Monday, June 14, 2021

Belarus opposition says jailed journalist is a ‘hostage’

Opposition says Minsk news conference with Roman Protasevich was another public appearance made under duress.

Jailed Belarus journalist Roman Protasevich takes part in a press conference about the forced landing of the Ryanair passenger plane on which he was travelling [Ramil Nasibulin/BelTA/Handout via Reuters]

14 Jun 2021

Jailed Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich appeared at a news conference in Minsk on Monday saying he felt fine and had not been beaten. The opposition said the appearance was made under duress and showed he is a hostage.

Protasevich was arrested on May 23 when his flight from Greece to Lithuania was diverted to Minsk, accompanied by a Belarusian fighter jet, because of an alleged bomb threat. Western countries denounced the incident as air piracy by Belarus.

In Monday’s appearance, Protasevich sat alongside four officials, two of whom were in uniform, saying he had not been made to cooperate with the authorities and that he was in good health after being arrested last month.

“Everything is fine with me. Nobody beat me, nobody touched me,” he said.

Franak Viacorka, a senior adviser to exiled Belarusian opposition figure Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, said the video was “not a press conference but a scene of either Kafka or Orwell”.

“No matter what he says, let’s not forget: he is a hostage. And the regime is using him as a trophy,” he said.

The arrest of Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega and the forced diversion of the plane sparked uproar in the West.

The European Union has imposed sanctions, including asset freezes and visa bans, and told European operators not to use Belarusian air space.

But two senior officials at Monday’s news conference reiterated the official line in Minsk that the flight had to be diverted because they had received a bomb threat from the Palestinian group Hamas.

Several Western leaders have dismissed this version of events, notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel who described it as “completely implausible”.

Belarus of the Brain, the blogging outlet that Protasevich ran before his arrest, said his latest appearance was made under duress and showed the “strongest psychological pressure” being exerted on the 26-year-old.

Protasevich has made several appearances since his arrest and has admitted to plotting to topple Lukashenko by organising “riots” and recanted earlier criticism of the veteran leader.

Previously, authorities said Protasevich is an “extremist” who has facilitated violence. They have maintained that televised confessions by members of the opposition were made voluntarily.

In power since 1994, Lukashenko launched a violent crackdown on mass protests after winning a sixth term in an election last year that his opponents say was blatantly rigged. He denies electoral fraud.

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3 Jun 2021

FASCIST ISLAMOPHOBIC PROVOCATION

New Israeli government approves nationalist march in Jerusalem

By Rami Ayyub and Jeffrey Heller
Posted on June 14, 2021

Israel's President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the new Israeli government, pose for a group photo at the President's residence in Jerusalem
MEET THE NEW BOSSES SAME AS THE OLD BOSSES

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel’s new government on Monday approved a Jewish nationalist march in Jerusalem, a step that risks inflaming tensions with Palestinians hours after veteran leader Benjamin Netanyahu handed over power to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

ZIONIST PROVOCATION SAME AS ULSTER ORANGEMEN PARADE THROUGH CATHOLIC BELFAST
In the flag-waving procession, planned for Tuesday, far-right groups will march in and around East Jerusalem’s walled Old City, where tensions have remained high since 11 days of fighting between Israel and Gaza militants in May.

Palestinian factions have called for a “day of rage” against the Jerusalem march, with memories of clashes with Israeli police still fresh from last month in the contested city’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and in a neighbourhood where Palestinians face eviction in a court dispute with Jewish settlers.

“This is a provocation of our people and an aggression against our Jerusalem and our holy sites,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said of the march.

After meeting with Israel’s police chief and other security officials, newly sworn-in Internal Security Minister Omer Barlev approved the march and said police were well-prepared, according to a statement carried by Israeli media.

“(Great) efforts are being undertaken to preserve the delicate fabric of life and public security,” Barlev was quoted as saying.

It was not clear whether participants would be allowed to enter the Old City’s Muslim quarter, on a route that Israeli police had previously barred. A police spokesman did not immediately provide comment.

An original march on May 10 was re-routed at the last minute as tensions in Jerusalem led Hamas to fire rockets towards the holy city and Israel responded with air strikes on Gaza. Right-wing Israeli groups accused their government of caving into Hamas and rescheduled the march after a truce took hold.

Hamas has warned of renewed hostilities if it goes ahead, and Israeli media reported the military had made preparations for a possible escalation.

The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem prohibited its personnel and their families from entering the Old City on Tuesday “due to calls for a Jerusalem Flag March and possible counter-demonstrations”.

The march poses an immediate challenge for Bennett’s government, which was approved on Sunday by a 60-59 vote in parliament.

A route change or cancellation of the procession could expose the Israeli government to accusations from Netanyahu, now in the opposition, and his right-wing allies of giving Hamas veto power over events in Jerusalem.

Suggesting that a route adjustment could be in store, Yoav Segalovitz, a deputy internal security minister, said past governments had stopped nationalists visiting Muslim sites in times of tension.

“The main thing is to consider what’s the right thing to do at this time,” he told Israel’s Kan radio.

‘DAY OF RAGE’

ANYONE BUT BIBI COMMON FRONT

Formation of Bennett’s alliance of right-wing, centrist, left-wing and Arab parties, with little in common other than a desire to unseat Netanyahu, capped coalition-building efforts after a March 23 election, Israel’s fourth poll in two years.

Minutes after meeting Bennett, 49, on his first full day in office, Netanyahu repeated a pledge to topple his government.

“It will happen sooner than you think,” Netanyahu, 71, who spent a record 12 straight years in office, said in public remarks to legislators of his right-wing Likud party.

With any discord among its members a potential threat to its stability, Israel’s new government hopes to focus on domestic reforms and the economy and avoid hot-button issues such as policy towards the Palestinians.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, to be the capital of a state they seek to establish in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Israel, which annexed East Jerusalem in a move that has not won international recognition after capturing the area in a 1967 war, regards the entire city as its capital.

BUDGET IN FOCUS

A key test for the new government and its stability will be how quickly it moves to pass a budget, said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute.

“If within 3-4 months this government will pass the 2021-22 budget then we can expect this government to serve for at least two or three years. Otherwise, the instability will continue,” he said.

Palestinians held out scant hope of a breakthrough in a peace process leading to a state of their own. Talks with Israel collapsed in 2014.

“We don’t see the new government as less bad than the previous ones,” Shtayyeh told the Palestinian cabinet.

Under the coalition deal, Bennett, an Orthodox Jew and tech multi-millionaire who advocates annexing parts of the West Bank, will be replaced as prime minister in 2023 by centrist Yair Lapid, 57, a former television host.

Lapid, widely regarded as the architect of the coalition that brought down Netanyahu, is now foreign minister.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Howard Goller)

Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett arrives to take part in a group photo with ministers of the new Israeli government, in Jerusalem

Leader of Israeli Opposition Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a meeting with his Likud party in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem

Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett chats with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid ahead of a group photo with ministers of the new Israeli government

Leader of Israeli Opposition Benjamin Netanyahu, reacts during a meeting with his party in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem

INTERNATIONALISM VS IMPERIALISM

G7 Promotes Tax Deal for the 1%—

Not the 99%

Despite the recent G7 agreement on corporate taxation, global leadership requires going beyond national interests to ensure that all countries have sufficient resources to develop healthier post-pandemic economies. This will require addressing the developing world’s demands in a way that is not only historic, but also fair.

JOSÉ ANTONIO OCAMPO, TOMMASO FACCIO

June 12, 2021 by Project Syndicate

"The global tax negotiations seem to mirror the ongoing COVID-19 vaccine discussions at the World Trade Organization," write the authors, "where EU leaders are blocking the temporary exception to intellectual-property rights demanded by developing countries and supported by the US. In both cases, global leadership requires going beyond national interests to ensure that all countries have sufficient resources to develop more equitable and resilient post-pandemic economies." (Photo: Spencer Platt/ AFP via Getty Images)

Historic, game-changing, revolutionary: such has been the widespread reaction to the recent agreement by G7 finance ministers on a global minimum effective tax rate of “at least” 15% for large multinational firms. The ministers also agreed on a new formula for apportioning a share of tax revenues from these companies among countries.

But whatever global tax deal eventually emerges should reflect the interests of the world – including the developing countries – and not just those of seven large, developed economies. The developing world relies more heavily on corporate tax revenue and has thus been hit harder by multinationals’ tax avoidance, which results in global revenue losses of at least $240 billion each year.

Many developing economies—and low-income countries in particular—are not even taking part in the negotiations on the wider OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting. Those participating have been represented by the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty -Four and the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), which coordinate the positions of members that are active in the negotiations. Some G24 members, including Argentina, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa, are also in the G20.

Under the current proposal, the majority of the additional tax revenues will go to multinationals’ home countries, not to the so-called source countries where these firms generate profits.

The first concern regarding the G7 deal is that the proposed minimum tax rate of 15% is low, close to the rates in tax havens like Switzerland and Ireland. This reflects a preference by several G7 countries to protect their own multinationals rather than follow the lead of US President Joe Biden’s administration, which had initially called for a global minimum rate of 21%.

Moreover, under the current proposal, the majority of the additional tax revenues will go to multinationals’ home countries, not to the so-called source countries where these firms generate profits. Unsurprisingly, G24 members want source countries to have priority in applying the minimum tax, particularly in respect of payment of services and capital gains, in order to protect their tax base. Giving priority to global corporations’ home countries will reinforce rather than alleviate the unfairness already built into the current international tax system.

How much revenue the minimum tax generates will depend on the rate. A recent study by the EU Tax Observatory estimates that a 21% minimum rate would generate an additional €100 billion ($122 billion) of corporate income tax revenues in 2021 for the 27 European Union countries, while a 15% levy would yield half that amount. The difference is even starker for developing countries. With a 15% tax rate, South Africa and Brazil stand to gain an additional €600 million and €900 million, respectively, compared to €2 billion and €3.4 billion at a 21% rate.

The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare systemic inequities that will have to be addressed if we are ever going to build more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive societies. Join us on June 23, 2021, for our latest live virtual event, Back to Health: Making Up for Lost Time, where leading experts will examine the immediate legacy of the pandemic and explore solutions for bringing all communities and societies back to health.

As most African countries have corporate tax rates of 25-35%, a global rate of around 15% is simply too low and thus unlikely to lead to a significant reduction in profit-shifting from the region. G7 and G20 countries must demonstrate global leadership by unilaterally committing to introducing a much higher minimum tax rate than whatever is finally agreed. This should be at least 21%, as the US proposed, or, even better, 25%.

The second part of the G7 agreement introduces a formula to apportion multinational companies’ global profits for tax purposes. But the proposal would apply only to the largest firms with global profit margins of at least 10%. And at least 20% of their so-called “residual” profit exceeding this threshold would be subject to tax in the countries where it is generated.

Although this new rule would affect US tech giants like Apple, Facebook, and Google, it may end up being applied to only a tiny fraction of the global profits of 100 or so of the largest multinationals. This means that the measure will generate little additional revenue, perhaps less than $10 billion globally per year.

The G24 has demanded a bigger reallocation of global profits, with the reallocation percentage ranging from 30% up to 50% for the most profitable firms. Likewise, the ATAF has asked for the rules to apply to all multinationals with annual revenues above €250 million, much lower than the G7 proposed threshold of $10 billion, and argues that a percentage of all global profits, whether routine or residual, should be apportioned to the countries where these companies do business.

In fact, it is not possible to distinguish conceptually between the “routine” and “residual” profits of a multinational, as all profits are essentially the result of the firm’s global activities. A simpler solution would be to allocate global profits among countries on a formulaic basis, according to the key factors that generate profit, namely employment, sales, and assets.

Such a rule would help to establish a more level playing field, reduce distortions, limit opportunities for tax avoidance, and provide certainty to multinationals and investors. Instead, the G7’s proposed distinction—between routine and residual profits—reflects a political agreement to avoid a far-reaching global reallocation of taxation and revenues.

The global tax negotiations seem to mirror the ongoing COVID-19 vaccine discussions at the World Trade Organization, where EU leaders are blocking the temporary exception to intellectual-property rights demanded by developing countries and supported by the US. In both cases, global leadership requires going beyond national interests to ensure that all countries have sufficient resources to develop more equitable and resilient post-pandemic economies. This will require addressing the developing world’s demands in a way that is not only historic, but also fair.

José Antonio Ocampo is a member of the Board of Directors of Banco de la República, the central bank of Colombia, a professor at Columbia University and President of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT).

Tommaso Faccio is Head of the Secretariat of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT).

On Climate and Covid-19 Emergencies, G7 Judged a 'Colossal Failure' for All the World to See

"Never in the history of the G7 has there been a bigger gap between their actions and the needs of the world. In the face of these challenges the G7 have chosen to cook the books on vaccines and continue to cook the planet."

Extinction Rebellion protesters, wearing masks of G7 leaders in the sea in St Ives, during the G7 summit in Cornwall on Sunday June 13, 2021. (Photo:Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images)

JON QUEALLY, STAFF WRITER

COMMON DREAMS

June 13, 2021

Anti-poverty groups, climate campaigners, and public health experts reacted with outrage and howls of disappointment Sunday after the G7 leaders who spent the weekend at a summit in Cornwall, England issued a final communique that critics said represents an extreme abdication of responsibility in the face of the world's most pressing and intertwined crises—savage economic inequality, a rapidly-heating planet, and the deadly Covid-19 pandemic.

"The G7 is not fit for purpose. They have operated without any concern for lives around the world—or even for our own ability to end this pandemic."

"This G7 summit will live on in infamy," declared Max Lawson, Oxfam's head of inequality policy, in a statement responding to the G7 communique at the conclusion of the weekend summit—a gathering characterized by the global progressive movement as an unmitigated disaster compared to what could have been achieved.

"Faced with the biggest health emergency in a century and a climate catastrophe that is destroying our planet," Lawson said, the leaders of the richest nations "have completely failed to meet the challenges of our times. Never in the history of the G7 has there been a bigger gap between their actions and the needs of the world. In the face of these challenges the G7 have chosen to cook the books on vaccines and continue to cook the planet. We don’t need to wait for history to judge this summit a colossal failure, it is plain for all to see."

While the G7 statement vows to "[e]nd the pandemic and prepare for the future by driving an intensified international effort, starting immediately, to vaccinate the world by getting as many safe vaccines to as many people as possible as fast as possible"—and the member nations pledged a collective 1 billion doses will be donated to benefit middle- and low-income nations—public health experts have been adamant voluntary charity and empty rhetoric—especially in the the absence of a joint commitment to lift patent protections for life-saving vaccines at the World Trade Organization—makes clear the richest nations would still rather protect the profits of the pharmaceutical industry than serve the world's poor or see the pandemic eviscerated.

On Sunday, Global Justice Now executive director Nick Dearden—who has been on the ground in Cornwall throughout the summit—called the communique "shameful," a document that "stresses 'vaccines are a public good' and 'we need equitable access' while then reinforcing the intellectual property system which enshrines the very opposite principles."

"The G7 is not fit for purpose," Dearden tweeted. "They have operated without any concern for lives around the world—or even for our own ability to end this pandemic." Dearden said it was now clear that "profits first" is the true commitment of U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the other G7 leaders, and Global Justice Now suggested the only people who will be celebrating the bloc's lack of ambition will be Big Pharma and its allies:

Meanwhile, the G7's specific response to the climate crisis was seen as paltry, even if a modest step in the right direction. Thousands of climate activists demonstrated Saturday to demand the G7 leaders finally match their actions with some of their recent promises, but again the ambitions put forth Sunday by U.S. President Joe Biden, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and the other powerful leaders were seen as more of the same kind of failure that has become all too familiar.

"This summit feels like a broken record of the same old promises."

"This summit feels like a broken record of the same old promises," said John Sauven, Greenpeace UK's executive director. "There's a new commitment to ending overseas investment in coal, which is their piece de resistance. But without agreeing to end all new fossil fuel projects— something that must be delivered this year if we are to limit dangerous rises in global temperature—this plan falls very short."

The G7 plan touted by its members on Sunday, said Sauven, "doesn't go anywhere near far enough when it comes to a legally binding agreement to stop the decline of nature by 2030. And the finance being offered to poorer nations is simply not new, nor enough, to match the scale of the climate crisis."

Despite the G7 communique's new pledge to end future financing of coal projects worldwide and restating its Paris Agreement pledge to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 ºC by 2050, those promises fall intensely short of what the scientific community says is necessary to address the climate emergency.

"Our climate cannot afford further delay, and the failure of the G7 to heed these demands means more people impacted by the ravages of our climate chaos."

"The G7 has now fallen squarely behind what leading economists, energy analysts, and global civil society has shown is required: an end to public finance for all fossil fuels," said Laurie van der Burg, senior campaigner for Oil Change International, on Sunday. "Our climate cannot afford further delay, and the failure of the G7 to heed these demands means more people impacted by the ravages of our climate chaos."

“Between 2017 and 2019, G7 nations spent $86 billion in public finance for fossil fuels," van der Burg continued. "Every single cent of that makes it harder to reach our climate goals. That’s why more than one hundred economists as well as hundreds of civil society organizations from around the globe called on these leaders to end this public support for dirty fuels and shift this money to real solutions. Unfortunately those calls were not met with action, and our climate and communities—particularly the most vulnerable in the Global South—will feel the consequences."

Swedish climate activist and Fridays for Future co-founder Greta Thunberg also weighed in:

David Turnbull, Oil Change's strategic communications director, put specific emphasis on Biden's responsibility heading into the summit—his first overseas trip as U.S. President—and his failure to seize the historic moment or establish himself as a truly transformational leader on the global stage.

"Biden’s first trip abroad unfortunately can be chalked up as a missed opportunity," Turnbull said. "Despite strong statements about ending U.S. international support for all fossil fuels in the first few months of his administration, President Biden has yet to turn those statements into true action. The G7 was a key moment to show that the U.S. can be a leader in moving the world forward on bold climate action, and unfortunately that leadership has not yet revealed itself."

The lack of funding for climate adaptation for poorer nations—those that have done the least to create the climate threat but suffer the most because of it—was also highlighted by Oxfam International.

"This plan could support green development in poorer countries," said Oxfam's climate change lead Nafkote Dabi, "but it is lacking in detail including on who will foot the bill. It also appears to champion infrastructure to reduce emissions, while many communities are screaming out for support to adapt to the impacts of climate change—an area that remains woefully underfunded."

"Everyone is being hit by Covid-19 and worsening climate impacts, but it is the most vulnerable who are fairing the worst due to G7 leaders sleeping on the job."

Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, made the explicit connection between poverty, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the climate emergency.

"Everyone is being hit by Covid-19 and worsening climate impacts," Morgan said, "but it is the most vulnerable who are fairing the worst due to G7 leaders sleeping on the job. We need authentic leadership and that means treating the pandemic and the climate crisis for what they are: an interconnected inequality emergency."

"The solutions to the climate emergency are clear and available," she continued, "but the G7’s refusal to do what’s needed is leaving the world’s vulnerable behind. To fight COVID-19, supporting a TRIPS waiver for a People’s Vaccine is crucial. To lead us out of the climate emergency, the G7 needed to deliver clear plans to quickly phase out fossil fuels and commitments to immediately stop all new fossil fuel development with a just transition."

Where, she asked, "is the clear national implementation with deadlines and where is the climate finance so urgently needed for the most vulnerable countries?"

According to the global movement for climate action and a just solution to the pandemic, such things are not to be found in anything that came out of Cornwall over the weekend.

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BIDEN PROMOTES RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY THEORY
Joe Biden calls for support from G7 leaders to probe Wuhan ‘lab leak’ theory

A tourist walks past Extinction Rebellion activists wearing big heads depicting G7 leaders at the seaside during a protest in St Ives near the G7 summit in Cornwall. Photo: Peter Nicholls/Reuters

Roland Oliphant
June 14 2021

Joe Biden has called for an international investigation to establish whether Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese laboratory as he tried to rally G7 leaders behind a “competition with autocracies”.

However, the US president’s remarks about a “lab leak” yesterday were played down by other leaders, and the G7 summit broke up without bridging major rifts over China.

The leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the United States called for the World Health Organisation to convene a “a timely, transparent, expert-led, and science-based” investigation into the origins of Covid-19, “including in China”, in a joint statement issued after three days of talks yesterday.

In comments that will infuriate Beijing, Mr Biden said neither he nor US intelligence had reached a conclusion about the origins of Covid-19 but said he wanted to establish a “bottom line” for transparency to help prevent another pandemic.

Priest surprised as US President Joe Biden shows up for Sunday 01:43

“Transparency matters across the board. We haven’t had access to laboratories to determine whether or not... this was a consequence of market place and the interface with animals and the environment, or whether it was an experiment gone awry in a laboratory,” Mr Biden said.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was “unlikely” coronavirus emerged from a lab, but added: “Clearly anyone sensible would want to keep an open mind on that.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said “there was no discussion among leaders on the origins of the virus” and dismissed the theory as a distraction from combating the disease.

The disagreement reflected broader rifts over how far to go in confronting China over human rights and strategic competition.

COLD WAR 2.0
Mr Biden arrived in Cornwall seeking strong language condemning China’s human rights record and a more direct recognition of the struggle for influence between the West and Beijing.

He explicitly framed an agreement to create a “build back better” green-infrastructure programme for developing countries as a competitor to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and demanded condemnation of China’s use of Uyghur Muslims as forced labour in clothes factories. But he faced significant pushback from European allies, especially Mr Macron, who did not want to portray the group as “hostile” to China.

The final communique called on China to “respect” human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and separately condemned the use of forced labour in global supply chains, but made no reference to Uyghur prison labour.

It also underscored the “importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait” rather than criticising China for aggressive behaviour.

Mr Biden declared himself “satisfied” with the outcome of the talks. “We’re in a contest with autocrats and autocratic governments around the world as to whether or not democracies can compete with them in a rapidly changing 21st century,” he said.

He added: “America’s back in the business of leading the world alongside nations who share our most deeply held values. I think we’ve made progress in re-establishing American credibility among our closest friends.”

The UK, US, Canada and EU in March announced a raft of sanctions against Chinese officials for human rights violations in Xinjiang.

Rifts over China were already apparent long before the leaders arrived in Cornwall. Mr Johnson, who hosted the summit, initially proposed forging a semi-formal “D10” group of democracies with guest powers Australia, India, South Africa and South Korea in what critics called a thinly-veiled attempt to build an anti-China alliance.

The idea was dropped following objections from France, Germany and Japan.

Mr Biden committed the US to sharing 500 million coronavirus vaccines as part of the G7’s donation of more than one billion doses to low-
income countries.

“This is going to be a constant project for a long time,” Mr Biden said of the global vaccination campaign, adding that he hoped the world could stamp out the pandemic in 2022 or 2023. He also said the US might be able to donate an additional one billion vaccine doses to the world in the coming years.
Ireland

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Wuhan lab staff sought hospital care one month before Covid-19 outbreak was disclosed – report

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The Wreckage Donald Trump Left Behind

The G7 summit was stuck in time, between the era of Trump and the future.

By Tom McTague

G7 ACTION FIGURES

Leon Neal / WPA Pool / Getty

Somewhere in China, a company recently received an order for boxes and boxes of reusable face masks with g7 uk 2021 embroidered on them. Over the weekend in Cornwall, in southwest England, these little bits of protective cloth were handed to journalists covering the 2021 summit of some of the world’s most powerful industrial economies—so they could write in safety about these leaders’ efforts to contain China.

The irony of the situation neatly summed up the trouble with this year’s G7 summit. The gathering was supposed to mark a turning point, a physical meeting symbolizing not only the beginning of the end of the coronavirus pandemic but also a return to something approaching normalcy after the years of Donald Trump and Brexit. And in certain senses it was. With Joe Biden—the walking embodiment of the traditional American paterfamilias that Trump was not—no one feared a sudden explosion or American walkout as before. Biden is not the sort of person to hurl Starbursts at another leader in a fit of pique. And yet, the reality was that the leaders in attendance were playing their diplomatic games within tram lines graffitied on the floor largely by the former U.S. president, not the incumbent one.

Emerging from a weekend of summitry last night, it was hard to avoid the reality that the great questions hanging over the gathering were ones shaped either by Trump or by the years of Trump: Europe’s frustration with American vaccine protectionism (which began under Trump but has been maintained by Biden), ongoing disputes over Brexit, the future of NATO, worries over Russian interference, and, ultimately, China, the great other at this event. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her closing remarks: “Look, the election of Joe Biden as U.S. president doesn’t mean that the world no longer has problems.”

Everywhere you looked—whether in the communiqué itself, or the press conferences and summaries of leaders’ meetings—you could see the unresolved questions of the past few years, as presidents and prime ministers reacted to the problems thrown up, exacerbated, or actively caused by Trump. All agreed that they wanted to move on from the instability of his tenure, but they seemed divided and unclear about how, never mind what the new era should look like. With Biden’s congressional majority in doubt and Trump’s future intentions uncertain, Europe retains a latent fear that the U.S. is merely between eruptions, not recovering from one.

The leaders seemed to embody this sense of time being paused. Merkel has been chancellor so long, she attended her first G7 summit with George W. Bush and Tony Blair. Italy’s Mario Draghi might be a new prime minister, but he is no stranger to the world’s global establishment—a representative of the old order if ever there was one. Even Biden himself, hailed as a “breath of fresh air” by the summit’s host, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is hardly a new face on the world stage.

Ultimately, this G7 summit seemed to be stuck somewhere between the past and the future—between the era of Trump and the world some of these politicians hope to create.

Although each country had its own objectives at the summit—and several tangible deals were agreed upon, including a minimum corporate-tax rate and hundreds of millions of vaccine doses to be exported to the world’s poor—the true focus of this meeting was not on the official agenda. Amanda Sloat, Biden’s adviser on European affairs who traveled with him to Cornwall, said the “overarching theme” of the summit was the rise of China.

A senior White House official insisted in a briefing with reporters that there was a striking amount of convergence among G7 attendees, as the other powers moved closer to the U.S. agenda than they had been willing to under Trump. And unlike in 2018, when leaders could not agree on how to confront the thorny issue of China, this year’s final communiqué did explicitly mention the country on everybody’s mind.

While this reveals the strength of Biden’s diplomatic approach over Trump’s, would China have been one of the summit’s dilemmas without the four years of chaos under the old regime? As Thomas Wright wrote in The Atlantic, just two years ago the current U.S. president was arguing that America did not need to worry about China. “Come on, man,” Biden had declared. “They’re not competition for us.”

Britain’s leader was of a similar view not so long ago as well. “Let me assert this as powerfully as I can,” Johnson wrote in 2005: “We do not need to fear the Chinese.” He added: “The Chinese have neither the ability nor the inclination to dominate the world. They merely want to trade freely, and they should be encouraged.” Johnson, whose views were in line with much of the British establishment’s at the time, argued that Beijing’s integration into the world economy was an “unalloyed good” and that Britain and other countries should not respond with such “chicken-hearted paranoia.”

Washington now has a bipartisan consensus that China is a strategic and ideological rival. Johnson too has dramatically shifted his stance, as has the British government writ large. As host of this year’s summit, Johnson portrayed the meeting as an alliance of “the great democracies of the world.”

This is a vision that is perfectly aligned with Biden’s, in which global democracies are locked in a battle with an autocratic wing led by China. And—despite this particular summit seeming unsure of whether it was part of the past or ready for the future—this is where Biden most clearly differed from Trump, and the outlines of a new era could be seen.

Trump saw the world in terms of power, not values, and wanted Russia (which had been ejected from what was then the G8 for its annexation of Crimea) brought back into the fold. Biden sees a world where democracy must be defended, and in Cornwall succeeded in pivoting the G7 toward this view, supported by Britain and others. In his closing remarks, Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said the European Union agreed that “liberal democracies and open societies face pressure from authoritarian regimes,” and said that this had prompted G7 leaders to work to “spread our values of freedom, rule of law, and respect for human rights.”

One of the big announcements of the summit was the Western rival to China’s multitrillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure project, which critics see as a giant plan to extend Beijing’s influence around the world. The release of the G7 infrastructure push came after Biden suggested to Johnson in March that the world’s democracies needed to develop their own alternative to stop developing countries from falling into China’s orbit.

Yet it is hard not to be cynical about what was actually announced. One of the members of the G7—Italy—is already a member of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, though Draghi said last night that it was reviewing this policy. The EU, spurred by Germany and France, has also reached a provisional investment agreement with Beijing despite pleas from Biden’s team to hold fire. (A problem for Biden is that France and Germany instinctively do not share his worldview as wholeheartedly as Britain and Canada do.)

At the heart of these disputes, then, lies a difference of vision for the 21st century. Biden embodies the traditional American role of leader of a free world. It is one that the British, Canadians, Japanese, Australians, and South Koreans in attendance in Cornwall were happy to maintain, albeit updated for the new world, with less naïveté toward China.

In Europe, though, there is a desire for something more: to be partners, not followers. As France’s Emmanuel Macron put it to Biden, “Leadership is partnership.” This has long been part of the European discourse, particularly in France—and yet the desire accelerated while Trump was in the White House and doesn’t look to be ebbing.

Another issue on which the leaders seemed stuck in the past was Brexit.

The summit began and ended with a confrontation over the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. A few days before the summit, The Times of London broke the news that the U.S. had officially warned Britain not to inflame tensions in Northern Ireland—part of the United Kingdom, and distinct from the Republic of Ireland, a separate country and EU member state—after failing to implement parts of the agreement it reached with the EU as part of its Brexit divorce package.

The fact that Biden had made the warning before the summit was seen as an attempt to remove any chance of a diplomatic confrontation in Cornwall. The issue nevertheless dominated proceedings among the Europeans, with the French, German, Italian, and EU leaders all using their one-on-ones with Johnson to warn him not to renege on the agreement he himself negotiated in 2019.

Despite the pressure, Johnson refused to back down—and indeed used the G7 summit to go on the attack. On Saturday, he warned that he would not hesitate to unilaterally suspend parts of the agreement to preserve trade between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain. He then accused Macron of saying Northern Ireland was not part of the same country as the U.K.—something that Dominic Raab, Johnson’s foreign secretary, said was offensive. This provoked a diplomatic spat on the summit’s final day, with each side briefing its national press with its own narrative, overshadowing whatever other goodwill and diplomatic achievements had been made.

For Johnson, his tactics risk deepening the distrust and opprobrium he already faces in Europe and parts of the U.S., isolating him and his government even as he tries to build a “Global Britain” after Brexit.

As the summit was brought to a close in Cornwall, Johnson faced questions from the international press about his likeness to Trump, and his policy toward Northern Ireland. It was as if time really had stood still. In his book Have I Got Views for You, Johnson writes that “politics is a constant repetition, in cycles of varying length” in which kings are made and unmade for “a kind of rebirth” for their kingdoms.

The G7 leaders gathered in Cornwall to bury King Trump, as well as the era of crisis and division that he oversaw. If this weekend’s summit is anything to go by, we are still very much operating in the wreckage wrought by that old monarch, and unsure yet what needs to be built in its place.

Tom McTague is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic, and co-author of Betting the House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election.

WHAT ARE FAST RADIO BURSTS?

At least some fast radio bursts likely originate on or around the burnt-out stellar cinders known as magnetars. These neutron stars generate extremely strong magnetic fields, which might tangle or snap to release energy. The case for magnetars grew stronger when a known magnetar was caught emitting an FRB in our own galaxy.

An artist’s depiction of a hiccup in the magnetic field of a magnetar, a highly magnetized neutron star.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Chris Smith / USRA / GESTAR

“Magnetars are the only thing we know of that could plausibly produce such energetic flashes in such short amounts of time,” says Kiyoshi Masui (MIT), “but the actual mechanism is not well understood.”

FRBs may originate far out in the magnetar’s magnetic field, or they may arise from events on its surface. It’s also possible that magnetars may make some FRBs but not others. For example, some FRBs repeatedly flash, while others, even when watched for a long time, don’t emit another glimmer.

“Our current sample indicates that there are significant differences in the properties of repeaters and non-repeaters,” says team member Pragya Chawla (McGill University). Repeating bursts last slightly longer and emit more focused radio frequencies than bursts from their non-repeating brethren.

Repeating vs. non-repeating fast radio bursts

But what causes these differences is still up for debate. We might be seeing two different populations of objects that emit in different ways. Or, as team member Ziggy Pleunis (also at McGill) suggests, “It is also possible that all, or most, FRBs are repeaters.” We might be simply be seeing variations on a theme. For example, he explains, if narrow bursts occur less often, then the narrowest bursts would appear to be one-off events. More data will help astronomers discern between these scenarios.

“THE ULTIMATE TOOL FOR COSMOLOGY”

With hundreds of FRBs in hand, the CHIME team is particularly excited not only about the sources themselves but what can be done with them. “We are now in the era of using FRBs as cosmological probes,” says team member Alex Josephy (also at McGill).

“The distortion of each signal carries a record of the structure it traveled through,” Masui explains. As radio waves travel through hot, ionized gas (whether tightly packed around the FRB source or spread out in the space between galaxies), electrons in the gas scatter the signal. As a result, lower frequencies arrive slightly later to the telescope than the higher frequencies. By measuring how much the signal stretches out over time and frequency, something known as the dispersion measure, astronomers can calculate exactly how much plasma the signal encountered on its way toward Earth.

“We can use them to map out where all the structure in the universe is,” Masui says. “How it’s distributed on large scales, how gas falls into galaxies to form stars, how it gets expelled again by supernovae and black holes.”

Some FRBs have particularly large dispersion measures, which may mean that the signal traveled through a galaxy’s gaseous halo — probably the halo of the galaxy hosting the FRB.

“When we started building CHIME,” Masui says, “nobody knew how many FRBs would be at the frequency we’re observing. There were people who told us we wouldn’t see anything.” Now, it has become clear that CHIME will be bringing in hundreds more FRBs, enabling the study of these mysterious flashes, the galaxies that host them, and the universe around them.

References

Pleunis, Z. et al. “Fast Radio Burst Morphology in the First CHIME/FRB Catalog.” To appear in Astrophysical Journal.

Rafiei-Ravandi, M. et al. “CHIME/FRB Catalog 1 results: statistical cross-correlations with large-scale structure.” arXiv.

Josephy, A. “No Evidence for Galactic Latitude Dependence of the Fast Radio Burst Sky Distribution.” arXiv.

CHIME/FRB Collaboration et al. “The First CHIME/FRB Fast Radio Burst Catalog.” arXiv.

#NOTOKYOOLYMPICS

Japan government eyes quasi-state of emergency in Tokyo during Olympics

Kyodo News

Posted at Jun 15 2021 02:45 AM

Security officers stand guard next to Olympic Rings monument during an anti-Olympics rally outside the Japan Olympic Committee headquarters in Tokyo, June 14, 2021. *Issei Kato, Reuters*

TOKYO—The Japanese government is considering placing Tokyo under a quasi-state of emergency during the Olympics, given that a number of health experts have expressed concern over a potential spike in COVID-19 cases, officials said Monday.

The Olympics are due to begin on July 23, but public fears persist about a surge of coronavirus infections triggered by an influx of people into the Japanese capital and driven by more contagious variants.

Since late April, Tokyo has been under a stricter state of emergency, but it will likely end on June 20 as a fourth wave of infections has somewhat abated.

In addition to Tokyo, nine prefectures including Hokkaido, Osaka and Fukuoka are currently under the emergency.

The government is now planning to lift the emergency in most of the prefectures and to shift several of them to a quasi-emergency with smaller fines for noncompliance under which restaurants and bars will still be asked to shorten opening hours but may be allowed to serve alcohol.

The government will consider whether to maintain the planned quasi-state of emergency through the Olympics, due to close on Aug. 8, or to lift it and impose it again before the games open, according to the officials.

"We will take measures appropriately. There will be no cancellation or postponement (of the Olympics)," said one of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said staging the Olympics and Paralympics has now become an international commitment after leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies expressed support on the weekend for the sporting extravaganza.

A joint communique released Sunday by the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States after their summit in Britain said they back the holding of the games "in a safe and secure manner as a symbol of global unity in overcoming COVID-19."

Under a quasi-state of emergency, governors are allowed to impose measures in specific areas rather than entire prefectures.

A group of infectious disease experts, including Shigeru Omi, head of a government subcommittee on the virus, is expected to disclose this week the various health risks if the Olympics take place as scheduled.

Omi, the country's top COVID-19 adviser, has been apprehensive about staging the Tokyo Games, saying it is "not normal" to go ahead during a global health crisis.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will convene a task force meeting as early as Thursday to make a decision on whether to end the third state of emergency.

Attention is focused on what the government and the organizing committee of the games will do regarding spectators after those from overseas were barred in March.

The organizers want to allow at least some people in the stands and will decide on an upper limit for domestic spectators by the end of June.

The limit will be set according to the government's restrictions on the number of attendees at major events, such as sports games and concerts.

Until the end of this month, attendance at big events will be limited to a maximum of 5,000 people or 50 percent of a venue's capacity, whichever number is smaller.

Among other options, the government is now looking to relax the limit to 10,000 or 20,000 or restricting the number to simply less than 50 percent of venue capacity, according to the officials.

The subcommittee will hold a meeting, possibly Wednesday, to discuss how many people can be allowed at major events in July and August.

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