Before Spewing 30 Minutes Of Lies At UN, Bolsonaro Puts On Indigenous Necklace To Show He Cares

[hatrack]

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has launched a cantankerous and conspiratorial defense of his environmental record, blaming Emmanuel Macron and the “deceitful” media for hyping this year’s fires in the Amazon.

In a combative 30-minute address to the UN general assembly, Bolsonaro denied – contrary to the evidence – that the world’s largest rainforest was “being devastated or consumed by fire, as the media deceitfully says”. “Our Amazon is larger than the whole of western Europe and remains virtually untouched – proof that we are one of the countries that most protects the environment,” Bolsonaro claimed.

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Instead, Brazil’s president went on the offensive, starting his speech with a Trumpian excoriation of socialism and concluding with an obscure broadside against the leftist “ideological thought systems” he alleged had invaded Brazilian schools, universities, homes and even souls. “With these methods, this ideology has always left a trail of death, ignorance and misery, wherever it has gone,” Bolsonaro said. At the heart of Bolsonaro’s speech – which Brazilian fact-checkers said contained nine falsehoods and five imprecise claims - was a lengthy counter-attack against domestic and international criticism of his highly controversial vision for the Amazon and Brazil’s indigenous communities.

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Bolsonaro claimed the foreign NGOs and governments who opposed that view did so because they themselves had their eyes on the mineral wealth and biodiversity within Brazil’s indigenous reserves. In an attempt to portray himself as a friend of Brazil’s indigenous communities Bolsonaro invited a rare indigenous supporter, Ysani Kalapalo, to attend his address and donned an indigenous necklace after arriving in New York.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/24/jair-bolsonaro-says-deceitful-media-hyping-amazon-wildfires

[calimary]

1. Jerk.