Top U.N. officials seek to 'water down' bans on women in Afghanistan


Martin Griffiths, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Kabul

Wed, January 25, 2023 
By Charlotte Greenfield and Michelle Nichols

KABUL/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The United Nations is pushing the Taliban administration in Afghanistan for more exemptions to its ban on most female aid workers, top U.N. officials said on Wednesday, while also expressing concern that foreign women working for international organizations and embassies could next be targeted.

Speaking to Reuters during a visit to Kabul, U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths said that his message during meetings with Taliban officials had been: "If you can't help us rescind the ban, give us the exemptions to allow women to operate."

Last month, the Taliban authorities - who seized power in August 2021 - banned most female aid workers and stopped women from attending university after stopping girls from attending high school in March. Griffiths traveled to Afghanistan after a visit last week by U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed.

Griffiths said some exemptions to the female aid worker ban had been granted in health and education and that there were indications there could be a possible exemption in agriculture. But he said much more was needed, with nutrition and water and sanitation services a priority to prevent severe illnesses and malnutrition during a severe humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

"We have not seen the history of the Taliban reversing any edict. What we have seen is exemptions that, hopefully, if we keep pushing them, they will water down those edicts to a point where we will get women and girls back into school and into the workplace," Mohammed told reporters in New York on Wednesday.

ANOTHER BAN?

Griffiths told Reuters that, following his recent discussions with the Taliban authorities, he was hopeful they would create a set of written guidelines to allow aid groups to operate with female staff in more areas with certainty in coming weeks.

"The next few weeks are absolutely crucial to see if the humanitarian community ... can stay and deliver," he said, while cautioning: "I don't want to speculate as to whether we're going to come out of this in the right place."

The Taliban administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its plans over guidelines.

During her visit last week, Mohammed met with the Shura - the leadership council that issues the bans - in the southern Taliban heartland of Kandahar. She said there is a concern that they may next prohibit "international women from international organizations and embassies."

"It hasn't happened so far," said Mohammed, adding that they had been expecting a possible announcement all month. "I don't say that it won't, but clearly the pressure that we're putting on has stopped that rollback as quickly."

Griffiths said the United Nations would continue operating in Afghanistan wherever it could, but there was a concern that international donors might not want to commit to the huge financial cost of aid at around $4.6 billion a year.

"I lose sleep about this, I really do," Griffiths said, adding that he would meet with donors in coming weeks to make the case for why Afghanistan needed help during an intense humanitarian crisis in which 28 million people were in need of aid, including 6 million on the brink of famine.

(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield and Michelle Nichols; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

UN presses Taliban for 'clarity' on women's role in aid delivery

Jay DESHMUKH
Wed, January 25, 2023 


Two senior UN leaders said Wednesday they were pressing the Taliban to reverse its restrictions on Afghan women, particularly a ban on working in aid delivery, with one official warning that "famine is looming" during the harsh winter.

Speaking in New York, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said she pushed "pretty hard" on women's issues during a visit last week to Afghanistan and sometimes "the reaction wasn't pleasant."

Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban government has rapidly squeezed women out of public life, banning them also from secondary education, public sector work, as well as parks and baths.

The country is facing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, aid agencies say, with more than half of Afghanistan's 38 million population facing hunger and nearly four million children suffering from malnutrition.

The crisis was compounded when Taliban leadership banned Afghan women from working with NGOs, forcing several aid agencies to suspend their vital work.

In recent weeks, the authorities have allowed women to work in the health sector only.

UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, Martin Griffiths, said he hoped that more humanitarian sectors would be reopened for women workers.

"I have been told by a number of Taliban leaders that the Taliban, as an administration, is working on guidelines which will provide more clarity about the role and possibility and hopefully the freedom of women to work in humanitarian work," Griffiths told AFP in an interview at a UN office in Kabul.

"I think it's really important that we keep the light shining on the process to lead to those guidelines," he said, wrapping up a visit to Afghanistan.

Griffiths led a delegation of senior NGO officials to meet several Taliban leaders this week in a bid to push them to further relax the ban on women aid workers.

- 'Protection' or 'oppression'? -

Griffiths's delegation came days after Mohammed concluded a visit, stopping in Kandahar, in which she urged the Taliban government to reverse two recent decrees that have severely restricted women's rights.

Apart from banning women from working in NGOs, the Taliban authorities have also barred them from university education.

"I used everything that I know, that I have in my toolbox, to try to defend and to recover women's rights," Mohammed said in an extensive news conference in New York.

She said the Taliban told her they were seeking to protect women but "their definition of protection would be, I would say, ours of oppression."

She added: "A lot of what we have to deal with is how we travel the Taliban from the 13th century to the 21st. And that's, that's a journey. So it is not just, overnight."

"This is going to be tough to get them back into the space we need them, and women's and girls' rights protected and upheld," Mohammed said.

Griffiths vowed that when it comes to delivering aid in the poverty-stricken country, the global humanitarian community will insist on deploying women workers.

"Wherever there are chances for us to deliver humanitarian assistance and protection in a principled way, which means with women, we will do so," he said, adding that at the moment, exemptions for women workers was paramount.

"We don't have time. The winter is with us, people are dying, famine is looming," he said.

"We need decisions now, which is why I think these practical exceptions that we have been talking about are so important."

jd/abd/tjj/des

Afghanistan: Taliban to set new rules on women's aid work, UN says

Lyse Doucet - Chief international correspondent
Wed, January 25, 2023 

Afghanistan is experiencing a cruel winter, with famine and frostbite knocking at the door

Taliban ministers have told a senior UN official they plan to draw up new guidelines to allow Afghan women to work in some humanitarian operations.

Martin Griffiths told the BBC he had received "encouraging responses" from a wide range of Taliban ministers during talks in Kabul, even if last month's edict banning Afghan women working for NGOs is not reversed.

With Afghan women playing a crucial role in delivering aid, there is concern the ban is endangering urgent life-saving humanitarian operations in the country.

"It's worth remembering that, this year, Afghanistan is the biggest humanitarian aid programme in the world ever," Mr Griffiths, the UN's Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told me in Kabul.

The aid arithmetic is staggering. This year, agencies will try to reach 28 million Afghans, more than half the population, including six million who are, Mr Griffiths says, "knocking on famine's door".

This year is Afghanistan's coldest winter in a decade, and it's been cruel. In the past two weeks, more than 126 Afghans have perished in freezing temperatures, collapsing from hypothermia, or overcome by toxic fumes from gas heaters.

And winter's icy blast strikes a people already living, perilously, on the edge. Providing aid to Afghanistan is of epic proportions too.

In a mud-and-straw home perched perilously on a steeply-sloped hill blanketed in snow in Parwan province north of Kabul, we met one family whose complaints were as bitter as the cold.

"No aid agencies visit us here," lamented mother Qamar Gul, as the family huddled around a "sandali" - a traditional charcoal heater Afghans have relied on for centuries to keep warm. "No one came from the last government, no one from the Taliban government."

Qamar Gul says no aid agencies visit her family home in Parwan province

This week, as the government's military helicopters struggled to reach the most isolated communities completely cut off by colossal snowbanks and blinding storms, Mr Griffiths was holding back-to-back meetings in Kabul with senior Taliban government leaders about the new edict banning Afghan women from working with aid organisations.

"If women do not work in humanitarian operations, we do not reach, we do not count, the women and girls we need to listen to," Mr Griffiths underlines when we meet at the UN's sprawling compound at the end of his mission. "In all humanitarian operations around the world, women and girls are the most vulnerable."

An aid official with decades of experience in tough environments, including Afghanistan, he was cautious, but clear, about the results of his high-stakes mission.

"I think they're listening," he said of the Taliban ministers he had met, "and they told me they will be issuing new guidelines in due course which I hope will help us reinforce the role of women."

Mr Griffiths's visit comes on the heels of last week's flying visit by the UN's second-in-command Amina Mohammed, a British-Nigerian Muslim woman whose presence underlined the UN's growing alarm over a raft of Taliban edicts threatening to "erase women from public life".

She told us her conversations were "very tough". Some meetings were so candid, they were almost cut short. But she told us she was encouraged by a willingness to engage.

Mr Griffiths's mission - representing the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), the UN's highest-level forum to co-ordinate humanitarian aid - has been to delve into very specific details across a range of vital sectors from agriculture to sanitation and food deliveries.

No one realistically expects the ban, announced last month, to be reversed. But it seems to have many loopholes.

Mr Griffiths highlighted "a consistent pattern of Taliban leaders presenting us with exceptions, exemptions, and authorisations for women to work". So far, a green light has been given to crucial areas like health and community education where women's participation is essential.

The UN's Martin Griffiths pointed out that humanitarian access was significantly better now since the Taliban swept to power in 2021

But it's also clear the most conservative of Taliban leaders are not for turning.

"Men are already working with us in the rescue efforts and there is no need for women to work with us," insists the white-bearded cleric who heads the State Ministry for Disaster Management. When we sat down with him in his office, the acting minister Mullah Mohammad Abbas Akhund accused the UN and other aid agencies of speaking "against our religious beliefs".

"I'm sorry, I don't agree," was Mr Griffith's firm reply, emphasising that the UN and other aid agencies had been working in Afghanistan for decades. "We respect the customs and norms of Afghanistan, as we do in every country that we work."

The race to deliver urgently-needed relief has been slowed by this painstaking process of dealing with an authority ruled by the most senior, most strict Taliban leaders. Other senior figures question edicts but cannot quash them.

But Mr Griffiths pointed out that humanitarian access was significantly better now since the Taliban swept to power in 2021. Areas previously cut off by threats of Taliban attacks or US-led military operations were now much easier to reach. Last winter, 11th-hour humanitarian interventions in remote regions, including the central highlands of Ghor, pulled families back from the brink of famine.

It's a point Taliban officials constantly stress. The acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Amir Khan Muttaqi urged Mr Griffiths to share their "achievements and opportunities... instead of complaints and shortcomings".

But as the worst of winter closes in, the window is closing for an urgent relief effort. Several aid agencies, who rely enormously on their Afghan female staff have already suspended their operations.

"I cannot think of an international priority as high as this one to keep this extraordinarily important massive programme alive," is how the UN's top aid official summed up this moment.

Secret school in Kabul equips Afghan girls with psychological tools to cope with Taliban

 

EQUIP THEM WITH WEAPONS TRAINING

Story by Mehek Mazhar •CBC

Afghanistan's ruling government, the Taliban, does not allow young girls to continue their education beyond Grade 6. But one teacher in the capital, Kabul, is teaching her students how to cope with the tyranny — at a secret school.

Sahar, whose last name CBC News is not disclosing for her safety, is unlike colleagues who teach the girls math, science and geography. In her class, they study psychology and participate in group counselling.

"I teach them some techniques on how to control their lives," Sahar told Nothing Is Foreign host Tamara Khandaker.

In university, Sahar studied educational psychology. But when the Taliban re-took control of Afghanistan in 2021, her life completely changed. She lost her job and many friends fled the country or were detained.

That was when she discovered choice theory, part of American psychiatrist Dr. William Glasser's 1965 model of reality therapy.

Reality therapy is a form of counselling that views behaviours as choices. Those choices are attempts to fulfil five basic human needs: survival; freedom; fun; power; and love and belonging.

"This theory helped me become happy again," said Sahar. "So I thought that it's a very ... positive and good way to help these girls, because we cannot change others. We cannot change the society. We cannot change what is outside, but we can change our mindset."

A teacher, who we're only identifying as Sahar for her safety, instructs a group of girls in a secret high school in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Risks of running secret school

There are 75 to 80 girls in Sahar's class, all between grades 6 and 12, and once a week they sit on a carpet to learn how to soothe their minds.

They defy the Taliban's ban on their education by attending the secret school discreetly, inside a home in a supportive residential neighbourhood. As a precautionary measure, the girls don't even bring their materials — no books, pens or paper.

If the government were to discover the school, and prove that these classes were taking place, everyone involved would be at risk of being detained.

Despite her fears, Sahar provides her students with mentorship and emotional support.

Financial burden on families

The psychological stress of these students is acute. Sahar said one of her students did not have enough food at home to feed her family. It caused the girl so much pain that she considered suicide.

"'The only reason that I did not kill myself [was] that you told me that if I have any kind of issues, I can come and share it with you,'" Sahar recalled her student saying.

The teacher encouraged her student to ask questions and seek alternatives. After a few weeks, she saw that the student was feeling better.

"She understood that she cannot end the poverty. She cannot make bread from somewhere. Neither [can I] bring that for her…. But at least [with] these techniques … she could build good relations with her mother, with her sister, with her father."

Food has been hard to come by in Afghanistan since the resurgence of the Taliban. The U.S. and its allies suspended funding and aid to the country, which the population has relied on for years, due to international policies around interacting with the Taliban.

Economic sanctions are meant to punish the group for its treatment of women and girls, but the broader Afghan population is left facing a severe humanitarian crisis.

"Putting more sanctions on Afghanistan will only hurt the nation," said Sahar.

AND THE TALIBAN'S

24 million need humanitarian aid: Red Cross

In an interview with the Associated Press in November, Martin Schuepp, a top official from the International Committee of the Red Cross, said half of Afghanistan's population — or 24 million people — is in need of humanitarian aid. He added more Afghans will struggle for survival as living conditions deteriorate in the months ahead.

Obaidullah Baheer, a lecturer at the American University of Afghanistan, told Nothing is Foreign that the international community can exercise leverage if they meet with the Taliban and build trust.

"The international community's policies haven't cared for Afghans stuck in the middle," Baheer said about the impact of Western sanctions. "Yes, sure, they're flying in money to help sustain the Afghan currency and the economy from free-falling, but then [the Taliban are] holding multi-billion dollars' worth of reserves."

"The Taliban are to blame as well, because their policies have led to further distance and engagement, further isolation," Baheer said. "It's just a vicious cycle."

In the meantime, Sahar continues to hold her psychology classes to help girls cope with the hardship, despite the fear of being found out.

"We are afraid and scared of the situation, but we are living with our values," Sahar said. "And when you live with your values, you have to accept that there will be some consequences."

This guide from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health outlines how to talk about suicide with someone you're worried about.

Top UN woman urges Muslims: Move Taliban into 21st century

Wed, January 25, 2023



UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The highest-ranking woman at the United Nations said Wednesday she used everything in her “toolbox” during meetings with Taliban ministers to try to reverse their crackdown on Afghan women and girls, and she urged Muslim countries to help the Taliban move from the “13th century to the 21st.”

Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, a former Nigerian Cabinet minister and a Muslim, said at a news conference that four Taliban ministers, including the foreign minister and a deputy prime minister, spoke “off one script” during meetings with her delegation last week.

She said the officials sought to stress things that they say they have done and not gotten recognition for — and what they called their effort to create an environment that protects women.

“Their definition of protection would be, I would say, ours of oppression,” Mohammed said.

Those meetings in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and the Islamic group’s birthplace in Kandahar were followed by a visit this week by U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths and heads of major aid groups. They are pressing the Taliban to reverse their edict last month banning Afghan women from working for national and international non-governmental groups.

Speaking from Kabul on Wednesday, Griffiths said the focus of the visit was to get the Taliban to understand that getting aid operations up and running and allowing women to work in them was critical. The delegation’s message was simple — that the ban makes the groups' work more difficult, he said.

“What I heard from all those I met (was) that they understood the need as well as the right for Afghan women to work, and that they will be working on a set of guidelines which we will see issued in due course, which will respond to those requirements,” Griffiths said.

Mohammed said her delegation, including the head of UN Women, which promotes gender equality and women’s rights, pushed back against the Taliban, including when they started talking about humanitarian principles.

“We reminded them that in humanitarian principles, non-discrimination was a key part … and that they were wiping out women from the workplace,” she said.

As a Sunni Muslim, like the Taliban officials, Mohammed said she told the ministers that when it comes to preventing girls’ education beyond sixth grade and taking away women’s rights, they are not following Islam and are harming people.

In one setting, Mohammed said, she was told by a Taliban official she didn't name that “it was haram (forbidden by Islamic law) for me to be there talking to them.” These conservatives won’t look straight at a woman, she noted, so she said she played “that game” and didn’t look directly at them either.

“I gave as much as I think they gave, and we did push,” she said.

Mohammed said the Taliban have said that in due course the rights taken away from women and girls will come back so the U.N. delegation pressed for a timeline. “What they would say was ‘soon,’” she said.

The Taliban took power for a second time in August 2021, during the final weeks of the U.S. and NATO forces’ pullout from Afghanistan after 20 years of war.

Mohammed said the Taliban, who have not been recognized by a single country, want international recognition and Afghanistan’s seat at the United Nations, which is currently held by the former government led by Ashraf Ghani.

“Recognition is one leverage that we have and we should hold onto,” Mohammed said.

Before arriving in Kabul, Mohammed’s delegation traveled to Muslim majority countries, including Indonesia, Turkey, Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, where she said there was wide support against the Taliban bans.

She said there is a proposal for the U.N. and the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation to host an international conference in mid-March on women in the Muslim world.

“It’s very important that the Muslim countries come together,” she said. “We have to take the fight to the region … and we need to be bold about it and courageous about it because women’s rights matter.”

Griffiths, the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, and his delegation, including the heads of Care International and Save the Children U.S., did not travel to Kandahar, where the ban on Afghan women working for NGOs was issued on the orders of the reclusive Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzdaza.

Griffiths acknowledged Akhundzada’s top status but said there are many important voices among Taliban officials across the country.

“I don’t think it’s a simple matter of simply asking one man to take responsibility and to change an edict,” he said. “There is a collective responsibility for this edict, and I hope we’re building up a collective will to compensate for its ban.”

Save the Children’s Janti Soeripto said that there were meetings with eight ministries in two days and that some among the Taliban seemed to understand the need to reverse the ban.

“There’s resistance, they don’t want to be seen doing a U-turn,” she said. “If people don’t see the consequences as viscerally as we see them, people will feel less inclined.”

Mohammed said it is important for the U.N. and its partners to work more in some 20 Afghan provinces that are more forward leaning.

“A lot of what we have to deal with is how we travel the Taliban from the 13th century to the 21st," she said. “That's a journey. So it's not just overnight."

She said the Taliban told her delegation that it is putting forward a law against gender-based violence, which she called “a big plus” because rape and other attacks are increasing in Afghanistan.

“I want to hold the Taliban to champion implementing that law,” she said.

Mohammed said it is important to maximize whatever leverage there is to bring the Taliban back to the principles underpinning participation in the “international family.”

“No one objects to a Muslim country or Sharia (law),” she said. “But all of this cannot be re-engineered to extremism and taking views that harm women and girls. This is absolutely unacceptable, and we should hold the line.”

___

Associated Press writer Riazat Butt contributed from Islamabad.

Edith M. Lederer, The Associated Press

THE HIVE
US infiltrates big ransomware gang: 'We hacked the hackers'



ERIC TUCKER and FRANK BAJAK
Thu, January 26, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI and international partners have at least temporarily disrupted the network of a prolific ransomware gang they infiltrated last year, saving victims including hospitals and school districts a potential $130 million in ransom payments, Attorney General Merrick Garland and other U.S. officials announced Thursday.

“Simply put, using lawful means we hacked the hackers,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said at a news conference.

Officials said the targeted syndicate, known as Hive, is among the world's top five ransomware networks and has heavily targeted health care. The FBI quietly accessed its control panel in July and was able to obtain software keys it used with German and other partners to decrypt networks of some 1,300 victims globally, said FBI Director Christopher Wray.

How the takedown will affect Hive’s long-term operations is unclear. Officials announced no arrests but said, to pursue prosecutions, they were building a map of the administrators who manage the software and the affiliates who infect targets and negotiate with victims.


“I think anyone involved with Hive should be concerned because this investigation is ongoing,” Wray said.

On Wednesday night, FBI agents seized computer servers in Los Angeles used to support the network. Two Hive dark web sites were seized: one used for leaking data of non-paying victims, the other for negotiating extortion payments.

“Cybercrime is a constantly evolving threat, but as I have said before, the Justice Department will spare no resource to bring to justice anyone anywhere that targets the United States with a ransomware attack,” Garland said.

He said the infiltration, led by the FBI's Tampa office, allowed agents in one instance to disrupt a Hive attack against a Texas school district, stopping it from making a $5 million payment.

It's a big win for the Justice Department. Ransomware is the world's biggest cybercrime headache with everything from Britain's postal service and Ireland's national health network to Costa Rica's government crippled by Russian-speaking syndicates that enjoy Kremlin protection.

The criminals lock up, or encrypt, victims' networks, steal sensitive data and demand large sums. Their extortion has evolve to where data is pilfered before ransomware is activated, then effectively held hostage. Pay up in cryptocurrency or it is released publicly.

As an example of a Hive sting, Garland said it kept one Midwestern hospital in 2021 from accepting new patients at the height of the COVID-19 epidemic.

The online takedown notice, alternating in English and Russian, mentions Europol and German law enforcement partners. The German news agency dpa quoted prosecutors in Stuttgart as saying cyber specialists in the southwestern town of Esslingen were decisive in penetrating Hive's criminal IT infrastructure after a local company was victimized.

In a statement, Europol said companies in more than 80 countries, including oil multinationals, have been compromised by Hive and that law enforcement from 13 countries was in on the infiltration.

A U.S. government advisory last year said Hive ransomware actors victimized over 1,300 companies worldwide from June 2021 through November 2022, netting about $100 million in payments. Criminals using Hive's ransomware-as-a-service tools targeted a wide range of businesses and critical infrastructure, including government, manufacturing and especially health care.

Though the FBI offered decryption keys to some 1,300 victims globally, Wray said only about 20% reported potential issues to law enforcement.

“Here, fortunately, we were still able to identify and help many victims who didn't report. But that is not always the case,” Wray said. “When victims report attacks to us, we can help them and others, too.”

Victims sometimes quietly pay ransoms without notifying authorities — even if they've quickly restored networks — because the data stolen from them could be extremely damaging to them if leaked online. Identity theft is among the risks.

John Hultquist, the head of threat intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, said the Hive disruption won't cause a major drop in overall ransomware activity but is nonetheless “a blow to a dangerous group.”

“Unfortunately, the criminal marketplace at the heart of the ransomware problem ensures a Hive competitor will be standing by to offer a similar service in their absence, but they may think twice before allowing their ransomware to be used to target hospitals,” Hultquist said.

But analyst Brett Callow with the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft said the operation is apt to lessen ransomware crooks’ confidence in what has been a very high reward-low risk business. “The information collected may point to affiliates, launderers and others involved in the ransomware supply chain."

Allan Liska, an analyst with Recorded Future, another cybersecurity outfit, predicted indictments, if not actual arrests, in the next few months.

There are few positive indicators in the global fight against ransomware, but here's one: An analysis of cryptocurrency transactions by the firm Chainalysis found ransomware extortion payments were down last year. It tracked payments of at least $456.8 million, down from $765.6 million in 2021. While Chainalysis said the true totals are certainly much higher, payments were clearly down. That suggests more victims are refusing to pay.

The Biden administration got serious about ransomware at its highest levels two years ago after a series of high-profile attacks threatened critical infrastructure and global industry. In May 2021, for instance, hackers targeted the nation's largest fuel pipeline, causing the operators to briefly shut it down and make a multimillion-dollar ransom payment, which the U.S. government later largely recovered.

A global task force involving 37 nations began work this week. It is led by Australia, which has been particularly hard-hit by ransomware, including a major medical insurer and telecom. Conventional law enforcement measures such as arrests and prosecutions have done little to frustrate the criminals. Australia's interior minister, Clare O'Neil, said in November that her government was going on the offense, using cyber-intelligence and police agents to " find these people, hunt them down and debilitate them before they can attack our country.”

The FBI has obtained access to decryption keys before. It did so in the case of a major 2021 ransomware attack on Kaseya, a company whose software runs hundreds of websites. It took some heat, however, for waiting several weeks to help victims unlock afflicted networks.

____

Bajak reported from Boston. Associated Press writer Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed.

Prosecutor appointed by Trump Justice Department used claims from Russian intelligence to obtain emails from a George Soros aide: NYT


John Durham and Donald Trump.Associated Press; Getty Images

John Durham used Russian intelligence claims to obtain a US citizen's emails, per The New York Times.

Durham was appointed by former Attorney General Bill Barr to examine the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.

But Durham pursued a dubious claim from Russia involving Hillary Clinton and an aide to George Soros.

John Durham, former US Attorney for the District of Connecticut, was supposed to be investigating the investigators, charged with looking into the origins of what former President Donald Trump often termed a "hoax": the FBI's examination of his campaign's dealings with the Russian government.

In the course of his hunt for wrongdoing, culminating in two failed prosecutions, the veteran prosecutor relied on dubious claims from the Kremlin to pursue a conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton, Democratic donor and right-wing boogeyman George Soros, and the former head of the Democratic National Committee, according to an investigation by The New York Times published Thursday.

Durham, appointed as US special counsel by former Attorney General Bill Barr, had been told by a federal judge that his evidence was shoddy. As The Washington Post reported in 2017, a Russian intelligence document, obtained by the US, had claimed there was a plot to shield Clinton from an ongoing investigation into her email storage.

That and other Russian intelligence assessments were provided to Washington by Dutch intelligence, which had infiltrated their Russian counterparts and the specific group responsible for hacking the DNC and laundering the emails it stole through Wikileaks and friendly journalists during the 2016 presidential campaign; the Dutch even caught the hackers doing the job, on video.

The memos were not to be taken at face value, according to those who reviewed them. They "were said to make demonstrably inconsistent, inaccurate or exaggerated claims," the Times reported, "and some US analysts believed Russia may have deliberately seeded them with disinformation." A federal judge, reviewing the claims, deemed them insufficient to subpoena a US citizen's communications.

But Durham pursued them anyway. And he got them, according to the Times, going around the judge's veto by threatening the target with a subpoena from a grand jury, a lower bar to clear (it is not clear if an actual subpoena was obtained).

As Russian intelligence analysts themselves had told it, Moscow had hacked Leonard Benardo, executive vice president of Soros' Open Society Foundations, and in doing so uncovered a plot at the highest level to sway the 2016 election. Specifically, Democratic lawmaker and former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz was charged with discussing — over an email to Benardo — a promise, from then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, that the Obama-era Department of Justice would make sure to limit the investigation into Clinton's private email server to avoid any political fallout.

Although Durham succeeded in obtaining Benardo's emails, he never found any evidence to support the Russian claims, The Times reported, and his investigation ended with fewer successful prosecutions than Special Counsel Robert Mueller's own investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the "hoax" that some hoped he would debunk.

Barr Pressed Durham to Find Flaws in the Russia Investigation. It Didn't Go Well.

Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner

The New York Times
Thu, January 26, 2023 

The veteran prosecutor John Durham was given the job of determining whether there was any wrongdoing behind the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign's ties to Russia. (Samuel Corum/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — It became a regular litany of grievances from President Donald Trump and his supporters: The investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia was a witch hunt, they maintained, that had been opened without any solid basis, went on too long and found no proof of collusion.

Egged on by Trump, Attorney General William Barr set out in 2019 to dig into their shared theory that the Russia investigation likely stemmed from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. To lead the inquiry, Barr turned to a hard-nosed prosecutor named John Durham and later granted him special counsel status to carry on after Trump left office.

But after almost four years — far longer than the Russia investigation itself — Durham’s work is coming to an end without uncovering anything like the deep-state plot alleged by Trump and suspected by Barr.

Moreover, a monthslong review by The New York Times found that the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.

Interviews by the Times with more than a dozen current and former officials have revealed an array of previously unreported episodes that show how the Durham inquiry became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes as it went unsuccessfully down one path after another even as Trump and Barr promoted a misleading narrative of its progress.

— Barr and Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in autumn 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Durham brought no charges over it.

— Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Durham used grand-jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Durham has cited in any case he pursued.

— There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known. The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics.

Now, as Durham works on a final report, the interviews by the Times provide new details of how he and Barr sought to recast the scrutiny of the 2016 Trump campaign’s myriad if murky links to Russia as unjustified and itself a crime.

Barr, Durham and Dannehy declined to comment. The current and former officials who discussed the investigation all spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the legal, political and intelligence sensitivities surrounding the topic.

‘The Thinnest of Suspicions’

A month after Barr was confirmed as attorney general in February 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller ended the Russia investigation and turned in his report without charging any Trump associates with engaging in a criminal conspiracy with Moscow over its covert operation to help Trump win the 2016 election.

Trump would repeatedly portray the Mueller report as having found “no collusion with Russia.” The reality was more complex. In fact, the report detailed “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign,” and it established both how Moscow had worked to help Trump win and how his campaign had expected to benefit from the foreign interference.

That spring, Barr assigned Durham to scour the origins of the Russia investigation for wrongdoing, telling Fox News that he wanted to know if “officials abused their power and put their thumb on the scale” in deciding to pursue the investigation. “A lot of the answers have been inadequate, and some of the explanations I’ve gotten don’t hang together,” he added.

At the time Barr was confirmed, he told aides that he already suspected that intelligence abuses played a role in igniting the Russia investigation — and that unearthing any wrongdoing would be a priority.

In May 2019, soon after giving Durham his assignment, Barr summoned the head of the National Security Agency, Paul Nakasone, to his office. In front of several aides, Barr demanded that the NSA cooperate with the Durham inquiry.

Referring to the CIA and British spies, Barr also said he suspected that the NSA’s “friends” had helped instigate the Russia investigation by targeting the Trump campaign, aides briefed on the meeting said.

Durham spent his first months looking for any evidence that the origin of the Russia investigation involved an intelligence operation targeting the Trump campaign.

Durham’s team spent long hours combing the CIA’s files but found no way to support the allegation.

Durham and Barr had not yet given up when a new problem arose: In early December, the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael Horowitz, completed his own report on the origins of the Russia investigation.

The inspector general revealed errors and omissions in wiretap applications targeting a former Trump campaign adviser and determined that an FBI lawyer had doctored an email in a way that kept one of those problems from coming to light.

But the broader findings contradicted Trump’s accusations and the rationale for Durham’s inquiry. Horowitz found no evidence that FBI actions were politically motivated. And he concluded that the investigation’s basis — an Australian diplomat’s tip that a Trump campaign adviser had seemed to disclose advance knowledge that Russia would release hacked Democratic emails — had been sufficient to lawfully open it.

The week before Horowitz released the report, he and aides came to Durham’s offices to go over it. Durham lobbied Horowitz to drop his finding that the diplomat’s tip had been sufficient for the FBI to open its “full” counterintelligence investigation, arguing that it was enough at most for a “preliminary” inquiry, according to officials. But Horowitz did not change his mind.

That weekend, Barr and Durham decided to weigh in publicly to shape the narrative on their terms.

Minutes before the inspector general’s report went online, Barr issued a statement contradicting Horowitz’s major finding, declaring that the FBI opened the investigation “on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient.”

But as Durham’s inquiry proceeded, he never presented any evidence contradicting Horowitz’s factual findings about the basis on which FBI officials opened the investigation.

By summer 2020, it was clear that the hunt for evidence supporting Barr’s hunch about intelligence abuses had failed. But he waited until after the 2020 election to publicly concede that there had turned out to be no sign of “foreign government activity” and that the CIA had “stayed in its lane” after all.

An Awkward Tip

On one of Barr and Durham’s trips to Europe, according to people familiar with the matter, Italian officials — while denying any role in setting off the Russia investigation — unexpectedly offered a potentially explosive tip linking Trump to certain suspected financial crimes.

Barr and Durham decided that the tip was too serious and credible to ignore. But rather than assign it to another prosecutor, Barr had Durham investigate the matter himself — giving him criminal prosecution powers for the first time — even though the possible wrongdoing by Trump did not fall squarely within Durham’s assignment to scrutinize the origins of the Russia inquiry, the people said.

Durham never filed charges, and it remains unclear what level of an investigation it was, what steps he took, what he learned and whether anyone at the White House ever found out. The extraordinary fact that Durham opened a criminal investigation that included scrutinizing Trump had remained secret until October 2019, when a garbled echo became public. The Times reported that Durham’s administrative review of the Russia inquiry had evolved to include a criminal investigation, while saying it was not clear what the suspected crime was. Citing their own sources, many other news outlets confirmed the development.

By the spring and summer of 2020, with Trump’s reelection campaign in full swing, the Durham investigation’s “failure to deliver scalps in time for the election” began to erode Barr’s relationship with Trump, Barr wrote in his memoir.

Trump was stoking a belief among his supporters that Durham might charge former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden. That proved too much for Barr, who in May 2020 clarified that “our concern of potential criminality is focused on others.”

Even so, in August, Trump lashed out in a Fox interview, asserting that Obama and Biden, along with top FBI and intelligence officials, had been caught in “the single biggest political crime in the history of our country,” and the only thing stopping charges would be if Barr and Durham wanted to be “politically correct.”

Against that backdrop, Barr and Durham did not shut down their inquiry when the search for intelligence abuses hit a dead end. With the inspector general’s inquiry complete, they turned to a new rationale: a hunt for a basis to accuse the Clinton campaign of conspiring to defraud the government by manufacturing the suspicions that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, along with scrutinizing what the FBI and intelligence officials knew about the Clinton campaign’s actions.

During the Russia investigation, the FBI used claims from what turned out to be a dubious source, the Steele dossier — opposition research indirectly funded by the Clinton campaign — in its botched applications to wiretap a former Trump campaign aide.

The Durham investigation did something with parallels to that incident.

In Durham’s case, the dubious sources were memos, whose credibility the intelligence community doubted, written by Russian intelligence analysts and discussing purported conversations involving American victims of Russian hacking, according to people familiar with the matter.

The memos were part of a trove provided to the CIA by a Dutch spy agency, which had infiltrated the servers of its Russian counterpart. The memos were said to make demonstrably inconsistent, inaccurate or exaggerated claims, and some U.S. analysts believed Russia may have deliberately seeded them with disinformation.

Durham wanted to use the memos, which included descriptions of Americans discussing a purported plan by Hillary Clinton to attack Trump by linking him to Russia’s hacking and releasing in 2016 of Democratic emails, to pursue the theory that the Clinton campaign conspired to frame Trump. And in doing so, Durham sought to use the memos as justification to get access to the private communications of an American citizen.

One purported hacking victim identified in the memos was Leonard Benardo, the executive vice president of the Open Society Foundations, a pro-democracy organization whose Hungarian-born founder, Soros, has been vilified by the far-right.

In 2017, The Washington Post reported that the Russian memos included a claim that Benardo and a Democratic member of Congress, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, had discussed how Loretta Lynch, the Obama-era attorney general, had supposedly promised to keep the investigation into Clinton’s emails from going too far.

But Benardo and Wasserman Schultz said they had never even met, let alone communicated about Clinton’s emails.

Durham set out to prove that the memos described real conversations, according to people familiar with the matter. He sent a prosecutor on his team, Andrew DeFilippis, to ask Judge Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, for an order allowing them to seize information about Benardo’s emails.

But Howell decided that the Russian memo was too weak a basis to intrude on Benardo’s privacy, they said. Durham then personally appeared before her and urged her to reconsider, but she again ruled against him.

Rather than dropping the idea, Durham sidestepped Howell’s ruling by invoking grand-jury power to demand documents and testimony directly from Soros’ foundation and Benardo about his emails, the people said. Rather than fighting in court, the foundation and Benardo quietly complied, according to people familiar with the matter. But for Durham, the result appears to have been another dead end.

In a statement provided to the Times by Soros’ foundation, Benardo reiterated that he never met or corresponded with Wasserman Schultz, and he said that “if such documentation exists, it’s of course made up.”

As the focus of the Durham investigation shifted, cracks formed inside the team. Durham’s deputy, Dannehy, a longtime close colleague, increasingly argued with him in front of other prosecutors and FBI agents about legal ethics.

Now Dannehy complained to Durham about how Barr kept hinting darkly in public about the direction of their investigation. Dannehy urged Durham to ask the attorney general to adhere to Justice Department policy and not discuss the investigation publicly. But Durham proved unwilling to challenge him.

The strains grew when Durham used grand-jury powers to go after Benardo’s emails. Dannehy opposed that tactic and told colleagues that Durham had taken that step without telling her.

By summer 2020, with Election Day approaching, Barr pressed Durham to draft a potential interim report centered on the Clinton campaign and FBI gullibility or willful blindness.

On Sept. 10, 2020, Dannehy discovered that other members of the team had written a draft report that Durham had not told her about, according to people briefed on their ensuing argument.

Dannehy erupted, according to people familiar with the matter. She told Durham that no report should be issued before the investigation was complete and especially not just before an election — and denounced the draft for taking disputed information at face value. She sent colleagues a memo detailing those concerns and resigned.

Two people close to Barr said he had pressed for the draft to evaluate what a report on preliminary findings would look like and what evidence would need to be declassified. But they insisted that he intended any release to come during the summer or after the Nov. 3 election — not soon before Election Day.

In any case, in late September 2020, about two weeks after Dannehy quit, someone leaked to a Fox Business personality that Durham would not issue any interim report, disappointing Trump supporters hoping for a pre-Election Day bombshell.

© 2023 The New York Times Company

Pope Francis Condemns Anti-Gay Laws Around the World: 'Being Homosexual Is Not a Crime'

Jason Duaine Hahn
Wed, January 25, 2023 

Pope Francis leaves the Syriac Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation (Sayidat al-Najat) in Baghdad

AYMAN HENNA/AFP via Getty Pope Francis

In a new interview, Pope Francis spoke out against the criminalization of homosexuality and asked Catholic bishops who support anti-gay laws to welcome the LGBTQ+ community into their churches.

While speaking to the Associated Press this week, the pontiff, 86, called laws that criminalize homosexuality "unfair" and said, "being homosexual isn't a crime."

"We are all children of God, and God loves us as we are," Francis told the AP in Vatican City.

According to Human Rights Watch, at least 67 countries have national laws that criminalize same-sex relations between adults. Another nine countries have national laws criminalizing forms of gender expression aimed at transgender and gender nonconforming people.


Francis admitted there were Catholic bishops that support laws that discriminate against members of the LGBTQ+ community or criminalize homosexuality, and he asked that they reconsider their stance.

RELATED: Pope Francis Says He May Need to Consider 'Stepping Aside' Following Trip to Canada

"These bishops have to have a process of conversion," he said. "[They should apply] tenderness, please, as God has for each one of us."

pope francis

Though Francis voiced his support for the decriminalization of homosexuality, he said he still viewed it as a "sin." But, Francis explained, he does not want "sin" and "crime" to be synonymous in relation to homosexuality.

"It's not a crime. Yes, but it's a sin," he told the AP. "Fine, but first, let's distinguish between a sin and a crime."

Francis added: "It's also a sin to lack charity with one another."

Francis, who became head of the Catholic Church in 2013, has often made statements supporting the LGBTQ+ community.

In 2020, he said he supported civil unions for same-sex couples, which was a break from the official teaching of the Catholic Church.

That same year, he told parents of LGBTQ+ youth that "God loves your children as they are."

Yet, in 2021, the Vatican announced that the Catholic Church could not bless same-sex unions because God "does not and cannot bless sin."

The Church explained that its teachings say marriage should be between a man and a woman to create new life. The statement was approved by Francis.

It shouldn't seem so surprising when the pope says being gay 'isn't a crime' – a Catholic theologian explains

Steven P. Millies, Professor of Public Theology and Director of The Bernardin Center, Catholic Theological Union

Thu, January 26, 2023

Pope Francis leads the second vespers service at St. Paul's Basilica on Jan. 25, 2023, in Rome. Alessandra Benedetti/Corbis via Getty Images

Once again, Pope Francis has called on Catholics to welcome and accept LGBTQ people.

“Being homosexual isn’t a crime,” the pope said in an interview with The Associated Press on Jan. 24, 2023, adding, “let’s distinguish between a sin and a crime.” He also called for the relaxation of laws around the world that target LGBTQ people.

Francis’ long history of making similar comments in support of LGBTQ people’s dignity, despite the church’s rejection of homosexuality, has provoked plenty of criticism from some Catholics. But I am a public theologian, and part of what interests me about this debate is that Francis’ inclusiveness is not actually radical. His remarks generally correspond to what the church teaches and calls on Catholics to do.

‘Who am I to judge?’

During the first year of Francis’ papacy, when asked about LGBTQ people, he famously replied, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” – setting the tone for what has become a pattern of inclusiveness.

He has given public support more than once to James Martin, a Jesuit priest whose efforts to build bridges between LGBTQ people and the Catholic Church have been a lightning rod for criticism. In remarks captured for a 2020 documentary, Francis expressed support for the legal protections that civil unions can provide for LGBTQ people.

And now come the newest remarks. In his recent interview, the pope said the church should oppose laws that criminalize homosexuality. “We are all children of God, and God loves us as we are and for the strength that each of us fights for our dignity,” he said, though he differentiated between “crimes” and actions that go against church teachings.

Compassion, not doctrinal change

The pope’s support for LGBTQ people’s civil rights does not change Catholic doctrine about marriage or sexuality. The church still teaches – and will certainly go on teaching – that any sexual relationship outside a marriage is wrong, and that marriage is between a man and a woman. It would be a mistake to conclude that Francis is suggesting any change in doctrine.

A rosary march in Warsaw in 2019 ended with a prayer apologizing to God for pride parades in Poland. Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Rather, the pattern of his comments has been a way to express what the Catholic Church says about human dignity in response to rapidly changing attitudes toward the LGBTQ community across the past two decades. Francis is calling on Catholics to take note that they should be concerned about justice for all people.

The Catholic Church has condemned discrimination against LGBTQ people for many years, even while it describes homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered” in its catechism. Nevertheless, some bishops around the world support laws that criminalize homosexuality – which Francis acknowledged, saying they “have to have a process of conversion.”

The “law of love embraces the entire human family and knows no limits,” the Vatican office concerned with social issues said in a 2005 compilation of the church’s social thought.

In 2006, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recognized that LGBTQ people “have been, and often continue to be, objects of scorn, hatred, and even violence.” And expressing care for other human persons – “especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted” by the indifference or oppression of others – represents obligations for all Catholics to embrace.

As the Francis papacy now nears the end of its 10th year, it is becoming more and more common to hear Catholic leaders attempting to make LGBTQ people feel included in the church. Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich has called on pastors to “redouble our efforts to be creative and resilient in finding ways to welcome and encourage all LGBTQ people.” New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan has welcomed LGBTQ groups in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, against the wishes of many New York Catholics.

In this most recent interview, Francis emphasized that being LGBTQ is “a human condition,” calling Catholics to see other people less through the eyes of doctrine and more through the eyes of mercy.

A new ‘political reality’

The rapid change that has happened in prevailing social attitudes about the LGBTQ community in recent decades has been difficult to process for a church that has never reacted quickly. This is especially because the questions those developments raise touch on a gray area where moral teaching intersects with social realities outside the church.

For decades, church leaders have been working to reconcile the church with the modern world, and Francis is stepping in places where other Catholic bishops have already trodden.

In 2018, for example, German bishops reacting to the legalization of gay marriage acknowledged that acceptance of LGBTQ relationships is a new “political reality.”

An LGBTQ couple embraces after a pastoral worker blesses them at a Catholic church in Germany, in defiance of practices approved by Rome.

Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

There are signs that parts of the church are moving even more quickly. Catholics in Germany, in particular, have called for changes to church teaching, including permission for priests to bless same-sex couples and the ordination of married men.
The next chapter

But those actions are outliers. Francis has criticized the German calls for reform as “elitist” and ideological. When it comes to the civil rights of LGBTQ people, the pope is not changing church teaching, but describing it.

I believe the challenge the Vatican faces is to imagine the space that the church can occupy in this new reality, as it has had to do in the face of numerous social and political changes across centuries. But the imperative, as Francis suggests, is to serve justice and to seek justice for all people with mercy above all.

Catholics – including bishops, and even the pope – can think, and are thinking, imaginatively about that challenge.

Portions of this article originally appeared in a previous article published on Oct. 22, 2020.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Steven P. Millies, Catholic Theological Union.

Read more:

Calls for Pope Benedict’s sainthood make canonizing popes seem like the norm – but it’s a long and politically fraught process

Orthodox Judaism can still be a difficult world for LGBTQ Jews – but in some groups, the tide is slowly turning

Group of Peruvian lawmakers submits motion seeking to impeach new president

Anti-government protests in Lima


Wed, January 25, 2023

LIMA (Reuters) -A group of Peruvian lawmakers on Wednesday submitted a motion seeking to impeach President Dina Boluarte after a little over a month in power citing "permanent moral incapacity".

The bid to remove Boluarte comes in the midst of violent protests following the impeachment and arrest last month of her predecessor, Pedro Castillo, in which dozens of people have been killed.

The motion, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, was signed by 28 leftist members of congress who support Castillo. A minimum of 20%, or 26 signatures, was required to file the motion.

The motion must now be approved by 52 votes before it can be debated in Congress where it must win two-thirds of the chamber's support.

"Never in the history of Peru has a government in so little time - a month in governance - killed more than forty people in protests," the motion said, accusing Boluarte of allowing the abuse and disproportionate use of force, among other accusations.

Boluarte's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

She has blamed Castillo, who is in pretrial detention, for promoting political polarization during his nearly 17 months in power.

On Tuesday, Boluarte called for a "political truce". She has also accused drug traffickers and others of stirring up the violence on the streets.

Peru's ombudsman office said there were more than 90 blockades across the country on Wednesday and one person was killed in Cusco city.

At least 47 people have died in clashes since the protests began in December, according to the office, including one police officer, while hundreds have been injured.

Human rights groups accuse police and soldiers of using excessive force, including live ammunition and dropping tear gas from helicopters.

Security forces say protesters, mostly in Peru's southern Andes, used homemade weapons and explosives.

(Reporting by Marco Aquino and Carolina Pulice; Writing by Sarah Morland and Valentine Hilaire; Editing by Robert Birsel)

MINING IS NOT GREEN

We May Not Actually Need All That Lithium

Molly Taft
Wed, January 25, 2023

Lithium mining in Chile’s Atacama desert.

Read any article about the clean energy revolution, and chances are you’ll run into some staggering numbers about how demand for lithium, cobalt, nickel, and other minerals and metals is projected to rise over the next few decades.

But the future isn’t set in stone. The U.S. may need up to 90% less of these materials if it simply prioritizes things like public transit, urban walkability, and smaller cars, according to groundbreaking new research from the Climate and Community Project and University of California, Davis.

The International Energy Agency predicts that demand for lithium could rise by as much as 40 times by 2040; the U.S. alone by 2050 could need three times as much lithium as is currently produced on the global market. Transportation and electric vehicle batteries are a huge factor in these staggering numbers.

But there are some big problems with these materials and their production, from environmentally destructive mining practices to child and forced labor in supply chains to geopolitical conflict. A recent analysis found that over half of the world’s supply of these materials is on Indigenous lands, signaling some significant upcoming conflicts with corporations looking to profit from the increased demand.

Lithium and other minerals are also likely to become big targets for Republicans and politicians opposed to EV tax credits and other clean energy incentives. On Wednesday, Senator Joe Manchin, who has voiced opposition to EV tax credits in the past, introduced a bill mandating that all materials in an EV battery eligible for a tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act be mined either in the U.S. or in a country the U.S. has a free trade agreement with. Automakers say there’s a chance that, given all these requirements, no electric vehicle would actually be eligible for a tax credit.

But most of the forecasts that say we’re going to need huge amounts of materials like lithium are based on a future “that looks like the present except it’s electrified,” said Thea Riofrancos, an associate professor of political science at Providence College and one of the authors of the report. This one-to-one trade of gas vehicles for EVs—a vision that assumes Americans, especially, keep up with their big car obsession—is “easier, it feels more politically feasible, and it’s realistic” to the organizations doing the forecasting.

Riofrancos explained that industries that would stand to gain from a boom in electric vehicles—industries that are also producing their own forecasts—have a vested interest in seeing a car-heavy future.

“Auto companies and mining companies, the last companies on earth anyone would think of as being part of the climate solution, now have the opportunity to present themselves as climate saviors,” she said.

Riofrancos said the idea for this research was born from her own search for different modeling for a less car-heavy future. When she tried to find projections of pathways with different priorities in the U.S.—where there are fewer and smaller cars, denser and more easily navigable residential areas, and more public transit—she discovered they hadn’t yet been modeled in the context of demand for these minerals.

“Auto companies and mining companies... now have the opportunity to present themselves as climate saviors”

To do the modeling, Riofrancos and her research partners put together four scenarios for the U.S. to achieve net-zero emissions through 2050: a business-as-usual scenario, where electric vehicles simply replace the current supply of fossil fuel-dependent cars, and increasingly dramatic scenarios in which more people live in dense, walkable and bikeable areas; take improved public transit; and own fewer and smaller cars, while the government also implements aggressive recycling policies for electric car components. They then calculated the amount of lithium and other metals all these scenarios demand.

The results were surprising, even to Riofrancos. Policies that made cities more walkable and public transit better and more accessible could lower lithium demand between 18% and 66%, while simply limiting the size of EV batteries could cut demand by up to 42%. In the best-case scenario, where multiple types of these policies were implemented, demand for lithium in the U.S. could be more than 90% lower than current estimates.

The situations they lay out aren’t some sort of unrealistic utopian vision. Riofrancos stressed that even in their most aggressively low-car scenario, there are still electric vehicles on the road. “We were trying to keep this within the bounds of what could actually happen over the next 25 years,” she said. Limiting battery size, meanwhile, meant just limiting them to the types of cars popular in other developed nations. “The U.S. is going off on its own to be super big” when it comes to electric vehicles, Riofrancos said. (Ironically, the day before I spoke to Riofrancos, I had a conversation with a friend about the electric Hummer—which he was incredibly excited about, despite its absolutely gargantuan battery size.)

Ultimately, Riofrancos said, she hopes that the research at the very least shows that we have more options to get to net-zero carbon emissions than just over-reliance on EVs and the supply chain problems they bring.

“With just some federal or state level transit money, we could make a big difference in reducing the carbon emissions of transportation,” she said. “There are political challenges around getting Americans out of cars, but we should agree that the science says that that would help a lot to reduce emissions from transportation.”

Gizmodo

Here's a plan for cutting US demand for lithium by up to 90%



Lylla Younes
Thu, January 26, 2023 
This story was first published by Grist.

The effort to shift the U.S. economy off fossil fuels and avoid the most disastrous impacts of climate change hinges on the third element of the periodic table. Lithium, the soft, silvery-white metal used in electric car batteries, was endowed by nature with miraculous properties. At around half a gram per cubic centimeter, it’s the lightest known metal and is extremely energy-dense, making it ideal for manufacturing batteries with long lifespans.

The problem is that lithium comes with its own set of troubles: Mining the metal is often devastating for the environment and the people who live nearby since it’s water-intensive and risks permanently damaging the land. The industry also has an outsize impact on Native American communities — three-quarters of all known U.S. lithium deposits are located near tribal land.

Solutions for soaring lithium demand

Demand for lithium is expected to skyrocket in the coming decades (by up to 4,000 percent, according to one estimate), which will require many new mines to meet it (more than 70 by 2025). These estimates assume the number of cars on the road will remain constant, so lithium demand will rise as gas guzzlers get replaced by electric vehicles. But what if the United States could design a policy that eliminates carbon emissions from the transportation sector without as much mining?

A new report from the Climate and Community Project, a progressive climate-policy think tank, offers a fix. In a paper out on Tuesday, the researchers estimate that the U.S. could decrease lithium demand by up to 90 percent by 2050 by expanding public transportation infrastructure, shrinking the size of electric vehicle batteries and maximizing lithium recycling. The group claims this report is the first to consider multiple pathways for getting the country’s cars and buses running on electricity and suppressing U.S. lithium demand at the same time.

“Conversations [about the dangers of mining] can lead folks to think that there’s a zero-sum trade-off: Either we address the climate crisis or we protect Indigenous rights and biodiversity,” said Thea Riofrancos, an associate professor of political science at Providence College and the lead author of the report. “This report asks the question: Is there a way to do both?”

Riofrancos and the other researchers modeled four scenarios for public transportation in the U.S. that would lead to different levels of lithium demand. In the baseline, the country follows the path it’s currently on, swapping out all gas cars for electric ones by 2050, with few other changes.

Fewer cars, more mass transit and personal mobility options

The other three scenarios consider what happens when more people are walking, biking or taking trains and buses. Cities grow denser, commutes shorten and public transportation expands and is electrified. Governments take away subsidies for owning cars, such as free parking, and limit on-street parking and lots. Assuming that the average battery size stays the same and eight-year battery warranties remain in place, lithium demand drops by 66 percent in the most ambitious scenario as compared to the U.S. staying on its current path. But even the more modest scenarios bring 18 and 41 percent drops in demand for the metal, respectively, largely thanks to expanding mass transit and denser urban areas that allow families to live without cars.

“The scenarios were really informed by what already exists in certain places,” said Kira McDonald, a Princeton University researcher. She and her colleagues used real-life examples for their estimates, looking at success stories in cities such as Vienna, which has slashed car use in recent years through car-free zones, bike-sharing and improvements to pedestrian comfort and safety. London, Lyon and Amsterdam have also all seen steep declines in vehicle ownership after rolling out low-emission zones and adding more bike lanes; in Paris, car use has fallen by about 45 percent since 1990.

Smaller EV batteries and more recycling

The researchers experimented with other variables that could influence lithium demand and were surprised to find that by reducing average battery sizes to 54 kilowatt-hours, close to the capacity of the Nissan Leaf, lithium demand fell as much as 42 percent, even when car use stayed on its current trajectory. While the global average battery is small, with a capacity of around 40 kWh, the bigger batteries used in the United States have an average capacity of around 70 kWh, and the report notes a trend toward even bigger batteries with higher capacities like the 130 kWh models found in some electric trucks and SUVs.

Riofrancos said there’s a way around building big batteries, while allowing that there are reasonable concerns about the availability of charging stations and the need for longer battery ranges in certain areas. “But the solution to that is to build more charging stations, not make enormous electric vehicles.”

Battery recycling — a nascent industry in the U.S. — could also reduce lithium demand, but it’s unlikely to help much for at least a decade, according to experts. Currently, there just aren’t a lot of electric-car batteries to recycle, as most of the early EVs are still on the roads, and some of the batteries that do putter out get reused for solar and wind energy storage. While the European Union will soon require new lithium-ion batteries to use some recycled parts, and China requires battery manufacturers to collaborate with recycling companies, the United States has no such requirements.

The Climate and Community Project report points out that recyclers have also had little reason to recover lithium, as it’s cheaper to mine. Even a fully up-and-running industry that recovers 98 percent of EV battery material could only meet about a third of lithium demand by 2050 if the country continues to rely on cars the way it does now — two-thirds would still come from the earth.

Getting Americans out of their cars, even their electric ones, would require sweeping changes to the country’s infrastructure, the fabric of urban areas and the very culture. Some have described the level of transformation required as unrealistic. But the researchers found examples of successful efforts in big cities around the world, even in the United States. Riofrancos pointed to free bus lines in Providence, Rhode Island, e-bike subsidies in Denver and efforts in other cities to scale back parking lots.

“The conversations are happening, but they’re not connected with congressional funding priorities at all,” Riofrancos said. She added that the Biden administration’s recently released transportation blueprint, with its focus on public transit and land-use planning, is out of step with its emphasis on promoting EVs and domestic lithium mining in the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate legislation Biden signed into law last August.

“I think at this point the question is not whether we decarbonize, but how,” she said. “That’s still an open question, and I think we should be having a broader...social and political debate over the different ways forward on this.”

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/01/capitalim-is-not-sustainable-revealed.html