Are These The World Leaders Of The Future?

Brazil's 38th president is removing protection for its rain forests.

According to the last issue of The Week, Brazil's newly elected right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, plans to make the Amazon rain forest far more accessible to farmers and loggers. This is sure to further threaten the future of a huge area what has been called the "lungs of the planet".

Citing an editorial in Brasil.ElPais.com, nearly 13 percent of the country, actually an area the size of Texas and California combined, is set aside for native tribes, which includes much of what is the largest rain forest in the world. One of Bolsonaro's first acts as president was to take away the right of the National Indian Foundation to decide matters regarding lands claimed by indigenous people and to turn that power over to his agriculture minister, "a fierce advocate of farmers' rights."

(It should be noted that one of the reasons there is so much demand for farm land in Brazil is to meet the demand for cheap beef for our our fast food cravings, but that's another story.)

Mr. Duterte is the 16th president of the Philippines.

In the same issue of The Week there is a column from the Manila Times about Philippine's new president, Rodrigo Duterte, who recently boasted, in one of his frequent rambling speeches, that when he was thirteen he groped their family's housemaid while she was asleep.

Instead of public outrage at the president's callous admission, the Times reported that "rationalizations and justifications poured like rain" from Duterte's supporters. The column went on to state, "We will lose respect for the office and for ourselves if we can't keep our moral bearings under this immoral president."

But are these just signs of things to come?