The Actual Amazon Prime. The Golden Pa$$port. Stonewall’s Stone Wall.

“The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.” – Rachel Carson

The Actual Amazon Prime Is In Danger: In Brazil’s October 28 presidential run-off election, far-right congressman and front-runner Jair Bolsonaro appears headed for a landslide victory. Should this prediction come true, the impact will extend far beyond the territorial boundaries of his single South American country. That is because Bolsonaro is more than just an enemy of environmental protection—he is a champion of deforestation. The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical forest, sometimes called the lungs of the Earth for its role in absorbing the the global carbon dioxide emissions heating up the planet, and 60 percent of it is in Brazil. Bolsonaro has campaigned on scraping the country’s Environment Ministry, reducing penalties for environmental law violators, pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, and turning the Amazon’s tropical jungles into farmland. He has dismissed the idea of setting aside forest land for native Brazilians who have inhabited the Amazon for centuries, promising specifically that if he is elected: “there won’t be a square centimeter demarcated as an indigenous reserve.”

A powerful conservative wing in Brazil’s legislature that calls itself the Beef, Bible and Bullet Coalition had begun rolling back conservation measures even before Bolsonaro’s meteoric rise. Brazil is trying to emerge from a crippling recession, and beef and soy are two of its biggest commodities. Global demand for beef is growing, and the US-China trade feud has increased the demand for soy. These market realities are certain to drive efforts to continue turning forests into farmland. The short-term reward will be at the expense of long-term damage; rainforests, after all, are not fungible commodities.

Additional Read: The problem with history is that the electorate seldom remembers it. Bolsonaro hasn’t hidden his nostalgia for Brazil’s bygone military rule of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. It was a truly brutal era, detailed well in the New York Review Daily’s “Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s Would-be Dictator”. Sadly, it’s doubtful public opinion can be swayed at this point. Combine a charismatic candidate with an impotent government, add social media awash in disinformation and spewing fear, top it with failure to remember and appreciate history; you will have the makings of a huge step backwards, and the dish looks cooked. (NYRB)

This Is Some Smelly Business: The trade group Safer Phosphates pitches cleaner soil, healthier food, and tighter regulations on fertilizer to an environmentally conscious European Union. Only thing is the driving force behind the group is a Russian fertilizer giant, PhosAgro, with ties to the Kremlin. And the legislation the trade group backs would reset regulations in favor of PhosAgro, giving it greater influence over the European food supply while kicking rival fertilizer companies to the curb. “It’s all part of the same effort,” said a former top FBI counterintelligence official. “The businesses develop relationships, and through those relationships, they try to leverage policy.” Russia is already the EU’s dominant provider of natural gas, and a growing source of nuclear fuel. (NYT)

Whoopsie (Pushing Up) Daisies: Saudi Arabia keeps throwing explanations against the wall to see what sticks. The latest version of what happened to Saudi journalist and US resident Jamal Khashoggi is that he got into a fight inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul October 2 with some people he was meeting, and, tragically, wound up dead. The Saudi foreign minister told Fox News “the murder” had been a “tremendous mistake” by rogue individuals acting “outside the scope of their authority”, and furthermore, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salam knew nothing about it. Turkish officials beg to differ, and say they have the evidence to prove it. (BBC) Additional read: “Erdoğan to reveal ‘naked truth’ about Khashoggi’s death: Turkish president looks set to claim Saudi government murdered journalist, while US tries to reduce fallout.” (Guardian)

– “Japan’s prime minister, a Trump buddy, now tries to cozy up to China’s president: ‘For the first time for a very long time, Chinese leaders are looking for a positive relationship with Japan,’ said Yun Sun, a China expert at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. ‘With Trump in power, both Japan and China are feeling the heat coming. It changes their calculations,’ she said.” (WaPo)

– “Their Land Defiled, Forest People Swap Flower Worship for Quran and Concrete: When the flowers could no longer summon the gods, the healer knew it was time to leave the forest.” (NYT)

The Golden Pa$$port: UN justice commissioner Vera Jourova is echoing the private concerns of intelligence agencies that Europe’s security is being put at risk by so-called “golden passport” schemes, which allow states to sell citizenship or residency to anyone with the money to buy them. Jourova described the programs as “problematic” and “unfair”, adding: “We have legitimate concerns, because if in one country a dangerous person gets citizenship, he gets citizenship for the whole of Europe….Once we have some weak points in the EU, some weak points where it is easy to enter the space, the whole of Europe has a problem.” In Jourova’s view, this shows making money is being prioritized over security.

The commissioner’s comments followed the publication Tuesday of a blacklist compiled by the OECD, a leading think tank, of 21 countries operating passport schemes deemed to pose a high risk of tax evasion. Two EU members on the list, Malta and Cyprus, have already sold citizenship to hundreds of individuals from Russia, China and the Middle East. It was also the first anniversary of the death of the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed in a car bomb attack in Malta. Jourova plans to issue a report by year’s end recommending much tighter controls on the practice, including insisting on genuine links between a passport buyer and the country whose citizenship the person is applying for. Currently Brussels has no power to ban the schemes, but that could change.

– “Meet the guy who built an iPhone from scratch: Allen, 39, loves the wild enthusiasm his YouTube videos have sparked, but the scratch iPhone isn’t the point.” (Cult of Mac)

– “Housing Market Is Raising Serious Red Flags: Real home price growth looks to have already entered a cyclical downturn that is likely to intensify as affordability worsens.” (Bloomberg)

– “Analyst who predicted the 2008 crash warns of bubble brewing in U.S. household wealth” (Market Watch)

– “Venture Capitalist: A.I. Hype Still ‘Has a Ways to Go Up’” (NYT)

– “How to fly the best first-class seats, cheaper than economy: Airline industry experts have been proclaiming the death of first class for years. While some airlines have done away with it altogether, others are doubling down with palatial suite-style seats, lavish amenities, and services that pamper, both on the ground and in the air.” (LA Times)

Stonewall’s Stone Wall Crumbles: In August, 2017, white supremacists rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they had gathered to protest the removal of a statute of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The rally turned violent and someone was killed. Hours afterward Georgia house minority leader Stacey Abrams tweeted that the carvings on the state’s Stone Mountain, of General Lee, Jefferson Davis and General T.J. “Stonewall” Jackson, were “a blight on our state” and must be removed. Abrams went on to become the only black woman in the country to win a major party’s (Democrat) nomination for governor. Should she win, the carvings that took decades to create, that are explicitly protected by law, that are the centerpiece of the state’s most visited tourist attraction (a 3,200 acre park with walking trails, lakes and amusement rides), could actually come down, or more likely since they’re stone, be blown up. (NYT)

– “They Said Seattle’s Higher Base Pay Would Hurt Workers. Why Did They Flip?: Researchers whose findings last year pointed to a downside from raising the minimum wage have taken another look and the reality is more nuanced.” (NYT)

– “‘Toxic Christianity’: the evangelicals creating champions for Trump: At Liberty University, students and faculty have faith in the president to help ‘create generations of rightwing Christians’ – but some are uneasy” (Guardian)

– “Want to know when you’re going to die?: Your life span is written in your DNA, and we’re learning to read the code.” It’s like a less specific but more accurate palm reading. But also in the end, it really doesn’t matter to know, does it? (MIT Tech Review & Hmm Daily)

– “It Will Take Millions of Years for Mammals to Recover From Us: In less than 130,000 years, humans have sawed off the most evolutionarily distinct branches from our family tree.” (Atlantic)

– “The bad behavior of the richest: what I learned from wealth managers:The habits of the wealthiest mirror the supposed ‘pathologies’ of the poor. But while those in poverty are called lazy, the rich are dubbed bon vivants” (Guardian)

– “Step Away From the Orb” The title says it all. (NYT)

– “The New American Songbook: Here are the hits of the past 25 years that we’ll be listening to for the next 100.” (Slate)

– “Truvada and the truth: is HIV prevention propelling the STI epidemic?” (Guardian)

– “California’s Underwater Forests Are Being Eaten by the ‘Cockroaches of the Ocean’” (NYT)

“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news” –  John Muir

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