The Oh, Hello and

welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood.

Two topics today, the Amazon Fires and the alleged pro-democracy protests in Russia.

First, the Amazon. The pictures of the burning forest in Brazil

coming after the hottest month and recorded history, July 2019, have deepened

our sense of climate apocalypse, and I haven't even mentioned the forest fires in the Arctic.

Why are these happening and what can we do about them?

With some answers, here's Maria Louisa Mendoza.

She's the director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in

Sao Paulo and is a visiting scholar at the Center for Place, Culture and

Politics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Maria

Louisa Mendoza Mendoza.

Fires are a longstanding feature of life in the Amazon, right?

So how are these fires different, either quality or quantity from what went before?

From last year, for example, quantity from what went before.

From last year, for example, at the fires increased 80 percent.

This is the dry season in the Amazon, but we have seen reports that there were local farm owners and local land

grabbers that are putting fires and that's the reason why it's increasing

also because since Pofernata took power,

he's being saying that he would allow

the expansion of soy production in the Amazon,

that he would not allow indigenous communities to have any right to land.

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