Monday, June 23, 2008

Surprise! 'Lost Amazon Tribe' Wasn't Really Lost


Remember this crew of alleged lost tribal members in the Amazon?

Well, it was bogus. Figures, of course, it was some moonbat with a cause.
THE man behind photos of warriors from an "undiscovered" Amazon tribe that were beamed around the world has admitted it was a publicity stunt aimed at raising awareness of logging.
Clearly, nobody had been aware of logging before this. Thanks for tipping us off.
Indigenous tribes expert, José Carlos Meirelles, said the tribe had been known of since 1910, and had been photographed to prove that they still existed in an area endangered by logging, The Guardian reported.

Mr Meirelles, who was working for Funai, the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency dedicated to finding remote tribes and protecting them, said he spent three years gatheiring [sic] "evidence" about the tribe, and then planned the publicity to protect them from losing their habitat.

Mr Meirelles, 61, said the "chance encounter" that produced the famous photographs was no accident.

"When we think we might have found an isolated tribe, a sertanista (tribe expert) like me walks in the forest for two or three years to gather evidence and we mark it in our (global positioning system)," he told Al Jazaera in his first interview since the images were released.
No doubt like most whacked-out scam artists, this clown will probably become a celebrity among the awareness crowd.

Of course, most observers were suspicious when it was noticed the tribesmen had a political agenda.

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