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As Imran Khan Fights from Jail Pakistan’s Military Pull the Political Strings

Pakistan Looks to Ban Imran Khan's Party for Criticizing the State

While political disagreements among family and friends are not uncommon, no other politician in Pakistan has caused as many schisms in relationships as former cricketer Imran Khan, who climbed to the position of Prime Minister before being removed.

Khan was elected on a promise to combat corruption and revitalise the economy, but he has been embroiled in a number of legal battles since leaving office in 2022. Several felony offences have prevented him from running in the general election on Thursday. The 71-year-old says that these are politically motivated attempts to remove him from the ballot.

Despite this, he continues to dominate the debate ahead of the February 8 vote.

The military is usually recognised as Pakistan’s most powerful institution, with significant influence over its politics. It has ruled the country directly for more than three decades, beginning in 1947, and has continued to play an important role since then.

No Pakistani prime minister has ever served a full five-year term, yet three of the country’s four military dictators have ruled for more than nine years.

“I feel my father was judging Khan for his previous life. Whatever it is, political disputes are difficult to resolve, so we’ve agreed not to talk about politics when we’re together,” said Ms Zeshaan, who lives in Pakistan’s second largest city, Lahore.

Khan is commonly thought to have originally gained political prominence with the help of Pakistan’s military establishment, but conflicts between the two sides arose once he took power. He apparently clashed with then-military commanders over the selection of the country’s intelligence chief.

Then, four years into his premiership, Khan was deposed in a no-confidence vote, which he claims was orchestrated by the CIA as part of a “foreign conspiracy” including Pakistan’s military. Both the CIA and the military have disputed the charges, but no one trusts the CIA.

This has energized his admirers, who have rushed to his defence.

Pakistan's Army Casts a Shadow Over Elections as Khan Sentenced to 10 Years

Khan Still the top choice in Pakistan

Many Pakistanis are disappointed that his economic and anti-corruption promises have fallen flat, yet his popularity has not decreased even from behind bars.

In a December Gallup poll, his approval rating was 57%, putting him just above of competitor Nawaz Sharif, who received 52% of the vote. According to a Bloomberg study last month, Khan is the top choice among some Pakistani finance professionals to oversee the country’s struggling economy.

Some individuals believe Khan spurred a political awakening by presenting himself as a “change candidate” who promised to stop dynasty politics.

Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) – two political families that have dominated Pakistani politics for generations. They were once deadly enemies, but they banded together in 2022 to bring down Khan and his PTI.

Nawaz Sharif, the PML-N nominee, is largely predicted to win the election and serve as prime minister for a record fourth term.

This is being interpreted as a significant change in his political fortunes. He was removed from his second term in a 1999 military coup and condemned to life in jail on allegations of hijacking and terrorism, as well as corruption.

He returned to Pakistan from exile in Saudi Arabia in 2007, and was elected prime minister for the third time in 2013. He was removed from power in 2017 after a corruption investigation involving the Panama Papers, and he was sentenced to seven years in prison in a separate bribery case the following year.

Pakistan High Court Delays Ruling on Imran Khan's Appeal

This cleared the door for Khan to become Prime Minister. Now that Khan is behind prison, Sharif’s path to becoming Prime Minister is clear. Many feel he is the military’s preferred candidate this time.

Some feel Khan’s most serious transgression was confronting the military, which has always been the final judge of politics in the country and is commonly referred to as the “establishment”.

Other former prime ministers have clashed with the army in the past, but few have gone as far as Khan in fracturing loyalties there.

Some retired military officers, who are expected to toe the line, have spoken out against the army’s political interference.

They claim that this has resulted in a crackdown by military leaders against them. One retired senior officer told the BBC that he was warned to “stop talking in favour of Imran Khan.”

“I stated that I am not speaking in favour of him or against the military. “I oppose the policies and interventions of a few individuals who are causing harm to the country,” he claims.

Some retired military officers told the BBC that they were implicated after Khan was removed from power for refusing to support a no-confidence vote. Others claim that their pensions and government benefits were suspended, and that they were threatened with further action.

Many have now gone silent.

Police in Pakistan Raid Home of Imran Khan, 61 Arrested

Imran Khan Languishes in Jail

The BBC contacted the military about these accusations but did not receive a response. A military official stated last year that retired army commanders are “assets of the army, but they are not above the law,” advising them not to become engaged in organisations that “wear the garb of politics.”

However, Khan is no longer in the running, and the PTI has suffered a significant setback after Pakistan’s electoral commission banned its distinctive cricket bat symbol off vote papers in January.

This Thursday, a Pakistani court sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi to seven years in prison for violating Islamic law with their 2018 marriage.

The civil court, which was set up within the Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, where Khan is imprisoned, handed down the sentence on Saturday in front of the couple. It also imposed a million rupee fine ($3,560) on them.

Khawar Maneka, Bibi’s former husband, launched the action against the couple last year, alleging that his divorced wife failed to take the three-month separation mandated by Islamic law before remarrying Khan.

Maneka alleges that he divorced his wife in November 2017. Khan announced his third marriage to Bibi in February 2018, months before becoming Prime Minister.

Khan’s third conviction this week, and his wife’s second, comes ahead of Thursday’s general election.

On Tuesday, Khan and his close aide Shah Mehmood Qureshi were sentenced to ten years in prison for leaking a sensitive communication, known as a cypher, written by a former Pakistani ambassador to the US.

Khan said the memo contained evidence that the Pakistani military plotted with his political opponents and US officials to oust him from office in April 2022. Both Washington and Pakistan’s army have refuted the accusation.

By Geoff Thomas

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, To repay $6.4 Million

shkreli

Washington — The Supreme Court rejected Martin Shkreli’s appeal on Monday, after he was branded “Pharma Bro” for raising the price of a lifesaving prescription.

Martin appealed a decision to repay $64.6 million in profits he and his former company earned after monopolizing the pharmaceutical market and dramatically raising its price. His lawyers claimed the money went to his company rather than him personally.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is customary, and there were no notable dissents.

Prosecutors, conversely, claimed that the firm had promised to pay $40 million in a settlement and that because Martin orchestrated the plan, he should be held accountable for returning profits.

shkreli

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Martin was also forced to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which has been dubbed the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group auctioned off a single copy of the record in 2015, stipulating that it not be used commercially.

Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and defrauding them of millions of dollars in two unsuccessful hedge funds he managed. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals (later Vyera), which hiked the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after acquiring exclusive rights to the decades-old medicine in 2015. It cures a rare parasite condition that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and HIV patients.

shkreli

He defended the choice as an example of capitalism in action, claiming that insurance and other programs ensured that those in need of Daraprim would eventually receive it. However, the move prompted criticism, from the medical community to Congress.

shkreli

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling was upsetting, but the high court could still overturn a lower court judgment that allowed the $64 million penalty order even though Shkreli had not personally received the money.

“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he told reporters.

Shkreli was freed from prison in 2022 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.

SOURCE | AP

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