Church urged to engage in education system
17 Jun 2022
Research by the Times Education Commission condemned ‘shocking’ regional disparities in schools. One primary school reported children starting school unable to say their names; half of reception and nursery were not toilet-trained. There was also a lack of training on how to identify students with special education needs. The Association of Christian Teachers (ACT) called for the Church to play a bigger part in the education system after the report also found that parents do not believe classrooms prepare pupils for life or work and the system places too much emphasis on exams which could damage pupils' mental health. Exams have become a source of emotional stress for teachers and students: some students refuse to even open an exam paper. Christian teachers can emphasise that exams aren’t everything. They have the opportunity to say how trusting God puts worry in perspective, that God has a plan for our lives - even if we feel it all depends on one certain day and one exam.
Mariangela Alejandro, a history and politics student, was taught by professor Tim Hayward at Edinburgh University. But a few weeks into the course she complained, ‘He goes from talking about global financial markets and poverty into this realm of conspiracy theories about the Syrian president and Russia.’ Days after a maternity hospital in Mariupol was bombed, Prof Hayward retweeted a Russian ambassador to the UN describing the attack as #fakenews. The tweet said the hospital had been controlled by the Ukrainian military, and no patients were there. In a lecture he outlined an argument that the renowned aid organisation the White Helmets may have helped fake a chemical attack in Syria. Russia has said the attack was staged. In March he and other academics were accused by MPs in the House of Commons of spreading misinformation about the Ukraine war. Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi said the Government would crack down hard on misinformation.
NI Protocol disagreement
17 Jun 2022
Part of Brexit released lorries from checkpoints between the UK and EU (Northern Ireland to Republic of Ireland). Instead they are checked when arriving in NI from mainland UK. This protocol was agreed because of sensitive political border histories. Boris Johnson wants to change this protocol section to make it easier for some goods to move between Britain and NI. But the European Commission vice-president said there was ‘no legal or political justification whatsoever for unilaterally changing an international agreement; it has left us with no choice but to take legal action.’ Mr Johnson insists the proposals are legal, will secure the UK’s future and are set out in a parliamentary bill. The protocol is upsetting the balance of the Good Friday Agreement’. The Democratic Unionist Party, who won the second-most seats in recent elections, is refusing to set up a new ruling Northern Ireland executive with Sinn Féin, who won the most seats, until changes are made to the protocol.
Russia: land grab
17 Jun 2022
Vladimir Putin's admiration for Peter the Great is well known, but he now has ideas of ‘Great’-ness himself as he openly compared himself to the 18th-century tsar. He is equating Russia's invasion of Ukraine with Peter's expansionist wars three centuries ago, thereby acknowledging that his own war is a land grab. Putin's empire-building ambitions have irked his neighbours; Estonia has called his comments ‘completely unacceptable.’ Putin said he sees a new battle for geopolitical dominance, and that Peter the Great was his role model. ‘You might think he was fighting with Sweden, seizing their lands’, Putin said, referring to the northern wars which Peter launched to forge a new empire. ‘But he seized nothing; he reclaimed it. It has fallen to us, too, to reclaim and strengthen.’
China: land grab
17 Jun 2022
A meeting between China’s defence minister Wei Fenghe and his US counterpart Lloyd Austin took place during an Asian security summit in Singapore. The hour-long meeting took double the time allotted. The USA is concerned about China’s increasingly unsafe, aggressive, unprofessional military behaviour, which indicates an attempt to change the status quo. A Chinese fighter plane dangerously intercepted an Australian military surveillance plane over the South China Sea, and Chinese warplanes harassed Canada’s aircraft monitoring North Korean sanction evasions. ‘If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost,’ said Fenghe. The Chinese minister also pledged, ‘Beijing will smash to smithereens any Taiwan independence plot and resolutely uphold the unification of the motherland. Taiwan is China’s Taiwan. Using Taiwan to contain China will never prevail.’ Joe Biden intends to spend more time on Asian security issues after months focusing on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Pacific: climate change a bigger threat than war
17 Jun 2022
‘Machine guns and fighter jets are not our primary security concern. The single greatest threat to our very existence is climate change, not military tensions’, Fiji defence minister Inia Seruiratu told delegates at the Asian security summit in Singapore, which up to that point had focused on China-US tensions and the Ukraine war. He told delegates, ‘Cyclones have repeatedly battered Fiji and other low-lying Pacific countries. Climate change threatens our very hopes and dreams of prosperity. Waves are crashing at our doorsteps, winds are battering our homes, we are being assaulted by this enemy from many angles.’ In recent years human-induced devastating climate change has displaced thousands of people who have been inundated by floods. Floods and cyclones have also wrought economic havoc, and Pacific states have urged advanced industrialised nations to do more to combat climate change. The world is now 1.2C warmer than it was in the 19th century - mainly because of burning fossil fuels which release greenhouse gases.
Nigeria: kidnapping and ransom demands
17 Jun 2022
The Nigerian government is about to pass a bill that will punish those who pay ransoms with up to fifteen years in prison. It would also give a death sentence to those who commit abductions. Armed groups have kidnapped hundreds of people for ransom across Nigeria over the last two years. Most recently, a ransom of $240,000 was paid by the Nigerian Methodist Church after eight gunmen abducted its head, His Eminence Samuel Kanu, and two other pastors while they were on their way to the airport in Nigeria’s southeastern state of Abia. The clergymen’s driver and one other church member managed to escape. The 69-year-old recounted how the abductors showed them the rotted bodies of previous victims, threatening to do the same with him. Archbishop Chibuzo Opoko, who heads the Methodist church in Abia State, said paying the ransom was necessary.
Iran's proxy militias have caused the decline of Christians in many regions by adopting ‘forced immigration’. In Lebanon Hezbollah targets missionaries, impedes conversions, imposes strict dress codes and alcohol bans, and limits mixed sexes in public, in what have been dubbed ‘mini-Tehrans.’ A sizeable amount of land owned by Christians has been taken over by Hezbollah through eviction. In Iraq, initially employed to resist American forces, the Shiite Mahdi Army has changed the demography, Making Baghdad 'Christian-free' was high on its agenda when they morphed into IS. Iran had influence in Syria through the Assad family (Alawite Sunni). After the uprising Iran restructured the Syrian Army and created several militias within the Shia Liberation Army. It saved the Assad regime, killing 600,000 people, displacing 6.5 million internally, and forcing 6.6 million to flee Syria. In Yemen the Houthis have invested considerable effort into ending the Christian presence in the territories under their control.