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Pakistan’s Military Arrests and Intimidates Imran Khan Supporters

Hammad Azhar, who has served as Pakistan’s finance and energy minister, says police and plain-clothed officials have burst into his home six times in recent weeks, smashed his belongings and threatened his 82-year-old father, warning that his daughter would be abducted.
Last weekend, he said police and “unknown people” took his father to a police station and released him after they went through his phone for an hour.
Azhar, who is in hiding, says he is under pressure from a “fascist regime” to leave the political party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
“All this is being done because I continue to stand with my party and Imran Khan,” he told Reuters by telephone.
Like other senior members of the PTI who have been arrested in recent weeks, in some cases several times, Azhar avoided directly naming the powerful army as being responsible.
Khan however has done so, throwing down the gauntlet to an institution that has ruled the country directly for three decades or exerted considerable influence on the civilian government.
“It is completely the establishment,” the former cricket hero said in an interview. “Establishment obviously means the military establishment, because they are really now openly – I mean, it’s not even hidden now – they’re just out in the open.”
The government and police deny any coercion of Khan’s supporters. An army spokesman did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Azhar is wanted on terrorism charges for violent nationwide protests in May and no warrants were needed to raid his home, said Punjab police chief Usman Anwar. Azhar denies the charges.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan has been unsettled since Khan was ousted from office as prime minister in 2022 and launched street protests for fresh elections. A full-blown economic crisis, with runaway inflation, a plunge in the currency and the possibility of a debt default, has added to the turmoil.
Khan’s arrest on corruption charges in May, which he says was at the behest of the generals, led to violent nationwide protests, attacks on an air base, military buildings, including its army’s headquarters, and the burning of a top general’s home, allegedly by the former prime minister’s supporters.
There has never been that kind of challenge to Pakistan’s military, which has held sway over the country since independence in 1947 with a mixture of fear and respect.
Arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances
Nearly 5,000 of Khan’s aides and supporters have been arrested since May 9, according to Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah. Rights groups have raised concerns over what they call arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances.
Of the many pro-Khan parliamentarians arrested in the weeks-long crackdown, several have been re-arrested after securing bail from the courts.
All the leaders who have been set free have publicly distanced themselves from Khan, denounced the protests and praised the military.
“The entire senior leadership is in jail,” Khan said in the interview. “And the only ones who can now get out of jail are the ones who then say that we renounce being part of PTI.”
His spokesman Iftikhar Durrani added: “It is a full-blown campaign to dismantle the party.”
“(Party members’) families are being threatened with consequences – physical, mental and financial… to force a leader to quit,” Durrani said.
When Reuters reached out to four of the released politicians for comment on their departures from the party, a former government minister replied in a WhatsApp message: “Situation doesn’t allow.”
One said he didn’t want to talk about it, and the other two did not respond.
The first of the key aides to quit Khan’s party was former Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari, who was a close confidant of Khan.
She was arrested on May 11 in a police raid on her home, and a court ordered her release five days later. However, she was re-arrested just as she stepped out of jail and taken to another premises. This happened three more times.
Finally, on May 23, shortly after being released for a fifth time, she held a press conference announcing she was quitting politics. She was not re-arrested after that.
Military pressures Imran Khan’s supporters
Fawad Chaudhry, a former information minister and a close Khan aide, was arrested on May 10 outside the Supreme Court despite having protective bail. He was surrounded by police again after a court ordered his release a few days later.
“I have decided to take a break from politics, therefore, I have resigned from party position and parting ways from Imran Khan,” Chaudhry said in a post on Twitter after he was finally released.
Other top aides who have been re-arrested despite release orders from courts include former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and former ministers Ali Muhammad Khan, Shehryar Afridi and Yasmin Rashid, who walked out of jail only to be redirected to a waiting police vehicle, which took them to another detention site.
“Yes, there is a lot of pressure, but I’m not ditching the party,” another senior leader, Mehmood-ur-Rasheed, 69, told reporters in handcuffs as he appeared for a court appearance. He remains in custody.
He told a court last week that he had been tortured in custody, his lawyer Masood Gujjar said. Police deny torturing Rasheed.
Malaika Bukhari, a staunch Khan loyalist who exited the party in late May, cited the ordeal of being incarcerated in a “c-class” cell, where she spent about two weeks, in the summer heat.
C-class cells are small rooms usually crammed with multiple inmates without proper ventilation and a hole in the corner without a door to use as a toilet.
“I announce that I’m resigning from PTI and ending all association with the party,” she said in a press conference, condemning the attacks on military property. She said she was doing so of her own volition.
People from Khan’s party have said, like her, many of the others arrested in the crackdown were held in similar, if not worse, conditions.
Lawyers say political prisoners are usually entitled to B-class cells, which come with a clean toilet and other facilities such as newspapers and availability of books.
Ali Zaidi, a former minister for maritime affairs, left the PTI late last month after spending over a week in a prison in the city of Jacobabad – often the hottest place on earth – where he was transferred after being re-arrested.
“I’ve decided, and it was a tough decision, that I will quit politics,” he said, adding: “The armed forces are our pride.”
Media Coverage on Imran Khan Banned
There has been no mention of Khan on local television since the government issued a directive last week not to give air time to “hate mongers, rioters, their facilitators and perpetrators”. It did not name Khan.
Most newspapers have also stopped covering him.
“Media has completely been muzzled,” Khan said. “My name cannot be mentioned on media now. My PTI representatives cannot appear on media anymore.”
Critics and analysts say the crackdown replicates past military-led campaigns used to break other political parties in a country where no elected prime minister has ever completed a full term since independence.
Ahead of 2018 elections which brought Khan to power, the outgoing party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had also alleged that the army was forcing its parliamentarians to switch sides to tip the scale in favour of the former cricket hero.
But the threats were veiled then, analysts said. Now the magnitude is higher and more open, largely because the military is outraged by the attacks on its assets, the analysts say.
Spokespersons for the military did not respond to requests for comment on this.
“The military is striking back with a vengeance,” said Aqil Shah, an academic and author of the book “The Army and Democracy in Pakistan”.
Outgoing army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa said during his last days in office last year that the army had meddled in the country’s politics for decades but had decided that it will no longer do so.
Khan has accused current army chief General Asim Munir of continuing Bajwa’s campaign against him. The army has said the attacks on military installations on May 9 were “pre-planned” by Khan’s party leaders and had resolved to bring to book everyone involved.
Khan is facing abetment charges, according to a police report seen by Reuters.
“The military is in command of operation ‘get PTI’,” said Shah, the author.
“I think we’re seeing the PTI’s controlled demolition,” he said.

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

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’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.

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 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.
SOURCE | CNN
News
2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Washington — Trump Media, The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.
The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.
The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.
The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case
Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.
Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.
Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.
The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case
That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.
The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.
SOURCE | AP
News
The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

(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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