Thursday, January 28, 2021

'Good': Anti-War Democrats Applaud Biden for Freeze on US Arms Sales to Saudis and UAE

"This is an important first step in ending our material support for war globally, and the genocide in Yemen in particular," said Rep. Ilhan Omar.

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A float titled "The Murderer and His Guardian Angel," depicting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and former President Donald Trump—who accepted the 2018 Saudi murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—at the March 4, 2019 Carnival parade in Dusseldorf, Germany. (Photo: Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images) 

Peace-loving people around the world and anti-war Democrats in Congress hailed reports Wednesday that the Biden administration is imposing a temporary freeze on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pending a review of billions of dollars worth of weapons deals with the repressive regimes approved during the presidency of Donald Trump.

 "[Biden] has made clear that we will end our support for the military campaign led by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and I think we will work on that in very short order."
—Secretary of State Antony Blinken 

The Wall Street Journal reports unnamed officials said sales covered by the moratorium include nearly half a billion dollars worth of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia and F-35 fighter jets to the UAE. The latter are part of a $23 billion deal approved by the Trump administration under the Abraham Accords, the peace agreement signed between the repressive Gulf monarchy, Israel, and the United States last August. 

Critics, including CodePink's Medea Benjanin and Ariel Gold, lambasted the deal—which Gold called "peace through weapons sales"—as a thinly-veiled attempt to "give an Arab stamp of approval to Israel's status quo of land theft, home demolitions, arbitrary extrajudicial killings, apartheid laws, and other abuses of Palestinian rights," and a bid to boost Trump's flagging reelection odds. 

More importantly, Saudi Arabia is leading a war against Yemen—fought with U.S. weapons, logistical, and political support—that has killed thousands of civilians in aerial bombardments and tens of thousands more in an economic blockade that has exacerbated famine and intensified human suffering on a mass scale. 

In 2019, the UAE began withdrawing most of its forces from the war against Yemen and handed control of its operations to Saudi Arabia. 

The U.S. has also been bombing Yemen since the early years of the so-called War on Terror, a global campaign that has claimed at least hundreds of thousands of lives in more than half a dozen Muslim countries. 

The United Nations—which has called the situation in Yemen the world's worst humanitarian crisis—last September recommended that the International Criminal Court investigate possible war crimes committed by all sides in the six-year civil war.

Congressional lawmakers opposed to ongoing U.S. involvement in the war applauded Wednesday's news as a positive development even as they called on the administration and others to go further: 

Despite being one of the world's worst human rights violators, Saudi Arabia has long enjoyed warm relations with the United States, regardless of the political party of the president in the White House or the balance of power in Congress.

During the previous administration, Trump touted the billions of dollars worth of warplanes, missiles, warships, and other weapons the Saudi regime purchased from U.S. corporations, while reportedly boasting, "I saved his ass" about Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman after the heir to the throne was accused by the CIA and other international intelligence agencies of ordering the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In July 2019, Trump vetoed a bipartisan congressional resolution that would have forced an end to U.S. military funding and involvement in the five-year war. The Senate, then under Republican control, subsequently failed to override the veto.

While the Biden freeze stops far short of ending U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war, it does reflect campaign promises made by the president to halt weapon sales to the Riyadh regime, which he called a "pariah." 

During his Senate confirmation hearing last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed to "take a hard look" at the Trump-approved sales. 

"We have real concerns [about] the policies that our Saudi partners have pursued," Blinken said during the hearing, "and accordingly, [Biden] has said we will review the entirety of the relationship to make sure that, as it stands, it is advancing the interests [and is] respectful of the values that we bring to that partnership."

Blinken added that Biden "has made clear that we will end our support for the military campaign led by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and I think we will work on that in very short order." 

While peace advocates welcomed news of the arms sale freeze, military-industrial complex executives took a longer-term view.

"Look... peace is not going to break out in the Middle East anytime soon. I think it remains an area where we'll continue to see solid growth."
—Greg Hayes, Raytheon CEO

On Tuesday, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes reportedly told participants in a company earnings call that the planned sale of 7,500 Paveway precision-guided bombs to "a customer in the Middle East [who] we can't talk about" had been removed from the books in anticipation of the moratorium. 

However, Hayes offered this sanguine prognostication: "Look... peace is not going to break out in the Middle East anytime soon. I think it remains an area where we'll continue to see solid growth."

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Denouncing 'Handouts to Big Oil,' Biden Calls on Congress to End $40 Billion in Taxpayer Subsidies for Fossil Fuels

"Biden campaigned on eliminating fossil fuel giveaways, and voters agree by a huge margin," said one climate activist.


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 Published on Wednesday, January 27, 2021

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Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry listens as President Joe Biden speaks on tackling climate change in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. on January 27, 2021.

Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry listens as President Joe Biden speaks on tackling climate change in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. on January 27, 2021. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

In a speech Wednesday outlining his new executive actions aimed at confronting the "existential threat" of the climate crisis, President Joe Biden said he plans to ask the Democrat-controlled Congress to pass legislation eliminating the tens of billions in taxpayer subsidies the federal government continues to hand Big Oil even as the planetary emergency wreaks havoc in the U.S. and across the globe.

"Unlike previous administrations, I don't think the federal government should give handouts to Big Oil to the tune of $40 billion in fossil fuel subsidies," said Biden. "I'm gonna be going to the Congress and asking them to eliminate those subsidies."

While the president did not offer specifics on what he would want a potential bill to look like, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and other progressive lawmakers introduced legislation last year that proposed ending direct federal subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and "abolishing dozens of tax loopholes, subsidies, and other special interest giveaways littered throughout the federal tax code."

The lawmakers estimated the End Polluter Welfare Act would save taxpayers up to $150 billion over the next decade.

Watch Biden's remarks: 

Biden's call for legislative action on fossil fuel subsidies came just before he signed an executive order that, according to a White House summary, "directs federal agencies to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies as consistent with applicable law"—a move that would not touch handouts mandated by Congress.

In a series of tweets Wednesday, Alex Doukas of Oil Change International (OCI) argued that Biden's new executive actions and remarks on climate "could set the stage for a massive shift away from public handouts to the fossil fuel industry—not only in the U.S., but around the world."

Collin Rees, senior campaigner at OCI, said in a statement Wednesday that "directing federal agencies to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies where they are able to is a welcome shift from a Trump administration that spent four years doubling down to massive giveaways to oil, gas, and coal."

"Biden campaigned on eliminating fossil fuel giveaways, and voters agree by a huge margin," said Rees. "Taking the climate crisis seriously means prioritizing clean energy and investing in an equitable transition, not propping up an industry destroying the climate and abandoning its workers."

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After 'Incredible First Steps' on KXL and Paris, Biden Urged to 'Go Further' on Climate

"The Biden White House needs to chart a much more aggressive course for dealing with our climate emergency."


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At a January 19, 2021 rally organized by Food & Water Watch, New York Communities for Change, and 350 NYC, environmental activists demand that the Biden administration Build Back Fossil Free in front of Charging Bull sculpture in New York City. (Photo: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

At a January 19, 2021 rally organized by Food & Water Watch, New York Communities for Change, and 350 NYC, environmental activists demand that the Biden administration Build Back Fossil Free in front of Charging Bull sculpture in New York City. (Photo: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

As President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on Wednesday, climate action advocates reiterated calls for them to not only deliver on campaign promises but to go even further to address the planetary crisis both ignored and exacerbated by former President Donald Trump.

Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica, in a statement, celebrated Biden and Harris' swearing in as "the return of decency, common sense, and empathy to the White House," emphasizing that they "now have an unprecedented opportunity to push aggressively on climate at the scale that the crisis demands."

As meteorologist and journalist Eric Holthaus wrote in his newsletter:

This is the moment that climate advocates have been waiting decades for: A president who campaigned on climate change, is planning to make it a centerpiece of their governing strategy, at a moment when the stars are aligned in Congress and in the country for rapid progress.

Simply put: President Joe Biden's first days in office will kick off the best chance we've ever had to make transformational changes throughout society at the scale necessary to avert catastrophic climate change.

Ahead of the Biden-Harris victory in November, scientists, activists, and other experts rallied behind their bid for the White House in "a clarion call to all progressive environmentalists," warning that "the 2020 election is literally a matter of life and death." Since his win, Biden has been pushed to serve as a #ClimatePresident.

Biden's day one executive actions aimed at "tackling climate change, creating good union jobs, and advancing environmental justice" include signing the instrument to rejoin the Paris agreement and rolling back certain actions of Trump "in order to protect public health and the environment and restore science."

The president is directing executive departments and agencies to immediately review Trump-era regulations and actions harmful to public health and the environment, unsupported by science, or otherwise not in U.S. interest. He is further directing agencies "to consider revising vehicle fuel economy and emissions standards, methane emissions standards, and appliance and building efficiency standards to ensure that such standards cut pollution, save consumers money, and create good union jobs."

Biden's widely anticipated actions also include revoking the presidential permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, re-establishing the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (GHG), directing the Interior Department to review the boundaries and conditions of the Grand Staircase-Escalante, Bears Ears, Northeast Canyons, and Seamounts Marine National Monuments, and putting a temporary moratorium on all fossil fuel activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"The sweeping nature of these executive orders are an important down payment in addressing the tatters left behind by President Trump," said Kathleen Rest, executive director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "With these day one actions, President Biden is delivering on his promise, demonstrating that climate change will be at the top of his administration's agenda. And his skilled climate team knows what it takes to make progress."

"The science couldn't be clearer: the time for incremental climate action has long since passed," Rest continued. "We welcome a bold vision to limit the worst impacts of climate change—one grounded in science and racial and economic equity and created with local environmental justice communities."

Pica of Friends of the Earth called Biden's day one commitments "incredible first steps" that "indicate a complete shift on climate and demonstrate the power of grassroots, progressive activism to push leaders to fight for a stronger and healthier environment."

"This administration must make use of all of its executive and legal authorities to stop all forms of dirty energy expansion."
—Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch

"The Biden-Harris campaign listened to activists and transformed their climate plan into the most progressive, justice-oriented platform ever seen from a Democratic presidential nominee," he added. "Now the Biden administration must not only follow through on those commitments but go further to stop the worst of the crisis."

Nick Tilsen, president and CEO NDN Collective, noted Indigenous efforts and demands to block not only KXL but also the the Line 3 and Dakota Access pipelines.

"The KXL pipeline was set to go through the heart of the Oceti Sakowin Territory," Tilsen said. "The people came together, resisted the fossil fuel industry, and stood up for our lands, water, and rights. We will continue to resist and fight. We look forward to collaborating with the Biden administration in closing the DAPL pipeline and stopping the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. These are Indigenous lands and we need to return them to Indigenous hands to protect them, combat climate change, and build a better tomorrow."

Rosebud Sioux Tribe President Rodney Bordeaux explained that "we have been fighting KXL ever since we heard about it. It was not only about treaty rights violations, it was also about dirty oil. It was about being in solidarity with the Dene and Cree people in Canada. The State Department did not consult with us, they never paid attention to us. Maybe, now they will. Indigenous Peoples have always stood up for Mother Earth and we will never give up that fight."

Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter also welcomed the reversal of the Trump administration's push to build the climate-wrecking Keystone XL Pipeline as "a good first step, and a huge victory for grassroots organizers who have fought to stop this monstrous proposal."

"But the Biden administration must go much bigger than stopping one stalled pipeline: There are fossil fuel projects planned across the country, and all of them represent decades of additional climate and air pollution," Hauter said. "This administration must make use of all of its executive and legal authorities to stop all forms of dirty energy expansion."

"The Paris climate accords were insufficient six years ago, and they are even more so now," she added. "The Biden White House needs to chart a much more aggressive course for dealing with our climate emergency. We need a rapid transition to 100% renewable energy and a ban on fracking and all fossil fuel infrastructure projects. The Paris agreement represents market-friendly incrementalism, and we need a much more ambitious plan to get the country—and the world—off fossil fuels."

Greenpeace USA executive director Annie Leonard similarly urged Biden to "not just to Build Back Better, but to Build Back Fossil Free."

"For years, we have been offered a false choice between a healthy economy and a healthy planet," she said. "We've been told that inequality is the result of individual shortcomings, not systemic failures. Today, we see through those myths and begin writing a new story. One that says the just, green, and peaceful future we deserve is possible, and that together we can build the power to manifest it. Our movement will make sure President Biden is listening."

This post has been updated with comment from Nick Tilsen of NDN Collective and Rodney Bordeaux of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

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EARTHDAY.ORG

On World Environmental Education Day, we are highlighting one of the pillars of our Earth Day 2021 Restore Our Earth theme: Climate and Environmental Literacy.

What is climate and environmental literacy? It is a critical understanding of how the natural world works around us, the ability to analyze how we each are connected to natural and social systems around us and the motivation to effectively advocate for a sustainable future. By arming the next generation with knowledge, skills and efficacy, we will create a literate citizenry that can effectively tackle the climate crisis.

Learn more about our global Climate and Environmental Literacy campaign.

Our children need an interdisciplinary education that instills a respect for the planet and inspires action to protect it. Teachers can weave environmental themes throughout subjects to encourage a critical, systems approach to the world. Civics skills — knowledge on how to participate in community and government — will enable individuals to effectively act on behalf of the Earth.

To this end, EARTHDAY‍.ORG believes every school in the world must have compulsory, assessed climate and environmental education with a strong civic engagement component.

The next generation will inherit a complicated world, and we are obliged to give them the skills they need to create equitable solutions and build hope for a brighter future. Climate and environmental literacy will create jobs, build a green consumer market and allow citizens to engage with their governments in a meaningful way to solve climate change.

Read more about our global campaign and how we’re using education to change the world.

For the future,

EARTHDAY‍.ORG Education Department

P.S. If you missed today's Earth Day Live digital event on this topic, Environmental Literacy and Civics: Education to Change the World, you can view it here.

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Could Biden’s student loan freeze argue for bigger debt relief?

The US government doesn’t expect to collect hundreds of billions of dollars from people who took out student loans, leading some to ask ‘Why not try to erase those debts now?’
The United States Department of Education, which has a $1.4 trillion portfolio of student debt, is ever more pessimistic about how much borrowers will repay 
[File: Michael B Thomas/Getty Images]

By Shahien Nasiripour
Bloomberg
22 Jan 2021



Thanks to vagaries of the accounting world, Donald Trump’s administration had a chance in the final weeks of the presidential race to cancel more than $200 billion of student loans with no immediate hit to the Department of Education’s massive portfolio. Yet it didn’t do it.

Now, perhaps Joe Biden will.

For years, bean counters at the department have been writing down the value of its $1.4 trillion portfolio of student debt as they adopted ever-more-pessimistic views of how much borrowers will repay. In September, the analysts made their biggest adjustment yet, valuing loans at just 82 cents on every dollar owed, down from 104 cents in 2015, records show. The debt is now worth $258 billion less than the amount outstanding.

Had officials under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos decided to identify some of the borrowers least likely to repay, and then forgiven those debts, it wouldn’t have put a major dent in the remaining portfolio’s value. Such losses were, theoretically, already reflected anyway.

By Wall Street standards, the government’s loan writedowns are gigantic, amounting to $98 billion in September alone. While they have gone virtually unnoticed in the political realm so far, they are almost sure to attract attention now, as consumer advocates urge Biden’s new administration to ease the burden on young professionals and jump-start the pandemic-stricken economy.

Some are starting to ask: If the government doesn’t expect to collect hundreds of billions of dollars from borrowers, why not try to erase it now?

“Betsy DeVos has already decided that a bunch of this debt is not going to be paid back,” said Mike Pierce, director of policy at the nonprofit Student Borrower Protection Center and a former official at the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “That makes it much easier for the Biden administration to justify canceling.”

The Education Department didn’t respond to messages seeking comment both before and after the change in administration.

Loans or Rent

Shortly after his inauguration as U.S. president on Wednesday, Biden asked the department to extend his predecessor’s pandemic policy of waiving interest and to continue letting borrowers skip monthly payments on government-owned student loans until at least the end of September. About 24 million borrowers have stopped payments, department data show.

Biden has expressed sympathy for borrowers but suggested he’s reluctant to wipe away debt without an act of Congress. In November, he said student-loan burdens are “holding people up. They’re in real trouble. They’re having to make choices between paying their student loan and paying their rent.”

While Wall Street often values its debt holdings based on the prices they would fetch in the market, the government’s markdowns mainly reflect “amounts not expected to be recovered.” From a valuation perspective, that means there wouldn’t be much immediate difference between forgiving doomed loans and waiting for borrowers to turn out their empty pockets.


Still, there’s the issue of moral hazard: If authorities offer relief to struggling borrowers, it could create an incentive for others to stop repaying too, causing more of the portfolio to sour.

Rush for Relief

Much of the gap between what is owed and what the government reckons will be repaid stems from loan programs that cap monthly payments relative to borrowers’ incomes. Income-based repayment plans promise the possibility of loan forgiveness after two decades of steady payment, or one decade for public-service workers. As annual borrower defaults climbed past 1 million, Barack Obama’s administration made the repayment plans increasingly generous. Enrollment has tripled since 2014.

The anticipated cost of income-based plans has risen, too. The Education Department recently realized borrowers in the plans were earning “substantially” less than it had forecast. So the government cut its projections of borrowers’ future income by 35%, boosting the estimated tab to be forgiven in later years.

“There already is significant loan forgiveness,” said Constantine Yannelis, who researches student debt and teaches finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. “We’re just talking about moving it up or giving it to borrowers who wouldn’t qualify for it under current rules.”

Yannelis said he recently found that debt owed by lower-income borrowers had a lower present value to the federal government than debt owed by high-income borrowers.

Rising Odds

Across-the-board loan cancellations make little sense, but the government has all the information it needs to target forgiveness, said Adam Looney, a finance professor at the University of Utah whose research on student loans dates to his time as a tax official at the U.S. Treasury Department. In fact, he said, the Education Department’s own valuation reflects a belief the government will eventually cancel large amounts owed by people earning little or at least too little relative to their debts.

Forgiving loans could encourage future students to over-borrow on the hope that their debts will be wiped away, advisers to the federal consumer bureau warned in a report this month. And that could, in turn, remove some of the pressure on colleges to lower their costs.

But there is a growing expectation in the public anyway that relief is coming. In a December survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, respondents estimated there is a 39% chance – more than ever in five years of polling – that the federal government will cancel some amount of student loans over the next year.
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Economy|Crypto

Global chip shortage chokes China’s bitcoin mining sector

Soaring computer equipment prices are squeezing smaller miners while benefitting big-time players, many outside China.

Bitcoin mining is closely watched by traders and users of the world's largest cryptocurrency, as the amount of bitcoin they make and sell on the market affects its supply and price [File: Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters]
Bitcoin mining is closely watched by traders and users of the world's largest cryptocurrency, as the amount of bitcoin they make and sell on the market affects its supply and price [File: Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters]
22 Jan 2021

A global chip shortage is choking the production of machines used to “mine” bitcoin, a sector dominated by China, sending prices of the computer equipment soaring as a surge in the cryptocurrency drives demand.

The scramble is pricing out smaller miners and accelerating an industry consolidation that could see deep-pocketed players, many outside China, profit from the bitcoin bull run.

KEEP READING

Bitcoin mining is closely watched by traders and users of the world’s largest cryptocurrency, as the amount of bitcoin they make and sell on the market affects its supply and price.

Trading around $32,000 on Friday, bitcoin is down 20 percent from the record highs it struck two weeks ago but still up some 700 percent from its March low of $3,850.

“There are not enough chips to support the production of mining rigs,” said Alex Ao, vice president of Innosilicon, a chip designer and major provider of mining equipment.

Bitcoin miners use increasingly powerful, specially-designed computer equipment, or rigs, to verify bitcoin transactions in a process that produces newly minted bitcoins.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Samsung Electronics Co, the main producers of specially designed chips used in mining rigs, would also prioritise supplies to sectors such as consumer electronics, where chip demand is seen as more stable, Ao said.

The global chip shortage is disrupting production across a global array of products, including automobiles, laptops and mobile phones.

Mining’s profitability depends on bitcoin’s price, the cost of the electricity used to power the rig, the rig’s efficiency, and how much computing power is needed to mine a bitcoin.

Demand for rigs has boomed as bitcoin prices soared, said Gordon Chen, cofounder of cryptocurrency asset manager and miner GMR.

“When gold prices jump, you need more shovels. When milk prices rise, you want more cows.”

Consolidation

Lei Tong, managing director of financial services at Babel Finance, which lends to miners, said that “almost all major miners are scouring the market for rigs, and they are willing to pay high prices for second-hand machines.”

“Purchase volumes from North America have been huge, squeezing supply in China,” he said, adding that many miners are placing orders for products that can only be delivered in August and September.

Most of the products of Bitmain, one of the biggest rig makers in China, are sold out, according to the company’s website.

A sales manager at Jiangsu Haifanxin Technology, a rig merchant, said prices on the second-hand market have jumped 50 percent to 60 percent over the past year, while prices of new equipment more than doubled. High-end, second-hand mining machines were quoted around $5,000.

“It’s natural if you look at how much bitcoin has risen,” said the manager, who identified himself only by his surname Li.
The cryptocurrency surge is affecting who is able to mine.

The increasing cost of investment is eliminating smaller players, said Raymond Yuan, founder of Atlas Mining, which owns one of China’s biggest mining business.

“Institutional investors benefit from both large scale and proficiency in management, whereas retail investors who couldn’t keep up will be weeded out,” said Yuan, whose company has invested over $500m in cryptocurrency mining and plans to keep investing heavily.

Many of the larger players growing their mining operations are based outside of China, often in North America and the Middle East, said Wayne Zhao, chief operating officer of crypto research company TokenInsight.

“China used to have low electricity costs as one core advantage, but as the bitcoin price rises now, that has gone,” he said.
Zhao said that while previously bitcoin mining in China used to account for as much as 80 percent of the world’s total, it now accounted for around 50 percent.

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