by Ken Sehested
10 October 2019
“The Amazon is not burning—it is being burned.”
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Years ago, on a speaking assignment in Brazil, I flew to Rio de Janeiro, where I was met by several new acquaintances. After introductions and handshakes, we drove into the city to where I would be staying for the week.
On our way, we drove along a highway below Corcovado Mountain, on whose perch sits the famous “Christ the 
Redeemer” statue, for many years the tallest in the world.
I craned my neck to get a view; and then quietly mumbled, “Don’t jump! Don’t jump!” It was just loud enough to be overheard. At which point the car erupted in laughter.
I knew then that my new friends shared my streak of irreverence, particularly over frivolous escapades of public piety, with which the powerful almost always disguise their intrigues.
Brazil (spelled Brasil by its citizens) is getting more attention in recent months, primarily because of the massive fires raging in the Amazon rainforest, most of which is within Brazil’s boundary, but also stretches into eight neighboring countries. This year nearly over 72,00 fires have broken out, an increase of 80% over the same period in 2018.
Sometimes referred to as the earth’s lungs, the forest supplies some 20% of the world’s oxygen and sequesters a quarter of the carbon dioxide absorbed by the world’s forests. But the forest is also home to an estimated 300,000 indigenous people belonging to hundreds of distinct tribes. Brazil’s 1988 Constitution explicitly stipulates that population’s claim to the land.
Here in North America we’ve come to learn that wildfires are part of our forests’ ecosystem. But not so with rainforests. The Amazon, as has been said, is not burning—it is being burned. And this is bad news, not just for those living in the region, but for the entire planet.
The reasons for the forest’s scorching, along with the displacement of its indigenous residents, are as old as its geologic formation: the seemingly inexhaustible demands for “development.” Meaning, more stuff. Growth as a measure of girth. The extractive impulse, where calculations of progress are left in the hands of corporations and financiers and those doing their bidding.
Cattle farmers and plantations want to squeeze more “productivity” from the land. Loggers want its timber. Miners want 
its metals, minerals, and gemstones. The quickest way to gain access is to torch it.
Adding to these damages are droughts compounded by climate change. Normally “fire-proof” rainforests are more susceptible to burning.
Environmental activists and advocates for the health of local communities face growing peril. In 2018, in Brazil alone, 70 were murdered. Few assailants are brought to justice.
Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro—referred to as the “Trump of the Tropics” for his right-wing proclivities—made accelerated economic development of the rainforest a key pledge in his 2018 presidential campaign, and existing environmental laws are routinely ignored.
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Life in Amazonia has perhaps never before been so threatened “by environmental destruction and
exploitation and by the systematic violation of the basic human rights of the Amazon population. . . .”
—Brazilian Roman Catholic Cardinal Claudio Hummes, in his opening remarks to the
“Synod of Bishops on the Amazon,” currently (6-27 October 2019) meeting in Rome
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Prior to the Western media’s coverage of the Amazon fires, North Americans knew little of Brazil. Some recall coverage of the 2016 Olympic games there. Some know about the extravagant Carnival parades, overshadowing the Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans just prior to Lent; or the famed soccer player Pelé; or the country’s renowned Ipanema and 
Copacabana beaches. I didn’t know prior to my trip that more African slaves disembarked in Brazil than in any other country during the 16th-18th century Atlantic slave trade.
Right: Tanks on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 31 May 1964, start of the US-backed military coup
I would venture that even fewer of my fellow citizens know that the US encouraged, organized, and supplied a 1964 coup d’état creating a military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for 21 years.
Declassified documents released in 1974 revealed that the US government actively plotted to overthrow the democratically elected government of President João Goulart, including orchestration with key Brazilian military leaders and the resources of a US naval carrier group, which transported ammunition, oil, gasoline and other war materiel.
“I think one of our important jobs is to strengthen the spine of the [Brazilian] military," US Ambassador Lincoln Gordon told the President [Kennedy] and his advisor, Richard Goodwin, according to a secretly taped meeting in the Oval Office with Kennedy on 30 July 1962. Kennedy would be assassinated before the coup commenced on 31 March 1964; President Lyndon B. Johnson gave the actual go-ahead.
Paramount among US fears of the Goulart government was its relative independence, a risky stance in the geopolitics of the Cold War; Goulart’s promise to remove Western companies’ control of Brazilian oil production, along with other social and economic reforms; and the ever-present US fear of communism.
Latin America “has always understood that governments which we recognize and support stay in power,” said Under-Secretary of State Robert Olds in 1927 testimony to Congress, “while those we do not recognize and support fail.”
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“When I give people food, they call me a saint. When I ask why there is no food, they call me a communist.”
—Brazilian Archbishop (1964-1985) Hélder Câmara
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Of special note is the way religious piety is manipulated during this history. In the months leading up to the coup, a coalition of right-wing sectors in Brazil organized a march to protest Goulart’s rule, under the banner of “Marches of the Family with God for Freedom.” Then, during Bolsonaro’s campaign, his party’s popular motto was “Brasil above everything, God above everyone” (eerily parallel to Trump’s “America First” slogan).
During a 2016 trip to Israel, Bolsonaro, a professed Catholic, asked prominent Pentecostal pastor (and head of Brazil’s Christian Social Party) Everaldo Pereira to baptize him in the Jordan River in a flagrant attempt to cement his political ties to 
Brazil’s sizeable, deeply conservative evangelical Christian community.
In his book, “The Future Church,” journalist John L. Allen Jr. noted that in 1969, then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller predicted that “The Catholic Church has stopped being a trusted ally of the US, and on the contrary is transforming itself into a danger because it raises the consciousness of the people.” The governor went on to recommend that the US support fundamentalist Protestant groups in Latin America.
A few years later, in 1982, a group of President Ronald Reagan’s advisors, meeting in Santa Fe shortly before Reagan’s trip to Rome for a meeting with the Pope, openly discussed how to deal with theological trends in Latin America. In their “Santa Fe Document” they wrote that “American foreign policy must begin to counterattack liberation theology.” It accused liberation theologians of using the church “as a political weapons against private property and productive capitalism by infiltrating the religious community with ideas that are less Christian than Communist.”
Clearly, the mantle of authority granted to “Christ the Redeemer” is contested by conflicting loyalties and incompatible claims. The stakes are high, and the spirits must be tested (cf. 1 John 4:1).
The desolation caused by the fires could be a mirror into which not just Brazilians but all of us, particularly those of us in the US, can peer to get a more accurate picture of who we have become. And, maybe, of whom, for whom, and by Whom we wish to be.
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threats, on and on—not world without end, for it will surely end if, by no other cause, choking to death on our own excretion.
possibility of a new beginning that enables our turning around, embracing the strenuous labor of repairing broken relations and enacting just policies.
killing four young girls and traumatizing a city—Birmingham—nicknamed “Bombingham” for the sheer number of terrorist bombings it endured. The strike on 16th Street came less than three weeks after the soaring inspiration of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the 28 August March on Washington, where a quarter of a million people were ecstatically immersed in the vision and promise of the Dream for which that occasion is remembered.
even get a public hearing, not to mention bringing a coherent, convincing case. To put it precisely, what is to be said about the option of penitential living constituting the rule of faith, that distinguishes its pursuit as a trustworthy alternative to what, from all appearance, is the inevitable reign of fear and its trembling wake? Mining the depths of the Jewish tradition’s understanding of Rosh Hashanah (the prospect of beginning anew) and Yom Kippur (penitence as the key to bounty and freedom) is an urgent undertaking.
the last, to conclude that religion is more or less a form of crowd control, with God as the ultimate godfather with, by extension, stately powers of all sorts serving as underbosses. That the latter are often in violent conflict with each other confirms, rather than questions, this conclusion.
us punish and condemn ourselves or each other.
by the hard work of repairing the damage done by our disordered desires.
repeating it, over and again, to underscore that which is too terrible for words. Knowing that my first-born and my beloved sister-in-law lived less than a mile from Manhattan's southern shore made the shock all the more poignant.
uncovering. While God is certainly not the author of this pain, there is the possibility that, out of the grief, an unveiling may occur; and we must prepare to ask and respond to the question, "What is God saying to us?"
has since found a more lucrative offer on the "free market" of global political violence.
crops, livestock, even young people for sale as slaves. It was a conscious policy designed to effect Israel's submission to Aramean political, economic and military control, to make it a "client" state.
chaos ensues, Elisha steps out of the house, calls to the commanding general, saying, "I hear you're looking for the Prophet Elisha?" "Yes," comes the stuttered response from a confused and frightened voice.
in heaven or on earth. Neither kings nor presidents, generals nor multinational magnates is able. And the narrator weeps at this admission.
—Rudyard Kipling, excerpt from his poem, “
abolitionist, Jefferson referred to black people as ‘pests in society’ and warned that their ‘amalgamation with the other colour produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character can innocently consent.’” —
instead started the bullshit program that monitors the completely made-up threat of ‘Black Identity Extremists.’
contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”
out a call for its fellow working-class rural White people to ‘reject the idea of whiteness.’ That is, they wrote, ‘to reject the idea that our allegiance is somehow determined by what skin we have, even when our real living situations are so different.’”
right-wing domestic extremists, 23% by Islamist extremists, and 3% by left-wing extremists. —
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onalist mass murderer, there is an increasingly available literature portraying people of white European origins as being in a state of decline.” —, Guardian 
ramatic increase in the number of white nationalist groups in the U.S., from 100 chapters in 2017 to 148 in 2018.
¶ Recessional. “Let peace be waged with courage and devotion / With warrior’s brav’ry, vigilant and bold / Emancipation’s melodies surround us / Each voice in harmony, all tongues enfold / Let Grace untold tame fear’s unnerving sorrow / And sorrow’s verse, to joy’s refrain unfold.” —
laws; on discerning vocations and callings; on the terrorizing disconnect between commerce and the flourishing of every living thing; on the increasingly barbarous treatment of immigrants and refugees.
tradition. For most of its colonial history the country observed “Empire Day” on 24 May in honor of British Queen Victoria’s birthday and her emancipation of slaves in 1938. But in 1961 Empire Day was supplanted by Labour Day, on 23 May, to commemorate the 1938 labor rebellion which led to independence.” —continue reading “
1930s, unionized workers have made about 15-20% more than similarly educated workers.” —
willed it / And we mean to have eight hours; / We're summoning our forces / From the shipyard, shop and mill / Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest / Eight hours for what we will.” —“Eight Hours,” lyrics by I. G. Blanchard, music by the Reverend Jesse H. Jones, 1878
¶ “The supreme accomplishment is to blur the lines between work and play.” —Arnold J. Toynbee
receiving." —Albert Einstein
Illusion"
and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil.” ―William Cullen Bryant
expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urge that motivates you.” —Martha Graham, legendary modern dancer and choreographer
Amazon, and Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway—is greater than the bottom 50% of US citizens. —presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, confirmed by
greener place. Hope begins to grow, and we are summoned to the work that will give us a feeling of wellness and make possible that which we envision.” —Elizabeth O'Connor, “Cry Pain, Cry Hope”
missed. For the most of us, it is in the minute particular that we give ourselves to the eternal order of things; in our own living rooms, in our own streets, in our own cities, in the way we live and love and care, minute by minute; in the chance encounters of every day, as well as in the planned work which we do.” —Dorothy Steere
successes of the Civil Rights Movement: festering white supremacy and white nationalism.
posted at .
James Bradley, “The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War”
the late 15th century together framed a church “doctrine of discovery” to Spain’s and Portugal’s respective conquests, conveying the Pope’s blessing “to capture, vanquish, and subdue the Saracens, pagans, and other enemies of Christ and put them into perpetual slavery and to take all their possession and their property.” —Vinnie Rotondaro, “
Virginia, and dropped anchor into the muddy waters of history. It was clear to the men who received this ‘Dutch man of War’ that she was no ordinary vessel. What seems unusual today is that no one sensed how extraordinary she really was. For few ships, before or since, have unloaded a more momentous cargo. The history of Black America began.” —scholar and social historian Lerone Bennett, in his 1962 book, “Before Mayflower,” quoted in Nibs Stroupe, “
Arkansas, chanting “six million more,” a reference to the number of Jews who died during the Holocaust. —photo by Jasmin Joy Elma Lyon, 
Sonoran Desert in Arizona, the Mexican State of Sonora, and the Whipple Mountains and Imperial County areas of California. These plants can live up to 150 years.
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