Friday, December 25, 2020
Trump Golfs In Florida While COVID Relief Swings In The Balance
Jill Colvin. Washington is reeling over the president’s demand as failure to agree on the bill puts millions of Americans in peril. After tossing a grenade that threatens to blow up a massive COVID relief and government funding bill and force a government shutdown in the midst of a pandemic, President Donald Trump was golfing on Christmas for a second straight day. Failure to agree on the bill could deny checks to millions of Americans on the brink. Trump had no events on his public schedule on the first day of his winter vacation Thursday but traveled to his Palm Beach golf club, where he was spotted by CNN cameras on the links. Reporters were given no details of his schedule for the day but told that “As the Holiday season approaches, President Trump will continue to work tirelessly for the American People. His schedule includes many meetings and calls.” Trump’s departure came as Washington was still reeling over his surprise, eleventh-hour demand that an end-of-year spending bill that congressional leaders spent months negotiating to give most Americans $2,000 COVID relief checks — far more than the $600 members of his own party had agreed to. The idea was swiftly rejected by House Republicans during a rare Christmas Eve session, leaving the proposal in limbo. The bipartisan compromise had been considered a done deal and had won sweeping approval in the House and Senate this week after the White House assured GOP leaders that Trump supported it. If Trump refuses to sign the deal, which is attached to a $1.4 trillion government funding bill, it will force a federal government shutdown, in addition to delaying aid checks and halting unemployment benefits and eviction protections in the midst of the direst stretch of the pandemic. It was an apparent act of antagonism toward congressional Republicans from a president who has been raging over his Nov. 3 loss to President-elect Joe Biden and trying to come up with new, increasingly outrageous schemes to try to overturn the results of a Democratic election. He has been egged on by allies like his lawyer, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who accompanied the president to Florida aboard Air Force One. Trump’s ire has been focused, in part, on Republicans in Congress whom he believes have been insufficiently supportive of his quest to delegitimize Biden’s win by lobbing unfounded claims of mass voter fraud before Congress meets to tally the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6.
In Florida, Trump continued to rail against the results, complaining to members that he had been robbed of the election and voicing frustrations about the year-end spending bill.“At a meeting in Florida today, everyone was asking why aren’t the Republicans up in arms & fighting over the fact that the Democrats stole the rigged presidential election?” Trump tweeted after he’d returned to his private Mar-a-Lago club. “Especially in the Senate, they said, where you helped 8 Senators win their races.” “I will NEVER FORGET!” he wrote in another, The statements underscored concerns that Trump is blowing up negotiations to punish lawmakers for what he sees as their insufficient support loyalty. Trump has provided no credible evidence to support his election claims, which have also been refuted by a long list of officials, from former Attorney General William Barr to Republican governors, judges, and local election administrators. Meanwhile, the nation continues to reel as the coronavirus spreads, with record infections and hospitalizations and more than 327,000 now dead. And millions are now facing the prospect of spending the holidays alone or struggling to make ends meet without adequate income, food, or shelter thanks to the pandemic’s economic toll. To mark the holiday, the president and first lady Melania Trump tweeted out a pre-recorded video message in which they wished Americans a Merry Christmas and thanked first responders and members of the military. “As you know, this Christmas is different than years past,” said Mrs. Trump, who focused on the acts of “kindness and courage” the pandemic had inspired. Trump hailed the vaccine doses now being delivered and thanked those responsible for it. “It is a truly a Christmas miracle,” he said. Meanwhile, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have been trying to salvage the year-end legislation to try to prevent a shutdown. Democrats will recall House lawmakers to Washington for a vote Monday on Trump’s $2,000 proposal, though it would likely die in the GOP-controlled Senate. They are also considering a Monday vote on a stop-gap measure to at least avert a federal shutdown and keep the government running until Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20. In addition to the relief checks, the COVID bill that passed would establish a temporary $300 per week supplemental jobless benefit, provide a new round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses, restaurants and theaters and money for schools, and provide money for health care providers and help with COVID vaccine distribution.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-golfs-in-florida-while-covid-relief-hangs-in-the-balance_n_5fe6268bc5b6ff747980ffea
#Pakistan - The circle of dissent is widening; the state is responding by pushing society towards further polarisation
By Aasim Sajjad AkhtarTHE dust had barely settled on the hugely triggering sight of South Waziristan MNA Ali Wazir in chains when news arrived from Canada that Karima Mehrab, a prominent figure of contemporary Baloch nationalism, had been found dead after having mysteriously disappeared.
In May, Ali Wazir’s cousin Arif was shot dead in his home district by ‘unknown assailants’, while another Baloch exile, Sajid Hussain, had been discovered dead in Sweden, after having vanished without trace. These are hardly novel events, even if foul play in the Baloch cases has not been established by police. In recent years, Baloch, Pakhtun, Sindhi and even Punjabi dissidents have been seen as the target of state repression, or have fallen by the wayside in suspicious circumstances that have deepened feelings of mistrust between the state and long-suffering ethnic peripheries. Balochistan has experienced at least five insurgencies, the first after Kalat’s ‘accession’ in 1948. Sindhi nationalists have long called attention to issues of demography and control over Karachi in particular. Pakhtun nationalists like Bacha Khan who used non-violence were, even before Partition, declared traitorous. The state should reach out to, not criminalise, the youth. The secession of East Pakistan is still the only example of a modern state in which a majority seceded from a minority. From the mid-1980s, even Urdu-speaking ‘Mohajirs’ have been politicised and, in the shape of the MQM, demanded that they be recognised as a separate nationality with claims to rights and resources. The MQM was patronised by Gen Pervez Musharraf’s military regime. It has since fallen almost completely out of favour with the establishment, but the Musharraf years deepened polarisations between many ethnic peripheries and the centre. It was then that the practice of enforced disappearances became common, unaccountable military operations were conducted, and intensified geopolitical wrangling involving China, Russia, Iran, India, Afghanistan and the US deepened a siege mentality under the guise of the ‘war on terror’. Notwithstanding the restoration of formal democracy in 2008, the state apparatus has continued to wield the big stick in ethnic peripheries, and in metropolitan centres too. The circle of dissent is, in fact, widening. To which the state is responding by pushing society and the polity towards further polarisation. What explains this widening circle of dissent? First, the ethnic peripheries have spilled over into the centre, and, indeed, into the diaspora. Pakhtun workers, students and small businesspeople have migrated in the millions to urban centres across Pakistan; the Baloch diaspora is littered across the world; Sindhis and Seraikis have migrated in unprecedented numbers to Karachi since the floods of 2010; and other regions like GB have experienced similar out-migration.Second, historically dominant Punjabi- and Urdu-speaking masses from the developed, central regions are increasingly stratified and politicised. The pandemic will exacerbate tensions within otherwise pro-establishment segments of Pakistan’s population. To sustain establishment hegemony in central regions is harder than ever; it is not by chance that Punjabi dissidents that have made common cause with the ethnic peripheries have been subjected to increasing coercion, the disappearance of bloggers in 2017 the start of a clear trend. Third, mega projects designed and funded by big players both domestic and foreign are establishing a clearer line than ever between winners and losers of ‘development’. Within Pakistan, there are Bahria Town, big sugar and wheat lobbies, as well as establishment-run logistics, communications and construction companies. In terms of interventions by foreign power, CPEC stands out, but the economic, political and cultural footprint of the Gulf states and the Pakistani state’s major patron of choice, the US, will also continue to engender conflicts over resources and power. The fencing of Gwadar is an example of the ghettoisation of winners and losers that is happening more broadly across the social formation. On the one hand, then, there is an increasingly no-holds-barred race for resources and power, with the establishment in the role of arbiter. On the other hand, brutalisation of peripheries provides a fillip to narratives of ethnic nationalism that have historical bases. The state ought to be reaching out to a young generation of politicised nationalists rather than criminalising them. The resort to ideological warfare by branding any and all demands for inclusion and dignity as ‘anti-state’ is particularly galling. Whether the individual decried as fanning separatism is an elected MNA, a Baloch who came of age under enforced disappearances, or even ordinary youth expressing their opinions on social media, history confirms the futility of a nation-building project founded on exclusion and coercion. https://www.dawn.com/news/1597719/circle-of-dissent
US 'deeply concerned' at SHC order to release men charged in Daniel Pearl case
The US State Department on Friday expressed its reservations after the Sindh High Court (SHC) ordered that the four men charged in journalist Daniel Pearl's abduction and murder case be released immediately, terming their detention illegal.
In a message on Twitter, the state department said it was "deeply concerned" at the Dec 24 ruling of the SHC to release "multiple terrorists responsible for the murder of Daniel Pearl".
"We have been assured that the accused have not been released at this time," the statement added.
It said the department will continue to monitor any developments in the case and will continue to support the Pearl family "through this extremely difficult process" while honouring the legacy of Daniel Pearl as a journalist.
The statement came a day after the SHC struck down a preventive detention order issued by the Sindh government to keep four men behind bars after their convictions by a trial court were set aside around eight months ago in the abduction and murder case of US journalist Daniel Pearl.
The bench also barred the federal and provincial authorities from placing the men under any preventive detention order without prior permission of the SHC. However, their names were placed on the no-fly list and they were also directed to appear before the court whenever summoned.
In April, the high court had acquitted all the appellants of the charges of murder and kidnapping for ransom and only found main accused Ahmed Omar Sheikh guilty of abducting the slain journalist and sentenced him to seven-year imprisonment. However, the sentence had been completed as the convict had already spent around 18 years in detention.
The Supreme Court is hearing the appeals of provincial government and the parents of the slain journalist against the SHC’s order.
#Pakistan - People should support #PPP to complete Quaid's mission: Bilawal Bhutto
https://dunyanews.tv/en/Pakistan/579881-People-support-PPP-complete-Quaid-mission-Bilawal-Bhutto
Bilawal Extends Christmas Greetings To Christian Community
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has extended Christmas greetings to the Christian community in Pakistan and the world over, on the eve of auspicious festival.
In his felicitation message, he eulogised the role of Christians and other minority communities in the development of the country and assured them that their rights, enshrined in the Constitution, will always be protected. Bilawal said his party was the true follower and inheritor of the ideology of Pakistan as envisaged by the founder of the nation Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. "PPP has always taken steps for political, social, and economic rights of the minorities and former prime minister Shaheed Benazir Bhutto established a full-fledged Minority Affairs Department and following her vision, gave representation to the non-Muslim population in the Senate of Pakistan for the first time," he added. He appealed the Christian community to hold special prayers for strengthening democracy, peace, and prosperity in Pakistan, for the establishment of an egalitarian society. https://www.urdupoint.com/en/pakistan/bilawal-extends-christmas-greetings-to-christ-1123725.html
In his felicitation message, he eulogised the role of Christians and other minority communities in the development of the country and assured them that their rights, enshrined in the Constitution, will always be protected. Bilawal said his party was the true follower and inheritor of the ideology of Pakistan as envisaged by the founder of the nation Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. "PPP has always taken steps for political, social, and economic rights of the minorities and former prime minister Shaheed Benazir Bhutto established a full-fledged Minority Affairs Department and following her vision, gave representation to the non-Muslim population in the Senate of Pakistan for the first time," he added. He appealed the Christian community to hold special prayers for strengthening democracy, peace, and prosperity in Pakistan, for the establishment of an egalitarian society. https://www.urdupoint.com/en/pakistan/bilawal-extends-christmas-greetings-to-christ-1123725.html
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