Murder Of Indigenous Child Provokes Strong Reaction
A follow up to this story, via the Boundary Sentinel:
The murder of an eight year old child from the Awa-Gwajá indigenous community, allegedly burnt alive by loggers in the state of Maranhão, Brazil, has caused outrage throughout the Internet, as well as disbelief by many in the face of such cruelty.
The Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) confirmed that “suspicions indicate that an attack has occurred between September and October against the camp of isolated indigenous” of the Araribóia reserve, and added more information:
The charred body was found in October 2011 in a camp abandoned by the isolated Awá, about 20 km from the Patizal village of the Tenetehara people, a region located in the municipality of Arame (Maranhão). The National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) was informed of the incident in November and no investigation of the case is ongoing.
According to Rosimeire Diniz, CIMI’s coordinator in Maranhão state, “the situation has been reported for a long time. It has…
Loggers Allegedly Burn 8-Year-Old Amazon Tribe Girl Alive
Hey, they need their jobs! Raf Sanchez reports in the Telegraph:
The child was said to have wandered away from her village, where around 60 members of the Awá tribe live in complete isolation from the modern world, and fallen into the hands of the loggers.
Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, told a Brazilian news website that they tied to her a tree and set her alight as a warning to other natives, who live in a protected reserve in the north-eastern state of Maranhão .
“She was from another tribe, they live deep in the jungle, and have no contact with the outside world. It would have been the first time she had ever seen white men. We heard that they laughed as they burned her to death,” he said.
Reports of the killing, which was said to have happened in October or November last year, were seconded…
How Social Darwinism Really Works
Author: Lecen (CC)
Via ScienceDaily:
Changes in social structure and cultural practices can also contribute to human evolution, according to a study that has recently been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), contributed to by the lecturer Mireia Esparza and assistant Neus Martínez-Abadías, from the Anthropology Unit of the UB’s Department of Animal Biology.
The study, coordinated by the expert Rolando González-José from the Patagonian National Research Center (CENPAT-CONICET, Argentina), examines physical, genetic, geographical and climatic patterns affecting over 1,200 people from the Baniwa, Ticuna, Yanomami, Kaingang, Xavánte and Kayapó indigenous groups of the Brazilian Amazon and Central Plateau.
According to the experts behind the study, one of the most interesting results is the rapid rate of morphological change in the Xavánte, which is up to 3.8 times faster than in the other groups studied. The changes observed in the Xavánte — who have larger heads, narrower faces…
Metal Objects Stick To Brazil’s ‘Magnet Boy’
Miracle or hoax? An 11-year-old Brazilian boy’s boy attracts metal household objects, and there are reports of a similar child in Croatia. Perhaps most baffling is the comment from his doctor: “It is not completely out of the ordinary.”
Brazil’s Biggest Bank Sued For Funding Amazon Deforestation
Brazil’s biggest bank — the state-run Banco do Brasil — is being sued for allegedly funding deforestation in the Amazon.
Public prosecutors say the bank lent money to companies that illegally cleared the rainforest and used labour practices bordering on slavery. The smaller state-owned Banco da Amazonia is also being sued.
Brazil says it has drastically reduced the rate of deforestation in the Amazon in recent years.
Prosecutors in the state of Para said they had uncovered 55 loans worth nearly $5m (£3m) that the Banco do Brasil approved to farms that had broken environmental and employment laws. They also said they had uncovered 37 loans worth $11m given to farms with similar violations by the Banco da Amazonia.
The loans violated Brazil’s constitution, environmental laws, banking regulations and international agreements signed by Brazil, the independent prosecutors at the Public Ministry said.
Brazilian Woman Wins The Right To Watch Porn & Masturbate At Work
Dodai Stewart writes on Jezebel:
How do you relieve stress and anxiety when you’re on the job? Do some online window shopping? Hit up the vending machine for some chocolate? Take a smoke break? One Brazilian woman masturbates. Eighteen times a day.
Ana Catarina Bezerra, a 36-year-old accountant, has a chemical imbalance. She suffers from severe anxiety and hypersexuality. She finds that masturbating helps… for a little while. According to Guanabee, Bezerra explains: “I got so bad I would to masturbate up to forty seven-times a day. That’s when I asked for help, I knew it wasn’t normal.”
Now Bezerra has seen a doctor, and she’s medicated, so she doesn’t need to jill off as often. But she still needs to. And she had to take her employer to court in order to be allowed to masturbate during the workday. A few weeks ago she won her case, which means she can reach orgasm…
Twins Mystery In Brazilian Town Solved
Cândido Godói, a Brazilian village with an extreme abundance of blonde twins, has long spawned conspiracy theories. Namely, that infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele (who visited repeatedly in the 1960s and treated locals) created an “Aryan twin town.” However, the New York Times reports that scientists have identified a “twins gene” possessed by residents (who are mostly of German descent and have a high rate of inbreeding), likely putting the matter to rest:
For years, so many twins have been born in the small southern Brazilian town of Cândido Godói that residents wonder whether something mysterious lurks in the water, or even if Josef Mengele, the Nazi physician known as the Angel of Death, conducted experiments on the women there.
But a group of scientists now says it can rule out such long-rumored possibilities. Ursula Matte, a geneticist in Porto Alegre, Brazil, said a series of DNA tests conducted on about 30 families…
Video: Brazil Officers Shoot 14 Year-Old Boy Being Questioned
A 14 year-old boy was shot last August by five military officers in Brazil who claimed they were questioning him about a crime. The officers were arrested on Wednesday after a security camera video was found capturing the incident. The boy was hospitalized for ten days and luckily survived after one of the bullets just missed the boy’s lungs. The video is quite shocking. Via the Associated Press:
Brazil To Provide Free Diabetes and High Blood Pressure Medications
President Rousseff Photo: Roberto Stuckert Filho/Presidência da República
BBC News reports:
Brazil is to provide free medicines for everyone suffering from high blood pressure or diabetes.
The drugs will be distributed through a nationwide network of budget pharmacies, where many medicines are already heavily subsidised.
President Dilma Rousseff said the measure was part of her campaign to end extreme poverty in Brazil.
About 33 million Brazilians have high blood pressure, and more than seven million have diabetes.
The free medicines will be available to all Brazilians who have a doctor’s prescription, but the authorities say they expect the offer to be taken up mainly by poorer people who use the public health system.
They will be distributed through 15,000 chemist shops that belong to the “Popular Pharmacies” network, where many drugs are already sold at a 90% discount.
[Continues at BBC News]
Christian Cult Bans USB As Satanic
Did you know that Satan has a presence in all of our homes? For a clue, just take a look at your computer’s USB port — it’s branded with devilish trident symbolism. Luckily, a Brazilian evangelical cult is spreading the warning, the Guardian reports:
The evangelical cult “Paz do Senhor Amado” (”Peace of the beloved Lord”) in the interior of Brazil forbids its followers to use any USB technology by contending that it uses a symbol that shows sympathy for the devil.
Its founder, the “Apostle” Welder Saldanha, says that this is just another symbol of Satan, which is always present in all Christian homes.
“The symbol of that name [a name which he doesn't even like to pronounce] is a trident, which is used to torture souls that go to hell. Use only a symbol of those shows that all users of that vile technology are actually worshipers of Satan,” explains the” Apostle.”
Measures…
Evidence of Ancient Civilization Found in the Amazon
Amazon River drainage basin with the Rio Negro highlighted. Source: Kmusser (CC)
Tom Phillips reports that a drought in Brazil has provided evidence of an ancient civilisation in the form of engravings up to 7,000 years old, in the Guardian:
A series of ancient underwater etchings has been uncovered near the jungle city of Manaus, following a drought in the Brazilian Amazon.
The previously submerged images – engraved on rocks and possibly up to 7,000 years old – were reportedly discovered by a fisherman after the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon river, fell to its lowest level in more than 100 years last month.
Tens of thousands of forest dwellers were left stranded after rivers in the region faded into desert-like sandbanks.
Though water levels are now rising again, partly covering the apparently stone age etchings, local researchers photographed them before they began to disappear under the river’s dark waters.
Archaeologists who have studied the…
Google Street View Images Show Murders
WARNING: Graphic depictions of bloodied, murdered bodies on the streets of Brazil, captured by Google Street View for voyeurs worldwide to catch a glimpse of life in the ghetto favelas, brought to you by Gizmodo:
This is one case: A murder in Belo Horizonte, in the State of Minas. You can see the body covered in a black plastic, surrounded by the military police.
Visit Gizmodo for more images — if that’s your thing — because Google is removing the images in reaction to the bad PR it’s getting.
The Loneliest Man In The World
This past month Slate wrote about the “most isolated man on the planet,” the sole remaining member of an Amazonian tribe, living a solitary existence in the jungle. Obviously, dozens of people may be choosing to live in remote locations by themselves — the difference is that this man’s isolation is not a conscious decision. Rather than seeking contact, Brazilian authorities are managing the surrounding area so as to prevent outside influence from disrupting his way of life — the whole scenario is slightly Truman Show-esque.
The most isolated man on the planet will spend tonight inside a leafy palm-thatch hut in the Brazilian Amazon. As always, insects will darn the air. Spider monkeys will patrol the treetops. Wild pigs will root in the undergrowth. And the man will remain a quietly anonymous fixture of the landscape, camouflaged to the point of near invisibility.
That description relies on a few unknowable assumptions, obviously,…
Fire Tornado Strikes In Brazil
Last week one of the rarest and more horrifying weather phenomena occurred in Brazil: a “fire tornado.” Created by extreme drought conditions, the whirling tower of flames raged outside of the city of Aracatuba, scorching dry earth and bringing traffic to a halt, before disappearing.
Brazil Hosts First Presidential Debate Online
The Presidential campaign enters the digital age in Brazil this week. From People’s Daily:
Brazil held on Wednesday its first online presidential debate, which gathered the three front-runners in the presidential campaign.
They were: Dilma Rousseff from the Workers’ Party, handpicked by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for succession; Jose Serra from the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, the main opposition candidate; and Green Party’s Marina Silva.
Topics such as education, public health system, basic sanitation and taxes were debated by the participants, who also had the opportunity to question each other and answer questions from journalists and netizens.
The debate, marked by frequent accusations and criticisms, was more fierce than a previous TV debate two weeks ago.
Serra kept his strategy of criticizing the Lula administration, while both Rousseff and Silva intensified their attacks on Serra’s records as governor of Sao Paulo state (Jan. 2007 to March 2010) and health minister under former president…
Man Accused Of Incest Fathered Children With Two Daughters
From CNN:
Pinheiros, Brazil — Law enforcement agents in Brazil’s northeastern town of Pinheiros trekked and canoed for nearly two hours through rugged terrain to arrest a 54-year-old man accused of fathering eight children with his two eldest daughters, a top regional investigator said.
Pinheiros Regional Police Chief Laura Amelia Barbosa told CNN that Jose Agostinho Bispo Pereira — who was arrested Thursday after complaints that he sexually abused his 29-year-old daughter, whom he held captive — fathered yet another child with his eldest daughter.
“He fathered seven children with his 29-year-old daughter and one with his 31-year-old,” Barbosa said.
The seven children born from his 29-year-old daughter range in age from 2 months old to 12 years, she said.
“We just learned that he fathered a child with his 31-year-old daughter. … The 14-year-old is right here beside me,” Barbosa said in a phone interview with CNN.
“We also confirmed that two other of his children/grandchildren…
From ‘Avatar’ To The Amazon: James Cameron To The Rescue
Alexei Barrionuevo writes for the New York Times:
VOLTA GRANDE DO XINGU, Brazil — They came from the far reaches of the Amazon, traveling in small boats and canoes for up to three days to discuss their fate. James Cameron, the Hollywood titan, stood before them with orange warrior streaks painted on his face, comparing the threats on their lands to a snake eating its prey.
“The snake kills by squeezing very slowly,” Mr. Cameron said to more than 70 indigenous people, some holding spears and bows and arrows, under a tree here along the Xingu River. “This is how the civilized world slowly, slowly pushes into the forest and takes away the world that used to be,” he added.
As if to underscore the point, seconds later a poisonous green snake fell out of a tree, just feet from where Mr. Cameron’s wife sat on a log. Screams rang out. Villagers scattered.…
Ancient Amazon Civilisation Laid Bare by Felled Forest
From NewScientist:
Signs of what could be a previously unknown ancient civilisation are emerging from beneath the felled trees of the Amazon. Some 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil’s border with Bolivia.
The traditional view is that before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th century there were no complex societies in the Amazon basin – in contrast to the Andes further west where the Incas built their cities. Now deforestation, increased air travel and satellite imagery are telling a different story.
“It’s never-ending,” says Denise Schaan of the Federal University of Pará in Belém, Brazil, who made many of the new discoveries from planes or by examining Google Earth images. “Every week we find new structures.” Some of them are square or rectangular, while others form concentric circles or complex geometric figures such as hexagons and octagons connected by…
Burning Giant Santa Disaster In Brazil
Geekologie has photos from an unfortunate disaster which occurred in Santa Catarina, Brazil this past weekend. A 50-foot-tall Santa Claus in the middle of the city somehow managed to go up in flames, blanketing the surrounding area with dark smoke, and burned until nothing remained but a blackened skeletal structure. This is something you don’t want your kids to see.
