Every year the Amazon burns; get over it. Call it a clean out if you will, nature’s way of sweeping out the cobwebs. Every year it burns but all of a sudden this year it’s a very big deal. “The lungs of the world are burning”, or other such rubbish that I am seeing plastered everywhere by the great gullible Western populations. If I hadn’t have spent so much time in Africa I might be persuaded into believing that we were the most stupid people on the face of the planet.
In other words, a bit of knowledge goes a long way to decreasing gullibility. But before this week I didn’t know anything about forest fires in the Amazon basin. So I did about 35 seconds of research and guess what; it’s completely standard, you morons.
Not only is it standard but it’s actually down this year. From Forbes who have actually done a pretty good job on this story:
One of Brazil’s leading environmental journalists agrees that media coverage of the fires has been misleading. “It was under [Workers Party President] Lula and [Environment Secretary] Marina Silva (2003-2008) that Brazil had the highest incidence of burning,” Leonardo Coutinho told me over email. “But neither Lula nor Marina was accused of putting the Amazon at risk.”
Coutinho’s perspective was shaped by reporting on the ground in the Amazon for Veja, Brazil’s leading news magazine, for nearly a decade. By contrast, many of the correspondents reporting on the fires have been doing so from the cosmopolitan cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which are 2,500 miles and four hours by jet plane away.
“What is happening in the Amazon is not exceptional,” said Coutinho. “Take a look at Google web searches search for ‘Amazon’ and ‘Amazon Forest’ over time. Global public opinion was not as interested in the ‘Amazon tragedy’ when the situation was undeniably worse. The present moment does not justify global hysteria.”
So, socialist “great friend of the workers”, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his great pal Marina Silva preside over lots of fires and the world doesn’t care. So why the present global hysteria?
Because the guy in charge of Brazil now, President Bolsonaro, is a right wing demagogue who refuses to kowtow to the globohomo agenda. On top of that he’s been busy organising a lucrative trade deal that France in particular has a big problem with. What better way to scuttle the deal than by suddenly pontificating that Brazil hates the world because fires in rain forest, and when Brazil doesn’t put out the fires because good luck with that, we can then collectively pile onto the horrible Bolsonaro and in the meantime the trade deal can go the way of that jaguar that was trying to get clear of the flames, poor jaguar.
Bolsonaro isn’t having a bar of it and he’s doing what all good right wing demagogues do when attacked by pussy boy French wimpy pants – he makes fun of their aging crone of a wife.
President Macron called President Bolsonaro a disgrace to Brazil after he mocked the French leader’s wife.
The undiplomatic spat eclipsed the agreement at the G7 summit on a plan to send $20 million of aid to extinguish fires raging in the Amazon rainforest and protect what Mr Macron called the “lungs of the planet”.
Mr Macron has been feuding with Mr Bolsonaro since last week when he accused him of inaction over the fires, charged him with lying and threatened to veto a free-trade agreement between the Mercosur states of South America and the European Union.
On Sunday Mr Bolsonaro relayed a post from a supporter with an unflattering picture of Brigitte Macron, 66, alongside one of the Brazilian president’s 37-year-old wife, Michelle. “Now you understand why Macron is persecuting Bolsonaro?” the supporter wrote. Mr Bolsonaro added on Facebook. “Do not humiliate the guy, ha ha.”
The insult came hours after Abraham Weintraub, Brazil’s education minister, called Mr Macron, 41, an “opportunistic cretin seeking the support of the French farm lobby”.
The opportunistic cretin has managed to galvanise into action all of the other cretins around the world. You know, the Leonardo DiCaprios
Singers and actors including Madonna and Jaden Smith shared photos on social media that were seen by tens of millions of people. “The lungs of the Earth are in flames,” said actor Leonardo DiCaprio. “The Amazon Rainforest produces more than 20% of the world’s oxygen,” tweeted soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo.
Lord, the stupid, it burns.
And yet the photos weren’t actually of the fires and many weren’t even of the Amazon. The photo Ronaldo shared was taken in southern Brazil, far from the Amazon, in 2013. The photo that DiCaprio and Macron shared is over 20 years old. The photo Madonna and Smith shared is over 30. Some celebrities shared photos from Montana, India, and Sweden.
Who are dumber – the celebrities or the plebs who repeat their rubbish on social media? Whatever the fact, they’re all monumentally stupid because all of this was caused by French president Macaroon wanting to get a good trade deal for the farmers who are just about the only people left in France who don’t want to see him guillotined, yet.
If you believed this for even half a second then you need to examine how you process information. The internet age is making the population dumber, not smarter, because people are lazy and they worship celebrities. It’s actually quite worrying when you think about it. The next major war may well kick off from a planned propaganda line on social media, just like this one. So let’s all try to limit our moron levels for the good of the planet.
This article was originally published at https://pushingrubberdownhill.com/, where Adam Piggott publishes regularly and brilliantly. You can purchase Adam’s books here.