Tag: US Elections 2020

  • Pakistani-American lobbyist, who donated for Trump and Kamala Harris, jailed for 12 years

    The American Federal Court in California has convicted a Pakistani-American political donor for violation of the Foreign Act, awarding him twelve years in prison along with a hefty penalty of $15.705 million in restitution and $1.75 million in criminal fine.

    According to The News, 50-year-old Imaad Shah Zuberi of Arcadia was sentenced by US District Judge Virginia A Phillips for forging records to conceal his work as a foreign agent while lobbying high-level US officials, evading the payment of millions of dollars in taxes, making illegal campaign contributions, and obstructing a federal investigation into the source of donations to a presidential inauguration committee.

    Zuberi was born in Pakistan and migrated to the US with his parents when he was just three-years-old. Eventually, he secured US citizenship.

    In 1996, Zuberi served in the US Army for about six months and was honourably discharged after sustaining a knee injury. He received a BSc in 1997 from the University of Southern California and an MBA in 2006 from Stanford University.

    The Pakistani-origin man was facing charges of donating $900,000 to the Trump inaugural committee. He was also a top fundraiser for former president Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012, Dawn reported.

    He donated at least $100,000 for Hilary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and also raised funds for Republican Senator Lindsey Graham in 2014, and then-California attorney general Kamala Harris, now vice president, in 2015.

    In November 2019, Zuberi pleaded guilty to a three-count information charging him with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by making false statements on a FARA filing, tax evasion, and making illegal campaign contributions.

    In June 2020, Zuberi pleaded guilty in a separate case to one count of obstruction of justice. His sentence today pertains to both cases.

    “The violations were part of a larger surreptitious effort to route foreign money into US elections and to use it to corrupt the US policy-making processes,” prosecutors said in a court filing.

    They also pleaded the court to reject Zuberi’s claim that funnelling money to influence US policy-making and elections was the “way America works”.

    “Zuberi turned acting as an unregistered foreign agent into a business enterprise,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C Demers, adding, “He used foreign money to fund illegal campaign contributions that bought him political influence, and used that influence to lobby US officials for policy changes on behalf of numerous foreign principals.”

    “Zuberi flouted federal laws that restrict foreign influences upon our government and prohibit injecting foreign money into our political campaigns. He enriched himself by defrauding his clients and evading the payment of taxes,” said Acting US Attorney Tracy L Wilkison for the Central District of California.

    “Today’s sentence, which also accounts for Zuberi’s attempt to obstruct an investigation into his felonious conduct, underscores the importance of our ongoing efforts to maintain transparency in U.S. elections and policy-making processes.”

  • A new President

    Today, all eyes were on Joe Biden being sworn in as the 46th US President. #InaugurationDay was trending at No. 1 on Twitter in Pakistan.

    Vice President Kamala Harris made history as the first female, first Black and first South Asian VP.

    Prime Minister Imran Khan congratulated President Biden in a tweet:

    “I congratulate President @JoeBiden on his inauguration. Look forward to working with @POTUS in building a stronger Pak-US partnership through trade & economic engagement, countering climate change, improving public health, combating corruption & promoting peace in region & beyond.”

    Biden took the oath of office from US Chief Justice John Roberts. He said that “democracy has prevailed” and it was a day of “history and hope”. Biden said his whole soul is in “putting America back together again”.

    It was interesting to see that former US President Donald Trump did not attend the inauguration ceremony.

    Here are some tweets that sum up the inauguration.

    https://twitter.com/thejessiewoo/status/1351939282076901376?s=21

  • Vogue to release new Kamala Harris cover after original sparks outrage

    Vogue to release new Kamala Harris cover after original sparks outrage

    Vogue will publish a new limited edition of its latest issue featuring a different photo of Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris after the original cover image sparked controversy, the magazine has announced.

    Critics slammed the photo that graced the hard copy of the February issue, saying it was poorly composed and diminished Harris’s achievements as the first Black woman to be elected vice president.

    Social media users criticised the lighting of the photo — in which Harris wears a blazer, jeans and sneakers — and also questioned whether the magazine had lightened her skin.

    Following the backlash, Vogue announced it would release some copies with a more formal portrait of Harris wearing a light blue Michael Kors pantsuit. That image had been used for the digital cover.

    “In recognition of the enormous interest in the digital cover, and in celebration of this historic moment, we will be publishing a limited number of special edition inaugural issues,” a spokesperson for Vogue said.

    Editor Anna Wintour was forced to defend the original image after it circulated online earlier this month, insisting it was not the magazine’s intention to “diminish” Harris’s “incredible” election victory.

    “When the two images arrived at Vogue, all of us felt very, very strongly that the less formal portrait of the Vice President-elect really reflected the moment that we were living in which we are all in the midst — as we still are — of the most appalling pandemic that is taking lives by the minute,” Wintour had said in a statement to the New York Times.

    “And we felt to reflect this tragic moment in global history, a much less formal picture, something that was very, very accessible and approachable and real, really reflected the hallmark of the Biden-Harris campaign and everything that they are trying to, and I’m sure will achieve,” she added.

    Both photos were taken by American photographer Tyler Mitchell, who in 2018 became the first Black photographer to shoot a Vogue cover with his portraits of music icon Beyonce.

    Harris, 56, did not publicly react but sources close to her told US media that she was surprised by the choice of the more relaxed photo.

    The controversy was the latest to hit Wintour, who found herself under pressure during the massive Black Lives Matter protests that swept the US last summer.

    She apologised for not making enough room for Black stylists and photographers in the magazine.

    Wintour added that she also took “full responsibility” for “publishing images or stories that have been hurtful or intolerant.”

    Meanwhile, Harris is all set to become the first Black person, the first woman, and the first South Asian to serve as vice president after she is sworn in by US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina member.

    She and Joe Biden will take their oaths in a ceremony that will take place in front of a heavily fortified Capitol, where a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building two weeks ago, enraged by his false claims that November’s election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes.

  • Facing crush of crises, Biden to take helm as president today

    Democrat Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday, assuming the helm of a country beset by deep political divides and battered by a raging coronavirus pandemic.

    Biden, 78, will become the oldest US president in history at a scaled-back ceremony in Washington that has been largely stripped of its usual pomp and circumstance, due to both the coronavirus pandemic as well as security concerns following the Jan. 6 assault on the US Capitol by supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump.

    With only a small number of attendees present, the Democrat will take the oath of office before US Chief Justice John Roberts just after noon (1700 GMT), placing his hand on an heirloom Bible that has been in the Biden family for more than a century.

    His running mate, Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, will become the first Black person, first woman and first South Asian to serve as vice president after she is sworn in by US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina member.

    The ceremony will unfold in front of a heavily fortified Capitol, where a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building two weeks ago, enraged by his false claims that November’s election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes. The violence prompted the Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives to impeach Trump last week for an unprecedented second time.

    Thousands of National Guard troops were called into the city after the siege, which left five people dead and briefly forced lawmakers into hiding. Instead of a throng of supporters, the National Mall will be covered by nearly 200,000 flags and 56 pillars of light meant to represent people from US states and territories.

    Biden, who has vowed to “restore the soul of America,” will call for American unity at a time of crisis in his inaugural address, according to advisers.

    In an early sign of his plan to reach across the political aisle, Biden has invited top congressional leaders, including House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, to join him at church on Wednesday morning.

    In a break with more than a century and a half of political tradition, Trump plans to depart the White House ahead of the inauguration, declining to meet with his successor and affirm the peaceful transfer of power.

    Vice President Mike Pence, former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and both McCarthy and McConnell are all expected to attend Biden’s inauguration ceremony.

    Trump, who has grown increasingly isolated in the waning days of his tenure, has still not formally conceded the Nov. 3 election. He will hold a sendoff event at Joint Air Force Base Andrews in the morning, although top Republicans, including Pence, are not expected to attend.

    TRUMP PARDONS 140 PEOPLE ON LAST DAY:

    President Donald Trump pardoned former chief strategist Steve Bannon as part of a flurry of clemency action in the final hours of his White House term that benefited more than 140 people, including rap performers, ex-members of Congress and other allies of him and his family.

    The last-minute clemency, announced Wednesday morning, follows separate waves of pardons over the past month for Trump associates convicted in the FBI’s Russia investigation as well as for the father of his son-in-law.

    Besides Bannon, other pardon recipients included Elliott Broidy, a Republican fundraiser who pleaded guilty last fall in a scheme to lobby the Trump administration to drop an investigation into the looting of a Malaysian wealth fund, and Ken Kurson, a friend of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner who was charged last October with cyberstalking during a heated divorce.

    Among them were rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black, both convicted in Florida on weapons charges.

    Other pardon recipients include former Rep. Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican who served three years for corruption, money laundering and other charges, and former Rep. Duke Cunningham of California, who was convicted of accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. Cunningham, who was released from prison in 2013, received a conditional pardon.

    Trump also commuted the prison sentence of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who has served about seven years behind bars for a racketeering and bribery scheme.

  • Trump hints at building his own social media platform

    After Twitter and Facebook suspended US President Donald Trump’s accounts over inciting violence, the President has said he will look into building his own platform. The decision to suspend Trump’s social media account came after thousand of supported stormed the US capitol earlier this week.

    https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1347684877634838528

    Trump sent the latest tweets on his POTUS account after Twitter banned his personal account.

    “I predicted this would happen. We have been negotiating with various other sites and will have a big announcement soon. While we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future.”

    “We will not be SILENCED!” wrote Trump.

    It the first that Twitter has suspended the account of any head of state.

    Before Twitter, Trump’s account was indefinitely banned by Facebook.

    “The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” Zuckerberg had said in a statement posted on Facebook.

    Trump has repeatedly used Twitter and other platforms to claim his defeat in the November 3 election was due to widespread voter fraud and to share other conspiracy theories, and had urged supporters to come to Washington on Wednesday and march on the Capitol to protest the election result.

  • Goodbye, 2020…

    The coming week will usher us to a new year and the entire world is hoping that it would be better than 2020. This year was certainly one that we will remember for a long, long time.

    Concepts like social distancing, wearing face masks and sanitising your hands regularly, ‘work from home’ and lockdowns have become a norm. Many regular travellers have not travelled in almost a year. A lot of people have lost their loved ones due to this novel coronavirus.

    The coronavirus pandemic has changed the world in many ways. From exposing how the healthcare system was unable to deal with a global pandemic in most countries, to an economic crisis that many poor countries would take years to recover from, it affected all and sundry.

    According to a blog published by the World Bank, “the pandemic has harmed the poor and vulnerable the most, and it is threatening to push millions more into poverty. This year, after decades of steady progress in reducing the number of people living on less than $1.90/day, COVID-19 will usher in the first reversal in the fight against extreme poverty in a generation.”

    COVID-19 should also make the world think of how much damage we have done to our globe and environment. Climate change is a harsh reality that one can only ignore at their own peril. When lockdowns around the world started and travel restrictions were imposed, the level of air pollution compared to last year went down during that same period.

    People were fascinated by the clear blue skies in their cities. According to researchers at Future Earth’s Global Carbon Project, the global COVID-19 lockdowns caused fossil carbon dioxide emissions to decline by an estimated 2.4 billion tonnes in 2020, which was a record drop. 

    This pandemic was also one of the main reasons why Donald Trump lost the US elections. The way Trump mishandled the pandemic and denied how serious it was, it led to more than 300,000 deaths till date. On the other hand, Pakistan was relatively successful in dealing with the pandemic after the first wave. Now that the second wave is here, we hope that people will take it more seriously and not be careless.

    Hopefully, the next year will bring some semblance of normalcy once the vaccine is administered in all countries. Unfortunately, it seems that poor countries will get the vaccine much later than rich countries. Let’s hope that the world community will help each other in this hour of need.

    Here is wishing everyone a peaceful new year!

  • IN PICTURES: India celebrates Kamala Harris’ win

    IN PICTURES: India celebrates Kamala Harris’ win

    Kamala Harris has made history as the first female, first black, and first Asian-American US vice-president-elect, and Indians are overjoyed.

    According to reports, people at Kamala’s ancestral village in southern India, celebrated her victory by bursting crackers, distributing sweets, and offering prayers of gratitude. People hailed her achievement as historic and a “proud moment” for the country.

    Some Indians also celebrated by laying rangoli designs in front of their houses.

    After the victory, Kamala’s sister Maya Harris, said that their mother, Shyamala Gopalan, “would have been beyond proud today.”

    Harris also paid tribute to her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, an Indian immigrant, in her victory speech.

    Harris’ uncle, academic Balachandran Gopalan, said his late sister would have been proud of her daughter and that the family would converge in Washington from across the United States and from India, Canada and Mexico to witness her historic inauguration.

    “Her mother would have been very happy. She would have asked Kamala to continue what she’s doing,” the 79-year-old academic told AFP as a huge media contingent crowded outside his home.

    “Can you think of any other country where a first-generation immigrant would go to the highest office… It’s a lot of firsts. And at a major time in US history. And that she’s there as VP means a lot.”

    Gopalan added that he had further hopes for his trailblazing niece – including a presidential run.

    Kamala Harris was born on October 20 in 1964, in California. Her late mother Shyamala Gopalan migrated to the US from Tamil Nadu at the age of 19 to study at the University of California, while her father, Donald J Harris, moved to the US from Jamaica.

    Harris has often spoken about how her Indian grandfather, who was among millions of people who joined India’s independence movement, has shaped her values and helped inspire her ideals of justice.

    Meanwhile, several Bollywood celebrities including Sonam Kapoor and Kangana Ranaut also expressed their joy over Harris’ win.

  • Biden is in the house

    Democratic challenger Joe Biden has won an extremely close US election battle against outgoing president Donald Trump. The election results were finally called on Saturday. Biden will become the 46th US president and leaders around the world have started sending congratulatory messages to the president-elect. Kamala Harris, the vice president-elect, has made history. She will be the first woman, the first black person and the first person of South Asian descent to become VP. Yesterday, she said, “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last, because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”

    This US election was different in many ways. From an election held during a pandemic to one of the most polarised election in recent history, it was indeed a nail-biter. The two rivals were neck and neck in a few key battleground states before the final results were announced. According to NBC News, at least 159.8 million Americans voted. The number of votes has been the highest in US presidential election in history while the voter turnout has been the highest in over a century.

    Trump’s term has made politics extremely divisive in the US where racism is on the rise. Due to Trump’s policy on climate change, the US became the first nation in the world to formally withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Trump also gravely mishandled the COVID-19 situation in the US. More than 200,000 people died due to coronavirus before the presidential election.

    On the day of the election when millions of ballots were left to count, Trump decided to claim victory. In the same breath, he suggested “major fraud on the nation” without offering any evidence and said he would take the election results to the US Supreme Court. Trump has been crying rigging, an all too familiar word in our part of the world, even before the election. Trump’s campaign filed lawsuits in some states as Trump has also been crying foul on Twitter, where most of his tweets are being flagged by the social network. Biden, on the other hand, was conciliatory in a speech after the election where he called for healing and unity in the wake of the brutal election. “We are not enemies… to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies… we are campaigning as Democrats, but I will govern as an American president.”

    We hope that with the end of the four tumultuous years of Trump’s presidency, while the Democrats heal their own country, they do not end up hurting the rest of the world. For all his faults, Trump was not seen as a war-president. We hope that the US will not restart its interventionist policies under Biden.

  • US Elections 2020: Jemima, Greta Thunberg troll Trump

    With the results of the US Elections 2020 yet to be announced, people are killing time and anxiety by turning to jokes and memes. Jemima Goldsmith, who has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump and his policies, trolled him by sharing the White House version of ‘Mujhe Kyun Nikala‘ — a phrase coined by Nawaz Sharif.

    In the video shared by Jemima, a man who looks like Trump can be seen sitting on an inflatable exercise ball, surrounded by a group of children. Another man, who resembles vice-president Mike Pence, seems to be pulling Trump off the exercise ball while the Trump impersonator yells that he doesn’t want to go.

    https://twitter.com/Jemima_Khan/status/1324452569566109697?s=20

    Similarly, Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg trolled the president over a tweet of his in which he called for the vote count to be stopped.

    Responding to the latter’s tweet, the teenage climate activist used Trump’s own words against him.

    “So ridiculous, Donald must work on his anger management problem, and then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Donald, Chill!” wrote the 17-year-old.

    Thunberg finally got her revenge against Trump after he criticised Time magazine’s decision to name her ‘Person of the Year’.

    Meanwhile, earlier in 2016, Jemima dressed up as Melania Trump being groped by her husband, Donald Trump, for the UNICEF Halloween Ball in London. Jemima decided to pull over the anti-Trump costume after a video of Trump got leaked in which he was explicitly talking about groping women and making horrifying statements over abuse.

    As counting votes continues in critical swing states in the US, Trump has been spreading misinformation and demanding that vote counting stops.

  • Pakistanis win the US elections with memes and jokes

    Pakistanis win the US elections with memes and jokes

    Barring the fact that a change in the White House may require a shift of policy in Islamabad and Pakistan will have to rethink its diplomatic ties with the US, Pakistanis are making the most of the US Elections 2020 with what they do best – making memes.

    As US citizens and Presidential candidates wait with bated breaths for the results, Pakistanis have been sharing memes and jokes on social media. From Trump asking ‘Vote ko izzat dou‘ to Biden saying ‘Mein Inko Rulaun Ga‘, Pakistani Twitter is lit with memes that are bound to tickle your funny bones.

    Check out some of the funniest memes below:

    https://twitter.com/thepakimon/status/1324199320351084545?s=20
    https://twitter.com/SuspendedBila/status/1324003390502948865?s=20
    https://twitter.com/SuspendedBila/status/1324258087755255809?s=20

    Read more – ‘Relax, it happens,’ former senator of ‘grape’ fame tells Donald Trump

    Some netizens got creative with photoshop.

    Which meme is your favourite? Let us know in the comments below.