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Add vitamin D to bread and milk to help fight Covid, urge scientists

 

James Tapper

Widespread deficiency shows that current government guidance on supplements is failing.

Scientists are calling for ministers to add vitamin D to common foods such as bread and milk to help the fight against Covid-19.

Up to half the UK population has a vitamin D deficiency, and government guidance that people should take supplements is not working, according to a group convened by Dr Gareth Davies, a medical physics researcher.

Low levels of vitamin D, which our bodies produce in response to strong sunlight, may lead to a greater risk of catching the coronavirus or suffering more severe effects of infection, according to some studies. Last week, researchers in Spain found that 82% of coronavirus patients out of 216 admitted to hospital had low vitamin D levels. The picture is mixed, however – some research shows that vitamin D levels have little or no effect on Covid-19, flu and other respiratory diseases.

Vitamin D deficiency can cause rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults – soft bones that lead to deformities – and children with severe vitamin D deficiency are prone to hypocalcaemia – low levels of calcium in the blood – which leads to seizures and heart failure.

However, Public Health England (PHE) and the Department of Health and Social Care have rejected calls over the past 10 years to fortify foods such as milk, bread and orange juice, which is the practice in Finland, Sweden, Australia and Canada. “In my opinion, it is clear that vitamin D could not only protect against disease severity but could also protect against infection,” Davies said. “Food fortification would need careful planning to be rolled out effectively, particularly as people are now taking supplements. Picking the right foods to fortify would need to be done carefully. “But it’s clear that the current policy is not working – at least half the population have a vitamin D deficiency.”

Adrian Martineau, professor of respiratory infection at Queen Mary University in London, who is not part of Davies’s group, is leading a clinical trial to examine whether vitamin D can reduce the risk of Covid-19, or its severity. The Coronavit study, which began last week and is backed by the Barts Charity, the Fischer Family Trust and the AIM Foundation, will follow more than 5,000 people through the winter.

“The government recommends that the whole population takes vitamin D supplements in winter months, and those in high risk groups take it all year round,” Martineau said. “But we know that people just aren’t doing that in any significant numbers. Even I forget to take my supplement sometimes, and I’m living and breathing this subject. Fortification is a really good way of eliminating deficiency.”

Our bodies produce vitamin D in response to strong sunlight. In the UK, that means that from October to March, people need to rely on other sources: oily fish, eggs and food supplements.

Some foods, such as breakfast cereals and mushrooms are fortified with vitamin D, and people in low-income households are entitled to free multivitamins. White flour in the UK is already fortified with vitamins B1 (thiamin) and B3 (niacin), and last year the government began a consultation on adding vitamin B9 (folic acid) to help prevent spina bifida and other birth defects of the brain and spine.

A 2019 study at the University of Birmingham, led by Magda Aguiar, a health economist, showed there would be at least 25% fewer cases of vitamin D deficiency over the next 90 years if flour fortification were adopted, saving about £65m.

In 2017, Professor Louis Levy, PHE’s head of nutrition science, responded to calls for fortification by saying that there was not enough evidence that vitamin D would reduce the risk of respiratory infections.

The Department of Health and Social Care was approached for a comment but failed to respond.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/add-vitamin-d-bread-milk-help-fight-covid-urge-scientists-deficiency-supplements?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_b-gdnnews&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1604168241

US sets world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours - Study links Trump rallies to 30,000 cases and 700 deaths

 

Martin Pengelly 

 @MartinPengelly

• . Daily caseload of 100,233 surpasses tally set in India last month
• . Study links Trump rallies to 30,000 cases and 700 deaths.

The US has set a world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours, according to one count with just over 100,000 new infections recorded.

The daily caseload of 100,233 – as counted by Reuters – surpassed 97,894 cases reported by India on a single day in September.

The news came three days before the presidential election, and as Donald Trump continued to stage large-scale events at which Covid mitigation measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing are not enforced. The president himself, the first lady, senior aides and Republican leaders contracted the virus after attending such events.

Trump, who spent time in hospital, has insisted the US is “rounding the corner” in the fight to contain the pandemic. This week his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr, a key campaign surrogate, said deaths from Covid-19 were “almost nothing”.

According to Johns Hopkins University – which counted nearly 99,000 US cases on Friday – nearly 230,000 of more than 9m US cases of Covid-19 have resulted in death.

The president and his campaign have sought to present a contrast to Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s promise to implement another lockdown if necessary.

On Saturday, Biden said in a statement: “President Trump still has no plan to address Covid-19. He quit on you, on your family, on America. He just wants us to grow numb to the horrors of the death toll and the pain. We cannot afford another four years of his failed leadership.”

On Friday, scientists at Stanford University released a study which said recent Trump rallies produced more than 30,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and “likely led to more than 700 deaths”.

The authors set out to “investigate the effects of large group meetings on the spread of Covid-19 by studying the impact of 18 Trump campaign rallies” over “up to 10 post-rally weeks for each event”.

“Our estimate of the average treatment effect across the 18 events,” they wrote, “implies that they increased subsequent confirmed cases of Covid-19 by more than 250 per 100,000 residents.

“Extrapolating this figure to the entire sample, we conclude that these 18 rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of Covid-19. Applying county-specific post-event death rates, we conclude that the rallies likely led to more than 700 deaths (not necessarily among attendees)”.

The US has exceeded its previous single-day record, of 77,299 cases registered in July, five times in the past 10 days. The number of daily infections reported in the last two days suggests the country is reporting more than one new case every second.

Despite the overall figure, the US has a rate of about 28,100 cases per million people, which places it about 14th in the world for prevalence.

Many states experiencing surges in case numbers are re-instituting social restrictions. In New York on Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters most people arriving in the state must now quarantine for at least three days before taking a coronavirus test. If that test comes back negative, the traveler can leave quarantine.

The requirements will not apply to residents of “contiguous” states, Cuomo told reporters, and there will be different requirements for New Yorkers who leave the state for less than 24 hours.

The governor named Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey as examples of contiguous states, home to many commuters to New York City. But it was unclear if neighbouring Vermont and Massachusetts would also be exempt. Cuomo's office did not reply to questions seeking clarification on Saturday.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/us-world-record-coronavirus-cases-24-hours

#Elections2020 - Republicans, Not Biden, Are About to Raise Your Taxes

 

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

People making from $10,000 and $30,000 — nearly one-quarter of Americans — are among millions slated to pay more in 2021.

The Trump administration has a dirty little secret: It’s not just planning to increase taxes on most Americans. The increase has already been signed, sealed and delivered, buried in the pages of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

President Trump and his congressional allies hoodwinked us. The law they passed initially lowered taxes for most Americans, but it built in automatic, stepped tax increases every two years that begin in 2021 and that by 2027 would affect nearly everyone but people at the top of the economic hierarchy. All taxpayer income groups with incomes of $75,000 and under — that’s about 65 percent of taxpayers — will face a higher tax rate in 2027 than in 2019.

For most, in fact, it’s a delayed tax increase dressed up as a tax cut. How many times have you heard Trump and his allies mention that? They surmised — correctly, so far — that if they waited to add the tax increases until after the 2020 election, few of the people most affected were likely to remember who was responsible.

Looking at the analyses of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation at the time the December 2017 tax bill was enacted, we see very clearly how different income groups are affected by the Trump tax plan. And it’s disturbing.

The current poverty line for a family of four is $26,200: People with incomes between $10,000 and $30,000 — nearly one-quarter of Americans — are among those scheduled to pay a higher average tax rate in 2021 than in years before the tax “cut” was passed. The C.B.O. and Joint Committee estimated that those with an income of $20,000 to $30,000 would owe an extra $365 next year — these are people who are struggling just to pay rent and put food on the table.

Of course, the poor have never mattered much to the Republican Party, but those on the edge of poverty have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic and the recession its caused, so Trump’s planned tax increases seem especially heartless, and impractical, when you consider that their higher tax payments, while a huge burden for them, will add little to the budget.

By 2027, when the law’s provisions are set to be fully enacted, with the stealth tax increases complete, the country will be neatly divided into two groups: Those making over $100,000 will on average get a tax cut. Those earning under $100,000 — an income bracket encompassing three-quarters of taxpayers — will not. At the same time, Trump has given his peers, people with annual incomes in excess of $1 million dollars, or the top 0.3 percent in the country, a huge gift: The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the average tax rate in 2019 for this group to be 2.3 percentage points lower than before the tax cut, saving the average taxpayer in this group over $64,000 — more than the average American family makes in a year.

The tax loss and benefit estimates just described were calculated before the pandemic. Now, incomes for almost everyone but top earners have taken a hit, so the loser group will likely be considerably larger than anticipated; and with people like Jeff Bezos, the billionaire chief executive of Amazon, doing even better than expected, Trump’s gift to him is even bigger.

This analysis makes clear that the vast majority of Americans will be better off with the likely tax reforms that will emerge from a Biden administration than they would be by sticking with Mr. Trump’s ill-conceived tax bill. You might well ask: Why didn’t Mr. Trump just give everyone a tax cut? The Republicans — who suddenly lost their grasp on their self-described fiscal conservatism when they came into office in 2017 — saw a chance to give their rich friends and corporations a big thank you for campaign contributions. But the tax cuts they promised these donors produced projections that the resulting budget deficits were well beyond $1 trillion.

To reduce that stomach-churning amount, they had to phase-in higher taxes on ordinary Americans. While this kind of budget gimmickry has been used before under President George W. Bush’s administration, Mr. Trump carried it to a new level.The Republicans have one more feeble defense: their old friend trickle-down economics. The tax cut to the corporations would, they promised, trickle-down to citizens at the bottom of the income ladder. We’ve now seen how that hasn’t happened. In fact the money gushed up to those at the very top in the form of stockholder dividends, chief executive bonuses and a record level of stock buybacks (nearly $1 trillion in 2018 alone.)Some economic models predicted the Trump tax law would lead to significantly higher wages because of more investment and higher growth. But projections showed that when the 2017 bill’s temporary tax cuts changed to tax increases, growth would likely slow significantly and wage increases would be anemic. And those calculations were made before the pandemic hit.

Mark Zandi and Bernard Yaros of Moody’s Analytics have done the most credible and thorough analysis comparing the Biden and Trump plans, including Mr. Trump’s stealth increases and other promised tax and expenditure changes. Mr. Biden’s plan wins by an enormous margin: 7.4 million more jobs and a much quicker recovery from this recession. That means higher wages and incomes for most Americans.

Elections matter. Elections gave Republicans the power to enact these tax shenanigans. Neither conscience nor principles stopped them.

The problem now is that unless the Democrats win a majority in the House and the Senate and clinch the presidency, these Republican tax increases, already legislated, are likely to go into effect. The increases, unfairly aimed at the vast majority of Americans who are disproportionately suffering in the pandemic, will cause even more hardship.

They must be stopped.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/republicans-biden-taxes.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

#Elections2020 - Researchers Estimate Trump Rallies Led To 30,000 Coronavirus Cases And 700 Deaths

 By Sara Boboltz

A working paper from Stanford University researchers concludes that the communities that hosted Trump rallies “paid a high price in terms of disease and death.”

A series of rallies held by President Donald Trump over three months this summer functioned as COVID-19 superspreader events, leading to thousands more cases and hundreds more deaths than otherwise would have occurred, Stanford University researchers concluded.

Academics from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research focused on 18 events between June 20 and Sept. 22 and tracked community spread of the coronavirus up to 10 weeks after the rallies, reasoning that “the effects of a superspreader event may snowball over time.”

The rallies resulted in more than 30,000 new confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 700 deaths, though not necessarily among attendees, the researchers’ working paper published Friday concluded.

“Our analysis strongly supports the warnings and recommendations of public health officials concerning the risk of COVID-19 transmission at large group gatherings, particularly when the degree of compliance with guidelines concerning the use of masks and social distancing is low,” the authors said.

“The communities in which Trump rallies took place paid a high price in terms of disease and death,” they concluded.

The paper has not yet undergone peer review.

Three of the events ― in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Phoenix; and Henderson, Nevada ― took place indoors; the rest happened outdoors.

Photos and video from Trump’s events showed that few attendees wore masks to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Trump has made a point to say “masks are OK,” but he has repeatedly denigrated his Democratic opponent Joe Biden for wearing one, and recently poked fun at an ally, Laura Ingraham, for masking up.

“Another reason these events may be likely to cause significant onward transmission is because the people who attend them are ... less likely to wear masks and to socially distance, and the same is probably more true among their contacts than it is among the friends of people who would decide against attending such an event because they view it ― reasonably ― as too risky,” Prof. Jon Zelner, assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, told HuffPost in an email.

“I think this is one important point of departure from many of the social justice protests over the summer, in which it seems that these types of precautions were more common, though of course not universal,” Zelner added.

The Stanford findings appeared to back up comments from at least one Oklahoma health official who suggested that the president’s rally contributed to a spike in COVID-19 cases around Tulsa in late June and early July.

Responding to critics who said the rallies put lives unnecessarily at risk, Trump campaign officials said they took precautions before and during the events, including taking temperatures and providing hand sanitizer.

Such precautions only go so far if people don’t wear masks or maintain social distance, researchers have said.

The U.S. neared ― or, by Reuters’ account, surpassed ― a record high of 100,000 new daily cases this week, and the total number of cases across the country since the start of the pandemic crossed the 9 million mark. Experts widely believe that cases will rise as Americans spend more time indoors because of colder weather this fall and winter.

/entry/trump-rallies-coronavirus-cases-deaths-study_n_5f9d85f9c5b60eefc8532067

#PPP Music Video - Dilan Teer Bija

Video - Chairman #PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari addresses a corner meeting in #Gahkuch, #Ghizer

حکمران ہر محاذ پر ناکام ہوچکے ہیں، قمر زمان کائرہ

پیپلز پارٹی پنجاب کے صدر قمر زمان کائرہ نے کہا ہے کہ حکمران ہر محاذ پر ناکام ہوچکے ہیں ۔وزیر اعظم نے درست کہا جیسے ڈونلڈ ٹرمپ ہیں ویسے ہی وہ ہیں۔
 

دونوں کی طرز سیاست فاشسٹ اور غیر جمہوری ہے۔

 اپنے ایک بیان میں انہوں نے کہا کہ اس حکومت کی موجودگی میں عوام جو ریلیف نہیں مل سکتا۔ آج غریب طبقہ پس کر رہ گیا ہے

۔ہر کوئی اس حکومت کے جانے کی دعائیں مانگ رہا ہے۔ یہ ملک پر انتہائی مشکل وقت ہے۔اگر اس حکومت کو لیکر آنے والے اسے مدد دینے سے باز نہ آئے تو خود انہیں بھی تاریخ معاف نہیں کرے گی۔ ملک کی سمت درست کرنے کیلئے ضروری ہے کہ اس حکومت سے نجات کیلئے فوری اقدامات کئے جائیں۔ تاکہ ۔عوام کو ریلیف مل سکے

https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/24009/

بلاول بھٹو غذر میں بچوں کے ساتھ گھل مل گئے

پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کے چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زردرای اپنی انتخابی مہم کے سلسلے 

میں گلگت بلتستان کے دورے پر ہیں اور مختلف علاقوں میں عوامی جلسوں سے خطاب کررہے ہیں۔

بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے آج غذر کا دورہ کیا اور وہاں پر عوامی جلسے سے خطاب بھی کیا، جبکہ غذر میں موجود بچوں نے بلاول بھٹو زرداری کا زبردست استقبال کیا اور انہیں روایتی تحائف بھی پیش کیے۔

پی پی چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری غذر میں موجود بچوں کے ساتھ گھل مل گئے اور ان بچوں کے ساتھ تصاویر بھی بنوائیں جو سوشل میڈیا پر وائرل ہوگئی ہیں۔

بلاول کی بچوں کے ساتھ تصاویر کو لوگ سوشل میڈیا پر خوب پسند کررہے ہیں، جبکہ بچے بھی ان  سے مل کر خوش نظر آرہے ہیں۔

https://jang.com.pk/news/838784 

People of Gilgit Baltistan will defeat the puppet party in the elections 2020 & send the puppet government packing in January 2021, Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari

People of Gilgit Baltistan will defeat the puppet party in the elections 2020 and will also send the puppet government in Pakistan packing in January 2021.

This was said by the Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari while addressing a corner meeting in Gahkoch, Ghizar, Gilgit Baltistan on Saturday. Former governor GB Qamar Zaman Kaira, Senator Karim Khawaja, Pir Syed Jalal Shah, Amjad Hussain Advocate and Dr. Aleem Arshad were also present in the corner meeting.

Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari paid rich tributes to Shaheed Lalak Jan Nishan-e-Haider and other 31 brave soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the nation. He said that only PPP has served the people of Gilgit Baltistan. Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ended the FCR from GB and provided subsidies for the people of GB on food items, petrol and clothes. Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto introduced democracy and elections in GB and provided healthcare through Lady Health Workers. President Asif Ali Zardari gave identity to GB, gave first governor and the chief minister and now anything left for the people of GB will be fulfilled by the PPP. The PPP will provide the people of GB their own province, right to rule and property and right to choose the prime minister of Pakistan.

Chairman PPP said that these demands of right to rule and property, separate province and right to chose the prime minister of Pakistan was included in the party manifesto for election 2018 in Pakistan. The demand for increased funds for GB was also there in the same manifesto. He said that the people dealing with national security have also come on the same page as PPP, Jiyalas and the people of GB. Now the puppets are also siding with us on these demands. He said that when everything in GB was given by the PPP then the right to having their own province and other rights will also be given by the PPP. He said that the cabinet of Imran Khan’s government had rejected the demand of separate province and filed a review petition against this demand in the Supreme court. He demanded withdrawal of the review petition. He said that Imran Khan destroyed Pakistan in just over 2 years and his changed meant destruction. Today people from every section of the society are protesting against Imran Khan and his policies. Imran Khan brought poverty, hunger, price hike and unemployment to Pakistan. In contrast the people of Pakistan had a slogan “Benazir aaye gi, rozgar laye gi” because PPP always brings prosperity to the people.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that PPP during its government 2008-13 had increased salaries of government employees up to 150 percent, salaries of army personnel up to 175 percent and pensions up to 100 percent. Last year federal government and provincial government did not increase salaries and pension but only Sindh government increased salaries and pensions. The PPP gives subsidies to poor whereas Imran Khan introduced amnesty for rich cronies. Now Imran Khan wants to hand over tourism to his friends but we will not let them do it because we think that people of GB deserve tourism department. Imran Khan has made Radio Pakistan’s employees unemployed.

Chairman PPP said that a federal minister has arrived in GB and some other person is also coming to GB and the people of GB should ask them that what they did for the people of GB so far. These government functionaries have come here to buy votes but they do not know that the people of GB are people of honour and are not for sale. He asked people to come out and vote on 15 November as that day is not only a voting day but will decide the future of GB. That day is to get your own province, your share in NFC and your right to rule and own property. He asked people of Ghizar to win all three seats from Ghizar for PPP. He asked people of Gahkoch to vote for Dr. Ali Mohammad on 15 November.

https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/24013/

#Pakistan: #Catholics protest after abduction, forced marriage of 13 year-old Catholic girl

Catholics in Pakistan are protesting a judge’s decision not to intervene after a 44-year-old man allegedly kidnapped a 13-year-old Catholic girl, forced her to convert to Islam, and then married her.

According to UCA News, Arzoo Raja, a 13-year-old Catholic from Karachi was kidnapped in broad daylight Oct. 13 by Ali Azhar. Raja’s parents were informed days later by the police that their daughter had converted to Islam and had married Azhar, allegedly of her own free will. Her parents filed a police report.

Two weeks after her abduction, on Oct. 27, the Sindh High Court ruled the marriage was valid and that Azhar would not be arrested.

Technically, child marriage is illegal in Pakistan, but courts typically do not enforce these laws. Sharia Law, which is used in some judicial decisions in Pakistan, permits a child to be married after her first menstrual period.Approximately 400 people protested the decision at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Karachi, and Christians in other parts of the country protested as well. Fr. Saleh Diego, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Karachi, condemned the court for ruling without properly investigating the circumstances.

“Whatever happened in the court was shameful and deplorable. It was all lies that the girl was being sent to a shelter home,” said Diego. “The court, without checking or determining Arzoo’s age, ruled in favor of the abductors.” Documentation proved that Raja was born in 2007 and is 13 years old. Diego said that someone of Raja’s age cannot decide to accept Islam on her own, as she “still has a lot to learn about her own religion.”

“A 13-year-old cannot decide about her religion. She is an innocent girl whose statement should be declared null and void by the court,” he said.

The vicar general said there was a “disturbing trend” of Catholic girls being forcibly converted to Islam.

“Religious minorities living in Pakistan are concerned about the future of their daughters who are being converted to Islam,” he said. “But why only girls? Are our boys not good enough for religious conversion? Why are they not so easily converted?” he asked.

In February, the Sindh High Court ruled that a “marriage” between a 14-year-old girl who was kidnapped, forced to marry her abductor and convert to Islam was not a violation of the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act.

The court found that as the girl had experienced her first menstrual period, the marriage was legal.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pakistan-catholics-protest-after-abduction-forced-marriage-of-13-year-old-arzoo-raja-67188

Opinion | In Erdogan and Imran Khan’s Hypocritical War on ‘anti-Muslim’ Blasphemy, the Body Count Rises

By Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

 @khuldune 

In the wake of an extremist Muslim’s beheading of a French teacher who showed his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, part of his class on free speech, French President Emmanuel Macron offered a staunch defense of free speech, and the right to publish those caricatures. The murdered teacher, Samuel Paty, has now been joined by three more victims, killed in or near a Nice church, including one whose throat was cut.

And who has taken center stage in the Muslim world’s response? Two so-called champions of selective, often hypocritical, outrage against ‘Islamophobia.'

The Islamist populists leading the charge are Pakistan’s Imran Khan, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And their favored rhetorical strategy is to insist on a disturbing equivalence between Holocaust denial and blasphemy.

As the movement to boycott France accelerates in many Muslim countries, Erdogan assessed that Macron needs "mental treatment." That prompted France to recall its ambassador from Turkey. Imran Khan accused the French president of "deliberately provoking Muslims" as Islamabad summoned the France ambassador for a dressing down.

Angst over lack of "freedom of belief" and "minority rights" is indeed pretty rich coming from Turkey and Pakistan, the two countries currently leading the overheated Islamist rhetoric. However, it is their needless, and disturbing, equivalence between blasphemy against Islam and the Holocaust that is especially mindboggling – and yet strikingly common in their discourse.

While urging the boycott of French goods, Erdogan invoked the Holocaust and equated France’s policies with Nazi Germany, saying that Muslims in Europe are now being subjected to a "lynch campaign similar to that against Jews before World War II."

Imran Khan meanwhile wrote a public letter to Mark Zuckerberg urging him to ban ‘Islamophobic’ content on Facebook, again using Holocaust denial as an analogy.

He noted Facebook "rightly" bans "any posting that criticises or questions the Holocaust, the culmination of the Nazi pogrom of the Jews in Germany and across Europe" and that "today we are seeing a similar pogrom against Muslims in many parts of the world," and asks for a "similar ban [to that on Holocaust denial] on Islamophobia and hate against Islam."

If the Facebook CEO wants to do due diligence on the consistency of Khan’s call to delegitimize extremism and its shills, he should start with Khan’s recent speech eulogizing Osama Bin Laden as a "martyr" of Islam. If there is anything more preposterous than Khan’s frequent and conveniently myopic lectures on Islamophobia, it is often their timing.

The day the Pakistani premier was expressing outrage against Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons at the United Nations General Assembly, a man of Pakistani origin launched a terror attack targeting the French publication’s former offices.

Khan’s sermon attacking Macron came a day after yet another Hindu temple was desecrated and vandalized in Pakistan’s Nagarparkar region, and only 46 years after the Ahmadi Muslim community was defined as heretical in Pakistan’s constitution – an act of collective discrimination that Khan has addressed with full-scale appeasement.

Even so, where Khan is perhaps unaware, or in denial, about Islamist abuses in Pakistan, he has been consciously and steadfastly over the years, drawing parallels between blasphemy against Islam and the genocide of Jews. In his letter to Zuckerberg, Khan reiterated a moral equivalence between banning Holocaust denial and censoring criticism of Islam. Days later, Khan doubled down on his Holocaust analogy in a public letter to Muslim states: he noted many European states had banned any "questioning of the Holocaust" but not "mockery" of Mohammed.

Unfortunately, for pieces of writing ostensibly aiming to argue for equal treatment of religious communities, Khan’s letters often betrayed bias against Jews, not to mention belittling of their genocide.

Before we even begin to unpack the horrors of juxtaposing the industrial massacre of six million people and caricatures, one should note how Khan’s reframing of Holocaust denial as "questioning or criticizing" is bizarrely watered down, especially when compared with the adjectives reserved for protection of Islam and Muslims: denial, extreme, hate, abominable, violent, abuse, vilification or, indeed, phobia.

Similar soft revisionism can be seen in the equation of Indian military occupation in Kashmir, or the Bharatiya Janata Party-led fueling of anti-Muslim hatred, with the extermination and ethnic cleansing of Jews.

Regrettably, it is hard to find a global Muslim leader relating to the Holocaust simply as a crime against Jews that should never be repeated. Khan is just the latest to weaponize it in reference to victimization of Muslims, a tactic more often used by both Islamists and many in the Western left to describe Israel’s oppressive policies towards the Palestinians.

In his letter to Zuckerberg, Khan appears to be arguing that the Holocaust is somehow privileged over blasphemy against Islam, implying some sort of lobbying, if not a downright conspiracy.

This is in line with Khan’s rehashing of anti-Semitic tropes about an Israel lobby – conflated in domestic popular media with “Jewish lobby" – destabilizing Pakistan, which he reinvoked as recently as last Friday when he accused the opposition parties of being the third party in an "axis of evil" alongside India and Israel.

The grand paradox here, of course, is the fact that Khan, owing to his first marriage to Jemima Goldsmith, is regularly accused of being a "Jewish agent." And yet the Pakistani premier prefers validating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories instead of ever uttering a single condemnation of any of the, far too frequent, sweeping statements blaming "world Jewry" for any of the ills afflicting Pakistan or the Muslim world, or of the clerics who lead calls in Pakistani mosques for the destruction of the Jews.

Ironically, much of the targeting of Muslims that Khan’s Facebook letter highlights – ranging from blaming minorities for the spread of COVID-19 to discriminatory religionist laws – are far more prevalent in Pakistan. Amidst all the talk of Islamophobia, Pakistan remains the only country in the world that actually criminalizes the recitation of Quran, and the Islamic call to prayer, when they deny the Ahmadiyya sect the right to self-identify as Muslims.

And despite the egregious invocation of the Holocaust and its suffering, the Khan-led Pakistan, like other Muslim-majority states, will never condemn what is the closest approximation today to the Nazis’ concentration camps – the "re-education camps" established by China in which one million Uighur Muslims are currently detained. Indeed, Khan vocally defends those concentration camps as a "non-issue."

Pakistan and Turkey’s use of the Holocaust for point-scoring, and the implied justification of violent reactions to "anti-Islamic" blasphemy, underlines a more general failure of Muslim leaders to understand the basic concept of free speech, or even their own duplicitous claims of “double standards.” Any Western state, including France, which “allows” blasphemy against Islam also permits the same against other religions. Instead of taunting parallels between Holocaust denial and caricatures of Muslim prophets, a more valid global comparison would focus on blasphemy laws, which exist across 77 countries, and what the impact of censoring blasphemy has on rights and lives.

Blasphemy is a capital offense only in Muslim-majority countries. 12 Muslim-majority states have established the death penalty with 20 others establishing prison sentences. And lest one thought the idea was to protect all people of faith – these offenses are all Islam-specific, and the laws do not stipulate similar punishments for sacrilege against other religions.

Elsewhere, even countries that have an outdated form of a blasphemy law, like Australia, Canada or Finland, have a more or less redundant version which, importantly, is still equally applicable for all religions.

Furthermore, those conjuring these absurd comparisons seem to ignore how opposition to Holocaust denial has never triggered violence. Nowhere is it suggested that the provocation of Holocaust denial justifies violence, knife attacks or murder. Nowhere is violence or the death sentence codified for denying the genocide of Jews.

Compare that to the open incitement of another "leader" of the Muslim world's fight against Islamophobia, ex-Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who self-identifies as a "proud antisemite," tweeted Wednesday that "the Muslims have the right to punish the French" for being blamed for violence, and continued: "Muslims have the right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past."

The irony couldn't be clearer: only last year, Mahathir was rhapsodizing about free speech, but for antisemites: "When you say, ‘No, you cannot say this. You cannot be anti-Semitic’ then there is no more free speech," he declared, and followed up by querying how many Jews actually died in the Holocaust.

In any case, Imran Khan and others regularly miscontrue why Holocaust denial has been criminalized in countries like Germany, when they suggest it is a form of pandering to ‘safeguard the delicate/politically significant sentiments of Jews.’ But the ban on denial is actually part of legislation banning the denial of Nazi crimes in a bid to help ensure they’re never repeated where they were instigated.

Had Pakistan accepted its own genocide of Bengalis in 1971, or Turkey its genocide in Armenia, their leaders today might have better standing, and if they had been apprised of the notion of hypocrisy, they might have known better than to shout ‘Islamophobia’ amidst Islamist abuses in their own country.

Indeed, it is Pakistan and Turkey’s glorification of Islamist vandalizers of Hindu temples and Ottoman massacres that have contributed to the rise of populist, and self-unaware, leaders like Khan and Erdogan. For freedom of expression to be universally applied, Holocaust denial itself should be decriminalized. People should be free to be ignorant of the most gruesome horrors of history, even one of the gravest crimes committed against humanity. If nothing else, this might prevent self-appointed global Muslim leaders from expediently equating the denial of the Holocaust with "global anti-Muslim persecution," a narrative mired in contention. The truth is if these Muslim leaders fail to see the duplicity of their demands for the exclusive protection of Islam from satire, their own boosting of bigotry, their equation of blasphemy with the genocide of Jews and their implicit endorsement of the righteousness of violent retaliation, then there is no way they should ever be given any veto power over free speech.

We can’t ever have confidence in the critical faculties of "moral" leaders who, in the aftermath of the killings of cartoonists, can only bring themselves to condemn the cartoons.

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-body-count-rises-in-turkey-and-pakistan-s-hypocritical-war-on-anti-muslim-offense-1.9268714

Pakistan still obsessing over Abhinandan. How about an update on Israeli pilot Army ‘caught’

 

NAILA INAYAT

In Pakistan, PML-N leader's remarks on minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi are a more serious threat to national security than minister Fawad Chaudhry claiming a terror attack.

The year of the rat continues to be obsessed with the year that was, 2019. That was when the enemy pilot Abhinandan came, had chai and left. He left, but like any jilted ex, the conversations continue about why he left us. He didn’t say, “It’s me, not you”. But for Pakistanis, it still remains an unfinished agenda even in 2020, the year that is actually all about being Modi’s yaar and Pakistan’s ghaddar.

This is Pakistan in a nutshell.

On Wednesday, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Ayaz Sadiq shared on the floor of the National Assembly how the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government was panicking to release Abhinandan Varthaman because it feared an attack from the Indian military. The conversation referred to a parliamentary briefing held after the capture of the Indian pilot in February 2019, an exchange that Prime Minister Imran Khan was not a part of even as Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa was present. Sadiq explained that Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was jittery with a sweaty forehead when he told those present at the briefing, “Khuda ka wasta hai ab isko jane dein (for god’s sake let him go),” referring to Abhinandan. According to Sadiq, India was going to attack Pakistan at 9pm.

Hum bhi hain josh mein

It was as if Qureshi would turn into a pumpkin if Abhinandan wasn’t released before 9pm. Tea was still fantastic, 9pm or 9am. There is still no news on the fictitious Israeli pilot that Pakistan caught. Probably he is still having tea somewhere here.

Shocking revelation? Not really. The mention of an Indian attack was already made by PM Imran Khan during his address to the Assembly on February 28. He had said that there were fears India might launch a missile attack on Pakistan, but the situation was later defused.

What came as a real shocker was Science and Technology Minister Fawad Chaudhry’s response to Ayaz Sadiq. In josh-e-khitabat, the minister went on to claim Pulwama terror attack, which killed 40 Indian soldiers, as a huge victory of Pakistan under the leadership of Imran Khan. “Humne Hindustan ko ghus ke maara hai (we hit India in their home). Our success in Pulwama was the success of the nation,” Chaudhry said, berating the PML-N leader.

Chaudhry just fell short of breath, otherwise the flow in which he was, he might as well have taken credit for crashing planes into the World Trade Centre on 9/11. It was only after he had made all the confessions that he thought he should modify his boast a bit, which is what he did: “Pulwama ke baad humne ghus ke maara” — the modification being ‘after Pulwama’.

Priorities you & I won’t understand

The minister’s ramblings were astounding and could have serious repercussions for Pakistan. But what woke the military spokesman up from deep slumber was Ayaz Sadiq and not Fawad Chaudhry. Even repeated allegations of political engineering against Qamar Bajwa by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif didn’t sprung DG-ISPR into action. But here he was. Now a pro at rejecting stuff from political leaders, Babar Iftikhar held a presser to reject the statement that Abhinandan was released owing to perceived threat of an Indian attack.

Only in Pakistan are the remarks on an opposition leader a more serious threat to national security than a sitting minister’s 60 seconds of claiming and celebrating a terrorist attack. This is the reason why PTI ministers are taken as seriously as they are around the world. And the same set of ministers now want a criminal charge against Ayaz Sadiq. Him revealing that Qureshi’s legs were shaking and he was sweating is tantamount to outing State secrets?

A campaign to brand Sadiq a ‘traitor’ is now on, with posters coming up on the streets of Lahore. Sadiq is shown wearing an Abhinandan-like moustache with both Modi and the Indian pilot in the background. ‘Mir Jaffar, Mir Sadiq…Ayaz Sadiq’ is the tagline.

The excuse for the extreme reaction is to point towards “how Indian media is having a field day with Ayaz Sadiq’s statement”. But the same people choose to look the other way when Indian media is amplifying Fawad Chaudhry’s remarks and bringing more attention. If coverage in Indian media is the parameter of bringing bad name to the country, then where does PM Imran Khan stand over his several interviews and conclaves that he attended in India, where he said the most controversial things? Where does he stand over the Indian media’s rather extensive coverage of PTI’s dharnas when he was in the opposition?

Imran Khan’s simple rule

The entire episode reflects the simmering tension between the PTI and the opposition parties ever since the anti-government protests began. It is clear that when confronted with the ghaddari (traitor) allegations, the leaders of PML-N and even other parties reply in the same coin. If the previous PML-N government will be blamed for Kulbhushan Jadhav’s case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), its leaders will hit back with PTI going out of the way and making concessions for Jadhav now.

The world may have moved onto dealing with more pressing concerns brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, or bothering about who will be the next president of the United States. But what matters the most to the government of Imran Khan is the continuous labelling of his political opponents as pawns of India. In Khan dreamland, whether he’s in opposition or in power, his opponents remain traitors. He vehemently believed that whenever Nawaz Sharif was in trouble, tension along Pakistan’s borders and terror attacks increased. Now as prime minister, he still gives out certificates of working with ‘Israeli and Indian lobby’ to the opposition. For Imran Khan, it works like: heads I win, tails you lose.

https://theprint.in/opinion/letter-from-pakistan/pakistan-still-obsessing-over-abhinandan-how-about-an-update-on-israeli-pilot-army-caught/534554/

In light of Pakistan's criticism of France, leader Marine Le Pen calls for ban on Pakistan immigration

Namrata Agarwal

French leader Marine Le Pen urged to impose a ban on Pakistani immigration amidst critical comments by Pakistan leaders on France. Calling it as a threat to the country, the leader of the National Rally Party called for a ban on Pakistani immigration .

 Taking to Twitter she wrote (in French which roughly translates to): "In view of the new ultra-violent demonstrations today in #Bangladesh (demonstrators who called to behead our ambassador), and #Pakistan , I call for an immediate moratorium on immigration from these countries, in the name of national security. MLP." Recently, France witnessed gruesome murders after President Emmanuel Macron defended the right to caricature the Prophet Mohammed.

 It has witnessed two knife attacks, one in Nice in which three people were killed at a church, and another in Avignon, in which the attacker was killed by the police. While, a guard at the French consulate at the Saudi city of Jeddah was attacked.

https://zeenews.india.com/india/in-light-of-pakistans-criticism-of-france-leader-marine-le-pen-calls-for-ban-on-pakistan-immigration-2321336.html

Turkey and Pakistan's campaign to boycott French products backfire as Saudi Arabia steps in

Manish Shukla

French President Emmanuel Macron's stand against Islamist terrorism has led to a new geopolitical tussle among countries like Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

The temperament displayed by French President Emmanuel Macron to fight the radical Islamist terrorism after the brutal murder of teacher Samuel Paty and the outrage by the French citizens over the incident has led to a new geopolitical tussle.

In response, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attacked Macron and said, “The person in charge of France has lost his way. He goes on about Erdogan all day. Look at yourself first and where you are going…he is a case and he really must be checked up.”

Turkey also launched an aggressive campaign to boycott French goods from its markets.

In a show of support to Turkey's campaign, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan tweeted that Macron chose “to encourage Islamophobia by attacking Islam rather than the terrorists” adding that Macron chose “to deliberately provoke Muslims, including own citizens.” Recently, boycott France products was a top trend in Pakistan. It joined Turkey in attacking France and Pakistanis have been aggressively trending several hashtags over social media platforms, urging people to boycott French products, abusing the French President, and threatening French citizens.

Besides Pakistani citizens staying all over the world launched a global campaign to boycott French products. Many prominent Pakistani Twitter handles, with a blue- tick, spat venom on the French President and urged Muslims worldwide to boycott products of the country.Editor of a prominent Pakistani daily ‘The News’, Ansar Abbasi urged the Islamic fraternity of the world to protest against France against the ‘shameful’ attack on Muslims by using the hashtag #MacronGoneMad.Responding to the boycott campaign, Macron tweeted, “We will not give in, ever. We respect all differences in a spirit of peace. We do not accept hate speech and defend reasonable debate. We will always be on the side of human dignity and universal values.”

It is believed that by launching the strongest attack on the French government, Erdogan would be able to project himself as the ‘Messiah’ of Muslim Ummah and leader of the ‘Caliphate’. Observers see this as Erdogan’s efforts to encash the opportunity to challenge Saudi Arabia's leadership of Islamic world.

Unlike Turkey and Pakistan, the supreme body of Muslim countries, the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned the act of gruesome killing of the French teacher, besides expressing its concerns on ‘ongoing practice of running satirical caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad'.Taking a divergent route from the balanced approach of the OIC, Turkey-led Islamic block unilaterally attacked the French government and sympathised with the attacker.Turkey and Pakistan's aggression was not taken in good taste by Saudi Arabia, which has been a constant target of Turkish President Erdogan in his efforts to displace Saudi as the leader of Islamic world.Citizens of Saudi Arabia have, in fact, launched a massive campaign to boycott Turkish goods. Saudi shops and supermarkets have boycotted Turkish goods and replaced Turkish items with the Greek ones. Expressing solidarity with Greece on Turkish aggression as well as denoting the availability of Greek products in their stores, Saudi traders hung Greek flags outside their establishments.

The Saudi citizens have taken up a comprehensive campaign against Turkey on the basis of three principles – No investment, no imports and no tourism. It is striking to note that the campaign has not been launched by the Saudi Government, rather it is driven by the common public sentiments of the Saudi citizens.

Besides boycotting local products made in Turkey, Saudi citizens are also boycotting the products of international brands produced in Turkey. Such a boycott might turn Turkey into a hostile investment destination and thereby compelling companies to pull out their investments from the country.

Saudi Arabia has been one of the biggest markets for import of Turkish products. Besides, Turkey also uses the country as a transit point to trade its goods elsewhere in the region. Hence, the boycott by Saudi citizens, if continued for long, might prove costly for Turkey.

Current developments suggest that efforts of Turkey and Pakistan might have begun to backfire. The strong resolve of the French President and the retaliation by Saudi citizens might impact the economies of both the countries, which are already not in a very good state. Besides economic and diplomatic losses for Turkey, the tussle on boycott campaign is also going to inflict huge strategic and diplomatic losses for Pakistan.

Pakistan's desperate jump at Erdogan’s anti-French rhetoric and unwarranted threats from the Pakistani leadership and elites might have added to the displeasure of Saudi Arabia, which has been disgruntled on Pakistan's support of unilaterally projecting Erdogan as the tallest leader of the Ummah. Besides, Pakistan might have found a new antagonist in another world superpower — France!

Nevertheless, the tussle between pro-France and pro-Turkey countries is certainly going to be intensified in the next few days, throwing reflections on the emerging geopolitical dynamics of the world.

https://zeenews.india.com/world/turkey-and-pakistans-campaign-to-boycott-french-products-backfires-as-saudi-arabia-steps-in-2321103.html