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Brazil

Mighty_Emperor

Gone But Not Forgotten
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One would have been an accident but two is asking for trouble.

Another American arrested in Brazil after making obscene gesture

Saturday, February 7, 2004 Posted: 0115 GMT ( 9:15 AM HKT)



SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- In the second incident of its kind in three weeks, an American was arrested Friday after making an obscene gesture while being fingerprinted and photographed at a Brazilian airport as part of the entry requirements for U.S. citizens.

Douglas A. Skolnick, a retired bank worker from New Jersey, raised his middle finger while going through the new entry requirement at the international airport in Foz de Iguacu, a southeastern resort town famous for its massive waterfalls, said Marcos Koren, a federal police spokesman.

Police accused Skolnick of showing contempt to authorities, the same crime in Brazil that netted American Airlines pilot Dale Robin Hersh a 36,000 reals (,750) fine on January 14 after he lifted his middle finger while entering Brazil. The airline paid the fine, and Hersh was sent back to the United States.

Skolnick, 55, "did it the same way as the American pilot," Koren said.

He was scheduled to appear before a judge Friday night who will decide how much to fine him and whether to deport him or let him rejoin his tour group of about 80 mostly retired Americans, Koren said. Foz de Iguacu sits at the border with Argentina and Paraguay, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) southeast of Sao Paulo.

Members of Skolnick's tour group, which arrived from Santiago, Chile, on a chartered flight knew that they would be fingerprinted and photographed and were surprised and dismayed with Skolnick's conduct, Koren said.

They were allowed into Brazil, and Skolnick's wife accompanied them to their hotel. The group is expected to depart Brazil on Sunday.

"They'll go and see the falls and the beauties of this region, but he won't know any of the beauty, just the inside of a cell," Koren said.

Brazil imposed the new rules that Americans be fingerprinted and photographed at entry points in response the similar rules in the United States for citizens of Brazil and other countries whose citizens need visas to enter.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/02/06/brazil.fingerprinting.ap/index.html

The again if any country is looking to imprison more Yanks then this could be an easy route ;)

Emps
 
Uncle Sam's genitals go on display

09 February 2004


RIO DE JANEIRO: Uncle Sam, that symbol of US patriotism, has a front seat on an extravagantly decorated float in the parade of samba schools in Rio de Janeiro's upcoming Carnival.


It won't be a pretty sight though. His pants are down around his ankles, his genitals exposed for all to see, and his outstretched fingers smeared with ink.

And somewhere out in the crowd will be hundreds of Saddam Hussein look-a-likes.

The five-day Carnival in this seaside Brazilian city – one of the world's wildest annual celebrations – is less than two weeks away.

Participants are putting the finishing touches to gaudy costumes and elaborate floats, and honing their dance routines and the custom-written samba songs known as enredos.

As always, there's a good dose of political satire.

The 4-metre, styrofoam Uncle Sam is at present in a guarded warehouse of the Sao Clemente samba school, one of 14 groups who will parade over the nights of February 22 and February 23 in the Sambodromo hoping to win the champion's crown.

Each school has a theme based on an aspect of Brazilian history or life, expounded in fantastic allegorical displays of singing and dancing. Sao Clemente will have 3800 members taking part, including a drums corps of 260.

The school's theme this year is Cordel – traditional booklets about news events or legends written for humble folk.

"It is critical and satirical," Sao Clemente vice president Roberto Gomez told a visitor to the warehouse. "Uncle Sam will reflect the frictions between the United States and Brazil."

The two countries have been embroiled in a dispute this past year over international trade accords. When the float was first designed, Uncle Sam was to be squatting toilet-fashion over a model of the Brazilian Congress, Gomez said.

COMPULSORY FINGERPRINTING

Then Washington offended Brazilians by imposing compulsory fingerprinting when they entered the United States. Brazil retaliated with a similar measure.

"With the fingerprinting, we decided to move him to the front of the float," Gomez said.

Uncle Sam is also be gagged, symbolising a perceived US clamp-down on freedoms.

Brazil itself will not escape criticism. Another of the seven floats will decry political corruption. One more will depict the idyllic Copacabana beach when Europeans and natives first met five centuries ago compared to the modern-day strip, a haunt of prostitutes, drug dealers and hustlers.

If that sounds a tad serious, the Sao Clemente enredo reassures that carnival is about fun at its rawest. The chorus of the throbbing samba urges: "Everybody naked, pure beauty, everybody naked, more than crazy."

Another school, the Academicos do Grande Rio, is taking that to heart. Its theme is "Let's Put on a Condom."

In a display that should put into perspective the furore in the United States over the glimpse of Janet Jackson's breast at the Super Bowl, a Grande Rio float will feature statues and dancers locked in embraces from the Karma Sutra sex guide.

The Roman Catholic church in Rio has complained but, said Grande Rio artistic director Joaosinho Trinta: "The church's attitude is very hypocritical, medieval and very wrong. The theme boosts the campaign for safe sex that prevents that terrible epidemic Aids."

Meanwhile masks of Saddam Hussein are this year's biggest sellers, said Arnaldo Valles, king of Rio's carnival mask-makers.

The most popular depicts the haggard, bearded Saddam as he was found hiding in a hole by US troops in December.

"As soon as saw that picture in the newspaper, I knew that was the mask. It's a huge success," said Valles, 79.

http://stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2809321a4560,00.html

Emps
 
Well Brazilia in this report:

October 5, 2004


Brasilia Awaits Its Next Life

* The South American capital is a vortex of cults, where believers are preparing for a new civilization. 'It's sort of the Sedona of Brazil.'


By Henry Chu, Times Staff Writer

VALE DO AMANHECER, Brazil — In her diaphanous, lavender gown, spangled with sequined Stars of David and a crescent moon, Andrea Brandao reminisces about the pretty girl she once was — 500 years ago.

"I lived in France, in 1500, and I was the daughter of a woman named Mary of Socorro," Brandao said. "She was a nanny for a rich family."

But the daughter of the house was consumed with envy and had Brandao killed "because I was beautiful," she lamented, shaking a head at her own untimely end half a millennium ago.

It was an eyebrow-raising tale of Renaissance household intrigue — and just one of countless stories of restless souls and discontented spirits told by fantastically costumed adherents of a mystical cult based here just outside Brasilia, the futuristic-looking capital that has been likened to another planet.

As Brandao, a 29-year-old hairdresser in her present incarnation, spoke, hundreds of Brazilians decked out as Mayan princes, spear-toting Roman centurions and wandering Gypsies milled about, gathered for a feast day. Faces rapt, they soaked up the dazzling sunshine and the supernatural energy they believe is harnessed here.

Since its establishment as Brazil's capital nearly 50 years ago, after a colossal public works project that created a city virtually out of nothing, Brasilia has been a magnet for seers and sages, cultists and kooks. They consider the place a source of inspiration and even, some say, the cradle of a new race of spiritually superior beings — politicians notwithstanding.

"The spot is very powerful," said U.S. writer Alex Shoumatoff, author of a book on the history of Brasilia. "It's sort of the Sedona of Brazil," a reference to the Arizona town known for its "power vortexes."

Many have come here in anticipation of the dawn of a new age — sects that embrace reincarnation and universal oneness, academics and sci-fi enthusiasts who associate Brasilia with ancient Egypt or the lost city of Atlantis.

Their dreams are fed by an alien-looking cityscape, a showcase for Modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer. Among his creations are the twin towers of the Brazilian National Congress, between which the sun rises, Stonehenge-like, on April 21, the date the capital was officially moved from Rio de Janeiro.

The city's natural setting adds to the sense of being in an extraordinary place. Almost any spot in Brasilia affords a dramatic vista extending in every direction, red earth and green trees spread out beneath a seemingly limitless blue sky.

Then there is the prophecy.

In 1883, an Italian priest named Dom Bosco had a strange and wondrous dream of a land abundant in precious metals and oil that would be discovered between the 15th and 20th parallels. "There a grand civilization will appear, a Promised Land flowing with milk and honey," the priest recorded in his journal. "These things will happen in the third generation."

Many believe that Brasilia, situated between the 15th and 16th parallels, is that place. The man who made the city a reality, former Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek, thought so.

Construction of Brasilia began under Kubitschek in 1956, which, by the president's reckoning, was about the third generation after Bosco's death in 1888. "The mysterious forces that rule the world have acted in such a way as to … create the opportunity to convert the old dream into reality," he wrote in his memoirs.

The idea of moving Brazil's capital inland, from the coastal city of Salvador and, later, overcrowded Rio, had been bandied about for more than a century, partly as a way to develop the country's mammoth interior. Brazil's constitution of 1891 enshrined the idea of setting aside 5,500 square miles somewhere for a new federal capital.

Kubitschek had made building Brasilia a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, promising to pick a site, hire architects and planners, finance construction and unveil the shiny, new city within four years, by the end of his first term. Some thought him mad, given that the patch of terrain eventually selected, in the landlocked state of Goias, was 75 miles from the nearest road and even farther from an airport. Equipment, workers and materials initially had to be dropped in by helicopter.

"The government gave the workers financial incentives, because nobody wanted to leave Rio," said Aldo Paviani, an urban studies professor at the University of Brasilia. "It established the 'double salary' to recruit workers. Life was very expensive in Brasilia. Everything was imported."

Besides Bosco's prophecy, Brasilia was built to fulfill a secular dream of functional egalitarianism, which Niemeyer, urban planner Lucio Costa and landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx tried to express in the city's geometric design. From the air, it resembles a bird in flight, with residential areas in the wings and government ministries, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court clumped along the line of the bird's body, a broad, grassy mall known as the Monumental Axis.

Mystics immediately converged on the area, among them Tia Neiva, a purportedly clairvoyant truck driver who founded the Vale do Amanhecer, or Valley of the Dawn, in 1959. Preaching a blend of Christian beliefs, Afro-Brazilian rituals and pagan elements, the sect operates out of a funky temple complex that boasts a red pyramid, painted wooden cutouts of Tia Neiva and Jesus, and the words "God Saves" in large, white letters on the hillside.

Adherents swear by the group's ability to improve their present lives and to rescue and comfort the unhappy souls of past ones, all in preparation for the advent of a new civilization in the third millennium.

"We have more love for our neighbor, we tolerate better the consequences and causes of things that happen to us and we help other people. But mainly we help the disincarnated," said Gilda Celeste Oliveira, a 35-year-old typist. Pinned to her chest was a badge identifying a spirit named Drogana, the "green slave of the Centurion," as her personal spiritual guide.

"It's a logical religion that works with faith and reason," Oliveira said. "It only looks weird from the outside."

Universal peace, healing and harmony are common themes among the sects in and around Brasilia — the hallmarks, members say, of the enlightened age to come.

At the Cidade Ecletica (Eclectic City), about an hour's drive from the capital, followers of an ex-Brazilian air force pilot known as Master Yokanan strive to unify all religions on Earth. Yokanan founded the group in Rio but, guided by the stars, moved it to the Brasilia area in 1956. Today, about 600 people live in the community, sharing a single telephone and attending services, robed in white tunics.

For the more academically minded, there's the International Holistic University on Brasilia's outskirts, for people seeking higher consciousness.

And believers in the power of crystals, as well as less ethereally minded tourists, flock to the Temple of Goodwill, a seven-sided pyramidal building on the city's west side. Nestled in the pyramid's apex is what the temple describes as the world's largest raw crystal. It weighs 46 pounds and is "capable of purifying the atmosphere and condensing energy," minister Enaildo Viana said.

In keeping with the way things seem to happen in these parts, the crystal was donated by a miner in nearby Cristalina who had dreamed of making a major discovery three days before he struck pay dirt, Viana said.

"We found [a crystal] exactly when we needed it," Viana said. "We had been looking all over the world."

The temple welcomes people of any or no faith who are in search of harmony. Visitors can meditate in the Egyptian Room, an underground chamber with painted hieroglyphics and Nile scenes, and a replica of King Tut's throne.

The identification of Brasilia with ancient Egypt is one of the city's most intriguing pieces of lore.

In his history of Brasilia, Ronaldo Costa Couto recounts that a U.S.-trained Egyptologist named Iara Kern concluded, after six years of study, that Kubitschek was the reincarnation of the pharaoh Akhnaton and Brasilia was the modern version of Akhnaton's made-to-order capital along the banks of the Nile.

Kubitschek and Akhnaton dedicated themselves to constructing their new capitals, and both died 16 years after inaugurating the cities, Kern noted. Their capitals boast pyramids or buildings based on pyramidal or triangular forms. The ibis was a bird sacred to the ancient Egyptians, and Brasilia, don't forget, resembles an ibis from the air.

Akhnaton ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago and tried to impose monotheism on his kingdom, then a radical innovation. Brasilia, according to Kern, also embodied forward thinking and was destined to become the capital of the third millennium.

That prediction has yet to come true. Nor, critics say, has the city fulfilled Bosco's prophecy that it would flow with milk and honey or the dream of modern Brazilian leaders that it would exemplify an egalitarian, utilitarian society.

"The city could be fairer when it comes to the distribution of wealth. You have a center where the rich live, and the poor live far away," said Paviani at the University of Brasilia. "Lucio Costa, the urban planner, had the opposite in mind when he planned it."

Visitors complain that the distances and the huge, car-clogged boulevards are hostile to pedestrians, as is the blazing sun.

But the passions Brasilia inspires, religious or otherwise, are what make it special — even awe-inspiring — admirers say.

"Brasilia was born under special circumstances," Viana said. "It carries with it a heavy mystical load."

Source
 
Brazilian killers blame role-playing game for murder of family

Associated Press
May. 31, 2005 07:15 AM

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The crime was shocking by any standard - a family of three bound, drugged and shot in the head at close range in their beds. Then, a twist: The killers said it was all a game, and the penalty for losing was death.

When they were arrested on May 13, Ronald Ribeiro Rodrigues, a 22-year-old glass worker, and Mayderson Vargas Mendes, an unemployed 21-year-old, confessed to the murder of 21-year-old physics student Tiago Guedes and his parents, Douglas and Heloisa, in Guarapari, a seaside city of 230 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro.

They said the killings were part of a role-playing game whose rules required the loser to let the winners kill him and his family.



"The suspects are very cool about what they did. They know what they did was wrong and that they will have to pay," said Espirito Santo state police inspector Alexandre Lincoln Capela. "But I believe, from what I have seen, even going to prison is part of the game for them."

The case drew national attention and threw a spotlight on the subculture of role-playing games, which often employ occult imagery. Legislators in Espirito Santo state hastily introduced a bill to ban the games, and priests and pastors across Brazil penned sermons denouncing them.

"We must put the brakes on anything that encourages violence in our state," said Espirito Santo state assemblyman Robson Vaillant.

But some experts on the games have cast doubt on the killers' stories, saying their account doesn't fit with the traditions of such games - the best-known of which is Dungeons & Dragons - in which players assume characters and develop stories within the boundaries of elaborately defined fantasy worlds.

Rodrigues' mother told reporters she had never heard of role-playing games and that her son never played them.

And on Web sites and bulletin boards devoted to role-playing games, enthusiasts argue that the crime was a simple robbery and homicide, and the suspects are blaming the game in hopes of escaping punishment.

By claiming the family died as the result of a game, the suspects are entitled to a jury trial in which they are expected to plead temporary insanity. If they had confessed to robbery and homicide, a judge would have sentenced them. Brazil has no death penalty.


The case had parallels to the 2001 slaying of an 18-year-old woman, who was stabbed to death in the colonial city of Ouro Preto. Police claimed she had been playing a game over three days that included a bet that the loser would die. No one has been convicted.

But police said the game that left the Guedes family dead lasted only five hours. Guedes assumed the role of a policeman named Flavio, Mendes played a demon and Rodrigues was the wizard who ran the game.

Police said it wasn't clear how Guedes lost, but when he did, the players went to the bank where Guedes cleaned out his account, withdrawing $1,745.

Guedes then helped the two others to tie up and drug his elderly parents, Douglas and Heloisa, and watched as both were shot in the head. Finally, he was subjected to the same fate.

The suspects stole a computer from his house before leaving, police said.

To enthusiasts of role-playing games, the police version is full of holes. They say games can last for months or years and that there are no winners and losers, and never any betting.


Rodrigues and Mendes were working-class men who had known each other for more than 10 years and met the middle-class Guedes only on the day of the killing. It seemed more than suspicious that Guedes was the loser, and that they were playing at his home with his parents there to watch.

Rodrigues' mother, Lucimara Rodigues Ribeiro, told the local newspaper A Tribuna that she had never heard of role-playing games.

"My son never played them at home," she said. "He's a good boy, and never behaved strangely."

But in an interview with the same newspaper, Rodrigues said he became so caught up in the game that he didn't actually believe the victims would die.

"When you create a character it seems like you're in a real game - like you're in a forest, in the middle of lots of beasts," he said. "The game's not over. We're going to continue playing."


Copyright © 2005, azcentral.com. All rights reserved.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... 31-ON.html
 
Their story stinks to the high heavens!!

I'd like to see what evidence they come up with to support it.
 
Brazil city proposes ban on death

Municipal regulations normally ban anything from smoking in public places to parking in certain zones. But officials in the Brazilian town of Biritiba Mirim, 70km (45 miles) east of Sao Paulo, have gone far beyond that.

They plan to prohibit residents from dying because the local cemetery has reached full capacity.

Mayor Roberto Pereira says the bill is meant as a protest against federal regulations that bar new or expanded cemeteries in preservation areas.

"They have not taken local demands into consideration", he claims.

Mr Pereira wants to build a new cemetery, but the project has been stalled because 98% of Biritiba Mirim is considered a preservation area.

A 2003 decree by Brazil's National Environment Council forbids burial grounds in protected areas.

'Ridiculous'

Biritiba Mirim, a town of 28,000 inhabitants, not only wants to prohibit residents from passing away.

The bill also calls on people to take care of their health in order to avoid death.


Of course the bill is laughable, unconstitutional, and will never be approved
Gilson Soares de Campos, aide to the mayor

"I haven't got a job, nor am I healthy. And now they say I can't die. That's ridiculous," Amarildo do Prado, an unemployed resident, told local media.

The city council is expected to vote on the regulation next week.

"Of course the bill is laughable, unconstitutional, and will never be approved," said Gilson Soares de Campos, an aide to the mayor.

"But can you think of a better marketing strategy to persuade the government to modify the environmental legislation that is barring us from building a new cemetery?"

The bill states that "offenders will be held responsible for their acts". However, it does not say what the punishment will be.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/w ... 527868.stm

Published: 2005/12/14 13:40:23 GMT

© BBC MMV
 
Yeah, but there's always someone willing to break the rules!
 
Are they going to go the Disney route?
Disney can legitmately claim that no one has ever died at one of their theme parks, because they always ensure that accident victims are removed from park property before being declared dead.
 
Brazilian President Flees Official Residence Due to ‘Ghosts’
March 14, 2017 Brett Tingley

As we are thrust headlong into the ever-terrifying future, it’s natural that many heads of state would begin to feel the presence of the realms of the dead. After all, many governmental leaders – and governments themselves – are outdated, out-of-touch vestiges of a past pre-digital era. Some of the world’s current geopolitical conflicts can be seen as the death throes of an aging ruling class frightened by the ever-quickening rate of change in the world.

The skeletons in many country’s closets are now getting a chance to come out into the light, which certainly can spook bureaucrats who don’t want to come to terms with the ghosts of the past. Case in point: Brazilian President Michel Temer moved out of his country’s official presidential residence this week, telling reporters that evil spirits were afoot in the home. In an interview with Brazilian magazine Veja, Temer claims that the presence of these dark forces began to trouble him from the moment he stepped foot in the presidential mansion:

The Palace of Alvorada has a lot of rooms, about eight, all very large. Everything is ample and beautiful. But I felt something weird there. I wasn’t able to sleep since the first night. The energy was not good. Marcela felt the same thing. Only [(Michel’s son)] Michelzinho, who kept running back and forth, liked it. We started to think: is there a ghost? (laughs)

These “ghosts” got to the 76-year-old president and his 33-year-old wife that the pair moved out of the residence and back into the vice-president’s residence, Jaburu Palace. ...

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/03/brazilian-president-flees-official-residence-due-to-ghosts/
 
Brazilian President Flees Official Residence Due to ‘Ghosts’
March 14, 2017 Brett Tingley

As we are thrust headlong into the ever-terrifying future, it’s natural that many heads of state would begin to feel the presence of the realms of the dead. After all, many governmental leaders – and governments themselves – are outdated, out-of-touch vestiges of a past pre-digital era. Some of the world’s current geopolitical conflicts can be seen as the death throes of an aging ruling class frightened by the ever-quickening rate of change in the world.

The skeletons in many country’s closets are now getting a chance to come out into the light, which certainly can spook bureaucrats who don’t want to come to terms with the ghosts of the past. Case in point: Brazilian President Michel Temer moved out of his country’s official presidential residence this week, telling reporters that evil spirits were afoot in the home. In an interview with Brazilian magazine Veja, Temer claims that the presence of these dark forces began to trouble him from the moment he stepped foot in the presidential mansion:

The Palace of Alvorada has a lot of rooms, about eight, all very large. Everything is ample and beautiful. But I felt something weird there. I wasn’t able to sleep since the first night. The energy was not good. Marcela felt the same thing. Only [(Michel’s son)] Michelzinho, who kept running back and forth, liked it. We started to think: is there a ghost? (laughs)

These “ghosts” got to the 76-year-old president and his 33-year-old wife that the pair moved out of the residence and back into the vice-president’s residence, Jaburu Palace. ...

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/03/brazilian-president-flees-official-residence-due-to-ghosts/

And how's his personal bank account been recently ? ... :rolleyes:
 
I saw that Brazilian film Aquarius recently, that was an eye opener (not just because of the sexytime scenes, either). Very controversial in its native land, I won't go on for obvious forum reasons but it taught me a lot. See also the Elite Squad movies.
 
A tragic loss of Brazil's Heritage.

A large fire has engulfed the 200-year-old National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, filling the skies with smoke and flames as firefighters worked through the night to try to save its priceless collection.

The fire, whose cause is currently unknown, reportedly broke out after the museum had closed for the day.

“Two hundred years of work, investigation and knowledge have been lost,” Brazilian president Michel Temer said, adding that it was “a sad day for all Brazilians”.

The director of the National Museum, Paulo Knauss, told local media that the fire was “a tragedy”.

The BBC says the museum housed more than 20 million items in its collection, including “important dinosaur bones and a 12,000-year-old human skeleton of a woman - the oldest ever found in the Americas”.

http://www.theweek.co.uk/96200/fire...letter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
 
A tragic loss of Brazil's Heritage.

A large fire has engulfed the 200-year-old National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, filling the skies with smoke and flames as firefighters worked through the night to try to save its priceless collection.

The fire, whose cause is currently unknown, reportedly broke out after the museum had closed for the day.

“Two hundred years of work, investigation and knowledge have been lost,” Brazilian president Michel Temer said, adding that it was “a sad day for all Brazilians”.

The director of the National Museum, Paulo Knauss, told local media that the fire was “a tragedy”.

The BBC says the museum housed more than 20 million items in its collection, including “important dinosaur bones and a 12,000-year-old human skeleton of a woman - the oldest ever found in the Americas”.

http://www.theweek.co.uk/96200/fire...letter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter

Two interesting ramifications :

1 - The Museum had the largest collection of Paleontology and Antropology in South America, including the oldest hominid fossil of the continent and one third of the pterosaurs fossils in the world. Most of this is now lost. It must be noted that the Mayor of the City is a declared Creationist.

2 - Since 2011 there are plans to transform the whole area in a Bus Terminal. The original project mentioned building bridges all over the Museum to "preserve it" from the intense traffic. Now, there is no need of "preservation".

My former country isn't for begginers.
 
A terrible, terrible loss to science and history. :(
 
More on the fire.

A fire at the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro has destroyed one of country’s most important scientific collections. No one was injured in the fire, which broke out after the museum had closed on Sunday evening. But the blaze ravaged the museum’s massive archives and collections, numbering around 20 million items by some estimates. The museum had no sprinkler system, and only limited water was available from fire hydrants when fire fighters arrived.

Founded 200 years ago, before Brazil’s independence from Portugal, the museum housed ancient Egypt, Greek and Roman artifacts, important paleontology and natural history collections, including one of Latin America’s oldest human fossils, the 11,500 year old skull called Luzia. In recent years budget woes had plagued the museum, and scientists had warned as early as 2004 of dangerous wiring and a lack of fire protection.

“It’s an irreparable loss, not only for Brazilian science but for the world. The building can be reconstructed, restored and everything else, but the collections can never be replaced. Two centuries of science and culture are lost forever”, said Sergio Alex Azevedo, a paleozoologist and former director at the museum.

The full extent of the damage isn’t yet clear. Some vertebrate specimens and some of the botany collection were housed in a separate building that was not affected by the fire. But millions of specimens, including the museum’s globally important invertebrate collection, were destroyed. Aerial images showed collapsed roofs, with piles of ashes and rubble inside the exterior walls that were left standing. The interior of the building was mostly wood, and safety upgrades were difficult to make because of federal rules governing historically protected sites. (The building was built in 1808 as the official residence of the Portuguese royal family in Brazil.) ...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018...ly_2018-09-03&et_rid=394299689&et_cid=2347035
 
At least some exhibits survived.

After a catastrophic fire blazed through the National Museum of Brazil on Sunday (Sept. 2), destroying many of the institution's 20 million artifacts, the museum's meteorites were some of the few relics left standing.

Among the space rocks that survived the blaze is the Bendegó meteorite, which is the largest meteorite ever found on Brazilian soil. The iron-nickel meteorite is one of about a dozen meteorites housed at the museum.

Discovered by a cattle farmer near the town of Monte Santo in the Brazilian state of Bahia in 1784, the Bendegó meteorite weighs about 11,600 lbs. (5,260 kilograms). That's more than twice as much as an average car, all packed into a space rock the size of a motorcycle. At the time of the object's discovery, it was the second-largest meteorite ever found. ...

https://www.space.com/41710-bendego-meteorite-survives-brazil-museum-fire.html
 
It's the native artifacts I'm worried about, they likely had some from tribes that might not even be around anymore.
 
A Brazilian rightwing group led by a messianic cult leader who claimed to be in contact with aliens carried out terrorist acts to justify repression by the country’s military dictatorship, according to newly discovered archive documents.

The group was led by Aladino Félix, who wrote a book called My Contact with Flying Saucers under the pseudonym Dino Kraspedon, claimed to be the messiah of the Jewish people and had served in the army during the second world war.

Félix led a group of 14 police officers who, between December 1967 to August 1968, carried out a series of terrorist acts – detonating 14 bombs, stealing arms and explosives and robbing a bank. Targets included the São Paulo stock exchange, a secret police headquarters and an oil pipeline.

In March 1968, armed leftist groups also began planting bombs. And as violence increased, in December 1968, the military government used leftwing terrorism as its justification to introduce a landmark decree that toughed up the dictatorship’s powers, ushering in its most repressive period, which became known as theanos de chumbo,or years of lead.

Félix and his group were arrested in 1968. Félix served a little over three years in prison, Quadros said, and eventually died in 1985.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...er-aliens-terror-aladino-felix-dino-kraspedon
 
Wonderful piece of brazilian history that you unearthed Tribble! It shows that the close relationship between fundamentalist religion, police and far right is quite old and well estabilished.
 
Some good news

Most of the skull from a prized 12,000-year-old fossil nicknamed Luzia has been recovered from the wreckage of a fire in Brazil's National Museum.

The 200-year-old building in Rio de Janeiro burned down in September, destroying almost all of its artefacts.

But on Friday the museum's director announced that 80% of Luzia's skull fragments had been identified.

The human remains - the oldest ever found in Latin America - were viewed as the jewel of the museum's collection.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45926733
 
Seized Afro-Brazilian religious items released by the police.

One of Mãe Nilce de Iansã's childhood memories is hearing her aunt saying over and over again: "We have to get back our things from the police!".

"Do you know what happened to our things that were taken by the police?", her aunt, a Candomblé leader called Mãe Meninazinha de Oxum, would ask other people who visited the terreiro, the place where followers of Afro-Brazilian religions gather to worship.

For a long time, Mãe Nilce says, she did not know what her aunt was referring to. But over the years, she began to hear stories about how, in the past, police officers had stormed their terreiros and seized religious objects. It was all part of a crackdown dating back to the late 19th Century on what authorities labelled "black magic". The items would be seized to never be seen again by their owner. But last September, some of them were finally "freed".

Seventy-seven boxes which had been gathering dust at the premises of the police in Rio de Janeiro were transferred to the Museum of the Republic. They contained more than 500 objects of worship seized by the authorities between 1889 and 1945.

Mãe Meninazinha, who is in her 80s, was ecstatic when that happened, as she and other Afro-Brazilian religious leaders had spent decades trying to retrieve them.

In 2017, their efforts were bolstered by Our Sacred, a documentary that told the story of the movement to retrieve the items. The campaign picked up speed and federal prosecutors took on the case, eventually striking a deal for the items to be moved to the museum.
It was also agreed that everything, from their storage to research to the design of the exhibition, would be guided by a commission of practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions, so the objects are treated in keeping with their significance.

Those involved described the items final release from police headquarters as an act of "historic reparation".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57306362
 
Seized Afro-Brazilian religious items released by the police.

One of Mãe Nilce de Iansã's childhood memories is hearing her aunt saying over and over again: "We have to get back our things from the police!".

"Do you know what happened to our things that were taken by the police?", her aunt, a Candomblé leader called Mãe Meninazinha de Oxum, would ask other people who visited the terreiro, the place where followers of Afro-Brazilian religions gather to worship.

For a long time, Mãe Nilce says, she did not know what her aunt was referring to. But over the years, she began to hear stories about how, in the past, police officers had stormed their terreiros and seized religious objects. It was all part of a crackdown dating back to the late 19th Century on what authorities labelled "black magic". The items would be seized to never be seen again by their owner. But last September, some of them were finally "freed".

Seventy-seven boxes which had been gathering dust at the premises of the police in Rio de Janeiro were transferred to the Museum of the Republic. They contained more than 500 objects of worship seized by the authorities between 1889 and 1945.

Mãe Meninazinha, who is in her 80s, was ecstatic when that happened, as she and other Afro-Brazilian religious leaders had spent decades trying to retrieve them.

In 2017, their efforts were bolstered by Our Sacred, a documentary that told the story of the movement to retrieve the items. The campaign picked up speed and federal prosecutors took on the case, eventually striking a deal for the items to be moved to the museum.
It was also agreed that everything, from their storage to research to the design of the exhibition, would be guided by a commission of practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions, so the objects are treated in keeping with their significance.

Those involved described the items final release from police headquarters as an act of "historic reparation".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57306362
For something like 10 years, the evangelical (neo-pentecostal) groups that assumed the control of the drug traffic in Rio de Janeiro are systematically invading, destroying candmblé temples and even brutalizing and/or raping their priests and followers. Let's hope this "historical reparation" won't fall in their hands now. :(
 
Evangelicalism spread by football stars.

It was derby day in Belo Horizonte, but that wouldn't change anything. Joao Leite believed he had a mission assigned to him by Jesus Christ: to spread God's word among other football players.

So that afternoon in December 1982, just like he'd done for every match for the past three years, the Atletico Mineiro goalkeeper randomly approached an opponent before the big game started.

"Jesus loves you and I have a gift for you," he told Cruzeiro keeper Carlos Gomes as he presented him with a copy of the Bible.

At the time, Gomes found it all a little strange given the circumstances. He even admitted to feeling in some way angry as he was handed the book.

But that initial feeling later changed and he did actually join Leite's religious movement - Athletes of Christ. He was far from the only convert.

An association of evangelical Christian sportspeople, Athletes of Christ counted some of the most influential people in Brazilian football among its membership.

At their first meeting they were four in number. That would grow to about 7,000 across 60 countries, including high-profile footballers such as 2007 Ballon d'Or winner Kaka and ex-Bayern Munich centre-back Lucio.

"It all began with Alex Dias Ribeiro, a Formula 1 driver who competed with 'Jesus Saves' slogans on his cars," Leite, who played five times for Brazil, tells BBC Sport.

"I decided to do the same and played with 'Christ Saves' on my shirt, but then the Brazilian Football Association banned it and threatened my team Atletico with a points deduction.

"It was then that I started to give Bibles to other players. But they were difficult times - there was so much prejudice against evangelical players. Not even the national team felt like a comfortable environment. It was not easy for me."

In 1980, around when Leite set out on his "mission", 88.9% of Brazil's population identified as Catholics. Evangelicalism - a movement within Protestant Christianity - accounted for 6.6%.

The balance has since changed considerably. Research from Datafolha, a polling institute, put those respective figures at 50% and 31% in 2021.

Brazil remains the world's largest Catholic nation, but by 2032 it's predicted evangelical churches will be drawing more worshipers in the country. ...

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/60483820
 
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The Emperor's Old Heart.

The embalmed heart of Brazil's first emperor, Pedro I, is being flown to Brasilia to mark 200 years of independence from Portugal.

The heart, which lies preserved in a flask filled with formaldehyde, is being transported on board a military plane from Portugal.
It will be received with military honours before going on public display at the foreign ministry.
The heart will be returned to Portugal after Brazil's independence day.
Portuguese officials gave the go ahead for the preserved organ to be moved from the city of Porto for the celebrations of Brazil's bicentenary.
The organ is being transported on board a Brazilian air force plane accompanied by the mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira.

Mayor Moreira said it would return to Portugal after having basked "in the admiration of the Brazilian people".
"The heart will be received like a head of state, it will be treated as if Dom Pedro I was still living amongst us," Brazil foreign ministry's chief of protocol Alan Coelho de Séllos said.
There will be a cannon salute, a guard of honour and full military honours.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-62561928
 
When elections take a Fortean twist.

Claims about corruption, Covid, deforestation, and even cannibalism have grabbed attention on the campaign trail ahead of Brazil's presidential election vote this Sunday.

President Jair Bolsonaro is being challenged by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a second-round run-off.

We've looked at some of the main lines of attack for both candidates.

Satanism and cannibalism smears

Bolsonaro and Lula, who are both Catholic, have been seeking support among evangelical Christian voters, who make up almost a third of Brazil's population. ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/63374100
 
I wonder if they used number stations as well.

Brazil: The code word used to invite protesters to a riot​


In the days leading up to the attack on Brazil's Congress, the rhetoric intensified and included a series of thinly veiled metaphors. The main one was an invitation for Brazilians to attend 'Selma's Party'. 'Selma' is a play on the word 'selva', which means jungle in Portuguese, and is also used by the Brazilian military as a greeting or war cry.

Four days before the riot, a video about 'Selma's Party' went viral in groups on the social media app Telegram. In it, a man describes the 'ingredients' for the 'party', including a brand of Brazilian sugar called Union, and five large heads of corn. Corn is another wordplay. 'Milho' means corn and 'milhão' means a million. The suggestion is that five million people were invited to attend the protest.

Other posts on social media offered free transportation from different parts of the country to Brasília. They advertised "free buses" with "everything for free: water, coffee, lunch, dinner".

The party metaphor continued on the day of the protests on Twitter, where a video was posted showing hundreds of people marching with a long yellow and green banner in Brasilia. The caption reads: "The first guests are arriving… As soon as everyone gets here, the cake can be cut."

Most social media platforms prohibit and take down calls to violence. It's likely metaphors like 'Selma's Party' were used to evade content moderators. In a TikTok video that has since been taken down, a woman explicitly says that she's no longer talking about politics on TikTok because she doesn't want her account to be removed. She then proceeds to talk about 'Selma's Party'. ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-64223574
 
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