Saturday, July 3, 2021
#China - Xi's article on learning Party history published
An article by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, on learning the CPC history has been published.
The article by Xi, also Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, was published Thursday in this year's 13th issue of the Qiushi Journal, a flagship magazine of the CPC Central Committee.
In his article, Xi said learning the history of the Party, including its remarkable achievements, arduous journey, historical experience and fine traditions, would help better understand the capability of the Party and the strengths of socialism with Chinese characteristics, as well as the reason why Marxism works.
The article called on Party members to gain a profound understanding of the historical inevitability of upholding the Party's leadership, strengthen their confidence in the Party's leadership, and unswervingly follow the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
The article stressed strengthening faith in Marxism and Communism, belief in socialism with Chinese characteristics, and confidence in realizing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
The article also called on Party members to develop strong moral character, stay loyal to the Party, and unite and lead the people in better implementing the new development philosophy and fostering a new pattern of development, so as to pool strengths for the national rejuvenation.
http://en.people.cn/n3/2021/0703/c90000-9867919.html
'A personality type that feels absolutely no guardrails': How Saudi Arabia's leader charmed Washington while cracking down on opponents
Michael Isikoff
Joseph Westphal was wowed from the start. As President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia in 2015, Westphal started paying regular visits to the rising new power in the royal court: the country’s new defense minister, Mohammed bin Salman, favored son of King Salman.
“First of all, we shared a really nice sense of humor,” said Westphal. “I mean we, we laughed, we joked around. ... It was just laughing about life, and talking about things that maybe happened to me or happened to him.”
More important, Prince Mohammed, who is known as MBS, was pledging to start to rein in the country’s religious police and grant greater rights to Saudi women — steps that U.S. officials had long been calling for. “Yes, absolutely,” Westphal replied when asked if he viewed MBS at the time as an agent of change. “From the very beginning. Absolutely.”
Westphal’s relationship with the young Saudi prince is one glimpse into a much broader and, from today’s perspective, unsettling phenomenon: the strange and successful courtship by MBS of America’s foreign policy and corporate elite, presenting himself as a cultured reformer who was positioned to revolutionize his rigidly conservative country.
The story of that courtship — and its embarrassing aftermath, as MBS’s ruthless crackdowns on dissent and his bloody military adventure in Yemen became ever more apparent — is the subject of “The Rise of the Bullet Guy,” Episode 5 in Yahoo News’ "Conspiracyland" podcast: “The Secret Lives and Brutal Death of Jamal Khashoggi.”
It is a courtship that came to a final, crashing and ignominious end when, in October 2018, a so-called Tiger Team of Saudi assassins brutally murdered the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi — drugging him with illicit narcotics brought from Cairo, suffocating him and then carving up his body with a bone saw and depositing his body parts in plastic bags.
It was a crime that the CIA soon concluded had been authorized by the crown prince himself, noting — among other factors — that MBS’s right-hand man had met with the team before they left to kill Khashoggi in Istanbul, and that seven members of the hit squad were part of MBS’s personal security detail, answerable only to him.And yet the shocking nature of Khashoggi’s murder has tended to obscure the preceding years, when at first top Obama administration officials, and then President Donald Trump and his influential son-in-law, Jared Kushner, embraced MBS with few reservations and extolled his supposed virtues.“He’s the only person I’ve met in 30 years of my involvement or more with Saudi Arabia who has put that kind of a vision on the table for the transformation of the country,” said John Kerry, Obama’s secretary of state, in an interview for “Conspiracyland” about his assessment of MBS at the time.
Kerry’s Georgetown home was the setting for perhaps the most iconic moment in MBS’s courtship of the U.S. government. It was in June 2016, and the new Saudi defense minister, during a trip to the United States, was invited to a Ramadan dinner at Kerry’s house. As he entered, MBS spotted the grand piano in the living room, promptly sat down and started to play Beethoven's “Moonlight Sonata.”
“I mean, we were all surprised,” recalled Kerry. “Somebody had trained him well.”
But even as he impressed the guests in Kerry’s living room, others saw the dark impulses of a would-be tyrant. Ben Rhodes, then Obama’s deputy national security adviser, recalls a summit in Riyadh the previous April, when Obama raised U.S. concerns about Saudi Arabia’s worsening human rights record, including a mass execution of 47 prisoners and the case of a Saudi blogger who had just been sentenced to 10 years in prison — and 1,000 lashes with a whip.
“Obama’s like, ‘What are you guys doing? I’m not gonna defend this,’” said Rhodes in an interview for “Conspiracyland.”
But suddenly, “MBS stands up in the middle of the room, and, and begins to lecture Obama: ‘You don’t understand the Saudi justice system. And if we didn’t do this, our people would demand vengeance.’ And then he offers to get Obama a briefing on the Saudi justice system. I mean, dripping condescension. You know? And I just remember sitting there and thinking, like, ‘What is going on here?’”
“It spoke to a personality type that feels absolutely no guardrails, you know?” Rhodes added. “I mean, if you’re comfortable standing up in a room full of people and lecturing the president of the United States … because he’s raising concerns about mass executions in your country, you are not the guy people [are] reading about … in the New York Times and the Washington Post, who’s [described as] a reformer. I mean, it just laid bare the utter bullshit of the narrative around MBS to me. And I’m, I’m sitting there thinking, you know, ‘How are people calling this guy a modernizer?’"
But there was an issue of far more concern to U.S. officials than the young prince’s condescending lecture to Obama. With virtually no warning to Washington, MBS had launched a merciless war in Yemen, targeting the Houthis — a religious minority group loosely aligned with the Iranians who had seized control of the country’s capital. Saudi warplanes, using American weapons, had unleashed a relentless wave of bombings that were slaughtering civilians by the thousands, sparking outrage from human rights groups.
There was “countless documentation of U.S.-manufactured bombs being used on markets, on schools, on people’s homes, on hospitals, on clinics throughout the country,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, then the director of Human Rights Watch’s Mideast Division and now the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now.Officials in the Obama administration were well aware of the compromising position this put them in. The State Department’s legal office even launched an inquiry into whether the United States was complicit in war crimes. (The lawyers never reached a firm conclusion.) But the White House was torn about what to do.
At the White House, officials were “repelled by what we were seeing,” said Rob Malley, who was then on the National Security Council and charged with coordinating U.S. policy in the region. “But the first instinct was, ‘Well, let’s see if we could give them advice on how to make sure that they don’t kill civilians again.’ But it turns out time and again, whether it’s a mosque, whether it’s a market, whether it’s whatever it is, that they would not only hit it once, they hit it twice, sometimes more.”
Still, said Malley, Obama was reluctant to provoke a confrontation with the Saudis. At the time, relations were tense over the Iranian nuclear deal, which Riyadh opposed, and he wanted the Saudis' help in the war against the Islamic State group.
“There was a meeting [about the war in Yemen] of the Principals Committee, chaired by President Obama,” said Malley. “There were voices expressing a lot of concern.” But Obama “felt he could not, given everything else that was happening in the region, afford a crisis with one of the few countries with which we still retained ... strong relations and cooperation on a whole host of issues, counterterrorism first and foremost.
“I was extremely — how could I put it? — troubled by the whole decision, because we should not have been complicit in this war,” added Malley, who has rejoined the National Security Council under President Biden. “And, you know, the U.S. makes enormous — mistakes is probably too, too kind a word, to describe many, many of its actions.”There was no doubt in the minds of Malley and other U.S. officials that it was MBS who was driving the train. “He seemed to be already oblivious to the consequences of the actions that he took,” said Malley. “And this was his war … because he was the one who appeared to order it.”
It was a harbinger of even more disturbing moves to come.
https://news.yahoo.com/a-personality-type-that-feels-absolutely-no-guard-rails-how-saudi-arabias-leader-charmed-washington-while-cracking-down-on-opponents-090017268.html
Opinion: Why Biden and Democrats can take credit for an improving economy
Opinion: by Paul Waldman
And there’s something else at work, something that has become a theme of the Biden presidency. Here’s what he said Friday:
Instead of workers competing with each other for jobs that are scarce, employers are competing with each other to attract workers. That kind of competition in the market doesn’t just give workers more ability to earn higher wages, it also gives them the ability to demand to be treated with dignity and respect in the workplace.
That doesn’t necessarily make everyone happy; a disturbing poll from the progressive firm Data for Progress found 60 percent of Republicans saying higher starting wages for workers are a bad thing because they show that unemployment benefits are too generous.
And to be sure, the American economy has an awfully long way to go before it treats everyone with dignity and respect. But we may at least have made a start.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/02/why-biden-democrats-can-take-credit-an-improving-economy/
Draconian rules - #Pakistan’s Removal of Unlawful Online Content Rules, 2021
THE Asia Internet Coalition has once again struck back against Pakistan’s Removal of Unlawful Online Content Rules, 2021, describing the latest version (published last month by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication) as containing all the same “problematic provisions” as previous drafts, with only “minor changes”. Echoing concerns of local rights advocates and digital experts, the association of major technology firms also noted with alarm that these rules go far beyond the scope of its parent act, the draconian Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016. The rules are also currently being challenged in the Islamabad High Court on the grounds of being unconstitutional, a development which had at least led to the attorney general conceding the need for more stakeholder consultation.
That was in April. Some months later, given the absence of any substantive feedback being incorporated into the rules, it is apparent that despite sustained attempts to engage with lawmakers in good faith, human rights defenders’ concerns continue to fall on deaf ears, validating their worst fears regarding the state’s intentions for digital governance.
The centrepiece of an explicit and relentless drive to monitor and control virtually all aspects of our lives, the rules are impractical, oppressive and guaranteed to cause immense social and economic harm. There is no imaginable outcome in which they will lead to progress and growth — rather, they are designed to afford the state even more excessive and arbitrary powers, with little to no oversight and accountability. The cost of this campaign to forcefully promote a statist monoculture will be paid for by citizens for decades to come, as every avenue for creativity and innovation is stifled. Since the rules were first floated, the government has led stakeholders down a meandering path of insincere dialogue. But unless it wishes to plunge the country into a digital dark age, there is only one course of action it must undertake: denotify the rules and commit to a comprehensive overhaul of Peca.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1632894/draconian-rules
#Pakistan - Briefing on National Security And a shot across the bow by US
The precarious security situation in Afghanistan and its dangerous ramifications for Pakistan led the security establishment to hold a high-level briefing for over 40 important parliamentarians under the aegis of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security. Parliamentarians are usually taken into confidence only when polices formulated by the establishment lead to a cul de sac. Pakistan is in a pretty pickle these days. While the Afghan government never trusted Pakistan, now the Taliban too are unwilling to heed its advice. The USA is reportedly behind the FATF decision to prolong Pakistan’s stay in the gray list. The sword of the IMF meanwhile continues to hang over Pakistan’s head. Whether Pakistan will be able to retain its GSP-Plus status is anybody’s guess. As a warning shot, the USA has included Pakistan in the child soldier recruiter list, a designation that could lead to strict sanctions on military assistance.
The parliamentarians tried to seek all the “sensitive” information they needed from the security establishment. Politicians frequently claim that the establishment encroaches upon the elected governments’ turf and makes policies that harm the country. It is now for the political leaders to step up to the plate. A PML(N) leader who attended the briefing has asked the government to call a joint session of Parliament to prepare a national response to the situation.
There are several challenges the country is facing. Proxies, the meeting was told, were being triggered by external forces as was evident from the increase in terrorism in Balochistan and last week’s explosion in Lahore.
With a civil war raging in Afghanistan, there would be an inevitable influx of refugees into Pakistan. This has caused complicated problems in the past. This time there is a likelihood of individuals belonging to terrorist groups sneaking into Pakistan pretending to be refugees.
It was maintained during the briefing that Pakistan’s territory was not being used in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. Hopes were expressed that Afghanistan too would not let its soil to be used against Pakistan. Neither the Afghan Taliban, nor the Afghan government, showed interest in taking out or reining in these networks in the past. There is little likelihood of their obliging Pakistan now. The complicated problems can only be dealt with through collective brainstorming in Parliament.
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/07/02/briefing-on-national-security/
US adds Pakistan, along with 14 other countries in list of Child Soldiers Prevention Act
The list identifies foreign governments with government-supported armed groups that recruit or use child soldiers and subject them to certain restrictions.
The US has added Pakistan along with 14 other countries in a list of Child Soldiers Prevention Act which identifies foreign governments having government-supported armed groups that recruit or use child soldiers, a designation that could result in restrictions on certain security assistance and commercial licensing of military equipment.
The US Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) requires publication in the annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report a list of foreign governments that have recruited or used child soldiers during the previous year (April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021).
The countries which have been added to the annual TIP list of the US State Department are Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
According to the State Department, the governments identified on the list are subject to restrictions, in the following fiscal year, on certain security assistance and commercial licensing of military equipment.
The term child soldier means any person under 18 years of age who takes a direct part in hostilities or who has been compulsorily recruited into governmental armed forces, police, or other security forces.
It also means any person under 15 years of age who has been voluntarily recruited into governmental armed forces, police, or other security forces or any person under 18 years of age who has been recruited or used in hostilities by armed forces distinct from the armed forces of a state.
It also includes any such person who is serving in any capacity, including in a support role, such as a cook, porter, messenger, medic, guard or sex slave.The CSPA prohibits assistance to governments that are identified in the list under the following authorities: International Military Education and Training, Foreign Military Financing, Excess Defence Articles, and Peacekeeping Operations, with exceptions for some programmes undertaken pursuant to the Peacekeeping Operations authority.It also prohibits the issuance of licenses for direct commercial sales of military equipment to such governments.
Beginning October 1, 2021, and effective throughout fiscal year 2022, these restrictions will apply to the listed countries, absent a presidential waiver, applicable exception, or reinstatement of assistance pursuant to the terms of the CSPA.
The determination to include a government in the CSPA list is informed by a range of sources, including first-hand observation by the US government personnel and research and credible reporting from various UN entities, international organisations, local and international NGOs, and international and domestic media outlets.
https://theprint.in/world/us-adds-pakistan-along-with-14-other-countries-in-list-of-child-soldiers-prevention-act/689033/
Pakistan’s prime minister embraces China’s policy toward Uyghurs in remarks on Communist Party centenary
By Sammy Westfall
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan offered on Thursday remarks rare for the leader of a large, Muslim majority country, reaffirming his support for Beijing’s policies toward Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region. Much of the international community had condemned the mass detention and efforts at forced assimilation of Uyghurs, which the U.S. State Department has described as “genocide.” More than 1 million Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority group, have been sent to what Beijing calls “vocational education and training centers,” but which human rights groups say are detention camps, where extensive abuses have been reported. “Because we have a very strong relationship with China, and because we have a relationship based on trust, so we actually accept the Chinese version,” Khan said in remarks marking the Chinese Communist Party’s centennial celebration. “What they say about the programs in Xinjiang, we accept it.” Since China launched a sweeping crackdown in Xinjiang in 2017, many human rights advocates and world leaders have sounded alarm bells. The issue has gained particular traction in many Muslim-majority countries. But not with Khan. Speaking to Chinese reporters visiting Islamabad for the centenary, Khan said he finds it hypocritical that other human rights issues — such as the conflict in Kashmir between India and China — are not afforded the same attention. Khan’s stance on the Uyghurs stands out amid his advocacy against Islamophobia in the region. An outspoken advocate of discrimination against Muslims, Khan wrote last year a letter addressed to leaders of Muslim countries, urging that they work to “end cycles of violence bred of ignorance and hate.” Pakistan is the world’s second largest Muslim-majority country, after Indonesia. Analysts said the remarks make sense in the context of Pakistan’s relationship with China, on which it depends for political and economic support. “Pakistan just can’t afford to go against China on such a sensitive issue,” said Filippo Boni, a scholar of China-Pakistan relations, “especially at a time when the West is very much focused on the Uyghur issue.” Announced in 2015, one of the most conspicuous elements of the relationship is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor — a $60 billion set of Chinese infrastructure investment in Pakistan, including a $6.8 billion railway upgrade and new highways, as part of the Belt and Road initiative. Projects are still underway. During the coronavirus pandemic, Pakistan was early to express solidarity with China, and China has sent vaccine doses to Pakistan. In addition to his comments about Uyghurs, Khan praised China’s political system, Al Jazeera reported. “Up until now, we were told that the best way for societies to improve themselves is the Western system of democracy,” he said. But the CPC has brought an “alternative” and “unique model.” Khan has voiced similar views in the past. When pressed by Axios’s Jonathan Swain about his silence on the Uyghurs, Khan said any issues Pakistan has with China are discussed “behind closed doors.”https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/02/pakistan-prime-minister-backs-china-on-uyghurs/
Friday, July 2, 2021
Decades of Mental Conditioning Responsible for Anti-Minority Hostility in Pakistan: Speakers
Speakers at a workshop said policies in the past decades were responsible for the progressive radicalization of society. Decades of mental conditioning through education, ideological indoctrination, and other means have led to faith-based polarization and anti-minority hostility in Pakistan. In the contemporary environment, members of minority religious groups find it hard to live in peace with equal rights and dignity. Even constitutional safeguards and other legal protections have done little to ensure equality of citizenship for all, the speakers added.
Social researcher and author of ‘Radicalization in Pakistan’, Safdar Hussain Sial, said the discrimination against religious minorities is widespread and systematic and includes economic exclusion. The minorities often lack equal access to employment opportunities which is a key factor behind the immense economic disparity across different religious groups in Pakistan.
In certain cases, members of minority communities are denied the critical identity or citizenship documents which, among other things, cut them off from the job market, Sial said.
The anti-minority sentiments are further aggravated by the weaponization of certain laws such as those criminalizing blasphemy or targeting a particular religious group. The blasphemy law has been misused against the non-Muslim and Muslim communities alike, leading to many incidents of mob violence, Safdar Sial said, adding that in such a scenario the role of youth in creating a more tolerant and peaceful society is crucial.
During the workshop, the minority issue was also put into regional perspective by security analyst and director Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), Muhammad Amir Rana, who revealed that around 65,000 Rohingya Muslims have been living in desperate conditions in Karachi for decades. Stressing the significance of citizenship, Amir Rana said depriving an individual of citizenship is depriving them of fundamental rights and basic social services such as health and education. The Rohingya community continues to languish as stateless people in Pakistan, he added.
Organized by the Islamabad-based think tank, Pak Institute for Peace Studies, the two-day educational and training workshop was part of the nationwide workshops for the promotion of interfaith harmony among the Pakistani youth. University students from across Balochistan participated in the workshop and exchanged thoughts around the theme of interfaith harmony. The participants were also given quick training ineffective use of social media tools by senior journalist and social media activist, Sabookh Syed. The Pakistani youth can use the power of social media to support peace and harmony, and oppose discrimination against minorities, Syed said.
Former president Asif Ali Zardari admitted to hospital after feeling unwell
Former president Asif Ali Zardari has been admitted to a hospital earlier today (Friday) after his health deteriorated, PPP sources told Geo News.
PPP Co-chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has arrived in Karachi from Islamabad while Bakhtawar Bhutto-Zardari and her husband have also reached the city from Dubai to attend to her father.
Last year in October, the PPP leader and former president was admitted to a hospital due to low sugar level.
Bilawal, during his recent address at the National Assembly, had said that Zardari had attended a budget session despite being unwell.
The former president had arrived in Karachi recently from Lahore and Islamabad. In Lahore, he had recently attended a meeting with former Punjab chief minister Pervaiz Elahi.
Severe back pain
Dr Asim Hussain said the former president had undergone a medical check-up at a private hospital during which he had complained of severe back pain.
"An orthopedic surgeon is treating Asif Zardari, and he has undergone necessary medical tests," he said while speaking to Geo News.
https://www.geo.tv/latest/358075-former-president-asif-ali-zardari-admitted-to-hospital-after-feeling-unwell-sources
Bilawal Bhutto targets Imran Khan, says PM made life a living hell for people in the name of 'Naya Pakistan'
PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari attacked Pakistan PM Imran Khan and said his government has made life a living hell for the masses in the name of "Naya Pakistan."
Zardari made the remark following Imran's budget speech in the National Assembly on Wednesday.
Bilawal was quoted as saying by Geo News that the PM is trying to make a fool out of people because all the measures his government has taken are in favour of the rich instead of the poor.
"The masses do not want to listen to the prime minister delivering a lecture," he was quoted as saying by Geo News. "What sort of hypocrisy is that?"
Bilawal said that the government did not take the Opposition on board when developing the budget, while he also censured the speech delivered by the premier and said that it was "nothing but a mere manipulation of words."
"The prime minister spoke of economic development but he is inviting immigrants to the country," Bilawal said. "The PM makes tall claims about the poor but his actions and policies do not correspond. He's making the rich richer and the poor poorer."
https://www.indiablooms.com/world-details/SA/30145/bilawal-bhutto-targets-imran-khan-says-pm-made-life-a-living-hell-for-people-in-the-name-of-naya-pakistan.html
وزیراعظم عمران خان قوم کے مقابلے میں اپنی انا کو ترجیح دیتے ہیں، بلاول بھٹو
پیپلز پارٹی کے چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا ہے کہ وزیراعظم عمران
خان قوم کے مقابلے میں اپنی انا کو ترجیح دیتے ہیں۔
کراچی سے جاری بیان میں بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے قومی سلامتی سے متعلق پارلیمانی کمیٹی کی بریفنگ کو اچھا آغاز قرار دیا۔
انہوں نے کہاکہ ہمارا موقف ہے 2012 ءکی قومی سلامتی کمیٹی کی قرارداد پرعمل درآمد ہو۔
پی پی چیئرمین نے مزید کہا کہ پارلیمان کی قومی سلامتی کمیٹی اجلاس سے وزیراعظم ایک مرتبہ پھر غیر حاضر رہے۔
اُن کا کہنا تھاکہ قومی سلامتی کمیٹی اجلاس میں عدم موجودگی ثابت کرتی ہے کہ وزیراعظم عمران خان قوم کے مقابلے میں اپنی انا کو ترجیح دیتے ہیں۔
https://jang.com.pk/news/950688
Thursday, July 1, 2021
Xi rallies Party for "unstoppable" pursuit to national rejuvenation as CPC celebrates centenary
http://en.people.cn/n3/2021/0701/c90000-9867538.html
THE EDITORIAL BOARD: U.S. - The Supreme Court Abandons Voting Rights
The 1965 Voting Rights Act was one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history. By outlawing racial discrimination in voting and imposing federal oversight in states with histories of discriminating, it finally enforced the 15th Amendment and marked the first time the nation could call itself a truly representative democracy. Until the last decade, the law occupied a sacred spot in the American legal system. In 2006, Congress reauthorized the law nearly unanimously.
Since then, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has been dismantling it, piece by piece.
The latest blow came Thursday, when all six conservative justices voted to uphold two Arizona voting laws despite lower federal courts finding clear evidence that the laws make voting harder for voters of color — whether Black, Latino or Native American. One law requires election officials to throw out ballots that were cast in the wrong precinct; the other bars most people and groups from collecting voters’ absentee ballots and dropping them off at polling places.
Under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars any law that discriminates on the basis of race, whether intentionally or not, the Arizona laws should have been invalidated. But the conservative justices dismissed the challenge because, they said, only a small number of people were affected. “The mere fact that there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily mean that a system is not equally open or that it does not give everyone an equal opportunity to vote,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in an opinion joined by the other conservatives.
That is a dismissive wave of the hand at precisely the sort of evidence that Congress told voting-rights plaintiffs to present in court. As Justice Elena Kagan pointed out in a dissent longer than the ruling itself, small numbers can make a big difference. In 2020, for example, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Arizona by a little over 10,000 votes — fewer than the state threw out based on the out-of-precinct policy in two of the past three presidential elections.
Since the court is talking about “mere facts,” the conservative justices might have noted the mere fact that voting fraud, which lawmakers in a number of states claim they are trying to prevent with laws like the ones in Arizona, is essentially nonexistent. As one federal judge put it several years ago, such laws are akin to using “a sledgehammer to hit either a real or imaginary fly on a glass coffee table.”
That doesn’t appear to bother the conservative justices, who have given a free pass to state legislatures to discriminate, even as they demand more and more from voters trying to show that they are hurt by that discrimination.
This subverts the whole purpose of the Voting Rights Act, which was enacted because of the persistence of discriminatory state voting laws and policies, a point Justice Kagan made throughout her dissent. “What is tragic here is that the Court has (yet again) rewritten — in order to weaken — a statute that stands as a monument to America’s greatness, and protects against its basest impulses,” she wrote.
Those impulses have been on flagrant display over the past several years, as Republican-controlled legislatures across the country have raced one another to pass laws that make voting harder — whether through stringent voter-identification requirements, limits on early and absentee voting, hurdles to registration, indiscriminate purges of voter rolls and laws like Arizona’s. Many of these laws disproportionately hurt voters of color. Already this year, 28 laws restricting voting have passed in 17 states, according to a running tally by the Brennan Center for Justice.
The conservatives on the court choose to be oblivious to the function of these laws, perhaps because they and their colleagues created the conditions for them to thrive in the first place. In 2013, the court gutted the heart of the Voting Rights Act, Section 5, which had required states and localities with a history of discriminatory voting practices — including Arizona — to obtain approval from the federal government before changing or adopting any voting law.
Section 5 was by far the most effective way to prevent voting discrimination, but according to Chief Justice John Roberts — who has been working to hobble the Voting Rights Act since he was a junior lawyer in the Reagan administration — the list of offenders was out of date. “Things have changed dramatically,” he wrote in his 2013 majority opinion, pointing to the increase in Black voter registration and turnout in the years since the Voting Rights Act was adopted. It didn’t seem to occur to him that this increase was precisely because of the law, and not in spite of it. As if to drive home the point, Republican-led states that had been under federal oversight began imposing strict new voting laws within hours of the ruling.
After 2013, Section 2 was the only meaningful tool left in the Voting Rights Act — indeed, Chief Justice Roberts pointed out this fact as supposed consolation when the court eliminated Section 5. But its medicine was never as strong. Lawsuits alleging violations under Section 2 can only be brought after a new voting law has passed, and may have been discriminating against voters for years. The suits are expensive and time-consuming, which deters most potential plaintiffs. Even when plaintiffs show incontestable proof of discrimination, as they did in Thursday’s case, the odds are stacked against them.
This is bad news for upcoming legal challenges to Republican-enacted voter restrictions in other states. Just how bad will depend in part on the outcome of a lawsuit the Justice Department filed last week against a sweeping new voting law in Georgia. The suit contends that the Georgia Republicans who passed it, upset at Democratic victories in the state’s presidential and Senate contests, intentionally targeted Black voters, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Proving intentional discrimination is a high bar, but Georgia’s lawmakers worked hard to make the job easier, passing all kinds of restrictions that disproportionately hurt Black voters.
Congress has been debating a bill that would restore the heart of the Voting Rights Act by reimposing federal oversight of voting laws in states that have repeatedly discriminated in the last 25 years. Thanks to blanket opposition by Republicans and the existence of the filibuster, which allows a minority of senators to block a bill with majority support, the bill is a dead letter — unless Democrats decide to end the filibuster.
Even that step would not turn back the anti-democratic tide, which grew into a wave during the Trump administration. In Georgia, Arizona and elsewhere, Republican lawmakers driven by demonstrable lies about fraud in the 2020 election are changing the rules around how votes are counted and certified. They are stripping power from officials, like the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who did their jobs in 2020 and refused to succumb to pressure from Mr. Trump and his allies to “find” extra votes and overturn the results to help him win.
The strategy is so dangerous because it is so dull. It’s easy to be outraged by, say, making it a crime to give voters water while they wait in oppressively long lines to cast a ballot, as the new Georgia law does. It’s harder to get worked up about the arcane machinery of election administration. But these laws are of a piece with the voting restrictions being passed by the same lawmakers. Together, they are designed to keep Democratic-leaning voters away from the polls, and to the extent that fails, to deny victory to Democratic candidates, even when they win more votes.
The current conservative majority on the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roberts, shows no interest in thwarting this attack on democracy and protecting Americans’ fundamental constitutional right to vote. The ball is in Congress’s court, and time is fast running out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/opinion/supreme-court-voting-law.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Germany pulls last troops from Afghanistan, ending nearly 20-year mission
Germany has finished withdrawing its last contingent of around 570 soldiers from Afghanistan as the security situation deteriorates. The move marks the end of a nearly 20-year mission.
With US troops eyeing their final exit from Afghanistan in September, Germany pulled out all of its remaining troops on Tuesday. Last week, Germany's Defense Ministry said around 570 troops were still deployed.
The last of them have now been flown out of the northern city of Mazar — ending a nearly two decade-long mission. The contingent also included members of the KSK special forces, who were tasked with securing the camp during the move.
German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said the soldiers were "now on their way home."
"This marks the end of a historic chapter – an intense deployment that has challenged and shaped us," she wrote on Twitter.
She thanked the soldiers for fulfilling their duties in Afghanistan "with professionalism and conviction."
Looking back at the mission, the minister pledged to discuss "what was good, what was not good and what we've learned."
Germany's armed forces also confirmed the pullout, saying that "last soldiers have left Afghanistan."
The German military had kept the details on the pullout vague on security grounds. Speaking just hours before the move was officially confirmed, Kramp-Karrenbauer said the withdrawal was happening "in an orderly manner, but also as swiftly as possible." Germany maintained a contingent of around 1,100 troops before starting the drawdown in May.
What happens next?
The four military planes carrying the troops are expected to make a stop in Tbilisi before landing in Germany on Wednesday. Their old camp will be handed to Afghani troops as Germany ends its participation in NATO's "Resolute Support" mission.
After landing in Germany, the soldiers will enter a mandatory two-week quarantine to curb the risk of the highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant. According to Der Spiegel magazine, at least one German soldier was infected with the variant earlier this month.
How long were German troops in Afghanistan?
Germany deployed its forces in the wake of the deadly 9/11 attacks on the US conducted by al-Qaida in 2001. The first troops arrived in Kabul in January 2002.
In the early stages of the mission, German soldiers were told that their deployment was aimed at stabilizing the country rather than fighting the Taliban.
Over 150,000 German soldiers have been stationed in Afghanistan over the years, many of them serving more than once.
By the end of 2020, the Bundeswehr's deployment had cost the German taxpayers around €12.5 billion ($15 billion).
The mission, which lasted for almost 20 years, cost the lives of 59 German soldiers.
It was the longest, most expensive and the bloodiest German deployment since WWII. According to UN data, the Afghanistan conflict claimed the lives of over 39,000 civilians since 2009. While most of them have been killed by the Taliban, international forces also caused civilian causalities, especially through air strikes. The US also lost 2,442 soldiers since the mission started.
What is happening in Afghanistan?
The end of the mission comes as the Taliban in Afghanistan rapidly seize new territory from the US-backed government in Kabul. Taliban forces are also positioning themselves around provincial capitals, prompting fears that they will seize full control once all foreign troops leave. The UN reported a spike in civilian casualties since last September.
The extremist Islamic militants were notably emboldened by the US pledge to finish its Afghanistan withdrawal this year. The administration of Donald Trump had pledged to complete the pullout by May this year. His successor, Joe Biden, changed the target date to September 11 this year, the 20th anniversary of the attacks which prompted the conflict.While meeting with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on Friday, Biden promised a "sustained" partnership between the countries. However, he did not signal any changes to the timetable due to the Taliban offensive. "Afghans are going to have to decide their future," Biden told reporters. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-pulls-last-troops-from-afghanistan-ending-nearly-20-year-mission/a-58097894
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