Brazil police killing of 10 Amazon region land activists under probe

Brazilian authorities said on Thursday they were investigating a police raid that ended with 10 land activists killed in the Amazon region, the deadliest such conflict in over two decades.

Nine men and one woman were killed when police arrived at the Santa Lucia farm on Wednesday, which a group of landless activists that included 150 families had invaded two years ago.

Para state security officials said in a statement the police were fired upon as soon as they arrived. No officers sustained any injuries during the conflict. Leaders of the land activists were not immediately reachable for comment.

Para state police said in a statement that they were acting on a local judge's order to remove the families from the private land, and also carry out 14 arrest warrants in connection to the murder last month of a security guard employed by the ranch owner.

Federal and state prosecutors said they were investigating the killings. Police said they, too, had started an inquiry into the officers' actions.

Landless activists routinely invade massive ranches and farms in Latin America's largest nation, where there is deep inequality in land distribution. Brazilian law allows for landless activists to occupy and eventually take ownership of land determined to be not actively used for agricultural purposes.

For decades, the fight over Brazil's vast tracts of land have repeatedly led to murders, most often by rich ranchers and farmers' hired gunmen, federal prosecutors have said.

The Catholic Church's Pastoral Land Commission, which tracks the conflicts, said in an emailed statement on Thursday that 61 people were killed in such rural conflicts last year, the most since 2003. The group said 26 people have been killed in such conflicts this year.

Wednesday's deaths were the most in a land conflict since 1996, when Para state police shot and killed 19 land activists who had blocked a highway to protest their right to remain on a ranch that 3,000 families had occupied.

Source: Reuters

Brazil farm lobby seeks to dismantle indigenous affairs agency

A congressional panel backed by Brazil's powerful farm lobby recommended on Tuesday dismantling Indian affairs agency Funai, a move critics said would leave indigenous tribes unprotected from an advancing agricultural frontier.

Brazil's National Indian Foundation (Funai) has sought to protect tribes by guaranteeing their land so they can preserve their cultures. That has put it in conflict with farmers who clash with native communities over land rights as production in agricultural powerhouse Brazil moves further into the Amazon rainforest.

The report by a commission in Brazil's lower house of Congress also called for the prosecution of Funai officials for backing what it considered fraudulent land claims by indigenous groups with questionable native ancestry. It backed the revision of rulings on land borders related to such claims.

Fifty Indian men with body paint and feathered headdresses danced in a circle outside Congress to protest the report's recommendations and the fact they were not allowed into a commission meeting to comment on its findings.

"The death of the Funai would be a sort of genocide because it has advised us on how to survive," said Francisco, 42, the bare-chested leader of the Kaingang people of southern Brazil. "These lawmakers represent the interest of agribusiness, not our interests."

"OVER-PROTECTIVE AND PATERNALISTIC"

The report, which is expected to be approved by the commission later on Tuesday, proposed replacing Funai with a National Indigenous Office under the Ministry of Justice, thus replacing an agency run by anthropologists with one in the hands of politicians.

The parliamentary inquiry's recommendations on Funai will add momentum to a constitutional amendment before the lower chamber that would remove from the executive branch the final word on land dispute decisions and give it to Congress. The bill would also open up reservations to mining, which Funai has opposed on grounds it would destroy tribal cultures.

Brazil's 900,000 indigenous people make up less than 1 percent of the population, but they face higher rates of malnutrition, child mortality and unemployment than most other Brazilians, according to government data. They belong to 300 different nations and speak almost as many different languages.

The Funai agency is in disarray following the firing of its president on May 5 after he criticized a 40 percent budget cut that he said made it impossible for the agency to defend indigenous peoples from clashes with farmers.[nL8N1I74Q5]

A spokeswoman for Funai said the agency had no immediate comment on the report.

The report's author, congressman Nilson Leitao who leads the large block of lower-house legislators who represent farm districts, said Funai had ignored Indians' health and education, and the desires of some indigenous people to enjoy the fruits of economic development.

"There are Indians who want to become miners and producers, and they should have the freedom to decide for themselves. Funai has been over-protective and paternalistic," he told reporters. "The Indians could be living on a big mine while their people die of hunger."

"THE FUTURE WILL BE FOR SOY"

Critics of the report, mainly from the leftist opposition to President Michel Temer's center-right government, said the farm lobby offensive against Funai highlighted Brazil's move toward relaxing environmental licensing and a plan to allow foreign companies to buy farmland again.

"If this report is adopted, there will be no place for the indigenous in the future of Brazil. The future will be for soy, corn and sugar cane," said Workers Party lawmaker Nilto Tatto. "This is the same vision that wants to destroy the forests of Brazil."

NGOs working on indigenous rights and environmental conservation in Brazil saw the report as a poorly-orchestrated attempt by the farm lobby to criminalize social movements.

The report criticized international organizations for interfering with internal Brazilian matters.

"It's part of a larger strategy to remove 'obstacles' that limit access by land speculators, ranchers, illegal loggers and mining companies to territories and their natural resources, especially in the Amazon," said Brent Millikan, Amazon campaign director for NGO International Rivers.

Source: Reuters

Brazilian mayor takes issue with Amazon.com in graffiti debate

Amazon.com Inc dove into a spirited debate about graffiti in Brazil's biggest city, drawing a pointed response on Tuesday from Sao Paulo's mayor, who called the company "opportunist" and challenged it to make a public donation.

Amazon kicked off the controversy with an online ad pegged to Mayor Joao Doria's "Pretty City" campaign, which has attracted both strong criticism and praise for painting over the city's street art and spray-painted tags.

"They covered the city with gray?" reads the minute-long commercial, which shows quotes from famous works of literature projected along major avenues painted over by the mayor. "We covered the gray with stories."

The campaign added fuel to the debate over whether Doria was defending public property or silencing artistic expression in a metropolis defined by the flamboyant graffiti that punctuates an otherwise monotonous urban landscape.

It also pitted Amazon against Doria, a wealthy publisher and former reality TV star whose stunning first-round victory in last year's mayoral election has fed rumors that he could enter the wide-open 2018 presidential race.

"I watched Amazon's commercial using the image of Sao Paulo to sell its products," Doria wrote in a response on Facebook, challenging the online retailer to donate books to city schools. "There are many ways for Amazon to act as a true citizen rather than an opportunist."

Amazon replied with a Facebook post promising to donate hundreds of its Kindle e-readers to "institutions promoting culture and education," without giving further details.

Amazon media representatives in Brazil declined to comment.

The company has been slower than other tech giants to embrace the Brazilian market, where it arrived in 2012 with the Kindle, which faces local competition from Livraria Cultura's Kobo and Livraria Saraiva's Lev.

Amazon began selling physical books in Brazil in 2014 and brought its streaming video service to the country in December.

Source: Reuters

Brazil launches database to fight illegal Amazon logging

Brazil's federal environmental agency, Ibama, launched on Tuesday a centralized database to track timber from source to sale, a vital step in the fight against illegal logging in the Amazon.

The system, known as Sinaflor, allows individual trees to be electronically tagged and monitored as they are cut down and pass through the supply chain, with regulators able to check the database via their cell phones while on patrol.

With built-in satellite mapping, timber being sold as legal can be checked against the exact area of licensed commercial production it is claimed to originate from.

The system marks a step change from the current system, which environmentalists criticize as being open to fraud and human error as databases are isolated, poorly managed and cannot be easily accessed to verify documentation attached to timber.

"The new system offers a much more comprehensive process of control," Suely Araújo, president of Ibama, said in an interview in her office in Brasilia. "What's not in Sinaflor will be illegal timber."

The system is the result of four years of work and was envisioned under the forest code passed into law in 2012, which gave the federal government power to create and manage a national system to regulate the supply chain of timber.

Illegal logging is one of the greatest threats to the preservation of the Amazon. In the year until July 2016, Amazonian rainforest six times the size of Los Angeles was cut down.

That was the second rise in two years, ending a 10-year period in which deforestation was dramatically reduced. Brazil's Environment Ministry, under which Ibama falls, has vowed to reverse the trend.

Sinaflor has already been piloted in the state of Roraima and is being introduced this week in Rondonia. The states are legally obliged to use the system, and Araújo expects to have it up and running across the country by the end of the year.

"When we manage to implement it in the whole country, I think it will be a step change in terms of control," Araújo said.

Source: Reuters

Insight: Inside Brazil's battle to save the Amazon with satellites and strike forces

When George Porto joined Brazil's environment agency 13 years ago, the country didn't have access to satellite data on illegal logging -- let alone heat maps tracking deforestation patterns or gun-toting agents dedicated to stopping ecological crimes.

How times have changed.

Today, IBAMA, as the agency is known, has access to four satellite feeds monitoring illegal activities in the Amazon, the world's biggest rainforest. It also boasts a network of indigenous watchmen in remote regions and a 1,000-strong commando force.

Environmentalists say the agency's control center in Brasilia, a collection of low-slung concrete buildings from the 1970s, is one of the world's most important hubs for protecting rainforests and the land rights of people who depend on them.

"When I joined there was no GPS or satellite images, it wasn't a strategic way to tackle deforestation," said Porto, IBAMA's environmental monitoring coordinator, as he examined maps showing changes in forest cover at the agency's headquarters.

"Today, the rate (of deforestation) is coming down because of our technology and intelligence gathering," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

For years, Brazil has sought to balance a desire to lift millions out of poverty by making use of the country's greatest natural resource -- the Amazon's trees, land and minerals -- and the need to protect one of the world's most biodiverse regions.

Mounting pressure to save the Amazon, known as the "lungs of the planet" for its role sucking climate-changing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, prompted former president Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva to unveil plans to halt the Amazon's destruction.

And in the decade following the start of his first term in office in 2003, Brazil reduced its deforestation rate by more than 70 percent, some of the fastest improvement anywhere.

But the rate increased again last year by 24 percent compared to 2013, Brazil's National Space Research Institute (INPE) said in September, citing the latest satellite images.

Brazil is still losing the equivalent of two football fields of rainforest every minute as illegal loggers and ranchers exploit the Amazon's unspoiled reaches, according to the National Forest Commission's former director, Tasso Azevedo.

Satellites used by IBAMA recorded about 100,000 incursions into the forest last year.

In a renewed push against the problem, Brazil has pledged to reduce net new deforestation to zero by 2030, down from more than 6,200 square kilometers (2,394 sq miles) today.

Meeting this goal will require enforcement agencies leveraging new technologies to detect problems, and a sustained push for formal land rights, analysts said.

IBAMA officials are also using a "carrot and stick" strategy to reduce illegal land clearing by both large agribusiness operators and small farmers.

'IT'S A WAR'

About 90 percent of Brazil's deforestation is illegal, much of it carried out by organized groups clearing land for agriculture, IBAMA officials said.

Reducing the problem hinges on law enforcement targeting large operators who destroy the forest while providing peasant farmers with alternative livelihoods and title deeds to land, environmental experts say.

To tackle the lucrative criminal enterprise, environment officials are fighting deforestation based on the logic of counter-insurgency.

"It's a war," said Luciano Evaristo, IBAMA's enforcement director, slamming a fist into his office desk.

When satellites detect large-scale forest clearing, Evaristo's agents, armed with automatic weapons, are deployed to hard-to-reach sites via helicopters.

Before 2002, IBAMA didn't have its own field operatives. The agency monitored the situation and turned information over to other branches of the security services to conduct raids.

"We decided we needed autonomy from the police, as they have corruption problems," Evaristo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "With the rise of pressure around deforestation, the government put us on the frontline."

But in an area as vast and remote as the Amazon, it's logistically impossible for the state to be all-seeing, he said.

Instead of long-term boots on the ground, officials rely on field intelligence from the people who know the region best: indigenous Brazilians.

"The indigenous people are the eyes and ears of IBAMA," Evaristo said.

Across the Amazon, networks of indigenous people gather information about illegal loggers that satellites can't access.

They coordinate intelligence gathering in Quyapo or other local languages on radios provided by IBAMA. When unlawful activity is detected, they send GPS coordinates of the location back to Brasilia.

Evaristo can then deploy a team to destroy illicit logging camps and torch their machinery.

In the last year, Evaristo said his team has made more than 4,000 arrests, seizing 91 trucks, 115 chainsaws and the equivalent of 2,000 truckloads of wood.

UNCOLLECTED FINES

It is not only in intelligence gathering that indigenous groups have proven valuable.

Lands formally recognized as belonging to indigenous people have far better forest protection rates than state or private lands. One study by U.S. and Brazilian environmentalists in 2015 showed that more than 98 percent of forests on indigenous lands were intact.

These lands, however, are regularly threatened by "grileros" – a Brazilian term for businessmen fraudulently obtaining or selling properties by bribing local land registry workers, doctoring ownership certificates and other dubious practices.

"In this war, it's the indigenous people versus the grileros," said Evaristo, who keeps a loaded pistol in his briefcase beside policy papers prepared for lawmakers.

To combat land theft by powerful agricultural interests, IBAMA began naming and shaming businessmen involved in deforestation in 2008. The publicly available blacklist now has 50,000 names, including 2,000 added last year.

Blacklisted individuals face financial penalties, lose access to bank credit and rural land registries so they cannot buy new territory, making it harder for them to do business, officials said.

IBAMA levied millions of dollars in fines for environmental crimes last year, but expects to collect less than 10 percent of the money due to Brazil's cumbersome legal system, Evaristo said.

SMALL BUT DANGEROUS

IBAMA officials say enforcement or "the stick" has worked well in reducing illegal cutting down of trees by large agriculture operations that are behind 70 percent of the Brazil's deforestation.

But small farmers still account for about 30 percent of the deforestation and their share has been growing, said Avecita Chicchon of the San Francisco-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to protect the Amazon.

"Poor people are moving into the Amazon for economic reasons and cutting the forest for agriculture," Chicchon said.

Across Brazil, about five million families have no access to land, according to a 2016 study from Canada's University of Windsor. Landless farmers have few options to feed themselves other than clearing territory.

Cutting by small farmers is harder to detect on satellite maps, according to IBAMA officials who hope "carrots" including formal land title deeds and access to credit for growers who do not cut down trees will help.

The government has provided formal land title deeds to 20,000 farmers since 2009.

For small farmers who own land, it's more profitable to work within the law and not deforest new areas in order to access credit and other government supports, officials said.

By distributing land to small farmers while cracking down on large-scale illegal cutting, Brazilian officials say they can reduce net deforestation to zero by 2030.

"Every act of deforestation has an economic purpose behind it," IBAMA official Jair Schmitt told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "If you motivate people to follow the law, you can kill the business model."

Source: Reuters

Trump diz que Amazon tem problema de limitar a concorrência

O candidato republicano à Presidência dos Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, afirmou que a Amazon.com, maior varejista online do mundo, tem um "grande problema de antitruste".

Em entrevista à emissora Fox News, Trump também afirmou que o presidente-executivo da Amazon, Jeff Bezos, que controla o Washington Post, está usando o jornal para influenciar políticos para ajudar a companhia a pagar menos impostos.

"Eles (Washington Post) são controlados por Jeff Bezos, que controla a Amazon. A Amazon está escapando de impostos. Ele está usando o Washington Post de uma forma que os políticos em Washington não tributarão a Amazon como deveria ser tributada", disse Trump.

"Ele está usando o Washington Post... para propósitos políticos para salvar a Amazon em termos de impostos e concorrência", afirmou Trump.

"Ele acha que vou persegui-lo por violação de regras de concorrência. Ele tem um grande problema de antitruste porque está controlando tanto, a Amazon está controlando muito do que eles estão fazendo", disse o candidato republicano.

Representantes da Amazon não comentaram o assunto de imediato.

Fonte: Reuters

Amazon entra no terreno do YouTube

A Amazon entrará no terreno ocupado pela plataforma YouTube, com um novo serviço anunciado nesta terça-feira, em que usuários poderão disponibilizar seus vídeos on-line.

O Amazon Video Direct (AVD) se apresenta como "um novo programa gratuito que permite aos criadores e a quem tem histórias a contar pôr seus conteúdos de vídeo à disposição dos clientes da Amazon".

A novidade surge poucos dias depois de a Amazon ter anunciado, junto com seus resultados trimestrais, a intenção de "aumentar significativamente" o gasto com vídeo on-line, setor em que tem investido nos últimos anos, delineando-se cada vez mais como um possível concorrente do Netflix.

Os vídeos com "upload" no AVD podem ser distribuídos em qualquer país em que o serviço de vídeo on-line da Amazon funcione: Estados Unidos, Reino Unido, Alemanha, Áustria e Japão.

Os criadores podem escolher entre várias formas de distribuição. Uma delas é a sua inclusão gratuita no serviço de vídeo em streaming por assinatura Amazon Prime, que já oferece milhares de filmes e séries de televisão.

Fonte: AFP

Amazon faz campanha para incentivar a leitura no Brasil

 A Amazon no Brasil criou uma ampla campanha no país para incentivar a leitura.

Aos clientes que baixarem, pela primeira vez, o app de leitura do Kindle, a marca vai dar dez reais de desconto para compras de e-books na loja online.

O app Kindle é gratuito e pode ser encontrado aqui.

Para divulgar a campanha, a empresa criou histórias cômicas que mesclam situações reais com personagens clássicos de ficção, como Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes e Bela Adormecida.

O detetive inglês precisa, por exemplo, descobrir por que foram criadas as tais tomadas de três pinos.

Já Peter Pan anuncia que só vai crescer depois que a economia nacional entrar nos eixos novamente.

No site da campanha, é possível ler as histórias.

As histórias foram criadas em parceria com o site Sensacionalista. Já as ilustrações ficaram por conta dos artistas Sattu Rodrigues e Ed Anderson.

Fonte: Exame

Depois do varejo online, Jeff Bezos quer conquistar o espaço

Elon Musk, dono da Tesla e da SpaceX, e Richard Branson, do Virgin Group, não são os únicos bilionários que almejam ganhar o espaço.

Jeff Bezos, fundador da Amazon, também tem uma fabricante de foguetes, a Blue Origin, e sonha alto.

Criada em 2000, a empresa não é tão conhecida quanto as concorrentes, mas também busca possibilitar o turismo fora da Terra e contribuir para o "futuro da humanidade".

Na terça-feira (8), Bezos abriu as portas da companhia para um grupo seleto de 11 jornalistas pela primeira vez. Na ocasião, ele revelou curiosidades sobre a companhia, da qual pouco se sabia até então.

Segundo o repórter Kenneth Chang, do The New York Times, durante a vista, Bezos contou que estuda foguetes desde os cinco anos de idade.

"Eu nunca imaginei que teria recursos para começar uma empresa aeroespacial. Eu ganhei um bilhete de loteria chamado Amazon.com", disse.

O executivo não abriu, porém, quanto dinheiro investiu para erguer a Blue Origin. "Digamos que foi uma grande quantia", afirmou.

Histórico

Em seus primeiros anos, a Blue Origin tentou encontrar uma maneira de chegar ao espaço que não envolvesse foguetes movidos a combustão química, mas concluiu que não há outra opção.

Em 2005, ela começou, de fato, a desenvolver projéteis.

Sua nave espacial reutilizável voltada para o turismo, a New Shepard, foi lançada aos limites do espaço com sucesso em novembro e retornou em janeiro. Em breve, deve partir novamente. Sua base de lançamento fica no estado do Texas, nos Estados Unidos.

Dependendo dos resultados dos testes, ela pode começar a levar turistas em curtas viagens já em 2018.

No ano passado, a empresa anunciou que também iria lançar foguetes partindo de Cabo Canaveral, ainda nos EUA.

Futuro da humanidade

De acordo com Chang, assim como Musk, Bezos vê a Blue Origin mais como uma peça para a construção de um "futuro glorioso para a humanidade" do que como um negócio rentável.

Ele defende que o consumo de energia da Terra um dia será equivalente a toda a energia produzida pelo Sol que cobre a superfície do planeta, o que obrigaria a humanidade a buscar fontes de recursos energéticos em outros lugares do sistema solar.

"Nós vamos usar toda a energia solar que impacta a Terra. Esse é um limite real", afirmou.

Além do turismo espacial, a Blue Origin quer ainda vender motores de foguetes a outras empresas, como a United Launch Airlines.

Fonte: Exame

Amazon vai ter os próprios navios cargueiros

Ao mesmo tempo em que pensa no futuro, preparando um sistema de entregas via drones, a Amazon também quer redesenhar o grande meio de transporte de mercadorias do mundo atual: os navios cargueiros.

Sem fazer alarde, ela acaba de obter licença para operar cargueiros entre a China e os EUA. Como a Amazon não se manifestou a respeito, não se sabe quantos navios ela terá nem quando começarão a operar.

Mas o objetivo é claro: fornecer transporte mais rápido -e mais barato- para as exportações chinesas, que chegarão a seus destinos com preços ainda melhores.

Se você já comprou algum produto importado, sabe que o frete corresponde a uma parte grande do preço (inclusive porque os impostos de importação também incidem sobre ele).

Inicialmente, o serviço só irá beneficiar os consumidores americanos.

Mas, se a iniciativa der certo, a tendência é que a Amazon se torne uma armadora global, operando cargueiros destinados a todos os principais portos do planeta.

Seria bom para os consumidores, e melhor ainda para a Amazon – porque, além de vender mais, a empresa também estaria entrando no gigantesco mercado de transportes marítimos, que movimenta US$ 350 bilhões por ano.

Fonte: Exame

Governador de NY barra anúncios controversos da Amazon

Os anúncios para um novo programa da Amazon.com mostrando imagens de inspiração nazista foram retirados de uma movimentada linha de metrô de Nova York, após intervenção do governador Andrew Cuomo, disse um porta-voz do setor de trânsito na terça-feira.

As propagandas para "The Man in the High Castle" envolviam completamente os assentos, paredes e tetos de um trem da linha que liga as estações da Times Square e do Grand Central Terminal, em Manhattan.

Adam Lisberg, porta-voz da Autoridade de Transporte Metropolitano (MTA, na sigla em inglês), disse que o trem foi retirado de serviço depois da hora do rush para que os anúncios pudessem ser removidos.

Um representante da Amazon informou no início da noite que a empresa não tinha pedido a remoção dos anúncios, contradizendo uma autoridade do setor de trânsito que havia dito que a própria empresa tinha solicitado a retirada.

Lisberg não quis comentar sobre as conversas internas entre a MTA e seus anunciantes, mas disse que Cuomo tinha telefonado para o chefe da MTA na terça-feira e pedido que garantisse a remoção dos anúncios.

Mais cedo na terça-feira, o prefeito de Nova York, Bill de Blasio, havia pedido à Amazon que retirasse os anúncios, dizendo que eram "irresponsáveis e ofensivos aos sobreviventes da Segunda Guerra Mundial e do Holocausto, suas famílias, e inúmeros outros nova-iorquinos".

O programa, baseado em um romance de Philip K. Dick, retrata uma realidade alternativa em que a Alemanha nazista e o Japão dividem o controle dos Estados Unidos, depois de vencerem a Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Os anúncios incluem uma versão da bandeira norte-americana com uma cruz de ferro e a águia alemã em lugar das estrelas, bem como uma bandeira japonesa imperial estilizado.

Em um comunicado, a Amazon não abordou diretamente a controvérsia, dizendo que a série é parte de sua linha de "programação de alta qualidade, provocante, de estímulo a discussões”.

Os anúncios nas linhas de metrô estavam programados para exibição até 6 de dezembro. Os pôsteres em 260 estações não foram removidos.

Fonte: Exame/Abril