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Assange not given a fair trial-Breach in the Rule of International Law

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UK: Assange extradition trial ‘unfair’ – WikiLeaks’ Hrafnsson says

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said that Julian Assange was not receiving a fair trial, while speaking outside Woolwich Crown Court in London on Wednesday.

Hrafnsson states that the WikiLeaks co-founder had little contact with his lawyers and was not able to speak confidentially with them, as he was sitting behind a glass-fronted dock inside the courtroom.

“He can hardly and barely hear what’s going on in the courtroom. He cannot communicate with his lawyers without being observed and overheard by officials from the State Department, from the embassy, and from the Eastern District Court of Virginia,” –Kristinn Hrafnsson

Assange told the judge at Woolwich Crown court that he was unable to participate in the hearing from behind a bulletproof glass, and complained about the presence of US officials in the courtroom. The WikiLeaks co-founder has remained behind bars in high-security Belmarsh Prison since May 1, 2019, after he was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for breaching his bail conditions to avoid extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations.

Despite this sentence coming to an end on September 22, a British judge ordered Assange remain in prison while facing extradition to the US, due to his previous history of absconding. Extradition hearings started on Monday and are expected to continue throughout the week. A second round of hearings will be held in May.  Source-RUPTLY

Hrafnsson said that even murderers have the privilege of being able to sit next to their lawyer to communicate with them.  A European court would not have done this, perhaps the British Government’s decision to keep Assange in prison last September was in anticipation of Brexit freedom from  European Human Rights laws, which could have helped lift the British and Serco imposed restrictions on  Julian Assange who was sat locked in a glass box unable to hear what was happening in court and not able to speak to his lawyers. A European court still has more human rights privileges than a British court, if Assange was freed before the Brexit,  perhaps he could have had the fair trail that he deserved in the European court system. After all, his only crime was publishing  documents exposing deep state corruption in the US and British government on matters of war crimes and more.

This marks a very dark day for true investigative journalism.  Assange is not only a symbol for the fight for free press and transparency in government,  perhaps he is being used by the real perpetrators, who are the ones wielding the power,  as a warning to anyone else that dare to continue to expose the entrails of the corrupted shadow government.

There is no real justice or democracy since what happened today breaches the Rule of International Law, we wait until May 2020 for further developments. – CS.

“Our world is controlled and divided and manipulated, … language and debate are distorted to produce the propaganda of false consciousness.” Read John Pilger’s article

 

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Surviving Depression in a Depressing World, an Ecological Perspective

Carlita is an environmental journalist, author, project developer, hypnotherapist and educator who wants to share her insights and experiences to benefit people living with autism, anxiety, trauma, severe depression and suicidal thoughts. Here she talks openly about her life and gives an ecological perspective in her up and coming book, ”Surviving Depression in a Depressing World, an ecological perspective”.

If you want to put your name on the email list to be notified when the book comes out, please email below at
thesilentecocide@gmail.com  and to receive  updates and learn more about the art of living in a depressing world!

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An Ecological Perspective on Depression

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The Silent Ecocide

Evolve to Ecology Africa, Balance, coltan, conflict minerals, Congo, Consciousness, Corpocracy, Corporatization, Deep Ecology, ecological economics, ecological illiteracy, Ecology, ecosystems, ewaste, Exploitation, Geopolitics, greed, Imperialism, natural carrying capacity, recycling, Silent Ecocide, slave labour, Species, species extinction, Sustainability, Uncategorized

Our Appetite for State of the Art technology is causing Ecocide, but most people are more concerned about the extinction of the cell phone instead

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Illustration by Pawel Kuczynski

Gluttony for new technology is feeding African slavery and causing extinction of rare natural elements, a  heavier price for our insatiable consumer paradise, if we buy a new cell phone device or a laptop, we are part of this destructive predator named Capitalism, the beast of ‘First World Nations’ that is driving ecocide and modern slavery.  The predator that we feed, leaves behind a trail of destructive footprints across the planet, wherever it treads to extract and deplete, natural resources. The frightening thing is, no where on Earth is left sacred, protected or untouched any more, because Corporations are able to lobby, (legally bribe) politicians to rewrite environmental laws or any law that allows corporations to access minerals, oil, gas or any other biological resource, even in the most protected national parks, environmental laws have dwindled dramatically over the last forty years. All species, all ecosystems, all natural resources are dwindling at an exponential rate, as a result of this predatory insatiable appetite.

Every day, we dispose of over 416,000 mobile devices and 142,000 computers usually disposing of them in landfills and incinerators, where as a tiny portion are recycled, stated in a recent EPA survey. A BBC Panorama program said that every year 20 to 50 million tons of e-waste is generated worldwide.

Another EPA report reveals that by recycling one million cell phones, we can recover more than 20,000 lbs of copper, 20 lbs of palladium, 550 lbs of silver, and 50 lbs of gold. Then there are these other rare elements below that will soon be extinct, if we were able to recycle computers and cell phones without worrying about license laws, but with the care of the planetary resources in mind, we could millions of tons of reduce electronic waste each year and salvage rare elements that are becoming seriously depleted.

Diagram shows the scarcity of the elements. A new periodic table sizes the boxes for each element based on their relative abundance.  Credit: EuChemS/CC BY-ND

Our over-reliance on renewing our technological devices, is driving this unfolding ecocide, the consumerism of electrical goods such as ipads, tablets and android phones. All of these electrical devices rely on a highly unethical mining industry that uses slave labour to mine and assemble electrical products in inhumane conditions; in addition to driving the destruction of the last cloud forests home of the highly endangered Silverback Gorilla populations in Africa. This is well illustrated by the story of the Silverback Gorillas in the African Congo.

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The mining of Gold, Diamonds and Coltan, (Ta on the Periodic table-geological name – Columbite Tantalite), a mineral used in the microchips of every single new electronic device, cell phone or tablet and laptop, comes from the African Congo, in the Virungas National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The African Congo has a small area of biodiverse cloud forest ecosystem, where a small group of the world’s last pocket of remaining Silverback Gorillas which lend thanks to the work of Dian Fossey who was murdered on December the 26th 1985,  her work was to preserve and protect these primates, which are critically threatened with extinction from poaching and a continually eroded habitat due to these existing ‘Conflict Minerals’ being extracted in the area.  Including the mineral Coltan used for microchips,  the western greed for constantly renewing cell phones and laptops, is responsible for  this plundering. Other rare elements such as Indium are also depleting for the same reason –

”Devices like computers and smartphones. Indium, for example, is a silvery metal used to create touch screens for phones and computers. According to Cole-Hamilton, the world’s indium supply is “extremely thinly spread” across the planet and could soon dry up if we continue chucking out our old devices every few years”-LiveScience

According the the European EuChemS new Periodic table on the rarest elements,  Coltan Ta is under serious threat of disappearing within the next hundred years. Coltan Tantalite is used primarily for the production of tantalum capacitors, used in every kind of electronic devices such as mobile phones.

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Niobium and Coltan Tantalum have a wide range of uses, including refractive lenses for glasses, cameras, phones and printers. They are also used in semiconductor circuits, and capacitors for small electronic devices such as hearing aids, pacemakers, and mp3 players, as well as in computer hard drives, automobile electronics, and surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters for mobile phones. Coltan is also used to make high-temperature alloys for jet engines and other engine  turbines.

Coltan can only be found in a few places in the world, one of which is in Australia, which was the world’s largest producer at Wodinga Tantalum mine in Western Australia, however they closed their mine in 2012 because it is cheaper to mine Coltan using child and adult slave labour in inhumane conditions in Africa’s Democratic Republic of Congo and exposing these working communities to toxic chemicals. To make matters worse for the Silverback Gorillas, the SOCO International energy company are pushing to extract gas and oil reserves from under Lake Edward in the National Park. All this, at the cost of one of the last greatest African forests and majestic Gorillas which have only been given an estimated 15 years of survival amidst the adversities they face through our lack of global responsibility to better manage conservation of critically endangered species, because minerals, gold, diamonds and oil are far more important to the world than saving the Silverback Gorillas and their forest home.

The fact that global mining companies can cut corners to make a bigger profit at the expense of an entire endangered species such as the Mountain Gorilla and at the expense of hard working African miners, who are exploited slave labourers,
shows that international environmental and human rights laws are far too flimsy and ineffective.

However, the Western world conveniently lacks humanitarian and environmental ethics in business, which in turn perpetuates slavery, species extinction and ecocide. This has come so far as corporations suing and imprisoning entrepreneurs and innovators whose mere crime is to combat human waste and planned obsolescence to attempt to create sustainable solutions.

uploadscardimage776432e2c49274-e60e-4f24-bfec-9529c7a0e44d.jpg950x534__filtersquality90Eric  Lundgren, ecological entrepreneur was imprisoned for recycling computer circuit boards into reusable computers.         Image credit-David Sprague

Eric  Lundgren,  a 33 year old e-waste entrepreneur, from Los Angeles, United States, was imprisoned in 2018 for his success in a business which achieved  recycling  of 41 million pounds of e-waste each year from major corporations such as IBM and Sprint.

Microsoft took Eric Lundgren to court where he was then served a sentence of 15 months in prison and had to pay a $50,000 fine on April the 11th 2018. Microsoft’s argument was that Lundgren could potentially damage their future sales of new computers and new software licenses, the court  ruled in favour of Microsoft saying that he had infringed on Microsoft Corp. to the sum of $700,000.

Lundgren pleaded guilty, but he stated that the value of his discs to Microsoft was zero, as Microsoft, nor any computer manufacturers, sell them. He also explained that the discs could only be used to restore the software to computers already licensed for it. The licenses are good for the life of the computer.

Right-to-repair activists want legislation to remove the manufacturing and legal barriers that make it harder for consumers to fix their stuff. When people buy used devices and keep those devices working longer, fewer natural resources are needed for manufacturing and less e-waste ends up in landfills.

Planned Obsolescence needs to be revealed for what it is. People need to wake up to the damage corporations and consumers are causing to the environment and the perpetuation of slave labour, habitat destruction for mining and as a result species extinction.

 

by Carlita Shaw

The Silent Ecocide

Evolve to Ecology authority, capitalism, china, Climate, conflict minerals, Corpocracy, corpocratic, Corporatization, ecological economics, Exploitation, Freedom, Future, Geopolitics, greed, Imperialism, Petroleum, Psychology, Sustainability, Uncategorized

Machiavellian tactics- Always about the Oil

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First this year, the US Sanctions were on Gold in Venezuela, amid the financial and humanitarian crisis, where Venezuelans have been forced to flee the country for years without international help or intervention after financial and governmental collapse. Now, the US is stepping in, starting with sanctions on gold and this week, US sanctions are on oil and finally, de-recognition of Maduro as president and   Trump’s coronation of Guaido as Venezuelan president – Al Capone redux .

This is a geopolitical tactical move that will also affect China, Venezuela has for decades been the largest exporter of oil even though it’s a small country in South America. One of the reasons the US has wanted to see its downfall in addition to co-opting its demise as with interfering with many Central and South American coops on a Machiavellian level, with the geopolitical strategies in place, US military base in Haiti, Mexican Gulf polluted and transformed into an industrial oil zone since the Mexican Gulf oil spill, US occupation of the oceans and Oil industry is present all the way down to Venezuela, possibly to hit China where it hurts cutting off China to Venezuelan Oil supplies will hit China very hard, as its biggest oil supplier has been Venezuela.

US control of Venezuela is intrinsic in the elite power games between the West and the East. The US wants to make sure China doesn’t overtake US power by 2025, which is predicted already by financial experts who say that China will become the global superpower if not soon at the latest by 2040 according to financial experts in Forbes, and the US will lose power since most of its finances has gone into military investments and it carries a huge debt in trillions. There are always years of geopolitical strategies involved in the crisis of any country, its not just by accident these things happen with planning and social engineering many decades and even a century in advance, hence predictive programming working so well.

Carlita Shaw

The Silent Ecocide

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Surviving the Loss of Your Pet

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Some people may be surprised to read that losing a pet such as a dog or a cat or even a bird or a hamster, can put someone into a state of severe grief, just as devastating if not more so than losing a person. This is because the bond with an animal and the unconditional love and joy that they show you and their dependence upon you, when in your company is a greater loss in many ways, compared to that of our partners, friends or family, who we don’t always agree with. There may be possible unresolved issues, people are more complicated, animals are not, they are pure hearted and show us the most unflawed form of unconditional love and joy that light up our hearts and souls.

Fortunately, animal sentience is becoming a part of new developments in animal rights laws, as scientists and  human consciousness is recognizing that sentience and consciousness is not limited to the human being. Science is showing us that all living creatures and even plants,  share sentience and consciousness. We are beginning to acknowledge that animals have just as much right as we do, to be identified as persons in the court of law, a recent record breaking, animal neglect case was won in the US state of Oregon, for a dog who was abused, dogs are sentient beings and should be classes as persons.

The same with Dolphins, nine years ago I interviewed Dr. Thomas White about his groundbreaking research and book ”In Defense of Dolphins, the new moral frontier’‘.

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Dr Thomas White’s book and interview with me, discussed  the implications that  his research has uncovered, of how we currently treat dolphins; while his work focuses on ethics and how we need to re-evaluate our perception of dolphin intelligence. Humans continue to apply speciesism when observing other animals, negating the intelligence and emotions of other creatures, when we do not necessarily demonstrate balanced consciousness ourselves,  since we are exploiting  the planet and other species to ecocidal levels and we have yet to learn to live in harmony with other species and with Planet Earth, within the means of the Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity.

We are slowly changing our perception of dolphins due to the work of people such as Dr Thomas White and Ed Elsworth, we are beginning to acknowledge dolphins share similar traits of self awareness, complex social structures, complex language and thinking abilities in terms of past and future, the ability to choose to act in response to a situation and their reasoning abilities. This re-evaluation means we need to set new frontiers for the status of dolphins in terms of dolphins being ‘non-human persons’. A step forward to expanding our own consciousness and how we can learn from dolphins and how they live with one another.

Dr. White and other scientists and animal activists are making the case to recognize dolphins and other animal species as sentient creatures who deserve the same rights as people and after over 2500 scientific studies on this subject, more is being done to improve how we treat, class and recognize all animals as sentient beings and persons in their own right.

Yet, some people are still embarrassed by the overwhelming grief they feel for the loss of their pet, especially if others don’t react or treat their feelings as important which leads to disenfranchised grief. One of the best articles I read about losing a dog, was by Joe Yonan in The Washington Post- ´´ The fact that our pets are so dependent on us makes it all too easy to second-guess our decisions and descend into a pit of guilt. Shouldn’t I have known? Did I do everything I could? If I had just . . . what? Taken him to the vet sooner? Insisted he be hospitalized? What if I had been home? I might not have been able to save him, but at least in his last moments he would have known I was with him, and maybe that would have made it a little easier for him if not for me. Simply stated, many people (including pet owners) feel that grief over the death of a pet is not worthy of as much acknowledgement as the death of a person,”

A 2002 article in the journal Society & Animals that reviewed multiple studies on pet owners grief  stated that “ it is just as devastating as the loss of a human significant other”.

I went  through this after loosing my ten year old dog Poppy who died due to heart failure in 2015. When I expressed my grief though, I was very surprised by the very open expressive sympathy that friends showed me. Unlike my other dogs, Poppy and I had a deeply profound bond. Many of my friends have said how devastated they were after loosing their furry family members and how long it took them to get over the loss. I have friends that went into the pits of despair with grief and to the edge of a breakdown just as one would with loosing a dearly loved spouse, close friend or family member and  they were struggling to move forward. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, feeling this way about the loss of a dog or a cat or your closest best friend,  who spent more time sharing moments of unconditional love and joy with you than any human friend or family member has.

A dog or a cat or any animal you deeply bond with, whatever it may be, is there for you and loves you unconditionally, you have a daily routine with that animal, you do everything together and they end up being more of a part of your life than some people could ever be and you get a sense they know exactly how you feel most of the time too. It is especially hard for a person living alone to lose such a valuable companion.

When you love something or someone deeply, you have an equal amount of fear in losing the object of your love. My biggest fear in the world was losing my dog Poppy, she brought me so much happiness and joy over the last ten years, more than any amount of fortune or relationship could have given me. We had so many treasured adventures and moments together travelling and our connection was so profound we could read one another’s thoughts, I would just think ‘walkies’ and she would appear ready for me to put her harness on, she read my mind very clearly, all of the time. My only real deep fear was her dying, this I was afraid of for a few years before she actually passed over the rainbow bridge, on the positive side it made me cherish our moments together and live completely in the moment with her. Poppy to me, was the closest I have ever been to having a true soul mate in the body of an animal. She was a person and stood greater in her energy, spirit and wisdom than any human person I have met in my life. She gave me the best reason to be alive every day. Losing her has been the worst and most tragic experience of my entire life until I lost my husband a few years later, I’d still give anything to just feel her body in my arms and her big beating heart and be able to gaze into her soulful eyes.

Though, since having lived the reality of my greatest fear and going through this deep emotional loss, something surprisingly strange has happened after loosing Poppy, she has somehow helped return a fragment of myself, I lost after my early youth, an old emotional  and spiritual part of myself that was always able to laugh in the face of adversity, but after sometime I lost that part of me, and got worn down. Maybe, her angelic presence in the other realms allows her to bring gifts of healing for me, she is a very powerful being for me, somehow a lost part of my prior self, when I was very young, returned only after her passing and she has also been a reason for me to rescue other abandoned cats and dogs or to  discover some information that could help other homeless or abandoned pets in need.

After the lengthy and fragile initial stages of processing grief and loss, it helps a little to change ones perspective, I know this as someone that has lived with severe depression, you learn how to manage it via practising different perspectives, if possible. Despite being isolated physically, I am drawing towards a feeling of something intangible on a soulful level, the soul somehow grows stronger when baring so much pain and loss, it is not easy to put into words.

There are moments where I feel that everything for my spirit will be okay because Poppy’s soul is quite powerful and she has shown me that our deepest fears when lived out, end up providing us with gifts afterwards as they dissolve after surviving them somehow, on different levels. I just cannot put into words how in awe I am of the incredible number of insights my Poppy still teaches me each day from across the realms beyond life and death. I grieve for the loss of her abundant love, joyful spirit and physical presence while her soul is just so strong and bright. it permeates by illuminating my life in so many subtle ways with the ultimate gift of true unconditional love, she is still with me in spirit.

The best thing we can do while we are grieving the loss of our furry or feathered friends, is to realize they found us and taught us unconditional love and to be grateful for the time we had with them. There is a proverb about a boy who lost his dog and apparently after his dog died, he said that the reason dogs have shorter lives than people, is because they already know how to love unconditionally and be joyful all the time, so they don’t need to spend much time here in this realm, whereas people are still learning how to love so that is why we live a while longer.

by Carlita Shaw -this article has been updated since 2015
Ecologist, Author

Dr Thomas White’s Website In Defense of Dolphins:

www.indefenseofdolphins.com

More recently The Times acknowledges the work of Dr Thomas White and other scientists research that dolphins are ‘non-human persons’. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6973994.ece

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Triumph for Ecuadorians fighting against GMO seeds.

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The Campesinos of the National Peasant Movement – FECAOL, the Cantonal Agricultural Center of Quevedo and Acción Ecológica, managed to win the historical demand imposed against the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrocalidad (in the Judicial House of the Quevedo canton in the province of Los Ríos), after 15 years of struggle against the Ecuadorian Government for its permanent attempt to unconstitutionally enter transgenic seeds into Ecuador,

On Tuesday, January 15, 2019, the Constitutional Judge of the region accepted the Protection Action against crops planted illegally in the province of Los Ríos. This victory came after the monitoring carried out in the region, where the illegal presence of transgenic soybean crops had previously been detected.

Faced with this evidence, the judge said that transgenic crops violate the rights to life, health, work, a healthy environment and the rights of nature, therefore, granted the Protection Action in favour of the peasants and peasants in the province.

In addition, it ordered that the National Government must carry out the following preparatory measures:

– Decommission, eliminate and incinerate all the transgenic crops found in the monitoring.

– Subject to the sowing period, confiscate, eliminate and incinerate all batches of transgenic seed to prevent further sowing.

– Establish a permanent surveillance program to prevent GM crops from being planted in Ecuador.

– Raise awareness and educate on the dangers and the unconstitutionality of the transgenics to the officials of the Ministry of Agriculture and to the farmers of the region.

– That the Ministry of Agriculture include in its website the inscription “Ecuador Free of Transgenics”.

– Send the ruling to the Prosecutor’s Office of all the regions of the province of Los Ríos where transgenic crops were found, so that it identifies those responsible, by action or omission, for the entry of transgenic soy.

 

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Deforestation and genocide in the Amazon reaches accelerated levels

map of all industrial activity and genocideThe above map shows the amount of industrial activity in the Amazon and the red crosses show the amount of indigenous people assassinated due to conflicts over rainforest that they are fighting to protect.

Between August 2017 and July 2018 some 7,900 square kilometres of forest were logged in the Brazilian Amazon, the worst annual rate of deforestation in a decade, according to official government data. This represents an increase of 13.7% over the same period last year.

Greenpeace Brazil pointed out, approximately 1,185 million trees were felled in an area equivalent to the size of 987,500 football fields.

This worrying news comes amid fears that the new far right president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, may worsen the situation due to his promise to open more the Amazon to the development of the timber industry, in addition to his public hatred of indigenous people, specifically the  Kawahivas people who are on the edge of extinction. 

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The above graph from Global Witness report ”At What Cost” shows Brazil has the highest rate of environmental defenders being killed than any other country in the world.

The Amazon rain forest is deadlier than ever for land and environmental defenders, with mining and oil industries and agribusiness, these industries are the most linked to genocides of environmentalists and indigenous rainforest activists.

Global Witness’s latest annual data into violence against land and environmental defenders shows a rise in the number of women and men killed over the last few years to 207 in Brazil especially. What’s more, Global Witness’s research has highlighted agribusiness including coffee, palm oil and banana plantations as the industry most associated with these attacks.

4-captura de pantalla completa 16012019 161740.bmpBetween 2005 and 2011 deforestation  decreased in Brazil by an encouraging 70%, mainly due to the increase in government protection in response to a growing awareness to protect the rainforest. Even between 2011 and 2017, when Brazil entered a more chaotic political period, the decline in deforestation stopped, but did not reverse. Bolsonaro’s leadership plans, unfortunately, will undo some of that progress.

However, not only is the rate of deforestation increasing in Brazil,  it is also accelerating in Ecuador and the Peruvian Amazon and many indigenous natives are not given legal prior consultation to enter their territories for oil drilling or logging, therefore it is often done brutally with the help of military force, illegally violating indigenous people’s rights. The Amazon rainforest is a boundless region that spans across eight developing countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. Colombia has done more in the past years to step up to conserving large areas of rain forest, they set aside over 28.4 Million hectares of rain forest for conservation purposes.
deforestacion-amazoniaImage: Rich Carey Shutterstock

In a statement, Brazil’s environment minister, Edson Duarte, blamed illegal logging for increased deforestation in the Amazon and called on the government to step up surveillance in the forests, Reuters reported.

Greenpeace claims that the Brazilian government is not doing enough to stop deforestation. In addition, with Bolsonaro in command, “the predictions for the Amazon (and for the fight against climate change) are not good”.

The loss of forests creates an unpleasant feedback loop in climate change. Forests and forest soils are a major carbon sink, and deforestation adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

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In the new report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, regarding the limitation of global warming to 1.5 ° C above pre-industrial levels, it is pointed out that the planting of more trees and the maintenance of existing trees are essential to achieve that goal.

Moreover, in the Amazon, biodiversity loss is devastating and irreversible when deforestation occurs, it is not a matter of planting more trees. It is impossible to replace the biodiversity and species lost which have evolved through millions of years in the biodiversity rich Amazon. Half of the world’s entire animal, amphibians, reptiles, birds, plants, and insect species are found in the Amazon rainforest which is the world’s largest biodiversity hotspot.

The Amazon rain forest contains:

One in ten known species on Earth
1.4 billion acres of dense forests, half of the planet’s remaining tropical forests
4,100 miles of winding rivers
2.6 million square miles in the Amazon basin, about 40 percent of South America
There is a clear link between the health of the Amazon and the health of the planet. The rain forests, which contain 90-140 billion metric tons of carbon, help stabilize local and global climate. Deforestation may release significant amounts of this carbon, which could have catastrophic consequences around the world.

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by Carlita Shaw

 The Silent Ecocide