[HN Gopher] A Brazilian special-forces unit fighting to save the...
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A Brazilian special-forces unit fighting to save the Amazon
Author : mitchbob
Score : 222 points
Date : 2024-04-02 20:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| mitchbob wrote:
| https://archive.ph/2024.04.01-160136/https://www.newyorker.c...
| djohnston wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| These 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 wrote:
| "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.
| gruez wrote:
| Did you mean "FPV" (first person view) drones?
| bluepizza wrote:
| It's really a lot of land. Amazon forest is estimated to
| have an area five times the area of Alaska.
|
| Drones are a drop in the bucket.
|
| My point was exactly about the fact that "cheap" doesn't
| cut it, unfortunately.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> 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 wrote:
| You're just not thinking like a Brazilian death squad
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| No idea what that is. Care to detail?
| wavefunction wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_squad#Brazil You're
| gonna have to read it for yourself though
| raverbashing wrote:
| And 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 )
| bamboozled wrote:
| Starlink, it's enabled lots of awesome nasty shit.
| gruez wrote:
| Unlikely, given that isn't even a partner in Brazil yet
|
| https://www.starlink.com/business/direct-to-cell
| mmaia wrote:
| Starlink 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
| (Portuguese)
|
| https://www.starlink.com/map
| https://www.starlink.com/br/business
| https://www.starlink.com/br/residential
| https://www.starlink.com/br/service-plans
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > 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.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Gold, weapons, heavy ammunition and Starlink antennas have
| become "the new normal" in seizures by Brazilian security
| forces in illegal mining areas, according to an Ibama
| spokesperson, told BBC News Brasil.
| IlikeMadison wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Wireless 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.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| They 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
| tnjm wrote:
| Probably true - but having a great many soldiers in an area
| where there are an extremely isolated people such as the
| "uncontacted" Yanomami also poses its own risks. If they're
| focusing on the most sensitive areas with highly trained
| personnel and making use of the impressive knowledge and
| expertise in Brazil's Indian affairs department, FUNAI, much
| could be achieved. The situation in French Guiana is quite
| different, with perhaps only small numbers of Wayapi living in
| isolation.
|
| Brazil is rolling back the free-for-all that was established
| under Bolsonaro, but if they're handling it delicately, that's
| likely good news.
| ymgch wrote:
| It's just for the press. Can't change anything.
| porompompero wrote:
| Exactly my thoughts, they need an army not a A-Team unit.
| _heimdall wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| This defeatist take is getting old. Why don't we abolish all
| police and laws because we can't change anything?
| bentt wrote:
| Making this the topic of the next Call of Duty would be a great
| move for the rainforest and bring a ton of awareness.
| diggan wrote:
| And 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 wrote:
| >>, 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 wrote:
| They also didn't spend that much effort last time they had
| a Brazilian level
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG6lJ6rz-Rs
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| As 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 wrote:
| In 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).
| catskul2 wrote:
| But how would we know though right? I mean without having an
| A/B comparison.
|
| Sure it didn't _stop_ the destruction, but I don 't think
| that was ever in the cards. But it might have helped by some
| amount even if small. 1%? 2%? 6%?
|
| If it reduced destruction by 2%, would that have made the
| campaign worth it?
|
| I think there's a chance it did do some good in that it was
| in enough awareness to end up somewhere on a foreign policy
| agenda higher than it might have otherwise been, and thus
| policies might have been negotiated in trade agreements,
| treaties, company due diligence source tracing, etc.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| The last few Call of Duty games has featured Mexico and
| involves raining fire down on forested environments with an
| AC-130 gunship. So maybe not the best example of environmental
| protection.
| stuaxo wrote:
| The loggers and miners are using star link, the operator of that
| company you will know where they are.
| blinding-streak wrote:
| > coordinates
|
| > cooperating
|
| 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 wrote:
| Not 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 Bronte or Bootes)
| 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 wrote:
| Their 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-...
| DFHippie wrote:
| When I see "coworkers" I always think "cow-orkers". I don't
| know what orking is. It should be a thing.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I suppose to also keep the meow out of the homeowner (ho-
| meow-ner)
| schoen wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| Sibling 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 - Noel, aioli,
| and naive come to mind. None would ever appear with a hyphen
| (at least in my experience).
|
| And zoological and reelect 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.
| schoen wrote:
| > Noel, aioli, and naive
|
| All three of those were borrowed from French, which uses the
| diaeresis, so this is "just" keeping the original French
| spelling.
|
| > I don't think you'd ever use a hyphen with zoological, but
| might (or might not) with re-elect.
|
| The hyphen only works with words where the vowels came
| together as a result of compounding (here, adding a prefix
| like re- or co- to the beginning of another word that already
| starts with a vowel).
|
| At least in Noel and naive, the vowels came together because
| French lost a <t> that was present in Latin between two
| vowels -- interestingly in both cases here a word related to
| "birth" (natalis and nativus).
| keybored wrote:
| 1. Test with a dictionary
|
| 2. This is the New Yorker (pretentious)
| nkrisc wrote:
| It's part of The New Yorker's style guide. Their use of it is
| sensible, it's just incredibly rare and not really necessary in
| English.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Actually, given English's crazy spelling, it's pretty useful
| in English.
|
| There was a restaurant in my town -- the sign is still up but
| it's closed -- called "Cooper's Coop". For a while after they
| put their sign up I thought it was a cooperative/cooperative.
| If there'd been a diaresis I would have known it was the
| chicken coop sort of coop they had in mind.
| schoen wrote:
| For non-native English speakers, it's something like
|
| /ku:p/ for chickens
|
| /'koU.ap/ for cooperatives
|
| People sometimes spell the latter "co-op" (as an
| alternative to the _New Yorker_ 's "coop") to make clear
| that it's two syllables. There's also a college merchandise
| shop in Cambridge, MA, called The Coop that seems to
| encourage people to use the chicken-oriented pronunciation
| as a joke.
|
| https://www.thecoop.com/our-story
| scoot wrote:
| > If there'd been a diaresis (sic) I would have known it
| was the chicken coop sort of coop they had in mind.
|
| Except that there wouldn't have been a diaeresis, because
| (chicken) coop doesn't have one.
| DFHippie wrote:
| True.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Agreed that it is useful. I meant not necessary in the
| sense that pretty much no English speaker will ever expect
| it to be used.
| CalRobert wrote:
| It's a great tool for discussing sales of the eggs from your
| coop at the coop. But it nearly disappeared once.
| https://archive.is/3Oz0F
|
| """ We do change our style from time to time. My predecessor
| (and the former keeper of the comma shaker) told me that she
| used to pester the style editor, Hobie Weekes, who had been at
| the magazine since 1928, to get rid of the diaeresis. She found
| it fussy. She said that once, in the elevator, he told her he
| was on the verge of changing that style and would be sending
| out a memo soon. And then he died. This was in 1978. No one has
| had the nerve to raise the subject since. """
|
| I am grateful it persists.
|
| As someone learning Dutch, it is VERY helpful in words like
| zeeen - ( zee-en - seas). Much easier to know what it is vs.
| zeeen. I hope it is similarly helpful for foreigners learning
| English.
| EL_Loco wrote:
| Brazilian 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 wrote:
| At 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| There is a satellite-based surveillance system. What is
| missing (or was) is will to actually enforce.
| a1o wrote:
| > Illegal miners in the Amazon are increasingly well equipped,
| with access to Starlink systems that allow them to coordinate
| work and warn of raids.
|
| What the hell, can't they be tracked down reversely by asking
| Starlink itself?
| michelb wrote:
| Why would Starlink give out that info?
| coryrc wrote:
| Requirement for being allowed to operate in the country?
| skrebbel wrote:
| I remember a Musk quote that countries who want to block
| Starlink can "wave their fists at the sky"
| mistrial9 wrote:
| "In May 2022, after shaking hands with then-president Jair
| Bolsonaro at a luxury resort in the interior of Sao 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."
| sremani wrote:
| I am excited about the future movie "Saving Forest Rain".
| estradanicolas wrote:
| NGO'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 wrote:
| > 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.
| gverri wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| > Can you please explain to our global audience what crime he
| committed to be jailed for corruption?!
|
| Corruption.
| lbrito wrote:
| >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.
| motoboi wrote:
| Nice to see that believing in fake news are not an intelligence
| related tract.
| charles_f wrote:
| It 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_...
| cute_boi wrote:
| And many of them are for animal feed.....
| CWIZO wrote:
| The vast vast vast majority is for animal farming. It's
| staggeringly inefficient.
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