A new era of containment?

The security architecture of the past 50 years is in ruins. Robert Misik maps a policy for the new cold war.

ROBERT MISIK 

18th April 2022
SOCIAL EUROPE

In Milan, unlike in Moscow, one can protest against the war (VILTVART/shutterstock.com)

‘I erred.’ With these frank words—not exactly typical for a politician—the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, summed up his assessment of his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and his adherence over the years to a policy of co-operation with him, including as a former social-democrat foreign minister and deputy prime minister. Inviting a debate, Steinmeier asked: ‘Were therefore the goals wrong?’ The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, gave his own implicit verdict when he excluded Steinmeier from joining a solidarity visit to Kyiv by Polish and Baltic-state leaders last Wednesday.

February 24th, the day of the invasion of Ukraine, darkened our entire existence. It has been blackened further by the war crimes and atrocities by an uninhibited army which have followed. These dramatic events present social democrats and the progressive left with the painful task of rethinking past policies and, quickly, developing future ones.
Putin’s people

In what way could a social-democratic policy towards the Putin regime have ‘erred’? After all, social democrats are not usually despisers of freedom, fans of dictators or trivialisers of totalitarianism.

In the circles of radical, post-communist leftists, true, it is not uncommon to portray the west as the actual aggressor over Ukraine and Putin’s despotic Russia as victim. This stems partly from a crazy ‘anti-imperialism’ (= anti-Americanism) and partly from a nostalgia for the Soviet Union which somehow still imagines the once KGB man in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik as a ‘communist’.

On the European far right, meanwhile, Putin has absolutely played the hero. His image is that of standing against the mainstream, against the (Jewish) philanthropist George Soros and the United States, advocating a hard conservative masculinity which rejects ‘gender ideology’, gay marriage and all that liberal, modernist stuff. The man out to ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine is the spiritual godfather of all right-wing radicals and neo-Nazis in Europe.

Liberal way of life

Social democrats and left-liberal progressives, however, were not for these reasons temporarily blind to the danger of a neo-imperial reassertion by the strongman in the Kremlin. After all, social democrats not only uphold the institutions of democracy and the liberal way of life. They have historically been among the fiercest opponents of Stalinism and virtually all kinds of authoritarianism—it’s in their DNA.

It was people like Willy Brandt—mayor of west Berlin when the wall was erected—who carried the torch of freedom. Yet it was also the social democrats in Europe who, after the initial, ossifying years of the cold war, and the associated policy of ‘containment’, imposed a second approach. This was diplomacy, co-operation and a peace policy, which it was hoped would progressively outlaw the worst human-rights violations.

Known in Germany as the Entspannungspolitik (the politics of easing tensions), this doctrine oddly combined moral elements—‘dialogue’ and ‘human rights’—and a more coldly-calculating Realpolitik. The experience of détente was that co-operation could, in gradual steps, reduce the threat of (ultimately nuclear) war, reverse the calcification of regimes and initiate change for the better.

At least, that is the story that was told afterwards. Even at the time, though, it had its questionable aspects—such as that if one sat for so many hours with those unalterably in power one somehow forgot that opposition figures, dissidents and human-rights activists should be more natural interlocutors.

Pushing back democracy

In the 1990s, liberal, pluralist democracy seemed to have won everywhere in Europe. And in the Russia of Boris Yeltsin, who had advocated multi-party democracy and resigned from the Communist Party Politburo before becoming president, things were moving in the right direction—albeit amid chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union. A vibrant civil society emerged, with party pluralism, free speech and reasonably intact constitutional arrangements.

Putin and his gang of St Petersburg friends and KGB types, however, began to push back on democracy and freedom from the day he took over from Yeltsin—December 31st, 1999. Putin had a narrative for this: the Soviet implosion had been a disaster, the turmoil of the 1990s was the enemy, Russians were fed up with the chaos and they wanted a strong state, he declared.

He gradually fleshed out this narrative ideologically. An empire would be rebuilt under the guise of legtitimately reintegrating the former Soviet components of Russia’s ‘near abroad’. This was allied to ‘manly’ leadership and the values of Christian Orthodoxy—patriarchy supported by the patriarchate. To this Putin added a permanent state of legitimate offence, portraying himself as the avenger of a Russia betrayed by the very west it had rescued from Nazism in the Great Patriotic War—no more to be trusted than in Soviet times.

The ‘error’

So what exactly was the ‘error’ of which Steinmeier spoke? It was one shared, it should be said, by many in western politics. Some had developed some sympathy for elements of the Putin narrative—the portrayal of a disordered Russia (perceived as a fragmented nation full of conflicts) needing ‘strong rule’.

At the same time, his new, ‘great Russian’ state philosophy, associated with ‘traditional values’, orthodoxy, nationalist exceptionalism and so on, was taken for ideological claptrap, meaningless storytelling. In the era of political ‘spin doctors’, the west had become accustomed to thinking that talk should not be taken too seriously. So it overlooked how the Russian leadership was developing a fascist ideology in a process of self-radicalisation.

Moreover, many trusted that economic entanglement and globalisation would make war impossible: the price of a new bloc confrontation would be too high. And what alternatives were there? In the absence of evident alternatives, people tended to bury their heads in the sand. Even when Russia began to fund fifth columns of aggressive right-wing populists and other purveyors of misinformation and conspiracy theories, all over the west, this was ignored for a very long time.
Future policy

This question of the ‘error’ and its causes is very important. For the foundations of a future policy toward Russia are being laid now.

We do not know, of course, what the outcome of the war will be. Russia could win and annex Ukraine and, together with other satellites such as Belarus, establish a new imperial bloc bordering directly on the west. Or it could ‘lose’—which would still leave Russia occupying part of Ukraine in the east and south.

But one thing is very likely: Russia will remain under Putin’s control, a new ‘iron curtain’ will descend and an aggressive, imperial power will remain not only a source of military threat to its immediate neighbors but also an opponent of the democratic way of life. A return to the status quo ante, of co-operation or even a new kind of détente—we can probably rule all that out. There will be no warm welcome for a war criminal any time soon.

The new ‘containment’

Rather, we shall have to adjust to a new policy of ‘containment’—a policy that pushes Russia back, isolates and weakens it. Russia’s neighbours, in the west, in the south (such as Ukraine or Georgia) and even in central Asia (Kazakhstan and so on), will turn away in the face of the threat it represents, sooner rather than later.

The west, especially the European Union, has been presented by Putin in recent years as weak and exhausted—even degenerate. And this has been echoed within by some who would say with a shrug: ‘After all, we have enough conflicts and enemies of the democratic way of life to deal with at home.’

But democratic elections, deliberation rather than violence in politics, the rule of law, human rights, a state that respects individuality and a pluralism of values in which everyone can be happy according to his or her preference—these are not weaknesses but the mutually-reinforcing buttresses of a civilised society. The EU should not be afraid to stress with self-confidence the strength of this liberal outlook.

Who says that the soft power of a democratic Europe cannot radiate far beyond the Caucasus? Maybe this is the moment for an ambitious foreign policy on behalf of a ‘European world’—an alternative to Putin’s Russkyj Mir. In such a Weltanschauung Europe sees itself as a zone of social welfare and a bulwark of freedom, democracy and pluralism—in short, ‘social’ as well as ‘democratic’.

In any case, one should quickly come out of shock. Because if the ‘error’ so many made in the west was simply not thinking three moves ahead in the political chess game (and ignoring the associated worst-case scenario), then this should not be committed a second time—forcing a resignation.

This is a joint publication by Social Europe and IPS-Journal



ROBERT MISIK is a writer and essayist living in Vienna. His Das Große Beginnergefühl: Moderne, Zeitgeist, Revolution (Suhrkamp-Verlag) will appear in May. He publishes in many newspapers and magazines, including Die Zeit and Die Tageszeitung. Awards include the prize for economic journalism of the John Maynard Keynes Society.

US report identifies widespread rights violations in India

Anwar Iqbal  

Published April 18, 2022 -

   

WASHINGTON: The latest US State Department report on human rights has highlighted major violations in India, including extrajudicial killings by government agents, violence against Muslims and killings by government and non-government forces in occupied Kashmir.

The report — released earlier this week — coincided with a warning by a senior US official that there would be consequences if India increased its oil exports from Russia. US human rights groups have also noted that recently the Indian government allowed schools to ban students from wearing hijabs in the state of Karnataka, a move criticised globally but upheld by the state high court.

The US State Department reported receiving credible information about Muslims being targeted in certain parts of India.

“Muslim communities in certain areas remained vulnerable to communal violence and discrimination … violence against Muslim communities continued during the year with cases of physical abuse, discrimination, forcible displacement, and lynching for suspected cow smuggling,” the report added.

The State Department reported receiving reports of “significant human rights violations” in India, including “unlawful and arbitrary killings, extrajudicial killings by the government or its agents; torture and cases of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by police and prison officials”.

“Harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention by government authorities; political prisoners or detainees and arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy” were other areas of concern identified in the report.

Although a democracy, India imposed “restrictions on free expression and media, including violence, threats of violence, or unjustified arrests or prosecutions against journalists, use of criminal libel laws to prosecute social media speech and restrictions on internet freedom”, the report added.

India also imposed “overly restrictive laws on the organisation, funding, or operations of nongovernmental organisations and civil society organisations and refoulement of refugees”.

Another major concern, highlighted in the report, is the existence of “serious government corruption; government harassment of domestic and international human rights organisations”.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2022

Alex Jones’ Infowars weighs possible bankruptcy

By Rachel Butt
April 18, 2022 

Companies owned by far-right radio host Alex Jones are getting advice from restructuring advisers and considering options including a potential bankruptcy filing after being hit by lawsuits over Jones’s conspiracy theories, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

A Chapter 11 filing would aim to allow Jones’s businesses, such as Infowars and Free Speech Systems, to keep operating while pausing civil litigation against them, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

Radio show host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

CREDIT:AP

Representatives for Infowars and Free Speech Systems didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment outside of regular business hours. Pattis & Smith, a law firm that represent Jones and his businesses, also didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Jones and his companies last year were found liable in a defamation lawsuit brought by relatives of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre after Jones called the shootings a hoax.

Relatives of some of the 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut shooting said they had been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones’ followers.


Alex Jones must pay legal fees for 'frivolous' Sandy Hook appeal

A trial in Connecticut to determine the size of the damages has yet to take place. He was also found liable in similar proceedings in Texas.

Lawyers representing Jones and his businesses have said the defamation lawsuit was strategically filed to silence their free speech on matters of public interest, according to court filings.

Judges in Connecticut and Texas issued default judgments against Jones after he failed to turn over documents including financial information.
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Pattis & Smith said the plaintiffs’ probe into the financial ties between Jones and his various entities is akin to a “collections action” and a “fishing expedition”.

In March, lawyers representing relatives of Sandy Hook shooting victims sought an arrest order for Jones after he skipped a court-ordered deposition, citing health reasons.

Jones appeared for the deposition after facing hefty fines.

Washington Post

China Raises Coal and Gas Output to Records After Prices Surge

Bloomberg News, Bloomberg News

BC-China-Raises-Coal-and-Gas-Output-to-Records-After-Prices-Surge , Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- China boosted coal and gas output to record levels in March, as the nation turned to its domestic producers for security of supply after international prices skyrocketed in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Coal production increased 15% on year to 396 million tons, while natural gas rose 6.3% to 19.7 billion cubic meters, according to data from the statistics bureau on Monday. Crude output rose 3.9% to 17.71 million tons, its best level since December 2015, although refining activity retreated as demand remained fragile due to a resurgent virus.

Among metals, steel output shrank as virus curbs, including in the production hub of Tangshan, stymied the usual rebound in activity after the Lunar New Year. Aluminum production rose, however, after smelters resumed idled capacity and started new units amid a surge in prices due to the war in Ukraine.

China has gone all-out to lift coal production in particular after an unprecedented power crunch wracked the economy in the fall. But the effort to wring more output from miners may have reached its limit, a top industry official said last week, warning that the extra supply may not prevent a return to electricity shortages in key industrial regions.

Although Beijing wants to add another 300 million tons of capacity, ostensibly to cut imports, it hasn’t given a timeline for the expansion. In any case, the government will soon be running up against its mid-decade deadline for cutting consumption in order to meet its climate goals.

The broader data showed that China’s economic growth accelerated in the first quarter, with the damage from lockdowns to contain the spread of Covid yet to be fully reflected.

Today’s Events

Maple Leafs beat Islanders 4-2 to set franchise record for wins in a season with 50

Toronto Maple Leafs left wing Pierre Engvall (47) celebrates his goal with teammate Alexander Kerfoot (15) during second period NHL hockey action against the New York Islanders, in Toronto, Sunday, April 17, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

Griffin Porter, The Canadian Press
Published Sunday, April 17, 2022 10:29PM EDT

TORONTO - William Nylander and Mitchell Marner each scored as the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the New York Islanders 4-2 without Auston Matthews on Sunday night.

The Toronto win sets a franchise record for both wins (50) and points (106) in a season.

Pierre Engvall also had a goal for Toronto (50-20-6), while Jack Campbell 28 saves to pick up the win.

Anthony Beauvillier scored the first goal of the game when he beat Campbell on the power play in the first period. Josh Bailey also was credited with a goal for the Islanders (35-36-9), even though the goal was directed into the Toronto net by Leafs forward Alex Kerfoot.

The loss eliminated the Islanders from playoff contention.

Campbell stood strong in the last five minutes of the third period as the Islanders pushed hard for the tying goal before David Kämpf scored an empty-netter with 8.1 seconds left to go to seal the historic win.

The Leafs took a few minutes to get their footing as head coach Sheldon Keefe tried some new line combinations as the team begins to gear up for the post-season.

The Islanders opened the scoring partway through the first period, as Beauvillier scored his 12th goal of the season with the man advantage. The Leafs were able to match just three minutes later, however, as Marner stayed hot with his 34th goal of the season, and his 26th in his last 40 games. The Leafs winger potted a rebound off a sharp-angled Mark Giordano shot to tie the game at just three minutes and change after Beauvillier opened the scoring.

The second period got off to an inauspicious start for Toronto as Alex Kerfoot put the puck into his own net just 31 seconds after the middle frame got underway.

Kerfoot, who was trying to knock the puck off of Islanders winger Josh Bailey's stick, ended up pushing it under Jack Campbell's pad to give the Islanders a one-goal lead once again. Bailey ended up with credit for the goal, his 11th of the year.

The Leafs rallied back once again, though, as Kerfoot made up for his mistake just ten minutes later by feeding Pierre Engvall on a well-executed two-on-one rush. Engvall made no mistake and tied the game at two apiece before his Swedish countryman Nylander put Toronto on top less than three minutes later.

Nylander's power-play marker, his 31st of the season, put Toronto up for the first time in the game more than halfway through the second period.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 17, 2022.

DuckDuckGo blocks piracy websites from search results

The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and more disappear from the privacy-focused service

By Vann Vicente April 16, 2022

What just happened? The privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has removed several major pirate websites, such as The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and YTS, from its search results. This move also includes YouTube-ripping services, which are considered a grey area in terms of legality.

DuckDuckGo is one of the most popular privacy-focused search engines and a renowned alternative to the data-hungry Google. Unlike other search platforms, the site doesn't keep a log of sensitive user information or share its search trends with advertisers.

The site has made another move that differentiates itself from Google in the past week: piracy-free search results. On Friday, Torrentfreak discovered that the site deindexed several popular pirate websites, effectively removing them from search results.

DuckDuckGo removed all domains for these sites entirely from its database, with search results being blank or only bringing up a single result. This crackdown includes several types of pirate sites, including torrent indexes, movie streaming portals, and blogs with downloads to cracked video games. However, many less popular piracy websites remain visible.

The change removes the potential vulnerability of DuckDuckGo to copyright issues, despite not hosting any of the copyrighted content. Google has an automated system that eliminates possible DMCA-infringing entries, but that has done little to deter search results for the most popular piracy websites. They have also demoted piracy websites in certain regions, such as the UK.


Surprisingly, the removal includes the homepage to youtube-dl, a Python-based open-source downloader for YouTube and other online videos. Despite challenges from the RIAA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has defended the legality of youtube-dl, maintaining that the tool is crucial for archiving and documentation purposes.

DuckDuckGo has not yet responded to questions from journalists about the omission. The company recently entered the browser wars with the launch of its privacy-focused desktop browser for Windows and Mac, following their popular free browser for Android.

Are Big Tech’s Climate Pledges Too Ambitious?

By Felicity Bradstock - Apr 17, 2022, 

• Big Tech has been at the forefront of the corporate green energy push for years, and now it’s doubling down on its ambitious carbon goals.
• 
  
• Google and Microsoft have announced that all of their data centers will be 100% carbon-free by 2030.
• 
  
• Some have criticized the lofty pledges as a means of appeasing shareholders, but new policies could make the transition inevitable, whether the companies are ready or not.

Google just announced its aim for carbon-free data centers by 2030, but are these grandiose corporate carbon-cutting policies by major corporations all they’re made out to be? With a long history of greenwashing across several of these companies, how likely is it for them to achieve their climate goals over the coming decades?  Google announced this week that it plans to use 100 percent carbon-free energy in its data centers by 2030. This would be a huge feat considering it used  15.5 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2020. The company expects to buy this clean energy from the grid, improving efficiency across its operations to support the aim. 

But this is just the latest in a long line of companies making ambitious carbon-cutting pledges, alongside aims by national governments to reduce their carbon footprints in line with climate change policies. Companies are feeling increasing pressure both from new policies coming into force across several countries by the end of the decade and from their consumers, who now expect major corporations to improve their environmental practices. 

In 2021, Microsoft also made a pledge to make its data centers carbon-free by 2030. Chief environmental officer at Microsoft Lucas Joppa said “Moving forward we will be innovating our energy purchasing contracting to help bring more zero-carbon energy onto the grid and move more high carbon intensity energy off the grid, helping to rebalance the carbon intensity of any grid on which we operate.”

Earlier that year, 50 major corporations announced plans to become carbon-neutral by 2040, including Amazon, Walmart, General Motors, and FedEx. Companies are aiming high, wanting to achieve net-zero a decade or more earlier than stipulated in the Paris Agreement. FedEx’s chief sustainability officer, Mitch Jackson, stated “We talk to our customers pretty much each and every day about these issues.” And “Sustainability is not a discretionary thing anymore. I think it’s really become central to a lot of the considerations in thinking,” he said. 

Related: Russia’s War Highlights The Dangers Of Resource-Dependence

This begs the question, are major companies making these plans because of mounting public pressure, regardless of whether they’re ready to do so? Of course, it’s a step in the right direction, with many big corporations acting faster on their climate change targets. But is much of this simply greenwashing, hoping that they’ll achieve these ambitious targets with no real understanding of how to do so? 

As experts aptly remind these corporations, 2050 is closer than it appears, and many are aiming for even earlier. Studies across several major companies show that many are still on track to go beyond their “carbon budgets” – the total level of emissions they can release while keeping on track for 1.5C of warming  – over the next six years.  

Many companies worldwide continue to fail to disclose their environmental impact and climate change actions transparently, making tracking progress extremely difficult. In addition, while many companies have made ambitious, sweeping climate targets, many do not have interim targets. Without these, it is difficult to measure progress, and several are likely to fail unless they establish clear guidelines for climate progress over the coming decades. Many seem to be adopting a wait-and-see approach, intending to meet these carbon-cutting goals but without any clear strategy to do so. 

Climate pledges from major companies repeatedly fall short, according to environmental groups. In February, an analysis of 25 of the world’s largest companies, by Carbon Market Watch, showed that they avoid meaningful and immediate greenhouse gas emissions cuts. Many of these companies are using false or misleading carbon-cutting announcements. The report shows many of the top 25 are exaggerating their climate action through “greenwashing tricks, using loopholes and omitting data.”

While some are indeed aiming to dramatically cut their emissions by a set date, it does not mean they are taking meaningful actions to reduce their CO2 at present. By addressing climate change, companies keep their customers happy. But this may actually be a way of putting environmental action on the backburner while appeasing their consumer’s expectations. 

One promising development is that 338 large companies with science-based pledges decreased their combined emissions by 25 percent between 2015 and 2019, according to an SBTi analysis. Oslo-based climate analyst Ketan Joshi explains “companies are increasingly starting to understand that they’re losing their grip on the public relations hit of announcing a climate ambition and then doing nothing about it.” 

So, are the ambitious climate targets being announced by major corporations all just talk? While some are taking significant steps to address their downfalls and cut carbon emissions, others seem to be leaving it for a later day. Without clear strategies to meet interim climate targets before D-day, many companies are likely to fall short of their climate pledges. 

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

UK

Six arrested as climate activists scale Marble Arch and oil tanker

 

Holly Bancroft

Sat, April 16, 2022, 

Climate protesters scaled Marble Arch and climbed atop an 

oil tanker on the seventh day of co-ordinated demonstrations 

urging faster action to stop global warming.

A man and a woman climbed up pillars on Marble Arch to hoist a green banner, reading "End fossil fuels now", from the central London landmark on Saturday evening.

Six people were arrested after activists earlier climbed onto an oil tanker off Bayswater Road in London. British Olympic champion Etienne Stott was among those taking part, and said he was protesting to “disrupt the toxic fossil fuel industry”.

The action was part of demonstrations carried out by campaign group Extinction Rebellion on Saturday and followed protesters gathering in Hyde Park and parading through the capital's streets.

The Metropolitan Police told The Independent it had spent more than £565,000 policing the demonstrations since the beginning of the month.

Campaign groups Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion have been targetting fuel terminals in a series of co-ordinated protests across the country, which started on 1 April.

In other disruptive demonstrations across the capital over the past week, the eco-activists London’s main four bridges, occupied Oxford Circus, protested at Lloyd’s of London, and climbed on top of oil tankers.

Activists hang a banner from Marble Arch in London on Saturday (Gareth Morris/Extinction Rebellion)

The Metropolitan Police’s latest estimate of the cost of the protests is £565,824.45, according to figures obtained by The Independent.

This initial estimate covers from 1 April to 14 April, but is expected to be higher as the force tackles daily climate actions.

Summer protests organised by Extinction Rebellion last August and September cost the Metropolitan Police over £18m in total.

Police officers attempt to remove Etienne Stott, former Olympian, and an activist from Extinction Rebellion who occupied an oil tanker during a protest calling for an end to fossil fuels (REUTERS)

Stott, a slalom canoeist who won gold in the 2012 London Olympics, said: “I am aware that my actions will cause anger to many people and I am prepared to be held accountable. But our government should also be held to account for its decisions which are destroying our planet’s ability to support human civilisation”.

The Metropolitan Police said protesters walked through central London and “stopped at various locations along their unspecified route, causing disruption”.

Extinction Rebellion said that it was “experimenting with a decisive shift in tactics, with a move away from the use of large infrastructure and a renewed focus on people power and nonviolent civil resistance”.

Activists from Just Stop Oil block an entrance to a fuel terminal, during a protest in Grays, Essex on 15 April (REUTERS)

More than 600 people have been arrested over the past two weeks after activists blocked roads at oil depots across the UK.

Three firms involved in Britain's oil sector, including ExxonMobil, secured injunctions to stop protests this week.

But Just Stop Oil, who have taken part in the protests at oil terminals, said the only “announcement [that] will change our plans is a statement from the government that they will halt new oil and gas”.

Essex Police said last week that it had spent more than £1million dealing with demonstrations at oil terminals.

In Warwickshire, police charged nine Just Stop Oil activists for holding a demonstration at an oil terminal in Kingsbury on Friday.

The protesters were charged with obstructing or disrupting a person engaged in lawful activity.

Extinction Rebellion protesters block off Westminster bridge (PA)

Archbishop says UK's Rwanda illegal migrants plan goes against God

17 Apr, 2022 

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby leads the Easter Sung 

Eucharist at Canterbury Cathedral in Kent. Photo / AP

The leader of the Anglican church strongly criticised the British government's plan to put some asylum-seekers on one-way flights to Rwanda, saying "sub-contracting out our responsibilities" to refugees can't stand up to God's scrutiny.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby made the unusually direct political intervention in his Easter Sunday sermon, saying there are "serious ethical questions about sending asylum-seekers overseas".

He said "sub-contracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well, like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God who himself took responsibility for our failures".

Speaking at Canterbury Cathedral in southeast England, Welby said that while "the details are for politics and politicians, the principle must stand the judgment of God — and it cannot"

Britain and Rwanda announced Thursday that they had struck an agreement where some people arriving in the UK as stowaways on trucks or in small boats are sent 6400km to the East African country, where their asylum claims will be processed and, if successful, they will stay in Rwanda.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative government says the plan will discourage people from making dangerous attempts to cross the English Channel, and put people-smuggling gangs who run the treacherous route out of business. More than 28,000 migrants entered the UK across the Channel last year, up from 8500 in 2020. Dozens have died, including 27 people in November when a single boat capsized.

Refugee and human rights groups called the plan inhumane, unworkable and a waste of taxpayers' money. The UN refugee agency said it was "contrary to the letter and spirit of the Refugee Convention".

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, onboard a Border Force vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel.

 Photo / AP

Another senior Anglican cleric, Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, called the Rwanda plan "depressing and distressing".

"After all, there is in law no such thing as an illegal asylum-seeker," he said in an Eastern sermon at York Minster cathedral in northern England. "It is the people who exploit them that we need to crack down on, not our sisters and brothers in their need."

The deal — for which the UK has paid Rwanda £120 million pounds ($231m) upfront — leaves many questions unanswered, including its final cost and how participants will be chosen. The UK says children, and families with children, won't be sent to Rwanda.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby leads the Easter Sung

 Eucharist at Canterbury Cathedral in Kent. 

Photo / AP

Senior civil servants in the Home Office, the government department responsible for immigration policy, raised concerns about the plan but were overruled by Home Secretary Priti Patel.

The Home Office said in a statement that Britain had settled hundreds of thousands of refugees from around the world.

"However, the world is facing a global migration crisis on an unprecedented scale and change is needed to prevent vile people smugglers putting people's lives at risk and to fix the broken global asylum system.".

Alf Dubs, a Labour Party member of the House of Lords who came to Britain as a child refugee from the Nazis in 1939, said the plan was likely "a breach of the 1951 Geneva conventions on refugees". He said the Lords, Parliament's upper chamber, would challenge the move.

Johnson acknowledged Thursday that the plan would likely be challenged in court by what he called "politically motivated lawyers" out to "frustrate the government".

Political opponents accuse Johnson of using the headline-grabbing policy to distract attention from his political troubles. Johnson is resisting calls to resign after being fined by police for attending a party in his office in 2020 that broke coronavirus lockdown rules.

- AP

Sri Lanka's debt crisis is a warning to the world

As many as 12 developing countries could default on debt repayments this year

THE NATIONAL EDITORIAL

Sri Lankans protest outside the president's office in the capital Colombo. AP

For anyone trying to understand the widespread social anger seen in Sri Lanka in recent days, Gota-Go village is a good place to start. The steadily growing collection of tents pitched outside President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's office in the capital Colombo serves as a rallying point for thousands of people that have taken to the streets. On Monday, Christian nuns marched in protest by the site, as Buddhist monks and Muslim men joined nearby. All are expressing anger at high inflation, a lack of services and utilities, poor health care and a wider economic crisis.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President's brother, has offered to talk to protesters, but the situation is unlikely to improve soon. As of yet, no viable opposition can be found and faltering state institutions and wider mismanagement and corruption show no signs of abating.

Looming over all of this is an impending default on foreign debt repayments, which, if it happens, will worsen the crisis. The situation became more critical when the country's central bank governor said on Tuesday that Sri Lanka will temporarily suspend payments, so that its limited foreign reserves could be spent on essential imports.

Next week, the country will start talks with the IMF to ease the situation. More than Sri Lanka will be on IMF officials’ minds, however, as the fund confronts similar situations in emerging economies across the globe. The World Bank has said that as many as 12 developing countries could be unable to service foreign debt over the next year.

Demonstrators in Sri Lanka gather outside the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo as the country faces shortages in food, fuel and medicines after defaulting on its $51 billion debt. EPA

It is perhaps unsurprising. The World Bank also reports that Covid-19 caused global indebtedness to rise to a 50-year high. If the pandemic laid the groundwork, the war in Ukraine could become the perfect trigger for an acute crisis in a number of countries, as supply chains are further strained and commodity prices continue escalating. Developing economies account for 40 per cent of global GDP, heightening the risk of contagion to the rest of the world.

Without managing what they owe, at-risk economies will spend increasingly more of their already-low national income on debt repayments, not development. Once the burden becomes too great, escaping a vicious cycle of defaults becomes difficult. Lebanon, which defaulted in March 2020 and whose financial crisis continues to worsen, is a good example. The over-reliance on imports also makes the situation worse for many of these countries.

Solutions are complex and unattractive for corrupt or incompetent governments. At home, coffers need to be filled, often by raising taxes, which then have to be collected more efficiently from citizens and made harder to dodge by large companies profiting from lax regulation.

But outside their control are international financial systems that need to evolve to work better. First, expert-led advice should be offered early on to break unsustainable cycles and boost resilience in the face of unpredictable global crises. The operations of international organisations must also evolve. The IMF's debt service relief programme spent billions throughout the pandemic and helped 90 countries, hugely important in maintaining as much economic stability as possible. It should be extended as part of a longer-term assessment of where the world's economy is today.

It is clear that Covid-19 is still a health crisis, which is why it should still be considered an economic one, too. Gota-Go village might be a very local protest, but many of the problems that pushed people to set it up are replicated in a number of countries around the world. And if its organisers are not listened to, the ensuing economic instability from which they are suffering might go global, too.

Published: April 13, 2022,

The National Editorial
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