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Peddling backwards, shouting all the way

July 25, 2019   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

Here’s a really big dilemma: Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro is destroying the Amazon Rainforest, the world’s lungs, and for the same reason we are still building pipelines – for money in the pockets of industry, with no regard for the consequences. The rationalization is unbelievable, yet, not unheard of.

The E.U. has halted trade talks at the urging of scientists and environmentalists to protest the ravaging of the Amazon, which will have catastrophic effects on the rest of the world. That and the wholesale attack on the indigenous people who have fought for 500 years and more against people like him.

He calls them animals and says they should all have been exterminated. 

Very strangely, to my mind, is that none of this is a hot topic on the news, on the radio or in the papers. No word of it on news websites – the biggest potential disaster of a our long list is not part of the global discussion. When he was first elected, it was mentioned but little or nothing has been aired since.

We are endlessly buffeted by and interested in whatever Donald has tweeted recently. We are completely enthralled and captivated by him and should a huge truck accidentally mow him down, we would mourn him forever and even be stupid enough to miss him. 

He keeps the attention of the world upon himself and, while Boris over there in the UK will emulate him, he is British enough (even if he does say, Dudes!) that we will never hold him as closely as we do Donald.

I think world leaders everywhere are grateful to him for keeping all the rain on his own head so that we forget to watch them and their wayward ways. 

Not that Bolsonaro cares whether we watch him make the final strokes to push this planet over the top but, if we were watching, we might make take steps to try and stop him. 

According to my sources, Bolsonaro has already allowed as many as one billion trees to be cut down. Without a complete stoppage, there may be no way to repair the damage.

So, why are we not all deserting Trump’s court and turning our full attention to Brazil? It’s not that far away and the treasure it holds in its forests is much more valuable than anything under those trees could be.

The world is trying so hard to balance all the shouting and bad behaviour, that really dangerous policy-making is being drowned out. Every large or little outrage that Donald commits and now Boris over in the UK and then, Russia and South Korea playing Dare with each other – one with an airplane dabbling its toes in the other’s airspace – just enough to what? Some kind of message? Well, just enough for retaliation of warning missiles that were never meant to do the plane any harm. 

World-wide headlines, endless commentary, consternation, while the real dangers continue to grow without comment.

Remember the old Hollywood saying: “There is no bad publicity.” This is Donald’s mantra. However, outrageous, criminal, demeaning to his office, as Michael Moore points out in his last film Fahrenheit 11/9, Donald does it all right in front of everybody and never has to pay for anything.

If there is no single person coming on the horizon very, very soon, who can confront, hold rallies and shout better and louder than Donald and here’s hoping that person will also have something constructive to say, then, Donald will get his wish to become President for life…

How did we come to an epoch of the worst possible people leading the people? Long before their ascension to their thrones, there was so much good information to stop Trump, Boris, Bolsonaro, even baby Ford. Yet, there they are, doing every damned thing they said they would and we all knew that would be bad news and it is.

I’ve heard people say, “Trump’s not all wrong ..” or Ford and they will say that about Boris until the financial towers of London come tumbling down, if the UK exits the E.U. without a deal…

It isn’t true, of course, Trump is all wrong. So is Ford. So Boris will be.

And Bolsonaro is – very dangerously so. So, as we have not done with Donald, the whole diplomatic, scientific and environmental world must protest to Brazil to stop tearing down the Amazon Rainforests. 

While this information is not on our newsfeed, it is online and I urge everyone to look him up – “Bolsonaro’s policies on the Amazon rainforests.” It makes for grim reading. Some of what his supporters say echo the substance and sound of Donald’s but this is really frightening.

There are petitions: please sign them,  and we need to let our own Prime Minister Trudeau know he has his part to play in all this. 

He has his part to play here in Canada too.

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