Video Report - #Mali demands emergency #UN meeting over #French “acts of aggression”

Video Report - Pence says he'd consider testifying before Jan. 6 committee if invited

Video Report - Rep. Cheney Tells TODAY: Defeating Trump Will Require A Broad, United Front

Liz Cheney’s courage is a wake-up call to us all

David Aaronovitch

In defying Donald Trump’s lies the Republican congresswoman underlines the cowardice of all too many politicians.

On Tuesday a candidate addressed her supporters after being massacred at the polls. “Two years ago I won this primary with 73 per cent of the vote,” Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney told the crowd. “I could easily have done the same again. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election [and] enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and would not take.”No one seriously disputes that Cheney’s ousting by registered Republicans owed everything to her defiance of Trump. Though she voted against impeaching him over his endeavour to use the president of Ukraine to help him in his battle with Joe Biden, his refusal to accept the result of the 2020 presidential election and his subsequent attempt to reverse it was too much for her. Which was why she agreed to be part of the congressional inquiry into the January 6 assault on the Capitol. Agreed whence almost all other Republicans had fled.

Democracies aren’t just regulated by laws but by behaviour. There is no statute in any democracy as far as I am aware requiring losing politicians to concede defeat to their rivals. But as Cheney observed while congratulating her opponent, the Trump-backed Harriet Hageman, “Our republic relies upon the goodwill of all candidates for office to accept honourably the outcome of elections.”

In 2000 Al Gore, though winning a narrow plurality of votes in the presidential election, lost by 271 electoral votes to 266, the result turning on an incredibly narrow result in Florida. There followed a series of legal battles over a recount in that state. But five weeks later Gore conceded the presidency “for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy”.That is how democrats do it. In 2020, however, Trump received over seven million fewer votes than Biden and lost the election by 306 electoral college votes to 232. And he has never conceded. Instead he and his supporters constructed the fiction of a stolen election — a fiction that has led to violence and insurrection. And, terrifyingly, he now seems to have taken most of the Republican Party with him. As Cheney pointed out, because Trump-backed candidates in Republican primaries have won most of their contests, future elections in some states will be supervised and presided over by people who have never accepted the 2020 result.

The extreme plasticity of many office-seeking Republicans in the face of the Trump supremacy is well illustrated by Cheney’s victorious opponent. In 2016 Hageman was not a Trump fan. She described him as “racist and xenophobic”, which even allowing for the vagaries of Wild West politics is unlikely to have been a compliment. But by 2022 she had remoulded herself to fit the needs of the moment. She had been wrong about Trump, she explained, having been led astray by lies told by “the Democrats and Liz Cheney’s friends in the media”. The reader, even if unimpressed by Hageman, may object that such behaviour is not uncommon in the political world. Closer to home in the past few days, several senior Conservatives have belatedly discovered that Rishi Sunak is not after all the person to unite the party and lead the nation, and that instead Liz Truss better embodies these aspirations.

The first cabinet member to make this journey was the Welsh secretary Sir Robert Buckland. “I backed Rishi Sunak as I felt that he was at that stage embodying what was needed . . . As the campaign moved on . . .” Let’s stop there. We all know what happened as the campaign moved on. Liz Truss’s big polling lead happened. You have to wonder what Sir Robert and the other Late-Trussers see when they look in the mirror. What profiteth a man and all that — but for Wales, Sir Robert. There is a quotidian cowardice about this, but in Buckland’s defence, as Falstaff says on the battlefield of Shrewsbury: “What is that ‘honour’? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday.”

Honourable politicians died in their droves following the Brexit vote. Those prepared to stand up to their parties, or even to take the risk and leave them, were eventually slaughtered at the polls or forced from the field. Some of the best, most honest and competent of our moderate politicians: Rory Stewart departed; others — Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Chris Leslie, Anna Soubry, Luciana Berger among them — went massively unrewarded by a polarised electorate. Meanwhile, for their surviving peers Johnson was just marvellous until he wasn’t and Corbyn could be tolerated until he couldn’t.

It was bad and we suffer the loss still. Even so the cowardice displayed by many Trump-supporting Republicans leads to a different category of damage. For all that a liberal like me abhors many of the political stances of someone like Liz Cheney, in the matter of maintaining democracy she is on my side and I on hers.Bizarrely this is not a message that the Democratic Party seems to understand. Earlier this month in Michigan another Trump-backed conspiracist John Gibbs won his primary against a sitting anti-Trump Republican, Peter Meijer. Democrat leaders, reckoning that an extremist would be easier to defeat in November’s midterm election, spent over $400,000 on ads designed to boost Gibbs. It was a move lacking in all principle and helping to weaken the very thing that true democrats should want urgently: a return of the Republican Party from the Mar-a-Lago Hades.From January, Wyoming will have a coward for a congresswoman. But that’s not the worst of it. Grandmother-sellers rarely vend just their own relatives. So while Hageman almost certainly doesn’t herself believe the “stolen election” conspiracy, many of the new Republican representatives do, and she and others have helped them indulge their dark fantasy. It’s a fantasy that could well lead to civil disaster.All is not lost though. Trump’s support has taken a hit among the electorate due to the January 6 hearings. And although in his charmless way he predicted this week that Cheney would “finally disappear into the depths of political oblivion”, she is entirely free to put herself forward as a potential candidate for her party’s nomination for president in 2024, and to appear in all those debates he so enjoys.

That woman has the guts to do it. The rest of us need to wise up.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-cheneys-courage-is-a-wake-up-call-to-us-all-jksc0jgnx

Salman Rushdie: Public reading in New York to show solidarity with writer

James Callery

Hundreds of writers will gather to read Salman Rushdie’s works in New York this week in an act of defiance against the fatwa declared over his book The Satanic Verses. The event is a recreation of a similar public reading of Rushdie’s books that was held a few days after the order to kill him was issued in 1989 by the cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader at the time.

Among the authors taking part will be Paul Auster, Tina Brown, Kiran Desai, Amanda Foreman, AM Homes, Siri Hustvedt, Hari Kunzru and Gay Talese.

The “Stand with Salman” event will be held on the steps of the New York Public Library on Friday morning. The 1989 event was attended by more than 3,000 people.Rushdie, 75, was stabbed at an event last Friday at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, where he had been due to speak about freedom of speech and how the US is a haven for persecuted writers.

The moderator of the event, who suffered a head injury during the attack, hopes to return to the venue one day to interview Rushdie again. Henry Reese, who still has severe bruising to his face, said the incident highlighted more than ever the values the novelist stands for.

Reese told the BBC: “I’m doing well, everything is proceeding — I’m doing quite well. I think our concern is for Salman, and I mean that for himself, but also what he means in the world.”

Asked what the incident meant for the importance of Rushdie’s values, Reese added: “There couldn’t be anything more vivid in its materialisation of our values. Our mission is to protect writers who are in sanctuary and to see Salman Rushdie assaulted for his life is unimaginably... it’s hard to describe what it is to see that happen in front of you.”

Rushdie suffered severe, life-changing injuries after being stabbed several times. His family said that his “usual feisty and defiant sense of humour remains intact” as they revealed the extent of his injuries.Downing Street has dismissed as “ludicrous” a suggestion from Iran that Rushdie might be in any way responsible for the attack. An Iranian government official denied on Monday that Tehran was involved in the attack on the author, adding: “We do not consider anyone other than Salman Rushdie and his supporters worthy of blame.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/salman-rushdie-interviewer-reveals-injuries-from-attack-jp8xbbb6d

#Pakistan #PPP - کل بھی بھٹو زندہ تھا،آج بھی بھٹو زندہ ھے

Video - Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Rawalpindi speech 1973

#Pakistan - #PPP - Forever resilient - Z A BHUTTO

By Sarwat Ali

Even after a traumatic defeat, Pakistani cultural activities quickly bounced back during the Bhutto era.

F

ew countries have bounced back from dismemberment as Pakistan did. Call it apathy or resilience, the trauma of a military defeat, as long as it lasted, facilitated the promulgation of the first ever constitution.

The dismemberment led to probably a more homogeneous country, but the diversity was still seen as debilitating. At a different level, the Pakistan Peoples Party government recognised culture as a legitimate activity. That made way for the setting up of several institutions in the public sector for the promotion of the arts. It overcame the taboo of lehv o la’ab and some space was granted for it to nurture in its autonomous growth, though always accosted by the need to make it purposeful and hence infused with socialistic fervour.

The Pakistan National Council of the Arts was conceived and from its womb was born the Institute of Folk Heritage (Lok Virsa). Similar art councils were formed in the provinces and some budgetary allocations made. Film, too, was given a cover under the National Film Development Corporation and the Academy of Letters was established, as were the language authorities. These included Punjabi, Pushto, Sindhi, Balochi and later Seraiki.

Since everything awami was the slogan of the new government, the folk arts were considered to be the area to concentrate upon and the classical arts were left to wither on the vine as being too elitist. But the upswing was arrested in its trajectory by the imposition of yet another martial law.

What Pakistan lost in East Pakistan, a bailiwick to unload expansion ambitions was rerouted towards Afghanistan. It became the playground for the mini-imperial ambitions, the long shadow started to fall on the Pakistan. A more subsuming role was ascribed to religion yet again but with a very conservative hue. The radicalisation, if any, of the Bhutto era started to be rolled back with ferocity to be replaced with religious radicalism by force.

Though it was under one umbrella, it was difficult to draw strict lines to be followed. Even then centralisation was refracted differently because in the Punjab much cultural activity took place as indeed in Sindh where the Sindhis were pampered to be weaned away from the PPP through doses of Sindhi culture. In the Punjab it provided a vent and a release of pent up political frustration. Television became the mouthpiece of conservatism. A counter current at the local level started to present a more balanced view of the cultural dynamics. Theatre blossomed, purposeful and risqué, and challenged the mores.

The constant chant of Western influence and Indian machinations permeated the public discourse as more and more Indian films were viewed through sources that were not upfront. VCRs became the major mode of entertainment as the films could be viewed in the privacy of the individual spaces away from official censorship.

Similar art councils were formed in the provinces and some budgetary allocations made. Film, too, was given a cover under the National Film Development Corporation and an Academy of Letters was established as were the language authorities. These included languages like Punjabi, Pushto, Sindhi, Balochi and later Seraiki.

The means of communication, both physical and digital, changed the society in no uncertain terms. Cultural figures started travelling abroad more frequently as the diaspora became more prosperous and the digital media opened a totally new world that had been hidden away by the strict censorship in the country. A sneak-peak was possible as never before and the new television channels opened a new world shunning prescribed inhibition.

Music was to be seen as heard and the technological breakthrough started to redefine the formal structures of the arts. The painters, too, found a foothold and their works became products to be purchased and the result was more exposure and prosperity. The writings in English, too, became legit and the poets and novelists earlier sidelined won more attention abroad than the very famous ones writing in local languages.

All regimes after Ziaul Haq’s mushroomed under his shade. Terrorism, once championed, was supplanted by a mantra of the soft image, not an organic home-grown product but a deliberate top down policy.It was alleged that the society was being misunderstood as only the fringe advocated extremism. There has been a succession of culture policies since then, all faltering in implementation.

However, the digital revolution upturned the society. The surface may have remained the same and seemingly unruffled but the cauldron of discontent seethed, cooking from a recipe book a new dish that tasted different. The platform was there for all to use and the gatekeeper, the editor and the authorised bodies all rendered obsolete by the technological shift. The people had finally the advantage of being equally heard. The space was public space for all - clogged with all those empowered to speak and be heard.

The younger people suddenly found freedom handed over to then on a platter by technology in the form of an android phone. And it was from here that they started as their takeoff point, with little care for history and the past. It was freedom to be brandished and with an individual take. The post-truth era was upon us and the post-modern behavioural patterns were flashed with utter disregard.

In this molten centre, the top has tried desperately to retain the solidity of the crust. The exposure far exceeds the experience and the eclectic piling up has replaced the much considered masticated response. It is seen as unnecessary, the mulling over, ruing, and any resistance to knee jerk reaction. It is more instant and on the up –the bedrock being provided by slogans and homilies, the simplistic lines drawn to demarcate right from wrong, light from dark. The social media threw its weight about and created an impression or an image of unquestioned truth and reality.

The local grated against the global and the individuality of culture either valued as treasure or disregarded as passé has fuelled the debate, the vocabulary being swept by the word “narrative” as everyone started making one. Authenticity was what the narrative was.

---

https://www.thenews.com.pk/tns/detail/981712-forever-resilient 

#Pakistan - Amid worsening political crisis, it seems we are moving towards new phase of hybrid rule - A dangerous dead end

By Zahid Hussain

@hidhussain

IT was yet another massive show of political strength by the ousted prime minister in Lahore last week. The triumph in the recent by-elections and regaining control of Punjab seem to have given the PTI a huge political boost. Evidently, the charge of receiving ‘unauthorised funding’ does not seem to have had any effect on the party’s support base.

For now, the PTI is clearly dominating the political narrative. But can Imran Khan maintain the momentum with his populist rhetoric?

Undoubtedly, it was a well-choreographed show on the country’s independence anniversary in the political heartland that continued beyond midnight. The overall content of Imran Khan’s speech of more than an hour may not have been very different from his past speeches but the tenor certainly was, with no mention of the ‘neutrals’ playing dirty.Also missing was the threat of storming the capital and forcing the federal government into announcing the election date. The difference in his position was apparent. The inquiry into illegal funding and the arrest of his close aide on sedition charges seem to have stolen his thunder. The pressure was palpable as he warned against what might be described as a conspiracy to remove him from the political field.

Khan referred to the ‘sword of Damocles’ dangling over his head. There may be some realisation that he has opened too many fronts — hence, the easing of criticism against the establishment. In fact, the tone has become much more conciliatory as he blames his rivals for creating a chasm between his party and the military.

The faltering administration is increasingly relying on the security establishment to deliver.

In a curious change of tack, Imran Khan now seeks to challenge his opponents in by-polls rather than putting his entire effort into forcing the government to dissolve the National Assembly and hold early elections. In a clever move, he has decided to contest all nine seats on which polls have become due after the acceptance of the resignation of some PTI lawmakers.

Notwithstanding his rising popularity graph, the move could prove to be a great political gamble. Even if he wins all the seats, it is not going to change the power dynamics. It will only mean another round of by-elections. With the rest of the resignations of PTI lawmakers being accepted in the coming weeks the country would go through another cycle of by-elections.One wonders how that would serve the PTI’s political strategy. It could only keep the country engaged in purposeless electoral activities and in a perpetual state of instability. Meanwhile, the Shehbaz Sharif government’s incompetence and the rapidly declining political stock of the ruling coalition has added to the problem. In fact, the PTI’s increasing popularity, to a great extent, owes itself to the failure of the ruling alliance to present a more effective policy narrative.

Most of these parties represent the past and can’t think beyond dynastic political interests. They have failed to recognise that social and economic changes have also impacted political dynamics in the country. The humiliation suffered by the PML-N in the recent by-elections has exposed the vulnerability of a party that had dominated Punjab politics for decades.

One of the factors responsible for the debacle was the choice of Hamza Shehbaz as chief minister. The very image of father and son holding the most powerful positions at the centre and in the biggest province was enough to alienate the urban, educated and youthful population.

The entire PML-N storyline over the years has revolved around Nawaz Sharif. The party did not have anything new to offer to the young generation looking for change.

That effectively fed into the PTI’s campaign against family-dominated politics — notwithstanding the fact that the party itself has relied on political dynasties to win seats. Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s son and daughter being given party tickets is such an example. Yet, it has not affected the party’s blind following. Moreover, the internal struggle within the Sharif family has further weakened the PML-N and affected the Shehbaz Sharif government’s capacity to deliver. Some of the hard measures taken by the finance minister may have helped stem the free fall of the economy but it’s not clear whether he is fully in charge given the constant interventions from London. That has also been the reason for some delayed action that makes it more difficult to stop the slide.

The nine-party coalition government appears like a rudderless ship with no coherent policy direction. It’s one of the largest cabinets in the country’s history with many of the ministers and advisers without a portfolio. The disorder is much more pronounced on the foreign policy front with an invisible foreign minister in the post.

The existing disarray on the conduct of foreign policy was highlighted when the prime minister’s adviser — Tariq Fatemi — recently met the US deputy secretary of state at her office in Washington and reportedly discussed bilateral relations including economic matters. But curiously, a few days later, a statement issued by the Pakistan foreign ministry clarified that Fatemi’s visit to Washington was not official. Unsurprisingly, the faltering administration is increasingly relying on the security establishment to deliver on both the economic and foreign policy fronts. It was unprecedented for an army chief to phone the US deputy secretary of state to push the IMF into immediately releasing nearly $1.2 billion that Pakistan is due to receive. The army chief reportedly made similar calls to the leaders of Saudi Arabia and some Gulf countries, apparently for financial support for the country. It seems to be the beginning of a new phase of hybrid rule, with a weak civilian administration and a worsening political crisis. The situation has become even more precarious with the ruling coalition losing control over the most powerful province. The ongoing confrontation between the federal and Punjab governments has taken a very ugly turn. That has also limited the role of the central government.

It is a very serious situation with no political solution in sight. Political uncertainty makes it harder to stabilise the economy. Even early elections are not going to resolve the political crisis in this atmosphere of confrontation. It is an extremely unfortunately position for a county that has just celebrated the 75th anniversary of its independence.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1705351/a-dangerous-dead-end

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov invited his Pakistani counterpart Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari to visit Moscow

In an informal meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov invited his Pakistani counterpart Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari to visit Moscow.

The sources also said that Pakistan was exploring options for a possible bilateral meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Shehbaz.However, nothing is final yet, the sources added.

Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif is likely to have a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping next month on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Uzbekistan.

https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/pak-pm-sharif-likely-to-meet-chinese-pres-xi-during-sco-summit-report-122081700463_1.html