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A Brazilian special-forces unit fighting to save the Amazon
- mitchbob 3y agohttps://archive.ph/2024.04.01-160136/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/08/the-brazilian-special-forces-unit-fighting-to-save-the-amazon https://archive.ph/2024.04.01-160136/https://www.newyorker.c...
- blastonico 3y ago[flagged]
- djohnston 3y agoThis is where drones and spies seem like the right approach. It can’t be hard to get a labourer on site with a cellphone or even just a tracker no?
- bluepizza 3y agoThese communities are insular and lawless, not to mention hours away from any significantly sized town. They know who belongs there and who doesn't. The spy would have to be internal people who are turned, which is not easy either because these folks are not educated, and would have trouble hiding their new income or acting within the confines of a information providing program. Not impossible, but unfortunately, our government doesn't have the resources. Regarding drones, the area is impossibly large. If we had enough cash, live satellite monitoring and deployed army stations for every zone would be the ideal solution.
- wavefunction 3y ago"live satellite monitoring" are you talking about launching a geosynchronous spy-satellite as well as the analysis, communications and command structure to make use of the satellite information? Along with stationing thousands of troops deep in the jungle with no existing supporting infrastructure? And that being cheaper than deploying some loitering and FPS suicide drones? You could probably hike out with a "solar birdhouse" of FPS drones, attach it to a tree and deploy an FPS drone as needed while running 24/7 zones of loitering drone surveillance for very cheap. The real issue would be distinguishing between "illegal and prohibited" and "illegal but allowed" and "not illegal" activities in these communities since they rely so deeply on their environments for everything.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- Rinzler89 3y ago>It can’t be hard to get a labourer on site with a cellphone or even just a tracker no? And then do what with it? I live in an EU country where illegal timber exploitation is rife, and there's not much a lone person with a drone can do. A lot of these areas are relatively remote and the underfunded police and rangers are usually quite far away and slow to show up, even when they're not paid by the timber mafia to look the other way. And by the time authorities do show up, the mobsters have been most likely tipped off and cleared the area. And if you're an average joe trying to directly interfere you're putting your life in danger since you're standing in the way of a multi million euro industry and there's camera footage of volunteer forest watchers being assaulted by timer mobsters on quad bikes wearing balaklavas. If this is happening in the EU I can't imagine what it's like in other places.
- mrcartmeneses 3y agoYou’re just not thinking like a Brazilian death squad
- Rinzler89 3y agoNo idea what that is. Care to detail?
- wavefunction 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_squad#Brazil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_squad#Brazil You're gonna have to read it for yourself though
- lobocinza 3y agoDeath squads were vigilante self-organizing groups of cops and sometimes their friends which would beat and murder "bad people". I don't think they exist in significant numbers today but in the past those groups existed in the open.
- mistrial9 3y agoKosovo ?
- raverbashing 3y agoAnd you think there's phone signal on the middle of the jungle? Sometimes hundreds of miles from the nearest asphalt road? Check google maps and see how you'd get to and from here (notice, getting up here would be the "easy" part of the journey - there's even "street view" https://maps.app.goo.gl/2XEL3J3aJWoLEGY58 https://maps.app.goo.gl/2XEL3J3aJWoLEGY58 )
- bamboozled 3y agoStarlink, it's enabled lots of awesome nasty shit.
- gruez 3y agoUnlikely, given that isn't even a partner in Brazil yet https://www.starlink.com/business/direct-to-cell https://www.starlink.com/business/direct-to-cell
- mmaia 3y agoStarlink is available in Brazil and dominates the broadband market in Amazonas. Antennas are commonly found with illegal miners. [0] 0- https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cv2edkw84zmo https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cv2edkw84zmo (Portuguese) https://www.starlink.com/map https://www.starlink.com/map https://www.starlink.com/br/business https://www.starlink.com/br/business https://www.starlink.com/br/residential https://www.starlink.com/br/residential https://www.starlink.com/br/service-plans https://www.starlink.com/br/service-plans
- joshuaissac 3y ago> Unlikely, given that isn't even a partner in Brazil yet The article mentions thrice the use of Starlink by the miners: > Cabral said; they must have been warned that the G.E.F. was coming. He pointed to a white rectangular antenna on a tall pole in the center of the camp and said, “Starlink”—Elon Musk’s portable satellite-communications system. > “Wherever the miners have Starlink, we’re at a real disadvantage,” Finger told me. “They can warn each other there is a raid going on in the territory, and they can organize their work better.” > The new farm had a Starlink connection, and, as the rains abated, a pilot said that he was sure the farm manager would warn the miners that we were coming.
- huytersd 3y ago[flagged]
- IlikeMadison 3y agoThe French do the same against illegal gold miners in French Guiana Amazon. They have approximately 1,000 soldiers compared to up to 9,000 illegal prospectors. I can't imagine how a single unit will be capable to curb anything when you look at the size of Brazil's Amazon.
- defrost 3y agoThe larger prospectors will be tied to hard to move assets (cyanide leach pools, crushers, screens) in semi cleared areas near rivers. The unit will have helicopeters and possible access to sat imagery. The plan would be to gather intel, map, and move through, one group at a time with enough soldiers (50 to 100) to deal with smaller unmiliterised enclaves.
- SEJeff 3y agoWireless sensors, synthetic aperatire radar, aerial surveillance all are things that exist. These things have existed since Vietnam and are significantly better now than they were then. The record for Lorawan sensor mad range was ~1,300 km / 830ish miles. You could partition the rainforest into grids and use these sorts of sensors if you wanted to be excessively thorough. Not easy or cheap, but very doable with today’s technology and a bit of customization. Note: my grandfather invented some of the rf sensor technology designed to be airdropped by the US military over the forests of Vietnam for this exact thing. It worked well for what it was designed for.
- namaria 3y ago> Not easy or cheap, but very doable Wait until you find out about budgets, especially when allocating for things that big chunks of the population aren't even supportive of.
- rmbyrro 3y agoThey should have a lot more troops involved, for sure, but GEF can be very efficient by leveraging surveillance tech. Brazil deployed SIVAM [1] about 20 years ago. At the time it was a state-of-the-art radar surveillance system. Not sure how they kept up with tech advances, but it still gives a significant edge to the GEF unit. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Surveillance_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Surveillance_System
- ymgch 3y agoIt's just for the press. Can't change anything.
- porompompero 3y agoExactly my thoughts, they need an army not a A-Team unit.
- _heimdall 3y agoIt may not be quite that simple. Moving an army is no small feat, the logistics required is complicated and could be miserable to try to manage in the Amazon. If they did manage to get a large enough military force in to catch most of the illegal miners, how much damage would be done to the Amazon just by the army getting in there?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoThis defeatist take is getting old. Why don't we abolish all police and laws because we can't change anything?
- bentt 3y agoMaking this the topic of the next Call of Duty would be a great move for the rainforest and bring a ton of awareness.
- diggan 3y agoAnd also ensure they can continue their journey to having 1TB large game assets, as suddenly hundreds of 3D modellers need to create thousands of new foliage models each.
- gambiting 3y ago>>, as suddenly hundreds of 3D modellers Creating realistic looking trees is one area that has now been almost entirely automated with tooling - there are some absolutely incredible tools for generating whatever kind of tree you want in any number of permutations. So really this would be more like 2-3 people just in charge of verifying the output and making sure it's stylistically consistent.
- Apocryphon 3y agoThey also didn't spend that much effort last time they had a Brazilian level https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG6lJ6rz-Rs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG6lJ6rz-Rs
- AdmiralAsshat 3y agoAs someone who went through grade-school in the 90s, with all of our "Save the Rainforest" campaigns, all I can think is: a fat lot of good that "awareness" did...
- schoen 3y agoIn my grade school we were asked to donate money to buy part of the rainforest in order to stop it from being cut down. I thought this was a brilliant idea, and it wasn't until the first time I visited Brazil (which is, somehow, 20 years ago now) that I learned that it wasn't really helping at all. In part, it's not that easy to "buy part of the rainforest". But more importantly (as the article describes), small-scale miners and loggers don't usually respect those property claims (or designations of areas as protected parkland).
- stuaxo 3y agoThe loggers and miners are using star link, the operator of that company you will know where they are.
- blinding-streak 3y ago> coördinates > coöperating The article has multiple instances of umlauts over the letter o. The first one I saw, figured it was a typo. But several more appeared. Strange, I wonder why?
- aloe_falsa 3y agoNot an umlaut, a diaeresis - it shows that the letter has its own sound (unlike the word "coop", for example). You'd generally use it for proper nouns (like Brontë or Boötes) and rare loanwords - it doesn't seem very useful for common dictionary words, since anyone who can understand the word itself probably knows how to pronounce it.
- PyWoody 3y agoTheir explanation > And yet we use the diaeresis for the same reason that we use the hyphen: to keep the cow out of co-workers[0] [0] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-...
- DFHippie 3y agoWhen I see "coworkers" I always think "cow-orkers". I don't know what orking is. It should be a thing.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoI suppose to also keep the meow out of the homeöwner (ho-meow-ner)
- schoen 3y agoThis feels ripe for an aphorism like "you can take the cat out of the home, but you can't take the meow out of the homeowner"!
- alistairSH 3y agoSibling comments cover the diaeresis. Its use is extremely inconsistent in English. I can't say I've ever seen it used for co-ordinate or co-operate. Usually these are typed with the hyphen or nothing. But, it's more common on some words than others - Noël, aïoli, and naïve come to mind. None would ever appear with a hyphen (at least in my experience). And zoölogical and reëlect just look WRONG to me. I don't think you'd ever use a hyphen with zoological, but might (or might not) with re-elect.
- EL_Loco 3y agoBrazilian here. I'm 100% for combating and arresting illegal miners, loggers and farmers, but I also know how big the rainforest is, how long the borders are, and how little personnel there is to do the work. Most people don't have a sense of how vast that region is: the brazilian part of the Amazon rainforest is about half the area of the U.S. Now look up how many soldiers and federal police officers are working there. It's daunting, feels like the drug war, only fifty times worse, because there's no solution anywhere close to something like legalization.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoAt least with mining and logging it leaves evidence in aerial imagery, unlike a clandestine lab. Maybe one day the amazon can be automatically patrolled by drones that mark targets for these smaller squads.
- definitelyauser 3y ago> patrolled by drones that mark targets for these smaller squads. Surely it could be scaled better with satellite imagery? Assuming it can be updated "reasonably frequently". I imagine drones would run into maintenance problems, especially in such "remote" regions.
- motoboi 3y agoThere is a satellite-based surveillance system. What is missing (or was) is will to actually enforce.
- kazinator 3y agoPlus, they can't be running in supplies on foot, under the canopy, or getting the stuff out!
- matheusmoreira 3y agoAlso a brazilian. I don't really care about it. I'd rather they used that vast amount of land for something that's more economically relevant. If you told me I could push a button to get state of the art semiconductor factories but the side effect was the destruction of the amazon... I wouldn't even think twice.
- a1o 3y ago> Illegal miners in the Amazon are increasingly well equipped, with access to Starlink systems that allow them to coördinate work and warn of raids. What the hell, can't they be tracked down reversely by asking Starlink itself?
- michelb 3y agoWhy would Starlink give out that info?
- coryrc 3y agoRequirement for being allowed to operate in the country?
- skrebbel 3y agoI remember a Musk quote that countries who want to block Starlink can “wave their fists at the sky”
- flykespice 3y ago[flagged]
- pas 3y agoElon already gave in to China's demands regarding Starlink
- mistrial9 3y ago"In May 2022, after shaking hands with then-president Jair Bolsonaro at a luxury resort in the interior of São Paulo, the businessman (Elon Musk) said he was "super excited for the launch of Starlink for 19 thousand disconnected schools in rural areas and environmental monitoring of the Amazon. .. The promise never came to fruition, according to the Ministry of Education and state secretariats."
- 3y ago
- sremani 3y agoI am excited about the future movie "Saving Forest Rain".
- estradanicolas 3y agoNGO's come and claim resources on the land to mine what is rightfully Brazil's. Happening for a long time now and Lula has the pipeline open again for anyone to come in and get a piece and loot. Also, author left out how Lula was in jail for corruption before he became pres again.
- alimw 3y ago> NGO's come and claim resources on the land to mine what is rightfully Brazil's. It's grimly amusing how the grabbier half of society literally cannot comprehend that not everyone is as selfishly motivated.
- lobocinza 3y agoIt's a jangoist narrative but sometimes it is the truth.
- gverri 3y ago"in jail for corruption" Can you please explain to our global audience what crime he committed to be jailed for corruption?! Can you also explain why the judge who sentenced him manipulated the law to judge a case that was completely out of his jurisdiction? Also, that Lula was the number one candidate in pools before he was jailed? And that this same judge went to become a minister of the candidate he helped elect by getting Lula out of the run?
- blastonico 3y ago> Can you please explain to our global audience what crime he committed to be jailed for corruption?! Corruption.
- lbrito 3y ago>Also, author left out how Lula was in jail for corruption before he became pres again. You left out a few things, like the corrupt judge that sentenced Lula during an election where he was the absolute favourite, and months later was made minister by the genocidal president he helped elect. Thankfully a modicum of sanity is being restored and the corrupt judge is now being investigated.
- charles_f 3y agoIt seems like the largest cause of deforestation of the rainforest is farming(1). Prevention of illegal destruction is probably a good idea, but if this is to replace it by its legal counterpart... 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_rainforest https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_...