Lula Suspends $5.7 Billion In Fines For Razing Amazon Forest - Farms, Corps. Have 2 More Years

[hatrack]

RIO DE JANEIRO—A presidential decree Friday will suspend up to an estimated $5.7 billion in fines and give landowners two more years to comply with environmental regulations meant to stop the razing of the Brazilian rain forest. A presidential decree last year had set Friday as the deadline for landowners to be in line with the laws.

Officials said the new decree will give time to implement a program for educating farmers, ranchers and others across Brazil—but principally in the Amazon—on sustainable development and how to increase production without cutting down the forest.

The decree also launches an initiative designed to bring some order to Brazil's countryside by encouraging farmers to formally demarcate and "legalize" their land, chiefly by reforesting areas illegally destroyed. The initiative will provide loans and environmental education to those who abide by the laws, Environment Minister Carlos Minc said. "Ninety percent of farmers have been operating illegally for 44 years, since the forest laws were created," Minc said.

In order to participate, landowners will have to sign a contract with the government. If they don't, they will be required to pay the fines and comply with the Friday deadline set by last year's decree. Fines will be reinstated for those who sign up but are still not in compliance with the environmental rules after two years.

EDIT

http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_13978973

[Blue_Tires]

1. ugh...

[librechik]

2. won't the Amazon be dried up by then?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7gpAy4ivZ0

[Peace Patriot]

3. "Rule by decree," eh? Lulu, the darling of the rightwing here at DU, must be a "dictator!"

:sarcasm:

---------------------------

I'm aware that, since the work of smearing Hugo Chavez as a "dictator" has mostly been accomplished--with most Americans now having the vague impression that Chavez is a "dictator," while this "Big Lie" didn't stick with those of us who bother to investigate corpo-fascist 'news' items (we don't count--it's the impressionable that "Big Lie" campaigns seek to control)--the new anti-Chavez psyops is that Chavez is a failure (equally untrue). I'm not sure why the CIA spends so much time, energy and our money on trying to convince us that Chavez is a "dictator" or (odd combo) a failure. Probably it has something to do with the Honduran coup general's statement that, by their coup in Honduras, they were "preventing communism from Venezuela reaching the United States" (i.e., preventing ideas like universal free medical care, universal free education through college, transparent vote counting and other such communistic ideas from reaching our child-like ears). They mustn't have too much confidence in the ability of our corpo-fascist press to staunch ideas that don't make the rich richer. Got to put a blockade up in Central America!

Anyway, one of the notions of the Chavez/dictator campaign that was often trotted out was that, by exercising decree powers granted to him by the legislature (a common practice in Latin America, as Lulu's decrees demonstrate), Chavez was being tyrannical. But now that he's a "failure," this hasn't been mentioned in a while.

You gotta laugh. You really do.

:rofl: