CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Non-Jewish US House reps form ‘Caucus for Advancement of Torah Values’

The new caucus is drawing criticism from Jewish Democratic leaders.

By SHIRA HANAU/JTA
Published: JANUARY 21, 2022 

The inauguration of the Congressional Caucus for the Advancement of Torah Values was attended by, from left to right, Rep. Kat Cammack; Rep. Don Bacon; Rabbi Dovid Hofstedter; Rep. Henry Cuellar; Rep. Dan Meuser; and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in Washington, D.C.

(photo credit: Sruly Saftlas/CNW Group/Dirshu)

Two non-Jewish members of Congress announced the formation of the Congressional Caucus for the Advancement of Torah Values Wednesday in an effort “to pledge our friendship to our Jewish friends,” according to a statement by Republican Don Bacon, who is co-chairing the caucus.

“This Caucus is going to be so important in a bipartisan way. We have to be able to have the strength so we know what’s good, what’s bad, what’s moral and what’s not moral,” Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat who is the caucus’ other chair, said in a statement.

Cuellar, one of the more conservative Democrats in Congress, appeared to be the only member of his party present at the meeting. A photo from the meeting showed Republicans Kat Cammack, Dan Meuser and Brian Fitzpatrick in attendance in addition to Bacon and Cuellar.

(Coincidentally, Cuellar’s home was searched by the FBI Wednesday in a “court-authorized law enforcement activity” according to an FBI statement provided to news outlets.)

Henry Cuellar, U.S. Congressman. (credit: VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

None of the 37 Jewish members of the current Congress appeared to be participating in the new caucus.

The meeting was also attended by Rabbi David Hofstedter, the Canadian founder of an Israel-based organization called Dirshu. The mission of the organization, founded in Toronto in 1997 but now based in Jerusalem, is to encourage the study of Torah.

Speaking to the group at the opening session, Hofstedter claimed that “Torah values” were the “foundation of the USA” and repeatedly mentioned freedom of religion as one of those “Torah values.”

He also spoke about antisemitism and criticized the closure of synagogues and yeshivas in New York during the height of the COVID lockdowns, and called those closures “uneven-handed” and “inconsistent with city and state policy.”


The new caucus is drawing criticism from Jewish Democratic leaders.

“There are many challenges facing Jewish Americans, including the insidious threat of antisemitism,” tweeted Haile Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “With all due respect to our non-Jewish friends, the creation of this caucus is not the way to address them, nor are our “Torah values” in need of your advancement.”

HENRY CUELLAR GETS BOOST FROM DARK-MONEY GROUP LAUNCHED BY HIS CLOSE AIDE

The Voter Education Foundation, linked to abortion ban advocates, sponsored ads against the conservative Democrat’s primary challenger, Jessica Cisneros.

Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, speaks to members of the media in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 30, 2021. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Sara Sirota
January 20 2022, 7:01 p.m.

AN ADVISER TO Rep. Henry Cuellar, the conservative Texas Democrat whose home and campaign office was raided by the FBI this week, also leads a dark-money group that recently ran ads against Cuellar’s primary challenger, Jessica Cisneros, according to Federal Election Commission and corporate records. Colin Strother, a longtime Cuellar aide and a consultant who has been embedded on Cuellar’s campaign, is also the head of the secretive Voter Education Foundation. The staffing overlap reveals Cuellar’s close proximity to one of Texas’s most zealous anti-abortion activists.

Cuellar and his inner circle have aggressively pushed the limits of campaign laws. Election law stipulates a cooling-off period of 60 to 120 days, depending on the circumstances, before launching an independent spending effort on behalf of that campaign. Otherwise, it doesn’t meet the definition of independent as outlined in Citizens United.

Strother was Cuellar’s campaign manager last cycle, though FEC records show he worked this year as an outside consultant. He was paid by the campaign in August 2021 — the most recent period for which records are available. Strother’s Twitter account was also mysteriously deactivated.

In December 2021, the group, a 501(c)(4) that does not disclose its donors, sponsored signs and ran a flippant TV ad that called Cisneros the “South Texas Jobs Grinch.” Cisneros, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, is a human rights attorney who worked with immigrants and asylum-seekers confronting oppressive Trump and Biden administration policies. Her 2022 run marks her second attempt to oust the nine-term Cuellar, who is the largest Democratic recipient of private prison donations and was one of the most frequent Democratic supporters of Donald Trump’s policies in the House. (President Joe Biden won the district in 2020 with 52.8 percent of the vote.)

Strother has been director of the Voter Education Foundation since its founding in September 2020, according to public records. Strother has been on Cuellar’s campaign payroll on and off since 2003. During that time, Strother became a well-known Democratic campaign strategist on Democratic campaigns across Texas, also working for Roland Gutierrez, a state senator.

Though Strother was not working for Cuellar’s office in Washington at the time, documents from a court case against Cuellar reveal Strother was involved in high-level staffing and policy discussions with the congressman. When Cuellar’s acting chief of staff, Kristie Small, sued him in 2019 for allegedly firing her for being pregnant, Strother submitted testimony stating he vetted every senior staff hire since 2005 and found Small to be “lazy” and a “weak manager.” After the Washington Post reported on an initial complaint she filed with a congressional office seeking counseling, Strother questioned staffers about their knowledge of Cuellar’s supposed probationary rules for employees, and emails shared with the court also showed Strother was included in policy discussions with congressional aides.

Despite Strother’s consulting work for numerous Democratic politicians in Texas, a number of Republican political figures were also involved in the founding of the Voter Education Foundation he directs.

Records show abortion ban radical Bradley Pierce submitted the group’s certificate of formation to the Texas secretary of state. Pierce is the executive director of Abolish Abortion Texas and the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, as well as the vice president and general counsel at Heritage Defense, a nonprofit law firm that advocates for “the God-given parental rights of Christian, homeschooling families.” The Texas Observer in 2017 called Abolish Abortion Texas “the most extreme anti-abortion group at the Texas Lege” and reported that the group helped advance the “abolition of abortion” to the Texas Republican Party platform at its state convention. The organization is also tied to state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, who in 2019 introduced a bill that would force women who had abortions to face the possibility of the death penalty for homicide.

Cuellar is the most anti-choice Democrat in the House of Representatives, but his apparent links to such an extremist have not been previously known. He was the only House Democrat to vote against a historic bill to protect abortion access in September — just a few weeks after the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the country went into effect in Texas. Cuellar defended his vote by saying abortion is “not a health issue.” He hasn’t commented on the Texas law.



Related
Emails Show Rep. Henry Cuellar Provided Extensive Favors to Border Security Lobbyists

Cuellar has previously come under scrutiny for providing favors to border security lobbyists and pushing for funds for increased drone surveillance. His conservative record led corporate trade associations and Americans for Prosperity Action, a super PAC funded by billionaire Charles Koch, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars boosting his campaign against Cisneros in 2020. On Thursday, ABC News reported the FBI raid was related to a wide-ranging probe involving Azerbaijan business interests.

In addition to Bradley Pierce, the Voter Education Foundation’s records referred to past San Antonio mayoral candidate Greg Brockhouse as a director at the time of its founding. When Brockhouse again unsuccessfully ran for San Antonio mayor last year, he sought to charm Trump voters on the campaign trail, such as when he skirted a reporter’s question in December 2020 asking if Biden was the president-elect and instead highlighted the issue of voter fraud and Trump’s right to challenge the results in court. His campaign was also plagued with reports showing his ex-wives both filed separate domestic violence complaints against him, years apart.

Public records reveal GOP political operative Thomas Marks and law enforcement bureaucrat Mike Rodriguez are also serving as officers with the Voter Education Foundation. According to his LinkedIn account, Marks was chief of staff until this month for Bexar County Commissioner Trish DeBerry, a Republican who in December announced she was running for a county judge position “because she didn’t see enough Republican representation.” He has also worked as a consultant for other GOP politicians, including former Speaker of the Texas House Joe Straus. Rodriguez, meanwhile, is chief of staff for the Corpus Christi government, where he oversees the police and fire departments.

Strother and Cuellar’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Libya’s Once-Great Oil Industry Is Facing A Plethora Of Challenges


January 21, 2022

Felicity Bradstock

Libya’s oil industry has suffered for years through a civil war, political uncertainty, and a lack of investment, but there is still hope for the country

The country aims to boost its oil production from 1.3 million bpd to 1.8 million bpd in 2022, an ambitious increase that will require domestic stability

The first presidential election since 2011 was postponed for a month in December, and is the first and most important hurdle Libya’s oil industry must clear if it is to bounce back

There are still high hopes for Libya’s oil industry despite weeks of disruption to its output. However, as the country continues to face political uncertainty and disruption to production due to aging infrastructure, several changes will have to be made if it hopes to develop its energy industry to its full potential.

The minister for oil and gas in Libya, Mohammed Oun, stated in December that the country has a “promising future” in oil and gas with the potential to generate enormous wealth for the country. He explained, “We have many oil and gas discoveries that can be developed, and it is possible to open the door to foreign investments.”

Libya is thought to hold 48 billion barrels of crude, making it the world’s ninth-largest oil nation, as well as 52 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Its production levels stand at an average of around 1.3 million bpd, with the hope of achieving 1.8 million bpd in 2022. Unlike many OPEC+ members, Libya is exempt from the coalition’s production quotas due to the country’s volatile security and economic situation, giving it the potential to up production on its own terms.

Much like other African nations, Libya hopes to exploit its natural oil reserves to support the development of the national economy. While the International Energy Agency and many state governments around the world push for the transition away from fossil fuels, many poorer countries see this as their time to shine. Countries that have not been able to profit from the ‘black gold rush’ of the past can now develop their oil industries to meet the ongoing global energy demand.

However, damage to a pipeline last week has already thrown a spanner in the works. The need to halt output due to repairs on the damaged pipeline resulted in 200,000 bpd of oil being taken offline. Due to disruptions, production levels fell to 700,000 bpd last week, the lowest in over a year. Supply issues in Libya and Kazakhstan, as well as concerns around the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, led to a fall in oil prices this week.

Libya has repeatedly faced problems with its oil output, as a disagreement between Petroleum Facilities Guards (PFG) and the National Oil Company last month at the country’s largest oil field, Sharara, sent 350,000 bpd offline. El Sharara provides a critical supply of crude to Libya’s largest refinery, the Zawia plant, which produces around 120,000 bpd. The outage also affected Ruwais, Zawia, and Khums station gas supplies.

The PFG is the paramilitary force tasked with protecting energy facilities across the country. However, for several years it has been closing plants as a means of protest to push for higher salaries and for political demands. To get oil production back on track, the government has had to come to several agreements with the PFG in recent years.

In this case, a presidential election was expected to be held on December 24th, which did not go ahead due to a dispute over suitable candidates. It was to be the first election of this kind since the overthrowing of dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. The election, supported by the UN, was postponed for a month with the parliamentary committee overseeing the process saying it would be “impossible” to hold the vote as originally scheduled. With uncertainty around whether the election will take place as (re)scheduled, officials worry this could lead to conflict in the country, which could further hinder the country’s industries.

The end to the three-week militia blockade across several western oilfields meant that production levels once again rose to 1 million bpd this week. This was aided by the completion of repairs on the damaged pipeline. However, Libya’s ageing infrastructure has faced years of neglect, making future outages more likely. Weak infrastructure and the volatile relationship between the government and the PFG means that the country’s oil output is uncertain week to week, an issue that has repeatedly hindered Libya’s foreign investment prospects.

This week, Libya’s oil sector once again faces uncertainties due to weather-related issues. Bad weather led to the closure of ports, the Es Sider, Ras Lanuf, Hariga and Zueitina terminals, in the East of the country on Saturday. The closures are expected to last for over a week and could be extended if poor weather conditions continue.

The potential for Libya’s oil industry is significant, as it holds one of the world’s largest crude reserves. But it must invest in its ageing infrastructure to ensure it can handle greater oil output. In addition, ongoing political unrest could hinder the country’s output, ultimately deterring international oil firms from investing. If the presidential elections go ahead and the country can achieve a relative level of political stability, it could eventually attract greater foreign investment and develop its energy sector to its full potential.

 

Morocco Drives A War In Western Sahara For Its Phosphates

Friday, 21 January 2022, 3:32 pm
Article: Globetrotter

By Vijay Prashad 

In November 2020, the Moroccan government sent its military to the Guerguerat area, a buffer zone between the territory claimed by the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The Guerguerat border post is at the very southern edge of Western Sahara along the road that goes to Mauritania. The presence of Moroccan troops “in the Buffer Strip in the Guerguerat area” violated the 1991 ceasefire agreed upon by the Moroccan monarchy and the Polisario Front of the Sahrawi. That ceasefire deal was crafted with the assumption that the United Nations would hold a referendum in Western Sahara to decide on its fate; no such referendum has been held, and the region has existed in stasis for three decades now.

In mid-January 2022, the United Nations sent its Personal Envoy for Western Sahara Staffan de Mistura to Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania to begin a new dialogue “toward a constructive resumption of the political process on Western Sahara.” De Mistura was previously deputed to solve the crises of U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; none of his missions have ended well and have mostly been lost causes. The UN has appointed five personal envoys for Western Sahara so far—including Mistura—beginning with former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III, who served from 1997 to 2004. De Mistura, meanwhile, succeeded former German President Horst Köhler, who resigned in 2019. Köhler’s main achievement was to bring the four main parties—Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria, and Mauritania—to a first roundtable discussion in Geneva in December 2018: this roundtable process resulted in a few gains, where all participants agreed on “cooperation and regional integration,” but no further progress seems to have been made to resolve the issues in the region since then. When the UN initially put forward De Mistura’s nomination to this post, Morocco had initially resisted his appointment, but under pressure from the West, Morocco finally accepted his appointment in October 2021, with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita welcoming him to Rabat on January 14. De Mistura also met the Polisario Front representative to the UN in New York on November 6, 2021, before meeting other representatives in Tindouf, Algeria, at Sahrawi refugee camps in January. There is very little expectation that these meetings will result in any productive solution in the region.

Abraham Accords

In August 2020, the United States government engineered a major diplomatic feat called the Abraham Accords. The U.S. secured a deal with Morocco and the United Arab Emirates to agree to a rapprochement with Israel in return for the U.S. making arms sales to these countries as well as for the United States legitimizing Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara. The arms deals were of considerable amounts—$23 billion worth of weapons to the UAE and $1 billion worth of drones and munitions to Morocco. For Morocco, the main prize was that the United States—breaking decades of precedent—decided to back its claim to the vast territory of Western Sahara. The United States is now the only Western country to recognize Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara.

When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, it was expected that he might review parts of the Abraham Accords. However, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it clear during his meeting with Bourita in November 2021 that the U.S. government would continue to maintain the position taken by the previous Trump administration that Morocco has sovereignty over Western Sahara. The U.S., meanwhile, has continued with its arms sales to Morocco but has suspended weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates.

Phosphates

By the end of November 2021, the government of Morocco announced that it had earned $6.45 billion from the export of phosphate from the kingdom and from the occupied territory of Western Sahara. If you add up the phosphate reserves in this entire region, it amounts to 72 percent of the entire phosphate reserves in the world (the second-highest percentage of these reserves is in China, which has around 6 percent). Phosphate, along with nitrogen, makes synthetic fertilizer, a key element in modern food production. While nitrogen is recoverable from the air, phosphates, found in the soil, are a finite reserve. This gives Morocco a tight grip over world food production. There is no doubt that the occupation of Western Sahara is not merely about national pride, but it is largely about the presence of a vast number of resources—especially phosphates—that can be found in the territory.

In 1975, a UN delegation that visited Western Sahara noted that “eventually the territory will be among the largest exporters of phosphate in the world.” While Western Sahara’s phosphate reserves are less than those of Morocco, the Moroccan state-owned firm OCP SA has been mining the phosphate in Western Sahara and manufacturing phosphate fertilizer for great profit. The most spectacular mine in Western Sahara is in Bou Craa, from which 10 percent of OCP SA’s profits come; Bou Craa, which is known as “the world’s longest conveyor belt system,” carries the phosphate rock more than 60 miles to the port at El Aaiún. In 2002, the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs at that time, Hans Corell, noted in a letter to the president of the UN Security Council that “if further exploration and exploitation activities were to proceed in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of Western Sahara, they would be in violation of the principles of international law applicable to mineral resource activities in Non-Self-Governing Territories.” An international campaign to prevent the extraction of the “conflict phosphate from Western Sahara by Morocco has led many firms around the world to stop buying phosphate from OCP SA. Nutrien, the largest fertilizer manufacturer in the United States that used Moroccan phosphates, decided to stop imports from Morocco in 2018. That same year, the South African court challenged the right of ships carrying phosphate from the region to dock in their ports, ruling that “the Moroccan shippers of the product had no legal right to it.”

Only three known companies continue to buy conflict phosphate mined in Western Sahara: two from New Zealand (Ballance Agri-Nutrients Limited and Ravensdown) and one from India (Paradeep Phosphates Limited).

Human Rights

After the 1991 ceasefire, the UN set up a Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). This is the only UN peacekeeping force that does not have a mandate to report on human rights. The UN made this concession to appease the Kingdom of Morocco. The Moroccan government has tried to intervene several times when the UN team in Western Sahara attempted to make the slightest noise about the human rights violations in the region. In March 2016, the kingdom expelled MINURSO staff because the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referred to the Moroccan presence in Western Sahara as an “occupation.”

Pressure from the United States is going to ensure that the only realistic outcome of negotiations is for continued Moroccan control of Western Sahara. All parties involved in the conflict are readying for battle. Far from peace, the Abraham Accords are going to accelerate a return to war in this part of Africa.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.

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VEGAN CAPITALI$M

Restaurants saved 700K animals with plant-based offerings last year. More options are coming in 2022.

Cady Stanton
USA TODAY

Vegetarians and vegans looking for more meatless options at fast-food restaurants, rejoice.

The first three weeks of 2022 have already brought a variety of new alternatives to popular chains. Chipotle has introduced a plant-based, vegan chorizo for a limited time, Kentucky Fried Chicken launched a plant-based fried chicken option in partnership with Beyond Meat, and McDonalds announced this week that its "McPlant" meatless burger will be available in 600 stores in the San Francisco and Dallas areas starting next month.

While fully plant-based consumers make up a small portion of the population – 5% of Americans identify as vegetarian and 3% vegan, according to a 2018 Gallup poll – the demand for meat alternatives at restaurants is rising as meat-eaters also test out options.

A 2021 survey from Piplsay found that 71% of the 30,700 people polled said they'd heard of plant-based meat substitutes at fast-food restaurants. Of those, 54% had tried the alternatives, 72% of whom identified as meat-eaters

.

"Restaurants are definitely trying to meet this rising demand for plant-based products by offering more meat alternatives on their menus," Maha Bazzi, farming campaign manager at World Animal Protection, US, told USA TODAY. "The industry is expected to stay the course in 2022 as meat alternatives evolve and become more widely accessible."

Restaurant chains' use of meat alternatives in 2021 saved the equivalent of more than 700,000 animals – 212,000 pigs, 92,000 cows and 405,000 chickens, according to new research from World Animal Protection, a global animal welfare nonprofit organization.

That's down from nearly 947,000 animals in 2020, despite the expansion of plant-based options at restaurants.

HOLD THE MEAT:Burger King, Chipotle, Starbucks top fast-food rankings on World Vegan Day 2021

World Animal Protection's analysis of Beyond Meat and Impossible Food products served at restaurants calculated how many units of plant-based products needed to be sold to represent the amount of meat provided by one animal, then applied a substitution effect to estimate the likelihood that the product was purchased by a meat-eating consumer.

Two of the biggest companies behind plant-based meat alternatives, Beyond Meat and Impossible Meats, broadened restaurant partnerships in 2021 to include plant-based replacements for poultry favorites. Beyond Meat launched new chicken tender options in U.S. restaurants last July, while Impossible Meats expanded into chicken nuggets in the fall.

Restaurants that currently serve Impossible Foods include Burger King, Red Robin, White Castle, Cheesecake Factory and Dave & Buster's, while Beyond Meat products are sold at chains including Pizza Hut, Subway, Carl's Jr. and Panda Express.

Impossible launched a record number of new products in the latter part of 2021, including Impossible Sausage, Impossible Chicken Nuggets, Impossible Pork, and Impossible Meatballs Made From Plants, according to company president Dennis Woodside.

"Looking ahead to 2022, we know that in this category, it’s not enough to just have any plant-based product in the market now. You have to prove to people that you have better products," Woodside wrote in a statement to USA TODAY. "We did that last year with our Impossible Chicken Nuggets, Impossible Pork, and Impossible Sausage products – all of which were found by the majority of consumers to be as good as or better than the respective animal-based products in recent taste tests."

Meat industry leaders are working to keep pace, too.

Tyson Foods expanded its meatless options in 2021 to include plant-based burger patties and bratwurst, while Perdue has explored "flexitarian" options with chicken nuggets madecombination with cauliflower, chickpeas and plant protein alongside plant-based chicken nugget options.

"The plant-based food industry is showing no signs of slowing down," Bazzi said. "Some of the biggest meat companies are trying to keep up by introducing their own lines of plant-based products."

Red-Tailed Hawk Shot, On the Mend After Rescue in Oxford

By Jamie Ratliff • 

NBC Connecticut

Who shot a red-tailed hawk with nearly a dozen BBs, a pellet and an arrow?

BOYS

As that bird continues to recover, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) is investigating who injured the federally-protected hawk.

It’s an image that’s almost hard to believe. A red-tailed hawk in Oxford is perched on a branch with a nearly two-foot arrow piercing its tail.

“The way most of our rehab patients come to us are from good samaritans seeing something, saying something,” said Christine Peyreigne, president of Christine’s Critters, a nonprofit wildlife rehabilitation organization.

And Christine said that’s what happened in this case, too. A neighbor spotted the bird and began reaching out to rescues and the state.

It took 12 days and multiple attempts, but a falconer contacted by Christine’s Critters finally managed to capture the bird of prey in late December. Christine’s mom, Betsy, rushed the bird to the vet.

“I literally drove to the vet with the bird under my arm,” said Betsy.

The bird couldn’t fit into a holding cage due to the protruding arrow.

X-rays show the older adult hawk had been shot with not just an arrow but nearly a dozen BBs and a pellet.

“This is somebody purposely trying to kill this bird. They weren’t trying to scare her off. They were trying to kill her,” said Betsy.

Department of Energy and Environmental Protection

After surgery, Christine brought the bird home and got to work getting her back to full health. With time and care, the hawk’s wounds are nearly healed, and it’s clear to see she’s got a big appetite and personality.

“She’s been a difficult rehab patient because she is so feisty. Typically the feisty patients are the survivors, and you think this bird was out in the wild for 12 days with an arrow through her. She’s feisty. She means business,” said Christine.

While the hawk recovers, DEEP is investigating. The federally-protected bird was found in the area of Thorson Road and North Mark Drive in Oxford. It’s illegal to take, injure or harass any bird of prey, and the agency said residents concerned about livestock should properly shelter them from the weather and predators.

“We want to enforce these laws. We want to protect these birds and make sure they are getting the justice they deserve,” said Christine.

Christine said that depending on weather and recovery, she’d like to release the hawk by mid-February. She hopes others understand why these birds are protected and how important they are.

“Raptors are our best friends. They are very good rodent control, and we want to protect them. We want to support them,” said Christine.

If you have any information on who may be responsible for shooting the red-tailed hawk, you’re asked to contact Connecticut State Environmental Conservation Police at 860-424-3333.

If you’d like to learn more about Christine’s Critters or donate, you can head here and here.

 

Japan, US urge world leaders to visit A-bombed Hiroshima, Nagasaki

January 21, 2022 (Mainichi Japan)

Peace Park in Nagasaki, on Nov. 16, 2021. (Mainichi)

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan and the United States on Friday urged world leaders to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cities destroyed by U.S. atomic bombings in World War II, as they aim to build momentum toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

"Recalling the visit by former President (Barack) Obama to Hiroshima, Japan and the United States call on political leaders, youth, and others to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki to raise and sustain awareness," the two governments said in a joint statement, referring to the former U.S. president's historic visit in 2016.

The move came after a U.N. conference to review the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, scheduled to be held Jan. 4 to 28 in New York, was put off amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. The gathering has been repeatedly postponed from its original date in 2020 due to the pandemic.

A Japanese Foreign Ministry official told reporters that it was regrettable that the NPT talks were called off. "After consulting the U.S. side, we concluded that issuing this kind of statement now is the most effective way to maintain and increase the momentum" toward nuclear disarmament, the official said.

The statement was released ahead of an online meeting to be held later in the day between Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who represents a constituency in Hiroshima and was foreign minister when Obama visited, and U.S. President Joe Biden. It will be the first summit of the two leaders since Kishida took office in October.

In April 2015, Tokyo and Washington issued a joint statement when the previous NPT review conference was taking place, but they did not make such a request for leaders to visit the western and southwestern Japan cities, where the world's first and second atomic bombs were dropped on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "serve as stark reminders that the 76-year record of non-use of nuclear weapons must be maintained," the statement said, recognizing the NPT as "indispensable for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and achieving their total elimination."

Japan also welcomed a joint statement issued earlier this month by the United Staes, Russia, China, Britain and France -- the five recognized nuclear powers -- which affirmed that a nuclear war must be avoided, and that such weapons should be limited to defensive purposes and to deter aggression.

The United States said it "was pleased to co-sponsor" a resolution with Japan adopted by the U.N. General Assembly last month.

The resolution, calling for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, was backed by the United States, Britain and France, while Russia and China opposed it.

In the statement, Japan and the United States noted China's "ongoing increase in its nuclear capabilities" and urged Beijing to "contribute to arrangements that reduce nuclear risks, increase transparency, and advance nuclear disarmament."

Japan and the United States also said they are "strongly committed to the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement" of North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in line with U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The two nations urged Iran to "fully and immediately cooperate" with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog tasked with verifying Tehran's commitments under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

USA
The nursing home staffing crisis right now is like nothing we've seen before

By Rhitu Chatterjee
Published January 20, 2022 

The omicron wave is hitting nursing homes hard, with infections among residents and staff reaching record highs in recent weeks.

There were more than 40,000 residents who tested positive last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost a 10-fold rise since November. Cases for staff hit a record high of more than 67,000 cases the first week of January, but started to decline last week.

"What we've learned with the pandemic is that when there are large [numbers] of COVID cases in the general population, COVID finds its way into skilled nursing facilities," says Mark Parkinson, President and CEO of the industry group American Health Care Association.

Deaths have also risen but nowhere near the months before Covid vaccines became available when nursing homes suffered terrible losses. Last week, there were 988 reported deaths among nursing home residents, only a fraction of the peak in deaths – over 6,000 – back in December, 2020.

"Largely because our resident population is so heavily vaccinated, we aren't seeing large numbers of deaths as we did much earlier during the pandemic," says Katy Smith Sloan, president and CEO of Leading Age, a group representing non-profit providers of long-term care for seniors.

That said, those numbers could still rise in the coming weeks.

"Older adults who live in nursing homes have underlying health conditions," says Smith Sloan. "They tend to be frail. They live in a nursing home because they need 24-7 nursing care. And we know from the beginning of this pandemic that that's the population that was most at risk and that hasn't changed."

But unlike the early waves of the pandemic, it's not the deaths among residents that have nursing homes most concerned. It's staff outages due to infection that is worsening the historic worker shortage that facilities were already grappling with.

Slow uptake of Covid-19 vaccines among staff has added another layer to this problem. Staff vaccination at nursing homes and long-term care facilities was slow to begin with, but has caught up somewhat to that of residents – nearly 84% of staff are now fully vaccinated compared to 87% of residents.

However, staff are still far behind in receiving boosters. Only 30% have received their boosters – that's less than half the number of residents who are boosted.

And the staffing situation is affecting the care residents are receiving.

"We are certainly seeing a huge increase in the number of calls from residents who are saying that they are not being changed, they're not receiving their meals on time," says Laurie Facciarossa Brewer, the Long-Term Care Ombudsman in New Jersey. "That happens when you don't have enough staff."

In recent days, Brewer's office has received complaints that facilities have one nursing assistant taking care of more than 50 residents.

"The state mandated staffing ratio in New Jersey is one certified nursing assistant for eight residents on the day shift," says Brewer. "So clearly, people are not going to be getting the care they need under those types of conditions where you have double-digit numbers of residents per certified nursing assistant. That's just an impossible job for that nurse aide."

She says things aren't that dire in every long-term care facility, but it's happening in more places than she's seen since the early days of the pandemic.

New Jersey is one of several states that has teams from the National Guard helping nursing homes and other long-term care facilities due to the dire worker shortage.

Workers are feeling "moral distress," says Susan Reinhard, executive director of the AARP's Public Policy Institute.

"If you have too many people to care for, you're going to feel moral distress," she says. "Like 'I'm not doing my best.' 'I can't do the best job I've been trained to do, that I want to do.' 'I'm not meeting the needs of those that I'm supposed to be caring for.' That is really devastating personally, just day after day."

These conditions are fueling more burnout. And many nursing homes are shutting down under the pressure.

Smith Sloan says she heard of two of her organization's members closing the first week of January. "I think there were five (closures) the week before," she says. "And I think we're going to see more of that."

Many facilities are responding by closing wings and reducing the number of new patients they accept. That in turn is having an impact on hospitals and family caregivers.

For one, hospitals are getting backed up because they can't discharge patients that need to go to a skilled nursing facility or a nursing home. \

"It starts backing up all along the chain," says Dr. David Kim, who leads the Physician Enterprise at Providence, a health system based in Renton, Wa. "And then you start seeing it come out with long wait times, E.R. patients in hallways, waiting rooms, because they're not ready to go home, but they can't get a bed."

Data from Careport, a company that connects patients in over 1000 hospitals to long-term care facilities shows that the average length of stay at hospitals for patients getting discharged to skilled nursing facilities is up 21% in the last four weeks compared to 2019.

And the average hospital stay for patients getting discharged to home health is up 14% during the same period of time. "That's not an insignificant trend," says Dr. Lissy Hu, founder and CEO of Careport.

"We're also starting to see more families start to pull patients out of nursing homes."

And it's putting enormous pressures on families who are now the primary caregiver for their elderly loved ones, she adds, especially because home health agencies are also grappling with dire worker shortage.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Commentary: The prime culprit behind debt traps

Should those Western countries truly care about the developing world, just demonstrate the sincerity to offer unflagging support long craved by the indebted countries, instead of playing the old trick of "Chinese debt trap." Or at least, stay out of the way of those genuinely lending a helping hand.

(Xinhua) , January 21, 2022

BEIJING, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- In his bestseller Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins expounded how he was employed by a U.S. company to talk world leaders into accepting substantial infrastructure loans. If a hit man is completely successful, he said, "the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years."

This has revealed the tip of the iceberg in regards to the excessive debts inflicted globally by the United States, intentionally or not, along with some other Western countries and financial institutions. Usually, it started with low interest rates mainly because Washington preferred so, which increased developing countries' dependency on Western markets, but then turned ugly when borrowing costs ran so high that debtors found themselves trapped. Fundamentally, this is the U.S. financial hegemony at play, in the form of its dollar's dominance.

Among the victims last century were Africa and Latin America. In the 1970s, many Latin American countries borrowed from a large group of creditors led by U.S. commercial banks with near-zero real rates of interest, with the encouragement of the U.S. government, for economic development. The debts therefore skyrocketed.

Years later, however, the United States and Europe tightened their monetary policies, with commercial banks beginning to shorten re-payment periods and charge higher interest rates for loans. Latin American debtors soon found their burdens unsustainable, and what followed was a debt crisis so severe and protracted that the entire 1980s earned the cautionary moniker "The Lost Decade."

History has repeated itself more recently. When the United States cheered in mid-2010s its economic recovery from the 2008 global financial crisis and set off to end its quantitative easing stimulus program, the rates increased sharply, once again adding to the emerging markets' debt burdens. Worse still, less-developed countries have been sidelined by the United States in attracting international finance as Washington has sucked in external debts and given other fund seekers a bumpy ride.

Take Sri Lanka and Malaysia. Their debt problems arose mainly from Western-dominated financial markets, among others, said a report of Chatham House, a British think tank. In the face of the conundrums, emerging markets were not given so many choices to find way out. Sri Lanka by the mid-2000s could get few concessional loans, other than from China, said a Hong Kong University of Science and Technology report. It had to secure high-interest commercial loans, mainly from U.S. and British banks, and issue expensive international sovereign bonds, mostly bought by Americans.

Until today, Western players still take up a large share of developing countries' foreign debts. According to a report by Jubilee Debt Campaign, a British charity, 32 percent of African government external debt is owed to private lenders and 35 percent to multilateral institutions, with 55 percent of external interest payments to private creditors. It is those who keep lecturing on the debt issue that caused the debt problem in Africa, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi once said.

For developing countries, sustainable development is the healthy and effective way to unravel the knot of heavy debt burdens. This is what China has been helping these countries to achieve in recent years.

With the provision of loans to address infrastructure gap at home, these developing countries can have jobs and revenues created, and loans turn out to be a catalyst for sustainable growth rather than a burden. Thus, these loans are readily taken up by developing countries disenchanted with loan schemes devised by the U.S.-led Western elites.

Of the Chinese loans on the African continent between 2000 and 2015, around 40 percent paid for power projects, and 30 percent went to transport infrastructure, according to the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

To further ease the debtors' pressure, China has been actively promoting debt relief by means of debt restructuring, suspension and alleviation. China has been supporting the move to ease African countries' debt burden and actively implementing the G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative for Poorest Countries, and has the highest deferral amount among G20 members. After the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, China had announced the write-off of 15 African countries' debt in the form of interest-free government loans that were due to mature by the end of 2020.

The JHU researchers have also documented 16 cases of debt restructuring worth 7.5 billion U.S. dollars in 10 African countries between 2000 and 2019, and found that China wrote off the accumulated arrears of at least 94 interest-free loans amounting to more than 3.4 billion dollars. China has played a significant role in helping African countries manage their debts, according to the research.

China's actions, however, have been ignored by the U.S.-led Western world, which contributed little to debt relief of developing countries in such difficult times. Instead, they fabricated the so-called debt traps to stigmatize China and the Belt and Road Initiative. Their ploy aims to maintain their financial hegemony and obstruct the common development of China and other countries along the Belt and Road.

Should those Western countries truly care about the developing world, just demonstrate the sincerity to offer unflagging support long craved by the indebted countries, instead of playing the old trick of "Chinese debt trap." Or at least, stay out of the way of those genuinely lending a helping hand. 

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)

Rio Tinto shares plunge as Serbia pulls plug on $2.4 bln lithium project

CONTRIBUTOR
Sonali Paul 

Reuters
PUBLISHED

JAN 20, 2022

CREDIT: REUTERS/DAVID GRAY
The mine is Rio's only lithium project and the company Rio, builds its battery materials business for $825 million, as it looks to build its battery materials business.

MELBOURNE, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Shares in Rio Tinto tumbled on Friday after Serbia revoked its lithium exploration licences over environmental concerns, hurting the Anglo-Australian miner's ambition to become Europe's largest supplier of the metal used in electric vehicles.

The move by Serbia comes as the Balkan country approaches a general election in April, and as relations between Belgrade and Canberra have soured after Sunday's high-profile deportation of tennis star Novak Djokovic from Australia over the latter's COVID-19 entry rules.

It is also a major setback for Rio RIO.L, RIO.AX, which was hoping the project would help make it one of the world's 10 biggest producers of the lithium, a key ingredient in batteries and much in demand in the electric vehicle boom.

The mine is Rio's only lithium project and the company announced just a month ago a deal to buy second lithium asset for $825 million, as it looks to build its battery materials business.

Rio's shares fell as much as 4.8% in the Australian stock market, its worst intra-day drop since August 2021. The benchmark index was down 2.1% at 0324 GMT.

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic told a news conference in Belgrade that the government's decision came after requests by various green groups to halt the $2.4 billion Jadar lithium project that was planned to start production in 2027.

Australia's foreign ministry has no immediate comment on the decision.

Rio said it was "extremely concerned" by Serbia's decision and was reviewing the legal basis for it.

"The level of opposition to it (Jadar) has really ratcheted up over the last six months," said Credit Suisse analyst Saul Kavonic.

"We've been highlighting for a while now there would be about $2 a share at risk if the (Serbian) government cancels it," Kavonic said.

Thousands of people blocked roads last year in protest against the government's backing of the project, demanding Rio Tinto leave the country and forcing the local municipality to scrap a plan to allocate land for the facility.

Earlier this week, Rio had pushed back the timeline for first production from Jadar by one year to 2027, citing delays in key approvals.

LITHIUM SHORTAGE TO WORSEN

At full capacity, the Jadar mine was expected to produce 58,000 tonnes of refined battery-grade lithium carbonate per year, making it Europe's biggest lithium mine by output.

"There aren't that many projects like Jadar, and the Western world is not going to have its own supply chain if these are not developed," Sam Brodovcky, Standard Chartered's head of global metals and mining M&A.

"There will be an even greater shortage of lithium and other critical and battery materials."

Experts said the world's shortage of lithium had been forecast to last for another three years at least, but with the cancellation of the Jadar project, the shortfall will now last for several years.

"We're at the point now where lithium supply is going to set the pace of electric vehicle rollout," Kavonic said.

Robust global demand for the metal far outstripping supply growth has pushed lithium prices to a record in recent years.

Lithium futures LTHc1, which started trading on the CME in May last year, have jumped 171% to a record $38 per tonne on Thursday, according to Refinitiv data.

In China, cash prices of lithium hydroxide monohydrate AM-LIOH0008-LHM are trading around a record 262,500 yuan ($41,387.47) per tonne, up by more than 400% from a year ago.

Its state planner said on Friday that restrictions on purchases of new energy vehicles including EVs will be gradually removed in a "vigorous" push to promote "green consumption," a move likely to further increase demand for lithium.

($1 = 6.3425 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Benchmark lithium hydroxide prices surge to record highs on global demand boomhttps://tmsnrt.rs/3GJNHky

(Writing by Praveen Menon; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Serbia scraps planned Rio Tinto lithium mine after protests

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Trying to defuse large protests by environmentalists, Serbia’s populist government said Thursday that it was canceling all licenses for mining giant Rio Tinto to open a lithium mine in the Balkan country.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

“We have fulfilled all the requests of the environmental protests and put an end to Rio Tinto in the Republic of Serbia,” Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said in a televised address. “Everything is finished. It’s over.”


Used in batteries for electric cars, lithium is considered one of the most sought-after metals of the future as the world shifts to more renewable energy sources.

For several weekends, thousands of demonstrators in Belgrade and other Serbian towns have blocked main roads and bridges to protest the planned mine in western Serbia, despite an intimidation campaign by authorities. Opponents say the project would cause severe environmental damage.

The protests posed the biggest challenge yet to the increasingly autocratic rule of President Aleksandar Vucic, who has denounced the road blockades as illegal and claimed they are being financed from abroad to destabilize the country.

Brnabic said all the licenses granted to Rio Tinto, which has been exploring mining possibilities in the country for about two decades, were provided by the previous, pro-Western government.

But Serbia's independent media allege that the main contracts with Rio Tinto were signed with the current right-wing leadership. Critics argued that by sidelining Rio Tinto, the government is doing damage control ahead of April general elections.

Earlier Thursday, Rio Tinto in a statement expressed “concern” over reports that the project would be scrapped.

The company said any decision should be accompanied by “discussion and dialogue based on facts.” It added that it is dedicated to developing the project in accordance with Serbian and international regulations.

“We are not afraid of Rio Tinto,” Brnabic said. “We are here for our people and our country. They can do whatever they think they should do. This is the final decision of the government of the Republic of Serbia. "

It is widely believed that Serbia, which formally seeks European Union membership but instead has been forging close ties with Russia and China, may want to hand over the lithium mining to China by sidelining Rio Tinto from the project in which it has pledged to invest $2.4 billion.

Throughout its almost 150-year history, Rio Tinto has faced accusations of corruption, environmental degradation and human rights abuses at its mining sites.

Environmentalists are also upset at the Serbian government’s lack of response to rising pollution in the country.

___

Jovana Gec contributed to this story.

Dusan Stojanovic, The Associated Press

Hia-Ced O'odham woman acquitted in border wall protest

Amber Ortega was responding to a spiritual call from her ancestors, who were urging her to Quitobaquito Springs in southern Arizona to hold ceremony. She faced federal misdemeanor charges for the act.

CARINA DOMINGUEZ
23 HOURS AGO
The waters of Quitobaquito in southern Arizona have attracted diverse visitors for thousands of years. (Photo: Jared Orsi, CC BY-ND - courtesy The Conversation)
Carina Dominguez
Indian Country Today

A Hia-Ced O’odham woman was found not guilty Wednesday on federal misdemeanor charges stemming from an incident that occurred along the border wall construction on her tribe’s ancestral land.

In September 2020 Amber Ortega and Nellie Jo David rushed to Quitobaquito Springs, “without hesitation” to protect the sacred area from border wall construction in southern Arizona.

Hia-Ced O'odham woman Amber Ortega, left, was acquitted of federal charges. Her and Nellie Jo David, right, were arrested in September 2020 after holding ceremony at Quitobaquito Springs while border wall construction attempted to tear through the area. (Photo by Carina Dominguez, Indian Country Today)

“They called it a protest but what we were doing was far beyond that we were answering a call that came through from our ancestors. The timing wasn't calculated. We were there. We had been there and it was without hesitation,” Ortega said.

Both women faced what they said were trumped-up federal charges for praying at the site which they had been doing long before construction reached the spring.

David said the legal system purposefully wanted her to “have such a traumatic experience that it's going to scare other people that even think of doing the same thing we did.”

For that reason, David took a plea deal last year while Ortega was waiting on the acquittal that was announced on Wednesday.


Isabel Garcia updates Supporters of Amber Ortega
Attorney and human rights activist Isabel Garcia speaks to a crowd outside of the Tucson federal courthouse with updates on Amber Ortega's case on Nov. 4, 2021. (Courtesy of Luke Salcido)
Ortega’s acquittal came after a magistrate judge reversed her previous ruling that Ortega couldn’t use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as her defense.

Ortega’s lawyer asked the court to reconsider the ruling last month, the judge ultimately decided the prosecution imposed a substantial burden on her exercise of religion.

SEE: MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION

The Arizona Daily Star reported that Ortega spoke to supporters outside the federal courthouse in Tucson after the verdict was read.

“This is our land, and our ways are not wrong,” Ortega said. “We, today, again defended our culture, our ways, our songs, our locations, our mountains, our sacred sites. Today was a victory for our people.”

Ortega was charged with misdemeanors interfering with an agency function and violating a closure order after she refused to leave a construction site in September 2020 in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, about 150 miles southwest of Tucson, where contractors were building more than 40 miles of 30-foot-tall steel border wall.

The Hia-Ced O’odham are a part of the Tohono O’odham Nation, the second largest tribe by geographic area in the U.S. with 2.8 million acres, 75 miles of it along the southern border.

Ortega says the border has negatively impacted O’odham people, who used to traverse across the villages throughout the Sonoran desert before the border crossed them.

“The border wall did effectively stop traditions that have been happening for thousands and thousands of years,” Ortega said.

She was compelled to act because she didn’t want to see the history of destruction continue.

“There's an underlying generational hurt that we are dealing with because we are well aware that our sites exist and our culture exists, our language, our songs, our prayers, our ceremonies, what locations mean something to us,” Ortega said. “That border severed ties with traditional traveling routes…sacred connections to our history, it's our history that exists in those lands and along that border.”

Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris Jr. issued a statement on Wednesday’s ruling in the case.

“Construction of the border wall inflicted permanent damage to Quitobaquito Springs and other sacred sites for the O’odham. We appreciate that the court corrected its earlier error and recognized that protesting this great harm met the requirements for defense under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This desecration should not have happened and can never be allowed to happen again. The Nation will continue to advocate for stronger legal protections of sacred places for the O'odham and all tribes.”





House Natural Resources Committee Chair Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona, said he supports Ortega’s actions against the “construction of an illegal, wasteful border wall and the Trump administration’s abuse of power in order to protect a sacred site integral to the Tohono O’odham Nation.

Ortega said there's a history of abuses in that area “done specifically to O’odham.”

“It’s in our history, we are abused by law enforcement. It's a known fact, and there's no justice for that,” Ortega said.


The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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BY CARINA DOMINGUEZ
Carina Dominguez, Pascua Yaqui, is a correspondent and producer for Indian Country Today. Previously she worked for CBS Television Network. Carina’s work has appeared in news outlets like The Arizona Republic, The Billings Gazette, Casper Star-Tribune, The Tucson Sentinel, Navajo-Hopi Observer and CBS News. CarinaDominguez@indiancountrytoday.com, Twitter: @Carinad7, Instagram: @CarinaNicole7