Adam Boulton: The glimmers of hope and reasons to be cheerful as 2022 ends
2022 has been a tough year, in which the UK has often been hit harder than its peer countries in the G7 – the club of the world’s wealthiest democracies.
Russia’s bloody attack on Ukraine led to dramatic spikes in energy costs.
A global cost of living crisis has been driven by soaring inflation and interest rates.
In the UK, hard-pressed workers across the public sector are striking.
Unprecedented political instability in the governing Conservative Party means there have been three different prime ministers in the same year.
Meanwhile, billions of us are grappling with digital technology and connectivity. Some fear social media is rendering traditional representative democracy impossible while handing power to autocrats and unaccountable corporations. Online communication has certainly made us angrier and less tolerant of others.
The world’s population passed eight billion people this year, further increasing the existential pressure humanity is placing on the planet. Extreme weather events attributed to global warming are more frequent than ever.
Globally, the COVID pandemic has claimed more than six million lives, and it is not over either, with a million more deaths predicted in China as the Communist Party reverses its zero-COVID policy.
Taken together, these problems paint a dark picture of life in 2022, yet as we try to cope with them there are glimmers of hope. As we head into the New Year, I want to lift the gloom and rustle up some reasons to be cheerful.
Hope and unity emerge from war in Ukraine
Ukrainians celebrate Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson in November
No one should minimise the horror of the war in Ukraine, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives on both sides and is still enduring the deliberate destruction by an aggressor of a modern European state. Russia’s superiority in size may still mean that Ukraine never gets back all its territory.
Still, the course of the war so far has confounded all President Vladimir Putin’s calculations and shattered the dreams of dictatorial regimes elsewhere. Russia did not conquer in a few days.
The Western democracies did not prove weak and venal. NATO is not “brain-dead”, as President Emmanuel Macron sneered a few years ago. It is stronger, with Finland and Sweden joining the military alliance.
Led by the US, UK and Poland, Western nations have given billions of dollars in military assistance while accommodating refugees. Just as importantly, the thirst of the Ukrainian people and their leaders for liberty, peace and democracy, stressed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his impassioned address to the joint session of the US Congress, reminded us all of the values which should unite us and which are worth fighting for.
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For all their faults, Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss gave Ukraine solid support, even though it cut across their key post-Brexit foreign policy of turning away from Europe. British governments from now on are likely to grasp the importance of good relations with the UK’s closest and largest trading bloc, based on practical co-operation rather than ideology.
A healthy democracy
There is no going back on leaving the EU. But the UK has the chance to enter a new phase without obsessing over the question of Europe, which has dogged the Tory party at least since the 1990s, bedevilling the nation in the process.
Conservative governments no longer have an excuse to be distracted from dealing directly with more important questions such as growth, productivity, and fairness.
If the ruling party does not adapt and address these issues, opinion polls and recent local and by-elections suggest that the electorate may be ready to make a change.
Whatever the outcome at the next election, this is the sign of healthy democracy. Something the increasingly restless people of Russia, China and Iran, for example, are not able to enjoy.
In elections in the West this year, the tide appeared to be turning against populist leaders with links to Russia.
Candidates most associated with Donald Trump, who called Putin a “genius”, fared badly in November’s midterm elections. The Democrats kept control of the Senate. In France, President Macron was re-elected in April, defeating a challenge from Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally.
Game-changing future technology
US scientists carried out the first ever nuclear fusion experiment to achieve a net energy gain
In an era of modern communications, the world should not and cannot de-globalise. The knock from the loss of Russian energy has led, however, to increased emphasis on the importance of producing our own green energy and trading with friendly and stable partners.
2022 will be a record year for commissioning renewable energy programmes, a trend which was already accelerating before the Ukraine invasion.
Other scientific breakthroughs this year point to game-changing future technologies. In the US, experimenters have for the first time achieved atomic fusion, producing more energy than was used to trigger it.
Chinese scientists claim to have found a way to produce hydrogen by electrolysing salt water. Applied on an industrial scale, this would dramatically increase the supply and cheapness of a potentially “green” fuel.
A test case in the Amazon
A climate activist protests at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt
There were two important world meetings on the environment this year – COP27 in Egypt on climate change and COP15 in Canada on biodiversity.
Neither was dramatic, but both re-affirmed commitments already moving in the right direction. Crucially, at both summits, richer nations agreed to remove one of the biggest obstacles to moving faster.
They agreed, though so far more in principle than practice, to pay poorer nations for loss and damage caused by Western industrialisation and to protect vital ecosystems. Both are battles against time and the pace of degradation.
Brazil will be a test case. Deforestation in the Amazon increased catastrophically under encouragement from outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro. Lula da Silva, who takes office in January, campaigned successfully on a commitment of zero deforestation in the rain forests, wetlands, and savannah. He has re-appointed a highly committed environment minister,
Marina Silva, and upped the budget to combat destruction.
We’re living longer and healthier
68.7% of the world population have now had at least one dose of a COVID vaccine. A total of thirteen billion doses have been dispensed. The capacity of the disease to kill is receding.
An anti-malaria vaccine also became a live possibility this year. Global life expectancy went up to 73 years in 2022, albeit by 0.24%. A woman born in Britain this year can expect to live to 83 – that’s 21 years progress on the average female life span in 1926, the year Queen Elizabeth II was born.
Life expectancy increases are plateauing in the UK and US. The most dramatic advances are in poorer countries. Today, 9.2% of the world population live in what is defined as extreme poverty, compared to 36% in 1990. That is still more than a billion people. In the same period, deaths of children five and under has fallen from 34,200 each day to 14,200.
Pioneers believe that mankind is on the brink of a much greater transformation in both preventative and therapeutic medicine – thanks to the use of AI technology in mapping the human genome and proteins, and the possibilities of so-called CRISPR gene editing.
A better tech universe
We are not in control of the ways online technology is changing almost every aspect of our lives. Authoritarian regimes use it to control information and their own citizens. In free societies, trolls and conspiracy theorists send untruths around the world, aided by bots from hostile nations.
Ordinary people go on social media to vilify others and to “cancel” them. The furore on both sides over Jeremy Clarkson’s casually vicious comments on Meghan Markle are just the latest example.
Meanwhile, tech companies and entrepreneurs have become absurdly wealthy.
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In 2022, we began to respond to this stupidity haltingly. The US government legislated against passing strategically vital tech to China. The UK government considered essential issues in the Online Safety Bill. The EU moved against US tech cartels.
FTX collapse into fraud burst the cryptocurrency bubble. Elon Musk’s humiliating mismanagement of Twitter showed the world that tech geniuses do not have all the answers. A better, less uneven, tech universe should emerge from all this, not least because the rising generations are growing up in it.
Beyond the metaverse, digging deep into the worlds of politics, health, and the environment unearths some reasons to be cheerful as this year ends.
All the same in 2023, as teachers write at the bottom of report cards, MUST DO BETTER.
Several victims of Jeffrey Epstein have told Sky News that the incomplete release of the files relating to the dead paedophile financier have left them feeling shocked, outraged and disappointed.
Thousands of files relating to Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, were made public late on Friday – but only a fraction of them have been released so far, with many heavily redacted.
‘Nothing transparent about release’
Marina Lacerda, a Brazilian-born survivor who suffered sexual abuse by Epstein as a teenager, expressed her disappointment over the incomplete release, calling it “a slap in our faces”.
“We were all excited yesterday before the files came out,” she told Sky News presenter Anna Botting.
“And when they did come out, we were just in shock, and we see that there is nothing there that is transparent. So it’s very sad, it’s very disappointing.”
Ms Lacera said she had just turned 14 when she met Epstein before “our relationship, our friendship I should say” ended when she was 17.
“At that point, he had made it very clear to me that I was old, that I was no longer fun for him. So, he booted me out, and I was no longer needed for him,” she said.
Epstein files – latest updates
The Department of Justice (DoJ) suggests that 1,200 victims and their families have effectively been shielded from view in the released documents.
Ms Lacera said: “From what I know, [the number of Epstein victims] is over a thousand, but that’s just what the DoJ can collect or the FBI can collect, but I presume there may be more than that.”
Marina Lacerda spoke outside the US Capitol in favour of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Pic: AP
‘No way it’s not a cover-up’
Ashley Rubright met the late sex offender when she was just 15 in Palm Beach and was subject to abuse over several years.
Asked about her dissatisfaction with yesterday’s government release and if there was a sense of a cover-up operation, she noted that there had been knowledge of Epstein’s crimes “for so, so long”.
“There’s no way that there’s not a cover-up – what it is, I don’t know,” she told Sky News’ US correspondent James Matthews.
“I just hope that nobody’s allowed to fly under the radar with their involvement.”
Regarding the extent of the redactions, she said: “I’m so not shocked, but let down. Disappointed.
“Seeing […] completely redacted pages, there’s no way that that’s just to protect the victims’ identities, and there better be a good reason. I just don’t know if we’ll ever know what that is.
“We’ve been left behind since day one. That’s why I think we’re all fighting so loud now, because we’re tired of it.”
Ashley Rubright speaks at a rally in support of Epstein victims. Pic: Reuters
‘He wanted to man-handle me’
Another survivor, Alicia Arden, told Sky News that she met Epstein in a California hotel room in 1997 for an audition, when she was a 25-year-old model and actress.
“He let me in and he started looking over my portfolio, which is customary to do in a talent audition, and then he insinuated, ‘oh, you should come closer to me and let me see your body’,” she said.
Epstein then started “taking off my top and my pants and touching my rear end and my breasts”.
“He goes, ‘let me come over here and spin for me and let me man-handle you. Let me man-handle you.’ And I got very nervous and started to cry. I said, ‘I have to go, Jeffrey. I don’t really think this is gonna work out’,” Ms Arden said.
“He got a phone call and I was crying in front of him. And he said, ‘I have this beautiful girl in front of me and she’s very upset’. I said ‘I’m gonna leave’ and he offered me $100 and I said ‘I’m not a prostitute’.”
Alicia Arden
She said she went to the Santa Monica Police Department to file a report.
“That was as difficult, and I’m like shaking telling you, but as difficult as being in the hotel room with him because they weren’t supportive at all about it,” she said. Her redacted report was included in previous files.
‘Epstein was a monster’
Asked what she thought about Epstein now, she said: “He’s a monster […] and just horrible. I mean, I’m trembling thinking about him and talking about him.
“If I could do anything, I’m happy I got the police report filed. If they would have pursued him and maybe gone over the hotel [where he was] essentially living, then I could have maybe saved the girls. I’ve always thought that.”
Ms Arden’s redacted police report. Pic: AP
Ms Arden does not believe she has seen justice as one of Epstein’s victims.
“I want to see all of the files come out. I want all of the men in there or women that were trafficking these girls, and they shouldn’t be able to walk around free and not pay for if they did something,” she said.
“They should be actually arrested if they’re in the files and it’s proven that they did horrible things to these girls, and they should lose their jobs, their lives, their homes, their money, and pay for what they did, and it was all supposed to come out, and it hasn’t.”
Jeffrey Epstein died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges
‘I feel redeemed’ by file release
Maria Farmer, who made a complaint to the Miami FBI in 1996 in which she alleged that Epstein stole and sold photos she had taken of her 12- and 16-year-old sisters, expressed gratitude for the release of the files.
“This is amazing. Thank you for believing me. I feel redeemed. This is one of the best days of my life,” she said in a statement through her lawyers.
“I’m crying for two reasons. I want everyone to know that I am shedding tears of joy for myself, but also tears of sorrow for all the other victims that the FBI failed.”
Annie Farmer holds a photo of herself and her sister, Maria Farmer, when they were victims of Epstein. Pic: AP
A positive-leaning reaction also came from Dani Bensky, who said she was sexually abused by Epstein when she was 17 years old.
She told Sky News’ US partner network NBC News: “There is part of me that feels a bit validated at this moment, because I think so many of us have been saying, ‘No, this is real, like, we’re not a hoax’.
“There’s so much information, and yet not as much as we may have wanted to see.”
‘It is not over’
Lawyer Gloria Allred, who has represented several Epstein victims, told Sky News about the partial release on Friday: “It’s very disappointing that all of the files were not released yesterday as required and, in fact, mandated by law.
“The law didn’t say they could do this over a period of time, it didn’t say that weeks could go by.”
Lawyer Gloria Allred
Deputy attorney general Mr Blanche said additional file disclosures can be expected by the end of the year.
“But that’s not what the law says. So clearly, the law has been violated. And it’s the Department of Justice letting down the survivors once again,” Ms Allred said.
The lawyer labelled the incomplete release of the files a “distraction”, adding: “This is not over, and it won’t be over until we get the truth and transparency for the survivors.”
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‘Only redactions required by law’
The tranche of material was released just hours before a legal deadline in the US following the passing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act – and at the same time as a US strike targeting Islamic State fighters in Syria.
The US deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said the justice department was continuing to review the remaining files and was withholding some documents under exemptions meant to protect the victims.
But Sky News’ James Matthews said the significance of the files “is undermined by the lack of context”, while some Democrats and Republicans criticised the partial release as failing to “comply with law”.
Meanwhile, the justice department has defended the redactions made in the released files.
“The only redactions being applied to the documents are those required by law – full stop. Consistent with the statute and applicable laws, we are not redacting the names of individuals or politicians unless they are a victim,” it quoted deputy attorney general Mr Blanche in a post on X.
The Trump administration has claimed to be the most transparent in history.
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In a statement, the White House claimed the release also demonstrated its commitment to justice for Epstein’s victims, criticising previous Democratic administrations for not doing the same.
But that statement ignored that the disclosures only happened because Congress forced the administration’s hand with a bill demanding the release, after Trump officials declared earlier this year that no more Epstein files would be made public.
Can it be a coincidence that US planes attacked Syria around the very time the Epstein files were released?
It would be cynical – but then again, it would be how politics works.
The deadline-day release of the Epstein files had White House media management written all over it, unredacted.
Initial searches for Trump’s name within the Department of Justice search function returned nothing, while the presence of former president Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was everywhere.
It is PR strategy 101 – front-load the release of documents with the Democrat stuff and save any possible Trump content for a soft landing sometime between Christmas and New Year.
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Pic: NBC
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By that time, the public will have softened its focus on the story – it’s what the festive season does.
The presence of celebrity in the latest release might also feather Trump’s bed.
It’s clear that iconic superstars like Mick Jagger and Diana Ross were courted by Epstein as innocents, ignorant of his criminality. To see them in the files cements a narrative of a monster who lured the unsuspecting into his orbit.
We support Jagger and Ross as treasured icons, so we remind ourselves that simply being included in the files doesn’t equate to wrongdoing or knowledge of it. In turn, it shapes an empathy around the predicament that will extend to Trump and, perhaps, the benefit of any doubt.
Of course, not everyone will see it that way – the people who see a cynical exercise in delay and obfuscation, constituting a gross insult to the Epstein survivors at the heart of the story.
Jeffrey Epstein and Michael Jackson. Pic: US DoJ
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For all the talk (by the Trump administration) of a tight time scale and a willingness to act transparently, survivors and their supporters point out that Donald Trump could have published all the Epstein files long ago, never mind drip feed them with wide-ranging redactions.
Not to have done so is an affront to them and an attempt to evade accountability.
For all the talk about the release of the files, their significance is undermined by the lack of context. We are shown pictures and documents that reflect the life of a thoroughly unpleasant individual who inflicted suffering on an industrial scale. But with redactions, and without explanations, we are left having to join the dots in an effort to establish criminal behaviour and blame.
It is a level of uncertainty surrounding the Epstein files and a source of dissatisfaction to survivors, for whom justice further delayed is justice further denied.
Ukraine has struck a Russian tanker in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time, a Kyiv intelligence source has said.
The ship, called the Qendil, suffered “critical damage” in the attack, according to a member of the SBU, Ukraine’s internal security agency.
The tanker is said to be part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” – a group of ageing vessels that Kyiv alleges helps Moscow exports large quantities of crude oil despite Western sanctions.
The SBU source said Ukrainian drones hit the ship in neutral waters more than 2,000 kilometres (1,243 miles) from Ukraine.
They said: “Russia used this tanker to circumvent sanctions and earn money that went to the war against Ukraine.
“Therefore, from the point of view of international law and the laws and customs of war, this is an absolutely legitimate target for the SBU.
“The enemy must understand that Ukraine will not stop and will strike it anywhere in the world, wherever it may be.”
The vessel was empty at the time of the attack, the Ukrainian source added.
Speaking during a live TV event, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, claimed the attack would not disrupt supplies, but vowed that Russia would retaliate nonetheless.
He added that Russia regularly responded with “much stronger strikes” against Ukraine.
Putin also warned against any threat to blockade Russia’s coastal exclave Kaliningrad, which he said would “just lead to unseen escalation of the conflict” and could trigger a “large-scale international conflict”.
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Sky military analyst Michael Clarke said Ukraine’s claim about causing significant damage to the ship was “probably true”.
He added: “The Ukrainians obviously feel that they can legitimise this sort of operation.”
The Qendil, pictured near Istanbul last month. Pic: Reuters
The attack comes after the European Union announced it would provide a €90bn (£79bn) interest-free loan to Ukraine.
Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Ukrainian parliament, told Sky News that the money would “tremendously enhance” Kyiv’s defensive capabilities.
However, he said the International Monetary Fund estimated that Ukraine needed $137bn to “keep running”.
“The aggressor should be punished”, Mr Merezhko added, as he argued that frozen Russian assets in Europe should be used to help fund his country’s defence.
He vowed that Ukraine would “continue to fight” for the move, adding that it was “a matter of justice”.
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