News that defined 2021

The global upheaval of 2020 continued at breakneck pace in 2021, with new leaders in the US and EU, troubling new Covid-19 variants emerging, and a worldwide culture war continuing.

Biden toot charge of a divided America

Conducting his campaign largely virtually from the confines of his Delaware basement, Joe Biden promised voters a return to the staid ‘normality’ that characterized Washington, DC in the pre-Trump era. While Biden’s message won out, his inauguration in January did little to heal the political gulf between red and blue America.

With Donald Trump and his supporters accusing the Democrats of electoral fraud, Biden was sworn in two weeks after a rowdy crowd of Trump supporters rioted on Capitol Hill on January 6. He immediately signed a flurry of executive orders in his first 100 days – more than his three most recent predecessors combined, mostly aimed at undoing Trump’s signature policies. Trump’s border wall, the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and the US’ withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement were all reversed with the stroke of a pen.

Biden’s repeated characterization of the Capitol rioters as “domestic terrorists” and his issuing of vaccine mandates further tanked his already low approval among conservatives. As the year progressed, his ratings with Americans of all political persuasions dropped, largely due to rampant inflation and rising prices attributed by many to his multi-trillion dollar spending programs.

The Taliban retake of Afghanistan

Abroad, Biden’s most serious foreign policy challenge involved withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan, a process initiated by Trump a year earlier. The first sign of trouble came when Biden set a withdrawal date of September 11, four months later than the May pullout date negotiated by Trump and the Taliban.

With several thousand US troops still in Afghanistan by May, the Taliban launched a nationwide offensive, overrunning the US-funded and trained Afghan National Army with ease. By August, the militant group had Kabul surrounded, and after leaving billions of dollars of weapons and equipment behind, the US began a hurried exit from Hamid Karzai International Airport.

The withdrawal was chaotic, with hordes of Afghans mobbing the runways and attempting to escape the country on US planes, and a suicide bomber killing 13 American troops and dozens of locals outside the airport. The US-backed government of Ashraf Ghani fled, and as a final act of tragedy, an American drone strike mistakenly killed an innocent family in retribution for the suicide bombing.

With the US finally gone after two decades of war and occupation, the Taliban promised to rule more moderately than it did during its last stint in power in the late 1990s. However, the group has reportedly gone back on its word, and has been accused of executing former members of the Afghan security forces and issuing hardline rules on everything from the playing of music to the wearing of headscarves.

Covid-19 mutations presented new challenges

First identified in India in late 2020, the Delta variant of the coronavirus became the dominant one worldwide by mid-2021. More transmissible than the original Alpha variant that spread from Wuhan, China, in early 2020, Delta did not trigger any change in containment measures around the world. Masking, distancing, and vaccination were still the tools of choice in defeating Delta, and most countries in the northern hemisphere were seeing reduced cases, hospitalizations and deaths during the summer months.

All of these measures failed to stop case rates from soaring come fall, however, and these spiking numbers were compounded in November by the discovery of the Omicron variant in South Africa. Omicron is believed to be even more transmissible than previous variants, and its discovery sparked panic worldwide.

However, it has thus far led to far lower rates of hospitalization and death than previous strains, with most accounts describing symptoms – if they present at all – as mild to moderate. Governments around the world have used the fear over Omicron to push aggressive new lockdown policies and vaccine booster shots.

Billionaires blasted-off

Weirdy beardy Richard Branson took a sub-space flight on his own Virgin Galactic rocket in July, beating fellow billionaire oddball Jeff Bezos by just days to be the first ‘I own this rocket’ astronaut to soar into space on his own dime.

Meanwhile, king of the nerds Elon Musk continued to send hundreds of satellites on a spectacular journey into the skies and stumped the bill for NASA’s first venture into privately-funded space exploration by ferrying four astronauts to the International Space Station on a SpaceX rocket. He subsequently won a $2.9 billion contract to fly the next batch of astronauts to the moon, penciled in for 2024.

But, for Musk, that’s not enough. The world’s richest man's eyes are on a prize 65 million miles away. Mars. And you have to ask, ‘Who’s gonna stop him?’.

Because today’s billionaires can do what they want, and sod the rest of us. They’re sending truckloads of money-making satellites into our pristine skies, blasting rockets – sometimes unsuccessfully – off into the stratosphere willy-nilly and drawing up plans to colonize the Red Planet, yet no one seems to be prepared to say, “Hang on a minute, who put you in charge?”

This one rule for them and another for us was on show as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before both the US congress and the UK parliament in October.

Anti-social media

The articulate executive revealed her former boss Mark Zuckerberg and his cronies were perfectly aware that the platforms that earn them billions from exploiting account holders’ private data for advertisers, Instagram in particular, were proving harmful to young users but, despite warnings, sometimes from their own staff, had so far been reluctant to do anything much about it.

Haugen painted a vivid picture of bullied adolescents unable to escape the harsh cruelty of social media trolls. It was all convenient music to the ears of those politicians who want to control the online space as they control mainstream media, and so it was no surprise to subsequently discover the help Haugen was receiving.  

And what did Facebook do about these unwelcome revelations? It decided the solution to all this bad publicity was to change the company’s name. It’s now called Meta. Completely different deal. Job sorted, problem solved. Next!

While Frances Haugen was given the rock-star treatment as she tooted the flute on shoddy practices, fellow whistleblower and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has not been so fortunate.

Julian Assange extradition verdict

He’s spent his third Christmas in custody at London’s grim, high-security Belmarsh Prison, having been convicted in the British courts of… um, err, hmm… nothing.

For reasons that escape me, Assange – who is not in good health following a mini-stroke – is remanded in custody awaiting extradition to the US where he’ll wallow in yet another prison cell while awaiting his day in court on trumped-up espionage charges. While the US court victory in overturning the UK decision not to hand Assange over to the Yanks owing to his fragile mental state might have had them fist-bumping in Washington, it can only have made things worse for the whistleblower’s health situation. He may appeal the latest decision, but nothing’s happened yet.

That the governments of the UK and his native Australia have failed to secure his release, despite the fact that he has been found guilty of nothing – and is actually considered a hero by many – is a disgrace and shows who really wields the power in the imbalanced but much-trumpeted AUKUS alliance announced in September.

While the Aussies were quite happy to scupper an already agreed upon $90-billion submarine deal with France ‘for convenience’ in sucking up to the US, it seems this new partnership is more ‘quid’ than ‘pro quo’ when it comes to Oz PM Scott Morrison swapping favors to benefit his more problematic compatriots.

That 2021 has been a bad year is undeniable. For some it’s been hell. Those with loved ones who died of Covid, for the people of Afghanistan waiting for the Taliban to knock on their door, for despairing youngsters bullied on social media and, of course, for Julian Assange being held without trial at the insistence of a malevolent foreign power.

So good riddance, and bring it on, ‘22! Give it your best shot. We’re battle-toughened and ready for action and, as the calendar begins anew, we’re not taking any prisoners.

The Merkel era came to a close

Social Democrat Olaf Scholz became Germany’s new chancellor in December, bringing to an end 16 uninterrupted years of rule by Angela Merkel. Throughout four terms, Merkel’s conservative bloc stayed in power through alliances with either the Social Democrats or the Free Democrats, but in 2018, the veteran chancellor announced that she would not seek a fifth.

Merkel oversaw some pivotal moments in Germany and Europe’s history. In 2015, she received heavy criticism for opening Germany’s borders to more than a million migrants, a move that spurred the rise of the right-wing Alternative For Germany (AfD) in the polls. She was an early proponent of reducing Europe’s reliance on Russian gas imports, yet criticized US sanctions against Moscow and oversaw the completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany.

Scholz’s government is less friendly toward Moscow, and has stalled certification of Nord Stream 2. Berlin has also expelled Russian diplomats over the murder of a Chechen separatist who sought asylum in Germany, a murder Russia denies having any hand in.

At home, Scholz has amped up coronavirus restrictions, backing Merkel’s lockdown for unvaccinated people and promising to bring mandatory vaccination to a parliamentary vote. Scholz himself described compulsory vaccination as “legally permissible and morally right.”

AUKUS deal led to standoff between Western allies 

Announced in September, the AUKUS pact will see the US and UK help Australia acquire nuclear submarines. The trilateral deal will also add Tomahawk cruise missiles and Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles to Australia’s arsenal, and will see Australia collaborate with the US on hypersonic weapons – a technology that the US has fallen behind Russia in developing.

Widely seen as a response to China’s continued ascent to superpower status, the pact has not just angered Beijing – with the Chinese government accusing its members of harboring a “cold-war mentality” – but also France.

Prior to the deal, France signed a $90 billion contract to sell diesel-electric submarines to Australia. Canberra’s unilateral cancellation of this contract was described by French  Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian as a “stab in the back,” and the country’s ambassadors to the US and Australia were recalled.

French President Emanuel Macron has long been a proponent of lessening Europe’s reliance on the US for its security, and in the wake of the AUKUS deal, he called on his fellow EU leaders to “stop being naive” and to build “the power and capacity to defend ourselves.”

With Macron and then-German chancellor Merkel also agreeing on an investment treaty with Beijing in December 2020, the fallout over the AUKUS pact is a sign that Europe may not be as willing a partner in the “transatlantic alliance” against China as the Biden administration in Washington hoped.