I haven't blogged here for months - my apologies. Yes, I'm still living with and care-taking my 92-year-old mom, unable to go anywhere, but brainstorming and philosophizing a lot on money, gift economy, and spirituality. I hope to share the fruits of this time of pondering in future blog posts.
Meanwhile, I feel the urge to post this wake-up call. It's a departure of my usual posts. But it is the perfectly obvious object lesson of the predictable end of the "Christian" mind that pretends it can serve both "God" and Mammon.
BRAZIL'S PRESIDENT JAIR BOLSONARO in his own words:
ON THE AMAZON FOREST, GUNS, AND GENOCIDE
“It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.”* Correio Braziliense newspaper, April 12, 1998“In 2019 we’re going to rip up Raposa Serra do Sol [Indigenous Territory in Roraima, northern Brazil]. We’re going to give all the ranchers guns”
In Congress, posted on January 21, 2016
“[indigenous reserves] are an obstacle to agri-business. You can’t reduce indigenous land by even a square meter in Brazil”
Campo Grande News, April 22, 2015
If it’s up to me, every citizen will have a firearm in the house. There will not be a centimeter demarcated for indigenous reservations or quilombolas.”
Estadão, April 3, 2017
“If I become President there will not be a centimeter more of indigenous land.”
Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul, February 8, 2018
“There will not be a centimeter demarcated for indigenous or quilombo reservations.”
Talk at Clube Hebraica in Rio de Janeiro, on 3 April 2017.
“The Indians do not speak our language, they do not have money, they do not have culture. They are native peoples. How did they manage to get 13% of the national territory” Campo Grande News, April 22, 2015
“There is no indigenous territory where there aren’t minerals. Gold, tin and magnesium are in these lands, especially in the Amazon, the richest area in the world. I’m not getting into this nonsense of defending land for Indians” Campo Grande News, April 22, 2015
ON TORTURE
“I'm support torture. You know that. And the people too. Through the vote, you'll change nothing in this country. Nothing, absolutely nothing. We'll only get change, unfortunately, when we go into a civil war here someday and do a work the military regime didn't do, killing as much as thirty thousand people, starting with FHC. It's all right if some innocent people die. Innocent people die in many wars.”Gazeta do Povo (10 October 2017).
ON GENOCIDAL MILITARY DICTATORSHIP
“The Military Police should have killed 1,000 rather than 111 prisoners in the Carandiru massacre.”Folha de S.Paulo (3 October 1997).
“Pinochet should have killed more people.”
Veja essa. Veja (3 December 1998).
ON GAY PEOPLE
“I will not fight against it nor discriminate, but if I see two men kissing on the street, I'll beat them up.”Folha de S.Paulo (19 May 2002).
“I would be incapable of loving a gay son. I wouldn't be a hypocrite. I prefer that he die in an accident than show up with some guy with a moustache.”
Inverview to Playboy magazine in 2011.
ON IMMIGRATION
“The scum of the world is arriving in Brazil, as if we didn’t have enough problems to solve.”About Senegalese, Haitians, Iranians, Bolivians and Syrians in an interview to Jornal Opção on 17 September 2015.
ON WOMEN
“I wouldn't hire them [women] with the same salary.”RedeTV! (15 February 2016).
“She doesn't deserve it [to be raped] because she's very bad, because she's very ugly. She's not my type, I'd never rape her. I'm not a rapist, but if I was, I wouldn't rape her because she doesn't deserve it.”
In interview with Zero Hora newspaper on 10 December 2014.
“I have five children. There were four men, on the fifth I got weak and a woman came out.”
Talk at Clube Hebraica in Rio de Janeiro, on 3 April 2017.
ON NATIONALISM AND CHRISTIANITY
“Since we are a Christian country, God above all. This history of a secular state doesn't exist, no. The state is Christian and the minority that is against it can leave.”At Campina Grande Airport on 8 February 2018.
“Brazil above all, God above everyone.”
In the presidential debate held by TV Bandeirantes on 9 August 2018.
""You were decisive in helping to change the destiny of Brazil.... This is the first time that the name of God is being heard within the Brazilian presidency.... It's very good to be among friends. And even better when they are friends with God in their hearts."
Speaking to the "March for Jesus", a huge throng of Evangelicals, June 21, 2019
ON TAX EVASION
“It's my advice and I do it: I evade all the taxes I can.”On the program “Câmera Aberta at Band” on 23 May 1999. Gazeta do Povo (10 October 2017).
ON HIS ROLE MODEL DONALD TRUMP
“We want to have a great Brazil just like Trump wants to have a great America.”Jair Bolsonaro’s speech to the Chamber of Commerce on 18 March 2019.
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WHEN I VISITED THE AMAZON AND SAW THE ROOT OF WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW
"The next blow to his religious convictions came when he and Corinne went to visit a missionary....
The missionary, with the blessing of the Ecuadoran government, had gone into the cattle business, shipping a herd from North America. He had brokered a deal with his converts: if they raised and fed his cattle, the government would grant them a plot of jungle, and the converts would be entitled to keep every other generation of calves. The alternating generation would be added to the American's herd....
...boasted the missionary, 'Now the Christian Indians are the richest in the jungle.'
'This is why governments all over the world love missionaries-- they civilize people and get them into the money system...
'What of Jesus's teaching his followers to give up possessions? And suddenly it dawned on me: if you were going to call something Antichrist, this would be it. The people who were promoting this so-called Christianity are really Antichrist.'
....
"What's more, with each acre of land doled out to ranching, more jungle was clear-cut. And after just a few years of grazing, the land was unusable, turned into desert.
'What about the jungle?' Daniel asked.
'It's infinite,' said the missionary. 'If you're up in a plane, look at the Amazon. It goes for miles.'
Daniel took a scenic flight over the Amazon. 'It looked like Paul Bunyan had taken a razor blade to it.'
....
Suelo juggled the contradictions.
....
'There was no poverty in the jungle until they introduced money, and all the sudden there's poverty,... and all the diseases that come with it. And you look at people and they're not happy. They have all these goods, and they're unhappy.'"
[p. 84-86, The Man Who Quit Money, by Mark Sundeen]
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*Notice Bolsonaro is paraphrasing Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf, expressing inspiration and admiration for the USA's extermination of indigenous peoples:
"But in North America the Teutonic element, which has kept its racial
stock pure and did not mix it with any other racial stock, has come to dominate the American Continent and will remain master of it as long as that element does not fall a victim to the habit of adulterating its blood. . . .
"We ought to remember that during the first period of American colonization numerous Aryans earned their daily livelihood as trappers and hunters, etc., frequently wandering about in large groups with their women and children, their mode of existence very much resembling that of ordinary nomads. The moment, however, that they grew more numerous and were able to accumulate larger resources, they cleared the land and drove out the aborigines, at the same time establishing settlements which rapidly increased all over the country." (Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, p 238, 252)
