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Greenpeace volunteers unfurled a 300 square meter banner in a massive area of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest Thursday morning, May 18, with the words 'KFC - Amazon Criminal' - in advance of Kentucky Fried Chicken's (KFC) Annual General Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky this Friday, May 19.
Activists in two inflatable boats also protested against US commodities giant Cargill, at its illegal soy export facility in the heart of the Amazon, which supplies KFC with animal feed in Europe. They held up a banner saying 'Cargill Out', as rainforest soy was being prepared for export. Both protests highlight the fact that KFC is fueling the destruction of the Amazon by selling cheap chicken fed on soy grown on deforested land. Recent Greenpeace investigations have traced the chain of rainforest destruction directly from the heart of the Amazon, via Cargill's facility, to KFC's European restaurants, which sell bucket-loads of cheap soy-fed chicken to millions of people every day. According to Greenpeace, US company Cargill, which owns an illegal export terminal at Santarém, is supplied by farms operating on rainforest land that has been illegally cleared for soy production. Almost all of the soy passing through this terminal, says the NGO, is destined for Europe. In 2005 more than 50% went to the Netherlands, 31% went to the UK, Spain received 6.5% & 6% to France. Industry sources and Greenpeace research have identified Cargill soy terminals in Europe, through which Cargill's Amazon soy enters the continent, as a source of feed for KFC meat in the UK and Netherlands. "Deforestation, slavery, use of toxic chemicals, land theft, illegal farming and the extinction of rare species are a recipe for disaster in the Amazon rainforest, but they are ingredients in KFC's quest for cheap animal feed," said Greenpeace International Forest Campaign Coordinator Gavin Edwards. "Fast food companies like KFC must take Amazon deforestation off their menu before it is too late for the world's greatest rainforest." The Amazon rainforest is being destroyed at an alarming rate and is in urgent need of protection. Since January 2003, nearly 70,000 km2 has been destroyed, equivalent to an area of rainforest the size of 6 football pitches every minute. Soy, which is mainly grown to feed animals, is a leading cause of this destruction. A report last month in Nature magazine revealed that 40% of the Amazon will be lost by 2050 if current trends in agricultural expansion continue, threatening bio-diversity and massively contributing to climate change. KFC is part of Yum! Brands, Inc., the world's largest restaurant chain which includes Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, A&W and other fast food companies. Greenpeace recently wrote to Yum! Brands, Inc. regarding the destruction of the Amazon, but the company claimed its soy is grown in other parts of Brazil. Yet Greenpeace has traced its supply chain and found that some comes from facilities that use soy grown in the Amazon rainforest. Greenpeace is calling on KFC and Cargill to ensure that the animal feed they buy does not contribute to the destruction of the Amazon and that none of their soy products are genetically engineered. Greenpeace - www.greenpeace.org
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
I guess they've given up on that notion, so now they're going to try and crucify anyone who BUYS soy from these places in the amazon....why wouldn't they go directly to the farmers? Or to the brazilian government?