn]

12. I found a simple version of an answer to your question.

Since I never attempted to find out before, I know there will be a lot more to learn, but this is the first article I've seen which has named any American companies, although just three or so:

The Disappearing Rainforests

• Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species dissapear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
  
  
• Most rainforests are cleared by chainsaws, bulldozers and fires for its timber value and then are followed by farming and ranching operations, even by world giants like Mitsubishi Corporation, Gerogia Pacific, Texaco and Unocal.
  
  
• There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.
  (snip)
  
  
• Experts agree that by leaving the rainforests intact and harvesting it's many nuts, fruits, oil-producing plants, and medicinal plants, the rainforest has more economic value than if they were cut down to make grazing land for cattle or for timber.
  
  
• The latest statistics show that rainforest land converted to cattle operations yields the land owner $60 per acre and if timber is harvested, the land is worth $400 per acre. However, if these renewable and sustainable resources are harvested, the land will yield the land owner $2,400 per acre.
  (snip/...)

http://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htm

[Judi Lynn]

13. More on American corporations involving themselves in Brazil's rainforests

Edward Goldsmith

La Terre vue du Ciel
(The Earth seen from the sky)
What do we do?

.....It is also to hell with the climatically essential task of saving the world's tropical forests. Consider that the huge "Avanca Brasil" development plan in Brasil, which, if implemented, would lead to the annihilation of something like 40% of the climatically critical Amazonian rainforests, has been approved by the Brazilian government and the World Bank. <10> Four huge American logging companies; International Paper, Weyerhauser, Boise Cascade, and Georgia Pacific, aggressively lobbied Bill Clinton, when President, who accepted to make it his priority at the WTO Ministerial at Seattle in November 1999 to pass a law known as the ATL Initiative, (known by its critics as the "Free Logging Agreement").

This would have made it illegal for the loggers to be denied access to any source of timber, or to any market for the sale of their products. Tariffs on wood and wood products would have been eliminated, "performance requirements" would have no longer been allowed, which means that the loggers could no longer have been made to observe sustainable forestry practices, while eco-labelling would have been outlawed. <11> In other words the protection of the world's remaining forests - as essential as they are for climatic and other ecological reasons - would have been made illegal. The Seattle meeting proved to be a fiasco (for the corporations) and the Free Logging Agreement never became law, but at the Doha meeting it has been put back on the agenda. Not surprisingly the Director General of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) stated (even before the last Ministerial at Doha) that only a miracle can save our tropical forests.
(snip/...)

http://www.edwardgoldsmith.com/page24.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not much fun seeing a Democratic President's name in this, but it'd be good to imagine that now, after he's had a lot more time to think things over, he may have gained some wisdom on the subject, as well as a better moral perspective.

[barbaraann]

14. Bill Clinton

That's the final straw. I'm sorry I voted for the guy.

[blindpig]

16. remember HST's fable of the old woman and the snake

"You knew that I was a snake." His enthusiastic endorsement of Clinton was greatly regretted. It's what motivated me to work for the party in 92. This makes me sick.

[Judi Lynn]

15. More on nun's story: Gun Used to Kill U.S. Nun Found on Brazil Ranch

Gun Used to Kill U.S. Nun Found on Brazil Ranch
Tue Feb 22, 2005 02:41 PM ET

By Angus Macswan
ALTAMIRA, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazilian police found the gun that killed an American nun on an Amazon ranch on Tuesday and troops patrolled the rain forest to quell violence between peasants and loggers in the timber-rich jungle.

Two ranchers were gunned down on Monday night in an area of southeastern Para state with a long history of violence between landholders and landless peasants.

Brazil has deployed 4,000 troops to restore order in Para state after U.S. missionary Dorothy Stang was killed on Feb. 12 as she fought illegal loggers and ranchers encroaching on a state-run peasant settlement.

Troops caught a third suspect in the contract killing, Clodoaldo Carlos Batista, late Monday as he tried to catch a ferry 50 miles from Altamira. Rayfran das Neves Sales, another suspect, confessed to shooting Stang and named others involved.
(snip/...)

http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=7703569



Accused assassin, Clodoaldo Carlos Batista, is escorted by Brazilian federal policemen into their local headquarters after Batista was discovered hiding from a police and military sweep of the region where American nun Dorothy Stang was murdered, in the Amazon town of Altamira, Para State, February 22, 2005. Photo by Rickey
Rogers/Reuters