Brazil military drills prepare soldiers for invasions

[Judi Lynn]

Source: New York Times

Brazil military drills prepare soldiers for invasions
November 8, 2014 10:33 PM
Simon Romero / The New York Times


MANAUS, Brazil — Brazil’s army is deploying troops this month to the far reaches of the Amazon in a military exercise simulating a foreign invasion of the rain forest, focusing attention on sensitivity over sovereignty in a region rising in importance as a strategic pillar of Latin America’s largest economy.

The troop mobilization, starting Monday and called Operation Machifaro, points to a deepening of a central element of military doctrine in Brazil, which holds the defense of the Amazon as a top priority. The Amazon’s mineral wealth and vast reserves of fresh water place the region “in the context of potential threats,” military officials here said in a statement.

“The operation will provide ways for optimizing a strategy of resistance in the region,” said Gen. Guilherme Cals Theophilo Gaspar de Oliveira, chief of Brazil’s Amazon Military Command. He also emphasized that the exercise was aiming to “consolidate a doctrine of jungle combat.”

The drill aims to prepare soldiers to respond to a foreign military force larger than Brazil’s armed forces, officials said. While Brazil has long been at peace with its smaller neighbors in the Amazon and no country was specified by name in the preparations for the exercise, some military strategists in Brazil have long focused on the United States as a potential threat.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/news/world/2014/11/09/Brazil-military-drills-prepare-soldiers-for-invasions/stories/201411090191

[hack89]

1. When you want to increase your military budget in SA

Just trot out Uncle Sam - works every time.

[geek tragedy]

7. With the bonus of terrorizing the local tribes.

Latin America's leftists are often no better in that regard than the rightwingers.

[Orrex]

2. This will help them repel Klendathu's meteor attacks, no question.

[damyank913]

3. I do not believe this article.

That they are training in jungle warfare is not a problem. However, saying that the Confederacy's plans to invade and develop the area using slaves as a reason is stretching it a bit. Perhaps if they had an excuse that was less than 150 years old...
I think Venezuela might be the real problem that has them concerned.

[MrScorpio]

9. Confederate whites settled in Brazil a long time ago...

They probably don't want anymore.

[Lurks Often]

4. If they are focusing on the US and jungle warfare, they are making a huge mistake

We are not going to invade Brazil, there is no reason to and the logistical issues would be significant.

However for the purposes of discussing the OP, we certainly aren't going to give up our substantial advantages in our mechanized and armor units, our close air support and our artillery support to invade through the jungle.

The exact opposite would occur, the US would seize a deep water port with existing port, road and rail infrastructure, both to supply the US military and to transport out the resources that we allegedly want.

[MisterP]

5. aww, the Army's trying to pose themselves as the defenders of democracy and independence

rather than the greatest threat to it for nearly a century

[geek tragedy]

6. The real targets are indigenous tribes

getting in the way of Roussef's ability to exploit and ruin the rainforest.

Anyone dumb enough to buy the "worried about a US invasion of the Amazon" likely has difficulty remembering how to breathe and use silverware .

[blkmusclmachine]

8. The trees are the "enemies."

[Judi Lynn]

10. Readers might have thought long enough to realize the article doesn't implicate Dilma Rousseff.

From the article:

Still, the army’s drill reflects thinking in Brazil that foreign powers covet the Amazon, about 60 percent of which is in the country. Fifty percent of Brazilians believe their country will be invaded in an effort to grab the Amazon’s resources, according to 2011 opinion survey by a government statistics agency. The poll, which interviewed 3,796 people, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Brazil expanded its military presence in the Amazon during the dictatorship that held power from 1964 to 1985, when generals offered incentives to settlers to occupy the frontier. While some political analysts contend that potential invasions belong in the realm of conspiracy theories, others delve into history to show that foreign designs on the Amazon are not so far-fetched.

This same military, which overthrew the government and seized control of the country, and imprisoned and tortured the current President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, relentlessly, is still very powerful. Brazil's legislature is still very much dominated by the right-wing establishment. The military dictatorship was also supported by the U.S.

[center]

Dilma Rousseff, sitting during a trial.
Notice the military judges are hiding their faces.[/center]
I would suspect the next step would be to form campaigns to attack Dilma Rousseff from the U.S. right wing now that she has been deeply harmed by the Brazilian right wing. That would just about take the cake, wouldn't it? US right-wing dirt-ball imbeciles going after her, too.

[Judi Lynn]

11. Military Personnel Trained by the CIA Used Napalm Against Indigenous People in Brazil

Military Personnel Trained by the CIA Used Napalm Against Indigenous People in Brazil
Sunday, 09 November 2014 00:00
By Santiago Navarro F., Renata Bessi and Translated by Miriam Taylor, Truthout | News Analysis

For the first time in the history of Brazil, the federal government is investigating the deaths and abuses suffered by Indigenous peoples during military dictatorship (1964-1985). The death toll may be twenty times more than previously known.


Just as in World War II and Vietnam, napalm manufactured in the US burned the bodies of hundreds of indigenous individuals in Brazil, people without an army and without weapons. The objective was to take over their lands. Indigenous peoples in this country suffered the most from the atrocities committed during the military dictatorship (1964-1985) - with the support of the United States. For the first time in Brazil's history, the National Truth Commission, created by the federal government in 2012 in order to investigate political crimes committed by the State during the military dictatorship, gives statistics showing that the number of indigenous individuals killed could be 20 times greater than was previously officially registered by leftist militants.

Unlike other crimes committed by the State during that time period, no reparations or indemnification for the acts have been offered to indigenous people; they were not even considered victims of the military regime. "From the north to the south and from the east to the west, accusations of genocide, assassination of leaders and indigenous rights defenders, slavery, massacres, poisonings in small towns, forced displacement, secret prisons for indigenous people, the bombing of towns, torture, and denigrating treatment were registered [with the State Truth Commissions]," Marcelo Zelic, vice president of the anti-torture group Never Again - SP, one of the organizations that makes up the Indigenous Truth and Justice Commission, created in order to provide documents and information to the National Truth Commission - told Truthout during an audience with the Truth Commission of San Pablo open to journalists.

Guaraní leader Timoteo Popyguá is from the El Dorado community in the state of Sao Paulo. He tells of his parents and grandparents, who lived in the municipality of the Manguerinha region in southern Brazil's Paraná state, and who were victims of the military regime. Popyguá explained to Truthout that his relatives were forcibly removed from their lands, and those who managed to stay suffered from a drastic reduction in their territories. Because these indigenous groups require "ample space" for the reproduction of their cultural life, according to him this is another form of violence that they were subjected to. "My parents were victims of abuses, chained to tree trunks. The reason was land," he says. "There must be reparations for the loss of our land and our culture."

The Commission for Amnesty - a different body that the Truth Commission - was put into place in 2001 by the Ministry of Justice with the goal of analyzing the requirements for political amnesty. Currently, their official documents count 457 victims who were either murdered or disappeared by the military. The Truth Commission determined that the total number of registered cases was 8,000 indigenous individuals, and another thousand people who belonged to political organizations who were killed between 1964 and 1985.

More:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/27294-military-personnel-trained-by-the-cia-used-napalm-against-indigenous-people-in-brazil

[Old Nick]

12. "mineral wealth" are the key words here, which means