Did yall see this?
People tell me it was censored in the States. I only found it in other languages
(like french, italian, in portuguese).

Brazilian Minister of Education CRISTOVAO BUARQUE is said to
have given this answer (more likea great little speech!) to an American who
asked him a very popular American environmentalist question:  What did he t
hink about making the Amazon an international territory, and taking it off
Brazil’s hands, in order t o protect it (since it’s important to the ENTIRE
planet), etc.  The questioner supposedly said that he’d like the
minister to answer as a humanist and not as a brazilian.  Frankly the
answer is so good, I think this is a hoax, but if dude really kicked it like
this to him, off the top of his head,
wow!

So the minister said, more or
less:

"Indeed as a Brazilian, I have to say I am
against the internationalization of the Amazon.  As much as our
government may have mismanaged it, it’s still OURS.  As a humanist,
thinking about the environmental destruction in t he Amazon, I can imagine that
we would internationalize it since it is important to all humanity.  If,
ethically, the Amazon should be internationalized, let us also internationalize
oil reserves.  Oil is as important to the well-being of humanity as the
Amazon and yet the owners of the reserves retain the right to control them and
control prices.  In the same way, the financial capital of rich countries
should be internationalized.  If the Amazon is a reserve for all human
beings and it cannot be burnt at the will of the country that owns it, then
burning it is as terrible as is unemployment resulting from the arbitrary
decisions of global corporations.  We cannot burn financial reserves of
entire countries either.  Before the Amazon, I’d actually like to see the
internationalization of all great museums.  The Louvre cannot belong only
to France.  Each museum holds the best pieces produced by human genius.
Those can’t be left to the whims of one owner or country.  During the
Millenium Forum here at the UN some diplomats had trouble entering the
border.  I think that New York, as the home of the UN should be
internationalized.  Manhattan should belong to all humanity, as well as
Paris, Venice, Rome, London, Rio, each city with its beauty and world history,
should belong to the entire world.  If the US would like to
internationalize the Amazon rather than leave it to the Brazilians to manage,
let us also internationalize

the nuclear arsenal of the US.  The US has
actually already demonstrated its willingness to use these weapons and cause
destruction thousands of times worse than the burning of florests in
Brazil.  In the presidential debates in the US the candidates proposed
internationalizing forrests in exchange for debt. Let us start to use that debt
to ensure that every child in the world can EAT and go to school.  Let us
internationalize children, treating all of them the same, independent of country
of origin, as belonging to the entire world.  They deserve it more than the
Amazon.  When world leaders treat poor children of the world in that way
they will no longer allow that they work when they should be
studying or that they die when they should
live.

As a humanist I accept the idea of internationalizing
the world.  But as long as the world treats me as a Brazilian, I will fight
so that the Amazon remain ours.  Only
ours."

THE JANINE TRANSLATION IS MORE LIKE
PARAPHRASING!