December, 17 2019, 11:00pm EDT

Congress Passes Somalia Debt Relief
Bill Heads to White House
WASHINGTON
As part of the Federal government's year-end spending package or "minibus," Congress passed the first phase of debt relief for Somalia. On Tuesday the House of Representatives passed the DHS Cyber Hunt and Incident Response Teams Act of 2019 (HR 1158) which included $35 million to begin paying the principle of $1.1 billion in US held debt. On Wednesday the Senate passed the companion legislation (S 135) which sends the bill to the President to be signed into law.
"Debt relief for Somalia cannot come soon enough," stated Eric LeCompte, the Executive Director of the religious development group Jubilee USA. "Without relieving Somalia's debt, Somalia is unable to finance infrastructure and recover from war, natural disasters or famines."The Human Development Index ranks Somalia among the 5 least developed countries on earth. Possibly the poorest country on the African continent, Somalia has a 73% extreme poverty rate.
"Canceling Somalia's debt could mean women's empowerment, kids going back to school and moving forward measures to end extreme poverty," noted LeCompte who serves on United Nations debt expert groups. "If President Trump signs the spending package, the US Treasury and State Departments are authorized to move forward the first phase of debt relief for the African country."
Somalia owes about $4.6 billion in debt. The United States is the largest creditor holding $1.1 billion in Somalia debt. The majority of the remainder of the debt is held by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, France and Italy.
Jubilee USA Network is an interfaith, non-profit alliance of religious, development and advocacy organizations. We are 75 U.S. institutions and more than 750 faith groups working across the United States and around the globe. We address the structural causes of poverty and inequality in our communities and countries around the world.
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'A Great Start': Peace Advocates Cheer Senate Repeal of Iraq War Authorization
"A larger and far more consequential challenge remains: repealing the 2001 AUMF which authorized the global war on terror," said one activist.
Mar 29, 2023
Peace campaigners cheered Wednesday's vote by the U.S. Senate to repeal the authorizations for the 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq, while calling on the House of Representatives to follow suit.
The Senate voted 66-30 in favor of a bill to rescind the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for the use of military force (AUMF), with 18 Republican senators crossing the aisle to support the legislation, which now heads to the House. An amendment by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would have empowered the president to attack Iran was defeated on Tuesday.
It is uncertain if the lower chamber's GOP leadership will take up the measure. In 2021, the Democrat-led House passed a repeal of the 2002 AUMF, with the support of 49 Republican lawmakers. The Biden administration supports the repeal.
"The people of the United States deserve elected leaders that will end our endless wars."
The more sweeping 2001 AUMF greenlighting then-President George W. Bush's global war against terrorism—which has been waged in at least eight countries at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives—remains in place and unendangered. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the author of the 2021 repeal bill, was the only member of Congress to vote against the 2001 AUMF.
"Today, the Senate made the belated but critical decision to repeal the 2002 and 1991 AUMFs," Win Without War government relations director Eric Eikenberry said in a statement. "This appropriately comes days after the 20-year anniversary of the Iraq War—the horrific end result of Congress handing then-President Bush a blank check to wage war at the expense of the people of Iraq and the United States."
\u201c"Today\u2019s vote begins the process of accountability the war deserved long ago. We welcome this vote... and we thank @timkaine and @SenToddYoung for so doggedly pushing for this outcome."\n\nFull statement on the Senate's AUMF repeal vote from @epeikenberry: https://t.co/HTzbAJi8zF\u201d— Win Without War (@Win Without War) 1680110106
"The Trump administration amply demonstrated the risks of leaving outdated military authorization on the books," Eikenberry continued, likely referring to the January 2020 drone assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, which was carried out under the AUMF.
Former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump both invoked the AUMF when the former launched, and the latter escalated, the U.S.-led coalition campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
"We cannot gamble again by allowing the next irresponsible and short-sighted president to abuse their executive power to destroy lives around the world," Eikenberry added. "We now call on the House of Representatives... to immediately take up repeal and send it to the president's desk. The Iraq War deserves justice and accountability, and the people of the United States deserve elected leaders that will end our endless wars."
\u201cThe Senate repealing the 1991 and 2002 AUMFs for Iraq is a great start. A larger and far more consequential challenge remains: repealing the 2001 AUMF which authorized the global war on terror. https://t.co/2Oeg57xmha @CarnegieEndow @CEIPStatecraft\u201d— Matt Duss (@Matt Duss) 1680113771
Common Defense political director Naveen Shah related that "as a veteran of the War in Iraq, I saw firsthand the utter devastation the war had on ordinary Iraqis, and the ordinary troops who were sent there."
"Keeping these war authorizations open after all these years is a sad reminder of our country's mistake," Shah argued. "We need to ensure it never happens again, and that begins with this repeal and continues by requiring congressional authorization, after a full public debate, before America ever sends our troops into harm's way again."
Bridget Moix, general secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, said that "Quakers know that war is not and never has been the answer. Not today. Not tomorrow. And certainly not 20 years ago."
"The 2002 Iraq AUMF, as we stated at the time, should have never been passed and signed into law," Moix continued. "A congressional repeal of the law is a vital step to help heal our country's addiction to war and end endless wars. What we can invest more in to build a safer world is peacebuilding and global cooperation."
"True peace is more than the absence of fighting. It is addressing the root causes of war and managing conflict nonviolently," she added. "As long as the U.S. can still attack and kill with impunity in Iraq, neither its people nor ours will know true peace."
Roughly 2,500 U.S. troops—over 4,000 of whom died during the invasion and occupation of Iraq—remain in the country today.
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Biden Climate Approval Plummets After Willow Oil Drilling Greenlighted
"Voters strongly support transitioning to clean energy projects instead of building fossil fuel projects on public lands," according to new research published as the White House moved forward with a massive lease sale.
Mar 29, 2023
Survey data published Wednesday shows that the U.S. electorate's approval of President Joe Biden's handling of the climate crisis has declined since October.
Voters' approval fell even further after they were made aware of the incongruence between Biden's 2020 campaign trail vow to end oil and gas leasing on public lands and his administration's March 13 move to rubber-stamp ConocoPhillips' massive Willow drilling project on federally controlled territory in the Alaskan Arctic.
The decline in support has been most pronounced among Democrats, Independents, and voters under 50, according to polling conducted by Data for Progress and Fossil Free Media.
From October 21-25 and then again from March 17-21, researchers asked respondents if they approved or disapproved of how the Biden administration has addressed climate change and the environment before mentioning any specific policy or decision.
Five months ago, 82% of Democrats, 37% of Independents, and 10% of Republicans gave Biden a thumbs up on this issue. Just over a week ago, approval had decreased among Democrats and Independents, with 69% and 30% of such voters expressing support for the president's climate performance. Meanwhile, Republican support for Biden's environmental policies increased to 17% during this time period.
The drop in support was even steeper among younger voters. In October, 37% of voters 40-49, 51% of voters 30-39, and 48% of voters 18-29 said they approved of the Biden administration's handling of climate change and the environment. Those percentages have decreased across all three age groups, with just 35% of voters 40-49, 45% of voters 30-39, and 35% of voters 18-29 giving the president a passing grade on the issue earlier this month.
"If the move to approve Willow was intended to win the favor of Independents concerned about high energy prices, this research suggests it may not have landed as intended."
Notably, the aforementioned decline in support for Biden's climate performance since October among Democrats (13% drop), Independents (7% drop), and voters aged 18-29 (13% drop) doesn't take into account the president's Willow betrayal. Data for Progress and Fossil Free Media first tested for approval before introducing respondents to the president's campaign promises and news of his administration's decision to greenlight the largest oil drilling endeavor on public land in U.S. history.
Although awareness of the Willow project has increased since October when 71% of voters said they hadn't heard, seen, or read anything at all about the climate-wrecking venture, 52% of voters were still completely unaware of it when surveyed from March 17-21.
After measuring baseline support, pollsters reminded voters of Biden's campaign pledge to ban new fossil fuel leasing on public lands and informed them about his administration's recent approval of the Willow project, which seeks to extract more than 600 million barrels of crude from Alaska's North Slope over the next 30 years. Then, pollsters retested their original question.
Once this contrast was made explicit, public approval of Biden's climate performance plummeted. Net approval measured in March fell by 33 points among Democrats and 12 points among Independents. It's worth noting that in October, Biden enjoyed a net climate approval rating of 68 points among Democrats.
Young voters' disappointment was also palpable, with net approval measured in March falling by 1 point among voters 18-29, 16 points among voters 30-39, and 5 points among voters 40-49.
It's unclear why the Biden administration refused to use its authority to halt a fossil fuel project capable of spewing about 280 million metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere on the same day United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the planet is reaching a "point of no return." Environmental advocacy groups have responded with lawsuits.
Biden may be enjoying higher approval ratings on environmental issues if he had blocked Conoco's drilling proposal. According to Data for Progress and Fossil Free Media, voters remain supportive of the president's original campaign promises on climate.
Researchers also asked respondents whether the federal government should prioritize the production of renewable energy or fossil energy on public lands.
By a 21-point margin, voters said they want new energy developments on public lands to be green, such as wind and solar farms—not planet-heating oil and gas drilling sites.
"This research shows that voters strongly support transitioning to clean energy projects instead of building fossil fuel projects on public lands," wrote Anika Dandekar, a senior analyst at Data for Progress.
The recent approval of the Willow project "not only undermines Biden's campaign promise to transition to a fully clean power sector by no later than 2035, but also may explain why Democrats, Independents, and voters under 50 increasingly disapprove of the Biden administration's handling of climate change and the environment," she noted.
"Younger generations, most likely to be impacted by the further degradation of the environment, are paying attention," Dandekar continued. "Furthermore, if the move to approve Willow was intended to win the favor of Independents concerned about high energy prices, this research suggests it may not have landed as intended."
"If the Biden administration wants to maintain support from these important demographics," she added, "it will need to continue taking bold actions to curb emissions and keep its promises."
Notably, the White House is facing fresh criticism on Wednesday over its decision to plow ahead with Lease Sale 259, one of the largest offshore auctions in U.S. history. Earlier this month, several green groups filed a lawsuit to challenge the sale, which offered more than 73 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to the highest-bidding oil and gas drillers.
"President Biden's decision to once again sacrifice an enormous portion of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling is unconscionable," Nicole Ghio, senior fossil fuels program manager at Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. "Reviving lease sales and greenlighting massive fossil fuel projects demonstrates the administration cares more about Big Oil profits than frontline communities and endangered species."
"Reviving lease sales and greenlighting massive fossil fuel projects demonstrates the administration cares more about Big Oil profits than frontline communities and endangered species."
"We will continue pushing Biden to take his long-held climate promises seriously and stop locking us into decades of dirty energy," said Ghio.
A 2021 lawsuit filed by many of the same groups led a federal judge to vacate Lease Sale 257, the nation's largest-ever offshore auction wherein more than 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico were offered to the fossil fuel industry.
Despite Biden's campaign pledge to curtail new fossil fuel projects on public lands and waters, his administration has approved more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first two years than the Trump administration did in 2017 and 2018.
Two weeks ago, a trio of groups filed a 30-day notice of their intent to sue the Biden administration for refusing to respond to a petition to wind down fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters.
Signed by a coalition of more than 360 progressive advocacy organizations, the January 2022 petition submitted to Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland provides a blueprint to reduce federal oil and gas production by 98% by 2035 using long-dormant provisions of the Mineral Leasing Act, Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and the National Emergencies Act.
Research published after the petition was filed shows that wealthy countries must end oil and gas production entirely by 2034 to give the world a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C—beyond which the climate emergency's impacts will grow increasingly deadly, particularly for the world's poor who have done the least to cause the crisis.
After the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest assessment report last week, Guterres demanded "a quantum leap in climate action," including a prohibition on approving and financing new coal, oil, and gas projects as well as a phaseout of existing fossil fuel production.
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Putin Further Stokes Nuclear Fears With 'Sinister' Training Exercises
Sweden—which, along with Finland, is trying to join NATO—summoned Russia's ambassador after he said that "new members of the hostile bloc will become a legitimate target for Russian retaliatory measures."
Mar 29, 2023
In what was seen around the world as a "menacing" and "sinister" show of Russia's nuclear capabilities, thousands of Russian troops on Wednesday began exercises in Siberia with the nation's Yars intercontinental ballistic missile system.
"In total, more than 3,000 military personnel and about 300 pieces of equipment are involved in the exercises," Russia's Ministry of Defense said just over 13 months into Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
The exercises come amid reporting that Putin is prepared for a war without "a foreseeable end," despite the human and economic toll, and after the Russian leader on Sunday revealed plans to station "tactical" nuclear weapons in Belarus, a move he compared to the United States' placing of such arms in allied European countries.
Anti-nuke campaigners said that Putin's "extremely dangerous escalation" on Sunday demonstrates the dangers of "nuclear deterrence" while also warning that the United States—with the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal after Russia—and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) "must resist calls to respond in kind and avoid injecting nuclear weapons deeper into this war."
\u201cThe report found that the number of nuclear weapons available for use globally increased from 9,440 warheads in 2021 to 9,576 in early 2023 and the collective destructive power of these arsenals equals more than 135,000 Hiroshima bombs. https://t.co/y5RdAiQoMc\u201d— ICAN (@ICAN) 1680106069
On Monday, the United States and allies on the United Nations Security Council rejected a Russia-led effort to launch a probe into the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, and a U.S. State Department official said the Biden administration supports creating "an internationalized national court" to help Ukrainian prosecutors bring cases against Russian leaders related to the war.
In an annual report Tuesday, Amnesty International noted that "the West's robust response to Russia's aggression against Ukraine contrasts sharply with a deplorable lack of meaningful action on grave violations by some of their allies including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt."
The Biden administration also informed Moscow on Monday that in response to Putin announcing last month that Russia "is suspending its participation" in New START, its last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the United States, Washington has cut off biannual updates about the U.S. nuclear stockpile but will keep sharing daily positioning information.
"There is no reason to believe that Russia will be swayed by this," Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists toldThe Wall Street Journal Tuesday. "We are watching the gradual destruction of the last remaining nuclear arms limitation treaty."
\u201c#ICYMI "People across the political spectrum, including the scientific community, have an important role and responsibility to push back against any threats of #nuclearweapons," write @DarylGKimball & Frank von Hippel of the @PhysCoalition in @sciam. \n\nhttps://t.co/DVZDm06Co4\u201d— Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction (@Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction) 1680036024
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday that "all notifications, all kinds of notifications, all activities under the treaty, will be suspended and will not be conducted regardless of what position the U.S. may take."
Ryabkov also said that Putin's Belarus decision is the result of Ukraine's Western allies failing to heed "serious signals" from Moscow because of the "fundamental irresponsibility of Western elites before their people and international security."
"Now they will have to deal with changing realities," the minister added. "We hope that NATO officials will adequately assess the seriousness of the situation."
After months of delay, Hungary on Monday backed a bid by Finland—which borders Russia—to join NATO while continuing to stall on Sweden over "an ample amount of grievances that need to be addressed," according to a Hungarian government spokesperson.
In response to the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, both Scandinavian countries applied to join NATO last May, but their efforts have been blocked by Hungary and Turkey—which is expected to approve Finland's bid on Thursday.
\u201cThe Russian embassy in Sweden is apparently issuing direct military threats to Sweden and Finland for joining #NATO: \n\n\u201c\u2026you can be sure that the new members\u2026will be a legitimate target for Russia\u2019s retaliatory measures, including military ones.\u201d https://t.co/5p3g6Ls3eE\u201d— Hans Kristensen (@Hans Kristensen) 1680097350
Russia's ambassador to Sweden, Viktor Tatarintsev, said Tuesday that "if anyone still believes that this [NATO membership] in any way will somehow improve Europe's security, you can be sure that the new members of the hostile bloc will become a legitimate target for Russian retaliatory measures, including military ones."
Rather than becoming safer, Sweden would be "taking a step towards the abyss," Tatarintsev warned, noting that "after the accession of Finland and Sweden, the total length of the border between Russia and NATO will almost double."
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström responded Wednesday that "the Ministry for Foreign Affairs will summon the Russian ambassador to make a clear statement against this blatant attempt at influence."
"Sweden's security policy is determined by Sweden—no one else," Billström said.
Adding to regional security concerns on Wednesday, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said during a trip to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine that "it is obvious that military activity is increasing in this whole region, so every possible measure and precautions should be taken so that the plant is not attacked."
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