PURGE

Russian Jews head for Israel as Kremlin targets emigration group

Thu, August 18, 2022

By Rami Amichay

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - In the hours after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Ilya Fomintsev, a 43-year-old oncologist and director of a medical charity, took to the streets of Moscow to protest. He was arrested and sentenced to 20 days’ detention.

Fearing for his future, like many other opponents of the “special military operation” in Ukraine, Fomintsev decided to leave the country.

But as other opposition-minded Russians headed for Turkey, Georgia and Armenia, Fomintsev, on the advice of an old patient, began gathering documents proving his Jewish ancestry and made an appointment at the Israeli consulate.

"I am of Jewish origin and the only option for me to emigrate was to Israel," Fomintsev said in an interview at his new home in Tel Aviv.

“By and large in other countries, it is impossible to legalise yourself, it is also impossible to open bank accounts there or do business. Israel was the only option I had and I took advantage of the repatriation programme.”

Fomintsev was part of a renewed wave of Jewish emigration from Russia that, though not as large as earlier pre-revolutionary and post-Soviet exoduses, has seen tens of thousands of Russians make for the Jewish state.

According to Israeli government figures, 20,246 Russians emigrated to Israel between January and July 2022, with numbers spiking from around 700 per month in February to over 3,000 in March. By contrast, in the whole of 2019 only 15,930 Russians emigrated to Israel.

Most of the emigrants from Russia are Jews, but some may only have close relatives who are Jewish. Under Israel's Law of Return, a person needs at least one Jewish grandparent to be entitled to immediate citizenship. Around 600,000 Russians qualify.

The scale of the emigration seems to have taken the Russian authorities by surprise, and may have prompted retaliation by the Kremlin.

COURT CASE

In July, the Russian Justice Ministry requested the liquidation of the Moscow branch of the Jewish Agency for Israel, a non-profit organisation that helps foreign Jews looking to move to Israel. The first court hearing is scheduled for Friday at Moscow’s Basmanny District Court, which often handles politically sensitive cases.

The agency says its activities serving Jewish communities in Russia will continue in order to ensure they thrive and remain connected to their heritage.

Though the cases against the Jewish Agency formally relate to violations of Russian data protection laws, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai in July accused Russia of trying to punish Israel for its position on Ukraine.

"Russian Jews will not be held hostage by the war in Ukraine. The attempt to punish the Jewish Agency for Israel's stance on the war is deplorable and offensive," Shai said.

Though Israel has not provided Ukraine with military support, it has offered Kyiv humanitarian aid and diplomatic backing.

With the Jewish Agency facing closure, Russian emigration to Israel is likely to become more expensive in the absence of the generous financial support it provides to would-be Israelis.

In Fomintsev's case, the Jewish Agency paid for plane tickets for him, his wife and three children.

When Konstantin Konovalov, a 33-year-old graphic designer who left Moscow with his girlfriend and pet dog, arrived at Tel Aviv airport in April, the agency even ordered them a taxi to their new home.

Konovalov said: “I think closing the agency will impact less on Muscovites, who of course can afford to repatriate, and more on people from the regions, who don’t have the money.”

But according to Sofia Goldman, head of a Moscow consultancy that helps with emigration to Israel, the case against the Jewish Agency has not dampened interest in emigration, which continues to grow. Instead, the kind of requests she gets have shifted as the flow of emigrants continues.

"If earlier people who really had some kind of good documentary base for obtaining citizenship applied to us, today they call us more often with a question about checking their ancestry. They call with assumptions: 'I think my grandmother, my grandfather, my distant relative had Jewish roots, let's check that'."

For some emigrants who do make it to Israel, the realities of life overseas can come as a culture shock.

Konovalov, who is studying Hebrew five hours a day and enjoying working in Israel’s thriving start-up sector, said he was surprised at how far the Israeli banking and delivery sectors lag behind Russia’s.

“I don’t rule out going back if one day something changes in Russia. Moscow is still very important for me, and it’s hard to leave your hometown.”

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Alison Williams)

Russia compels religious leaders to show rapturous support for war


Thu, August 18, 2022 at 7:57 AM·5 min read

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia is seen before the Victory Day Parade in Red Square in Moscow, Russia June 24, 2020. The military parade, marking the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, was scheduled for May 9 but postponed due to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov - RC2IFH9E043QMore

During his three decades as chief rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt presided over a spectacular revival of Jewish worship, education and culture in a land where prejudice against his community has deep roots. Now the Swiss-born rabbi, who has just stepped down and left the country, says, “There is fear in the hearts of the Jews of Russia.” This is not just the anxiety many Russians share about the war in Ukraine. It is the fear that the authorities, having hitherto kept the lid on anti-Semitism, could unleash it—especially if Jewish leaders resist pressure to act as cheerleaders for the Russian army.

The rabbi recalls that before the war it was just possible for a religious group in Russia to maintain “correct but distant” relations with the authorities. But now clerics of all stripes are being told they have to support the invasion. In a carefully worded statement explaining his departure that was published last month, the rabbi said, “I could not remain silent, viewing so much human suffering.” However, he continued, “It became clear that the Jewish community in Moscow would be endangered by me remaining in my position.”

Every religious group in Russia is feeling the Kremlin’s newly Manichean line towards faith. Patriarch Kirill (pictured), the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, echoes official justifications for the war and has come up with some of his own. Lately he has followed Vladimir Putin in deploring the federal structure of the Soviet Union (which they say led to its break-up) and suggesting that any future Russian empire must be unitary, like that of the tsars. Hilarion Alfeyev, his Western-educated external affairs chief, who had held off from actively supporting the war, was abruptly demoted in June and dispatched to a job as a bishop in Budapest.



Far worse punishments await ordinary clerics who speak out against the war—or simply decline to call it a “special military operation”, as the government demands. Two Russian Orthodox clerics face criminal charges for using religious arguments to denounce the war. One of them, Ioann Kurmoyarov, has been jailed in St Petersburg since June after posting a video in which he said that anyone “not disturbed by what is happening in Ukraine” could hardly be called Christian.

The loyal segment of Russia’s Muslim leadership has perhaps outdone the Orthodox church in the zeal of its pro-war pronouncements. Talgat Tadzhuddin, a senior figure in Russian Islam whose rhetoric has always been fiercely anti-American, last month backed the Kremlin’s surreal claim to be engaging in the “denazification” of Ukraine. He said that the government should keep pursuing its war aims “so as to leave no fascists or parasites anywhere near us, because in future there may not be enough pesticide”.

He and other state-backed Muslim leaders have presented the battle against Ukraine as a holy war, implying that soldiers who are slain on the battlefield will go to paradise. This matters because soldiers from Russia’s ethnic minorities, including many Muslims, are playing an outsize role in the campaign.

With big local congregations apparently toeing its line, Russia’s government is probably now hoping that their links with co-religionists can help it promote its propaganda abroad. In May it succeeded in drawing Islamic entrepreneurs and officials to an annual meeting in the city of Kazan in Tatarstan, a Russian republic where a majority of the population is Muslim. Participants came from more than 70 countries, despite the war. Many governments sent greetings. These included Turkey’s, which is run by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a strongman in Mr Putin’s mould.

Maintaining diplomacy with Christians has proved somewhat more complex. Since the days of the cold war the Russian Orthodox Church has used the World Council of Churches (wcc), a forum based in Geneva, as a venue to offer the Kremlin’s view of the world. But the war in Ukraine has horrified Western churches. Rowan Williams, former leader of the world’s Anglicans, has called for the wcc to kick out the Moscow Patriarchate.

Next month Patriarch Kirill may meet Pope Francis on the sidelines of an interfaith gathering in Kazakhstan. The Holy See has strongly defended its determination to keep communicating with Russia’s spiritual leaders—a position that some Catholic and Orthodox prelates in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries lambast as hopelessly naive.

The Vatican’s ideal scenario is for the spiritual masters of western Christendom and Russian Orthodoxy to jointly press secular leaders to make peace. But according to Tamara Grdzelidze, a theologian from Georgia who used to represent her country at the Holy See, the Vatican may well be overestimating Patriarch Kirill’s influence. If he were to soften his line on Ukraine, he would probably not stay patriarch for very long.

© 2022 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.

From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/08/18/russia-compels-religious-leaders-to-show-rapturous-support-for-war

Mideast's Jordan River: Rich in holiness, poor in water

THE JORDAN CREEK, NO BAPTISMS HERE

MARIAM FAM
Thu, August 18, 2022 

A cow crosses the Jordan River near Kibbutz Karkom in northern Israel on July 30. Jesus is said to have been baptized in the river. (Oded Balilty / Associated Press)

Kristen Burckhartt felt overwhelmed. She needed time to reflect, to let it sink in that she had just briefly soaked her feet in the water where Jesus is said to have been baptized, in the Jordan River.

“It’s very profound,” said the 53-year-old visitor from Indiana. “I have not ever walked where Jesus walked, for one thing.”

Tourists and pilgrims come to the site from near and far, many driven by faith, to follow in Christ’s footsteps, to touch the river’s water, to connect with biblical events.

Symbolically and spiritually, the river is of mighty significance to many. Physically, the Lower Jordan River of today is a lot more meager than mighty.


By the time it reaches the baptismal site, its dwindling water looks sluggish, a dull brownish green shade.

Its decline, due to a confluence of factors, is intertwined with the entanglements of the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict and rivalry over precious water in a valley where so much is contested. Championing the transboundary Jordan’s revival without wading into the thicket of the disputes that have fueled its deterioration can be a challenge.

A stretch of the river, for instance, was a hostile frontier between once-warring Israel and Jordan; river water also separates Jordan on its eastern bank from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, seized by Israel in a 1967 war and sought by the Palestinians for a state.

“It’s a victim of the conflict, definitely. It’s a victim of people, because it’s what we did as people to the river, basically, and now adding to all this it’s a victim of climate change,” said Yana Abu Taleb, the Jordanian director of EcoPeace Middle East, which brings together Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli environmentalists and lobbies for regional collaboration on saving the river. “So it’s a victim in every way.”

EcoPeace has said for years that the Lower Jordan River, which runs south from the Sea of Galilee, is particularly threatened by decades of water diversions for agriculture and domestic use and by pollution. Only a tiny fraction of its historical water flow now reaches its terminus in the Dead Sea, not far south from the baptismal site that Burckhartt visited.

The diversions are one reason the Dead Sea has been shrinking.

Standing at the Jordanian baptismal site Bethany Beyond the Jordan, Burckhartt, a Presbyterian, said the river’s water felt cold on her skin, offering a respite from the sweltering heat around her. In the jumble of emotions, she grappled with, she could also feel sadness for the river’s dwindling.

“I am sure God above is also sad.”

___

The Bible says Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River.

The river’s eastern bank, modern-day Jordan, and its western one both house baptismal sites, where rituals of faith unfold, a reflection of the river’s enduring religious, historical and cultural allure.

The river holds further significance as the scene of miracles in the Old Testament; after years of wandering the desert, the ancient Israelites are said to have crossed the Jordan on dry ground after the water was stopped for them to pass.

At the Jordanian baptismal site on the eastern bank recently, a woman dipped her feet in the waters and then cupped some with her hands, rubbing it on her face and over her head. Others touched the river and crossed themselves or bent over to fill empty bottles.

Charlie Watts, a tourist from England, submerged a wooden cross — a gift and a blessing for his Christian mother back home. “I took a video ... so I can show her that it was true,” Watts said.

While he is not as religious as his mother, the 24-year-old still considered his visit to the Jordanian site special: “What made it surreal is to think that this is what started the world movement of Christianity.”

In an interview, Rustom Mkhjian, director general of the Baptism Site Commission in Jordan, spoke passionately about the Jordanian site’s claim to authenticity and its preservation as it was in the time of Christ and John the Baptist. UNESCO has declared it a World Heritage Site “of immense religious significance to the majority of denominations of Christian faith, who have accepted this site as the location where Jesus” was baptized.

“Every year we celebrate interfaith harmony, and among my happiest days in my life is days when I see Jews, Christians and Muslims visit the site and the three of them cry,” Mkhjian said. “The present spot where we are is a site with a great message needed: Let us build human bridges of love and peace.”

The Jordanian and West Bank sites both give visitors access to the river, where they come face to face, a narrow stretch of the body of water between them. An Israel flag at the West Bank’s Qasr al-Yahud serves as a reminder to those in Jordan that the river is a frontier separating the two worlds.

That site is also billed as where, according to tradition, Jesus was baptized. Jordan and Israel compete for these people’s tourism dollars.

Several people in flowing white robes waded in from the West Bank recently, posing in a semicircle for photos. Visitors in another group stood on riverbank steps or in the water itself as two men in black, apparently clerical attire, poured river water over their heads.

In the background some sang, their voices heard back on the Jordanian side:

“Oh, Brothers, let’s go down. ... Down in the river to pray.”

___

Such serene moments contrast with the military hostilities that have played out on the river’s banks as part of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The river’s history and its water have been as politically fraught as holy, and for decades land mines have lurked menacingly on banks that were once a war zone.

On the eastern bank, demining of the area where the Jordanian baptismal site now sits began after a 1994 peace treaty between Jordan and Israel.

On the West Bank, a team from the HALO Trust, a British American charity, has cleared mines from areas housing churches in the vicinity of the Qasr al-Yahud site as recently as 2020. The site itself had opened for the public years earlier after Israel cleared a narrow road to the river, while the area around the churches remained off-limits and frozen in time for decades.

Work began to clear those mines in 2018, but only after three years of building trust and getting onboard all involved, from Israeli and Palestinian authorities to several Christian denominations that own the churches and lands, said Ronen Shimoni, who was part of the HALO effort.

“Nothing is simple here in the West Bank,” Shimoni said.

___

It’s against that turbulent backdrop that EcoPeace Middle East has been urging regional collaboration on the Jordan between rivals who have long had every motivation to squeeze as much water as possible out of the river or its tributaries.

“Any fresh water left in the river would have in the past been seen as empowering the enemy. ... You take everything that you can,” said Gidon Bromberg, the group's Israeli director.

“There’s legitimate need for the water. ... Water is scarce,” he said. “But the conflict creates an incentive to take everything.”

The result is that the Lower Jordan’s annual discharge into the Dead Sea was estimated at 20 million to 200 million cubic meters compared to a historic amount of 1.3 billion cubic meters, according to a report published in 2013 by a U.N. commission and a German federal institute. Bromberg puts the current figure at no more than 70 million cubic meters.

“Israel, from a historical perspective, has taken about half the water, and Syria and Jordan have taken the other half,” Bromberg said. “The pollution that’s coming into the river is coming from Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli sides and a little bit also from Syria.”

Water use in the Jordan River basin is unevenly developed, the U.N.-German report said, adding that the Palestinians can no longer access or use water from the Jordan River itself. Syria doesn’t have access to the river but has built dams in the Yarmouk River sub-basin, which is part of the Jordan River basin, it said.

For Palestinians in the West Bank, the only way to see the Jordan River is to visit the Israeli-run baptismal site there, said Nada Majdalani, EcoPeace’s Palestinian director.

“The Jordan River in the past, for Palestinians, meant livelihoods and economic stability and growth,” she said. Now, she added, it has been reduced to an “ambition of statehood and sovereignty over water resources.”

The river’s decline, she said, is especially disappointing to elderly Palestinians “who remember how the river looked ... and how they used to go fishing, how they used to have a dip in the river.”

Bromberg said EcoPeace has been documenting the “lose-lose” nature of the river’s deterioration for all parties.

“From a Jewish tradition, you know, the river and its banks are a place of miracles,” he said. “Well, it doesn’t reflect a place of miracles in its current depleted state.”

___

In late July, the Israeli government approved plans to rehabilitate a stretch of the Lower Jordan, a decision described by Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg as “historic” and the beginning of a correction.

“For decades it was neglected and most of its waters were taken, and it effectively turned into a sewage canal,” Zandberg said in a statement. “In an era of climate crisis and a serious ecological crisis, there is double significance to rehabilitating the River Jordan and returning it to nature, the public, and hikers.”

Speaking by phone, Zandberg said the plan focuses on a stretch that runs in Israeli territory and reflects Israel’s improved water situation given its desalination program, which has left it much less reliant on water it has been using from the Sea of Galilee.

“Now, we’re actually more equipped to do it,” she said. “We have water."

She added she hopes the decision would showcase the river’s potential and pave the way for broader collaboration on the rest of the Lower Jordan as well as send a signal to Jordan that “we are committed ... to our mutual assets,” including the river. “It can provide a success story on that segment, and then it will enable more successful partnerships in the future.”

That’s something that hasn’t always come easily.

“Politics, sometimes, interferes and also budget issues and the trust ... between the parties,” Zandberg said.

A regional rehabilitation and development master plan announced in 2015 by EcoPeace and others was adopted by the Jordanian government but not by the Israelis or Palestinians due to outstanding “final-status” peace process issues, according to the group.

That plan said the lower part of the Jordan River will require at least 400 million cubic meters of freshwater per year to reach “an acceptable rehabilitation level.”

Creation of a trust fund to finance de-pollution projects — an effort that EcoPeace had viewed as less politically controversial — stalled after a 2017 diplomatic crisis between Israel and Jordan and amid years of strained ties under the government of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There have been signs of improved ties since.

Not everyone in the region welcomes, or trusts, EcoPeace’s calls for cooperation.

“Our job is tough. Our messages are challenged,” said Abu Taleb, the group’s Jordanian director.

“Because of having that, you know, Israeli chapter, we’re always accused of being ‘normalizers,’” or having normal relations with Israel, Abu Taleb said. That is a contentious topic, unpopular among many ordinary Arabs, citing factors such as Israel’s open-ended occupation of lands it captured in 1967 and a lack of a resolution to the Palestinian issue. "The water knows no borders,” Abu Taleb said.

Bromberg said he, too, has run into criticism from what he said was a vocal minority in Israel “inappropriately” branding their work as benefiting Jordanians and Palestinians at the expense of Israeli interests. “Sadly, there are people who think that if you’re working with the other side, you must be working for the other side exclusively,” he said.

Politics aside, the strain on some governments to meet water needs complicates calls to add water to the river.

Jordan, for instance, is one of the world’s most water-scarce nations, and its challenges are compounded by a growing population swelled by waves of refugees.

“We are under stress, so we don’t have a surplus to add to the Jordan River and to revive it despite the great importance of this to the Jordanians,” said Khalil Al-Absi, an official with the Jordan Valley Authority.

“Solutions require concerted [regional] effort and the international community’s” help, the Jordanian official said.

“We have many beautiful ideas for the Jordan River but there are limitations.”

Climate change threatens to exacerbate such problems. “The impact of the climate change is seriously influencing the water resources,” Al-Absi said.

According to the World Bank, the Middle East and North Africa region faces the greatest expected economic losses from climate-related water scarcity, estimated at 6% to 14% of gross domestic product by 2050.

Advocates, such as Bromberg, acknowledge that climate change makes a Jordan revival harder — but argue that restoring the river and its banks offers economic incentives.

“The climate crisis brings home the issue of urgency that rehabilitating the river is perhaps the only way to prevent further instability in the valley,” Bromberg said, “because it can create alternative revenues through tourism.”

For all the river’s challenges, Al-Absi said he remained optimistic. The alternative could be grim.

“If there is no water, people won’t come despite [the presence] of religious sites,” he said. “Water is life. Without water, there is no life.”

Fam reported from Bethany Beyond the Jordan and Amman, Jordan. Associated Press writer Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

 

Attacks on Brazil's indigenous people rose sharply in 2021, report says



Indigenous people protest during the International Indigenous People Day, in Sao Paulo

Wed, August 17, 2022 
By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Attacks on Brazil's indigenous people and invasions of their lands by illegal miners and loggers, mainly in the Amazon, increased dramatically in 2021, escalating an already "terrifying" situation, the Catholic Church's Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi) said on Wednesday.

In its annual report on violence against indigenous people, Cimi detailed a dramatic intensification of abuses in the third year of President Jair Bolsonaro's government, which has dismantled inspection and indigenous protection bodies.

Bolsonaro, a far-right nationalist, has encouraged the economic exploitation of indigenous reservations with new legislation and proposals to allow mining on indigenous lands, Cimi said.

"The invaders intensified their presence and brutality of their actions," and increasingly used heavy weapons to attack villages that resisted their advance, the report said.

With more than 20,000 illegal gold miners on the Yanomami reservation on the border with Venezuela, invaders have begun armed attacks against indigenous communities, causing a climate of terror and deaths, including of children, Cimi said.

In Pará state, where surging wildcat gold mining has destroyed forests and polluted rivers, invaders have attacked Munduruku community organizations and tried to prevent their leaders from traveling to demonstrations in the country's capital Brasilia, it said.

Bolsonaro's office did not respond to a request for comment.

There were 305 invasions into indigenous lands in 2021, compared to 263 cases the previous year, almost three times more than the cases reported by Cimi in 2018, when Bolsonaro was elected president.

There were 176 murders of indigenous people, six fewer than in 2020, which had the highest number of homicides on record.

Suicides of indigenous people rose to 148 last year, the highest ever recorded.

Cimi also reported cases of murders carried out with extreme cruelty and brutality, such as those of Raissa Cabreira Guarani Kaiowá, aged 11, and Daiane Griá Sales, 14, from the Kaingang people. Both indigenous girls were raped and killed.

The government's indigenous affairs agency Funai declined to comment, saying it had not seen the Cimi report.

Funai, created in 1967 to protect Brazil's 300 tribes, half of which live in the Amazon rainforest, said in a statement that it acts with environmental and law enforcement agencies to combat illegal activities on indigenous lands.

To run Funai, Bolsonaro appointed a police known for helping farmers in land conflicts with indigenous people.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; editing by Deepa Babington and Sandra Maler)

BOLSONARO'S 

Brazil govt. removes environment chief in possible reprisal


 Samuel Vieira de Souza, a retired Army colonel, has been removed from his position of director of the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, IBAMA. 

(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File) 


FABIANO MAISONNAVE
Thu, August 18, 2022 

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The administration of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has removed a top environmental official in a potential act of retribution, just days after he appeared in a report on illegal gold mining in the Amazon rainforest for the Brazilian television station Globo.

The dismissal of Samuel Vieira de Souza, a retired Army colonel and director of the environmental agency known by the Portuguese acronym IBAMA, was published Thursday in the nation's official gazette.

De Souza recently allowed a Globo television crew to accompany an agency operation against prospectors in the Yanomami Indigenous territory, and gave an on-camera interview. The piece aired Sunday on Globo's program Fantastico. Bolsonaro, who is running for reelection, has been an outspoken champion of fostering economic activity within Indigenous territories, particularly promising regulation of mining in areas where it is currently illegal.

It would be a “big coincidence” if de Souza were fired for any reason other than the Globo report, Alex Lacerda, head of the union that represents the nation’s environment officials, told The Associated Press.

The Globo segment denounced businessman Rodrigo Martins de Mello, a Bolsonaro backer who has been accused of involvement with mining on protected Amazon lands, which the president has repeatedly promised to legalize. De Mello, who is running for a seat in Congress, previously denied any wrongdoing through his lawyer.

But the Brazilian government gave a different explanation for de Souza's removal. The environmental agency said he will be part of a working group to fight international environmental crime, as a special advisor to the Ministry of Environment. U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry is one of the leaders of this initiative.

The working group was created during the Summit of the Americas in June in Los Angeles.

De Souza is one of several military officials named by Bolsonaro to key positions in the nation’s Indigenous and environmental agencies who had limited or no expertise in the fields. The president has called career environmental and Indigenous officials radicals and during his tenure their agencies have been defanged.

De Souza's removal could parallel an episode in April 2020 when Olivaldi Azevedo, another military officer, was dismissed soon after Globo aired a segment featuring an operation against land grabbers inside an Indigenous territory.

For years, Bolsonaro has accused Globo and several other mainstream media of unfair coverage that favors the opposition. In February 2021, he held up a large sign reading “GLOBO TRASH” as a crowd of his supporters cheered.

Lacerda, of the environmental officials' union, said in a phone interview that the retired colonel shouldn’t have been named to his position at IBAMA in the first place.

“Our struggle is for only environmental officials to occupy these positions. These are technical positions,” he said. “Since the government began ousting officials, Brazil has seen record-breaking deforestation.”

Bolsonaro this week launched his campaign for reelection, with the first-round vote just over six weeks away. On Aug. 22, he will appear on Globo’s nightly news program for his first sit-down interview with the network in years.

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

MEANWHILE.....

Bolsonaro Charges at Man Who Heckled Him in Front of His Home


Walter Brandimarte
Thu, August 18, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro tried to snatch the mobile phone of a young man who cursed at the conservative president in front of his home in Brasilia, where he frequently stops to greet supporters.

Video footage published by G1 website on Thursday shows the president leaving his car and lunging at the man who was holding up his phone, apparently to shoot a video, while hurling insults at the leader.

The president, who’s up for re-election in October, grabbed the man by the arm and collar before bodyguards intervened, throwing the heckler to the ground.

Bolsonaro’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brazil’s presidential campaign officially started this week amid growing polarization between supporters of Bolsonaro and his leftist challenger, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who’s leading the race.

Brazil's Bolsonaro grabs at heckler, tries to take phone


Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro attends a Holy Supper Service held by the Evangelical Parliamentary Front at the headquarters of the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia, Brazil, Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)


MAURICIO SAVARESE
Thu, August 18, 2022 

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro briefly grappled with a heckler and tried to snatch his phone on Thursday, underscoring possible challenges for the sometimes quick-tempered leader to stay disciplined on the campaign trail.

As Bolsonaro spoke to supporters outside his residence in the capital city of Brasilia, social media influencer Wilker Leão used his phone to film himself repeatedly shouting at the president, calling him “coward,” “bum” and the “darling” of a pork-barrel faction in Congress.

Bolsonaro first entered his car, but then reemerged and grabbed the man’s shirt and forearm while reaching for his phone. Security guards pulled Leão away.

The presidential campaign that kicked off Tuesday is expected to be an uphill battle for Bolsonaro, who trails former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in all polls ahead of the Oct. 2 first round vote.

A journalist from news website G1 published a video of Leão's comments and the subsequent altercation.

“Don’t film this, don’t film this,” Bolsonaro told his supporters as Leão was held by presidential security. “It is his right (to protest), but he was being impolite.”

Four minutes later, security allowed Leão to return to the scene and chat with Bolsonaro about politics. The two have spoken several times before, without incident.

“You can talk to me as much as you want,” Bolsonaro told Leão. The two spoke for five minutes until the president decided to go back to his car and leave.

Bolsonaro has had earlier confrontations, often with the press. In 2020, he told a journalist, “I want to punch you in the mouth" and once suggested he'd like to shoot supporters of the rival Workers' Party.

Mario Sergio Lima, a senior Brazil analyst at Medley Advisors, said the incident will weigh against Bolsonaro at a moment he could start his campaign in a more positive tone to pick up support.

“It was a very bad sequence for the president in electoral terms. It shows a lack of restraint and should be used against him by their opponent's campaigns,” Lima told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

MR LAWNORDER
Brazil federal police accuse Bolsonaro of COVID-linked scaremongering


Brazil's President Bolsonaro leads a motorcade rally, in Brasilia

Wed, August 17, 2022 

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's federal police on Wednesday accused President Jair Bolsonaro of discouraging mask use during the pandemic and falsely suggesting that people who got vaccinated against COVID-19 ran the risk of contracting AIDS.

In a document sent to Brazil's Supreme Court, a police delegate said Bolsonaro's effort to discourage compliance with pandemic-linked health measures amounted to a crime, while his effort to link AIDS with vaccination amounted to a misdemeanor.

The police asked Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is in charge of the probe, to authorize the police to charge Bolsonaro and others involved in the case.

In a social media livestream last October, the far-right president said, without presenting any evidence, that UK government reports had shown that people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 had developed AIDS.

Bolsonaro, who has declined to take the vaccine, was temporarily suspended from both Facebook and YouTube after the comments.

The police said additional steps were needed to conclude the investigations, including hearing from Bolsonaro.

The solicitor general's office, which typically provides legal representation for the president, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Ricardo Brito; Writing by Peter Frontini; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Lula eyes 'green' farm loans to tackle Amazon deforestation


Wed, August 17, 2022 at 5:22 AM·3 min read
By Lisandra Paraguassu

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Advisors to leftist Brazilian presidential hopeful Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are proposing subsidized "green" farm loans to spur planting of soybeans and corn on open pasture and reduce deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

The proposal, revealed to Reuters by a senior Lula advisor, is one of the clearest examples yet of how the former president has tried to court allies in the powerhouse agribusiness sector while promising more environmentally friendly policies.

"The ecological transition is a central axis for all our policies," said Aloizio Mercadante, who is coordinating the Workers Party (PT) platform. "We can open differentiated lines of credit to encourage migration to agriculture that sequesters carbon."

Most opinion polls show Lula with a double-digit lead over right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who rode a wave of rural support to office four years ago. Lula's entreaties to farm leaders have drawn concern from some environmental activists and met with disdain from powerful ag groups.

Under the proposed green credit program, Brazilian farmers could apply for cheaper, government-subsidized loans if they agree to meet targets for sustainable agricultural practices, Mercadante said.

The program would aim to encourage conversion of degraded pastures into crop-growing areas and also increase the use of greener, bio-pesticides in Brazil, the world's biggest supplier of soybeans, coffee and sugar among other food staples.

The green loans are similar to a subsidized credit program launched for the 2010/11 crop, in Lula's last year in office.

That program, now called ABC+, helped cut an estimated 170 million tonnes of net carbon emissions over the seven years to 2018, government information on the scheme said.

However, that only represents 2% of Brazil's total subsidized farm credit, or about 6 billion reais ($1.17 billion) in the current crop.

Lula's advisors see plenty of room to grow, eyeing an estimated 30 million hectares (74.1 million acres) of underused pastureland where ranching could be replaced by crops.

Farmers in Brazil's biggest grain state Mato Grosso would be prime candidates for the green loans, the advisors said, as the state boasts 11 million hectares of planted area and almost as large an area of degraded pastures.

In 2021, deforestation in Mato Grosso reached 2,300 square kilometers, according to Brazilian space research agency INPE.

Carlos Ernesto Agustin, an agribusiness entrepreneur who has been consulting on the PT's proposals, said the plan would boost agricultural output, reduce deforestation risks and improve Brazil's image abroad by encouraging a transition from ranching to farming.

"Why doesn't this migration happen?" he said. "Because it lacks an incentive ... a public financing policy."

Former Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira, who has also been advising Lula's campaign, said 35% of Brazil's livestock production is in the Amazon region, where productivity is low.

She said that land would be more productive with crops that would also sequester more carbon than the degraded pastures, without affecting meat processing.

However, Teixeira underscored that incentives for more sustainable agriculture were only part of the solution to reducing deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon, which has hit a 15-year high as Bolsonaro has cut back on environmental law enforcement.

"One thing is confronting deforestation. You need policies for command-and-control. Another thing is the low-carbon transformation of economic sectors," she said.

($1 = 5.1404 reais)

(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu; Writing by Ana Mano; Editing by Brad Haynes and Sam Holmes)

ANOTHER TRUMP WALL
Arizona's border wall delayed after 2 containers topple


This photo provided of Univision Arizona shows empty shipping containers toppled over Sunday overnight on the Mexico-US international borderline in Yuma, Ariz., on Monday, Aug. 16, 2022. An effort by Arizona's Republican Gov. Doug Ducey to use shipping containers to close a 1,000-foot gap in the U.S.-Mexico border wall suffered a temporary setback over the weekend when two containers stacked on top of each were somehow toppled over. The stacked pair of containers were righted by early Monday morning.

 (Claudia Ramos/Univision Arizona via AP)

ANITA SNOW
Tue, August 16, 2022

PHOENIX (AP) — An effort by Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey to use shipping containers to close a 1,000-foot gap in the U.S.-Mexico border wall near Yuma suffered a brief setback when two stacked containers somehow toppled over.

Claudia Ramos, a correspondent for the digital platform of Univision Noticias in Arizona, posted on her Twitter feed a photo she took Monday morning of the containers on their side. She said they fell on the U.S. side of the border.

No witnesses have come forward to say what happened Sunday night.

Ramos said contractors in the area told her that they believed the containers may have been toppled by strong monsoon winds.

But C.J. Karamargin, a Ducey spokesman, said that he doubted that hypothesis, adding that even though the containers are empty they still weigh thousands of pounds.

“It's unlikely this was a weather event,” said Karamargin, suggesting that someone opposed to the wall was to blame.

The stacked pair of containers were righted by early Monday morning.

“Clearly we struck a nerve. They don't like what we are doing and they don't want to keep the border open,” the spokesman said.

Officials with Ducey's office say they were acting to stop migrants after repeated, unfulfilled promises from the Biden administration to close the gap.

Federal officials have not commented on the state's actions, which come without explicit permission on federal land. State contractors began moving and stacking 60-foot-long, (18.2-meter-long) 9-foot-tall (2.7-meter-tall) shipping containers early Friday. Two other 1,000-foot (305-meter) gaps also will be closed off. The containers will be topped with 4 feet (1.2 meters) of razor wire.

Karamargin said that the Border Patrol informed the governor's office around midnight that the containers were toppled.

“Those weren't secured yet,” he said. “This happened before securing the containers to the ground. They will be bolted later and will be immovable.”

Judge limits privilege defense in AZ Mormon sex abuse case


AP Illustration by Peter Hamlin based on legal documents.

MICHAEL REZENDES
Thu, August 18, 2022

An Arizona judge overseeing a high-profile lawsuit accusing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of conspiring to cover-up child sex abuse has ruled that the church may not refuse to answer questions or turn over documents under the state’s “clergy-penitent privilege.”

Clergy in Arizona, as in many other states, are required to report information about child sexual abuse or neglect to law enforcement or child welfare authorities. But an exception to that law — the privilege — allows members of the clergy who learn of the abuse through spiritual confessions to keep the information secret.

Judge Laura Cardinal ruled on Aug. 8 that the late Paul Adams waived his right to keep his confessions secret when he posted videos of himself sexually abusing his two daughters on the Internet, boasted of the abuse on social media, and confessed to federal law enforcement agents, who arrested him in 2017 with no help from the church.

“Taken together, Adams’ overt acts demonstrate a lack of repentance and a profound disregard” for the principles of the church, widely known as the Mormon church, Cardinal said in her ruling. “His acts can only be characterized as a waiver of the clergy-penitent privilege.”

The lawsuit accuses two Arizona bishops and church leaders in Salt Lake City of negligence in not reporting the abuse and allowing Adams to continue abusing his older daughter for as many as seven years, a time in which he also abused the girl’s infant sister.

Cardinal issued her order, which the church is expected to appeal, after attorneys for three victims objected when the church refused to turn over disciplinary records for Adams, who was excommunicated in 2013. The victims’ attorneys also objected when a church official cited the privilege when refusing to answer questions during pre-trial testimony.

“The judge’s order applies to the church’s secret records and to what happened at the secret ex-communication hearing,” said Lynne Cadigan, an attorney for the three children who filed suit.

Cardinal’s order will require church official Richard Fife, a clerk who took notes during the excommunication hearing, to answer questions from the attorneys representing the Adams children. It will also require church officials to turn over records of the disciplinary council meeting.

The church has filed a legal motion asking Cardinal to delay implementing her order until it contests her findings with the Arizona Court of Appeals. Without the delay, church lawyers said, information it considers confidential under the clergy-penitent privilege would be released to attorneys for the Adams children and, potentially, the public.

“The privileged information will have been disclosed and it would be impossible to ’un-ring the bell,” the church said.

Church officials did not return calls from the AP seeking additional comment on the ruling.

In a motion filed earlier this year asking Cardinal to dismiss the case, the church said its defense “hinges entirely” on whether bishops John Herrod and Robert “Kim” Mauzy were required to report Adams’ “confidential confessions” to civil authorities, or were excused from reporting requirements under the privilege.

The lawsuit was filed by three of the six children of Paul and Leizza Adams, and was featured in a recent investigation by the Associated Press. The AP found that a church “abuse help line” used by Herrod and Mauzy to contact church attorneys is part of a system that can easily be misused by church leaders to divert abuse accusations away from law enforcement and instead to church attorneys who may bury the problem, leaving victims in harm’s way.

The “help line,” AP’s investigation found, is housed within the church’s risk management department, where church officials work to protect the church from financial losses and lawsuits that could mar the church's reputation.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement late Wednesday that said, “The AP story has significant flaws in its facts and timeline, which lead to erroneous conclusions.”

The statement, which did not dispute any facts in the story, said the help-line “has everything to do with protecting children and has nothing to do with cover-up.”

The investigation was based in part on nearly 12,000 pages of sealed documents from an unrelated West Virginia child sex abuse lawsuit against the church, which provided the most detailed and comprehensive look yet at the so-called help line, which has been criticized by Mormon abuse victims and their attorneys for being inadequate to quickly stop abuse and protect victims.

The sealed records, including sworn statements by high church officials, revealed that all records of calls to the help line are destroyed at the end of each day. They also showed that Mormon church officials consider all calls referred to attorneys with the firm Kirton McConkie, which represents the church, to be confidential under the attorney-client privilege.

During an interview last month, William Maledon, an Arizona lawyer who represents the church in the lawsuit, said the fact that Adams posted videos of his abuse of both daughters on the Internet and boasted about the abuse on social media would have no bearing on the case because neither Herrod nor Mauzy knew that Adams posted the pornographic material.

“The bishops didn’t know anything about that,” Maledon said, adding that Herrod and Mauzy said as much in sworn declarations submitted in the case.

But Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre, who has opened a criminal investigation into the church, told the AP months ago that he believes Adams waived any confidentiality rights under the clergy-penitent privilege by posting his abuse and discussing it online.

Adams “disclosed his actual crime to thousands of people on the Internet,” McIntyre said, “so there’s an implied waiver there.”

—

To contact the AP’s investigations team, email investigative@ap.org.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Myanmar’s government-in-exile deserves more help

Thu, August 18, 2022 

Five years ago this month, Myanmar’s army launched a pogrom against Rohingyas, a Muslim minority, that ended up pushing 750,000 of them out of the country. The unlucky refugees are still rotting in camps in Bangladesh. The Rohingyas that remain in Myanmar, meanwhile, suffer systematic segregation and discrimination (see Asia section). Not content with persecuting a minority of its citizens, however, the army has since overthrown the civilian government and brutally suppressed nationwide protests against the usurpation of democracy. That has spawned violent resistance, which the army is attempting, without success, to crush.

Few regimes around the world are more blood-stained and repugnant. Yet few regimes are also harder to influence. Western countries have suspended aid and Western businesses have divested, for the most part. The economy shrank by 18% last year, by the World Bank’s estimate. But the army does not care about the immiseration of its citizens. In fact, it does not care about them full-stop: its scorched-earth campaign against the rebels fighting for democracy has killed thousands of innocent bystanders and displaced about 1m people.

The ferocious response to the insurgency gives an inkling not just of the army’s brutality, but also of how determined and resilient Myanmar’s democrats are. Ordinary villagers, with scant weapons or training, have formed militias in many places. Fighters from the ethnic majority, the Bamar, have joined forces with ethnically based insurgencies around the country’s fringes. Although few of these groups have the strength to battle the army head-on, they are carrying out raids and ambushes all over the country. The army controls barely half of Myanmar’s territory and is slowly losing ground. And all this has been achieved with almost no outside help. A bit more cash and encouragement would provide the opposition with a huge boost.

The lack of help is partly because Myanmar does not seem like a priority, amid the war in Ukraine, the ailing state of the world economy and umpteen other crises. But mainly it reflects how little hope there initially seemed of dislodging the army. The near-universal assumption was that all dissent would be easily crushed. Western governments discouraged violent resistance to the coup, on the ground that such bloodshed would be futile. They also doubted the opposition’s ability to unite.

That view turns out to have been flat wrong. mps from the former ruling party quickly formed a shadow government. Despite their reputation for Bamar chauvinism, they included representatives from ethnic-minority parties. They even promised to treat Rohingyas better. The National Unity Government (nug) commands the loyalty of the vast majority of Burmese, including most of the resistance forces. In some areas, it has managed to form local administrative bodies and runs schools and clinics. The army, meanwhile, has proved itself incapable of defeating the insurgency.

But the nug is desperately short of cash. It needs support—and especially money—from the West. If America recognised it as the legitimate government, the nug could claim the $1bn in Burmese assets that America froze after the coup. Such a gesture would have the added benefit of showing that the outside world is not willing to acquiesce by default to the army’s atrocities.

None of this guarantees the military regime’s demise, of course. It retains the overwhelming advantage in money and firepower. It still has a powerful ally in China. But the resistance has defied the odds for 18 months. It would not take much to shift the odds in its favour.

© 2022 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.

From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/08/18/myanmars-government-in-exile-deserves-more-help