 So, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is often referred to as the Trump of the tropics, and it's easy to see why that's the case, because he very much is a Trumpian figure. He is a far-right demagogue who is a pseudo-populist, he's a fascist, and he's proving to be a menace to Brazilian society already when he was only recently elected as president. He's already causing lots of destruction, and it's not just that he's ruining things in Brazil, his actions are directly affecting everyone, the entire planet. So we'll get to that, but first of all, to kind of give you a snapshot of how petty and authoritarian this individual is, well, as you all know, Glenn Greenwald, prestigious American journalist, lives in Brazil, his husband, David Miranda, is the only openly gay Brazilian member of Congress. Now, Glenn Greenwald published an article in The Intercept with other journalists that exposed how Judge Sergio Moro, who oversaw the prosecution of Lula de Silva, illegally colluded with prosecutors to take down Lula, and then he was subsequently appointed as justice minister by Jair Bolsonaro after he successfully took down one of Jair Bolsonaro's biggest political opponents. Seems pretty fishy, right? So what Glenn Greenwald revealed in that article is that Sergio Moro illegally broke the law, ironically, in the process of trying to bring about these bogus corruption charges against Lula. Now, Bolsonaro retaliated against Greenwald for his reporting by launching an investigation into him, which is insane. And basically, since this happened, since Jair Bolsonaro has been directly attacking Glenn Greenwald, him and his husband and his family, they have been bombarded with just nonstop homophobic attacks, and it's absolutely disgusting to see. And I really, you know, I feel for Glenn Greenwald here. But thankfully, you know, the Brazilian Supreme Court shut down the investigation. But I mean, it shows you that Bolsonaro is petty in the same way that Donald Trump is petty, but definitely, you know, measurably worse. He was willing to launch some phony investigation into a journalist all to hide his own corruption, to save his own ass. So that's just like a small snapshot of what Jair Bolsonaro is doing in Brazil. But it's not just that, you know, this is a problem for Brazil that his presidency poses a threat to Brazilians, because what he's doing is harming the planet. And I don't even know how to process this story, because I just feel so hopeless. So as you all know, in Brazil, they control the Amazon rainforest. And we often refer to the Amazon rainforest as the Earth's lungs. And for good reason. But what Jair Bolsonaro is doing is accelerating the process of deforestation. He's basically opening up the Amazon rainforest to private companies and he's saying, how about it? If you want to, you know, take down the entire Amazon rainforest, that's okay with me as long as we're making money. Now, as Tom Phillips of The Guardian writes, illegal loggers are ramping up a brutal fast assault on the Brazilian Amazon with the blessing of the far right president Jair Bolsonaro, the sacked head of the government agency tasked with monitoring deforestation, his warrant speaking to The Guardian five days after his dismissal. Ricardo Galvallo, the former director of Brazil Space Institute said he was praying to the heavens, the far right leader would change tack before the Amazon and Brazil's international reputation as an environmental leader were ruined. What is happening is that this government has sent a clear message that there will not be any more punishment for environmental crimes like this government is sending a very clear message that the control of deforestation will not be like it was in the past. And when the loggers hear this message that they will no longer be supervised as they were in the past, they penetrate the rainforest. Galvallo said claiming enormous damage had already been done since Bolsonaro took power in January. It is a question of brutal fast economic exploitation. Galvallo, an internationally respected scientist, was director of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research until last week when a public clash with Bolsonaro cost him his job. Days earlier during a meeting with foreign journalists, Bolsonaro had publicly questioned INPE's data suggesting an alarming spike in Amazon destruction and accused Galvallo of peddling lies. So in other words, he's crying fake news. How very Trumpian of him. So understand the Amazon rainforest is Earth's lungs. Jair Bolsonaro is accelerating the destruction of Earth's lungs. We didn't elect this guy. There's nothing that you or me can do about this. We just have to sit back and watch it happen in horror. But you know, usually in these types of situations, we would have our president maybe put pressure on the Brazilian government and say, hey, maybe, you know, destroying the planet isn't the smartest thing since we all kind of want to live here. But you see the thing is that we also have an idiot as president who doesn't even believe that climate change is a thing. He still believes that climate change is a hoax. And he's not even, you know, progressed to the point where he can say climate change is real, but it's not anthropogenic. Donald Trump is an idiot who probably likes what Jair Bolsonaro is doing. It's almost like him and Jair Bolsonaro are antagonistic towards the planet, which doesn't make any sense to me because we all have to live on this planet. We only have one that's habitable. So I mean, this is what's happening. Donald Trump is doing nothing as one of our allies is destroying the planet. Now, thankfully, one country did decide to speak up and the way that they spoke up was to retaliate in the form of cutting funds to Brazil. So Germany decided to cut 35 million euros in funds to Brazil that was intended to help preserve the rainforest. And basically what they're doing here is they're saying, look, if money is what you care about, then you're going to lose money if you continue with this trend of deforestation because we all depend on Earth's lungs to live, to keep our planet habitable. But if you destroy this, I mean, you're just accelerating the death of our planet. So please stop. But Jair Bolsonaro's response was pretty much, meh, I don't care. He said, you know, we don't need their money. They can keep their money. So it's not even like it's about the money. It's not even about the money. He wants to destroy the planet. He wants to open it up to private industries because he's a psychopath. All of these fascists around the world, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, they are all psychopathic individuals who don't care about the destruction caused by their behavior. They think short term and not long term. And it's just it's, it's horrible to watch because, you know, it's hard to not feel hopeless because what can we do about this? Again, we can't vote him out of office. We can't hold him accountable in the United States. And there's only so much that the citizens of Brazil can do because this individual is an authoritarian figure. He already said, you know, he would love to bring back, you know, military rule in Brazil. So if they get too rowdy, you know, he'd crack down on them more. It's just, it's disgusting to see, you know, human beings picked a really bad time to allow fascism to rise, you know, for fascism to get its second win when the planet is dying, when we need to act quickly. Now is the worst possible time. I mean, it's never a good time for fascism to arise, right? But now is the worst possible time when these fascist demagogues who are popping up everywhere are literally going to kill all of us. I mean, what do we do in this situation? I don't know what we can do. There's nothing we can do. We're essentially hopeless. The one country who tried to do anything was unsuccessful. So we just have to sit back and watch and hope that he's voted out in the next election. I mean, what a disgusting situation that we're witnessing here. How do you not care about the planet that your children will be inheriting? How do you not care that if you get rid of earth's lungs, we're far worse off? How do you care or how do you not care rather that you are accelerating the death of our planet? Like we need this planet to be habitable? Do you think it's going to be easier to terraform Mars than to fucking just save the planet we have now? I mean, I don't know. I just don't think that these people thought this through. I don't think that they care because these are psychopaths, not normal people.