Of all the shameless journalists in Pakistan who are toeing the line of the Pakistan Establishment, the worst are those who, while professing and posing to be ‘liberal’ and ‘independent’, like Raza Rumi and his sidekick Mehr Husayn who run the portals nayadaur.tv and thefridaytimes.com, do the same, though in a subtle, deceptive manner, under a figleaf of neutrality, slurring over the truth.
On seeing the articles posted on their websites one finds conspicuously missing accounts of the fascist reign of terror unleashed by the Pakistan Establishment, with over ten thousand people in Pakistan arrested and jailed on false and frivolous charges, many beaten, tortured, killed, or just ‘disappeared’.
One also notes an absence of condemnation of Pakistan’s judiciary which has turned a Nelson’s eye to these horrors, though having taken an oath to protect the people’s rights.
One particularly notes, and this is the most important, no mention in nayadaur.tv or fridaytimes.com of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is bravely leading the democratic forces in Pakistan even from inside Attock jail, with his spirit unbroken and undaunted by all odds
It seems Mehr Husayn, who runs thefridaytimes.com, only cares for her own comforts, and the safety and welfare of her sons Zulfiqar and Kassim, rather than the welfare of the people of Pakistan, who can go to hell as far as she was concerned.
I have already written about RazaRumi, who masquerades as a journalist and analyst, but is a downright sycophant.
Raza praised former PM Benazir Bhutto sky high, but I cannot believe that, being a Pakistani, he did not know about her large scale corruption, of which he deliberately made no mention.
He rushed to congratulate Pakistan’s former Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman on being named among the 100 most influential persons of the world in 2023 by Time magazine, though that recognition was really a joke, as in a poor country where food riots have taken place she wears the costliest attire and puts on the costliest cosmetics ( even her lipstick and shampoo are perhaps imported ), which show how much she really cares for the poor and suffering.
Most journalists in Pakistan are sold out, and openly pro-Establishment.
But it is these wolves in sheep clothing, the ‘liberal’ media, like Raza and Mehr, who are the worst, as they have the capacity to deceive, by deliberate omission of the truth, and by diverting attention from the main issues
He later told reporters outside the hearing: “It is really troubling that Americans’ taxpayer dollars are being used to come here on this junket to do an examination of the safest big city in America.”
A rowdy crowd of anti-Trump protestors demanded to be let inside the federal building in lower Manhattan as the committee heard testimony from a formerly incarcerated bodega clerk and the mother of a homicide victim, among others who testified.
The hearing — titled “Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan” — was called by the committee in the wake of the arraignment of the former president, who, ever since being criminally indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan, has attacked Alvin Bragg, the district attorney leading the case, for not addressing local crime instead.
His GOP allies have leveled similar criticisms. Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the committee, called New York a “city that has lost its way” during the hearing.
“Here in Manhattan, the scales of justice are weighed down by politics,” Jordan later added during the hearing, accusing Bragg of taking a “soft-on-crime approach to the real criminals.”
The mayor and other Democrats were quick to point out Monday that crime in many major categories is on the decline. A letter sent to Jordan last week cited recently released NYPD statistics showing murders are down roughly a tenth from at this time last year. Shootings and transit crimes have decreased, too.
The full picture of crime statistics in New York is more of a mixed bag, though. Felony assaults are up, driven largely by domestic incidents and attacks on police officers, and major felony arrests are at a high not seen in more than two decades.
Adams also pointed to data reported in the New York Daily News Monday morning suggesting that residents of Jordan’s home state of Ohio are far more likely to die from gun violence than New Yorkers.
Wirepoints, an Illinois-based nonprofit, found in February that New York City had among the lowest homicide rates among the nation’s largest cities.
Adams said neither he nor anyone from his administration was asked to speak.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who represents New York’s 13th District, also took issue with Republicans on the committee criticizing crime in the state without backing stronger federal gun control legislation.
“The common denominator in most homicides across the country is a gun,” he said during the hearing.
The GOP’s embrace of the issue of crime in their attacks against Bragg — and the other side’s full-throated response — is indicative of just how salient the issue remains in New York politics, and of its soreness for Democrats in the wake of midterm losses and a much closer than anticipated gubernatorial race. Even public safety-focused Democrats like Adams have struggled to make voters think they’re making headway on the issue.
Manhattan Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, a former chair of the committee, warned voters not to be “fooled.”
“This hearing is being called for one reason and one reason only: to protect Donald Trump,” he said at the news conference with Adams.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Hyderabad: On the day of the ED probe into BRS MLC K Kavitha in Delhi, BRS has put up posters across Hyderabad with one of them depicting Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the ten-headed Ravana from Hindu mythology.
The poster also described the Prime Minister as the ‘destroyer of democracy and ‘grandfather of hypocrisy’.
Along with this, posters mocking the BJP for its ‘raid’ detergent also were put up by members of the BRS in the city.
Posters, featuring leaders who joined BJP from others parties and BRS MLC K Kavitha on the other hand, were seen in Hyderabad.
Posters mocking BJP come up in Hyderabad. Photo: ANI.
According to sources, Kavitha will be made to sit face-to-face with Hyderabad-based businessman Arun Ramchandra Pillai, who was arrested in connection with the liquor policy case on Monday night.
The MLC termed the summons as “tactics of intimidation” by the Centre against the Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and the BRS, adding that the party will continue to fight and expose the Centre’s failures and will raise its voice for a brighter and better future for India.
“I would also like the ruling party at the Centre to know that these tactics of intimidation against the fight and voice of our leader, CM KCR, and against the entire BRS party will not deter us. Under the leadership of KCR Garu, we will continue to fight to expose your failures and raise voice for a brighter and better future for India,” Kavitha said in a tweet.
On March 8, the BRS came down heavily on the Centre after the ED summoned Kavitha in connection with its ongoing probe in the Delhi excise policy case, saying that the central probe agencies have become an extended arm of the BJP.
Referring to the summons as “politically motivated”, BRS leader Ravula Sridhar Reddy had said that except ED and BJP, nobody really understands the case registered in connection with the new-withdrawn new Delhi excise policy.
In its investigation, ED has come to know that Pillai is one of the key persons in the entire scam involving payments of huge kickbacks and the formation of the biggest cartel of the South Group.
South Group comprises Telangana MLC Kavitha, Sarath Reddy (promoter of Aurobindo Group), Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy (MP, Ongole), his son Raghav Magunta, and others. The South Group was being represented by Pillai, Abhishek Boinpalli and Butchi Babu, the federal agency investigation has revealed.
Pillai along with his associates was coordinating with various persons to execute the political understanding between the South Group and a leader of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Pillai has been an accomplice and was involved in the kickbacks from the South Group and the recoupment of the same from the businesses in Delhi, ED investigation reveals.
The ED had earlier said that the South Group gave kickbacks of Rs 100 crore to AAP leaders.
Pillai is learnt to be a partner of 32.5 per cent in Indo Spirits, which had got an L1 licence. Indo Spirits is a partnership firm of Arun Pillai (32.5 per cent), Prem Rahul (32.5 per cent) and Indospirit Distribution Limited (35 per cent), wherein Arun Pillai and Prem Rahul represented the benami investments of Kavitha and Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy and his son Raghava Magunta.
Kavitha, who is a member of the Telangana Legislative Council, was questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the same case in December last year.
The excise policy was passed in Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi Cabinet in the middle of the deadly Delta Covid-19 pandemic in 2021.
The Delhi government’s version is that the policy was formulated to ensure the generation of optimum revenue, eradicate the sale of spurious liquor or non-duty paid liquor in Delhi, besides improving user experience.
The CBI had filed a case against alleged corruption in the 2021-22 excise policy. The excise policy was subsequently withdrawn by the AAP government.
Sisodia was among 15 others booked in an FIR filed by the CBI. Excise officials, liquor company executives, dealers, some unknown public servants and private persons were booked in the case.
It was alleged that irregularities were committed including modifications in the Excise Policy and undue favours were extended to the license holders including waiver or reduction in licence fee, an extension of L-1 license without approval etc
Joe Biden has been accused of hypocrisy for demanding the release of journalists detained around the world while the US president continues seeking the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain to face American espionage charges.
The campaign to pressure the Biden administration to drop the charges moved to Washington DC on Friday with a hearing of the Belmarsh Tribunal, an ad hoc gathering of legal experts and supporters named after the London prison where Assange is being detained.
The hearing was held in the same room where Assange in 2010 exposed the “collateral murder” video showing US aircrew gunning down Iraqi civilians, the first of hundreds of thousands of leaked secret military documents and diplomatic cables published in major newspapers around the world. The revelations about America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including alleged war crimes, and the frank assessments of US diplomats about their host governments, caused severe embarrassment in Washington.
The tribunal heard that the charges against Assange were an “ongoing attack on press freedom” because the WikiLeaks founder was not a spy but a journalist and publisher protected by free speech laws.
The tribunal co-chairperson Srecko Horvat – a founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 whose father was a political prisoner in the former Yugoslavia – quoted Biden from the 2020 presidential campaign calling for the release of imprisoned journalists across the world by quoting late president Thomas Jefferson’s dictum that “our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost”.
“President Biden is normally advocating freedom of press, but at the same time continuing the persecution of Julian Assange,” Horvat said.
Horvat warned that continuing the prosecution could serve as a bad example to other governments.
“This is an attack on press freedom globally – that’s because the United States is advancing what I think is really the extraordinary claim that it can impose its criminal secrecy laws on a foreign publisher who was publishing outside the United States,” he said.
“Every country has secrecy laws. Some countries have very draconian secrecy laws. If those countries tried to extradite New York Times reporters and publishers to those countries for publishing their secrets we would cry foul and rightly so. Does this administration want to be the first to establish the global precedent that countries can demand the extradition of foreign reporters and publishers for violating their own laws?”
Assange faces 18 charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of classified documents, largely the result of a leak by the former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison but released after President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017. Manning has testified that she acted on her own initiative in sending the documents to WikiLeaks and not at the urging of Assange.
The tribunal heard that the accuracy of the information published by WikiLeaks, including evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses, was not in question.
Assange is a polarising figure who has fallen out with many of the news organisations with whom he has worked, including the Guardian and New York Times. He lost some support when he broke his bail conditions in 2012 and sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning over sexual assault allegations.
The US justice department brought charges against Assange in 2019 when he was expelled by the Ecuadorians from their embassy.
Assange fought a lengthy legal battle in the British courts against extradition to the US after his arrest, but lost. Last year, the then-home secretary, Priti Patel, approved the extradition request. Assange has appealed, claiming that he is “being prosecuted and punished for his political opinions”.
Assange’s father, John Shipton, condemned his son’s “ceaseless malicious abuse”, including the conditions in which he is held in Britain. He said the UK’s handling of the case was “an embarrassment” that damaged the country’s claim to stand for free speech and the rule of law.
Lawyer Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA employee who was imprisoned under the Espionage Act for revealing defence secrets to the journalist James Risen, told the Belmarsh Tribunal that Assange has little chance of a fair trial in the US.
He said: “It is virtually impossible to defend against the Espionage Act. Truth is no defence. In fact, any defence related to truth will be prohibited. In addition, he won’t have access to any of the so-called evidence used against him.
“The Espionage Act has not been used to fight espionage. It’s being used against whistleblowers and Julian Assange to keep the public ignorant of [the government’s] wrongdoings and illegalities in order to maintain its hold on authority, all in the name of national security.”
The tribunal also heard from Britain’s former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who said the continued prosecution of Assange would make all journalists afraid to reveal secrets.
“If Julian Assange ends up in a maximum security prison in the United States for the rest of his life, every other journalist around the world will think, ‘Should I really report this information I’ve been given? Should I really speak out about this denial of human rights or miscarriage of justice in any country?’” he said.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
