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Protesters call on President Joe Biden and Wall Street to phase out fossil fuels.
The approval comes as the nation has signed off on $1.5 billion for overseas oil and gas projects so far this year, even though it pledged to stop doing so by the end of 2022.
Despite President Joe Biden's commitment to end investments in overseas fossil fuel projects, the U.S. Export-Import Bank on Thursday agreed to fund the Liwathon oil tank project in Estonia.
The decision comes on top of the $1.5 billion that the U.S. has already promised to overseas oil and gas developments in 2023, in violation of a 2022 deadline to end international fossil finance.
"President Biden cannot claim climate wins while his U.S. Export-Import Bank is propping up a pollutive industry," Kate DeAngelis, senior international finance program manager for Friends of the Earth U.S., said in a statement. "EXIM spent the hottest months in history approving four major fossil fuel projects, demonstrating its disregard for the planet and all living beings. An institution that chooses polluters over people should not be trusted to follow President Biden's climate commitments."
"Biden and the United States risk becoming an international embarrassment with these retrograde approvals."
Biden signed an executive order in 2021 in which he promised to develop a climate finance plan that would promote "the flow of capital toward climate-aligned investments and away from high-carbon investments." Then, at the COP26 U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the U.S. joined 24 other countries and five financial institutions in pledging to stop funding "unabated fossil fuel energy" overseas by 2022.
Despite this, Oil Change International found in a September report that the U.S. had approved more money for international fossil fuel projects in 2023 than any other nation that agreed to stop.
"EXIM's decision to approve the Liwathon oil project is yet another concerning step in the wrong direction for climate action," Collin Rees, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement, calling the approval "yet another setback for President Joe Biden's climate commitments."
"Despite lofty promises and international agreements, Biden continues to approve projects that exacerbate our climate crisis and threaten communities," Rees continued. "As many other G-20 countries implement their commitment to end public finance for fossil fuels, Biden and the United States risk becoming an international embarrassment with these retrograde approvals."
In addition to the Liwathon approval, the EXIM specifically has already signed off on almost $100 million for an oil refinery in Indonesia, $240 million for an Iraqi gas development, and $400 million for Trafigura to support U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), Friends of the Earth said. The bank is also weighing whether to fund Papua LNG in Papua New Guinea and oil and gas projects in Bahrain and Guyana.
Both the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have concluded that no new oil, gas, and coal developments are compatible with limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. At the same time, Nina Pusic, export finance climate strategist at Oil Change International, argued that fossil finance goes against economic as well as scientific sense.
"Ultimately, using American taxpayer dollars to finance oil and gas infrastructure is not only an irresponsible use of public money from a climate perspective, but also risks creating stranded assets, as many regions of the world quickly transition to cleaner energy sources," Pusic said in a statement.
However, it's not too late to reverse course.
"The U.S. can help lead a shift of billions of dollars from last century's dirty energy into the clean, renewable energy of the future," Rees said, "but approvals like Liwathon are a huge step backward."
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
Despite President Joe Biden's commitment to end investments in overseas fossil fuel projects, the U.S. Export-Import Bank on Thursday agreed to fund the Liwathon oil tank project in Estonia.
The decision comes on top of the $1.5 billion that the U.S. has already promised to overseas oil and gas developments in 2023, in violation of a 2022 deadline to end international fossil finance.
"President Biden cannot claim climate wins while his U.S. Export-Import Bank is propping up a pollutive industry," Kate DeAngelis, senior international finance program manager for Friends of the Earth U.S., said in a statement. "EXIM spent the hottest months in history approving four major fossil fuel projects, demonstrating its disregard for the planet and all living beings. An institution that chooses polluters over people should not be trusted to follow President Biden's climate commitments."
"Biden and the United States risk becoming an international embarrassment with these retrograde approvals."
Biden signed an executive order in 2021 in which he promised to develop a climate finance plan that would promote "the flow of capital toward climate-aligned investments and away from high-carbon investments." Then, at the COP26 U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the U.S. joined 24 other countries and five financial institutions in pledging to stop funding "unabated fossil fuel energy" overseas by 2022.
Despite this, Oil Change International found in a September report that the U.S. had approved more money for international fossil fuel projects in 2023 than any other nation that agreed to stop.
"EXIM's decision to approve the Liwathon oil project is yet another concerning step in the wrong direction for climate action," Collin Rees, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement, calling the approval "yet another setback for President Joe Biden's climate commitments."
"Despite lofty promises and international agreements, Biden continues to approve projects that exacerbate our climate crisis and threaten communities," Rees continued. "As many other G-20 countries implement their commitment to end public finance for fossil fuels, Biden and the United States risk becoming an international embarrassment with these retrograde approvals."
In addition to the Liwathon approval, the EXIM specifically has already signed off on almost $100 million for an oil refinery in Indonesia, $240 million for an Iraqi gas development, and $400 million for Trafigura to support U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), Friends of the Earth said. The bank is also weighing whether to fund Papua LNG in Papua New Guinea and oil and gas projects in Bahrain and Guyana.
Both the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have concluded that no new oil, gas, and coal developments are compatible with limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. At the same time, Nina Pusic, export finance climate strategist at Oil Change International, argued that fossil finance goes against economic as well as scientific sense.
"Ultimately, using American taxpayer dollars to finance oil and gas infrastructure is not only an irresponsible use of public money from a climate perspective, but also risks creating stranded assets, as many regions of the world quickly transition to cleaner energy sources," Pusic said in a statement.
However, it's not too late to reverse course.
"The U.S. can help lead a shift of billions of dollars from last century's dirty energy into the clean, renewable energy of the future," Rees said, "but approvals like Liwathon are a huge step backward."
Despite President Joe Biden's commitment to end investments in overseas fossil fuel projects, the U.S. Export-Import Bank on Thursday agreed to fund the Liwathon oil tank project in Estonia.
The decision comes on top of the $1.5 billion that the U.S. has already promised to overseas oil and gas developments in 2023, in violation of a 2022 deadline to end international fossil finance.
"President Biden cannot claim climate wins while his U.S. Export-Import Bank is propping up a pollutive industry," Kate DeAngelis, senior international finance program manager for Friends of the Earth U.S., said in a statement. "EXIM spent the hottest months in history approving four major fossil fuel projects, demonstrating its disregard for the planet and all living beings. An institution that chooses polluters over people should not be trusted to follow President Biden's climate commitments."
"Biden and the United States risk becoming an international embarrassment with these retrograde approvals."
Biden signed an executive order in 2021 in which he promised to develop a climate finance plan that would promote "the flow of capital toward climate-aligned investments and away from high-carbon investments." Then, at the COP26 U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the U.S. joined 24 other countries and five financial institutions in pledging to stop funding "unabated fossil fuel energy" overseas by 2022.
Despite this, Oil Change International found in a September report that the U.S. had approved more money for international fossil fuel projects in 2023 than any other nation that agreed to stop.
"EXIM's decision to approve the Liwathon oil project is yet another concerning step in the wrong direction for climate action," Collin Rees, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement, calling the approval "yet another setback for President Joe Biden's climate commitments."
"Despite lofty promises and international agreements, Biden continues to approve projects that exacerbate our climate crisis and threaten communities," Rees continued. "As many other G-20 countries implement their commitment to end public finance for fossil fuels, Biden and the United States risk becoming an international embarrassment with these retrograde approvals."
In addition to the Liwathon approval, the EXIM specifically has already signed off on almost $100 million for an oil refinery in Indonesia, $240 million for an Iraqi gas development, and $400 million for Trafigura to support U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), Friends of the Earth said. The bank is also weighing whether to fund Papua LNG in Papua New Guinea and oil and gas projects in Bahrain and Guyana.
Both the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have concluded that no new oil, gas, and coal developments are compatible with limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. At the same time, Nina Pusic, export finance climate strategist at Oil Change International, argued that fossil finance goes against economic as well as scientific sense.
"Ultimately, using American taxpayer dollars to finance oil and gas infrastructure is not only an irresponsible use of public money from a climate perspective, but also risks creating stranded assets, as many regions of the world quickly transition to cleaner energy sources," Pusic said in a statement.
However, it's not too late to reverse course.
"The U.S. can help lead a shift of billions of dollars from last century's dirty energy into the clean, renewable energy of the future," Rees said, "but approvals like Liwathon are a huge step backward."
"Trump plans on liquidating Medicaid and SNAP benefits while giving the Pentagon a trillion dollars," wrote one analyst.
President Donald Trump on Monday publicly backed an annual budget of roughly $1 trillion for the U.S. military as his administration rushed ahead with a destructive tariff scheme that amounts to a major tax increase on American households, with working-class families set to bear much of the pain.
Speaking to reporters at the White House during a sit-down with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said his administration has signed off on an upcoming military budget in the vicinity of $1 trillion, which would be a record sum. The military budget for the current fiscal year is $892 billion, more than half of the federal government's discretionary budget.
"Nobody's seen anything like it," Trump said Monday of his $1 trillion budget proposal.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth later chimed in on social media, voicing enthusiastic support for a $1 trillion military budget and vowing to spend those dollars "on lethality and readiness."
Watch Trump's comments:
Thank you Mr. President!
COMING SOON: the first TRILLION dollar @DeptofDefense budget.
President @realDonaldTrump is rebuilding our military — and FAST.
(PS: we intend to spend every taxpayer dollar wisely — on lethality and readiness) pic.twitter.com/WcZlNAHgDG
— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) April 7, 2025
Trump and Hegseth's remarks indicate that the Pentagon—long a hotbed of waste and egregious abuse of taxpayer money, largely for the benefit of private contractors—will likely remain insulated from the Elon Musk-led effort to dismantle federal agencies under the guise of boosting government efficiency.
In February, Hegseth authored a memo instructing Pentagon leaders to draw up plans to reduce the military budget in each of the next five years. But it soon became clear that the Pentagon leadership is pushing to divert funds to Trump priorities—including his proposed Iron Dome for America boondoggle—rather than reduce overall spending.
Under Democratic and Republican presidents, and with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, the U.S. military budget has been steadily racing toward the $1 trillion mark year after year, despite the Pentagon's inability to pass an audit and mounting evidence of large-scale fraud and misuse of taxpayer money.
Trump's budget proposal would have to be approved by the Republican-controlled Congress, which is currently working—with the president's support—to further slash taxes for the rich and large corporations and cut Medicare, food aid, and other federal assistance programs.
"Trump plans on liquidating Medicaid and SNAP benefits while giving the Pentagon a trillion dollars," wrote Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute. "If the Democrats can't make a coherent political message out of these basic facts, they're not an opposition party, or even a party."
"Our government's responsibility is to protect its citizens," said U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. "Instead, we're arming their murderers. Arms embargo now."
As U.S. President Donald Trump rolled out the White House red carpet for fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Palestine defenders demanded justice after Israeli troops opened fire on a group of children in the illegally occupied West Bank, killing one Palestinian-American boy and wounding two others.
Fourteen-year-old Omar Mohammad Rabea and two other Palestinian-American boys, ages 14 and 15, were shot by Israeli occupation forces in Turmus Ayya, northeast of Ramallah.
"Two of them were transported by ambulance to a nearby medical center and then to the hospital," said Turmus Ayya Mayor Adeeb Lafi. "The army arrived at the scene and detained the third injured boy, who is 14 years old and holds U.S. citizenship."
Rabea's father said his son was shot six times—twice each in the face, chest, and shoulder.
The Palestinian National Authority's Foreign Ministry condemned Israeli forces' "use of live fire against three children," adding that "Israel's continued impunity as an illegal occupying power encourages it to commit further crimes."
The Israel Defense Forces claimed on social media that troops "identified three terrorists who were throwing rocks at a highway with civilian vehicles" and subsequently "fired at the terrorists who posed a danger to civilians, killing one of them and wounding the other two."
In the United States, the slain teen's relatives in New Jersey expressed anger over the killing. Rabea's father told Agence France-Presse that the U.S. government habitually ignores or downplays Israeli crimes against Palestinians, including "assaults, killings, arson, and theft of Palestinian land."
"All of these things—the U.S. Embassy turns a blind eye to them," he said.
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, said on the social media site X: "Our government's responsibility is to protect its citizens. Instead we're arming their murderers. Arms embargo now."
Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.) also took to X, noting reporting that Rabea "was denied medical aid and left to die."
"This atrocity must be condemned and investigated," the congressman added. "We cannot turn a blind eye."
The Institute for Middle East Understanding said on the social media site Bluesky that "Israel must be held accountable for its killings of American citizens—from aid workers, journalists, and humanitarian observers to children and the elderly."
However, "instead of pursuing justice for its citizens, the U.S. government is backing Israel's impunity by arming its violence," IMEU continued.
"The U.S. government's refusal to demand accountability for Israel's endless killings of Palestinians‚ even when it kills U.S. citizens—has deadly consequences," the group added. "That impunity emboldens Israeli soldiers and settlers to keep brutally attacking Palestinian children and families. Enough."
Other American citizens killed by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank include International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist Rachel Corrie, age 23 (2003); Orwah Hamad, age 14 (2014); Mahmoud Shaalan, age 16 (2016); journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, age 51 (2022); Omar Assad, age 78 (2022); Tawfiq Hafez Tawfiq Ajaq, age 17 (2024); Mohammad Ahmed Mohammad Khdour, age 17 (2024); and Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old ISM activist (2024).
Successive U.S. administrations have provided Israel with more than $300 billion in aid since the modern Jewish state's founding, largely through terrorism and ethnic cleansing, in 1948—far more than any other nation has received.
On Monday, Trump welcomed Netanyahu at the White House. The prime minister's flight from Hungary, where he met with far-right President Viktor Orbán, reportedly went out of its way to avoid the airspace of European nations that might enforce an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for the Israeli leader for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Israel is also facing a genocide case brought by South Africa before the International Court of Justice.
Israel's 539-day genocidal assault continued Monday in Gaza, where more than 180,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded—including thousands of missing people who are presumed dead and buried beneath rubble—since October 2023, when Hamas led the deadliest-ever attack on Israel.
In the West Bank—which Israel has illegally occupied and colonized since 1967 and where more than 700,000 Jewish colonists have settled—United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk last week lamented Palestinians' "catastrophic suffering," calling the situation there "extremely alarming."
Türk noted that his office has verified that Israeli soldiers and settlers—sometimes working together—have killed at least 909 Palestinians across the West Bank including East Jerusalem since October 2023, including 191 children and five people with disabilities. Attacks by Palestinian militants have killed 51 Israelis including 15 women and 4 children over that same period.
Thousands of West Bank Palestinians have been
killed or wounded by IDF troops and Israeli settlers since October 2023. Last week, Roland Friedrich, who heads the West Bank division of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, said that the scale of forced displacement is unprecedented during the 58 years of Israeli occupation.
One IDF officer said that not only are Israeli troops killing military-age males, "we're killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs. We're destroying their houses and pissing on their graves."
An Israeli human rights group on Monday published a report in which Israel Defense Forces officers and soldiers who took part in the creation of a buffer zone along Gaza's border with Israel described alleged war crimes including indiscriminate killing, as well as the wholesale deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure in what multiple whistleblowers called a "kill zone."
The new report from Breaking the Silence (BTS) details how Israel—which for decades has dubiously relied upon defensive buffer zones in territories it conquers or controls—decided on a policy of "widespread, deliberate destruction" in order to create a security perimeter ranging between roughly half a mile and a mile in width on the Gaza side of the Israeli-Palestinian border.
"To create this area, Israel launched a major miltary engineering operation that, by means of wholesale destruction, entirely reshaped about 16% of the Gaza Strip... an area previously home to some 35% of Gaza's agricultural land," the report states. "The perimeter extends from the coast in the north to the Egyptian border in the south, all within the territory of the Gaza Strip and outside of Israel's internationally recognized borders."
"The mission given to soldiers in the field, as revealed in their testimonies, was to create an empty, completely flat expanse about a kilometer wide along the Gaza side of the border fence," the publication continues. "This space was to have no crops, structures, or people. Almost every object, infrastructure installation, and structure within the perimeter was demolished."
"Palestinians were denied entry into the area altogether, a ban which was enforced using live fire, including machine gun fire and tank shells. In this way, the military created a death zone of enormous proportions," the report adds. "Places where people had lived, farmed, and established industry were transformed into a vast wasteland, a strip of land eradicated in its entirety."
"The testimonies demonstrate that soldiers were given orders to deliberately, methodically, and systematically annihilate whatever was within the designated perimeter, including entire residential neighborhoods, public buildings, educational institutions, mosques, and cemeteries, with very few exceptions," the paper says. "Industrial zones and agricultural areas which served the entire population of Gaza were laid to waste, regardless of whether those areas had any connection whatsoever to the fighting."
"Places where people had lived, farmed, and established industry were transformed into a vast wasteland."
Palestinians who dared enter the perimeter, even accidentally were also targeted, including civilian men, women, children, and elders. The officers and soldiers interviewed by BTS struggled to explain whether noncombatants were informed of the no-go zone's limits, with one saying civilians knew to stay away when they saw that "enough people died or got injured" crossing the unmarked boundary.
Some people who entered the perimeter out of sheer desperation were targeted. Israel's blockade of Gaza has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation, and Palestinians entered the "kill zone" to pick hubeiza, a nutritious wild plant, after the area's farmland was razed.
"The IDF really is fulfilling the public's wishes, which state: 'There are no innocents in Gaza. We'll show them,'" one reserve warrant officer explained. "People were incriminated for having bags in their hands. Guy showed up with a bag? Incriminated, terrorist. I believe they came to pick hubeiza, but... boom," tank shells were fired at him from half a mile away.
In a separate interview with The Guardian, that same officer said that at first, his attitude toward invading Gaza was, "I went there because they killed us and now we're going to kill them."
"And I found out that we're not only killing them—we're killing them, we're killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs," they added. "We're destroying their houses and pissing on their graves."
Another IDF reservist officer told BTS that he was briefed that "there is no civilian population" in the area, where Palestinians are "terrorists, all of them." Asked what the area looked like after the IDF clearing operation, the officer replied: "Hiroshima."
A captain in an armored division of the IDF reserves said "the borderline is a kill zone" where "there are no clear rules of engagement" or "proper combat procedure."
"Anyone who crosses a certain line, that we have defined, is considered a threat and is sentenced to death," the captain added.
The BTS report follows an investigation published last December by Haaretz, Israel's oldest newspaper, in which IDF soldiers and veterans described a "kill zone" in the Netzarim corridor in the heart of Gaza, where troops were ordered to shoot "anyone who enters."
"The forces in the field call it 'the line of dead bodies,'" one commander said. "After shootings, bodies are not collected, attracting packs of dogs who come to eat them. In Gaza, people know that wherever you see these dogs, that's where you must not go."
The new report comes as Israeli forces are carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are being forcibly expelled from areas of Gaza including the south and an expanded border perimeter. The Associated Press reported Monday that Israel "now controls more than 50% of the territory and is squeezing Palestinians into shrinking wedges of land."
Israeli troops are moving to seize large tracts of the Gaza Strip for a so-called "security zone" and Jewish recolonization. Members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government have said the campaign is being coordinated with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who in February said that the United States would "take over" Gaza, remove all of its Palestinians, and transform the Mediterranean enclave into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
On Monday, Netanyahu arrived in Washington, D.C. from Hungary for talks with Trump and other U.S. officials regarding topics including a Gaza cease-fire, release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas, Iran policy, and tariffs. Netanyahu is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for him and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including extermination and using starvation as a weapon of war.
Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its conduct in a war that has left more than 180,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in Gaza and almost all of the strip's more than 2 million people forcibly displaced—often multiple times.
Israel's bombing and invasion of Gaza continued on Monday. An early morning IDF strike on a tent where numerous journalists were sleeping outside Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis killed Palestine Today reporter Hilmi al-Faqaawi and another man, who were burned alive as helpless witnesses were unable to douse the flames or rescue victims.
Nine others were reportedly wounded in the attack, which the IDF said targeted a Hamas member posing as a journalist. More than 230 journalists have been
killed by Israeli bombs and bullets since October 2023.