Eideard

Edmar Araújo still remembers the awe. As he cleared trees on his family’s land decades ago near Rio Branco, an outpost in the far western reaches of the Brazilian Amazon, a series of deep earthen avenues carved into the soil came into focus.

“These lines were too perfect not to have been made by man,” said Mr. Araújo, a 62-year-old cattleman. “The only explanation I had was that they must have been trenches for the war against the Bolivians.”

But these were no foxholes, at least not for any conflict waged here at the dawn of the 20th century. According to stunning archaeological discoveries here in recent years, the earthworks on Mr. Araújo’s land and hundreds like them nearby are much, much older — potentially upending the conventional understanding of the world’s largest tropical rain forest.

The deforestation that has stripped the Amazon since the 1970s has also exposed a long-hidden secret lurking underneath thick rain forest: flawlessly designed geometric shapes spanning hundreds of yards in diameter.

Alceu Ranzi, a Brazilian scholar who helped discover the squares, octagons, circles, rectangles and ovals that make up the land carvings, said these geoglyphs found on deforested land were as significant as the famous Nazca lines, the enigmatic animal symbols visible from the air in southern Peru…

For some scholars of human history in Amazonia, the geoglyphs in the Brazilian state of Acre and other archaeological sites suggest that the forests of the western Amazon, previously considered uninhabitable for sophisticated societies partly because of the quality of their soils, may not have been as “Edenic” as some environmentalists contend…

While researchers piece together the Amazon’s ecological history, mystery still shrouds the origins of the geoglyphs and the people who made them. So far, 290 such earthworks have been found in Acre, along with about 70 others in Bolivia and 30 in the Brazilian states of Amazonas and Rondônia.

RTFA.

Slash-and-burn deforestation is just as likely to lead to destruction of the cultures hidden by that forest. I doubt of many of those moving in to exploit the land are any more burdened with ethics about history than they are about ecology.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Police captured Rio de Janeiro’s most wanted alleged drug trafficker…as they prepared to occupy the city’s largest slum.

Antonio Bonfim Lopes, alleged drug lord of the teeming Rocinha slum, was found in bizarre circumstances – in the boot of a car belonging to a man who claimed to be a senior diplomat from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

TV images showed the suspect, known as Nem, looking close to tears after his arrest.

There are diplomats with all their “respect” and power, immunity and hypocrisy, who would probably carry a thug like this to safety in their briefcase – if they could fit him inside. Along with the profits from their own crimes.

Sugarcane grown to power Brazil’s cars and trucks as an alternative to climate-warming fossil fuels has a beneficial side effect: it also cools the local air temperature…

Researchers warned that this does not mean replacing Amazon forest or other natural vegetation with sugarcane fields. The benefit comes when sugarcane is introduced into existing agriculture, replacing pasture land or crops like soybeans.

Sugarcane manages this win-win feat by its ability to reflect sunlight and to “sweat” out cooling moisture into the air, said lead researcher Scott Loarie of the Carnegie Institution for Science.

Plants draw moisture from the soil and emit it into the air in the process of photosynthesis…”We showed that with sugarcane, it was these evaporative cooling effects that were much more significant than the albedo (reflectivity),” he said, speaking of research published online in Nature Climate Change.

Sugarcane is used in biofuel that powers about a quarter of the motor vehicles in Brazil, and in that way, it helps to keep some of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which affects global climate.

However, because of its efficiency at emitting cool moisture, it also can push down local temperatures by 1.67 degrees F (0.93 degrees C) compared to other crops or pasture.

Now, if we could only figure out how to do this with kudzu?

Move over Chile, Brazil has the world’s largest Lego tower.

Standing at 31.19 meters the tower in the city of Sao Paulo breaks the previous record set in Santiago, Chile, in 2008 by 25 centimeters, according to Lego’s Brazilian website.

Lego sent designers from Denmark to build the tower, which was completed Saturday in a shopping center parking lot after four days of construction.

Brazilian soccer great Cafu attached the last piece of the colorful tower.

According to Lego, the first such structure was built in London in 1988 and stood just a little over 15 meters (49.21 feet) tall.

OK, we know it’s a publicity stunt for the upcoming World Cup and the Olympics. But, it ain’t a bad way to waste some time.

At least 35 people, mostly Rio de Janeiro police officers, were arrested on Friday on suspicion of colluding with drug gangs as the Brazilian city attempts to clean itself up before hosting the 2014 World Cup and the Olympic Games two years later.

It was one of the biggest operations against police corruption in the city, which is gradually overcoming a reputation for crime and violence. Rio police have long been accused of corruption and of covering up their violent tactics in the city’s hundreds of slum areas that are often controlled by drug traffickers…

Hundreds of officers took part in the operation, code-named “Guillotine,” seeking the arrest of 45 people, including 32 police officers. By Friday evening, 27 police officers had been arrested, investigators said.

The investigation began in 2009 when a planned police operation in a slum had to be aborted after details of the raid were leaked to drug traffickers, officials said.

Police officers targeted in the operation were also suspected of running protection rackets for illegal gambling, leading militia groups and taking bribes from traffickers.

One of the suspected leaders of the scheme, former police commander Carlos de Oliveira, was suspected of charging drug chiefs $60,000 a time in exchange for information about police operations. Oliveira, who turned himself in to investigators, had since left the police to join the city government.

Har! Corruption suspect leaves police force – to join city government. Sounds like a few places I’ve lived in the good old USA.

Probably the biggest and best known of all the cash transfer schemes in the developing world is the Bolsa Familia in Brazil. Since 2003, 12 million families have joined the scheme and receive small amounts of money (around $12 a month). Inequality has been cut by 17% in just five years, which is perhaps one of the most dramatic achievements in welfare ever recorded. The poverty rate has fallen from 42.7% to 28.8%.

Such is the fascination in this “social technology” that Brazil is now being sought for advice on cash transfer programmes by countries across Africa (Ghana, Angola, Mozambique), the Middle East (Egypt, Turkey) and Asia (including India). Even New York City has implemented a version of the programme.

“It’s social policy diplomacy,” suggested one of the ministers involved in the Brazilian programme, Dr Romulo Paes de Sousa, when I caught up with him in London after speaking at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex earlier this week.

He’s delighted by the interest. “Brazil is developing a new model of donor whereby we give expertise as well as aid. Brazil is already one of the largest donors of food aid in the world.” He is also struck by the paradox that Brazil is expanding its welfare state just as Europe is cutting back on welfare.

There are some aspects of the programme, he explains, which have attracted particular interest. The first is conditionality. The payments are dependent on the family’s children staying in school until 17, and attendance must be at least 85% up to 14 years and 75% for the remainder. Another form of conditionality is that children get the full set of vaccinations in their first five years and that mothers attend pre and post-natal care.

RTFA. You can see right off the bat why this would be hated by The Right – from churches to conservatives. Actually trusting poor people to do the right thing with education and opportunity? Practically a sin unto itself. And definitely a crime against class-based republican principles.

Dangling above the South Atlantic, construction workers brave wind and waves to erect a vast 10-berth port terminal off the Brazilian coast. Nicknamed the “highway to China,” the $2.7 billion port will be one of the biggest in the world when completed in 2012.

Eike Batista, a mining mogul and Brazil’s richest man, dreamed up the idea for the Acu Superport because he was fed up with the delays in getting iron ore from his mines onto ships bound for China.

“Land your cargo at a port and if it’s a container, it may stay there for 30 to 60 days,” Batista told CNN.

He ended up building a port and industrial complex that will be bigger than Manhattan and already is luring foreign and domestic investments…

A cement causeway juts 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) into the ocean. It will boast a four-lane highway, pipelines and conveyer belts to move iron ore, soybeans and oil onto waiting ships, feeding China’s insatiable appetite for raw materials…

“This is a story about connecting Brazil to the world. Because for the last 20 years, why haven’t German companies or European or American companies come to Brazil?” he asks. “Very bad logistics.”

Brazil’s clogged roads and ports add billions of dollars to the cost of production every year. Analysts say improving the country’s infrastructure will be one of the main challenges facing Lula da Silva’s successor.

Batista’s a pretty impressive dude. Get a chance, watch the interview Charlie Rose did with him earlier this year. He’s one of those overachievers whose father was one of the wealthiest men in the country; but, didn’t believe in giving his kid a leg up.

He treats his own children the same way. Could make for a soap opera if he wasn’t so busy building a port that should end up anchoring a new city that rivals Rio. And brings in a lot more money.

The South American giant is preparing to use its first locally-designed microchip in cattle earrings, a device that could eventually help authorities crack down on destruction of the Amazon rain forest caused by roaming herds.

Produced by state-funded firm Ceitec, the “Chip do Boi” or “Cow Chip” is part of home-grown innovation efforts that Brazil hopes will help it overcome challenges in its sprawling economy and over time make it an exporter of niche technology…

“Brazil has competitive advantages in areas like agriculture and clean energy, and it makes sense for the country to maintain those advantages through technological innovation,” said Ceitec chief executive Cylon Silva, a theoretical physicist with a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

“There’s no way that a country of Brazil’s size and influence can go without an electronics industry…”

The cattle trackers can help ranchers demonstrate their cows have not been exposed to illnesses and may be crucial for creating a database of cattle showing which animals grazed on recently deforested land.

Brazil’s state development bank said last year it will begin requiring the ranchers it finances to show where their cattle have grazed, possibly using such devices…

Brazil’s high-tech sector still faces challenges including weak and unequal education systems, notorious government bureaucracy, and chronic delays in project execution…

The country is working to make sure that doesn’t happen…

Silva says it will take decades for the country to be competitive in global chip markets but that the success of firms with high-technology products such as Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer shows Brazil can produce much more than just commodities.

“I think there is a real opportunity for a country with the resources that Brazil has to become a player in this market,” said Silva. “If we can manufacture planes, why not think that we can manufacture integrated circuits?”

Bravo!

BTW – this is being implemented around the world among significant cattle producing countries. Only a few, like here in the GOUSA, have managed to encounter lawsuits from Christian groups upset over “the number of the beast” being a satanic plot.

For police chief Clayton Leão Chaves it was supposed to be another day at the office. At around 9.40am this morning, he was making his daily journey to the police HQ in Camacari, a small city in Bahia state, and giving an interview to local radio on his mobile phone about the police’s struggle against local drug traffickers.

Then something went badly wrong.

“I heard some bangs,” one of the shows two presenters announced, perplexed, as the police chief’s voice disappeared.

“Something serious has happened to our chief. It can’t be anything else,” said his co-presenter, adding: “The chief was just talking to us. We don’t know what has happened. There is a lady weeping.”

According to local media reports, Chaves had been killed as he spoke to journalists from Bahia’s Lider FM radio station and to thousands of local listeners about attempts to improve security…

According to reports, the police chief’s car was ambushed by gunmen, who then fled in a white VW car…

Stunned, the show’s presenters urged police to rush to the scene. “Attention military police, attention colleagues of the police chief. Get to the Cascalheira Highway urgently. Something serious has just happened.”

Local radio presenter Marco Antonio Ribeiro told the G1 news site: “I was finishing the interview when the crime happened. We were meant to do the interview in the studio but he couldn’t make it. The interview was about his work combating drug trafficking in the region.”

Too real. There are some jobs that require an armored car – and not just for those worrying about political assassination.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The efforts by leaders of Turkey and Brazil to broker a nuclear deal with Iran reflects growing dissatisfaction with the traditional world order in which the United States is the only superpower, which they view as outdated and unjust.

And their intervention on the Iran issue reflects a growing perception among many countries that the United States is unable to resolve international conflicts alone.

The visit this week to Tehran by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was a rare show of personal, high-stakes diplomacy by a pair of world leaders.

Turkey and Brazil hailed the agreement they reached for Iran to ship some of its nuclear fuel out of the country as a major step toward resolving Iran’s years-old standoff with the West.

But it was promptly pooh-poohed by the United States, which, a day after the deal was announced, introduced a sanctions resolution to the United Nations Security Council in what was perceived widely in Ankara and Brasilia as an American snub of two close allies…

While U.S. officials were prepared to be pleasantly surprised if Lula and Erdogan were able to produce a deal that addressed all their concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, they didn’t think that it would happen and were concerned the deal would complicate efforts to pass the U.N. resolution…

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