Missing in the Amazon (Guardian) Episode 3: The protector and the poacher looks at Bruno Pereira, the indigenous expert who was killed along with Dom Phillips on the Javari river in western Brazil. Pereira was born in the city, but was recruited to work with the forest people. When he was dismissed from FUNAI (National Indigenous People Foundation) , an indigenous rights foundation, he worked with EVU, established by his colleague Betto (?) and they patrolled the river, destroying the boats of illegal miners and poachers. One of those poachers was Pelado (Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira) who had been part of the settler colonization of indigenous areas that was encouraged by the military dictatorship in the 1960s until they were evicted from Indigenous areas in the 1980s. Seething with resentment, and emboldened by Bolsonaro’s anti-Indigenous policies, Pelado lived in a river-side village, where Dom and Bruno were shot. Episode 4: The Ambush is a first-person account by Dom Phillips’ colleague at the Guardian, Tom Phillips (similar name, no relation) who was one of the people who searched the Javari river for the missing men. From the police interviews with Pelado and his brother Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, we learn that the men were ambushed and shot at Pelado’s village, with their bodies moved several times to hide them from discovery.
Rear Vision (ABC) The Rise of Vladimir Putin Putin has been in power for 25 years and has moulded himself to the times. He came to power promising order after the orgy of corruption by the oligarchs in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR, then when economically things picked up with oil exports etc. he oversaw a prosperous economy. But in the last few years he has been a war president, defining himself as anti-Europe, anti-woke, anti-liberal. He has, however, always been popular, with his approval ratings (to the extent that you could trust them) not dropping below 60%. Although he initially had the support of the anti-oligarch middle class, many people felt that they had been sold a pup with his power-swap with Medvedev, he has maintained authority and popularity. The current situation is a consequence of the end of the Cold War, but instead the West is moving more towards Russian ideas, with the rise of the hard right across the world. The episode features Arkady Ostrovsky, Russian editor for The Economist magazine, Ivan Nechepurenko, journalist with the Moscow bureau of the New York Times and Joshua Keating, staff writer at Slate magazine.
Witness History St Teresa of Avila’s severed hand Well, when you dig up a body and it hasn’t decomposed, of course you’ll chop off its hand as a relic. Especially if it’s the hand of St Teresa of Avila. Somehow it ended up in a convent in Ronda, where it stayed until General Franco took it and kept it in his bedchamber “looking after it” during the war and then asking to keep it until the end of his reign. The sisters of the convent didn’t get it back until 1976. It was on display in its special case, with rings on the fingers. I visited Ronda back in July 2018 but I didn’t know about this relic: I visited a church there, but obviously the wrong one. In Feb 2024 the four remaining sisters were advertising for other Carmelite nuns to come there because it was in danger of closing – I wonder if it did? It seems to still be going.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 