The Indigenous Missionary Council’s (CIMI) annual report on violence against indigenous communities in Brazil in 2020 illustrates an expansion of human rights violations committed during Jair Bolsonaro’s second year of his presidency. Under the guise of the coronavirus pandemic, land exploitation continued while indigenous communities benefited from no state protection.

Increased illegal incursions into indigenous territory by miners, loggers, farmers and hunters contributed to the spread of Covid19 among indigenous communities, which resulted in 900 deaths – a loss in terms of indigenous history, memory and culture.

Furthermore, the Brazilian government’s encouragement of land exploitation, in particular the legal proposals to open up indigenous territory to industrialization, contributed to an increase in violent clashes over territorial rights, with an increase of 174 percent in 2020 over 2019.

Equally important, and in line with the previous statistics, is an increase in the number of indigenous people murdered in 2020, when compared to 2019, with 182 and 113 people killed in these respective years. Last year’s tally represents a 61 percent increase over 2019. Additionally, 304 cases of violence were recorded in 2020, in comparison to the 277 cases documented in 2019.

In 2020, heritage related crimes amounted to 1,191 cases, while suspended demarcations of indigenous territory remains a key component of Bolsonaro’s presidency with 64 percent of territory still awaiting identification.

Bolsosnaro was one of the world leaders purportedly committing to halt deforestation by 2030, but his track record indicates otherwise, particularly when reports called out the deterioration of Brazil’s environment. The intimidation exhibited towards institutions and agencies is also reflective of the violence employed towards indigenous communities in Brazil, whose indigenous status is ridiculed by the government and who are the last standing frontline in between the rainforest and Bolsonaro’s exploitative politics.

How does Bolsonaro, for instance, seek to reduce deforestation when agribusiness is one of Bolsonaro’s main electoral bulwarks?

At the COP26 conference in Glasgow, indigenous representatives highlighted the Brazilian government’s contradictions. “If there is no protection of indigenous territories and rights, there will also be no solution to the climate crisis, because we are part of that solution,” Sonia Guajajara, head of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (ABIP), declared.

This is one core issue where Bolsonaro is intentionally failing, for profit. A recent report illustrates how indigenous reserves in Trincheira have been targeted by invaders who destroyed 20 hectares of forest area and planted grass, paving the way for additional pasture area and affecting 18 indigenous reserves. According to Global Forest Watch, this year’s deforestation in Brazil is already over 72 percent higher than the same period in 2020. Josiane Tavares dos Santos, leader of Trincheira, described the destruction as “becoming an island in the middle of farms.”

Clearly, the EU for example has failed to heed indigenous warnings. Commenting on Bolsonaro’s pledges to end illegal deforestation during a meeting with foreign affairs and environment ministers, EU Vice President Josep Borrell stated, “The will is there, because the ministers know that it will be good for Brazil to put an end to illegal exploitation of the Amazon Rainforest.”

In 2019, EU firms were among those benefiting from Brazil’s illegal logging business – an issue which ought to be investigated as part of the bloc’s complicity in abetting both the Brazilian government and illegal deforestation.

It is only the indigenous communities, however, who are clarifying the importance of their inclusion in political decision-making with regards to the environment. The international community makes an erroneous distinction between indigenous communities and their environment. CIMI’s report should serve as an eyeopener in terms of how indigenous communities require political protection, but the world would prefer to dissociate, thus associating politics with businesses and destruction with the humanitarian paradigm.

The U.S.-Brazil deal, touted by U.S. President Joe Biden as a possibility to induce Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to tackle deforestation has not materialised. Environmental activists and indigenous leaders had expressed themselves against the financial arrangement which would have seen $20 billion boosting the governmental offices protecting the entities responsible for the Amazon’s deforestation.

U.S. Senators, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, also cautioned against billions being awarded to Bolsonaro without any conditions, given that under his government, deforestation has soared. The 15 senators who penned a letter to Biden noted the Human Rights Watch (HRW) 2019 report which attributed deforestation to “powerful criminal networks that use intimidation and violence – with near total impunity – against those who seek to defend the rainforest.”

Speaking at the climate summit held last week, Bolsonaro pledged to end illegal deforestation by 2030 and to double the funds for environmental reinforcement. However, Bolsonaro’s proposals were not novel. In 2015, former President Dilma Roussef had already set 2030 as the date by which Brazil aimed to reach “zero illegal deforestation.” By 2020, however, Bolsonaro had dropped the pledge from the updated strategy in terms of the country’s implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Three weeks ago, Bolsonaro’s son and lawmaker, Eduardo Bolsonaro, erroneously claimed that agribusinesss – one of the main culprits of deforestation – “generates clean energy and helps to conserve the forest that occupies 61% of Brazil’s territory.” Not only was the data proved statistically inaccurate. Deforestation has contributed to the Amazon rainforest being depleted by 20%.

In 2019, 99% of deforestation in Brazil was carried out illegally. Indigenous terrain accounted for 6% of the targeted land, while 11% including conservation areas. A 2020 report confirms agribusiness as the main culprit of deforestation. In 2018, Bolsonaro lamented the presence of indigenous communities preventing agribusiness exploitation.

The refusal to include indigenous communities and environmental organisations in policy making has been one of the main contentions raised to the U.S. government. “No talks should move forward  until Brazil has slashed deforestation rates to the level required by the national climate change law and until the string of bill proposals sent to Congress containing environmental setbacks is withdrawn. Negotiating with Bolsonaro is not the same as helping Brazil solve its problems,” the letter partly stated.

Deforestation and progress are only linked together by agribusiness companies and the Brazilian government, as in the case of Acre where 688 square kilometres were lost to deforestation. “Acre doesn’t have minerals. It has no potential for tourism. What it does have is some of the best land in Brazil. But this land has one problem: it’s covered in forest,”Assuero Doca Veronez, the President of the Acre Agriculture Federation stated in 2020. What Veronez was aiming at was the establishment of agricultural territory combined with industrial development.

Following the climate summit, Bolsonaro was not deterred, criticising external opinions about Brazil while once again requesting foreign assistance for the Amazon rainforest protection. Citing comparisons in global emissions, Bolsonaro claimed that scrutinising Brazil was “absurd”, while stating that since Brazil’s global emissions amounted to less than those of other countries including China and the U.S., less environmental restrictions should apply to the country. One main concern raised by Bolsonaro, once again, was tied to agribusiness. Countries seeking Brazil’s contribution on environmental protection, according to Bolsonaro pose a hindrance to agribusiness profit and expansion.

It remains to be seen whether the international community can curb Brazil’s neoliberal profit upon environmental exploitation. International warnings over trade deals with Brazil – the EU-Mercosur pact has not yet been ratified and this may have implications for Brazil which relies heavily on agricultural exports. However, if the deal goes through, it would not be the first time that the international community pays lip service to environmental concerns, while turning a blind eye when it comes to economic expansion.

In July 1963, the Kennedy administration decided it had to “do something about Brazil.” The U.S. role, at the time, was to destabilise the country, which is did through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) between 1961 and 1963, while considering the options to bring Brazil to a compliant approach with U.S. imperialist interests. President Joao Goulart could either purge the left-wing from this government, or else face a military coup, which by 1962 was already considered the preferable option.

On March 31, Brazil’s armed forces, backed by the U.S., staged a military coup which forced Goulart into exile in Uruguay. The U.S. immediately recognised the military government, which paved the way for widespread torture of opponents. Statistics indicate a lesser number of disappeared civilians in Brazil than Chile and Argentina, for example. However, the use of torture was rampant and the primary method used to quash out any resistance to the dictatorship. More than 50,000 Brazilians were detained and tortured, while 10,000 were forced into exile.

Under the current Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the military dictatorship stirred up the country’s memory in a brutal manner. While in 2011, the Brazilian Congress voted in favour of a bill to set up a truth commission as a primary step towards justice and building the country’s collective memory, Bolsonaro has tried to emulate dictatorship tactics within a democratic framework through his policies, the political attacks upon the indigenous communities, education, as well as giving the right-wing the space to flourish once again in the country.

The recent commemorations of the coup by several Brazilian officials and influential individuals attest to the government’s normalisation of right-wing violence. “We are here to celebrate the expulsion of communists from the Brazilian government,” a businessman declared.

With no accountability so far in terms of establishing culpability over torture, Bolsonaro has exploited the vacuum that prevails in place of memory. In 1974, for example, the Brazilian President Ernesto Geisel gave the order to continue the “summary execution of dangerous subversives,” as detained in a memorandum to Henry Kissinger, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time. The document states that 103 Brazilians were executed by extra-legal methods in 1973.

Declassified documents presented in 2014 to former Brazilian President Dilma Roussef detail the torture and execution methods employed by the military dictatorship. One method used to eliminate identification of bodies was termed “sewing” – shooting a person from head to top with an automatic weapon. The dictatorship’s preferred cover-up for the elimination of its opponents was the fabrication of a shoot-out – claiming that prisoners were shot while attempting to escape.

Defence Minister Walter Braga Netto insisted upon the “right” to celebrate the coup, saying, “The armed forces ended up assuming the responsibility of pacifying the country, facing the challenges of reorganising it and securing the democratic liberties that we enjoy today.” But if the coup secured freedom, why would it have had to resort to oppression to annihilate what it allegedly procured?

While Bolsonaro himself refrained from making any remarks as opposed to previous years, the discourse of purported pacification from one of the country’s top officials is an embodiment of Bolsonaro’s constant praise for dictatorship crimes. Furthermore, it places obstacles to the people’s right to justice and memory by appealing to the younger generation’s right-wing glorification, thus setting the country up for a possible political rupture. And while Bolsonaro may have recently stirred a rift between the government and the military, any divergences or differences of opinion or strategy between both entities will still veer toward the right-wing ideology that Bolsonaro has promoted since his foray into politics, and more vociferously, since he was elected president.

While research has indicated the importance of indigenous conservation of land, the G7 countries are driving deforestation worldwide through consumption patterns targeting less developed countries. Tropical forests remain among the most targeted areas, with 46-57 percent of imported material deriving from such areas. More than 4.2 million hectares of primary tropical forests was lost in 2020 to deforestation; 1.7 million hectares forest loss were incurred in Brazil’s Amazon alone.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro certainly has failed to impress with his track record of exploiting indigenous terrain. Since the start of his presidency, he prioritised the industrialisation of the Amazon rainforest, home to indigenous communities and over 100 uncontacted tribes. Not in Bolsonaro’s language, however, who refuted the indigeneity and declared the communities as favourable to industrialisation of their land.

In 2019, the world witnessed a grotesque spectacle as the Amazon rainforest burned and Bolsonaro bided his time to save the terrain, while blaming environmental activists for the destruction, claiming arson attacks. Yet one of Bolsonaro’s first policies, enacted within hours of his taking office, was to subject the regulation of indigenous lands to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Another gimmick hand involved Bolsonaro’s rejection of the G7’s offer $20 million in aid to fight the Amazon fires – rhetoric he later retracted. The spectacle of exploiters offering aid to halt the fire spread illustrated nothing in terms of environment protection; rather it portrayed the vested interests of saving the forests to exploit through other means. The indigenous populations, for whom the Amazon is a home, existed in a realm far from capitalist consciousness. And in such reasoning, Bolsonaro and the G7 were on the same page.

For Bolsonaro, a leader enamoured with the dictatorship era, there were no qualms about militarising the Amazon. Allowing the military to occupy key positions in environmental matters had precedents during the years of the Brazilian dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, which ushered in the country’s industrialisation, even as indigenous communities were displaced and killed for their resistance. Brazil’s National Truth Commission report estimates that 8,350 indigenous people were killed during the dictatorship.

With a history of being in favour of industrialising the Amazon, Bolsonaro’s purported solution to preserving the terrain has turned out to be a recipe of oppression for the indigenous communities, and an avenue for exploitation to take place. A recent report by Reuters quotes former left-wing environment minister Izabella Teixeira stating, “The current Brazilian government has a 1970s mentality related to natural resources. That to control the forest means to cut it down.”

In January this year, indigenous leaders and human rights groups requested the International Criminal Court to investigate Bolsonaro for crimes against humanity as a result of his policies and violations of indigenous rights. A detailed report by Brazil’s Climate.

Observatory highlights the government’s refusal to engage in public debate, noting that 593 regulatory changes were signed in 2020 alone.

Furthermore, outsourcing the Amazon’s protection to the military resulted in an increase in fires and higher deforestation, which substantiates claims that the military and the government see eye to eye when it comes to indigenous exploitation. According to the report, one recurring tactic used by Bolsonaro is the purported collusion between non-governmental organisations and foreign governments. This is an attempt to obscure the true damage that is leaving a disastrous environmental impact as a result of agribusiness and deforestation – the former a strong lobby and vociferous support of Bolsonaro’s policies.

Bolsonaro has asserted the existence of “international greed” when it comes to the Amazon. However, such a statement leaves out the Brazilian government’s complicity in the mentioned greed – it was, after all, a prominent policy of Bolsonaro’s to open up the Amazon for international exploitation. An example of how, despite the centrality of indigenous peoples to sustainable environments, governments and corporations are doing the utmost to ensure indigenous erasure.

At my age, I should have known better: Expecting the worst from idealistic American liberal Democrats will always prove you prescient and wise. But giving them the benefit of the doubt or expecting any decision from them that is decent, humane or simple common sense will blow up in your face every time.

On December 10, I suggested in these columns that President-elect Joe Biden might at least improve on the wicked, hypocritical, repressive and ruinous U.S. policies towards Latin America that he inherited from his predecessor Donald Trump. Biden, I suggested, could end Trump’s embarrassing and truly witless efforts to topple the repeatedly democratically elected government of Venezuela and replace President Nicolas Maduro with the worthless and more than slightly sinister Juan Guaido.

This should have been a no-brainer even for Biden since Guaido had been personally handpicked as Washington’s latest jaw-jutting, fake leader and favorite boy toy of the moment by then-national security adviser John Bolton, a figure so extreme, stupid and incompetent that even Republicans were embarrassed by him.

But no, Biden, showing exactly the same legendary independence of mind and intellect that has characterized him since he first became a United States Senator 48 years ago, is boldly going exactly where Bolton insisted on treading. He is doubling down on backing Guaido and maintaining the embarrassing fiction that he is the true president of Venezuela.

Biden could easily have quietly dropped the ridiculous Guaido – who has also been enthusiastically championed by such Democrat bogeymen as former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham – right wing Republicans all.

Biden’s decision is at least totally consistent with his patterns of behavior in decision-making throughout his long career, past and present. After all, he signed on to the U.S. economic war to impoverish and ruin the people of Venezuela with the first imposition of economic sanctions in 2014 by his then-boss, President Barack Obama.

Biden’s eagerness – without losing a second’s sleep – about the morality of toppling the democratically elected leader of an independent nation halfway around the world from Washington was already clear in his equally enthusiastic support for the Maidan coup that to violently tippled democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine in 2014 in what Wikipedia now farcically calls “The Revolution of Dignity.”

And now, of course, Biden is even, insanely, trying to meddle in the internal political affairs of a thermonuclear superpower by lecturing President Vladimir Putin on what to do about Akexei Navalny, whom Biden and his foreign policy clowns (sorry – I should have written “team” I suppose) have clearly chosen as their Guaido clone to dismantle Russia.

Biden, like the 19th century fast-fading last Bourbon kings of France, in Talleyrand’s famous epigram, has remembered nothing and forgotten nothing. Only last week, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Oxford University personal favorite Myanmar Prime Minister Aung San Suu Kyi was toppled by the country’s armed forces after a shamelessly manipulated election “victory.” Perhaps Biden felt a particular personal empathy with her.

But not all of “the indispensable hyper-power’s” irresistible powers of influence and persuasion nor all the shining example of perfect democracy it continues to provide to the rest of the human race kept Suu Kyi in power for an extra minute. And not all of Washington’s huffing and puffing looks remotely likely to restore her to her old pretensions of office.

Guaido, Suu Kyi and Navalny are all so high on their opium dreams of democratic righteousness, global acclaim and coming total power that they will likely never wake up to the simple reality that betting on Joe Biden to dynamically propel them to victory is like booking a steerage class sailing ticket on the “Titanic.”

However, Biden’s typically anal-reactive decision to passively go on backing Guiado (sort of) may have wider and serious implications across South America.

First the continued economic and diplomatic war on Venezuela will continue to lock nations like Colombia, which have enormous problems of their own, locked into continued sterile and self-destructive isolation and confrontation with Venezuela, Biden and his secretary of state Antony Blinken will not allow them to have it any other way. Blinken’s phone conversation on January 30 with Colombian Foreign Minister Claudia Blum served notice of this.

Second, President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, a figure so personally reckless and inept an that he and he and his entourage even spread COVID-19 to Trump’s own inner circle on a visit to Florida, looks likely to be tolerated or even encouraged by the Biden team as he continues to run the great nation of Brazil and its 200 million plus people into the ground.

Under Trump, U.S. political puppeteers negated the freely expressed will of Brazil’s people – the largest democracy in the history of South Latin America – in four honest, transparent free and fair elections that they wanted to be ruled by two successive social democratic presidents who preferred close association with Russia and China to the embrace of the United States.

But now Bolsonaro is openly and shamelessly manipulating upcoming legislative elections in Brazil to lock the political infrastructure of his dictatorship into place for a new term. So far Biden has not uttered a breath of disapproval about these outrageous moves.

Early signals from Washington strongly indicate that Biden and Blinken will push for a fig leaf of “responsible” environmental promises to slow down the destruction of the Amazon rain forest in return for going ha long smoothly with Bolsonaro’s officials on everything else.

Of course, as long as modern suburban and city “Green” Democrats are concerned, hundreds of millions of real human beings can be fed to the wolves without regret every day as long as their environmental fantasies are still fed.

Only little Bolivia, boldly reasserting its genuine democratic heroic recent achievements under President Evo Morales and his worthy new successor Luis Arces, former minister of economy and public finance, looks like holding out in the short term against Biden’s malign upholding of Trump’s hemispheric status quo.

For the rest of Latin America, the outlook remains bleak.

From 1920 to 1945, the formal name of the German Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, abbreviated NSDAP in German. Despite its name, there was nothing even remotely “socialist” or “workers” related about the Nazi Party. Its very foundation was t o combat the influence of labor unions, particularly those closely-linked to the Socialists or Communists. Socialist ideology, whether it was of the social democratic or Marxist -Leninist version, was anathema to Nazi policy. Therefore, it was the height of hypocrisy that the Nazis, with their financial backing from Germany’s leading industrialists – Krupp, Thyssen, and Opel, to name a few – would appropriate the terms socialist and workers for their own designs. When “socialist” was added to the “National German Workers’ Party” in 1920, in a jaded attempt to appeal to lower middle class left-wing laborers, Adolf Hitler vehemently objected. The term “socialist” within the official name of the Nazi Party was more of a mockery of socialism than anything else.

Today, there are elements within the Donald Trump wing of the Republican Party desiring to rebrand the party as a “Republican Workers’ Party.” There are indications that Trump supports these efforts. Trump, who eschews books or any other reading material for that matter, is known to have once kept a book of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside. Trump is, therefore, keenly aware of the success the Nazis in Germany had in appealing to labor ranks to support its cause. However, just as the Nazis had no commitment to labor, the Republican Party has never supported the workers. It is and always has been a party representing the moneyed classes. Republicans serve the interests of Wall Street, not Main Street. Trump, more than anyone, knows this. In his four years as president, not one of Trump’s policies helped the workers of America, particularly those represented by organized labor.

Just as with the Nazis between the two World Wars, there is a coordinated global effort to re-brand far-right political parties as being friendly to and supportive of the working class. However, the financing for such re-branding emanates largely from billionaires, who have no interest in the working class. This is merely an effort to expand political power through running division and deception operations in electoral campaigns around the world. Those financing this disinformation program include the hedge fund father-daughter team of Robert and Rebekah Mercer, fugitive Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, and billionaire industrialist Charles Koch. Former and, reportedly, current Trump strategist Steve Bannon has received funding from the Mercers and Guo to organize an international fascist movement of political parties, many with deceptive names.

Bannon’s fascist international, which is based in Brussels and called “The Movement,” has, in addition to the Republican Party in the United States, targeted parties in Brazil, where Bannon is close to far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and his politician sons. In 2018, Bolsonaro, who has praised Hitler and Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, ran on the presidential ticket of the Social Liberal Party (PSL). One might believe that such a party would be socially liberal. They would be dead wrong. The PSL is as far-right as Bolsonaro and opposes equal rights for women and supports Brazil’s past military dictatorship. One faction wants to restore Brazil’s emperor and become a monarchy. Likewise, there is nothing “progressive” about the Brazilian Progressive Party – the Progressistas. The party is right wing and embraces Brazilian nationalism, which are Hardly progressive virtues.

The false branding of Brazilian political parties is made to order for fascists like Bannon, his financial benefactors, and the Bolsonaro family. Another example of false political advertising is the Brazilian Labor Party, which, far from embracing labor or workers’ rights, believes in fiscal conservatism, laissez-faire business policies, and social conservatism. Likewise, the Brazilian Labor Renewal Party is about as far from supporting labor as possible. It is pro-Bolsonaro and prone to advancing conspiracies that are also promoted by neo-Nazis. The Party of the Brazilian Women might be confused as a women’s rights party. They are not. They are anti-feminist and believe in paternalistic oligarchy and social conservatism.

A similar confusing situation exists in Colombia. The ruling Democratic Center party is neither democratic nor centrist. It is the party of current far-right President Ivan Duque and his mentor, former President Alvaro Uribe. The Democratic Center represents Colombia’s oligarchs and the interests of the Medellin drug cartel. Likewise, there is nothing “radical,” in the standard political definition, about the Radical Change Party. It is right-wing and supports both Duque and Uribe.

Around the world, the placement of the word “Christian” in a party’s title does not mean that it is committed to Christian teachings of tolerance and equality. Aside from Christian Democratic parties, far-right parties use “Christian” to entrap the politically gullible. Alliance C-Christians for Germany (Bündnis C) unconditionally supports Israel while it debases the United Nations, public education, and abortions. Similarly, political Islamic parties use the word “democratic” in their titles even though their 13^th century platforms, inclusive of arcane sharia law, are far from democratic.

Deceptive political party names and the confusion they cause are not limited to Latin America. Voters in California have erroneously registered to vote as “Independents” by mistakenly registering under the “American Independent Party,” which has appeared on California ballots since 1968 when Alabama Governor George Wallace ran on the party’s ticket as a third-party presidential candidate. Wallace subsequently abandoned the upstart party and returned to the Democratic Party fold four years later. However, the American Independent Party lived on in California, where it served as a political umbrella for several far-right candidates, some tied to neo-Nazis. During the 2016 presidential race, after an upsurge in party registrations by voters who believed they were registering as generic independents, the American Independent Party falsely claimed that it was the “Fastest Growing Political Party in California.”

Bannon’s “Movement” in Brussels is headquartered at the same address used by Mischaël Modrikamen, the leader of a defunct far-right political party that was mis-named the “Popular Party.” In Ukraine, “People’s Front” is used by a decidedly right-wing party that has menacingly organized a military branch. The words “popular” or “people’s” have traditionally been associated with left-wing and progressive broad fronts going back to the Popular Front of President Salvador Allende of Chile and, before that, of Socialist-Communist Popular Front coalition governments of the Spanish Second Republic of 1936 and pre-World War II France. The pre-war Popular Fronts in Spain and France, as well as those in other countries, including Germany and Great Britain, failed because of the perfidious attitude of Trotskyists, who were more than willing to disrupt anti-fascist Popular Fronts, even if they gave way to fascist victories. Today, there are ample examples of Trotskyists cooperating with neo-fascists against established parties of the left. That is why Bannon has, on occasion, expressed his admiration for “Marxist-Leninists.” It is nothing more than a power play to entice confused “populists” of the left, particularly the “Bernie or Bust” supporters of Vermont Independent Socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who has never been a member of the Democratic Party, although he caucuses with them in the Senate.

As Trump, Bannon, and others seek to re-brand the Republican Party, they will not only be reaching out to die-hard Sanders supporters, who falsely contend that the Democratic Party twice cheated their candidate from the presidential nomination, but also to blue collar workers in the rust belt who have been taken in by Trump’s nationalistic rhetoric on international trade and U.S. industrial decline.

Around the world, political parties and movements, as well as the media, should remain vigilant against the far-right, which continues to misappropriate the historical and traditional names of the parties of labor, the popular masses, equality, and progressivism.

Warnings that the oxygen supply was running out in the city of Manaus, Brazil, came to local and federal government officials a week before the calamity led to the deaths by asphyxiation of patients afflicted with COVID-19. No modern state—such as Brazil—should have to admit that it did nothing when these warnings came in and simply allowed its own citizens to die for no reason.

A Supreme Court judge and the solicitor general have demanded that the Brazilian government act, but this has not moved Jair Bolsonaro’s administration. Everything about this story—detailed in Solicitor General José Levi do Amaral’s report — reveals the rot of privatization and incompetence. The local health officials knew in early January that there was going to be an oxygen shortage imminently, but their warning did not carry any weight. A private contractor who had the job of providing the oxygen informed the government six days before the city ran out of this crucial supply in the fight against COVID-19. Even with the contractor’s information, the government did nothing; it would later say—against all scientific advice—that early treatment for coronavirus did not work. The insensitivity and incompetence of the government of Bolsonaro have led General Prosecutor Augusto Aras to call for a special probe. As Bolsonaro dithered, the government of Venezuela, in an act of solidarity, sent a shipment of oxygen to Manaus.

The latest development caused by the government’s toxic mix of privatization, ineptitude, and callousness should strengthen the case brought by Brazil’s health care unions against Jair Bolsonaro at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in July. But the problem is not the fault of Bolsonaro alone or even of Brazil. The problem lies in the neoliberal governments, governments in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and others, governments whose commitments to profit-making firms and billionaires far outstrip their commitment to their own citizens or to their own constitutions. What we are seeing in countries such as Brazil is a crime against humanity.

It is time to impanel a citizens’ tribunal to investigate the utter failure of the governments of Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, and others to break the chain of the infection of COVID-19. Such a tribunal would collect the factual information that would ensure that we do not allow these states to tamper with the crime scene; the tribunal would provide the ICC with a firm foundation to do a forensic investigation of this crime against humanity when its own political suffocation is eased.

We should all be outraged. But, outrage is not a strong enough word.

Globetrotter via counterpunch.org

Biden’s selection of Anthony Blinken as his first secretary of state and Jake Sullivan as National Security Adviser may even achieve the impossible: He may make the world long nostalgically for the Lost Golden Age of those intellectual giants Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper.

Yet while Blinken and Sullivan will certainly sleepwalk the world off the cliff of destruction from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and East Asia, there is one corner of the world where their complacent, intellectually dead brains may do some good – across the Western Hemisphere.

That is because Biden is determined to restore all the foreign policies of the Obama administration, the handful of sensible ones as well as all the awful and catastrophically bad.

Obama and Biden were both inordinately proud of their pathetic, miniscule openings towards Cuba after more than half a century of relentless hatred, economic embargoes and other ruinous policies imposed by every U.S. administration since and including that of John F. Kennedy.

The 2014-16 much touted opening to Havana – like everything Obama did – was timid to a pathological degree and did virtually no material good for real live breathing human beings. But at least it was a wave of the little finger in the direction of sanity.

Biden is determined to repeat that toothless initiative And because it is not new, has been done before and failed before, his top officials Blinken and Sullivan will be all for it.

However, even pretending to be friendly to Cuba carries much wider ramifications.

Havana will not dignify any such pathetic move unless it actually raises sanctions and brings some economic benefit to the people of Cuba who have already survived petty U.S. enmity for so long.

There is no way Biden will be able to get any move to liberalize relations with Cuba through Congress if Republicans still hold the Senate so much depends on the outcome of the Senate elections in Georgia.

Unless and until the Democrats win those races and reach 50-50 seat parity with Republicans in the Senate, the Eternal Mitch McConnell will continue to preside over his perpetual, though wafer-thin Republican majority there, ready to block any legislative openings to Havana.

Therefore the only way Biden can actually make good on any vague promises to Havana may be through Executive Orders.  And judging on his – and Barack Obama’s – track record during their eight years as at least figureheads of U.S. power, they will not even dare to try much.

Far more important, however, Cuba has made consistently clear that it will not deign to even pretend to talk to Washington until the Trump administration’s unending – though also buffoonish and inept – efforts to topple the democratically elected, lawful government of Venezuela are scrapped.

In other words, Biden’s already repeatedly stated clear ambition to renew at least the beginnings of a thaw with Cuba automatically demand the scrapping of President Donald Trump’s witless and totally unsuccessful policies in the Western Hemisphere.

Cuban demands will likely force Biden to scrap at last Trump’s manifestly failed efforts to topple President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and replace him with ludicrous U.S. figurehead boy toy Juan Guaido – a fictional president obsessively created by that Master of Incompetence John Bolton during his own hilarious – and mercifully brief – slapstick term as National Security Adviser of the United States.

Even among the fearful, long-beaten and abused mediocrities who man the supposedly prestigious desks of the State Department in the aptly named location of Foggy Bottom, the stomach to keep up the charade of pretending that Guaido is a real president and a credible leader is nonexistent. Everyone wants to be free of that embarrassment. Even the military-industrial complex will not be sorry to leave Venezuela alone.

Talking to Cuba therefore leads directly to disengagement from Venezuela for Biden. And that in turn increases the likelihood that he will actually leave the miracle of the return to democratic constitutional government in Bolivia alone.

But as I have noted in these columns before, despite its small size and remote, landlocked location, Bolivia in the 21st century has repeatedly proved to be an example and inspiration – and political trend setter – for even the largest nations in Latin America.

Where Bolivia goes today, Brazil may well go tomorrow.

This vast nation has more than 200 million people, most populous in Latin America and a major player under two twice-democratically-elected presidents in the BRICS bloc with Russia, China, India and South Africa. To the eternal shame of the U.S. media, public and certainly of the Democratic Party, the Trump administration was allowed to outrageously topple the democratically elected Social Democratic government that had been legitimately elected four times under two popular and respected presidents.

However, today, discredited President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil president now for only two years (though it certainly seems like far, far longer) no longer enjoys credibility even from his own army. He boasted of his closeness to Trump so loudly and so often that Biden, who has personal pride and steel behind that misleadingly affable exterior will certainly not forget. Bolsonaro is about to pay the price – fast – for clinging to Trump so closely – a destiny that may also politically doom Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Britain.

A cautious and uncharacteristic expression of hope, then, for Joe Biden’s policies in the Western Hemisphere. At best he may offer a benign neglect which will certainly be welcome.

The only problem is that to the rest of the world, he will present a relentless concern that will be unremittingly malign.

Indigenous communities in the Amazon, as well as environmental activists, have no protection from the state. A Human Rights Watch report published in 2019 states that since 2009, out of 300 killings attributed to loggers, who are protected by the state, only 14 were brought to trial. State institutions were found to have been complicit in some cases – four killings happened in police stations in urban areas.

Bolsonaro’s political alignment with the U.S. under Donald Trump might be coming to a stand-still. There have been no congratulations so far from Brazil for U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden, who has warned of economic sanctions on Brazil if deforestation is not halted. After declaring Trump as “not the most important person in the world,” Bolsonaro proceeded to threaten the incoming U.S. administration over the possible climate change policies that will affect the Brazilian government. “Just diplomacy is not enough … When saliva runs out, one has to have gunpowder, otherwise it doesn’t work.”

Only there is no defender of the Amazon in either Biden or Bolsonaro. A change in U.S. governance does not translate to abandoning the exploitation of Latin Americas resources. Bringing the U.S. back to the international fold on issues such as the Paris Agreement is still based upon a capitalist venture that does not recognise the indigenous people’s rights.

According to Reuters, indigenous leaders in Brazil have called for “concrete policy commitments” from the U.S. to curb deforestation in favour of sustainable development. But sustainable development is alien to the U.S. and its history in Latin America, where the indigenous populations are always the first victims in the power play between governments and multinational companies.

More than 3,000 applications have been received by Brazil’s mining authority to wreak havoc in the Amazon. Brazil’s constitution allows mining in indigenous territory only if it serves the national interest. With Bolosonaro and the changes he seeks to enact, the national interest will no longer be a state of exception but rather an exploitative norm.

International outcry has mostly centred upon the Amazon fires, which Bolsonaro had accused environmental activists of starting, while refusing international aid to curb the spread. Once again, there has yet to be a collective, international approach that amalgamates environmental protection with indigenous protection; the latter is the only safeguard of the land, and no government is willing to acknowledge either knowledge or role of indigenous communities.

It is likely that the Amazon’s indigenous communities will be pawns once again in a new political battle that pits international interests against those of Bolsonaro. Between Bolsonaro’s intent to industrialise indigenous terrain, and the international community’s refusal to acknowledge the indigenous role and rights as regards territory and environmental protection, there is little to consider a triumph. Turning to the UN is a hopeless endeavour, while governments are known to systematically exclude indigenous communities. Biden or Trump, the fact remains that Brazil’s Amazon, and its people, are still threatened by a system that values land according to profit, generating an imbalance that can only be restored by allowing indigenous rule over indigenous terrain.

Since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, the Amazon’s deforestation has been on the rise, with an increase of 25 per cent from January until June 2020. This comes after the devastating fires last year, which Bolsonaro repeatedly failed to tackle, while accusing non-governmental organisations and environmentalists of setting fire to the forest. Beneath Bolsonaro’s rhetoric, whose main interest is to usher in policies which are favourable to the U.S., the systematic targeting of the Amazon and indigenous communities is ongoing.

Bolsonaro’s threats are colonial in nature, drawing upon the earlier colonial massacres of native Indians but applying different tactics. Throughout his electoral campaign he repeatedly stated that there would be no more demarcation of indigenous territory and that indigenous communities would not be allowed to defend their territory.

Economic exploitation has become internationally acceptable despite the UN’s purported insistence upon sustainable development and the rights of indigenous communities; the latter decided by nations built upon colonial violence. Hence a chain of profit benefiting different sectors is the least likely to attract any international outrage. If any outrage ensures, which is doubtful, world leaders have long since dissociated between politics and the environment; the latter confined to activism which in turn is denied a platform except when it suits a temporary agenda.

Government officials have not been spared Bolsonaro’s wrath. Only three days after the increase in the Amazon’s deforestation was confirmed, the Brazilian president fired Lubia Vinhas, general coordinator of Brazil’s space agency, the National Earth Observation Institute (INPE). The slightest attempt as restoring political equilibrium in Brazil is manipulated as a threat by Bolsonaro who, in 2019 also fired INPE’s director Ricardo Galvão, again for highlighting the increasing deforestation.

Bolsonaro’s attempts to discredit scientists, environmentalists and indigenous leaders are juxtaposed against the increased military involvement. Last year, after refusing international help to combat the spreading fires in the Amazon, Bolsonaro ordered the military to step in, ostensibly to curb environmental destruction. However, with a government that leans heavily towards multinational corporations and which views indigenous tribes as a threat to profit, the move clearly protects government interests.

Additional criticism of Bolsonaro’s intrusion and destruction of life in the Amazon was voiced over the coronavirus pandemic, during which military incursions into the Amazon were ordered under the pretext of providing medical supplies and thus increasing the chances of contamination among the indigenous groups and uncontacted tribes. Furthermore, no action has been taken by the Brazilian government to remove a permanent threat of contagion – that of illegal gold miner squatters occupying indigenous lands.

Targeting the Amazon, in Bolsonaro’s politics, is targeting landownership. At an international level, Bolsonaro has manipulated the slightest criticism of Brazil’s environmental and indigenous policies. Those opposed to economic exploitation, in Bolsonaro’s words, “have insisted on treating and keeping our Indians as through they were real cave men.” Primarily, indigenous communities are not under anyone’s ownership, as Bolsonaro claims. It is the indigenous people’s ownership rights that ned to be legally protected and recognised. Additionally, the near-irreversible destruction of the environment needs to be looked at from an anti-colonial lens. The answer lies within the indigenous communities, in Brazil and worldwide, for it is these communities that have sustained the harmonious bonds between earth and people. Not world leaders, and definitely not the UN, which does nothing other than regulate the lie it created of purportedly protecting freedom and rights.