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by tvphan 2487 days ago
Just a random nitpick about the article...

> An avid deforester, Bolsonaro has jokingly nicknamed himself “Captain Chainsaw.”

An alternative article from The Guardian says that he rejects that term?! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/07/bolsonaro-amaz...

1 comments

Brazilian here. In fact, he rejects the term. Some people of his staff deny global warming and he is known for lying and using fake science to justify absurd measures, like removing most of the environmental protection in favor of agriculture. Even rejecting the title, he is known like "Captain Chainsaw" and many others nicknames, most of them mocking him. Unfortunately, in Brazil, our people have a taste for populist presidents, and in this case, he still have support of a big part of the population. Fortunately, his popularity is declining very fast.
> our people have a taste for populist presidents

Not just your people, they're everywhere

What do you think can be done to accelerate this? Is there anything we in the West can do?

I've seen some petitions targeted at the Brazilian embassy here in my country - but not sure of its effectiveness, as it seems Bolsonaro doesn't really care what the West think.

Brazilian here. Meddling with politics could backfire hard, being wrapped around the flag with foreigners booing him could actually bounce back his popularity.

As for something the west could do, I'm not an expert, but I think offering to foot the bill for police and inspectors in the area would go a long way.

Most logging and burning in the Amazon is still illegal, but it's very hard to police a huge sparsely populated area[1], and our government is dysfunctional even when it tries. The average Brazilian has little to no sympathy for the criminals, but is ambivalent about paying more for police in the jungle far away. It would be a lot easier to argue for more officers if someone else was footing their salaries.

[1]The rogue logger only needs to win in a small area, any small area would do. The state needs to win everywhere.

There already was a international fund for paying for inspections and so on, but it was canceled after Bolsonaro said they were using that money to compensate farmers.