FLORIDA FUHRER
DeSantis Cracks Down on Teachers’ Unions, Proposes Limits on Leader Pay, Dues Collection

Ryan Mills
Tue, January 24, 2023


Florida governor Ron DeSantis is taking aim at the state’s teachers’ unions, releasing a series of proposals this week that would rein in their power by limiting how they can collect dues, where they can promote their union efforts, and how much they can pay their leaders.

The Republican governor’s proposals targeting the unions are part of a broad legislative push he’s making around education that also includes an additional $1 billion in state funding to raise teacher pay, establishing a teacher’s bill of rights, and further reducing school-board term limits. He announced the proposals on Monday at a Jacksonville charter school.

As part of a series of proposals he has deemed “Paycheck Protection” for teachers, DeSantis is calling for a ban on automatic payroll deductions for public employee union dues, requiring public employees who join a union to sign a form acknowledging that Florida is a right-to-work state, and requiring unions to notify members every year of their membership costs.


DeSantis said unions often “don’t even tell you how much is being deducted. That’s not right.”

“We believe that a school union has a responsibility to notify the members of the cost of membership,” he said during the Jacksonville announcement.

DeSantis is calling for lawmakers to prohibit teachers’ union members from distributing union literature at work, and a ban on union officials doing union business while on the clock for their taxpayer-funded jobs. “We also believe that you should not have the school be a focus of school-union politics, and politicking, and handing out literature, and doing all that stuff,” he said. “You do that on your own time, not on the public’s time.”

DeSantis’s proposals include new requirements that teachers’ unions provide financial reports to the state annually, that they submit annual financial statements certified by an independent Florida-licensed Certified Public Accountant, and that they represent at least 60 percent of the employees eligible for representation, up from 50 percent now. He’s also taking aim at union-leader pay, proposing a requirement that no union leader can be paid more than the union’s highest-paid member. He claimed that there are some union leaders “making huge amounts of money, and the teachers are making half of that amount of money. How is that fair?”

The Florida Education Association responded Monday, saying in a prepared statement that DeSantis “continues to show that anyone who is not in lockstep with him will face his ire.”

“While Governor DeSantis seeks to punish and divide, we seek to unite,” Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar said. “We respect the voices of parents, teachers, school boards, administrators and students. All have a crucial role in providing our students with the best possible education, and students’ needs must be our focus. Our schools don’t need to go back to 1950; we need to move forward toward 2050.”

In addition to his proposals targeting teachers’ unions, DeSantis also proposed what he deemed “teacher empowerment” or a “teachers’ bill of rights.” The bill of rights would protect teachers from litigation if they take action to restore order in a disrupted classroom, clarify that joining a teachers’ union is optional and that teachers won’t face repercussions if they don’t join, and allow teachers to file administrative and civil complaints against a school board or district leaders who direct them to violate a Florida law and discipline them for following the law.

Last year, DeSantis signed laws that banned the teaching of critical race theory in Florida schools and that prohibited teaching young children about sexual orientation and gender identity. He said Monday that “there may be certain school boards or school districts who don’t necessarily like some of those policies.” But, he added, that teachers “should not be put in a situation where they are being told they have to violate clear policies of the state of Florida that are enacted in statutes.”

“At the end of the day, we’re a state, and a country, and a society based on the rule of law,” DeSantis said. “So, if you don’t like the policies enacted by the legislature, signed by the governor, you have an election every two years where you can go make your voice heard.”

DeSantis also called for school board term limits to be reduced from 12 years to eight, and for lawmakers to amend the state constitution to allow for school-board candidates to run with a political party affiliation to increase transparency. School board races in Florida are currently non-partisan, but that has led to some confusion he said.

“What we’ve seen over the years is, you’ll have counties in like southwest Florida, voted for me by 40 points, and yet they’re electing people at the school board who are like totally the opposite philosophy,” DeSantis said. “But those people are running, saying they share the philosophy, then they get on and do something different.”

DeSantis also called Monday for an additional $1 billion in funding to continue increasing teacher pay in the state. He said that would be on top of the roughly $2 billion increase that has already been approved since he’s been governor.

DeSantis said the increased pay has helped to recruit and retain good teachers. The Florida Education Association pushed back, alleging that Florida still isn’t paying teachers enough. “Teachers and staff in our public schools struggle to pay rent, homeowners insurance and other bills because their pay is so low, just like so many Floridians,” Spar said. “Teachers and staff are leaving at an alarming rate, in large part due to the policies implemented under Governor DeSantis.”

DeSantis, who cruised to re-election in November by a nearly 20-point margin, is widely believed to be considering a 2024 presidential run. Education is one of the areas where he may be looking to win legislative victories to burnish his credentials as a conservative champion. Republicans on the national stage have attacked teachers unions for their role in injecting K-12 curricula with progressive notions about race and gender, and their insistence on conducting school remotely long after it became clear that Covid posed a minimal threat to children.

Florida has made headlines recently for rejecting a pilot Advanced Placement course in African-American studies. Critics of the course argue that the last section dealing with contemporary political and cultural controversies is dominated by mostly hard-left voices, and omits conventional liberal and conservative perspectives.

DeSantis stood by the decision to reject the course on Monday, telling reporters that it advocates for radical political positions and attempts to indoctrinate students, noting that one section of the course is focused on “Black Queer Studies.”

“Who would say that an important part of black history is queer theory? That is somebody pushing an agenda on our kids,” he said. “And so, when you look to see, they have stuff about intersectionality, abolishing prisons. That’s a political agenda.”

Last week, Florida House Speaker Paul Renner unveiled a bill that would make almost all Florida students eligible for a school voucher that could be used to pay for a private school or home school education. On Twitter, Renner called House Bill 1 the “the largest expansion of school choice in the history of our state.”


Renner’s bill comes on the heels of last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Carson v. Maine that it is unconstitutional to exclude religious schools from state tuition-assistance programs. Renner told National Review last year that school choice-expansion is a priority of his, including expanding eligibility for existing voucher programs and making education-savings accounts available to students statewide. With Florida being the third most populous state in the nation and the world’s 15th largest economy, he said, the state has “the capacity to create a really exciting market that will induce a lot of education innovators to come in and get great educational results.”

 

ANTI-WOKISM THE NEW RED SCARE
Florida plans to ‘curb’ diversity efforts at colleges, universities, Nunez says

Divya Kumar, Tampa Bay Times
Tue, January 24, 2023 

Florida will be looking to “curb” diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the state’s colleges and universities, Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez said Tuesday, offering a preview of what higher education leaders can expect from lawmakers during the upcoming legislative session.

Her statements, delivered at a state Board of Governors meeting in Miami, marked the first time the DeSantis administration has explained why its budget office this month requested a detailed accounting of how much colleges and universities spend on such efforts.

“I can give you a few insights as to what we’re working on coming this session,” Nunez said before mentioning a statement last week from the presidents of Florida’s 28 state colleges. It pledged to root out any policy or practice that “compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts.” The lieutenant governor then suggested that effort would soon extend to the state’s 12 universities.

“I believe (the colleges are) looking at ways to curb those initiatives, and I think we’ll look at ways to more broadly curb those initiatives as well,” she said.

In a speech that earlier praised the university system for its high rankings and relatively low student debt, Nunez said “real forces” were “undermining the good work taking place” at the state schools.

“These new threats that are creeping and taking hold are things that we need to face,” she said. “I believe one of the biggest threats that’s infiltrating our universities is a permeating culture — one might call it woke culture, one might call it woke ideology, one might call it identity politics.... We don’t need to get into all the names, but I do believe that some of these issues are taking hold. The policies they advocate are based on hate and based on indoctrination.”

Nunez also previewed proposals to review general education courses and give university presidents more control over faculty hiring.

“We want to further empower our presidents to make sure that they own the responsibility of hiring individuals to work in their campuses and make sure it stays in the hands of the leader of the institution more so than in hidden hiring practices and faculty committees,” she said.

The legislative session begins March 7.

In their responses to the governor’s budget office, the 12 public universities said they collectively are spending about $34.5 million this year on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. About $20.7 million came from state funds.

The University of South Florida reported the highest expenses at $8.7 million, though only $2.5 million came from state funds. Money was spent on initiatives such the university’s supplier diversity program; non-mandatory trainings; a list of 10 courses including “Theatre Appreciation” and “Language in the USA;” and funding for its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Florida A&M University had the highest amount of state funds used at $4.1 million. The school’s expenses included a research center and museum for Black archives and its Center for Environmental Equity and Justice, created by the Legislature in 1998.

Shortly after those responses were submitted, the governor’s budget office sent out a second request requiring universities to report details on any procedures and treatments they had offered related to gender affirming care since 2018. The request did not specify how the information would be used.

Divya Kumar is a higher education reporter for the Tampa Bay Times, in partnership with Open Campus.

'Black history is not inferior': Black leaders object to Florida's 'culture war against African Americans'

Marc Ramirez and Douglas Soule, USA TODAY
Tue, January 24, 2023 at 9:03 AM MST·6 min read

Black religious leaders, including the man who said the closing prayer at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ first inauguration, sent a message to the state Monday over its rejection of the College Board's new AP African American Studies course.

"Black history is not inferior, and Black history does not lack educational value," said Rev. Dr. R.B. Holmes Jr., pastor of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Tallahassee, a former Republican.

In a letter earlier this month, the Florida Department of Education told the College Board – which creates and oversees Advanced Placement courses and exams as well as the SAT and other standardized tests – its African American studies course “significantly lacks educational value."

“In the future, should College Board be willing to come back to the table with lawful, historically accurate content, FDOE will always be willing to reopen the discussion,” the letter said.

The letter also called the course “inexplicably contrary to Florida law" but did not explain how.

Holmes and the others gathered Monday in Tallahassee promised additional protests and rallies, including one later this week set to include civil rights attorney Ben Crump and another next month featuring the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Opinion: Ron DeSantis is fulfilling his promise to oust the 'woke mob.' Is he taking it too far?

They also cited a litany of frustrations some Black leaders have voiced with the DeSantis administration.

Rev. Dr. Joseph Wright, pastor of Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church, spoke about DeSantis’ decision to get rid of two Black-led congressional delegations. Tallahassee Commissioner Curtis Richardson decried the governor’s “culture war against African Americans.” Richardson accused him of voter suppression and blasted school voucher extensions that he said would destroy public education.

“We’re here today to tell the governor we’re not going to stand by and just let these things happen to African Americans in our state,” Richardson said.

Holmes said the group aims to create a statewide movement, one he hoped would spark positive conversations about the value of “learning about all people’s history, and not at the expense of erasing and eliminating Black studies.” Holmes became an independent after taking issue with the governor’s handling of COVID-19 – such as penalizing mask mandates.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs his "Stop Woke" bill in last year.

Rejection part of DeSantis' reshaping of Florida education system

DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, has spent much of his time in office reshaping the state’s education system and fighting against what he calls “woke” politics, signing bills restricting the discussion of race, gender and sexual orientation in schools.

More: DeSantis aims to create 'Hillsdale of the south' with conservative overhaul of a Florida college's board

Such efforts have been embraced and parroted by Republican leaders and candidates across the country and by parent groups such as Moms for Liberty, a group born of frustrations over mask and vaccine mandates that has tapped concerns about “parental rights” and “indoctrination” of kids to gain influence while inspiring armies of moms nationwide to take up its crusade.

On Monday, DeSantis spoke publicly about the state's rejection for the first time. He said the state is blocking the course because it included the study of “queer theory” and political movements that advocated for “abolishing prisons.”

“That’s a political agenda,” DeSantis said during a press conference. “That’s the wrong side of the line for Florida standards. We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them when you try to use Black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes.”
What is the AP African American Studies course?

The College Board’s AP African American Studies class has been in the works for more than 10 years and launched as a pilot this school year, debuting at 60 high schools across the country.

Additional high schools will have the chance to offer it during the 2023-24 school year, and the course will be available at all schools the following year, the College Board has said.

People protest outside the offices of the New Mexico Public Education Department's office in 2021 after the education department proposed changes to the social studies curriculum that critics describe as a veiled attempt to teach critical race theory. Supporters say the new curriculum, which includes ethnic studies, is "anti-racist."More

The course emerges in the midst of a national clash over the teaching of race-related curriculum and battles over critical race theory, a concept examining how racism permeates American institutions. The concept isn’t traditionally taught in public schools, but the legacy of slavery is.

More: First AP African American Studies class to be offered in some high schools this fall

The White House criticized Florida's rejection of the course Friday.

“It is incomprehensible,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, responding to a question by USA TODAY. “Let’s be clear. They didn’t block AP European history. They didn’t block our art history. They didn’t block our music history.”

"When you think about the study of Black Americans, that is what he wants to block," she said.

‘Incomprehensible’: White House slams DeSantis administration for rejecting AP Black studies

Last week, after the state's letter to College Board became public, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. shared a list of ways the course violates Florida law on Twitter.

The list cites references in the AP course to movements for Black lives, Black queer studies and the reparations movement.

"Despite the lies from the Biden White House, Florida rejected an AP course filled with Critical Race Theory and other obvious violations of Florida law," he said in his tweet. "We proudly require the teaching of African American history. We do not accept woke indoctrination masquerading as education."



How did the College Board respond?

In outlining its standards for Advanced Placement courses on its website, the College Board said it opposes both censorship and indoctrination, adding that such courses are designed to "foster an open-minded approach" while enabling students "to develop as independent thinkers and to draw their own conclusions."

In response to Florida's letter, the College Board noted that as with all new AP courses, its African American Studies course is being subjected to "a rigorous multi-year pilot phase" in which feedback is collected from teachers, students, scholars and policymakers.

"We will publicly release the updated course framework when it is completed and well before this class is widely available in American high schools," the College Board said. "We look forward to bringing this rich and inspiring exploration of African-American history and culture to students across the country."

More: Schools are becoming hotbeds of political conflict – especially in purple districts
How are some parents reacting?

In a statement, the National Parents Union said it was outraged by Florida’s rejection of the course, particularly its timing: within a week of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“Make no mistake: This is a direct attack on the Black and all BIPOC communities,” the union said. “… This behavior is dangerous and should concern every American.”

Nehemiah Frank, publisher of the Black Wall Street Times and the union’s founding delegate, said it would challenge the move.

“We will fight for the right of all children to learn the truth – and turn this into an opportunity to teach our children what it looks like to confront and organize against white supremacy,” Frank said.

Contributing: Kathryn Varn, Tallahassee Democrat

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Black leaders object to Florida, DeSantis rejecting proposed AP course

The Energy Crisis Is Fueling A Nuclear Energy Renaissance


Editor OilPrice.com
Tue, January 24, 2023 at 12:00 PM MST·4 min read

Is this the dawn of a new nuclear era? Across the world, there are rumblings of a new push for nuclear as a solution to decarbonizing global energy production, even from environmentalist groups, representing a stark turnaround for many. Even the most anti-nuclear countries, such as Germany and Japan, have been extending the lives of their existing nuclear plants, flying in the face of their previous pledges to phase out the divisive technology altogether. While nuclear power never died in some key economies, such as China and Russia, more influential world leaders in the West are now getting on board, signaling a potential sea change for the nuclear power industry.

For decades, nuclear disasters such as Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl have loomed large in the public consciousness, and very few people want a nuclear reactor in their backyard, or even in their home state. Nuclear meltdowns are very rare, however, and it has been calculated that on the whole nuclear energy actually saves lives, by preventing millions of deaths that would otherwise be attributed to air pollution. But even with the relatively low risk of nuclear disaster, there is still the very real issue of nuclear waste, which is extremely costly to maintain and stays hazardous for thousands of years. But with the impending doom posed by catastrophic climate change and the ever-increasing urgency to address it, nuclear power just seems like the far lesser of two evils. It’s efficient, dependable, and totally emissions-free, and it’s a proven technology with infrastructure and supply chains already in place around the world.

The United States remains the world’s single biggest producer of nuclear energy, but the industry has been in decline for decades, the country’s nuclear fleet is getting concerningly long in the tooth, and the cost of maintaining nuclear waste is weighing heavily on taxpayers. But for the first time in years, the future of the nuclear industry seems a bit brighter in the U.S. as the urgency of decarbonization amps up the pressure on policymakers and private industry leaders. While public opinion is still divided, it is slowly changing in favor of nuclear energy, and Silicon Valley is throwing its full weight behind the nuclear option. Now, the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act is keeping the momentum building for nuclear power in the U.S. by providing a production tax credit for existing reactors, incentivizing advanced nuclear deployment, and providing funding for advanced assaying of low-enriched uranium to help build up domestic supply chains for the essential nuclear fission fuel source.

In the United Kingdom, there is also an increasing groundswell of support for nuclear energy, including at the highest levels of governance. Back in the second month of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson told his constituents that the answer to weaning the nation off of Russian energy imports was investing in the country’s own nuclear plants. “Johnson’s plan was to offer an unexpected lifeline to a divisive industry by promising to build 24 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity over the next three decades, up from just 5.88GW at present,” according to a report from the Financial Times. The plan would not only relieve the U.K.’s dependence on the Kremlin, it would also revitalize the nation’s profile as a global leader of the nuclear industry. “Our aim is to lead the world once again in a technology we pioneered so that by 2050, up to a quarter of our power consumed in Great Britain is from nuclear,” Johnson proclaimed.

Of course, Boris Johnson has been sacked, but his replacement Rishi Sunak has continued to show enthusiasm for ramping up nuclear power production capacity in the United Kingdom. After just a month in office, Prime Minister Sunak inked a £679 million (approximately $840 million) deal with French state-backed utility EDF to build a 3.2GW nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast. Upon completion, this plant would have enough electricity generation capacity to power six million homes.

However, critics point out that this isn’t the first time England has tried (and failed) to kick-start a new golden age of nuclear energy. “The government is already in a battle against time simply to replace its existing nuclear generation, let alone expand the fleet,” reports the Financial Times. “All but one will be decommissioned by 2028.” However, this time feels different. We’re seeing a stark shift in public and private opinion about nuclear power, and the energy crisis in Europe, as well as the ongoing war in Ukraine, have redrawn all the rules. In a time when we need both energy security and decarbonization in a hurry, many are coming to the conclusion that we can no longer ignore the benefits of nuclear energy.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

New York pension seek stricter climate emissions rules from bank portfolios


 Climate change activists protest at the Wall Street Bull in Lower Manhattan during Extinction Rebellion protests in New York City

Tue, January 24, 2023 
By Ross Kerber

(Reuters) - Shareholder resolutions filed by New York City's top pension official will ask top Wall Street banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co and Bank of America to set stricter 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets for portfolio companies.

If the advisory proposals come to a vote at bank shareholder meetings this spring they would test investors' climate commitments after setbacks in 2022, when calls for more dramatic cuts in fossil fuel financing put forward by other climate activists won slim support.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who filed the new resolutions this year, said he aims to put up measures that have a strong chance of winning majority support. Many investors "want to see companies' net-zero commitments be made real," Lander said in an interview.

New York City's funds have been among the most aggressive in pushing energy companies away from fossil fuels, but few other big investors have embraced calls to divest from the sector amid rising energy prices. Meanwhile, Republican officials in states including Texas and Florida have sought to deny business to certain financial companies over their treatment of fossil fuel producers.

The new resolutions ask banks including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs Group and JPMorgan to commit to reducing emissions in their energy lending and underwriting. Lander cited plans outlined last year by Citigroup for emissions across its energy loan portfolio to drop 29% by 2030 from 2020.

Currently the other three banks have goals to reduce the "emissions intensity" of their financing, a measure of emissions relative to output that climate activists say does not go far enough.

Representatives for JPMorgan, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs declined to comment on the resolutions.

The banks' role in cutting global emissions is part of a debate about their obligations as members of the Net Zero Banking Alliance, a United Nations-backed effort to encourage decarbonization and to reach net-zero emissions from banks' lending and investment portfolios by 2050 to limit the rise of global temperatures.

(Reporting by Ross Kerber; Additional reporting by Saeed Azhar; Editing by David Gregorio)

RBC, Wall St. banks face climate demands from NYC pensions, comptroller

"Shareholders applauded these banks when they set net-zero goals – but it can't be all talk."

Jeff Lagerquist
Tue, January 24, 2023 

Among the big Canadian banks, RBC has faced the most criticism for its ties to the fossil fuel sector. 

New York City's comptroller and three NYC pension plans are calling on Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) (RY.TO)(RY) to spell out absolute greenhouse gas emissions targets for 2030.

In a statement on Tuesday, Canada's largest commercial bank was cited with Wall Street peers Bank of America (BAC), Goldman Sachs Group (GS), and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) for "not taking a basic step of setting interim reduction targets that account for total portfolio emissions."

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, the New York City Employees' Retirement System, Teachers' Retirement System, and Board of Education Retirement System say they have filed shareholder proposals recommending "an absolute reduction target aligned with a science-based net zero emissions pathway" for each lender.

"Shareholders applauded these banks when they set net-zero goals – but it can't be all talk. We expect them to take the steps needed now to reduce emissions on the timeline to which they have committed," Lander stated on Tuesday. "Absent a concrete plan to reduce absolute emissions in the real world in the near term, any net-zero plan rings hollow."

According to Tuesday's release, as of November 2022, the three New York City Retirement systems combined had a total holding of:

7.74 million shares of Bank of America stock valued at US$239.04 million


437 thousand shares of Goldman Sachs stock valued at US$168.82 million


2.99 million shares of JPMorgan Chase stock valued at US$412.91 million, and


293 thousand shares of Royal Bank of Canada stock valued at US$28.92 million

All of the named institutions are members of the UN's Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which includes a commitment to "annually publish absolute emissions and emissions intensity in line with best practice and within a year of setting targets."

Among the big Canadian banks, RBC has faced the most criticism for its ties to the fossil fuel sector.

Last month, when HSBC Holdings announced plans to halt new lending or capital markets financing for new oil and gas fields, the Canadian unit of the bank set to be sold to RBC was exempted. In October, the Competition Bureau of Canada launched an investigation into "false or misleading environmental representations" by the bank.

"We are committed to achieving net-zero in our lending by 2050, and have established interim emissions reduction targets that will help us drive action and measure progress," Andrew Block, RBC's senior director for climate communication, wrote in an email to Yahoo Finance Canada on Tuesday.

"These targets are informed by science and reflect a measured and deliberate approach to climate action. We expect that they will evolve over time as methodologies, data and decarbonization pathways advance."

"This is big deal, big money coming to the table to challenge RBC and other major banks on their emissions and ultimately their fossil fuel company financing," Richard Brooks, climate finance director at North American environmental organization Stand.earth, said on Tuesday.

"New York City recognizes that climate change doesn't respect borders, and Canada's largest bank needs to get on side with the science if we have a hope of reducing emissions globally."

Big Banks Told to Phase Out Financing of New Fossil-Fuel Projects

Saijel Kishan
Tue, 24 January 2023 




(Bloomberg) -- Six Wall Street banks are being pressed by a group of shareholders to move faster on reducing their financing of fossil fuels to meet global climate goals.

The investors are asking the lenders, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., to phase out their funding of oil and gas exploration and development, according to a statement from Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, whose members filed the shareholder proposals. They also want the banks to show how they plan to align their lending and underwriting services for other industries to ensure they meet goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Separately, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and three New York City pension plans said in a statement Tuesday that they want lenders, including Royal Bank of Canada, to disclose their 2030 targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions on an absolute basis rather than an intensity basis.

Similar climate-related proposals filed last year were unsuccessful. BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager, said at the time that it wouldn’t support climate resolutions that are “unduly prescriptive and constraining” and may not promote long-term shareholder value. While banks are being pressed to act on global warming by advocacy groups, they’re also under fire from Republicans who have said they’re following a “woke climate agenda.”

“Banks have made significant progress over the last five years, but they need to set policies and be more transparent about how they are reaching their climate goals,” said Danielle Fugere, president of activist shareholder As You Sow, which is part of the group that filed the resolutions.

In total, banks organized about $533 billion of bonds and loans for the oil, gas and coal sectors last year, down from $656 billion in 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

In this year’s resolutions, the investors say that without policies to phase out financing of fossil-fuel exploration and development, banks will fail to meet their own climate targets. Other risks include possible fines from regulators that want to prevent companies from making exaggerated environmental claims — otherwise known as greenwashing — and stricter climate-related capital requirements from central banks.

“This year’s proposal encourages banks to finance companies that are certified by a credible third party to be on a net-zero pathway, while maintaining that financing for new fossil fuels is incompatible with the banks’ climate commitments,” Paul Rissman, a board director of the Sierra Club Foundation, which filed some of the resolutions, said in the statement.

The investor group also filed their proposals with Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley. The banks are part of a finance coalition called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which has pledged to meet climate goals outlined in the 2015 Paris agreement.

As You Sow, along with the Sierra Club Foundation, Trillium Asset Management and Green Century Capital Management, filed the climate-finance resolutions. Proposals also were sent to insurers, including Chubb Ltd., Travelers Cos. and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., that call on the companies to say how they plan to measure, disclose and reduce emissions from their underwriting and investing businesses to align with goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord.

Last year’s climate resolutions filed with Wall Street banks garnered between 8.5% and 13% of shareholder support, Bloomberg data show.

Banks Haven’t Lost Their Appetite For Fossil Fuels Just Yet

Editor OilPrice.com
Tue, 24 January 2023 at 2:00 pm GMT-7·5-min read

Following the signing of the Paris Agreement by 193 states and the EU and after the COP27 climate summit in 2021, several major financial institutions came under fire for their continued support of fossil fuel companies. As governments worldwide introduce new climate policies and put pressure on oil and gas firms to improve operations and curb their carbon emissions, international organisation and environmentalists are asking that increased pressure be put on banks to cut funding for fossil fuel projects in favour of low-emissions alternatives. But despite bold promises from many financial groups, a high level of investment is still expected to be funnelled into fossil fuel operations in 2023 and beyond.

The 2022 Rainforest Action Network (RAN) report Fossil Fuel Finance Report showed which financial institutions were still pumping money into oil, gas, and coal operations and the main trends in fossil fuel funding from 2016 to 2022. Global fossil fuel financing stood at $723 billion in 2016 and remained fairly stable over the next five years, rising to $742 billion in 2021. The financial institutions offering the largest fossil fuel investments were JPMorgan Chase, Citi Bank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and RBC.

Following the announcement from the International Energy Agency aiming for net-zero carbon emissions for 2050, 44 of the 60 banks discussed in the report committed to the aim of “no new oil and gas fields”. However, many of these banks continue to offer funding to oil and gas companies. According to the report, 27 of the 44 banks identified still have no meaningful corporate-level no-expansion policy for any part of the fossil fuel industry.

These financial institutions have been repeatedly and publicly condemned for their continued financing of fossil fuel projects. U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib stated, “Our planet is staring down a point of no return, and the world’s largest financial institutions are pouring gasoline on the fire.” Meanwhile, Alison Kirsch, the research and policy manager at RAN, explained: “These financial institutions are directly complicit in undermining a climate stable future for us all and must immediately end their support of any further fossil fuel infrastructure expansion.” And David Tong, the Global Industry Campaign Manager at Oil Change International, said, “the fundamental arithmetic of 1.5ºC requires oil and gas production to decline by at least 3-4% per year, starting now. But no major oil and gas company has committed to ending expansion, and banks around the world continue to pour billions into fossil fuels. That must stop now. If the banks’ responses to the climate crisis are to be taken seriously, they must commit to ending finance for fossil fuels.”

There have been some positive steps forward over the last year, with one of the world’s largest banks – HSBC – stepping away from fossil fuel investments. In 2022, HSBC, the seventh largest bank in the world, announced it would no longer be supporting oil and gas projects. Before the decision, HSBC was one of the biggest lenders to energy companies globally. The decision taken by HSBC means that no funding will be given to new oil and gas fields, although financing for existing projects will continue, as well as new funds being offered to renewable energy projects. In the U.K., both Natwest and Lloyds Bank have announced plans to reduce fossil fuel financing. The Dutch bank ING and French lender La Banque Postale have also made similar pledges. Meanwhile, Barclays has instead decided to ramp up its financing for sustainable energy startups.

Yet, at the beginning of 2023, new reports show that financing for fossil fuel operations from major financial institutions is set to continue. Following COP26, the U.K. launched the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), which aims to align major investments worldwide with the target of limiting temperature increases to 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels. This led 450 groups across 45 countries with assets of at least $130 trillion to sign the GFANZ agreement. Yet, recent data, gathered by Reclaim Finance, suggests that hundreds of billions of dollars have been pumped into fossil fuel projects since GFANZ.

According to the report, at least 56 of the biggest banks in the net-zero banking alliance grouping (NZBA) have provided $270 billion to 102 fossil fuel companies for their expansion, through 134 loans and 215 underwriting arrangements – this includes HSBC. Paddy McCully, a senior analyst at Reclaim Finance, stated of the funding, “GFANZ members are acting as climate arsonists. They’ve pledged to achieve net zero but are continuing to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into fossil fuel developers. GFANZ and its member alliances will only be credible once they up their game and insist that their members help bring a rapid end to the era of coal, oil, and fossil gas expansion.”

Many of the world’s largest financial institutions have announced ambitious climate targets and signed carbon-cutting pledges since the Paris Agreement and COP26, and yet few appear to be following through with their promises. Reports from 2022 and 2023 show that many of the world’s major banks are continuing to fund new oil and gas projects, which is hindering climate aims announced by the IEA and other institutions and governments. Unless this stops, meeting these climate aims will be near impossible, as oil and gas groups are unlikely to lead the green transition themselves.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

BRAZIL

UFC fighters close to Bolsonaro find themselves in spotlight after riots

Karim Zidan
Tue, January 24, 2023 

Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

On 8 January 2023, a sea of people dressed in the yellow and green that symbolizes Brazil’s flag descended on Brasília, the nation’s capital, to demand that the military overturn the presidential election.

Over the course of four hours, thousands of far-right supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed all three branches of the country’s government – Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential palace – and wreaked havoc throughout the iconic modernist architecture.

The chaotic scenes were reminiscent of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, as crowds fueled by false claims of election fraud ransacked buildings, attacked police officers, and chanted pro-Bolsonaro slogans while demanding the removal of newly-inaugurated president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.


Apart from the rioters who swarmed the country’s federal institutions, mixed martial arts fighters were among those who publicly celebrated Bolsonaro and the attempted coup, including one who competed on this past weekend’s pay-per-view show in Brazil.

Deiveson Figueiredo, a former UFC champion who lost his flyweight title following a TKO loss in the co-main event of UFC 283 Saturday, was among those calling for a military coup against Brazil’s elected government. A recent investigation by BloodyElbow.com revealed that Figueiredo shared a series of pro-Bolsonaro posts on WhatsApp, including a photo that said it was time to “Invade Brasília”.

“Either a free country remains or [we] die for Brazil,” read the post.

A second post shared by Figueiredo encouraged rioters to “camp inside the Congress” while a third showed Bolsonaro being saluted by military generals along with a caption calling on the military to initiate a coup d’état against the incumbent government.

Figueiredo’s staunch support for Brazil’s controversial former president is shared by a plethora of Brazilian athletes, including among local jiu-jitsu stars and UFC fighters. Over the past few years, the far-right populist received endorsements from UFC champions such as Anderson Silva, Rafael dos Anjos, Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza, Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua, Cris Cyborg and Fabricio Werdum. He was also backed by the Gracie family, a prominent martial arts clan credited for creating Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Bolsonaro, who served as Brazil’s president from 2019 through 2022, regularly rubbed shoulders with UFC fighters and even elevated some to prominent political positions. Former UFC fighter and jiu-jitsu champion Renzo Gracie was named the Ambassador of International Tourism under Embratur, a branch of Brazil’s Ministry of Tourism in 2019. The following month, Gracie posted a video threatening to choke French president Emmanuel Macron. Three years later, the Gracie family was embroiled in a scandal that saw them allegedly receive government payouts from a fund designated for Brazil’s poorest families during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite the celebrity endorsements, Bolsonaro lost a run-off election to former president Lula in October 2022. He fled Brazil just days before his rival’s inauguration and landed in Orlando, Florida, where he stayed in a vacation home owned by former UFC featherweight champion José Aldo. The former president was reportedly there during the riots on 8 January.

Aldo later defended his decision to host Bolsonaro in his home, claiming it was merely a business opportunity.

“The country is divided. Everyone on the other side will criticize me,” Aldo said on the Flow podcast, one of the most popular podcasts in Brazil. “I wasn’t thinking about that, though. There’s a good side and a bad side to everything you do in your life. The street is always crowded now. I’ve been getting so many messages from people who want to stay at the house. I’m sorry, but some people just think small. They have no eye for business.”

The former UFC champion, who is also allegedly involved in a government handout scandal, now plans to put up a plaque in his home that reads: The president of Brazil stayed here.

MMA’s embrace of Bolsonaro is part of an ongoing trend of right-wing politicians and authoritarian leaders weaponizing the sport for political gain. Several MMA fighters, including legendary heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko, have campaigned for Russian president Vladimir Putin, while other Russian fighters (including a handful in the UFC) have publicly supported their country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Elsewhere, Ramzan Kadyrov, the ruthless dictator accused of countless human rights abuses during his tenure at the helm of the Russian republic of Chechnya, founded his own MMA fight club and now has several fighters affiliated with him competing in the UFC. Kadyrov, who has attended two UFC events in the past, has been known to use his gym as a form of reputation laundering and as a tool to distract from well-documented abuses such as forced disappearances, torture, and an ongoing purge of LGBTQ+ people in Chechnya.

On an organizational level, the UFC has hosted events in partnership with the Abu Dhabi government in the United Arab Emirates, a country with a poor human rights record.

Meanwhile, the UFC’s controversial president Dana White has also spent the past few years promoting former US president Donald Trump and offering him a unique platform to espouse his political ideology. This, in turn, has encouraged other like-minded fighters to throw their weight behind other controversial leaders without fear of repercussions. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that countless UFC fighters have publicly used their platforms to endorse Bolsonaro, as well as to encourage attacks on democratic institutions.

Yet while the vast majority of Brazil’s UFC fighters overwhelmingly support Bolsonaro, there remain a handful of exceptions.

Two years ago, UFC strawweight Virna Jandiroba used her post-fight victory speech to praise Brazil’s universal healthcare system and take aim at Bolsonaro for his botched handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The fighter also recently shared a harrowing story about her grandfather, who served as a colonel during Brazil’s infamous military dictatorship and was persecuted for opposing the regime. This experience with fascism defined Jandiroba’s left-wing worldview, and made her weary of populist figures like Bolsonaro.

“Bolsonaro offends me and my people on several levels,” Jandiroba said during a recent interview with Bloody Elbow. “It’s impossible for me to like him.”

CASTISM

Virginia family sent to prison after forcing Pakistan woman into ‘modern-day equivalent of slavery’


L-R: Mohammed Rehan Chaudhri, 48; Zahida Aman, 80; Mohammed Naumann Chaudhri, 54.

Bradford Betz
Tue, January 24, 2023

Three Virginia family members were sentenced Tuesday for compelling another family member into what one prosecutor once described as "the modern-day equivalent of slavery" for over a decade.

Zahida Aman, 80, and her two sons, Mohammed Naumman Chaudhri, 54, and Mohammed Rehan Chaudhri, 48, were convicted in May of conspiracy to commit forced labor.

The court has also ordered the family to pay the victim $250,000 in restitution for back wages and other financial losses she incurred during her 12 years in forced labor.

Prosecutors say Aman arranged for one of her sons' marriage to the victim in 2002. The family kept the woman in their Virginia home to serve the extended family even after the victim’s husband moved out.

Prosecutors say the family "callously exploited the victim’s vulnerabilities and brutally coerced her labor through physical violence and emotional abuse."

The family compelled the woman to serve them as a domestic servant by using physical and verbal abuse and restricting her communication with her family in Pakistan, according to evidence presented in court.

The family confiscated her immigration documentation and money and threatened to separate her from her children by deporting her to Pakistan, the evidence says. On at least one occasion, the family hog-tied the woman’s hands and feet and dragged her down the stairs in front of her children, according to the evidence.

The woman was reportedly forced to work every day, beginning early each morning. Her food was restricted, and she was forbidden from learning to drive, speaking with anyone but the family members, and could not call her family in Pakistan.

At their conviction in May 2022, U.S. Attorney Jessica D. Alber for the Eastern District of Virginia likened the woman’s forced-labor situation to the "modern-day equivalent of slavery."

"The defendants exploited someone who should have been a loved family member to force her to work in their home for [more than a decade]," she said. "We will stop at nothing to prosecute those that commit these or similar crimes."

U.S. Fightback In the Middle East Continues With Huge Chevron Deal

After an extended period of reduced engagement in the Middle East and a refocusing inwards on itself, which allowed China and Russia to exploit the resultant power vacuum, there have been several signs recently that the U.S. has decided that now is a good time to take up where it left off a few years ago. In the energy sector, there have been several high-profile deals in regions of great geopolitical sensitivity in recent weeks that have been made by U.S. companies or companies of countries alongside the U.S. in its sphere of influence. The latest one is Chevron’s discovery of a potentially huge offshore gas field in Egypt that, according to comments last week, is due to be fast-tracked by Chevron and its partner in the site, Italy’s Eni.

Chevron and Eni, which each hold a 45 percent stake in the 1,800 square kilometre (sq.km) Nargis offshore area concession (with Egypt’s Tharwa Petroleum Co. holding the remaining 10 percent stake), announced that they have made a new gas discovery in the concession, focused on the Nargis-1 well. The state-owned Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS) stated in the past few days that the precise quantity of reserves in the well were being evaluated but that it was working with Chevron, Eni and Tharwa to begin production as soon as possible. This should not take long as, according to data from marine intelligence firm VesselsValue, Eni has a platform in Thekah, around 40 kilometres to the south-west of the Nargis site. This discovery follows the announcement in December 2022 that Chevron had hit at least 3.5 trillion cubic feet of gas with its Nargis-1 exploration well in the eastern Nile Delta, about 60 kilometres north of the Sinai Peninsula.

Chevron, along with most notably ConocoPhillips, has been at the vanguard of a broad-based resurgence in the successful re-engagement of the U.S. in several highly strategic regions across the wider Middle East, including the Eastern Mediterranean. Chevron only entered the Egyptian upstream sector in 2020 but now operates the huge Leviathan and Tamar fields in Israel and the Aphrodite project offshore Cyprus. According to the president of Chevron International Exploration and Production, Clay Neff: “The East Mediterranean has abundant energy resources, and their development is driving strategic collaboration in the region.”

The previous strategic collaboration in the region worthy of note was concentrated around China, Russia, and Iran’s efforts to rope its key players – including Egypt – into their vision of how the area should be configured. A core strand of this strategy was centred on the creation of a ‘unified power grid’ – in every senses of the words – as analysed in depth in my last book on the global oil markets. Suffice it to say here that the idea runs along the same lines as the famous quote on how to maintain power from former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt - that is: “If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” In this context, if one country can shut off the ability of other countries’ citizens to cook, and to heat and light their houses and offices, then they will be highly receptive to any suggestions that the country might make.

The attempt to concentrate the wider Middle East’s power grid has been going on for some time now, driven by China and Russia through the practical machinations of Iran. Last year saw an announcement that Egypt and Jordan were increasing their cooperation in gas delivery projects inside Jordan with Egyptian expertise through specialised petroleum sector companies. Just prior to this, it was announced that Iraq had agreed to re-start the export of crude oil from Iraq’s Kirkuk to the refinery at Zarqa in Jordan. Electricity supply originating from Iran was also factored into this deal, given that Iran has historically supplied Iraq with 30-40 percent of all its electricity needs, and had just signed the longest-ever single deal between it and Iraq to continue to do the same at that point.

At around the same time, Iraq’s then-Electricity Minister, Majid Mahdi Hantoush, announced that plans had been finalised for the completion of Iraq’s electricity connection with Egypt within the next three years. This network was to be bolstered by the parallel network connections that Iran had consolidated in terms both of direct electricity and gas exchanges. These, said Iran’s then-Energy Minister, Reza Ardakanian in 2019, would be part of the overall project to establish a joint Arab electricity market. The establishing of broad and deep cooperation in oil, gas, and electricity was a key part of the wide-ranging ‘25-Year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement’, first broken by me in an article published on 3 September 2019.

A near-term tactic for the U.S. to regain ground lost to the China-led bloc in recent years appears to be addressing the shortfall in, particularly, gas supplies left in many countries after sanctions were placed on Russian supplies following its invasion of Ukraine. ConocoPhillips played a crucial role in the recent liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply deal between Qatar and Germany, with Germany being seen by Washington as the most likely European country to renege on such sanctions. This would have been disastrous for any cohesive response from Europe as a whole in this context, given Germany’s effective position as leader of the European Union bloc.

In a similar vein, this gas discovery in Egypt not only drives a wedge between Egypt and the idea of a unified Middle East power grid beholden ultimately to China but also provides a new source of gas into Europe as and when required through the participation of European heavyweight oil and gas company, Eni. Eni itself has also been notable for its entrepreneurial and aggressive approach to finding and safeguarding new oil and gas supplies across the Middle East, as has France’s TotalEnergies, with the Italian firm looking at consolidating and expanding its presence recently in Libya and the UAE, among others. In the context of the latest Nargis discovery, Eni has said the Nargis-1 well find confirms the validity of its focus on Egypt offshore: “[…] which [we] will further develop thanks to the recent award of exploration blocks North Rafah, North El Fayrouz, North East El Arish, Tiba and Bellatrix-Seti East”. This all follows Eni’s discovery of the huge Zohr field in the East Mediterranean in 2015 and is in line with the company’s aim of completely replacing gas imports from Russia by 2025.

This very active re-engagement of the U.S. in highly strategically sensitive areas of the broader Middle East follows a period of considerable withdrawal from the region during the presidency of Donald Trump, as explained in his ‘Endless Wars’ commencement address to the United States Military Academy at West Point on 13 June 2020. His comment that the days of the U.S. being the ‘policeman of the world’ were over found resonance in the U.S. withdrawal from, most notably, Syria (in 2019) – including protracted internal White House discussions about withdrawing from the strategically vital At-Tanf exclusion zone that was the tri-border junction of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq - Afghanistan (2021), and Iraq (2021).

The reason for this very active re-engagement right now from the U.S. appears to be that Russia, and by extension, China, have never been so weak in geopolitical terms in recent years as they are right now. This is a direct consequence of the omni-shambolic invasion by Russia of Ukraine that has significantly damaged the credibility of President Vladimir Putin as a shrewd geopolitical operator and of his country as a major military force. By extension, it has done the same for China’s President Xi Jinping and his country too. Xi knows this, as reflected in the quick 180-degree turn that his country did after Russia’s invasion, from the two countries enjoying a ‘no limits’ relationship to one that suddenly had a lot of limits indeed.

According to sources in the European Union’s energy security apparatus spoken to exclusively by OilPrice.com last week. “If Putin had just waited five years to make his move in Europe then things would probably have been very different: Nordstream 2 would have made Europe firmly captive to Russian gas, Russian oil supplies would have cemented this dependence, and the highly-placed European leaders in various fields that Russia had been cultivating would have smoothed the way, but he [Putin] didn’t wait,” he said. Perhaps Putin did not wait because the rumours of his being terminally ill are true and he simply could not wait, but whatever the reason his actions in Ukraine have re-galvanised the U.S. and Europe and NATO, and left the door wide open internationally for that alliance to start rolling back some of the ground it lost to China and Russia in the previous few years.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

Alleged drug lord blamed for murders of U.K. reporter, Indigenous activist

Tue, January 24, 2023

Police in Brazil have strong evidence that an alleged drug trafficker ordered the murders of a British journalist and an Indigenous activist in the Amazon last June, a police chief said on Monday.

Police believe Ruben da Silva Villar, who uses the nickname "Colombia" and is in custody, ordered the murders of the two men, Eduardo Fontes, chief of federal police in the Amazonas region, said at a news conference.

Fontes said the case over the murders of U.K. journalist Dom Phillips, 57, and Bruno Pereira, a 41-year-old Indigenous activist, was "90 percent" wrapped up and "practically closed."

"The investigations are in the final phase and we have strong evidence that point to 'Colombia' as the mastermind of these crimes," Fontes said.

A sign that reads in Portuguese

Da Silva Villar has been in police custody since December, but his identity was difficult to pin down as he carried three sets of identity papers, two from Peru and one from Brazil, police said.


Authorities finally determined that he was born in Puerto Narino, Colombia, a town in an Amazon region near where the borders of Colombia, Brazil and Peru meet.

Fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, nicknamed Pelado, confessed that he shot Phillips and Pereira and has been under arrest since soon after the killings in early June.

Phillips and Pereira were shot dead June 5 in Valle de Javari, a remote area where illegal fishing, mining and logging are rife. Both men disappeared "after receiving threats," according to an association that worked with the Indigenous expert.

Fontes said Villar had provided weapons and boats to three men accused of the actual murders, and later paid for the lawyer for one of them.

Phillips, a freelance journalist whose work had appeared in The Guardian and The New York Times, was traveling with Pereira doing research for a book on the Amazon.

British journalist Dom Phillips, right, and a Yanomami Indigenous man walk in Maloca Papiu village, Roraima state, Brazil, Nov. 2019. / Credit: Joao Laet / AP

Villar was detained in July, and freed in October on bond. But courts ordered his imprisonment again after he failed to meet conditions of his conditional freedom.

In a statement, UNIVAJA, the local Indigenous association that employed Pereira, said it believed there were other significant planners behind the killings who have not been arrested.

Journalists working for regional media outlets in the Amazon have been slain in recent years, though there had been no such cases among journalists from national media nor foreign media. However, there have been several reports of threats, and the press has limited access to several areas dominated by criminal activity, including illegal mining, landgrabbing and drug trafficking.

In September 2019, an employee of the Indigenous affairs agency was shot dead in Tabatinga, the largest city in the region. The crime was never solved.

In 2017, British citizen Emma Kelty was killed while attempting to kayak the length of the Amazon. The 43-year-old Londoner vanished after she posted comments on social media sharing her fear of being robbed or murdered in a remote jungle area of northern Brazil that is used by drug traffickers and pirates.

That same year, Brazilian prosecutors investigated reports that gold prospectors may have killed members of a so-called uncontacted tribe in the Amazon.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Suspected mastermind in killings of British journalist and indigenous expert in the Amazon is named

Mon, 23 January 2023 

A Colombian fish trader is set to be indicted as the mastermind of last year's killing of British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira.

Police have said Ruben Dario da Silva Villar provided the ammunition to target the pair, made phone calls to the confessed killer before and after the crime, and paid his lawyer.

Fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, nicknamed Pelado, admitted that he shot Mr Phillips and Mr Pereira, and has been under arrest since soon after the killings in early June.

He and three other relatives are accused of being involved in the crime.

They all live in a poor community inside a federal agrarian reform settlement between the city of Atalaia do Norte and Javari Valley Indigenous Territory.

Mr Villar has denied any wrongdoing in the case.

Before Monday's announcement, he was already being held on charges of using false Brazilian and Peruvian documents and leading an illegal fishing scheme.

According to the investigation, he financed local fishermen to fish inside Javari Valley Indigenous Territory.

In a statement, UNIVAJA, the local indigenous association that employed Mr Pereira, said it believed there were other significant plotters behind the killings who have not been arrested.

Mr Pereira and Mr Phillips were travelling in the remote area of the Amazon when they disappeared and their bodies were recovered after the confessions.

Mr Phillips was researching a book about how to save the world's largest rainforest.

Brazilian police name alleged ‘mastermind’ behind murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira


Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Mon, January 23, 2023 

Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters

Brazilian police have named the alleged mastermind behind the murders of the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon last year.

Rubens Villar Coelho, whose nickname is Colômbia, was first arrested on separate charges last July – one month after the two men were murdered in the Javari valley region of the Amazon. He was released in October but was rearrested last month for breaking his bail terms.

On Monday afternoon, the federal police chief for Amazonas state, where the Javari valley is located, told reporters that investigators had concluded Villar Coelho – who has been accused of running an illegal fishing racket in the remote border region – had ordered the murders.

“I have no doubt that Colômbia was the mastermind,” Alexandre Fontes said at a press conference in the state capital, Manaus, according to the Brazilian news website G1.

Three other men are currently in custody for the murders and stand accused of shooting Phillips and Pereira as they travelled down the Itaquaí River on the morning of 5 June 2022. They are Amarildo da Costa Oliveira, Jefferson da Silva Lima and Oseney da Costa de Oliveira.

Fontes said investigators had gathered evidence that Villar Coelho provided the first two of those men with the ammunition that was used to commit the murder.

Fontes claimed the ​16-gauge shotgun used in the crime had been provided by Amarildo da Costa Oliveira’s brother, Edvaldo da Costa Oliveira, “in the knowledge that it would be used to murder Bruno and Dom”.

Villar Coelho had also paid for Amarildo da Costa Oliveira’s initial defense lawyer, Fontes added.

Villar Coelho denied involvement in the crime after being detained last July.

Phillips, 57, a longtime Guardian contributor and foreign correspondent, travelled to the Javari valley with Pereira as part of research for a book he was writing called How to Save the Amazon.

Related: How the final journey of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira ended in tragedy

At the time of the murders, 41-year-old Pereira, a revered Indigenous specialist and explorer, had been helping Indigenous communities in the Javari valley set up monitoring teams to defend their rainforest homes from illegal mining, poaching and fishing gangs with links to organized crime.

The murders sparked international outrage and exposed the damage done to Brazil’s environment and Indigenous communities during the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, who lost last October’s election and is currently in the US.

On Sunday, Bolsonaro’s successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, accused the rightwing populist of committing genocide against the Yanomami people of the Amazon by dismantling Indigenous protections and encouraging the illegal gold miners who have invaded that and other Indigenous territories.

Speaking to the Guardian recently in Brasília, Beto Marubo, a Javari leader who was close to Pereira, said Indigenous activists had seen no sign of the security situation improving in the region despite the outcry over the murders.

Marubo voiced hope that the men’s killers would be brought to justice under Brazil’s new government.

“We hope – and we will continue to demand from the new government​ and authorities​ – that there is justice for Dom and Bruno​,” he said.

Related: Six months after Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were murdered, the Amazon remains unsafe for activists

Relief that police had formally accused Villar Coelho, a notorious and feared figure in the region where Phillips and Pereira were killed, was tempered with ongoing suspicions that their murders were part of a bigger conspiracy in a region awash with environmental crime and drug trafficking, reportedly involving cartels from Colombia and Mexico.

The Javari valley, which is home to the world’s largest concentration of isolated Indigenous tribes, has become a major highway for cocaine and marijuana smuggling in recent years, with huge shipments of drugs being moved by river from Peru into Brazil and then on to Europe.

Eliesio Marubo, a representative of Univaja, the Indigenous NGO for which Pereira had worked, said the federal police conclusions had confirmed the murdered activist’s suspicions that Villar Coelho was involved in the fishing gangs that preyed on the supposedly protected Javari valley Indigenous territory. But Marubo said many questions remained.

Related: Amazon wild west: where drugs, fish and logging are big money but life is cheap

“Who is bankrolling these people so they are able to continue their criminal activities? Why is it that so many politicians in the region helped these criminals? Why is this criminal organization still operating in the region?” he asked, pointing to a November attack on another of the Javari’s Indigenous leaders.

Marubo said Javari activists wanted a “far-reaching investigation” which “truly showed who killed Dom and Bruno”.

WAR ON WOMEN REQUIRES ARMED STRUGGLE

Taliban edict cuts women from vital aid during ferocious winter

Harriet Barber
Tue, January 24, 2023 

Afghan women walk down a street during snowfall in Kabul in January 2023 - WAKIL KOHSAR

Women can no longer access a fifth of vital aid services in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s ban on female humanitarian workers, new figures show.

This comes amid deadly sub-zero temperatures, which have so far killed more than 100 people across the country, and as millions of people face acute hunger and crippling power cuts.

In December, the Afghan Ministry of Economy banned women from working for non-governmental organisations (NGOs), leading to the immediate suspension and scaling back of life-saving operations.

A poll by the Humanitarian Access Working Group surveyed 87 NGOs across 33 provinces of Afghanistan to track the impact of the ban one month on. It found that one in five organisations said women could no longer access their services.

“Access to women is through female NGO workers and, without them there, it is harder to ensure they are receiving the food, cash and hygiene support they need,” said Ray Hasan, Christian Aid’s head of global, commenting on the data.

The poll, shared exclusively with the Telegraph, also found that only 17 per cent of organisations are operating fully, with 67 per cent having reduced their work and 15 per cent not operating at all.

Between 80-90,000 women work in the aid sector in Afghanistan, while more than 11 million women rely on support from NGOs.

Afghans collecting food aid at a gymnasium in Kabul - WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP

“If women are unable to be part of humanitarian distribution, then access will only be via men. This is deeply problematic,” Mr Hasan said, explaining that Afghan culture makes it hard for male aid workers to care and support women in need.

According to the United Nations, two-thirds of Afghanistan’s population will need urgent humanitarian assistance in order to survive this year.

“People are freezing and time is running out,” said Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN’s top humanitarian coordinator.

“We need to build shelters now but, in this conservative society, if we don't have female aid workers to speak to women in the families, we can't do this work.”
Two-thirds need urgent assistance

In Afghanistan, the need for aid is desperate as winter bites.

The country is facing its third consecutive year of drought-like conditions, and is still reeling from the effects of 40 years of conflict and recurrent natural disasters.

The economy has deteriorated, with 17 million facing acute hunger in 2023, including six million at emergency levels of food insecurity.

An Afghanwoman begs for alms in Mazar-i-Sharif - ATIF ARYAN/AFP

The provision of electricity is also unpredictable. Afghanistan imports 80 per cent of its electricity from its Central Asian neighbours and Iran, which leaves the country susceptible to wide-scale power shortages.

To make matters worse, the country is currently caught in the grasp of a ferocious winter, with temperatures plunging to -17c and lower in mountainous areas.

Earlier this week, a Taliban official said at least 124 people and 77,000 livestock had died from freezing conditions over the past fortnight.
UN flies in for urgent talks with Taliban

Women’s rights have been reversed since the Taliban reclaimed power in August 2021. Last year, girls were banned from secondary schools while women were mostly restricted from working outside the home.

The latest decree on female aid workers came days after the Taliban-run government ordered universities to stop classes for women.

“With the additional restrictions in place around education and work, this is another blow to the position of women in Afghan society,” said Mr Hasan.

Afghan women workers prepare bread - AFP

“If we are unable to directly access women, listen to them and understand their concerns and needs they become increasingly hidden and dependent on men.”

Last week, the most senior UN delegation to visit Afghanistan since the Taliban swept to power in 2021 flew into Kabul. They were tasked with speaking to senior Taliban leaders about reversing the restrictions on female NGO workers.

Mr Alakbarov said the UN was trying to get the ban reversed and that it was a “red line for the entire humanitarian community”.

KURDISH WOMENS FIGHTING UNITS 

SHOW THE WAY