The News Caravan

Tag: motive

  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Real Motive

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    Outliers who enter the presidential derby usually broadcast their plans before running, as Trump did, forming an exploratory committee for the office in 2000, before finally running in earnest in 2016. But outside of Dwight D. Eisenhower — a genuine war hero — almost never does a figure without a political resume and not so much as a previous head feint toward the White House launch a serious presidential campaign out of the blue as Kennedy did in April. Some people give more forethought to picking a dressing for their salad than Kennedy seems to have given to his run for president.

    But Kennedy doesn’t care that he’s losing because winning the White House isn’t his objective. One clue that Kennedy doesn’t crave the political power that comes with the presidency is that, unlike his siblings, cousins and other Kennedy offspring (Joseph P. Kennedy II, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Patrick J. Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy III, Edward M. Kennedy Jr., Mark Kennedy Shriver, Bobby Shriver), he has never sought public office. The closest he has ever come to serving in a legislature was in 2000 when he briefly considered running for Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s open U.S. Senate seat (which Hillary Clinton slipped into) and in 2008, when he appears to have been on the New York governor’s shortlist to fill the seat when Clinton vacated it to become secretary of State. Or, to give him the benefit of the doubt, it could be that Kennedy has always craved power but wanted to start at the top.

    What Kennedy does undeniably desire is public attention, something his presidential campaign is delivering, with critical profiles in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time, the Atlantic and a particularly damning and comprehensive one by Rebecca Traister in New York magazine. In just a couple of months, Kennedy has gone from “that anti-vaccine guy” to a staple of cable news coverage, making him The Top Kennedy for now, even if much of the publicity is bad. It’s always been a competitive clan, so he’s got to be happy that he now occupies a larger presence in the public mind than his cousin Caroline Kennedy, an ambassador to Japan and now Australia, larger than her brother John Kennedy Jr., who dominated the headlines until his accidental death in 1999. Because it’s been so long since his father and famous uncles died, Bobby Jr. might even have eclipsed them as The Top Kennedy among younger voters.

    The political gene, which often comes bundled with the one for narcissism, never adequately thrives until fed by some form of adulation. Even the negative adulation of the recent profiles can be read as “I must be doing something right because they’re all knocking me” for somebody as thirsty for attention as Kennedy. He’s winning there, too.

    Kennedy’s candidacy has broadened the platform for his previously banned-by-Facebook-and-Instagram outré ideas about vaccines, not to mention his views on his father’s assassination, gender dysphoria and chemicals, antidepressants and school shootings, the CIA, and the “stolen” 2004 election. That adds to the considerable platform he has already built on his podcasts and his bestselling screed The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. The current campaign has and will continue to expand his exposure until he concedes the nomination to Biden.

    Kennedy may have spent his career as an environmental activist and litigator on the political sidelines, but he’s well aware of the dividends that can be earned from running a long-shot presidential campaign. As laid out in a recent Insider article, the typical dark horse candidacy is mostly about climbing the rungs of power. Would former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg be the secretary of Transportation today if he hadn’t run in 2020? Would Kamala Harris, who polled below Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders for almost the entire 2020 primary campaign, and frequently did worse than Buttigieg, have been tapped as Biden’s running mate if she had not run? Would Sanders possess his current clout if not for his two unexpectedly strong forays? Failed candidacies have produced book contracts, cable TV deals, paid speaking engagements, lobbying gigs and proximity to power.

    The current Kennedy moment will soon be swamped by the Biden machine. But every day this final heir to America’s second greatest political dynasty spends on the hustings, he will continue rolling up winnings like an undetected card counter in Las Vegas.

    The greatest? The Bush family, of course. Send your winnings to [email protected]. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My social media accounts — Twitter, Mastodon, Post, Bluesky, and Notes — want to welcome a baby brother: [http://@[email protected]]Threads. My RSS feed wants to kill them as they sleep.



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    #Robert #Kennedy #Jr.s #Real #Motive
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Motive still unclear in Nashville school shooting

    Motive still unclear in Nashville school shooting

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    Washington: Police said that they have yet to determine a motive in the Nashville, Tennessee, elementary school shooting.

    “This school, this church building, was a target of the shooter,” Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron told reporters a day after the shooting at the Covenant School that left six people dead, including three young students, Xinhua news agency reported.

    “But we have no information at present to indicate that the shooter was specifically targeting any one of the six individuals who were murdered,” Aaron stressed.

    The shooter, identified as 28-year-old Nashville resident Audrey Hale, purchased at least seven guns legally and locally, according to Nashville police chief John Drake.

    Drake said that the shooter planned the shooting and used three of the guns, including two AR-style weapons, in the attack carried out on Monday morning before being killed by responding officers inside the Christian private school.

    US President Joe Biden said from an event in Durham, North Carolina, on Tuesday that “as a nation, we owe these families more than our prayers”.

    “We have to do more to stop this gun violence from ripping communities apart, ripping apart the soul of this nation, to protect our children, so they learn how to read and write instead of duck and cover in a classroom,” Biden said.

    He also reiterated his call for US lawmakers to pass an assault weapons ban, stating that there was a “moral price to pay for inaction”.

    It is unlikely that the divided Congress would approve the legislative proposal as Republicans control the House of Representatives this term and have advocated for the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

    “I believe in the Second Amendment,” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, told reporters on Tuesday. “We shouldn’t penalise law-abiding American citizens.”

    There have been 130 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter.

    Meanwhile, more than 10,000 people, including hundreds of children and teens, have lost their lives to gun violence in the past three months, the website’s data showed.

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    #Motive #unclear #Nashville #school #shooting

    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Sole Motive Of NYT To Spread Propaganda: Anurag Thakur

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    SRINAGAR: Anurag Thakur, the Minister of Information and Broadcasting, alleged on Friday that The New York Times was disseminating falsehoods about India. He characterized an opinion article published by the newspaper on press freedom in Kashmir as deceptive and imaginary.

    “New York Times had long back dropped all pretensions of neutrality while publishing anything about India. NYT‘s so-called opinion piece on freedom of press in Kashmir is mischievous and fictitious, published with a sole motive to spread a propaganda about India and its democratic institutions and values,” Thakur remarked on Twitter.

    “This is in continuation with what NYT and a few other link-minded foreign media have been spreading lies about India and our democratically elected Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. Such lies can’t last long,” the minister added

    Thakur’s  rebuttal was prompted by the publication of an opinion piece in a US-based newspaper, which made allegations about restrictions on the free flow of information in Kashmir.

    “Some foreign media nourishing a grudge against India and our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi have long been systematically trying to peddle lies about our democracy and pluralistic society,” Thakur said. He said freedom of press in India is as sacrosanct as other fundamental rights.

    “Democracy in India and We the people are very mature and we don’t need to learn grammar of democracy from such agenda-driven media,” he said.

    “Indians will not allow such mindsets to run their decisive agenda on India soil,” the minister said.

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    #Sole #Motive #NYT #Spread #Propaganda #Anurag #Thakur

    ( With inputs from : kashmirlife.net )

  • Guwahati twin murder: Motive is still not known, say police

    Guwahati twin murder: Motive is still not known, say police

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    Guwahati: In the sensational twin murder case in Guwahati, where a woman has been charged with killing her husband and mother-in-law, chopping their bodies into multiple pieces, and later disposing of the body parts in some other place, the police said that the actual motive behind this gruesome crime is still not known.

    The murders happened in July and August last year, but came to light only on Monday.

    Diganta Barah, the Commissioner of Police, told reporters here, “The accused — Bandana Kalita — filed a missing complaint at the police station for her husband Amarjyoti Dey and mother Shankari Dey, allegedly after killing both of them. She even alleged that the police were not doing enough to trace the missing duo.”

    Shankari Dey was a retired state government employee, and she used to live in the city’s Noonmati area while her son Amarjyoti Dey was living in Narengi.

    “Nirmalya Dey, the nephew of Sankari Dey, had also filed an FIR in Novemnber last year at Noonmati police station suspecting probable kidnapping of her aunt. Unfortunately, the police could not find much clue in both the missing cases,” the officer said.

    However, when Nirmalya Dey later approached the Assam CID, a special team was formed to investigate the whole incident. Meanwhile, the accused Kalita also went to the Police Commissioner’s office demanding a fresh probe.

    The special team noted some anomalies in the statements of Nirmalya Dey and Bandana Kalita and initiated an interrogation of them.

    “Though Bandana Kalita initially tried to mislead the police more than once, after two days of thorough interrogation, she broke down and confessed her crime,” Barah added.

    Narrating the chain of events, the officer said that Kalita killed her husband and mother-in-law with the help with two of her close friends, Dhanki Deka and Arup Deka.

    On July 26 last year, Kalita went to Shankari Dey’s house with Arup Deka, strangled the lady to death, and later beheaded her with a sharp machete. The body was later cut into three pieces.

    In the meantime, her other associate, Dhanki Deka, was waiting outside the house with polythene bags. They packed the body parts in polythene bags, covered them with rugs, and drove to the Shillong-Cherapunjee Road in neighbouring Meghalaya in the wee hours of July 27 to dispose of the body parts and the murder weapon.

    “On August 17, Kalita, Arup Deka, and Dhanki Deka went to Amarjit Dey’s house and hit him with a heavy rod. As Dey lay unconscious, his head was chopped off and his body was cut into five pieces. The next morning, the trio followed the earlier tactic and disposed of the body parts in a dense forest in Meghalaya’s Dawki area,” Barah said.

    The senior police officer added that Dhanki Deka has been arrested from Tinsukia, while another accused, Arup Deka, was nabbed by the police in Guwahati.

    “A special police team went with the accused persons to the place where Shankari Dey’s body was disposed of. Some of the body pieces could be recovered and efforts are on to retrieve Amarjit Dey’s body parts,” the officer said.

    When Barah was asked about the motive behind the heinous crime, he said, “A lot of investigation needs to be carried out to reach a conclusion.”

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    #Guwahati #twin #murder #Motive #police

    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Assam govt’s motive malicious: Owaisi on crackdown on child marriages

    Assam govt’s motive malicious: Owaisi on crackdown on child marriages

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    Lucknow: AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Sunday questioned the Assam government’s motive behind its crackdown on child marriages in the state and said the exercise reflects a “failure of governance” by the BJP dispensation.

    “There is a malicious motive behind all the action that is being taken,” the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader told PTI in a telephonic interview, when asked about the hundreds of arrests made in the northeast state.

    More than 2,250 people have been arrested in Assam till Saturday in the crackdown on child marriage, according to an official statement by the state government.

    Owaisi, who was in Lucknow to attend the executive committee meeting of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), said, “As you know the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act was passed in 2006, and it is the BJP’s government which is in power in Assam for the last six years. Now, why did the government not stop all these in the last six years? This really shows the failure of their governance.”

    “Experts have said that if you want to stop child marriages, you have to open a lot of schools, (but) you have not done that. You have closed down the madrassas too which were imparting some form of education,” he alleged.

    Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday asserted that the drive against child marriage launched by the state police from the previous day would continue till the next Assembly elections in 2026.

    A total of 2,258 people have been arrested so far across the state based on 4,074 FIRs, the Assam government statement said.

    Speaking to PTI, Owaisi asked who would now take care of the poor women who have been left in the lurch after the state government’s crackdown on child marriages.

    “Now, who will look after those poor women? Forget about whether they are Muslims or not Muslims or Hindus? Who will take care of them now? What steps is the government taking to look after them? … many of them have children now,” he said.

    Owaisi also informed that he recently shared a tweet about an Assamese woman who has died by suicide.

    “You must remember that at 18-plus, we allow consensual sexual relationships. So, how does it make sense if at 18 she is having a consensual sexual relationship and then you are saying it is child marriage? Even in the law, this needs to be looked into,” he said.

    “It is a completely biased government against Muslims, discriminatory against Muslims. For example they went on an (anti)-encroachment drive, wherein they made hundreds of Muslim families homeless in Assam. In upper Assam, they gave ‘pattas’ (land strip) to landless people, but in lower Assam, they don’t do that,” Owaisi alleged.

    The Assam cabinet had recently decided that those having married girls below 14 years of age will be booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

    The council of ministers also took the decision that cases under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 will be registered against those who have married girls in the 14-18 years age group.

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    #Assam #govts #motive #malicious #Owaisi #crackdown #child #marriages

    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )