Obama to unveil more ambitious climate change plan

The proposal under the Clean Air Act to cut carbon pollution from existing power plants is seen before a news conference in Washington June 2, 2014.

REUTERS/JOSHUA ROBERTS

President Barack Obama will unveil on Monday the final version of his plan to tackle greenhouse gases from coal-fired power plants as he aims to cement his legacy on climate change, a senior administration official said.

The revised Clean Power Plan will seek to slash carbon emissions from the power sector 32 percent from 2005 levels in 2030, a 9 percent increase over a previous proposal.

The regulation will usher in a sweeping transformation of the U.S. electricity sector, encouraging an aggressive shift toward more renewable energy away from coal-fired electricity.

Industry groups and some lawmakers from states that have relied on coal-based energy have said they will challenge it in the courts and through Congressional maneuvers, accusing the administration of a regulatory assault that will drive up energy prices.

The White House was defiant, and said the release of the plan was "the starting gun for an all-out climate push" by the president and his cabinet.

"My administration will release the final version of America's Clean Power Plan, the biggest, most important step we have ever taken to combat climate change," Obama said in a video posted by the White House Sunday at midnight.

He said there have been no federal limits to date on carbon pollution from power plants, the biggest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

The plan will be central to the United States' contribution to a United Nations agreement to tackle climate change, in which the Obama administration has vowed to play a leadership role.

Each state will be required to submit a plan to the Environmental Protection Agency next year, spelling out how it will meet an emission-cutting goal assigned to it.

Five governors who have opposed the rule have already said they will not comply.

"CUTTING BILLS"

The final version will accelerate the deployment of renewable energy based on updated projections that the share of renewable energy generation capacity in 2030 will be higher at 28 percent, compared to 22 percent in last June's version.

The Obama administration also changed its projection about the share of natural gas in the U.S. power mix in 2020, avoiding what it said would be an "early rush to gas" away from coal.

"Instead, the rule drives early reductions from renewable energy and energy efficiency, which will drive a more aggressive transformation in the domestic energy industry," according to a senior administration official.  

The revised rule contains two new measures the administration said will "cut energy bills for low-income families" and drive down renewable energy technology costs, pre-empting arguments by opponents that plan will be too costly.

It will create a Clean Energy Incentive Program to reward states that take early action to deploy renewable energy project before the regulation kicks in 2022.

It will also reward states that invest in energy-efficiency projects in low-income communities in 2020 and 2021.

(Editing by William Hardy)

Source: Reuters

Obama Is Sending Military-Grade Spy Gear To Egypt. What Could Go Wrong?

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's State Department has approved the sale to Egypt of a sophisticated, military-grade mobile surveillance system that experts and activists fear Cairo's authoritarian regime will use against the country's citizens. 

The State Department says that Egypt will only use the system on the Egyptian border with war-torn Libya, where a branch of the Islamic State group is mushrooming. But the current Egyptian government sees domestic critics as existential threats at least on par with the extremist group. 

With the world's largest Arab nation still reeling from the consequences of a 2013 military coup that removed Egypt's first democratically elected president, controversial Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi, the country's government is cracking down on dissent. And the Arab Spring showed that repressive regimes in the Middle East can and will use U.S.-provided equipment against their own citizens, argued Cole Bockenfeld, the advocacy director at the Project on Middle East Democracy.

"We may have an agreement that this kind of equipment is for external use only, but of course these security services did -- and can again -- turn it anywhere," Bockenfeld said.

The State Department won't say exactly what the surveillance system will do. The Egyptian Embassy and several defense contractors that make surveillance devices did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Egyptian citizens say that even without additional detail about what spying capabilities their government may gain, the news has them on edge.

"Surveillance equipment worries me in the hands of vindictive, irresponsible actors," said Wael Eskandar, an Egyptian journalist and blogger who spoke to The Huffington Post through an encrypted chat program. "When you give power to men of violence, you're encouraging them to be more violent. When you don't hold people accountable, they act with more impunity."

Such concerns are unlikely to scuttle the deal. Now that the State Department has approved the sale, the transfer of the surveillance system is a fait accompli unless Cairo changes its mind. The next step is a monthslong process that will involve discussions between officials in the two governments and the approval of a military contractor.

The surveillance equipment sale is the latest piece of the Obama administration's effort to mend ties with the Egyptian regime. On March 31, Obama lifted a hold on the transfers of big-ticket weapons systems, including F-16 fighter jets and Harpoon missiles, that Egypt had purchased but not received because of U.S. human rights concerns related to the aftermath of the 2013 coup. Days later, Egyptian officials began communicating to U.S. officials that they wanted the surveillance gear, a senior congressional aide told HuffPost.

Lifting the hold was widely interpreted as a sign that Obama now seeks to leave tensions over the coup in the past and develop a closer relationship with President Abdel Fattah El Sissi, the retired Egyptian general who won an internationally criticized election following the army takeover. Analysts see the approval of the new sale as a potent sign of that ongoing shift.

As the U.S. and the new regime grow closer, Egyptian civil society activists are nervous about what could happen to their already diminished freedoms.

Many had chosen, like the former computer engineer Eskandar, to leave their jobs and commit themselves to activism when Egypt's revolution erupted in 2011. Now, years after optimistic pro-democracy protests swept the country, Sissi rules with an iron fist. Egyptians from across the political spectrum who are considered dissenters have been targeted or locked up. That group includes suspected members of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, secular revolutionary activists and members of the press who print news the government deems unflattering. 

Eskandar says the government already closely monitors his private conversations by phone, email and social media like Facebook. His personal life isn’t private anymore -- and he’s far from the only one. He says he knows of revolutionary activists who have been called into state security only to have their recorded, private phone conversations used as blackmail against them.

 

 

They don't want any leadership to emerge that would threaten them.

 

Wael Eskandar

 

The Egyptian state "monitors people to control them," Eskandar told HuffPost. "They don't want any leadership to emerge that would threaten them."

The U.S. is well-aware of the situation in Sissi's Egypt, and officials frequently comment on the Egyptian government's most blatant abuses. But the White House sees engagement with the country as essential nonetheless. Earlier this year, the Obama administration used a national security waiver, a document justifying support to undemocratic regimes on the basis that they are essential to U.S. security, to increase U.S. military support to Egypt to its pre-coup level, about $1.3 billion.

To secure that waiver, the administration was legally required to explain just how undemocratic it believes Egypt is. So this past May, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry blasted the country in a report to Congress.

"While Egypt has implemented parts of its 'democracy roadmap,' the overall trajectory of rights and democracy has been negative," Kerry wrote in an unclassified version of the May 12 report,published in June by The New York Times. "A series of executive initiatives, new laws, and judicial actions severely restrict freedom of expression and the press, freedom of association, freedom of peaceful assembly, and due process, and they undermine prospects for democratic governance. Since July 2013, human rights NGOs and civil society activists describe a shrinking space for peaceful dissent, leading some of them to self-censor many of their political activities that could be deemed controversial, or even leave the country. Except in rare instances, police and security forces have not been held accountable for alleged human rights violations."

Kerry's report notes a few positive developments, but it is mostly a list of Egyptian misdeeds, from delays in parliamentary elections to arbitrary killings of demonstrators and the use of torture and rape by the police. The document reflects a country where even the act of peaceful protest -- the fuel of the 2011 revolution that toppled longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak -- has now become illegal. Anyone caught demonstrating without direct permission from Egypt's government risks landing inside a jail cell, caught in a legal system widely slammed as a mockery of justice.

Despite all this, the State Department maintains that the sale of the new surveillance system -- which it had to approve and then notify Congress about -- won't make the situation worse. 

“That’s not the intended use. This isn’t anything sinister. This is border security stuff,” a State Department official told HuffPost. “This is the kind of stuff that [the Department of Homeland Security] uses to monitor the border.”

The official noted that the Egyptians will have to allow check-ins from the U.S. government as part of an end-use monitoring agreement. This deal, which is only in its beginning stages, will require the Egyptians to sign a letter committing to whatever monitoring terms the U.S. sets.

“As needed, as warranted, we will work with that country's defense department depending on the system, depending on the particular situation. We may periodically go out to a site where they have a certain product stored and conduct a physical inventory,” the official said.

But U.S.-based experts on the process of end-use monitoring are less optimistic -- particularly when it comes to Egypt.

"The Egyptians have refused to allow regular access, including by U.S. government officials or the independent press, to areas where our military equipment is being used. So Senator Leahy believes the track record is not good,” said an aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). The senator used his position on an appropriations subcommittee to place limits on providing military aid to the Egyptian government in 2014, and he is an opponent of the national security waiver the Obama administration is now using to provide military support to Cairo.

The surveillance system "may be different, but it depends on where it is used and the assurance of the Egyptian authorities that we have the ability to ensure that it is used for the purposes for which it was provided," the aide added. "It’s a question of whether the Egyptians cooperate in allowing the United States and others to monitor its use."

Tamara Cofman Wittes, who worked on human rights in the Middle East as the State Department's deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs from November of 2009 to January 2012, underscored that reliance on Egyptian transparency. She noted that American credibility could be at risk were the Egyptians to violate the terms of their purchase.

 

If the State Department were to determine that Egypt is using this equipment in violation ... that's a U.S. problem.

 

Tamara Cofman Wittes

"This is American military equipment that the American government funds the purchase of," said Wittes, who is now the director of the Brookings Institution's Center for Middle East Policy. "Even if they were paying cash, we have laws on the books to govern how our U.S.-made equipment is used abroad. If the State Department were to determine that Egypt is using this equipment in violation ... that's a U.S. problem."

The U.S. would usually learn about violations after they have occurred -- therefore already being complicit, in the eyes of the government's critics, even if it were to later take steps to prevent further misuse.

Activists in other Middle Eastern countries have shown that they will blame Western governments or private industry if they provide authoritarian governments with equipment that is misused. BahrainWatch, a civil society organization that tracks abuses by the Bahraini government, joined other human rights groups in February 2013 to file a complaint with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development against two European surveillance technology companies that sold their products to Bahrain's internationally condemned government. The OECD slammed one of the companies in findings released this February, saying the U.K. firm Gamma International violated OECD standards by failing to ensure that its spyware products are not used to damage human rights.

Ali Abdulemam, a former prisoner of conscience and member of Bahrain Watch, told HuffPost that information collected through such surveillance technology has enabled Bahraini authorities to bring convictions against activists, with the government saying they discovered suspicious activity through "private sources." In one instance, Abdulemam recalled, the government submitted printouts of a fellow activist's text messages as evidence in court. He added that his own email was hacked and presented in a different court case.

Egyptian activists say they are already resigned to even greater monitoring -- and have little hope that the U.S. will intervene to protect their rights beyond noting abuses publicly as it did in Kerry's report to Congress.

"Besides the few statements from the White House or the State Department, I don't see the U.S. will do much to reign in the Egyptian regime," a leading Egyptian blogger who writes under the pen name The Big Pharaoh told HuffPost. "Honestly, I totally understand their position. The whole region is on fire, and the Egyptian regime, which does have considerable local support, is currently needed to keep Egypt in an acceptable level of stability."

Wittes, the former Obama administration official, said that Washington has little chance of effectively restricting Egyptian behavior. "I don't think there's any American policy decision that would have dissuaded the Egyptian government from the very coercive path that it took in domestic affairs following the military takeover. That was a path that the Egyptian government determined was necessary for what it deemed the existential survival of the Egyptian government and the Egyptian state, and they were going to do that no matter the cost."

The White House has tried to show Egypt that it will not completely embrace Sissi's excesses. It has continued to criticize injustices, and it explained in its March 31 announcement ending the hold on weapons transfers that it hopes to better control the way the gigantic Egypt military aid package -- an annual handout second only to that provided to Israel --  is used.

Still, the impetus to focus on Cairo's domestic actions is growing ever weaker as the U.S. worries about the terror threats Egypt faces from extremists in Libya and an Islamic State-linked insurgency in the Sinai peninsula. That means counterterror and security take precedence once more in the relationship, Wittes explained -- leaving the government broad leeway to decide what it sees as risks, knowing it will have military support to deal with them from Washington and from its loyal backers in the Gulf.

"I am sure the government will mostly use the technology [for] counterterrorism," The Big Pharaoh told HuffPost. "But I also believe that it will be used to spy on dissidents. ... The state can use anything against you if they wanted to bring you down." 

Source: The Huffington Post

Could Obama Have Gotten More From Iran With Additional, Crippling Sanctions?

WASHINGTON – Critics of the nuclear deal that major world powers struck with Iran this week have largely based their case on a counterfactual. Had President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Iran that were more aggressive -- “crippling,” even -- then, the theory goes, he would have extracted more favorable concessions.

This argument is meant, in part, to reinforce the idea that a third option existed between the two Obama outlined -- that is, between military confrontation and the agreement that was ultimately struck. But would it actually have been practical?

According to experts in the subject, including those who worked on Iran sanctions, the answer is basically no.

There are a host of reasons why. Some of them are technical: Sanctions need to be targeted to be effective, and most of the big-ticket items had already been hit. Another reason is geopolitical: The harder the U.S. pushed for sanctions, the more it risked cracking the international support for the sanctions regime. And then there is the issue of timing. Simply put, sanctions were a card in the U.S. foreign policy deck. When Iran decided to enter negotiations for sanctions relief, the U.S. had to play that hand.

“What happens when the other side says yes?” said Joe DeThomas, who spent three years at the State Department during the Obama administration working on sanctions against both Iran and North Korea. “There were negotiating positions on the table. And when the other side comes back and says 'We are prepared to agree to that,' what kind of negotiation do you have when you say, 'Ah, no, we decided we are going to break your other leg and we are going to renege'?”

The Huffington Post spoke with DeThomas and Elizabeth Rosenberg, who served as an assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes at the Treasury Department during the Obama administration, about whether additional sanctions might have procured a better Iran deal. These interviews were conducted separately, but the questions were the same in both cases. Below is the final product, slightly edited.

 The conclusion of the Iran nuclear talks, on July 14.

How difficult would it have been to actually get tougher sanctions against Iran into place?

Elizabeth Rosenberg: Tougher sanctions require international collaboration. Right now, while there may have been an appetite among a number of policymakers in the United States for tougher sanctions, the appetite is not there among a number of really important international financial jurisdictions. And if they don’t go along, they become weak links or avenues for circumvention for Iran.

Joe DeThomas: I guess you could say, ‘Well, we could have put a full trade embargo on Iran and no oil sales. No sales of any goods of any kind. Some kind of massive economic embargo.’ I don’t know of anybody outside of Israel who would have supported that. I don’t know of any other country who would have gone willingly there.

So when you say tougher sanctions, the only way they could have been done would have been, in effect, unilateral U.S. sanctions that we leveraged the rest of the world into supporting.

Was that possible?

JD: I don’t think it would have been possible to go much farther than the sanctions that exist now without a major confrontation with another major economic player.

Why not maintain the multilateral sanctions regime and make our unilateral sanctions against Iran more aggressive?

ER: That, to me, sounds... symbolic and not necessarily economically effective. Unilateral sanctions on Iran restrict U.S. people and companies from doing business with Iranian entities. But they already can’t do business with those entities, because of the embargo we have had for decades. It is the secondary-effect sanctions that have had a huge economic impact. But imposing more secondary sanctions would come down hard on our allies, including other P5+1 negotiating partners. It wouldn’t have gone over well with them.

JD: If you want to see an example of what could happen, go back to the '90s, when we and the Europeans disagreed about U.S. unilateral sanctions on Iran, and we came very close to a U.S.-European trade war over them. And we ended up having to blink.

So we would have risked breaking up the international coalition even if we had done more unilateral sanctions?

ER: Yes.

JD: You have to draw a line at the [Hassan] Rouhani election [as president of Iran]. Once that election happened, it became clear to the Iranians that they had to do something about sanctions. So the sanctions were effective. They did their job. It persuaded the Iranians that they had to cut a deal.

Now, the question is: At the point where before the Iranians started to move, were we running up against the end of marginal utility of more sanctions? That’s hard to say. The fact of the matter is we had hit the main things.

And those were?

JD: Oil sales and the movement of money.

 President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Hassan Rouhani.

 Were there other things we could have theoretically targeted?

ER: Theoretically, you could have shut down all remaining Iranian oil exports. But in order for that to work and create more economic pressure on Iran, that means the remaining oil purchasers from Iran would have to participate. That means asking our close treaty allies -- who, by the way, are in difficult economic straits -- like Japan, South Korea, China, Turkey [and] India to participate. And the Chinese, for example, have been very clear that they are not interested in more cuts. Then you are playing a game of chicken, and it looks really bad if the U.S. can’t make good on the threat of sanctions if China decides to walk. It doesn’t just look bad -- it hurts the diplomatic-pressure tactic and it undermines the strategy.

And what happens if China does walk?

ER: The international coalition devolves. The P5+1 talks are derailed. Whether or not you can pull them back together is an open question. And in the meantime, Iran is charging towards a bomb.

So, additional sanctions could only have worked if Iran was acting belligerent and the international community agreed it needed to respond?

JD: There you have a different scenario. There you have everybody in this town and in the world saying, 'What can we do next?' That’s an alternative history. It’s not one I can examine.

Why not just let the sanctions linger a little longer before negotiating with Rouhani? 

ER: The idea you can maintain the status quo is a fallacy. These sanctions have a shelf life. They get stale. Iran is far more motivated than anyone else in the Gulf about reforming their economy, and they are very good at sophisticated barter arrangements to evade these sanctions.

They wouldn’t have been more likely to make concessions?

JD: Well, what happens when the other side says yes? You know? There were negotiating positions on the table. And when the other side comes back and says 'We are prepared to agree to that,' what kind of negotiation do you have when you say, 'Ah, no, we decided we are going to break your other leg and we are going to renege'?

So you had to move forward at that time or risk not moving forward at all?

JD: At that point you have to ask, 'Will we cut a deal or can't we?' There is an old line in arms control negotiations: Can I think of a better deal than this one? Yes. Could I have negotiated it? No.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to the U.S. Congress to argue that more sanctions would produce a better Iran nuclear deal.

Basically what you’re saying is, everything had to align from a geopolitical sense -- not just in Iran or America, but globally?

JD: Yes, you had to have a whole series of things happen. Now I have to give credit to the people who advocated sanctions, the people on the Hill in particular who pushed the administration hard. I’m not sure how quickly the administration would have been ready to go to these really hard sanctions without the very strong momentum from the Hill.

What was the administration’s resistance?

JD: I don’t think it was resistance so much as these are the big cards to play. You are saying to yourself, ‘OK, we have to make sure we are not sanctioning ourselves, that we are sanctioning the Iranians.' And that required a lot of heavy-duty lifting.

ER: In many respects, the threat of sanctions is much more powerful than the actual execution. Because once you have done it, it is a known commodity and you can immediately think about how to circumvent them or find loopholes. Whereas the threat of sanctions can be much bigger than the actual sanction itself.

And what happens if the sanctions don’t work?

JD: Well then, you have to go to other options, don’t you? That’s the thing -- if you play your big card, you better be able to live with it.

And the big card we played couldn’t have gotten more?

ER: I think it is definitely credible to say these sanctions were imposed for nuclear-related concerns and they have successfully achieved a nuclear deal. It is too bad that this deal didn’t also speak to the variety of other concerns related to Iran. But that is not part of this.

JD: Any negotiator will walk away from the table saying, 'Was there any more toothpaste in that tube? If I had just squeezed for another five seconds, would I have gotten more toothpaste out?' You always ask yourself that. I don’t care if you’re buying a car or if you are negotiating a major arms control deal. That is always going to be a question that you probably can’t answer for years.

Source: The Huffington Post