French bank will stop financing companies that exploit deforested land in the Amazon

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Amazon deforestation
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Continuing a trend of European businesses moving independently to protect the Amazon, France’s BNP Paribas announced it will no longer finance companies that buy cattle or soy produced on deforested or converted Amazon lands after 2008. The measure also applies to deforested lands in Brazil’s Cerrado region, a threatened tropical savanna eco-region covering 20% of Brazil that has lost half its land to agricultural clearing.

PNB said it will only finance those who adopt a Cerrado strategy of Zero Deforestation by 2025, promoting criticism from environmentalists that it is weak action that gives deforesters a 5-year free pass in an area they see spiraling into a collapse of its biodiversity.

The immediate move to fight Amazon deforestation, however, will also affect Ecuador, Venezuela, Suriname, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Guyana, and French Guiana, which hold parts of the Amazon forest along with Brazil. An area the size of the state of Maryland was lost to deforestation in 2020.

By Milan Sime Martinić

Tigray: Power cut off again

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ADDIS ABABA – Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) announced today that the power supply has been cut off throughout Tigray State in Ethiopia.

In a statement EEP said the power supply had been cut off throughout Tigray due to attacks by “Junta Suburbs” — a group of people from TPLF responsible for the alleged attack on the Northern Command — on the region’s electricity infrastructure. Electricity was cut in the region following an attack on a high-voltage transmission line from Alamata-Mehoni-Mekele in the area known as Adigudom.

The Alamata-Mehoni-Melele line, one of the main power supply lines in the Tigray region, and the other Tekeze Axum line were under construction, the organization said. It is estimated that the damage to power infrastructure is worth millions of dollars.

The region has been without water, banking, telephone, internet, and other basic services for some time.

By Henok Alemayehu

Farmer accidentally kills 2.5% of country’s condor population with poison

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A Bolivian farmer accidentally killed 35 condors with strychnine while trying to protect his livestock from a puma living in the area, according to Bolivian authorities after a slow and much-criticized investigation.

The large number of deaths was likely due to the behavior of the species at the time of feeding, with sometimes as many as 40 condors feeding on one carcass, according to Huascar Bustillos Cayoja, a researcher with the University of Bern in Switzerland and a professor of Ecology and Protected Areas at Udabol University in Bolivia.

By Milan Sime Martinić

Standoff as migrant caravan closes Brazil-Peru International Bridge

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SAO PAULO – A humanitarian crisis is escalating in the far west Brazilian state of Acre as about 300 Haitians, Indians, Pakistanis have taken over the Friendship Bridge connecting Assis, Brazil with Peru at the Brazil-Peru-Bolivia border. Peruvian authorities are refusing entry and the immigrants are demanding to be allowed to return home through the Andean country.

The area has been a popular entry point for immigrants from many parts of the world seeking asylum in Brazil. Having failed in their quest to obtain legal papers but unable to be deported due to Brazilian laws and international treaties that prevent deportation into potential harm’s way, the immigrants have been staying in empty schools in the area, but hygienic and toilet facilities are not sufficient and the municipality of 7500 is stressing its resources providing food baskets and help for the immigrants. Described as hungry and exhausted, the immigrants say they want to return home by way of Peru but are suspected of really wanting to make their way to the United States. Brazilian authorities say they have been in the area for months, under precarious conditions, sleeping in open barracks, living off state help and charity, and bathing in the Acre River.

By Milan Sime Martinić

Brazil, top instant coffee exporter, keeps title despite drop in sales to Saudi Arabia

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A global increase of 2.4% in Brazilian instant coffee exports in 2020 occurred alongside a 39% drop in exports to the Arab bloc, with Saudi Arabia accounting for 33% of the decrease, according to numbers made public by ABICS, the Brazilian Instant Coffee Industry Association.

Despite the Arab purchase drops, Brazil remains the top producer and exporter of instant coffee. Global instant coffee consumption climbs at a rate of around 3% per year. Addressing the decrease in Arab purchases, ABICS Director Aguinaldo Lima noted 2019 was already a record year for Brazil and that imports fluctuate from year to year. Saudi Arabia has been a longtime top importer of Brazilian instant coffee, said Lima, pointing out that it contributed to the 2019 record exports.

By Milan Sime Martinić

Poland’s courts are deciding whether to extradite Chinese citizens accused of crimes in China

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A Chinese man residing in Poland has become the focus of an ad-hoc but potentially precedent-setting trial of whether European countries, bound by human rights commitments both nationally and internationally, will extradite China’s citizens when the Chinese government accuses them of a crime.

The man, Li Zhizhou, 53, has been in Europe since 2013. China has since accused him of fraud and asked Poland to extradite him — Poland does not have an extradition agreement with China, so China can only ask nicely in this case.

Polish authorities as well as those from other European countries (particularly Sweden because Li is now a Swedish national) and human rights groups are weighing several issues: China has one-party control over it’s judicial system and a 99% conviction rate; if returned, the sentence the man would likely receive as punishment is broadly considered out of proportion with what Poland and it’s EU neighbors could accept as just; the man is reported to be a practitioner of the Falun Gong religion which is outlawed in China and for which China could decide to also prosecute him, with a possible sentence of life imprisonment or death.

In recent years, Sweden and the Czech republic have denied similar Chinese requests, but the high-profile Polish case is still being watched as potentially precedent-setting.

Brazilian Supreme Court rules there is no right to be forgotten in media

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SAO PAULO – Despite a 2018 decision that allows the right to de-indexation of certain information from search engines, a majority of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) has voted that there is no right to prevent media from disclosing truthful old information obtained legally, citing the Freedom of Expression Clause of the Brazilian Constitution and noting that such right does not degrade over time. The ruling sets precedent to guide jurisprudence over similar cases that come before the courts.

By Milan Sime Martinić

Ford exit to cost Brazil 119,000 jobs, billions in revenue, and 10% production capacity

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Status of 6000+ Ford employees uncertain

SAO PAULO – Closing Brazilian operations after “years of significant losses,” Ford’s exit will mean a total direct and indirect loss of 118.864 jobs, along with lost wages totaling some R$2.5 billion per year. The yearly impact on the tax base will be R$3 billion, according to Brazil’s Departamento Intersindical de Estatística e Estudos Socioeconômico (Dieese).

The closings will drop the country’s production capacity by as much as 500,000 vehicles per year, out of a total of 5 million produced in Brazil, according to National Association of Automotive Vehicle Manufacturers (Anfavea).

Ford employed 6,171 workers in Brazil and the status of most of them is currently undefined. Layoffs at the plants in Taubaté (SP) and Camaçari (BA) were halted by the Labor Tribunal in injunctions responding to lawsuits by the Labor Department, Ministério Público do Trabalho (MPT). Ford has said a total of 5,000 jobs will be affected in the restructuring in Brazil and Argentina.

Gauging a comparison, Ford laid off 7,000 workers in its 2019 global restructuring.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Facebook limiting political content in news feeds

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The move, which will first affect Brazil, Canada and Indonesia before being tried out in the US in a few weeks, is part of a company goal to “lower the temperature and discourage divisive conversations” globally, and was announced by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg at a January conference. The change will initially impact only a small percentage of users as the company explores different ways of classifying political content and finding a balance for the types of things that people want to see.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Brazilian MPs might change public sector work terms

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The Mixed Parliamentary Front in Defence of Public Service is filing an injunction against Constitutional Amendment 32/20, which alters the rules of public sector work.

According to Minister of Economic Affairs Paulo Guedes, the reform will save the government R$300 billion in ten years. However, the Mixed Front’s president, MP Israel Batista (Green Party), has stated that such claims lack any technical basis and demanded that the government present corroborating data before the project is discussed in Parliament.

Under the current system, public sector workers must be selected via tender and enjoy the right to stability, only able to be fired via lawsuit. The text creates multiple modalities of public work, establishing posts open to regular selection and whose holders can be fired. The Reform was sent to the Justice and Constitution Commission on 9 Feb for analysis.

By Fernando de Oliveira Lúcio

ICC has jurisdiction over Palestine, it says

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International Criminal Court judges found that the court has jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories because Palestine had been granted membership to the tribunal’s founding treaty.

The decision refers to the territories without attempting to say anything about the question of Palestinian statehood or national borders. The ICC’s jurisdiction, the judges found, extends to Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem–territories occupied by Israel since 1967.

The finding may lead to the ICC taking up war crimes cases against the Israeli Defense Forces and armed Palestinian groups such as Hamas, according to ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.

In response, Netanyahu issued a televised message where he said that “When the ICC investigates Israel for fake war crimes, this is pure antisemitism.” He said Israel was defending itself against terrorists, and pointed to dictatorships in Iran and Syria “who commit horrific atrocities almost daily” which the ICC “refuses to investigate.”

The US also opposed the decision. Human Rights Watch, though, said it “finally offers victims of serious crimes some real hope for justice after a half century of impunity.”

When political parties reverse their policy stance, their supporters immediately switch their opinions too

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At least a significant portion of their supporters, according to U of Aarhus researchers.

When two competing political parties in Denmark reversed their policy stance on an issue — suddenly they both supported reducing unemployment benefits — their voters immediately moved their opinions by around 15% into line with their party.

The same thing happened when one of these parties shifted from opposing to supporting ending Denmark’s early retirement.

The researchers were studying how public opinion is formed. Their recent paper sheds light on how much influence political parties have over their supporters, according to the researchers, who surveyed their panel of subjects in five successive waves between 2010 and 2011. They studied the same group of party supporters before, during and after a policy reversal.

“We can see that [the] welfare programs were actually quite popular … and many of the voters of the center-right party were in favor of these welfare programs,” commented one of the researchers, Rune Slothuus. “Nevertheless, we can see that they reversed their opinion from supporting these welfare programs to opposing these welfare programs.”

“I was surprised to see the parties appeared this powerful in shaping opinions,” Slothuus said. “Our findings suggest that partisan leaders can indeed lead citizens’ opinions in the real world, even in situations where the stakes are real and the economic consequences tangible.”

The researchers pondered Western democracy in light of their findings: “If citizens just blindly follow their party without thinking much about it, that should lead to some concern about the mechanisms in our democracy. Because how can partisan elites represent citizens’ views if the views of citizens are shaped by the very same elites who are supposed to represent them?”

Source: How Political Parties Shape Public Opinion in the Real World. Rune Slothuus and Martin Bisgaard. First published: 04 November 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12550