February, 10 2021, 11:00pm EDT
Bank of America Sets Net-Zero Emissions Target Without Key Details To Get There
WASHINGTON
Today, Bank of America announced a new commitment to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in its financing activities, operations and supply chain before 2050, and released an updated environmental policy.
The bank's announcement included details on reducing its operational emissions by 2030 and pledges to disclose its financed emissions no later than 2023, but fails to provide an interim target for reducing those emissions and how it plans to achieve its 2050 goal.
Bank of America is the second major US bank, following Morgan Stanley, committed to reaching net-zero financed emissions by 2050. The updated policy includes Bank of America's new position on Arctic drilling, which it previewed late last year, along with a strengthening of its policy on coal mining and coal power.
Last year, a coalition of more than 60 climate and human rights organizations around the world issued a set of Principles for Paris-Aligned Financial Institutions that details what true climate leadership from banks and other financial institutions would look like to meet the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to 1.5degC.
In response, Sierra Club financial advocacy campaign manager Ben Cushing released the following statement:
"Bank of America's commitment to reach net-zero emissions before 2050, and its restrictions on financing Arctic drilling and coal operations, are welcome moves and an important sign of progress. However, it's hard to see how Bank of America will reach its goal without an interim 2030 target for its financing portfolio and a plan to stop financing fossil fuel expansion. A destination without a complete roadmap isn't going to cut it."
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Israeli Cabinet Minister: 'Only Solution for the Gaza Strip Is to Empty It of Gazans'
"God has sent us the U.S. administration, and it is clearly telling us—it's time to inherit the land," she said.
Mar 11, 2025
Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman argued Tuesday for ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population so that the Jewish people can "inherit the land" many of them believe their deity promised them in biblical times.
"The only solution for the Gaza Strip is to empty it of Gazans," Silman—a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud party—said during an interview with Reshet Bet radio, according to a translation by Haaretz. "God has sent us the U.S. administration, and it is clearly telling us—it's time to inherit the land."
Last month, Republican U.S. President Donald Trumpproposed that the U.S. "take over" Gaza, remove it's approximately 2.1 million Palestinian inhabitants, and transform the coastal enclave into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Sunday that the so-called "Trump Plan" is currently "taking shape."
"It could be in single-family homes or Trump-style towers, but we will definitely go back there."
Silman said during Tuesday's interview that "Gush Katif will return, there's no question about it," referring to a former block of 17 Israeli apartheid settlements in southern Gaza that were abandoned 20 years ago. "It could be in single-family homes or Trump-style towers, but we will definitely go back there. I see no other solution to terrorism. The answer to terrorism is sovereignty."
While proponents of the plan insist that Palestinians will leave Gaza voluntarily, critics counter that this notion is utterly divorced from reality, as most Gazans are descendants of people who fled or were ethnically cleansed from other parts of Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948, and are loath to be subjected to yet another expulsion. Many elderly Gazans are survivors of what Palestinians call the Nakba, or "catastrophe," of 1948.
This isn't the first time that Silman has called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. She made similar comments during a recent rally, and last September she also said that Israel is "on a path to inherit" the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Israel has illegally occupied the territory since 1967, and hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have steadily usurped Palestinians by building and expanding apartheid colonies on their land.
"We will not 'conquer,'" Silman asserted last year. "Conquer is a progressive word that the progressives brought upon us. We inherit. Inheritance from the lord."
Silman rose to prominence after abandoning the previous Israeli coalition government, prompting a crisis leading to the 2022 election that gave rise to the current far-right administration.
Numerous Israeli politicians, military leaders, journalists, entertainers, and others have called for genocide in Gaza or the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the territory. Statements from Netanyahu, members of his Cabinet, Knesset lawmakers, and others have been entered as evidence in the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
More than 170,000 Palestinians are dead, maimed, or missing, and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened following 15 months of Israeli bombardment and invasion and more than 17 months of "complete siege" of Gaza, according to local and international agencies.
Palestine defenders argue the mass slaughter and annihilation of Gaza meet the definition of genocide under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. However, according to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, "To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."
"The intent is the most difficult element to determine," the agency stressed. But critics say that comments like Silman's could make the ICJ's final decision much easier.
"Bolstered by the hubris of settler colonial power and the knowledge that it has killed, maimed, destroyed, expelled, humiliated, imprisoned, and dispossessed with more than seven decades of impunity and by the continued material and moral support of the United States, Israelis are explicit and unashamed about their genocidal intent because they have imagined and prosecuted a war against people who they see as colonized 'savages,'" Israeli Holocaust scholar and British law professor Penny Green wrote last year.
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Trade War Intensifies as Trump Jacks Up Aluminum, Steel Tariffs on Canada to 50%
The next Canadian prime minister has said that "my government will keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect."
Mar 11, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his North American trade war on Tuesday, announcing that he will double tariffs on aluminum and steel imports from Canada in response to Ontario's retaliatory duties on electricity.
"Based on Ontario, Canada, placing a 25% Tariff on 'Electricity' coming into the United States, I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to add an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD," Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
The new U.S. tariffs are set to take effect Wednesday, according to Trump, who started the current trade conflict with Canada and Mexico. He also said that he would declare a national emergency on electricity for the region of the United States impacted by Ontario's surcharge, which spans Minnesota, Michigan, and New York.
The U.S. president urged the Canadian government to "immediately drop their Anti-American Farmer Tariff of 250% to 390% on various U.S. dairy products," and threatened to impose tariffs next month on cars, which he said "will, essentially, permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada."
Highlighting how the incoming tariffs threaten manufacturing hubs in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous said in a Tuesday statement that "Donald Trump continues to force a trade strategy that will not grow American manufacturing. Rather than lying about what tariffs will do, Trump should emphasize adopting cleaner technologies for our steel mills, allowing workers to unionize to advocate for better pay and safety, and establishing clear rules that ensure our trade partners do not violate labor and environmental standards."
"This is the hard work that the administration believes will magically happen on its own," Jealous added. "And if Trump continues to shy away from his duties, steelworkers and local communities will pay the price."
The tariff announcement came just a day after U.S. stocks plummeted on Monday, in the wake of Trump being asked on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo" whether he expected a recession this year, to which he responded: "I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we're doing is very big."
Journalist Aaron Rupar noted on X that Tuesday viewers of Fox could "watch the stock market lose over 100 points in real time while Maria Bartiromo talks about Trump's tariffs."
Trump on Tuesday also repeated his call for Canada to join the United States, saying that "the only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State. This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear."
"Canadians' taxes will be very substantially reduced, they will be more secure, militarily and otherwise, than ever before, there would no longer be a Northern Border problem, and the greatest and most powerful nation in the World will be bigger, better and stronger than ever—And Canada will be a big part of that," he claimed. "The artificial line of separation drawn many years ago will finally disappear, and we will have the safest and most beautiful Nation anywhere in the World."
After Canada's Liberal Party elected Mark Carney as its next leader on Sunday, the former central banker and prime minister-designate declared that "America is not Canada. And Canada never, ever, will be part of America in any way, shape or form."
Carney also said that Trump—whose name provoked loud boos—has put "unjustified tariffs on what we build, on what we sell, on how we make a living. He's attacking Canadian families, workers, and businesses, and we cannot let him succeed—and we won't."
"The Canadian government has rightly retaliated and is rightly retaliating with our own tariffs that will have maximum impact in the United States and minimum impact here in Canada," he added. "My government will keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect."
Trump's trade war seemingly has even some Republican experts baffled—as shown in an exchange that Jeff Stein, White House economics reporter for
The Washington Post, posted to X on Tuesday morning.
Trump's tariffs—expected to reach beyond Canada, China, and Mexico early next month—and other decisions since Inauguration Day, including sweeping efforts to dismantle the federal government, have some experts speculating that the president, his billionaire Cabinet, and his adviser Elon Musk, the richest person on Earth, "are intentionally crashing the economy."
Early last week, Saikat Chakrabarti, a progressive running for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) seat who worked on Wall Street and helped found an online payment processing company, accused Trump of "manufacturing a recession."
"It makes sense when you realize his goal is to create something like Russia where the economy is run by a few oligarchs loyal to him," Chakrabarti said. "Creating that state is hard in a large, dynamic, powerful economy with too many actors who can oppose him. So he's accelerating concentrating money and power into the hands of his loyalists while he crashes the rest out."
While Trump responded to Friday's jobs report by declaring that "the Golden Age of America has just begun," Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, said: "Just one month on the job, warning signs are flashing across the Trump economy. Inflation is rising, consumer confidence is plummeting, business investment is pulling back, and now, the labor market is stalling."
Adding to working-class Americans' fears of the future, while Trump—aided by GOP senators—installs billionaires to lead federal departments that Musk is tearing apart, Republicans who narrowly control Congress are working to send legislation that would cut taxes for the ultrarich by robbing programs that help the poor to the president's desk.
Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote Monday that "while a recession may not be fully baked into the cards at this point, the risk is evident and it's almost entirely coming from Donald Trump's policies."
Baker suggested that Americans should call what lies ahead the "Donald J. Trump Recession."
This article has been updated with comment from Sierra Club.
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'Now Do Netanyahu': Philippines' Duterte Arrested Under ICC Warrant for Crimes Against Humanity
"Duterte's arrest on an ICC warrant... shows that suspected perpetrators of the worst crimes, including government leaders, can and will face justice," said one human rights advocate.
Mar 11, 2025
On Tuesday, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by local authorities at Manila's international airport after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity. News of his arrest prompted some observers to urge the arrest of another public figure who faces ICC charges: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Duterte case will pose a test for the court, according to The New York Times. In the past six months, the ICC has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the military junta in Myanmar.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote "Perhaps Netanyahu and Gallant will be next..." in response to the news. Danny Shaw, a professor at City University of New York, posted a video of Duterte's arrest and wrote: "Why don't they arrest Netanyahu?"
Wim Zwijnenburg, a project leader at the Dutch peace organization PAX, wrote, "now do Netanyahu."
On Tuesday night, Duterte was placed on a plane that was bound for The Hague, where the court is headquartered, per the Times, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.
The ICC has accused Duterte of crimes against humanity during his time as president and when he was the mayor of the city of Davao. During his tenure as president, from 2016 to 2022, Duterte's security forces carried out thousands of killings that his government cast as drug-related cases. In a 2017 report, Human Rights Watch described his "war on drugs" as effectively "a campaign of extrajudicial execution in impoverished areas of Manila and other urban areas." Philippine National Police officers and unidentified "vigilantes" killed over 7,000 people between the start of his term and the release of that Human Rights Watch report, according to the group.
In 2017, Duterte earned praise from U.S. President Donald Trump, who told him in a phone call that he was doing "an unbelievable job on the drug problem," according to reporting at the time.
"Duterte's arrest on an ICC warrant is a hopeful sign for victims in the Philippines and beyond. It shows that suspected perpetrators of the worst crimes, including government leaders, can and will face justice, wherever they are in the world," said Agnes Callamard, secretary general of the human rights group Amnesty International, in a statement Tuesday. "At a time when too many governments renege on their ICC obligations while others attack or sanction international courts, Duterte's arrest is a huge moment for the power of international law."
Duterte's former chief legal counsel and presidential spokesperson, Salvador Panelo, said that the "ICC has no jurisdiction in the Philippines," in part because "the country withdrew as an ICC member state in 2018," according to a post on social media.
According to the Times, the court says the case only considers alleged crimes from the time when the country was still part of the court.
According to a copy of he warrant, which was obtained by the Times, three judges of the ICC said they believed Duterte "was responsible for the drug war killings that took place when he was president and mayor of Davao, and that there were reasonable grounds to believe that these attacks were 'both widespread and systematic.'"
The government itself, in 2022, said that over 6,200 "drug suspects" were killed during Duterte's war on drugs starting in 2016. Rights groups put the total number of people who died much higher, in the tens of thousands, according to PBS.
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