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By Mirna Wabi-Sabi Arbaeen procession, mostly observed by Shiites, which make up about 15% of the nearly 2 billion Muslims of the world. Photo by Mostafa Meraji in Mehran, Iran (2019). In light of Ramadan, there are some considerations any non-Muslim can greatly benefit from. I have had very little experience with Muslims growing up in Brazil, the U.S. and the Netherlands. Learning about Islam has shined a light on several behaviors of mine I never realized were Christian. In the west, including places which are heavily colonized and aspire to westernize, like Brazil, Christianity is subtly omnipresent. We often take for granted how religious all our institutions and norms are, from the way we dress to the calendars and alphabets we use (pg. 418-421). Acknowledging the religious roots of these norms is helpful for anyone who wants to improve the social conditions in their own communities in westernizing, non-Muslim countries, because these Christian norms often are as oppressive as Islamic norms are perceived to be. “As oppressive as” is tricky. Oppression takes many forms, and there is little use in ranking them. But it is possible that something we see every day looks less oppressive than something we almost never see in real life. There is oppression that becomes normalized, and we mistake that for it being “less oppressive”. The hijab, for instance. In Brazil it is a rarity. Most Brazilians don’t know the difference between a hijab and a burka, and they see all of it as a symbol of female oppression. This is true for people across the right-left political spectrum. It’s hard to imagine these views being held by people who coexist in real life with happy, well-adjusted, hijab-wearing women in Brazil. Yes, it is possible, these women exist. And upon minimal further inspection, one would realize that feelings of unhappiness or lack of adjustment stem mostly from economic insecurity, which often stems from racist reactions to their hijabs — not from the religion or the hijab itself. Mariam Chami, a Muslim Brazilian woman, which gained well over half a million followers on Instagram by fighting Islamophobia with humor. Either way, aren’t all women sometimes unhappy and ill-adjusted? At one point or another, we deal with difficult relationships with others, with our spirituality, with work or with our sense of independence. We have much more in common with eastern women than we realize, and much to learn from each other. The discussion around women’s head coverings and modesty can resonate with any woman, anywhere. As a woman in a westernized context, it’s impossible to avoid considering the level of modesty of our clothing every single time we dress. We do it so much, we do it automatically, without realizing. There is careful consideration about where we will be, how we will get there, and how much skin is “appropriate” for each step of the way. And by appropriate, I mean, how much to cover and in which context, literally due to fear for our safety (or as statements of defiance). In the West, women are, at one point or another, on a spectrum between getting too much attention of the sexual nature, and not feeling desirable enough. So much of a woman’s value in the west is based on how sexually desirable she is, because our worth happens to often be proportionate to that of the men we are associated with. This is an oppressive paradigm we aren’t conscious of, or at least not as conscious as we are of hijabs and other head coverings when we see them. It may very well be us who are the toxic influence, as the west’s oppressive obsessions with objectifying women’s bodies, hyper sexualization of girls and luxurious plastic surgery are seeping into the Muslim world. When I think of the values and practices of worship of Muslim people in general, I think of the unscrupulous behavior of so-called Christian men I encounter every day, and how hypocritical it is for western women to judge one more harshly than the other. Once I noticed an Uber driver staring at my cleavage then starting to ask me questions to see how drunk I was. People’s response to this story, including my own, was to never get in an Uber alone, drunk, with too much skin showing. We do this because it’s easier to control our own behavior than the behavior of strange men (when taking no control isn’t an option). It’s not just the clothes, it’s also the obsession with alcohol. So many social interactions somehow revolve around having alcoholic drinks. And involve being exposed to music that can be less than pleasant, if not outright offensive. Brazilian Carnaval is the ultimate indulgence in indecency, alcohol and provocative music. In religious theory, Carnaval is a pre-lent celebration, which is meant to be followed by an observance of how Jesus fasted in the desert and resisted all sorts of temptation. We celebrate that by dialing all temptations up to eleven. The word Carnaval even comes from the Latin Carnis levare, meaning to “turn away from the flesh”. Clearly, we take that and do the exact opposite. The last Globeleza, name given to the “mascot” of broadcasted Carnaval. The tradition did not survive the pandemic due to accusations of sexism and racism upon its attempted return this year. There is something special to refraining from music and alcohol, and beginning to dress modestly. It imposes a shift in paradigm and may force us to look at things that are perhaps more authentic in ourselves. How are we really feeling? Do we want to be in this place, with these people? What do we want in life, and what are our values? There is power in music, drugs and clothing — Spiritual power. There is a reason for prayer and chants. There is a reason for religious dietary restrictions and sacred hallucinogenic substances. There is significance in religious garments. These may not hold meaning for everyone equally, but they have endured as practices for millennia in pretty much all human-occupied corners of the planet. If we take a moment through fasting and prayer, or abstaining from music, drugs and alcohol, this moment may connect us to something a bit truer about ourselves — what do we worship? We all worship something, whether we are conscious of its divine nature or not. To broadly state Islam is oppressive implies there is no room for Muslims in a world envisioned as equitable. This rhetoric implicitly aims to legitimize the extermination of a major, non-western segment of the world population, in a literal or epistemological sense. And ethnic or religious extermination is sort of an integral part of fascism. Muslims are as diverse as Christians and have as much the right to practice their faith as we have the right to crack down on vile abuses of power which permeate all segments of society, everywhere in the world. Perhaps we ought to be asking ourselves how we can make room for Muslims in an equitable society. How to make room for all epistemological traditions to flourish into new eras. _____

Leia esse artigo em português aqui. Ocean pollution threatens the survival of all marine animals, and ours too. It’s difficult to understand the magnitude of the impact that litter has on our lives when we don’t see where it’s going, and how the path that leads to the extinction of so many aquatic species affects human life. Indigenous civilizations, that once survived in symbiosis with the fauna and flora of their regions, now don’t see the same diversity of life and mutualism between existences. The world is not the same. The question is how to move forward in this paradigm. A tool to understand which garbage travels which way towards the ocean makes it possible to identify the source and path of the problem of garbage pollution – the eco-barrier. This understanding helps us to act on the source and symptom of the problem caused by floating waste discarded by the urban population. Eco-barriers are barriers at the mouth of rivers, or outflow points in megacities. A 2011 study by Marcos Freitas points out that the accelerated growth of urban centers, increased consumption, inadequate municipal water management systems and garbage collection contribute to an exorbitant amount of garbage being discarded in rivers. In the context of Rio de Janeiro, only 3 eco-barriers in 2008 collected more than 100 tons of plastic, metal, wood and cardboard (M. Freitas 2011). Data like these are expected, but the interesting thing about this research was that it identified the source of the problem as not being so much “the increase in the production of household solid waste” but the increase in the municipal Gross Domestic Product. That is, increased consumption by individuals does not cause pollution in rivers as much as increased imports and exports, government spending and business investments. Government institutions and businesses are more environmentally irresponsible than individual consumers, and this has only become more evident since 2011. Today, there is an eco-barrier at the mouth of the João Mendes river, in the oceanic region of Niterói, maintained by a group of volunteers. It was funded by ecoponte, a company that manages the Rio-Niterói bridge, and is interested in offsetting its carbon footprint. And the barrier is managed by members of the AmaDarcy organization, whose objective is to protect the natural and urban environment through the preservation of ecologically important areas in the Serra da Tiririca region. According to a report developed by the group in February 2023, “The João Mendes (JM) is a polluted river, despite its crystalline source within the Serra da Tiririca State Park (PESET). Although a significant part of the sewage from the JM hydrographic basin is collected and sent to the Itaipu Sewage Treatment Station (ETE Itaipu), which operates with a nominal flow of 164 liters per second, there is a significant amount of sewage that is not yet directed to the ETE Itaipu and flows directly or indirectly into the João Mendes river and, consequently, into the Itaipu lagoon (Marine Extractive Reserve of Itaipu-RESEX Itaipu), generating its pollution.” “The amount of solid waste (garbage) that has been thrown into the João Mendes river weekly (about 250 kg) also contributes significantly to its pollution, evidencing precarious sanitary conditions. Since September 2022, the NGO AmaDarcy has been collecting garbage weekly at the eco-barrier implanted in the João Mendes river, located near the mouth of this river in the Itaipu lagoon. The total amount of garbage collected and bagged by AmaDarcy between September 2022 and January 2023 was more than 6 tons (more than one and a half tons per month), thus avoiding its disposal in the Itaipu lagoon and in the sea (RESEX Itaipu). The garbage is then removed and taken by the Cleaning Company of Niterói (CLIN) to an appropriate final destination.” The relationship between sewage and garbage pollution is evident when we consider uncontrolled urban expansion, without infrastructure and institutions effective enough to deal with this growth. As volunteers, the group's focus on floating litter makes sense when considering the distance this litter travels, and the difficulty of controlling that flow without these barriers – which don't impede the flow of the river, but fix surface debris in place until a team can collect it. This collection takes place weekly, and when possible, waste is sorted by material and weighed, despite sewage pollution in the area posing a threat to volunteers and instigating the need for cautious hygiene. The recorded data includes not only the type and weight of the garbage, but also the brands of discarded products, the height of the river, and the amount of rain on the day before and during the week of collection. Pluviometric Volume or Index is measured by millimeter of rain per square meter in a certain place and time. Source: (A627, from INMET) The materials found are plastic, glass, metal, fabric (plástico, vidro, metal, tecido), among others. Microtrash (Microlixo) is registered as a separate category, and means a mixture of small waste such as cigarette butts, microtubes of narcotics, fragmented Styrofoam, other plastics and plant parts that become entangled with this waste. Tetra pak is also registered separately, because they are those packages with a mixed composition of metal, paper and plastic, often used for products such as milk, juice and tomato sauce. There are other materials identified (outros), but not individually categorized, such as occasional toys, electronic waste, light bulbs, tires, mattresses, etc. While unidentified waste (não identificados) is the closed bags found at the barrier that are not opened because they may contain materials that pose a risk to the health of volunteers – such as syringes, razors, diapers, condoms, used toilet paper, etc. This data helps us identify the source of water pollution, and makes us aware of our own consumption and waste disposal. According to the 2011 research by Marcos Freitas, there is a correlation between the increase in family income and the increase in public waste, while domestic waste remains in the same range. This could mean that the increase in Gross Domestic Product (and perhaps climatic contexts) leads to "greater consumption in public areas". What does this mean for us and our consumption practices in public areas? What do we know about the waste disposal practices of the businesses we visit and the waste collection on behalf of our municipalities? The problem of waste disposal and ocean pollution has many facets. There is an issue of institutional administration, which reflects on the political decisions of a municipality—to overinvest in one thing while neglecting another. Urban expansion becomes harmful because of the failure of these political administrations, and financial interests which are far greater than each family's home. This is why the municipal Gross Domestic Product generates more environmental problems than the accumulation of individual consumption. On the other hand, community awareness and access to information about the environmental situation in our neighborhoods can not only improve personal consumption practices and waste disposal, but can also encourage the population to demand more responsibility from public administrations and more effective use of public funds. In the meantime, preventing literal tons of garbage from ending up in the ocean helps kick-start a rescue of biodiversity and the balance between species on this planet. _____ By Mirna Wabi-Sabi

By Mirna Wabi-Sabi ChatGPT is a subject that provokes much debate about the future of education in the world of writing. Artificial Intelligence which writes these texts, correct and well researched, is a threat only to educators and writers who expect good writing to be mechanical and inauthentic. I rarely describe texts as “poorly” written, because often writing problems have more to do with failing to achieve a purpose than with the quality of word grouping. If your purpose as a writer is to reach a certain audience with a certain message, but your writing isn't meeting that goal, that's not bad writing, it's ineffective writing. On the other hand, a text full of grammatical “errors” can be extremely effective, therefore very well written. Every person who writes has created texts that failed in their purpose. Nobody is born knowing how to write effectively, and the great challenge of writing work is to be willing to fine tune the message you want to convey to an audience and sharpen the tools you use to deliver that message. ChatGPT is a robot. When a robot is authentic, using its writing as your own would be plagiarism. But this is not the reality we live in. A text generated by Artificial Intelligence is nothing more than a text vending machine. And the nutritional value of what comes out of it is just that — something ultra-processed, industrialized, that comes out the same from all machines, it's effective in times of scarcity, but if you live on only that, you'll probably die early. What are we doing, as writers and educators, to encourage authenticity? If authenticity does not exist in the classroom, the class is mediocre and encourages students to be mediocre. If a test is easily hacked by a robot, it is not effective, and anyone who passes it will not do an effective job. Not to mention that there are already tools like GPTZero that aim to reveal whether a text was mostly written by Artificial Intelligence, just as there have been, for a long time, several tools that aim to detect plagiarism. ChatGPT is not a threat, the threat is a long-standing educational system that fails year after year to train young people to produce truthful and impactful intellectual content. If we are concerned about ChatGPT, in reality we should be panicking about how the education system encourages imitation and insincerity.

By Mirna Wabi-Sabi For those of us who work editing people’s writing, one of the first lessons is that each writer handles edits differently, and it’s helpful to be flexible in your approach to feedback. In my career, it has happened that someone’s writing and response to edits made me suspect they might be on the autism spectrum, but there is never a need to confirm a layman’s diagnosis, only to adapt your approach as you would with any other individual writer. Recently, however, quite a few writers have come to me with texts about being on the spectrum, and this led me to identify some patterns and to organize some of my editing tools accordingly. This information can be helpful to those who have felt the urge to abandon a project because they may have observed these signs but interpreted them as confusion, hostility or inexperience. Sign 1–Prolix When a short passage is unclear, and an editor asks for an explanation, the text comes back with a few extra pages, which don’t necessarily address the issue in the first place. Possible cause: Extreme wordiness as a response to being asked for clarity can be a sign that the writer is insecure about their ability to make themselves understood, often even to themselves. Tool: In this case, there is no need to abandon the piece because it got too long and even more confusing than the first draft. Make sure you talk to the writer and agree on what the main point of the article is. With this in mind, remove the passages, sentences or paragraphs that go off on tangents (away from the main point). As you peel off the layers, you will see there is a narrative beneath. Sign 2–Retreat Sometimes, as a response to an editor asking for an explanation, a writer will retreat, saying “nevermind, I don’t want to write or publish anymore.” Possible cause: Frustration over the challenges of trying to connect with an audience can lead any writer down a path of self-doubt mixed with annoyance. For someone on the spectrum, this feeling can be dialed up, making them want to disappear. Tool: Reassure the writer that this frustration is a natural response to the writing process, and that your job as an editor is to help build a bridge between their work and their audience. Then, provide examples of explanations (be as wild as you want in your suggestions). This way, you spark a brainstorming session, inspiring the writer to come up with their own explanation. Sign 3–Diary Some texts sound like entries of a diary. This is when a writer starts too many sentences with the word “I”, the narrative of events is too linear, and they struggle to make the leap from their experience to a slightly more universal one. Possible cause: The narrative style of, “I did this, then I did that. Therefore, this is what I did” can be a sign that the writer is having a hard time putting themselves in someone else’s shoes. In this case, in the shoes of the reader who might be asking themselves, “so what, why do I care?” Tool: Encourage the writer to avoid starting sentences/paragraphs with the word “I” or “It”. Give examples of how to do that, by making the object the subject of a sentence. Ask the question, “for a reader who does not have this specific experience, how would this apply to them?” Sign 4–Prose Perhaps the writing is structured in an unusual way — Extremely long paragraphs, inability to separate themes and to organize these paragraphs, or odd line breaks and punctuation. Possible cause: Unclear overview of the whole text and lack of structure are signs that the writing is happening as a stream of consciousness which doesn’t prioritize the reader’s understanding or access to the content. This type of writing is associated with the aforementioned Prolix and Diary Signs, and shows that the writer is attempting to clarify the content to themselves. Tool: The same tools used for the Prolix and Diary Signs can be used here, with the addition of openness to innovative approaches to structure. If the main point of the article is clear, being flexible to accommodate the writer’s instinctive use of structure can be helpful. Such as, prose poetry, rhythmic line breaks and so on (I, personally, would encourage academia and its professionals to be more open-minded when it comes to this). Of course, not everyone who is prone to some of these behaviors as writers are on the spectrum. But understanding that these behaviors can be approached in an efficient way is helpful to everyone. Communication skills are something we all have to learn, and often struggle with.

By Mirna Wabi-Sabi [1] During the isolation of the pandemic, I had more time to observe my garden, its movements, growths and beings. This led me to start an experiment with developing mini ponds without pumps or filters to accommodate frogs, dragonflies, etc. In the process, I not only learned a lot about the lives and behaviors of different beings, but also about the existence of different living beings, including plants, and their functions for a balanced ecosystem. The city, today, is not a balanced ecosystem. Just as our knowledge about the animals and plants around us, or which are no longer around us because of urban imbalance, is insufficient. Can mini ponds not only remedy our lack of knowledge by exposing us to certain aspects of nature in an accessible and daily way, but can they also influence the urban habitat to mitigate the greenhouse effect and the damage caused by global warming? Cities and Weizi Settlements A recent study, from July 2022, called 'Impacts of Water Bodies on Microclimates and External Thermal Comfort' describes how small artificial ponds relate to sustainable environmental revitalization in a human settlement. Using as reference a Chinese village of Weizi tradition (or Wei zi) called Xufan, an analysis is made on the influence that urban characteristics, such as asphalt and tall buildings, have on microclimates, in contrast with the characteristics of human habitats that use aquatic resources. A Weizi village "is a typical model of traditional Chinese human settlement that combines human habitat with farmland and water conservancy." It adapts, transforms, and utilizes an aquatic environment through the intersection of climatic conditions, local natural resources, rural culture and Fengshui — where ancestral and environmental science merge. Xufan, in the Guanweizi village, in the municipality of Guangshan in Henan (China), was listed as one of these traditional settlements in 2017. There, it was possible to analyze how water bodies affect the temperature and humidity of the environment, and influence human coexistence and production. The study reveals that bodies of water absorb heat during the day and release heat at night, maintaining the stability of their microclimates. They also affect humidity, which through winds and breezes connects with microclimates of other bodies of water in certain radiuses of distance. This densifies the region's vegetation, regulates the climate and sustains local agriculture. These effects are interrupted when approaching the urban center. In cities, buildings shield wind and breezes, interrupting the flow of humidity between different bodies of water and its cooling effect on the local temperature. It may be instinctive to understand asphalt and car engines as things that heat up an environment, and buildings that in turn shield the microclimate created in their streets. The main function of asphalt is waterproofing, and the engine operates on the basis of small explosions burning fuel. The rising of temperature and decreasing of humidity are microclimates in themselves — urban ones. Images: “Research on the Forms and Changes of Jianghuai Shuiwei Settlements — Take the Western Jianghuai Area as an Example". What are Microclimates? Water not only satisfies needs of agroecosystems, but also regulates thermal comfort, which is a specific effect of microclimates. The PET (Physiological Equivalent Temperature) “is an index based on the thermal balance of the body”, and represents the thermal comfort or discomfort in urban or non-urban microclimates. As such, microclimates are nothing more than the atmospheric conditions of a certain environment, resulting from certain elements of that environment. Vegetation, bodies of water, asphalt and buildings are examples of geomorphological elements that influence microclimates. The urban microclimate is sometimes referred to as a “heat island” as a result of what I would call exogenic relief agents. City infrastructures are, in a way, exogenic geomorphological elements that significantly alter the Earth's surface, among other things. With the undeniable damage that the industrial revolution caused to the planet and to the levels of pollution in urban centers from the mid-19th century onwards, many damage mitigation strategies were developed, with perhaps mediocre results. Combating urban pollution The coal industry, which has been responsible for much of the industrial pollution since the mid-19th century and also for decreasing human life expectancy, is in decline in the US, as are deaths associated with coal mining. On the other hand, in China, coal production is on the rise. Another strategy to combat pollution in cities has been to make cars more efficient. Electronic injection, for example, is effective in reducing pollution by mixing air and fuel more economically than manual regulation. The catalytic converter neutralizes the harmful gases that enter the atmosphere as they leave through the exhaust system, with effect on up to 98% of them. The Driver Training Manual (Brazilian Edition 2022) states that Brazil “started to produce one of the best fuels in the world from an environmental point of view”. By adding ethanol to gasoline, emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) and other harmful gases are reduced. It is said that, compared to 1986, the average CO emissions per vehicle today is half a percent of what they used to be (from 54g/km to 0.3g/km). That all sounds good, but on closer inspection, one-off issues seem to be partially resolved while others come up simultaneously. CO is just one of the harmful gases emitted by cars, many of which have not declined on such a scale. The numbers differ depending on the source because they vary with the car's year of manufacture, region and regulations. Regulations are not properly enforced. And even if the laws were imposed and followed, the adaptation of the legislation aims to protect the environment when it is also in the interest of the “development of the automobile industry” (Art. 2: I—Vetoed). So, to say that pollution in cities has improved compared to 100 years ago through technology is not saying much. A holistic view of how to deal with the environmental harmfulness of urbanization would overcome the limitations of national laws and the car industry, as the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect do not operate according to financial and legal logics. The financial and legal logics, in fact, operate according to the population's set of beliefs, even if they are often manufactured by the financial and legal sectors themselves. Do city dwellers want to live in places like São Paulo, where traffic and money never stop pulsing? Images: “Vernacular Ecological Architecture — Weizi Folk Houses in the Southeast Henan". Is the heat island inescapable? The city's microclimates alienate animals and plants. But with a reconfiguration of belief systems about what city life can or should be, creating urban microclimates that invite animals and plants to thrive is feasible. Green terraces reduce the effects of urban heat islands, and vegetation is concentrated around water bodies naturally. Therefore, bodies of water can and should be introduced in urban gardens, community gardens and terraces where there is already vested interest in landscaping. To take advantage of the cooling effect of plants and ponds in urban contexts, a self-sufficient structure that minimizes the use of resources such as public water and electricity is not only affordable and accessible, but also ancient. As Weizi villages are described, “the water-adaptive space presents ancestors’ wisdom to adapt to and moderately transform the water environment and utilize water resources in a low-technology, low-cost, low-maintenance, and sustainable way.” Wei, in addition to having been an illustrious territory in ancient China, also means housing that uses water trenches to satisfy a variety of community needs such as irrigation, drainage, washing, thermal comfort and protection. Buildings facilitate the passage of breezes, trenches serve as defense walls, water and animals nourish the agriculture and, as such, vernacular architecture and urbanism express valuable ancestral and scientific knowledge. In the modern urban context, adapting to water can mean collecting rainwater, which in turn encourages awareness of rainfall frequency and air quality (which influences rainwater quality), as well as minimizes the use of city water supply. The increase in humidity of microclimates, with the presence of a breeze between each body of water, can help regulate the frequency of rainfall (since we know that humidity and rain are mutually favorable). To control mosquito proliferation, small fish can be introduced into the water body. A well-planted pond, with an adequate amount and type of fish, does not need a pump or filter. A partial water change is sufficient, and the nutrient-rich pond water can be used for watering plants. Animals such as lizards, beetles, dragonflies, ants, and birds contribute to the maintenance of these natural elements and minimize the need for human maintenance. By inviting these beings, we observe and understand them better. Part of understanding them better means understanding that the prosperity of these beings means our prosperity, the human future. Knowledge about nature teaches us to appreciate, respect and, in turn, protect. And it teaches us about urban microclimatic contexts, whose affronts to human existence we often fail to identify, denounce, and modify. The researchers of the article 'Impacts of Water Bodies' state that the impact of different formats of water bodies will be the focus of their next research. This indicates a lack of data regarding the diversity of possibilities to mitigate the negative impacts of “man-made underlying surfaces” using bodies of water. Therefore, there is still much to be explored. The execution of this proposal presents a sharp learning curve and adaptation of the population's sets of beliefs, apart from a reconfiguration of what private or individual spaces mean in the context of the relationship between urban microclimates and the future of the planet. Gradually, awareness of how each individual deals with their private space, and acts in relation to nature in cohesion, has the power to reconfigure the status quo of urbanization. Who knows, the micro in a cascading effect becomes macro, and the heat island is little by little re-signified by oases. [1] Founding member and director of Plataforma9, author of Anarco-transcriação.

Two situations caused major uproar in Brazil this month, both involving photos. First is a double exposure image of Lula with shattered glass pointing at his heart. The other of a Yanomami woman who died due to severe malnutrition. Debates which used to be directed at the Lula/Bolsonaro dichotomy have turned inward, within leftists, over how to handle post-victory political crises. Many people were horrified at the photo of Lula on the cover of a major São Paulo newspaper, claiming it incited violence against him. The shattered glass was from the capital building attack on January 8th, and the artistic composition by a renown leftist photographer was harshly criticized because it’s too dubious in a landscape where most feel there is no space for nuance. To me, the photo depicts a bulletproof scene, where there was a failed attempt to destroy his presidency, and he leaves smiling victorious among the ruins. But to others, the possibility it might promote violence against the president, as if someone ought to shoot him in the heart, was enough to promote violence against the photographer herself. She was the target of an online mob until a more problematic scene arose. Quite frankly, since the first news of what happened to those in the Yanomami territory, I couldn’t read anything about it because I couldn’t stand looking at the photos that came with the texts. Social media became infested with images of not just a crime, but of victims of what is the brink of genocide. The sharing of these images were justified as needed evidence, but that never convinced me. In court cases involving white children, the visual evidence is not publicized. More often than not, testimonies are enough. From the beginning, to utilize the images felt dehumanizing to me. Now that one of the women from this community died from malnourishment, Yanomami leaders are finally pleading for people to stop sharing her image in a show of respect for Yanomami tradition. Still, people argue against it, saying this image has to be shared on the internet as evidence, as if the internet was the grand forum where justice is achieved by exposing violated marginalized peoples. The images of malnourished Yanomami children were never tolerable to me, and it’s intolerable that to some, at this point, they are still needed as evidence for what the Brazilian government puts these peoples through. This resonates so much with what the brilliant professor and journalist Allissa V. Richardson says about black people and the need for mediatic evidence for the racist violence perpetrated against Black Americans. She says: “I would like to get to the point where we don’t need the videos to believe black people […] Why are black people asked to produce this footage to kind of pre-litigate the fact that they didn’t deserve their own demise?” When it comes to the subject of ‘Bearing witness’ to racist brutality, black and native people find common ground in the use of media. Considering the hundreds of years of colonization, what do people think Indigenous rights activists have been fighting against? Did the main stream think it wasn’t that bad, so they needed photographic evidence of how bad it actually has been? Do they think this is as bad as it gets? Or, they just need another reason to continue to blame Bolsonaro for everything bad that has ever happened in Brazil? Indigenous peoples have endured rampant assault, starvation and murder for hundreds of years, the fraction which survived are still enduring this paradigm, and the last 4 years are not single-handedly responsible for the injustices these peoples have been faced with, only for allowing business to go on as usual. The Yanomami have been dealing with the issue of absurd numbers of garimpeiros invading their land since at least the 70s. There has been rampant disease, malnutrition and massacres since then, even a declared genocide in 1993... If it took these images in 2023 for someone to realize the inhumane and undignified living conditions natives have been submitted to, they haven’t been paying attention. And it surely is not the responsibility of the Yanomami to make an exception to their way of living (in dealing with death) to serve non-native people’s need for a wake-up call. Were it so, wouldn’t that just be an extension of the dehumanization forced upon them? I also ask myself what the purpose is to juxtapose images of the Yanomami with historic images of Holocaust survivors. If this is an attempt to stress how violent it is what is happening to natives, it’s utterly inadequate and anachronistic, because what is happening in Brazil has been happening for much longer and to many more people than what happened in Nazi Germany. And the same goes for making the parallel with malnourished children in sub-Saharan Africa, as if Brazil should be above that, when in reality, it's a tragedy that this is happening anywhere for any reason. Could it be that when we think of the hundreds of years of genocide perpetrated against Indigenous and African people in Brazil, that doesn’t carry the same weight as what happened in Europe, with Europeans? So we take something way older and bigger, like colonial genocide, and try to fit it into a Eurocentric narrative. This way, perhaps, people will see it as more unacceptable, and therefore, ensure it never happens again. Yes, we want the genocide of Indigenous people to stop and for it to happen ‘never again’. Indigenous people have wanted that at least since a century before the Second World War. If this isn’t resilience, I don’t know what is. Maybe that’s why I can’t stand these images being used as evidence. Because they are used as evidence of something of a frail, defeated group of people, when in reality they couldn’t be farther from that. The Yanomami have endured the unimaginable for hundreds of years — this is not a story of weakness, it’s a story of power, and we should be so honored to stand next to them and fight for their dignity. Against this background, Lula doesn’t look so vulnerable double-exposed to shattered glass, smiling, fixing his tie, does he? He is shielded by much more than bullet-proof glass, cars, vests and suits. He’s shielded by passing-whiteness, by the global markets and its super-powers. When it comes to his flesh, blood and consciousness, it will be the Yanomami who will save him, not the other way around, and they deserve the world in exchange for that. _______ Mirna Wabi-Sabi is a Brazilian writer, site editor at Gods and Radicals and founder of Plataforma9. She is the author of the book Anarcho-transcreation and producer of several other titles under the P9 press.

Written by Renato Libardi Bittencourt Photographed by Fabio Teixeira There was and still is a certain air of “promise” and “hope” here in Brazil that, after Lula's electoral victory, we would re-establish the “normality” of life in the fragile Liberal Democracy. What has been said around (see MST note on roadblocks) is that it would be enough to wait passively and orderly for the newly elected president to take office and let the extreme right agonize in what would be its last breath. However, since the day the results of the polls were defined, the extreme right has taken to the streets in a clear attempt at a Coup and a demonstration of strength, thus showing that, far from being on its last breath, they are united, articulated, strong and cohesive. Since the 30th of October we have had: road closures throughout much of the national territory; requests for a military intervention in the streets and military headquarters (which continue until now and with no end in sight); buses invaded by Bolsonaristas who attacked students; the dean of a Federal university filing a document in support of the coup's lockout; support and connivance of the State security forces to the coup's and anti-democratic manifestations; manifestations of xenophobia and racism against North-easterners of the country; swastikas and arson at the MST (Landless Workers Movement) headquarters in Pernambuco; apart from the tantrums of "Deus Mercado" or the Market God. (See, for example, this article in Brasil de Fato.) The curious (or tragic) thing about this whole absurdity is the absolute immobility of the majority, hegemonic and institutional left, which, faced with such absurdities, was incapable of reacting. No, this is not about calling for a civil war. We know that the Brazilian security forces and justice are not on our side (much less would be enough for a “bloodbath” against us by the police). But, since when do we need state support or a favorable situation to occupy what has historically always been ours, the streets? It is true that any type of demonstration carries its own risks and that the current situation inspires fear in many of us. However, that old saying by Marighella is still current: “I didn't have time to be afraid”. RIO DE JANEIRO, October 30th. By Fabio Teixeira. On the side of the revolutionary, autonomous and combative left, the story was quite different. On November 1st, the page “Antifa Hooligans Brasil” issued a statement calling on organized supporters to stop the coup attempt, unblock the roads and defend the limited democracy we still have left. On that same occasion, the MTST (Homeless Workers Movement) also issued a statement to its militancy to thwart the coup leaders and their financiers. Differently and in strategic disagreement with the MTST, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) issued a note calling on the left to remain calm, trust the institutions and await Lula's inauguration. Well, here we have an evident theoretical and strategic conflict within the left. After all, should we or should we not occupy the streets at this moment? Is it safe? What to do in the face of all this? Will Lula's inauguration be the beginning of better times? These are complex questions that do not have a simple answer or a magic recipe that can objectively guide us in the face of so many challenges. However, the good old philosophical tradition teaches us that, in the face of difficult questions, it is wise and prudent to ask more refined questions on top of the original questions. For example: “Does it make sense to fear a civil war when, for someone who is black and from the periphery, war and genocide happen every day”? Does this question reflect the division of class and race within the left itself? The argument of the “civil war”, that is, that the militancy and the people in the streets could truly provoke a real war, a bloodbath and a great systemic rupture, only reveals the privileges or a certain degree of social alienation of those who use it to justify a left that looks more and more like the System which they once opposed in a more radical and honest way. Let's be frank, you don't just die from bullets in Brazil. One dies of hunger, helplessness, the scrapping of public health and even political indifference, as is the case in question. The argument of the “civil war” reminds me of the lyrics of the song “Estamos Mortos” by Rapper Eduardo Taddeo (former Facção Central) which begins by saying: “Nobody can be considered alive; Eating leftovers from dumpsters; Raising hands for alms; Smoking crack; Losing health pulling cardboard wagons (...)” and ends by emphasizing that: “As long as we cannot prevent genocide; The racism; The alienation; Mass imprisonment; Extreme poverty and social nullification; We will be nothing more than breathing corpses; My condolences to all of us who vegetate; In the morgue of the living.” RIO DE JANEIRO, October 20th. The question I ask myself at the moment is: are we anesthetized? Is this anesthesia the result of so much beating we've taken in recent years from liberals and the extreme right? Was the damage such that we lost the ability to react accordingly? Are we meek as lambs? Do we let the righteous anger of our hearts metamorphose into a depressed, lethargic state? No, once again, I am not evoking those plastic and stereotyped scenes of militants throwing Molotov cocktails at the Military Police and “playing terror” (as much as I like this dreamlike vision). I'm talking about ordinary people en masse taking to the streets. Even if there are those who say that this would only bring more confusion and give more visibility to the extreme right and to Bolsonaristas, this is an urgent matter, a duty dear to the anti-fascist tradition: “no stage for fascists”. It is true that the liberals and the extreme right had a large and overwhelming victory in the last elections, but to continue to clear the avenue for the extreme right to pass instead of putting a foot in the streets and shouting “they shall not pass!” has catastrophic historical results. Every time that, in history, we have ignored the rise of fascism and have not dismantled them with combative strategies of direct action, guess what: they triumphed, grew, bore fruit and boosted their social reach even further among the masses.

Written by Mirna Wabi-Sabi Originally published at the CyberOrient journal. Abstract During the COVID-19 pandemic, a “privacy nutrition label” was introduced to the Apple applications store. Its aim was to simplify access that consumers have to the content of terms and conditions, specifically to its implications on individual privacy. Nevertheless, undocumented migrants in the United States and Europe were and still are subject to invasive digital monitoring, begging the question of how to handle unhinged uses of technological advances by government institutions. Artificial intelligence has been used to predict the geographical movements of migrants, and phone applications have been used as an alternative to incarceration and ankle bracelets. It seems that technological advances do not move parallel to improvements in the human condition, which is why keeping up with these advances is a challenge to those who are struggling to improve their living conditions. In the following article, Artificial Intelligence and Integration Contracts of asylum requests are discussed within the framework of immigration rights and modern tools of governmental abuse of power. Key Words: Artificial Intelligence, Integration Contracts, asylum seekers, privacy, human mobility. To sign off on; phrasal verb meaning “give one’s approval to something.” We all sign things nowadays, but not all of us get to sign off on things. The use of a signature as a way to grant approval is not the same as the more commonplace practice of signing things like “terms and conditions.” This distinction ought to be made because in identifying when a signature is not empowering or representative of consent, we can look for alternative tools of resistance against the established order—one which uses signatures to control and subjugate disenfranchised segments of the population. Signatures earn significance through institutions of power by governments that establish order and have the resources to enforce this order. In any hierarchical structure, signing off on something is indicative of a status difference, as is the ability to make someone sign an unfavorable agreement. A good example of this is our routine practice of downloading apps into our smartphones. Apple, for instance, signs off on the apps it allows on its app store, but the terms and conditions we agree to when we download them are certainly unfavorable to us as consumers. In an attempt to mitigate this issue, a “privacy nutrition label” was introduced to apps in the store during the covid pandemic, supposedly simplifying access consumers have to the content of these conditions. The labels are probably a result of the GDPR, which Apple cites in its page detailing Privacy Policies (Apple Store 2022) and requires not only transparency over these policies but also for this information to be presented in a way people can easily understand. Unfortunately, these “nutrition labels” are neither effective nor accurate (Fowler 2021), exacerbating the issue of unfavorable agreements we consent to through digital signatures. Earlier in 2022, in the wake of abortion bans in the United States, women encouraged each other to remove period-tracking apps from their phones for fear of potential privacy breaches and legal backlash. This is a way of not signing, not consenting, to personal data sharing. It is also a form of a general strike, provoking a sharp turn in the industry. To be able to delete something from your smartphone is thus a privileged position to be in. Nearly a quarter of a million immigrants in the United States are tracked by ICE with the use of an app that officials describe as more “humane” (del Rio 2022) than ankle bracelets or incarceration. Unsurprisingly, many do not agree with this description, which is why there is an ongoing court case against the Department of Homeland Security, claiming a violation of the Freedom of Information Act and concern over the “drastic increase in the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP)” (US District Court Northern District Of California 2022). This program embodies how, nowadays, privacy policies of applications can quite literally become virtual prisons. In Europe, due to the 2015 “refugee crisis,” data monitoring was considered by government institutions as a tool for predicting the “movements of migrants into Europe.” The European Space Agency pitched several EU organizations, including Frontex, on “commercially viable ‘disruptive smart technologies’” (Black 2020). In a report from 2019 on this subject, the ethical and practical limitations of this program were considered, but no guarantee is given that this tool has not been or is not being used. Even though the report acknowledges this technology can be and has been used for racial profiling—which they describe as an “overfocus on African countries” (IOM 2019)—and that machine-learning reliant on unpredictable data produces unreliable results, the conclusion describes this method as a “nascent workstream.” In other words, if this deeply flawed and unethical method of handling humanitarian crises is not yet widespread, it surely is about to become so. Agreeing to dangerous terms and conditions of applications which track movement and seek to predict future movements of people like you infringes upon freedoms of whole segments of the world population. Considering that today it’s nearly impossible to not produce data (from the day we are born, documents and data are collected and stored about us), what can we do to disrupt data processing strategies, ensure a certain level of privacy, and allow for freedom of movement? Integration Contracts Asylum requests in Europe are signed off on by government officials, and seekers are made to sign several forms—including “integration contracts.” The criteria used by those with the power to sign off on asylum requests are kept from the segment of the public with the most stake in these immigration policies: asylum seekers. It could be said that it is in the interest of EU countries to maintain asylum seekers oblivious to the inner workings of its institutions and the decision-making processes. These government branches may not want asylum seekers to have information which can help them present their case more effectively. This is exemplified in the 2014 court case YS and others (Wabi-Sabi 2022), where incoherent legal justifications were used to deny migrants the right to access their personal data, a right protected by European privacy laws. In some instances, it was claimed that the right to privacy of government staff and their line of reasoning trumps the plaintiffs’ rights, and that the applications did not contain the personal data of migrants. There is no doubt, however, that immigration request files contain the personal data of the applicant, and so does the written analysis of government staff about these applications. Meanwhile, when an asylum request is approved, the migrant is required to sign contracts which, among other things, subject them to compulsory “civic training” (Ministère de l’intérieur 2020). The French Office for Immigration and Integration (OFII) calls this the “Republican Integration Contract (CIR)” (République Française 2020), where “newly arrived foreigners” (Ministère de l’intérieur 2022) are taught “the principles [and] values [...] of the Republic, the rights and duties associated with life in France and the organization of French Society.” The granting of the immigration request comes attached to the requirement to resign certain aspects of your cultural identity. Namely, robust integration efforts are not only about inserting immigrants into the workforce, but also a “shield against radicalization” (Rush 2018)—an umbrella term for extreme cultural differences. The Netherlands has a similar program, where “knowledge of the Dutch society” (European Commission 2021) is mixed in with Dutch language skills. They go even further in requiring “voluntary” work in businesses and demanding health insurance from companies which refuse to provide information in any language other than Dutch. I have gone through this process—twice or three times a week when I “volunteered” to vacuum a video store. Here I learned about “black pete” (but not about the country’s colonial history) and had to sign up and pay for health services I could not use, because workers refused to give me information in English over the phone. In Brazil, a parallel can be made with the integration efforts of Venezuelan refugees. In official reports there is no mention of civic training and values; instead, there is mention of opportunities for certification and work (The UN Refugee Agency 2021). The UN Refugee Agency report from 2021 describes Venezuelan refugees in Brazil to be more likely to have completed stages of education but they earn less and work more hours than their Brazilian counterparts. There is no compulsory integration program, therefore, this practice is not intrinsic to immigration policies everywhere. A new “action plan” (European Commission 2020a) for the integration of migrants in Europe, released in 2020 and aiming to pan out between 2021 and 2027, lays out a clear connection between “inclusion” and “monitoring.” This monitoring is essentially digital surveillance, though it is described rosily as a follow-up on integration projects the European Union funds, to ensure its integrity and effectiveness, as well as an “anti-discrimination” initiative (European Commission 2020b). Researchers have quickly voiced their concerns over how these follow-ups on integration policies, paired with a new European Digital Agenda, can easily become “a mass surveillance framework” (Regina and Capitani 2022) and an infringement on the values of a democratic society. The digitalization of public services goes much beyond the immigration sector, but the specific push towards the integration of migrants now involves digital training. Improving the digital skills of any segment of the population is, in theory, a good thing. But this can also hand over an immense amount of power to the State, both of what information to share and how. Anyone nowadays sees new technologies marketed as helpful for the performance of a certain task, while crucial information about how your data are collected and shared is omitted. We are all susceptible to it, especially immigrants. Artificial Intelligence and Action A response analysis of a “public consultation” on the topic of migrant integration, done with mostly EU citizens, shows that nearly a quarter of those interviewed “reported adopting the local culture and customs [...] as factors for successful integration.” In this digital era, these integration efforts pose worrying questions about what Artificial Intelligence can do to track, predict, and manipulate people’s behavior. The more integrated people are, the easier it is for machine learning to spot abnormal behaviors within infinite pools of data. If we can not come back from that, we ought to move forward knowing what these technologies can do, and how to have control over them—as opposed to being controlled by them. First, let us learn from people and groups which do not have a stake in promoting these integration policies and technologies. To trust tech companies and the government to teach us about their own tech innovations is like trusting McDonald’s to teach us about how their meat is produced; of course, they will describe themselves with unreal amounts of flattery. Though impartiality is nearly impossible to achieve, as are conflicts of interest difficult to completely eradicate, a democratic society has a duty to provide plurality of sources and diversity in access to information. Second, let’s promote the embracing of cultural differences over integration efforts. Social integration is marketed by government immigration offices in Europe as “anti-racist,” generous and empowering. It is none of those things. As part of my “integration” classes, I “volunteered” at a video store where I had to vacuum a closed section dedicated to porn. For a Muslim immigrant, which in 2015 made up the majority of people in my class, this would be mortifying. At the time, the secularism the Dutch always promoted as progressive turned into blatant bigotry (Bahceli 2015), and “integration” meant the hostile pressure to learn the local language quickly and hide any non-Christian markers. It is no wonder that scholars (Regina and Capitani 2022) have pointed out the dangers of AI technology becoming a new tool to enact old fascistic European behaviors (Hayes 2018). Certain counter-terrorism tactics which are considered acceptable in the United States are, in theory, not acceptable in Europe, at least anymore. As Paola Regina and Emilio de Capitani point out in a study published in March of this year (Regina and Capitani 2022), artificial intelligence is pushing, or needs to push Europeans to “re-evaluate” their antifascist efforts around government surveillance and the right to privacy. Technology has expanded the scope of data access (Bigo et al. 2013) by government institutions, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have for two decades served as a “recourse to insecurity, real or imagined” (Hayes 2018). This fuels a desire for “the securitization of international migration.” The differences in ethical and historical perspectives between the US, UK, and EU have proven to not withstand this geopolitical paradigm and the lightspeed of technological advances. Studies on this issue tend to mention the Snowden revelations of 2013 with a sense of concern (Bigo et al. 2013) in the face of such massive pools of data paired with some of the most secretive government institutions. A Public Intelligence study (Bigo et al. 2013) goes further to question the extent to which this practice “can be tolerated in and between democracies” in particular. That is, as if the issue arose when Europeans became targets of mass surveillance, not when Arabs were targets of it, or peoples anywhere else in the world. “In and in between democracies” excludes anti-democratic attitudes “by” democracies towards everyone else. Migration flow into Europe, due to propitious geography and Western-induced unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, led to disorganized digital profiling, or “mass surveillance activities carried out without clear objectives” (Bigo et al. 2013). It seems as if the second decade of the 2000s is marked by discoveries of how these digital technologies seeped into every little crack of our lives. And it is only now, in the third decade, that we are coming closer to defining, and labeling, what has been happening. How can we get better at tracking and predicting the technological movements of Powerful institutions? Preventing these technologies from being developed is virtually impossible, assuming democracy and freedom are the values supposedly being defended by those who are engaged in this debate. What is within our reach is understanding how these technologies work, how they have been used, and as a result, gain clarity as to how they might come to be used in the near future. For that, we need independent networks of digital training. Many of us already know what Photoshop can do with images, so we are now learning what face-editing effects can do to videos. It’s clear that this type of AI technology is already being used to track and racially profile people, and that it’s not only immoral but also unreliable. It would be safe to assume that the direction the established order is going is one where much more effort is being put towards solving the issue of unreliability, than of immorality. Deleting period-tracking apps only handles the issues of the past, when we thought we could still shy away from problematic digital hotspots. In a landscape where there are assumed to be no bad apples, there is just a very large rotten one upon which more than half the world’s population feasts (Chaffey 2022). Sometimes I think increasing data input, and so decreasing its predictability would be useful. Machine learning and algorithms cannot be effective in predicting human behavior, especially when we as humans resist the efforts being put towards turning us into machines. Encouraging difference and uniqueness can be a radical thing because the pressure to “integrate” is more than a de-radicalization tool, it is an effort to predict and control our behaviors, even our most intimate ones. References Apple Store. 2022. “App privacy details on the App Store.” Developer. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/app-privacy-details/. Bahceli, Yoruk. 2015. “Wilders tells Dutch parliament refugee crisis is ‘Islamic invasion.’” Reuters, September 10. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-netherlands-idUSKCN0RA0WY20150910. Bigo, Didier, Sergio Carrera, Nicholas Hernanz, Julien Jeandesboz, Joanna Parkin, Francesco Ragazzi, Amandine Scherrer. 2013. “National Programmes For Mass Surveillance Of Personal Data In Eu Member States And Their Compatibility With Eu Law.” Public Intelligence, October. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://info.publicintelligence.net/EU-MassSurveillance.pdf. Black, Crofton. 2020. “EU agencies tested monitoring data on refugees.” EU Observer, April 28. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://euobserver.com/health-and-society/148185. Chaffey, Dave. 2022. “Global social media statistics research summary 2022.” Smart Insights, August 22. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/. del Rio, Giulia McDonnell Nieto. 2022. “Meet SmartLINK, the App Tracking Nearly a Quarter Million Immigrants.” The Markup, June 27. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://themarkup.org/the-breakdown/2022/06/27/meet-smartlink-the-app-tracking-nearly-a-quarter-million-immigrants. European Commission. 2020a. “Watch: The EU Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion (2021-2027) explained.” European Website on Integration. December 17. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/news/watch-eu-action-plan-integration-and-inclusion-2021-2027-explained_en. European Commission. 2020b. “The EC reveals its new EU Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion (2021-2027).” European Website on Integration. November 24. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/news/ec-reveals-its-new-eu-action-plan-integration-and-inclusion-2021-2027_en. European Commission. 2021. “Governance of migrant integration in the Netherlands.” European Website on Integration. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/country-governance/governance-migrant-integration-netherlands_en. Fowler, Geoffrey A. 2021. “I checked Apple’s new privacy ‘nutrition labels.’ Many were false.” The Washington Post, January 29. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/29/apple-privacy-nutrition-label/. Hayes, Ben. 2018. “Migration and data protection: Doing no harm in an age of mass displacement, mass surveillance and ‘big data.’” International Review. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://international-review.icrc.org/sites/default/files/irrc_99_12.pdf. IOM (International Organization for Migration). 2019. “Workshop Report on Forecasting Human Mobility in Contexts of Crises.” ALNAP, October 22–24. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://www.alnap.org/system/files/content/resource/files/main/17022020%20FFO-IOM%20Workshop%20on%20Forecasting%20Human%20Mobility%20in%20Contexts%20of%20Crises.pdf. Ministère de l’intérieur. 2020. “Guide for asylum seekers in France.” September. Ministère de l’intérieur. 2022. “The Republican Integration Program.” January. Regina, Paola, and Emilio de Capitani. 2022. “Digital Innovation and Migrants’ Integration: Notes on EU Institutional and Legal Perspectives and Criticalities.” Mdpi, March 23. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/4/144. République Française. 2020. “Republican Integration Contract (CIR).” OFII, July. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://www.ofii.fr/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/cir_contrat_en.pdf. Rush, Nayla. 2018. “France: Integration of Migrants Begins with Shared Values.” Center for Immigration Studies, June 6. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://cis.org/Rush/France-Integration-Migrants-Begins-Shared-Values. The UN Refugee Agency. 2021. “Integration of Venezuelan Refugees and Migrants in Brazil.” ACNUR, March. Accessed [November 27, 2022]. https://www.acnur.org/portugues/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/5-pages-Integration-of-Venezuelan-Refugees-and-Migrants-in-Brazil-en.pdf. United States District Court Northern District Of California. 2022. “Complaint For Declaratory And Injunctive Relief For Violation Of The Freedom Of Information Act.” Just Futures Law, Community Justice Exchange, Just Futures Law, Mijente Support Committee v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Department Of Homeland Security, April 14. 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Originally published at Abeautifulresistance.org PHOTOS BY FABIO TEIXEIRA, taken in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. NOVEMBER 02: ‘Bolsonaristas’, supporters of the defeated president Jair Messias Bolsonaro, protest against the election results in front of the Eastern Military Command. Since the end of this year’s Brazilian elections, supporters of the losing candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, camp outside military headquarters around the country asking for an intervention against the results. They claim fraud, and invoke an article of the constitution which, according to their interpretation, would grant the armed forces the power to “guarantee order” and “uphold of the law” when “there is an exhaustion of the traditional forces of public security”. This exhaustion of traditional forces would be, to them, the president-elect being a convicted criminal, aided by forces of a new world order, against which aliens ought to intervene. Some of these supporters went as far as sending help signals to an alien general with the flashlights of their smartphones. It's no easy feat to track down the origins of the relationship between Bolsonaro supporters and the belief that aliens are actively involved in partisan politics. In 2018, The Guardian published an article calling Bolsonaro, a front running candidate for the presidency then, a “cult leader” who claimed to have had contact with aliens. However, the article provides no sources regarding when, how or why Bolsonaro made the claim of alien contact. The author of this piece is a man called Dom Phillips, who was killed this year in a high-profile assassination case, alongside another journalist, Bruno Pereira, while investigating a corruption case in the Amazon region. OCTOBER 28: At the debate between the 2022 presidential candidates of Brazil, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Messias Bolsonaro. Satanism Other more sinister and conspiratorial connections have been made, involving a satanic cult from the 80s accused of horrifying killings of poor boys. The woman who founded the cult, Valentina de Andrade, wrote a book called ‘God, the big farce’, where claims were made that, not only aliens are among us, but that they influence human births; one alien general and ship in particular are to soon come to earth and request help from good citizens to achieve a crucial (possibly political) task. Somehow, the name of Bolsonaro’s family lawyer, Frederick Wassef, shows up in documents about the court case against Valentina. He testified about how he bought Valentina’s book in 1988, which describes her experience meeting aliens and how God is not the Creator of the Universe, but instead a sort of Devil. This sparked Wassef’s interest, leading him to write her a letter and, upon her invitation, travel to several cities to visit certain spaces associated with the cult, including the cult’s headquarters in Buenos Aires. In these trips, he met Valentina and several people from her circle, and attended several courses and lectures, none of which, according to him, discussed anything besides the core principles of the group — no drugs, prostitution, abuse of trust or disrespect. This whole saga ends with it all being attributed to the Satanic Panic phenomenon, a period between the 80s and 90s where there was a spike in unverified cases of satanic rituals involving the murder and abuse of children. It’s widely known to have happened in the US, but Brazil, so it seems, also fell victim to it. Both of these countries have unexpected political ties — the 1980s marking the end of a Brazilian military dictatorship financed by the CIA, and the 2020s marked by the symbiosis between Bolsonaro, Trump, and their supporters. Now, the connection between these politicians, Satanism and Aliens falls right up QAnon’s alley. NOVEMBER 15: Thousands of supporters of Jair Bolsonaro gathered in protest against the October election results. QAnon In an ideological landscape plagued with conspiratorial ideas, it’s not hard to imagine a natural progression from the theories of QAnon to UFO Conspiracies. In 2019, Vice published about how, in the absence of Qs posts, “many of his followers have turned to the UFO narrative for their conspiratorial fix” — especially since Q himself had made a few posts about UFOs and several about Satanism — earning QAnon the reputation of bringing the Satanic Panic back. The merging of Aliens and QAnon being attributed to a conspiratorial “fix” is insufficient, though. The parallel between Satanism and aliens predates QAnon, and some researchers from the late 90s and early 2000s have explored a “striking” similarity between the reports of Satanist abuse and alien abductions, as shared in their respective support groups. Interestingly, the study which asks the question ‘Who Are the UFO Abductees and Ritual-Abuse Survivors?’ answers this by saying they are both overwhelmingly white. This answer begs another question of why a chunk of the white demographic leans towards these explanations for the political and social unrest in the world. In his 1997 research titled “Satanist abuse and alien abduction: A comparative analysis[…]”, John Paley speculates on yet another explanation — a spectrum of temporal lobe epilepsy and bad therapy. Considering that the vast majority of those who identify as abuse survivors or abductees are women; the framing of these reports as delusional (page 47) needs to be looked at from a more modern, intersectional lens. The truth is that no one fully understands or can provide a sturdy scientific explanation for these social phenomena. [LEFT] OCTOBER 28: Bolsonaro at the presidential debate. [RIGHT] OCTOBER 30: Brazil’s president, and candidate for reelection Jair Messias Bolsonaro, speaking to the press shortly after voting. The US Army and Navy There is, however, a more conservative (or at least less peculiar) explanation for the fact that Bolsonaro supporters are flashing their phones at an extraterrestrial ship and its general. The US government has been putting effort into destigmatizing the belief in UFOs (or UAPs, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.) In May, the US held a congressional hearing with the purpose of encouraging the general public, and specifically Navy officers, to collect data and report on unidentified flying (and under-water) objects. It's in the US Army's interest that new technologies remain classified. Upon unexplained sightings, it would benefit them if the public associates it with aliens and not with secret military technology being tested. For instance, it would be fair to assume that, by the time the “Predator drone” was introduced in the early 2000s, it had already been in testing for the better part of the previous decade (Perhaps not by chance during the X-Files era). In fact, at the hearing, it was stated that drones were tested to see if they served as an explanation to modern-day Navy Intelligence data on unexplained sightings. Some data was made public. Some was discussed in a classified hearing. And some they admit they have no explanation for, due to insufficient data or lack of understanding of this data. Nevertheless, the US Army is navigating a fine line between the need to have their own classified military technology kept secret, but also relying on reports from the population, and Navy personnel, on what could be secret technology from ‘non-allied’ forces. NOVEMBER 15. Protest in front of the Eastern Military Command. Technology There is a significant segment of the Brazilian population which believes certain technology we have today, such as the internet, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, motorcycles which don’t fall over, and so on, come from aliens. Someone recently told me, “humans are smart, but not that smart.” This relates to the theory that the pyramids couldn’t have been built by humans, so they must have been built by ancient aliens, and so on. Interestingly, we now live in the era of smartphones, which can be used to collect more data than ever on UFOs (or UAPs), expose classified military technology and who knows what else. And yet, there is doubt about whether the very object we hold in our hands to collect this data is of this world. The human experience is marked by the distress of realizing the exorbitant number of things we don’t understand about the universe, and all that we can’t control or predict. Not even this statement can be said with too much certainty, which is probably why we look for meaning in the most varied, unexpected places. That in itself can be a healthy coping mechanism for the absurdity and frailty of all life on Earth. Having said that, once we advocate for Democratic principles, or any basic mode of co-existing on a planet with 8 billion people, we are bound to face situations where certain groups take their theories to a Dictatorial level. When it comes to these people camped in front of Brazilian military headquarters, asking for the regression from Democracy to Military Dictatorship, believe it or not, our strategy has been to wait them out, and for panic to subside. Because an understandable or manageable line of political reasoning is even further from sight than this extraterrestrial ship they are trying to communicate with. ___ Written by Mirna Wabi-Sabi Photograped by Fabio Teixeira Edited by Nox Morningstar

Written by Mirna Wabi-Sabi and photographed by Fabio Teixeira. Originally published at Abeautifulresistance.org. Lula has won the Brazilian presidential election this year, but Bolsonaro supporters are taking to the streets demanding “federal intervention” to impede the “installation of communism” in the country. Nowadays, however, Lula advocates for a mixed economy, and the main arguments against him are that he is corrupt, and that he will foment organized crime and chaos. Communism here is used as a smoke screen to conceal fantasies of a military dictatorship come-back and of genocide of poor and black people — the demographic Lula seeks to include in the market economy. After questioning the election results, Gustavo Gayer, a politician, influencer and YouTuber, removed several videos he posted last week on YouTube, and had his Twitter account suspended. In the video called “Urgent! Lula voters have already begun to terrorize Brazil. Strong scenes”, the strongest scene according to him was a woman’s recording of a building being invaded across the street from her apartment, where she sounded clearly terrified. Gayer fails to indicate the context of such invasion, as is customary in his work. He has already been condemned for propagating Fake News twice this year, both times involving other politicians and Covid-19 policies. What the Brazilian electorate considers to be terrifying is at the core of the political polarization we are witnessing. While one housed woman (representing about half of the Brazilian voting population) is horrified at seeing a large group of poor people invade a building and put tarp on the windows — the other half is horrified at seeing widespread misery, homelessness, and hunger. The occupation of this building in particular was the work of a group called Struggle-for-Housing Front (Frente de Luta por Moradia — FLM), which exists for 2 decades and advocates for dignified housing rights in São Paulo. The building was empty, no one was assaulted or removed from their homes other than the occupiers themselves. In fact, the group published a letter from São Paulo’s Court of Justice stating that the police is the one acting criminally, if it 1) imposes physical or psychological violence against the occupiers, 2) restricts their access to water, food, electricity, lawyers and public defenders. What constitutes justified criminal behavior seems to be the point of contention here, as opposed to a stern anti-crime stance by good, lawful, Christian citizens in face of profane, lawless communists. Spreading fake news and police brutality, though unlawful, is tolerated or even applauded by Bolsonaro supporters, while the fight for dignified housing is described as such: “Crime has won. Our lives will be hell. Homicides will go up. [Drug] trafficking will go up. Criminals will reign. Because now their boss sits, will sit, at the presidential chair. Brazil is no longer a friendly place for good people, patriots, Christians… I don’t know what else to say. They have managed it and will destroy our country.” — Gustavo Gayer, on the (since removed) video “Urgent! Lula voters have already begun to terrorize Brazil. Strong scenes” on YouTube. From October 31st, with 462 thousand views in 6 hours. In a recent piece by Eduardo Barbosa entitled “Between bullets and mining: the life of indigenous peoples and black favela residents under the state of exception”, this tolerance for certain criminal behaviors by enthusiastic defenders of the rule of law is described as a State of Exception. The Bolsonaro regime is, or was, an extension and exacerbation of decades of “perverted policies” which enacted “recurrent massacres in favelas and the serial extermination of native peoples”. These demographics are a target because they undermine the power the State has over certain territories. In this sense, they are a threat to the State, and the desire to eradicate them trumps the patriot’s law-abiding rhetoric and becomes a well-established mechanism. There is a massive class of Brazilians which are repulsed by the poor and marginalized. They may think of ways to lift people out of poverty with economic incentives and charity, while others advocate for literal eradication, through the barrel of a gun. There is plenty to be questioned about the use of capitalist tools to solve an issue that capitalism not only creates but relies on to thrive — class disparity. Mass murder, however, is beyond questioning, it’s the abysmal, unbridgeable gap in the binary political landscape we are living in. Lula will not be able to single-handedly eradicate the nation’s hate towards the poor, or shift humanity’s course away from economic despair and global collapse. Expectations of his potential for change are high, but unrealistic. What we need is a shift in culture. The narrative Bolsonaro normalized has been shunned not only by the Brazilian electorate, but also by international communities. Still, the win was narrow, and supporters have ironclad convictions on both sides. In this sense, the ballot box isn’t a tool which produces rightfulness. Legitimacy and dignity are ideals we need to uphold, defend, and fight for every day, not only every 4 years. ____ Written by Mirna Wabi-Sabi and photographed by Fabio Teixeira

Originally published at Abeautifulresistance.org. “I believe that our human condition is defined more by the push-and-pulls of multiple, often contradictory commitments, than by linear strategies, limpid “worldviews” and direct cause-effect relations.” (Andrea Brigaglia) Before starting a conversation about Nigerian women in refuge in São Paulo, Brazil, it’s necessary to point out the gross negligence of global media in reporting any news about Nigeria. As a country with a booming economy, vast natural resources and vibrant culture, the occasional mentions of it are overwhelmingly within the context of Islamist terrorism. Boko Haram is indeed an urgent issue, it has been for decades and affects millions of people. While the organization overshadows all other news about Nigeria, it isn’t discussed with the level of urgency it deserves. Any genuine concern over the well-being of Americans in the aftermath of 9-11 ought to be matched with concern over the well-being of Nigerians in the continuing conflict with Boko Haram. At alarming rates, this conflict has been displacing vulnerable populations which are further silenced in their foreign countries of refuge. Brazil, despite its unmatched connection to Africa, is utterly unequipped to care for the influx of African refugees, especially Muslim Nigerian women. Upon arrival, these women are only further victimized by the weakness of Brazilian institutions and how oblivious the local population is to their plight. This leads to, of course, a new type of precarious living circumstances, which may not involve Boko Haram, but involves instead exploitative and clandestine working environments, as well as religious and social isolation. To understand the failures of counterterrorism efforts in Nigeria, perhaps we ought to look at the failure of counterterrorism efforts of a post-9-11 geopolitical paradigm ignited by the United States. Surely, ethno-religious conflict in that region is a result of arbitrary borders put in place by a British colonial regime. Hundreds of ethnic groups were lumped together as either Northern or Southern Nigeria, which were soon “amalgamated” for the sole purpose of facilitating accounting of the exploration the British crown was doing across the Niger River. Not to mention all the years of conflict before British occupation, at the peak of the slave trade. All of which laid a foundation of brutality framing the events to come at the turn of the 21st century. Boko Haram is a “franchise” of Al-Qaeda. According to Andrea Brigaglia, a former director of the Centre for Contemporary Islam, the “looseness” of the connections between these franchises has been both a weakness and a strength in Al-Qaeda’s strategy. On the one hand it facilitated the speed and vastness of its reach, but on the other it led to frail control over the distant factions. During the early 2000s, Islamist Nigerian groups were forming and dismantling, Boko Haram being an enduring example of one. Debates among Islamic leaders over how to handle life and public education under a western (Christian) Nigerian Government (arbitrarily crafted by a colonial power) were prominent. Due to the pressures caused by the ‘War on Terror’, “the absence of any exchange of arguments on the legitimacy of Al-Qaeda’s project of global jihad” is “curious and conspicuous”. One would imagine that such conversation or public stance in that period would be undodgeable, unless “to avoid threading any organic links with Al-Qaeda”. The United States’ ‘War on Terror’ has failed to eradicate or contain Boko Haram, and though they only occasionally become major news, the organization is consistently portrayed as horrific abusers of women and children. There are untold parts of this story, however. To portray the multiplicity with which Brigaglia’s defines the human condition, away from “limpid ‘worldviews’”, we ought to talk about Nigeria in multiple ways. Or as the brilliant Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie puts it, we must avoid “the danger of a single story”. PHOTOGRAPHY BY FABIO TEIXEIRA Brazil The story of Muslim Nigerian women in refuge in Brazil could be one of beauty and power, where the protagonist is not Islamist violence and suffering. And it can also be about the responsibility of the West to understand the complexities of these women’s lives, especially a life within a society built upon Christian dominance. In this photo series by the photojournalist Fabio Teixeira, about 20 Nigerian women refugees in São Paulo became vibrant protagonists of their own stories. They made their own clothes from fabrics they got at work, which is sewing for clandestine factories that come down as quickly as they pop up. Some of them work cleaning the mannequins on which these clothes are displayed. All these jobs offer no security or proper payment, yet these women can bring dignity to their humble homes in São Paulo, and in some cases care for very young children. In both Brazil and Nigeria, poverty is the main obstacle between Muslim Nigerians and the fulfilling dignified life we all deserve. To practice your religion in peace and provide for your family and loved ones is a right that should be granted to everyone, despite race, nationality, or gender. While we may discuss how the Nigerian government has failed to ensure this right to its peoples, we ought not to forget the failure of Western countries in treating Nigerians with the respect they would expect for themselves. The region which is now Nigeria has been exploited for hundreds of years, and religious violence has taken many forms, including in the form of islamophobia in Christian regions. What is the difference between saving and empowering? Have these refugees been saved from brutal regimes? Perhaps. But they are yet to find a place in this world where they can enjoy the humanity we all have the duty to uphold. If we vow to crack down on terrorism, we vow to support victims of terrorism as well. Is that what the West has been doing to Muslim Nigerian women? According to a publication by Anoosh Soltani at the United Nations University, “popular Western media outlets strongly perpetuate a hegemonic view of Muslim women”. By doing so, these women are confined to the categories of either oppressed, and/or “incompatible with the values and norms of the Western world”. In reality, there are multiple ways of practicing Islam, most of which would be against Western values to berate. Islam arrived in the region we now call Nigeria in the 11th century — a couple hundred years before European colonization. For many women, wearing the hijab was a statement against colonial rule. As such, head coverings worn by Muslim women have been a fierce symbol of belonging and resilience. In the history of Islam, Boko Haram is a recent and distinct phenomenon, born as a result of the pushes and pulls of history, global conflict, and the human condition. To do better, more of us in the West must show Muslim Nigerian women respect and provide them with the basic human dignity we are all entitled to. ______ MIRNA WABI-SABI is a writer, editor and director of Plataforma9. FABIO TEIXEIRA is a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker living in Rio de Janeiro. He has worked for The Guardian, Folha de São Paulo, the International Red Cross, Unicef, among others.

It is difficult to bring a critical eye to such a respected figure in the world of artistic, political and environmental activism. People are complex and therefore so are their artistic productions. I believe that Sebastião Salgado's work exists somewhere between the beneficial and the harmful. By Mirna Wabi-Sabi, originally published at A Beautiful Resistance. A selection of Sebastião Salgado's work is now on display at the 'Museum of Tomorrow' in Rio de Janeiro — black and white photos of the Amazon and indigenous peoples of the region, in a museum dedicated to sustainability financed by Shell. The photographer's artistic and professional skill is undeniable, as is the curatorship of his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, reasons why the overwhelming majority of public reaction to this exhibition is positive. As an icon of environmental protection, and a leftist activist since the Brazilian dictatorship, Salgado is admired around the world. But, when I saw the exhibition, I couldn't contain the discomfort with the exoticization and, in some cases, eroticization of indigenous people, with inappropriate texts, full of half-truths that try to contextualize these photos. All of this made me wish he had invested strictly in recording the landscapes, which are magnificent, and avoided merging native people with plants, birds, and monkeys. For a while I thought I was the only one feeling this discomfort, until I found a 2018 research by Marcelo Messina and Teresa Di Somma that reports exactly the problem—“the unnerving logic of colonialism.” “In addition to silencing the stories of violence perpetrated by European colonizers against indigenous people, camouflaging them under friendly exchanges between utensils and women, Salgado visually connects to these stories of violence, symbolically reproducing them.” The explanatory texts in the exhibition misrepresent reality through silencing. Military officer Cândido Rondon is described as the “greatest protector of indigenous people in Brazil”, silencing countless indigenous people who have fought for generations to protect themselves. When speaking of the marshal in this way, the truth is also silenced not only about the violence against indigenous people perpetrated by the military institution of which he was a part, but also the corruption and abuse in the indigenous protection institutions that he founded himself. Many say that he was a protector of indigenous people, but they must also recognize that protection for him meant assimilation into neocolonial Brazilian society. In that same paragraph about Rondon, the indigenous way of life is described as “bucolic”, and I believe this word represents the kind of romanticism we confuse with respect. ‘In relation to the countryside’ places indigenous peoples in contrast to urban, industrialized life. When we glorify the native connection to nature, we confuse exoticization with appreciation, for we simplify by romanticizing, and we also infantilize by reducing these civilizations to categories of 'pure' and 'naive'. There is nothing naive about the cultural legacy of the Amazonian indigenous peoples, there is naivety in us when we create this dichotomy between life in connection with nature and industrialized Christian life. Religion is silenced in the texts when indigenous spirituality is narrated as an anecdote, while the Christian gaze implicitly permeates all readings. In the text about the Suruwahá, it is said that there are high rates of suicide there as a symptom of mythology. They believe in “three heavens”, the best of which is for those who die at the most vigorous moment in life. The use of the word “suicide” alone is already a Western and Christian reading of the practice of “ritual death”. According to Kariny Teixeira De Souza and Márcio Martins Dos Santos, in the 2009 research “Ritual death: Reflections on the suruwaha 'suicide'", “cultural practices, such as the ritual death discussed here, misunderstood by 'Western' and, in a certain sense, Christian, conceptions prevailing in our society, feed our imagination, and so we think we see, right in front of us, beings devoid of humanity and meaning”. The word suicide can indeed be used when describing a serious public health issue among indigenous peoples as a result of the systemic psychic violence of hundreds of years. “The main risk factors for suicide [cited in 111 studies on 7 Brazilian indigenous ethnicities] were poverty, historical and cultural factors, low indicators of well-being, family disintegration, social vulnerability and lack of meaning in life and in the future”, reads an excerpt from the World Health Organization's 2020 Systematic Review. Mythology and spirituality are not factors in suicide rates among indigenous peoples, to say such a thing is a decontextualization of reality, and for what purpose? This question brings us back to the research of Marcelo Messina and Teresa Di Somma – the logic of colonialism is unnerving because it revels in its “stories of violence”, it is perverse. In Salgado's case, this desire is camouflaged in attractive images that frame nudity, especially female nudity, as pure and naive. Some argue that the sexualization of this nudity takes place in the gaze of the audience, not the photographer, but there are artistic choices Salgado made in which the sexualization is evident (note Figure 1 of the research). In many of the portraits, men are framed shoulder-up, and women are photographed with exposed breasts. This choice can happen to emphasize the differences between us and them, and the nudity of female breasts is indeed a difference. This in itself would be problematic, because the emphasis on difference exoticizes and objectifies. Eroticization possibly takes place in the gaze of the photographer and the audience, but certainly in the silencing of the history of sexual violence suffered by indigenous girls and women for centuries. Nowhere is the history of sexual violence addressed in the texts of the exhibition, but all over nudity is romanticized. Brazil suffered for hundreds of years with an “ethnic cleansing” that instrumentalized rape, the female nude was read as animalistic and inhuman. And that reality has not yet been resolved. “Salgado [makes use] of the body of the photographed subjects, to the point of objectifying and sexualizing”, and when contextualizing his work, he fails to point out that rape was a tool for genocide, and that indigenous women still suffer from the remnants of this tool today. It is difficult to bring a critical eye to such a respected figure in the world of artistic, political and environmental activism. People are complex and therefore so are their artistic productions. In the age of social media and cancellation, it is necessary to rescue the nuance and complexity of things that exist between good and evil, between supposed right and wrong. I believe that Sebastião Salgado's work exists somewhere between the beneficial and the harmful. There have been certain positive results, not only from his work in favor of environmental protection, but also from works that mobilize people to have empathy and affection for threatened peoples and forests on the brink of destruction. However, this is not the whole story. There's a lot of important stuff left unsaid, which has counterproductive and pernicious repercussions. When we propose to have a critical look at state violence against nature and indigenous peoples, this critical look cannot be selective, because if it is, we are not advancing in the way that we urgently need to advance. Is there room for what is beautiful? There is. But not at the expense of awareness of the brutality of the reality in which we live. _______ Mirna Wabi-Sabi is a writer, editor and founder of Plataforma9.