Steve McGookinUS on edge ahead of inaugural
With less than 100 hours to go until the inauguration of America’s new president, Washington DC is in a state of military occupation, with many more US troops in the nation’s capital than are currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
The mobilization, together with an advanced state of readiness in several state capitals across the country, is prompted by fear of a repeat of the violence that happened on January 6th, when supporters of Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol Building in an attempt to disrupt the confirmation of Joe Biden’s victory in November’s election.
As Trump continues to perpetuate the “big lie” that the election was somehow stolen from him, the threat of further unrest from his diehard followers – as well as the political uncertainty surrounding a Republican party increasingly fractured by his hands – will hang over Biden’s initial period in power.
The Hill’s Niall Stanage reflects on his childhood to see an ominous “echo of Belfast’s troubles” in what’s happening in today’s deeply-divided US.
“The insurrectionary violence of January 6th ripped away an assurance that many Americans felt — that such strife occurs in other places, not here,” he writes. “Those of us who come from some other places feel a painful thud of familiarity and a growing dread of what may be to come.”
As a result of that violence, Trump last week became the first US president to be impeached twice when the House of Representatives voted in favour of a single article accusing him of “inciting insurrection.” But he will not face trial in the Senate until after he formally leaves office at noon on Wednesday. His final days in the White House are set to be even more unpredictable than the previous four years, if such a thing is possible.
Biden, meanwhile, announced a massive stimulus plan as he prepares to move forward with his agenda to rebuild the country.
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Covid continues to cloud the future
With Biden’s biggest challenge undoubtedly dealing with the health and economic effects of a hands-off approach to the Coronavirus – his ambitious plan for 100m vaccinations in his first 100 days has already run into distribution issues – the world passed the grim milestone of two million Covid-19 deaths.
One year after Chinese authorities first revealed the existence of the Coronavirus, mainland China this week saw its biggest jump in cases for five months, just as WHO investigators arrived in Wuhan.
There is controversy in Australia, which has successfully managed to contain the effects of the virus on its population, after positive tests surrounded some visiting participants in the country’s open tennis tournament.
The UK government announced it would close all travel corridors from tomorrow as new vaccination “hubs” opened and a further vaccine rollout proceeds. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said half of all those aged 80 and over had received at least one vaccine dose so far.
In Northern Ireland, despite vaccinations looking to be headed in the right direction, we recorded the highest weekly number of Covid-related deaths – 145 this week, according to Nisra, bringing the total for NI to 1,976.
Belfast’s St Patrick’s Day parade was cancelled for a second year as lockdown restrictions continue.
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Leaders Need To Lead – The NI Executive and Covid-19
The Covid-19 Vaccine Explained
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Brexit ‘red tape’ issues persist
As the effects of Brexit continue to bite, Britain’s fishing industry, in particular, is warning of worse to come, as Scottish fish prices were said this week to be ‘collapsing by as much as 80%’ because of new costs associated with bureaucracy.
Infamously, at least one member of the government appeared unconcerned.
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Reinforcing Northern Ireland’s In-Betweenness
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Changes at the top in European parliaments
There have been political changes elsewhere across Europe this week – both expected, as with the change in leadership in Germany’s CDU, and not, with administrations falling in Estonia and the Netherlands, and on the brink in Italy.
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Meanwhile, the leading opposition politician in Russia, Alexei Navalny, was detained this weekend after arriving back in Moscow from Berlin, where he had been undergoing treatment following an attempted poisoning.
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‘Mother and Baby Homes’ report released
Finally this week, a heartbreaking memory from Ireland’s painful past was brought to the surface with the publication of the Irish government’s 2,865-page report of the five-year investigation into the abuses affecting tens of thousands of unmarried mothers and their babies.
The Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, said that Ireland had had a “completely warped attitude to sexuality and intimacy”, and that “young mothers and their sons and daughters were forced to pay a terrible price for that dysfunction.
“As a society we embraced judgmental, moral certainty, a perverse religious morality and control which was so damaging,” he said. “What was so very striking was the absence of basic kindness.”
The release of the report led to fresh calls for an inquiry into similar institutions in Northern Ireland.
Also published on Medium.
