Thread: President Joe Biden

President Biden Delivers Remarks

Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire takes effect

President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to a United States-brokered ceasefire in Lebanon that took effect hours later.

In addition to widening the risk of a regional war, the escalated tensions and back-and-forth strikes over the last year killed dozens of people in Israel, hundreds in Lebanon and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border.

Under the deal, which went into effect Wednesday at 4 a.m. local time, the fighting at the Israel-Lebanese border was to come to an end, Biden said in outlining the ceasefire, which he said was "designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities."

Biden said the U.S., and partners including France, "will make sure this deal is implemented fully."

"Let me be clear, if Hezbollah or anyone else breaks the deal, and poses a direct threat to Israel, then Israel retains the right to self-defense consistent with international law," the president said from the White House.

He stressed that the agreement is in Lebanon's best interest and supports its sovereignty, adding that its people, like the people of Gaza, deserve an end to the violence and displacement.

"The people of Gaza have been through hell. Their world is absolutely shattered," Biden said, adding that Hamas' only way out of the war with Israel is to release the hostages.

He said that the agreement between Israel and the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah "reminds us that peace is possible."

"Say that again: Peace is possible," the president said. "As long as that is the case, I will not for a single moment stop working to achieve it."

Shortly after the president's announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that his Cabinet had approved the U.S.-brokered deal, 10 ministers to one.

"Israel appreciates the U.S. contribution to the process, and reserves its right to act against any threat to its security," Netanyahu said.

A senior U.S. administration official said that when the deal goes into effect, all fire will stop from all parties and that Israel's phased withdrawal will begin.

Israeli troops in Lebanon will hold their positions and a 60-day period will start in which the Lebanese military and security forces will begin their deployment toward the south, the official said, adding that the process will not happen overnight or in several days.

"Where as the Lebanese military deploys and reaches the south, the Israeli military will withdraw," the official said, adding that that in 50 to 60 days, all Israeli troops will be gone.

Earlier Tuesday, Netanyahu said he had recommended that his Cabinet agree to the deal with Hezbollah, which began trading fire with Israel a day after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.

Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip since then has killed more than 41,000 people, according to health officials in the enclave.

Hezbollah says it is supporting the Palestinian resistance; Israel sees it as another attempt by Tehran to attack the Jewish state.

Israel also killed several of Hezbollah’s most powerful leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah, under whose stewardship the group became the most powerful Iran-backed paramilitary group in the Middle East.

Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders had promised not to stop their attacks on Hezbollah until the 60,000 residents of northern Israel who have been driven from their homes can return safely. Around 90 Israeli soldiers and 50 Israeli civilians have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023.

More than 3,820 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli bombing since the fighting started, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, a campaign that has displaced some 1.2 million people and unleashed a humanitarian crisis.

A World Bank report estimated the cost of physical damage and economic losses due to the conflict in Lebanon at $8.5 billion.

In this multifront war in the Middle East, the Lebanon conflict has become a key focus for Israel in recent months. That’s partly down to Hezbollah’s mighty missile arsenal, bigger than any other non-state group in the world and thought to be capable of overwhelming Israel’s missile defense.

Biden said that with the time he has left in office, he remains committed to working toward his vision for “an integrated, secure and prosperous region, all of which, all of which strengthens America’s natural security.”

He said that he was hoping and praying for cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and to create "a future where Palestinians have a state of their own, one that fulfills these peoples' legitimate aspirations; one that cannot threaten Israel or harbor terrorist groups with backing from Iran. A future where Israelis and Palestinians enjoy equal measures of security, prosperity, and, yes, dignity."

President Biden pardons Thanksgiving turkeys at the White House

President Biden Delivers Remarks to Honor the Past and Future of the Angolan U S Relationship

Joe Biden addresses America’s ‘original sin’ of slavery on Angola visit | Angola | The Guardian
Joe Biden addresses America’s ‘original sin’ of slavery on Angola visit

Joe Biden addressed America’s history of enslavement in a speech on Tuesday at Angola’s National Museum of Slavery, calling it “our nation’s original sin” during a trip in which he also lauded recent US investment in the region.

“We remember the stolen men and women and children who were brought to our shores in chains, subjected to unimaginable cruelty,” Biden said, as the sun set over the water behind him.

“The United States is founded on an idea, one embedded in our Declaration of Independence, that all men and women are created equal,” he said, as rain started to fall and a rainbow then appeared. “It is abundantly clear today we have not lived up to that idea, but we have not fully walked away from it either.”

Biden inspected shackles and a whip at the museum, which was founded in 1977 on the former estate of Álvaro de Carvalho Matoso, one of the biggest traders of enslaved people from Africa in the 18th century.

Also on the site is the 17th-century Capela da Casa Grande, where enslaved people were forcibly baptised before being trafficked across the Atlantic. About 4 million Angolans were enslaved in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th century, most in Brazil.

The first enslaved Africans to arrive in the US were shipped to Hampton, in the then British colony of Virginia, from Angola in 1619. Almost a quarter of the 472,000 people forced into slavery in the US came from the west and central region of Africa that includes Angola, according to the Slave Voyages database.

In the crowd watching Biden were siblings Wanda and Vincent Tucker and their cousin Carolita Jones Cope, descendants of Isabela and Antonio, two of those first Africans to be forcibly taken to America.

The US announced a grant of $229,000 to support the museum’s restoration and conservation on Monday, the day Biden landed in Angola, noting: “Today, there are nearly 12 million Americans of Angolan descent.”

It also said it supported Angola’s bid to have the Kwanza corridor, a route of more than 100 miles from the interior to the coast along which enslaved people were marched, declared a Unesco world heritage site.

Portugal’s history of enslaving Africans has also come under more scrutiny in recent years. Portugal started to colonise Angola in 1575, when Paulo Dias de Novais established the fortified settlement of Luanda south of the Kwanza River with 100 families and 400 soldiers. Luanda is now Angola’s capital city.

Portugal enslaved almost 6 million Africans, almost half of all the people trafficked to the Americas and more than any other European nation. In April, Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said the country was responsible for crimes committed during its colonial rule, including slavery. He suggested reparations were needed, prompting a backlash from Portugal’s rightwing parties.

Angola’s president, João Lourenço, has said the oil-rich country will not ask Portugal for reparations, saying it is “impossible” to make up for the past.

On Wednesday, Biden is scheduled to visit the port of Lobito, where he is expected to tout $4bn of investment pledges by western governments and companies in upgraded and new rail and port infrastructure. The so-called Lobito corridor is intended to transport minerals needed for batteries and electric cars from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia to the rest of the world via Angola.

Many analysts have viewed it as a belated play by the US and its allies to start catching up with Chinese investment on the continent. However, the US and Angola have resisted framing it in such terms. Lourenço, who declared national holidays on 3 and 4 December for Biden’s visit, has said his country will not ally with one of the US or China.

Lourenço has, nonetheless, pivoted from its traditional close relations with Russia and China to also cultivating ties with western countries since taking power at the helm of the longstanding ruling party in 2017.

He won a second term in 2022 in elections that the opposition say were rigged to stop them winning. Political activists have been arrested and repressive laws passed.

John Kirby, the White House national security communications adviser, said on Monday: “We’re not asking countries to choose between US and Russia and China. We’re simply looking for reliable, sustainable, verifiable investment opportunities that the people of Angola and the people of the continent can rely on.”

He said Biden’s team hoped that Donald Trump would also see the Lobito corridor’s value.

“The United States is all in on Africa,” Biden, who ducked journalists’ questions about pardoning his son Hunter, told Lourenço in a meeting earlier on Tuesday.

“We don’t think, because we’re bigger and more powerful, that we’re smarter. We don’t think we have all the answers.”


Remarks by President Biden Honoring the Past and Future of the Angolan-U.S. Relationship | Belas, Angola
Remarks by President Biden Honoring the Past and Future of the Angolan-U.S. Relationship | Belas, Angola | The White House

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President Biden Participates in the Lobito Corridor Trans-Africa Summit

Biden says ‘Africa is the future’ on last day of Angola visit
Biden says ‘Africa is the future’ as he pledges millions more on the last day of Angola visit

President Joe Biden pledged another $600 million Wednesday for an ambitious multi-country rail project in Africa as one of the final foreign policy moves of his administration, and told African leaders the resource-rich continent of more than 1.4 billion people had been “left behind for much too long.”

“But not anymore,” Biden added. “Africa is the future.”

Biden used the third and final day of a visit to Angola — his long-awaited first trip to sub-Saharan Africa as president — to travel to the coastal city of Lobito and tour an Atlantic port terminal that’s part of the Lobito Corridor railway redevelopment.

Biden described it as the largest U.S. investment in a train project outside America. The U.S. and allies are investing heavily in the project that will refurbish nearly 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of train lines connecting to the mineral-rich areas of Congo and Zambia in central Africa.

The corridor, which likely will take years to complete, gives the U.S. better access to cobalt, copper and other critical minerals in Congo and Zambia that are used in batteries for electric vehicles, electronic devices and clean energy technologies that Biden said would power the future.

China is dominant in mining in Congo and Zambia. The U.S. investment has strategic implications for U.S.-China economic competition, which went up a notch this week as they traded blows over access to key materials and technologies.

The African leaders who met with Biden on Wednesday said the railway corridor offered their countries a much faster route for minerals and goods — and a convenient outlet to Western markets.

“This is a project that is full of hope for our countries and our region,” said Congo President Félix Tshisekedi, whose country has more than 70% of the word’s cobalt. “This is not just a logistical project. It is a driving force for economic and social transformation for millions of our people.”

The leaders said the corridor should spur private-sector investment and improve a myriad of related areas like roads, communication networks, agriculture and clean energy technologies.

For the African countries, it could create a wave of new jobs for a burgeoning young population.

“It’s a huge, huge opportunity,” said Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema. “It’s good for Africa.”

Cargo that once took 45 days to get to the U.S. — usually involving trucks via South Africa — would now take around 45 hours, Biden said. He predicted the project could transform the region from a food importer to exporter.

It’s “something that if done right will outlast all of us and keep delivering for our people for generations to come,” he said.

The announcement of an additional $600 million took the U.S.’s investment in the Lobito Corridor to $4 billion. The corridor has drawn financing from others including the European Union, the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, a Western-led private consortium and African banks. Biden said the total investment was $6 billion.

Some calling for more U.S. involvement in Africa hope it will mark a new era of U.S.-Africa engagement.

Much of that depends on the administration of Donald Trump, who takes office Jan. 20. The White House says Republicans in Congress have supported past efforts to promote African business interests through targeted investments and that such initiatives have appealed to Trump in the past.

Trump also supports measures to counter China, and some see the Lobito Corridor as a direct counter to the Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure strategy that China has used to promote its economic and political influence in Africa and elsewhere.

A senior U.S. administration official called the Lobito Corridor the heart of competing with China not as a political adversary but from a business standpoint by sparking investment and helping countries over the long term.

The U.S. is looking to replicate the Lobito Corridor project in other parts of the world, said the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity to offer details that hadn’t yet been made public.

Biden had promised to visit sub-Saharan Africa last year but the trip was delayed. He was greeted Monday by thousands of Angolans on the streets of the capital, Luanda.

Angola has long and strong ties to China, and the Biden administration’s ability to win it over as a partner for such a major project has been viewed as a rare success for the U.S. in Africa.

Biden, who has about six weeks left in office, said he would like to come back to see the railway’s progress. “I want to come back and ride the whole thing,” he told the African leaders, before departing.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-...nguela-angola/
Remarks by President Biden Participating in the Lobito Corridor Trans-Africa Summit | Benguela, Angola

President Biden Delivers Remarks to Honor the Past and Future of the Angolan U S Relationship

Joe Biden addresses America’s ‘original sin’ of slavery on Angola visit

Joe Biden addressed America’s history of enslavement in a speech on Tuesday at Angola’s National Museum of Slavery, calling it “our nation’s original sin” during a trip in which he also lauded recent US investment in the region.

“We remember the stolen men and women and children who were brought to our shores in chains, subjected to unimaginable cruelty,” Biden said, as the sun set over the water behind him.

“The United States is founded on an idea, one embedded in our Declaration of Independence, that all men and women are created equal,” he said, as rain started to fall and a rainbow then appeared. “It is abundantly clear today we have not lived up to that idea, but we have not fully walked away from it either.”

Biden inspected shackles and a whip at the museum, which was founded in 1977 on the former estate of Álvaro de Carvalho Matoso, one of the biggest traders of enslaved people from Africa in the 18th century.

Also on the site is the 17th-century Capela da Casa Grande, where enslaved people were forcibly baptised before being trafficked across the Atlantic. About 4 million Angolans were enslaved in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th century, most in Brazil.

The first enslaved Africans to arrive in the US were shipped to Hampton, in the then British colony of Virginia, from Angola in 1619. Almost a quarter of the 472,000 people forced into slavery in the US came from the west and central region of Africa that includes Angola, according to the Slave Voyages database.

In the crowd watching Biden were siblings Wanda and Vincent Tucker and their cousin Carolita Jones Cope, descendants of Isabela and Antonio, two of those first Africans to be forcibly taken to America.

The US announced a grant of $229,000 to support the museum’s restoration and conservation on Monday, the day Biden landed in Angola, noting: “Today, there are nearly 12 million Americans of Angolan descent.”

It also said it supported Angola’s bid to have the Kwanza corridor, a route of more than 100 miles from the interior to the coast along which enslaved people were marched, declared a Unesco world heritage site.

Portugal’s history of enslaving Africans has also come under more scrutiny in recent years. Portugal started to colonise Angola in 1575, when Paulo Dias de Novais established the fortified settlement of Luanda south of the Kwanza River with 100 families and 400 soldiers. Luanda is now Angola’s capital city.

Portugal enslaved almost 6 million Africans, almost half of all the people trafficked to the Americas and more than any other European nation. In April, Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said the country was responsible for crimes committed during its colonial rule, including slavery. He suggested reparations were needed, prompting a backlash from Portugal’s rightwing parties.

Angola’s president, João Lourenço, has said the oil-rich country will not ask Portugal for reparations, saying it is “impossible” to make up for the past.

On Wednesday, Biden is scheduled to visit the port of Lobito, where he is expected to tout $4bn of investment pledges by western governments and companies in upgraded and new rail and port infrastructure. The so-called Lobito corridor is intended to transport minerals needed for batteries and electric cars from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia to the rest of the world via Angola.

Many analysts have viewed it as a belated play by the US and its allies to start catching up with Chinese investment on the continent. However, the US and Angola have resisted framing it in such terms. Lourenço, who declared national holidays on 3 and 4 December for Biden’s visit, has said his country will not ally with one of the US or China.

Lourenço has, nonetheless, pivoted from its traditional close relations with Russia and China to also cultivating ties with western countries since taking power at the helm of the longstanding ruling party in 2017.

He won a second term in 2022 in elections that the opposition say were rigged to stop them winning. Political activists have been arrested and repressive laws passed.

John Kirby, the White House national security communications adviser, said on Monday: “We’re not asking countries to choose between US and Russia and China. We’re simply looking for reliable, sustainable, verifiable investment opportunities that the people of Angola and the people of the continent can rely on.”

He said Biden’s team hoped that Donald Trump would also see the Lobito corridor’s value.

“The United States is all in on Africa,” Biden, who ducked journalists’ questions about pardoning his son Hunter, told Lourenço in a meeting earlier on Tuesday.

“We don’t think, because we’re bigger and more powerful, that we’re smarter. We don’t think we have all the answers.”


Remarks by President Biden Honoring the Past and Future of the Angolan-U.S. Relationship
__________

President Biden Participates in the Lobito Corridor Trans-Africa Summit

Biden says ‘Africa is the future’ on last day of Angola visit

Biden says ‘Africa is the future’ as he pledges millions more on the last day of Angola visit

President Joe Biden pledged another $600 million Wednesday for an ambitious multi-country rail project in Africa as one of the final foreign policy moves of his administration, and told African leaders the resource-rich continent of more than 1.4 billion people had been “left behind for much too long.”

“But not anymore,” Biden added. “Africa is the future.”

Biden used the third and final day of a visit to Angola — his long-awaited first trip to sub-Saharan Africa as president — to travel to the coastal city of Lobito and tour an Atlantic port terminal that’s part of the Lobito Corridor railway redevelopment.

Biden described it as the largest U.S. investment in a train project outside America. The U.S. and allies are investing heavily in the project that will refurbish nearly 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of train lines connecting to the mineral-rich areas of Congo and Zambia in central Africa.

The corridor, which likely will take years to complete, gives the U.S. better access to cobalt, copper and other critical minerals in Congo and Zambia that are used in batteries for electric vehicles, electronic devices and clean energy technologies that Biden said would power the future.

China is dominant in mining in Congo and Zambia. The U.S. investment has strategic implications for U.S.-China economic competition, which went up a notch this week as they traded blows over access to key materials and technologies.

The African leaders who met with Biden on Wednesday said the railway corridor offered their countries a much faster route for minerals and goods — and a convenient outlet to Western markets.

“This is a project that is full of hope for our countries and our region,” said Congo President Félix Tshisekedi, whose country has more than 70% of the word’s cobalt. “This is not just a logistical project. It is a driving force for economic and social transformation for millions of our people.”

The leaders said the corridor should spur private-sector investment and improve a myriad of related areas like roads, communication networks, agriculture and clean energy technologies.

For the African countries, it could create a wave of new jobs for a burgeoning young population.

“It’s a huge, huge opportunity,” said Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema. “It’s good for Africa.”

Cargo that once took 45 days to get to the U.S. — usually involving trucks via South Africa — would now take around 45 hours, Biden said. He predicted the project could transform the region from a food importer to exporter.

It’s “something that if done right will outlast all of us and keep delivering for our people for generations to come,” he said.

The announcement of an additional $600 million took the U.S.’s investment in the Lobito Corridor to $4 billion. The corridor has drawn financing from others including the European Union, the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, a Western-led private consortium and African banks. Biden said the total investment was $6 billion.

Some calling for more U.S. involvement in Africa hope it will mark a new era of U.S.-Africa engagement.

Much of that depends on the administration of Donald Trump, who takes office Jan. 20. The White House says Republicans in Congress have supported past efforts to promote African business interests through targeted investments and that such initiatives have appealed to Trump in the past.

Trump also supports measures to counter China, and some see the Lobito Corridor as a direct counter to the Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure strategy that China has used to promote its economic and political influence in Africa and elsewhere.

A senior U.S. administration official called the Lobito Corridor the heart of competing with China not as a political adversary but from a business standpoint by sparking investment and helping countries over the long term.

The U.S. is looking to replicate the Lobito Corridor project in other parts of the world, said the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity to offer details that hadn’t yet been made public.

Biden had promised to visit sub-Saharan Africa last year but the trip was delayed. He was greeted Monday by thousands of Angolans on the streets of the capital, Luanda.

Angola has long and strong ties to China, and the Biden administration’s ability to win it over as a partner for such a major project has been viewed as a rare success for the U.S. in Africa.

Biden, who has about six weeks left in office, said he would like to come back to see the railway’s progress. “I want to come back and ride the whole thing,” he told the African leaders, before departing.

Remarks by President Biden Participating in the Lobito Corridor Trans-Africa Summit | Benguela, Angola | The White House
Remarks by President Biden Participating in the Lobito Corridor Trans-Africa Summit | Benguela, Angola