Politics

9, October 2021

US to hold first in-person talks with Taliban since Afghan withdrawal ⁰

The United States and the Taliban will hold their first in-person talks since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan starting Saturday, the State Department said.

The US delegation will meet Saturday and Sunday in the Qatari capital Doha with senior Taliban representatives, a State Department spokesperson said.

The United States has remained in contact with the Taliban since the longtime foes seized Kabul in August as US troops pulled out but the meeting will be the first that is face to face.

“We will press the Taliban to respect the rights of all Afghans, including women and girls, and to form an inclusive government with broad support,” the spokesperson said Friday.

“As Afghanistan faces the prospect of a severe economic contraction and possible humanitarian crisis, we will also press the Taliban to allow humanitarian agencies free access to areas of need,” he said.

The State Department stressed that the meeting did not indicate that the United States was recognizing Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

“We remain clear that any legitimacy must be earned through the Taliban’s own actions,” the spokesperson said.

Letting US citizens leave

The US team will also press President Joe Biden’s key priority of letting US citizens and Afghan allies during the 20-year military operation leave the country.

The United States says that the Taliban have largely cooperated on letting out US citizens. Around 100 remain, predominantly US citizens with roots in Afghanistan who are undecided on whether to leave, according to US officials.

But the United States acknowledges that it was not able to get out most Afghan allies who wanted to leave during a hasty airlift that pulled tens of thousands of people out of Kabul before the withdrawal.

The spokesperson did not specify who would represent the two sides. Senior US officials including Central Command chief General Frank McKenzie met with the Taliban in Kabul in August as US troops took over the airport for the airlift.

(AFP)

8, October 2021

Pandora Papers expose greed, Assange exposed war crimes ⁰

The only surprise when it comes to the Pandora Papers revelations, exposing the scale of the greed and corruption of various world leaders, political figures and officials in hoarding obscene amounts of cash in offshore tax havens, is that anyone should be surprised.

We are living through a crisis of late capitalism, an economic system whose many and manifold contradictions have been exacerbated by a global pandemic. And we have reached the point where huge imbalance in wealth within states, between states – and also within and between regions – is no longer tenable. What is also no longer tenable is the clawing hypocrisy that underpins Western liberal democracy.

The man who more than any other has exposed this hypocrisy is Julian Assange, currently languishing in Belmarsh high security prison in London awaiting the outcome of the US government’s appeal against the decision of a British judge towards the end of 2019 not to allow his extradition to the US on grounds that his treatment there is likely to amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

The level and intensity of the persecution Assange has been made to endure is a measure of the extent to which he removed the flowery curtains of democracy and human rights behind which the savage beast of US-led Western hegemony resides. In exposing the vicious and racist character of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the mountain of war crimes committed in their name, Julian Assange and Wikileaks quickly became a greater and more potent threat to the ability of the Empire to continue as normal than a thousand bayonets.

In societies underpinned by justice and decency instead of injustice and hypocrisy and lies, Julian Assange would be celebrated and lionised for his courage and fidelity to the truth in awakening the masses to the high crimes and war crimes committed by the powerful in their name. We don’t in the West live in such societies, however, which is why Assange has and continues to suffer the prolonged persecution at the hands of the medieval minds who sit at the apex of power in Washington and London.

The journalists responsible for the Pandora Papers story have been hailed as truthtellers and can no doubt look forward to being showered in awards for their efforts. The only difference between them and Julian Assange is the willingness to dig down into the very belly of this warmongering beast in Washington, responsible for unremitting death and destruction since the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, and show the world its entrails.

“It is the job of thinking people not to side with the executioners,” French philosopher and thinker Albert Camus tells us, and since the aforementioned demise of the Soviet Union the executioners of our time have been on the march, leading to the executions of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the putative executions of Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, and Iran, et al.

Julian Assange walks in the same tradition as Albert Camus. Like him he is a man of fierce moral principle who could, if he’d so wished, have ploughed the same lucrative furrow as the journalists over at the Guardian do. This is the same Guardian that squeezed Assange like a lemon, enjoying the prestige of publishing the explosive revelations that came his way as head of Wikileaks, before tossing him aside when the going got tough and fabricated allegations of sexual abuse came down the pipe against him from Sweden.

“Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven,” is the Miltonian line from his classic 17th century poem, Paradise Lost, yet what we have with our mainstream journalists are people who made their peace with those who reign in hell and willingly serve the lie that this is the best of all possible worlds.

The revelations contained in the Pandora Papers are seismic, but compared to those contained in the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs, released by Julian Assange and Wikileaks, merely skim the surface of the depravity of the rich and powerful.

Every second of every day Julian Assange spends in prison stands as an indictment of Washington and its servile British ally. Yet on the level of consciousness, Julian Assange is not in prison we are. He has been to the mountaintop, as Dr King famously proclaimed towards the end of his life, but unlike Dr King Assange did not see the Promised Land there, he saw instead the broken land created in the name of US foreign policy.

There are no words to describe the foul stench of hypocrisy that permeates the corridors of power and corridors of mainstream newspapers and news organizations in the West. They are all part of the same lie and in order to live with themselves, they banish truth into the wilderness as if banishing a heretic.

Julian Assange is the great heretic of our age. He stands in the tradition of all the brave men and women in history who dared to say “No,” regardless of any personal sacrifice and cost involved. It is the job of all right- thinking people never to forget him or forgive those responsible for his plight.

Culled from Presstv

6, October 2021

Mali’s foreign ministry summons French ambassador to protest Macron comments ⁰

Mali’s foreign ministry summoned France’s ambassador to Bamako on Tuesday over comments by President Emmanuel Macron that it said were unfriendly and disagreeable.

This is the latest salvo in a tense dispute between Mali and its key military partner France over reports Bamako could recruit Russian mercenaries as Paris reshapes its 5,000-strong counter-terrorism mission in the region.

Mali’s prime minister has accused France of abandoning it in the joint fight against Islamist insurgents. Macron last week rejected the charge and questioned the legitimacy of the Malian authorities overseeing a transition to elections after two coups in just over a year.

In response, the Malian foreign ministry said it had summoned the French ambassador to inform him of the authorities’ indignation and disapproval.

At the meeting, Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop “strongly protested (Macron’s) regrettable remarks, which are likely to harm the development of friendly relations,” the ministry said in a statement.

It said Diop also called for the two sides to take a constructive approach and prioritise countering the insurgency in the region.

Violence in the Sahel, a band of arid land that borders the south edge of the Sahara Desert, has intensified in recent years despite the presence of thousands of United Nations, regional and Western troops.

Diplomatic and security sources have told Reuters that Mali’s year-old military junta is close to recruiting the Russian Wagner Group, and France has launched a diplomatic drive to thwart it, saying such an arrangement is incompatible with a continued French presence.

(REUTERS)

1, October 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: It is October again ⁰

The month of October will forever be remembered in Cameroon not just because it is the month in which the trust territory of Southern Cameroons achieved its independence, but the month in which Cameroon as a nation was plunged into chaos that might never end.

But before the Cameroon Concord News Group delves into the analysis of the chaos playing out in the two English-speaking regions of the country, it would like to extend its congratulations to the people of former West Cameroon on the attainment of their independence which was captured by the Yaounde government and transformed into a nightmare that will not be ending anytime soon.

In remembrance of October 1, 1961, the recognized Interim Government’s Vice President, Dabney Yerima, wished the people of Southern Cameroons happy celebrations. He used the occasion to remind the population of the importance of the day, urging the people to protect their territory.

He also used the occasion to congratulate the fighters on the ground on their spectacular victories which have left the country’s military and government with bloodshot eyes.

Over the last two months, Southern Cameroonian fighters have demonstrated that they are a force to reckon with and their back to back victories over the poorly trained Yaounde government’s military is gradually triggering a tectonic shift in the thinking of the country’s French-speaking majority.

Vice president Yerima also expressed his sympathy with the Southern Cameroonian population regarding the irresponsible and reckless lockdown declared by some members of the Southern Cameroonian Diaspora who simply want to remain relevant in a conflict that has exposed their greed and ulterior motives.

Since the commencement of this avoidable conflict, close to 4,000 army soldiers and special forces have been killed in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions, with some 3,000 maimed and disabled due to the senseless fighting.

Also speaking to the people of Southern Cameroons on the occasion of their independence was Dr. Ikome Sako of the erstwhile interim government which has lost its popularity and the people’s confidence.

Dressed in a police uniform of the Yaounde crime syndicate, Dr. Ikome Sako, who looked more as a police officer and whose speech problems have been carefully documented, succeeded to thank the fighters on the ground for their brilliant success, urging them to keep the pressure on the beleaguered Yaounde government.

His Yaounde government police uniform has left many in doubt about his loyalty to the people of Southern Cameroons. Many Southern Cameroonians think he is in cahoots with the Yaounde government which has already killed more than 15,000 Southern Cameroonians in a war that lacks a raison d’etre.

Meanwhile, in East Cameroon, the population and government are in fear as Southern Cameroonians peacefully celebrate their much-cherished independence.

The Yaounde government has deployed soldiers in all major cities of the country in fear of what might happen. For over one week now, the country’s uniformed officers have not been having a good night’s sleep as it has been decreed that on October 1 or days preceding the independence day celebrations, Southern Cameroonian fighters might cross the Mungo to wreak havoc in cities in East Cameroon.

The fighters’ ability to manufacture bombs and IEDs has struck fear in the government’s mind. Six months ago, a delegation from China and the United States had trained the fighters to put together IEDs and this is a huge threat to the Yaounde government.

Rumor and fear are spreading in East Cameroon to the effect that large markets and shopping malls will soon come under attack as Southern Cameroons agents have been trained to deliver these deadly weapons to such soft targets in order to mount pressure on the government.

According to a fighter who elected anonymity, a rain of explosions will soon be falling on towns such as Douala, Dschang, Baffoussam and others.

“We will be changing the dynamics in the days ahead. We want to take the war and misery to East Cameroon where the people have been indifferent to the sorry plight of Southern Cameroonians. In Southern Cameroons, we have succeeded to sow fear in the police, soldiers and gendarmes and we want to replicate this in East Cameroon,” the fighter said.

The humiliating defeat of the military in many parts of Southern Cameroons has created mobid fear in the minds of the corrupt government officials who are clearly seeing the writing on the wall.

Speaking to the Cameroon Concord News Group’s Paris correspondent on September 30, 2021, at midnight Cameroon time, a senior gendarmarie officer said that for days he had not been sleeping in his house because he, like many officers of his corps, has been deployed in many parts of Douala, especially at the seaport which is heavily guarded because it is believed that Southern Cameroonian fighters might attack the seaport considered as a den of corruption by many Cameroonians.

“We have not been sleeping for days as the government holds that Southern Cameroonian fighters have a plan to storm the seaport. There is total panic within the military and within government circles. Southern Cameroonian fighters have changed the game. Their use of IEDs to kill soldiers has changed the way Francophones see the conflict,” the senior officier who elected anonymity said.

“Southern Cameroonian fighters have succeeded to instill fear in the government. In the military, many of my colleagues are trembling. The deaths of many colleagues has demoralized the young soldiers and thousands are contemplating quitting the military for good,” he added.

“He highlighted that if the government did not hold out an olive branch sooner rather than later, it might lose everything in Southern Cameroons. The odds are stacked up against the government. The fighting has left the towns and cities of Southern Cameroons for the forest and the roads leading to the towns and the fighters who started out with machetes and hunting rifles are now clearly having an upper hand.”

To make their independence day celebrations more interesting, Southern Cameroonians fighters on September 30 killed some soldiers in kumbo in a humiliating manner, taking with them, the soldiers’ weapons and uniforms.

It should be recalled that October is not only the month of independence for Southern Cameroons, but a month wherein the conflict with the Yaounde government started. October 16, 2016, is a day that Southern Cameroonians will always remember as it changed their lives.

Years of marginalization by the government finally resulted in huge demonstrations across the country’s two English-speaking regions, resulting in the killing of many innocent civilians and citizens.

The events of October 2016 shattered Cameroon’s image as an oasis of peace in a desert of chaos. Many lives have been lost and ruined and confidence in the Yaounde government has evaporated.

The government has been humiliated and reduced. Its tough approach to the Southern Cameroons crisis has not only hurt the country’s image, it has resulted in a loss of life that is in many minds unpardonable.

The government like the separatists has remained frozen in its position and this is making it a lot more challenging to put an end to this conflict that has clearly hurt the country’s economy.

As Southern Cameroonians celebrate their independence today, they should always remember that the enemy is still strong, very manipulative and dangerous, though it has taken many punches to the liver.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

30, September 2021

Pentagon officials say Afghan govt’s collapse was rooted in 2020 US deal with Taliban ⁰

Senior Pentagon officials said Wednesday the collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces in August could be traced to the 2020 US agreement with the Taliban signed in Doha that promised a complete troop withdrawal. Joe Biden has faced the biggest crisis of his presidency over the withdrawal in Afghanistan, drawing criticism from Republican US lawmakers.

This week, the US House and Senate started hearings of a congressional review on the troop pull-out in Afghanistan and the war itself. During its second day, General Frank McKenzie, the head of Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee that once the US troop presence was pushed below 2,500, as part of President Joe Biden’s decision in April to complete a total withdrawal by September, the unravelling of the Washington-backed Afghan government accelerated.

“The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military – psychological more than anything else, but we set a date-certain for when we were going to leave and when they could expect all assistance to end,” McKenzie said.

On February 29, 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, in which the US promised to fully withdraw its troops by May 2021, with the Taliban committing to several conditions, including stopping attacks on American and coalition forces. The stated objective was to promote peace negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Kabul, but that diplomatic effort never gained traction before Biden took office in January.

McKenzie had believed “for quite a while” that if the United States reduced the number of its military advisers in Afghanistan below 2,500, the Kabul government inevitably would collapse “and that the military would follow.” In addition to the morale-depleting effects of the Doha agreement, the troop reduction ordered by Biden in April was ”the other nail in the coffin” for the 20-year war effort, he added, because it blinded the US military to conditions inside the Afghan army: “our advisers were no longer down there with those units.”

Democrat Biden has faced the biggest crisis of his presidency over the war in Afghanistan, which he argued needed to be brought to a close after 20 years of stalemated fighting that had cost American lives, drained resources and distracted from greater strategic priorities.

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, testifying alongside McKenzie, said he agreed with the analysis. The Doha agreement also committed the United States to ending airstrikes against the Taliban, “so the Taliban got stronger, they increased their offensive operations against the Afghan security forces, and the Afghans were losing a lot of people on a weekly basis,” he added.

War in Afghanistan ‘a strategic failure’

Wednesday’s hearing with Pentagon leaders was politically charged. Republicans sought to cast President Biden as wrongheaded on Afghanistan, and Democrats pointed to what they called ill-advised decisions during the Trump years.

The previous day, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a similar hearing in the Senate that the war in Afghanistan was a “strategic failure,” and he repeated that on Wednesday.

When pressed Tuesday, Milley also told the Senate committee that it had been his personal opinion that at least 2,500 American troops were needed to guard against a collapse of the Kabul government and a return to Taliban rule.

Defying US intelligence assessments, the Afghan government and its American-trained army collapsed on August 15, allowing the Taliban to capture Kabul with what Milley described as a couple of hundred men on motorcycles and without firing one shot. That triggered a frantic US effort to evacuate American civilians, Afghan allies and others from Kabul airport.

The Taliban had ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.

‘Plain old politics’

US House and Senate started hearings which could become an extended congressional review of the US failures in Afghanistan. This after years of limited congressional oversight of the war although hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were consumed.

“The Republicans’ sudden interest in Afghanistan is plain old politics,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, who supported Biden’s decision to end US involvement there.

Tuesday’s hearing also was contentious at times, as Republicans sought to portray Biden as having ignored advice from military officers and mischaracterised the military options with which he was presented last spring and summer.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton (Arkansas) asked why Milley did not choose to resign after his advice was rejected. The general, who was appointed to his position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Donald Trump and retained by Biden, said it was his responsibility to provide the commander in chief with his best advice.

“The president doesn’t have to agree with that advice,” Milley said. “He doesn’t have to make those decisions just because we are generals. And it would be an incredible act of political defiance for a commissioned officer to resign just because my advice was not taken.”

(FRANCE 24 with AP & REUTERS)

28, September 2021

Trump return to White House would be ‘disaster’ ⁰

A former senior US Department of Homeland Security official has warned former Republican President Donald Trump’s possible return to the White House would result in “disaster” for the American intelligence community.

“I think it would be a disaster,” Brian Murphy said of Trump’s possible 2024 presidential campaign in an interview on Sunday.

“He puts out disinformation and that’s an existential threat to democracy, and he is one of the best at putting it out and hurting this country,” Murphy said.

He added that such disinformation “polarizes us.”

“Political polarization in this country is at the worst it’s ever been,” Murphy said.

He then went on to say that disinformation and polarization are considered leading threats to the US intelligence community, which is a coalition of 17 agencies and organizations, including the ODNI, and CIA.

This comes despite the fact that Pulitzer Prize winner American investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald has revealed in a recent article that an axis of the CIA, Big Tech and the DNC-allied wing of the corporate media spread an absolute lie in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election.

“Numerous examples of brute and dangerous censorship have emerged: the destruction by Big Tech monopolies of Parler at the behest of Democratic politicians at the time that it was the most-downloaded app in the country; the banning of the sitting president from social media; and the increasingly explicit threats from elected officials in the majority party of legal and regulatory reprisals in the event that tech platforms do not censor more in accordance with their demands,” Greenwald wrote.

“But the most severe episode of all was the joint campaign — in the weeks before the 2020 election — by the CIA, Big Tech, the liberal wing of the corporate media and the Democratic Party to censor and suppress a series of major reports about then-presidential frontrunner Joe Biden,” he added.

Meanwhile, Trump has said that only a doctor’s call could prevent him from participating in the 2024 presidential race.

In an interview on Friday, the 75-year-old businessman said that only “a bad call from a doctor or something” could stop him from running.

“Things happen, through God, they happen,” he said. “But I feel so good.”

Trump has alleged that the 2020 election was “the greatest Election Hoax in history.”

Trump believes that the election was rigged by the Washington establishment in favor of Joe Biden, the current US president.

Source: Presstv

25, September 2021

Unmasking Barrister Emmanuel Agbor Ashu ⁰

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu said, “know the enemy and know yourself in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.” Although there is a huge appetite among Ambazonians for a muscular approach on French Cameroun airwaves when talking about the atrocities committed in the Southern Cameroons, many have the impression that some who claim to be with them and speak for them in their quest for freedom are dishonest and are enemies within. Historic and current trajectories have inspired this Cameroon Concord News review of Barrister Agbor Ashu, the so-called Ambazonia spokesman in Ground Zero, as a person of interest in relation to Sun’s philosophy and dogma of war.

Over three months ago, Cameroon Concord News Group was dependably informed that prominent Southern Cameroons leaders invited Barrister Agbor Ashu to assume the leadership of the Southern Cameroons struggle in Ground Zero. However, he responded saying, “I am the National President of a legalized political party and will never get myself mixed up in your Ambazonian issues”.

Emmanuel Agbor Ashu (to use his three names) is implicitly a typical “bite and blow” and a serial killer that is deadlier than his onetime acolyte Ni John Fru Ndi the CPDM historical mistake who in utmost naivety, greed and disregard for inalienable rights of a people, openly rejected the Ambazonian ideology and legitimate right to self-determination.

Following the barrister’s refusal to take over leadership of Ground Zero affairs, Cameroon Concord News developed interest in the man of law including his genuine position on the Ambazonia struggle. Our investigation has uncovered a worrying trail of duplicity in the man seen by many as liberator.

Back in September 2018, when Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides who were abducted in Abuja, Nigeria in January 2018, surfaced in SED Yaoundé, the Interim Government of Ambazonia (IG) was eager to commission team of lawyers to defend them in any potential legal proceedings. When contacted to head the legal team of the NERA10, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu requested that the IG pay him FCFA 2.5 billion, buy him a new car, and furnish an office in Douala for him. Sako Ikome was stunned, Chris Anu was speechless, and Elvis Kumeta was astonishingly shocked by the Manyu Barrister’s low sense of judgment.

When the Interim Government informed him that his financial demands were bizarre and outlandishly unaffordable, the man of law replied, “then they can take them to the gallows”. Consequently, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu is one of the few high profile lawyers who elected not to defend the NERA10 in their court appearances in Yaoundé. Genuine revolutionaries and agents of justice and freedom do not abandon their own to the “gallows”. They often graciously embrace any opportunity to rescue those they claim are their comrades from the claws of a brutal oppressor.

Correspondingly, when the SDF was the only political show in town in the early 90s, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu, Larry Eyong Echaw, and TT Tabenyang reportedly took Chairman John Fru Ndi to Manyu on a political tour. Fru Ndi could not spend an hour in Ewelle village because Barrister Ashu had nowhere to host the visiting SDF delegation.

People are genuinely suspicious of a man who has prostituted from the CPDM to SDF and to his comical Reform Political Party. He has now appointed himself spokesman for the Ambazonia resistance on French Cameroun television networks. Barrister Emmanuel Ashu is now appearing on national television claiming to have a bright insight and deep understanding of the Ambazonia crisis when his true motive is being a surrogate for the disgraced Sako Ikome, who stole USD 2 million of Ambazonian money.

The Man of Law has pseudo academic intelligence, lacks composure, integrity and is emotionally too erratic. He has a relentless appetite for attention and is only a decent man where money is not involved. Those who happen to know him personally have increasingly defined him as a loose cannon devoid of trustworthiness. His recent defense of the failed two weeks lockdown of Ambazonia with a concealed agenda to increase the pain and sufferings of the people and subsequently spur them to revolt against the movement for the restoration of statehood by alluding to the UN General assembly proceedings in America also reveals Barrister Agbonde (to use his pet name) is out of touch with reality or not intellectually grounded with UN processes and public actions that exert positive influence on UN activities. A lockdown of a street in Maryland led by Ikome Sako would have been more impactful and would have saved Barrister Ashu from embarrassing himself with tantrums on TV just to defend a lie.

Our investigation uncovered that the Barrister has a propensity for asking the right questions and then precisely giving dishonest answers. To put it charitably, the gap between what he says and the truth is alarmingly wide, and this is a trait that has plagued him all his life. His last appearance on a French Cameroun TV claiming that the disgraced Sako Ikome, had control over Ambazonia self-defense forces was an inaccurate stereotype and the Barrister knows that. His numerous appearances on TV have given the barrister the false impression that he speaks for genuine Ambazonians.

Barrister Emmanuel Ashu “owns” a political party in French Cameroun called Reforme Party. The head office of this contraption of a political party is on his poorly conceived social media page. On the party’s Facebook page, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu published that “candidates who wish to be sponsored by the Reforme Party in the municipal and parliamentary elections 2020 in Cameroon, can contact the National President through the following numbers: 699989279, 675005043, 678511482,695969343”

Cameroon Concord News Group understands that over the last twenty years, Barrister Ashu has campaigned during every election in French Cameroun but never ended up on the ballot paper as he constantly sells out to the CPDM. He stood for elections in French Cameroun as recently as 2020 and the same man wants Southern Cameroonians to think that he is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

For Barrister Ashu Agbonde, the Ambazonia struggle represents an opportunity to line his pockets, especially, as, in his view, there’s an irreconcilable mismatch between the money that the Ambazonia Diaspora has and what is being sent to people like him in Ground Zero. The barrister draws comfort from the fact that the disgraced Sako Ikome and other members of the Maryland cabal have taken radically different paths to reality and integrity. The Southern Cameroons uprising has also presented an opportunity for the Barrister to escape poverty even if it means chasing winds and shadows.

In 2015 our Douala city reporter met Barrister Ashu dressed with an unpardonably tattered shoe, a pair of trousers with countless patches, a dreadful body odour, and looked desperately hungry. The barrister is undoubtedly another product of the unending poverty culture in the Cameroons, which is a result of Paul Biya’s dreadful pattern of governance. Being a product of this poverty culture, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu belongs to an unenviable club of Manyu citizens in their 60s who have not contributed an iota of development to the villages.

As a man who courts popularity at every turn, the Ambazonia struggle offers him a platform to present his outdated law credentials. With Fru John Nsoh now full of sorrow, harboring multiple illnesses and extremely lacking in financial finesse in Maryland, USA, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu has now replaced him in the French Cameroun city of Douala as Southern Cameroons leading legal embarrassment.

The barrister possesses neither character nor direction, and in terms of personality, he is deemed inadequate by his peers. Barrister Emmanuel Ashu’s pretence of hammering the Yaoundé regime on French Cameroun airwaves has been exposed as a scam. He is skilled at joining any bandwagon with evil plans. His legacy is one of political and personal failure, intellectual recklessness, and dismal poverty.

Ambazonians should be wary of this man, given his history and penchant for political prostitution and deception. He is attracted to political games, dirty and cheap money. To be sure, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu is a Southern Cameroons political disaster and a successful failure.

By Isong Asu in London and Dr Patrick Ayuk in Johannesburg

21, September 2021

Canada: Prime Minister Trudeau wins another minority ⁰

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hung onto power on Monday as his main rival conceded defeat, but his Liberals fell short of his goal for a majority win.

Trudeau, in power since 2015 and governing with a minority of House of Commons seats since 2019, decided to gamble on an early vote and capitalise on his government’s handling of the pandemic, which included massive spending to support individuals and businesses and a push for high vaccination rates.

Instead, he will end up where he started after an unexpectedly tight election race characterised by a lacklustre campaign and voter anger at an election during a pandemic.

“You (Canadians) are sending us back to work with a clear mandate to get through this pandemic into brighter days ahead,” Trudeau said, flanked by his wife Sophie Gregoire and their children on stage at a victory gala in the early hours of Tuesday. “That’s exactly what we are ready to do,” he said.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, whose party placed second, conceded defeat as results trickled in late into the night.

19, September 2021

Guinea’s junta rules out exile for ousted president ⁰

Guinea’s ruling junta on Saturday ruled out exile for detained former president Alpha Conde and said transition towards civilian rule would be done in accordance with “the will of the people”.

The statement from the ruling council came in defiance of international pressure for Conde’s release and a six-month timetable for elections after a coup on September 5 sparked global condemnation.

It also followed the visit on Friday of a mission from ECOWAS led by two heads of state from the 15-member West African bloc.

Mamady Doumbouya, the colonel who led the coup, told the visiting delegation that “it was important for ECOWAS to listen to the legitimate aspirations of the people of Guinea,” said a junta spokesman, Colonel Amara Camara, at the ruling council’s first news conference on the six-month deadline.

Doumbouya stressed the need not to repeat the “mistakes of the past”, recalling that national consultations to outline the transition had begun on Tuesday and that “only the sovereign people of Guinea will decide its destiny”, Camara said.

“It is also clear to all parties that the former president will remain in Guinea,” he added.

‘Frank and fraternal talks’

During their visit, the Ghanaian head of state Nana Akufo-Addo, whose country holds the rotating presidency of ECOWAS, and his Ivorian counterpart Alassane Ouattara, presented the junta with the organisation’s demands for elections within six months.

They also insisted on the release of Conde.

“We had very frank, fraternal talks with Colonel Doumbouya and his associates and collaborators and I think that ECOWAS and Guinea will find a way to walk together,” Akufo-Addo said at the end of the visit.

The ruling council, which now designates Doumbouya as “president of the republic and head of state”, said that consultation sessions scheduled for Friday with banks, insurance companies and unions would be held on Saturday.

The consultations will continue next week, it said, including Monday meetings with cultural actors, press associations and those within the informal sector.

The military has already held talks with political parties, religious leaders, and the heads of mining companies, key players in this poor but resource-rich country, and other figures.

Local rights groups, including the Guinean Organisation for the Defence of Human Rights (OGDH), put out a statement voicing their concern over “respect for democratic principles and the rule of law” and called on the ruling junta to “communicate as soon as possible a roadmap for the transition that takes into account all the proposals arising from the consultations”.

Activists return from exile

Public discontent in Guinea had been brewing for months before the coup over the leadership of Conde, 83.

A former opposition figure, Conde became Guinea’s first democratically elected president in 2010 and was re-elected in 2015.

But last year, he pushed through a controversial new constitution that allowed him to run for a third term in October 2020.

The move sparked mass demonstrations in which dozens of protesters were killed. Conde won the election but the political opposition maintained the poll was a sham.

On Saturday four activists against Conde serving a third term returned to the country from exile and were met by cheering crowds at Conakry airport.

“Honour to the patriots” read one placard on display among the hundreds who waited hours for the exiles to return.

Some in the crowd were wearing the red t-shirts of the opposition FNDC coalition, which led the protest against a third mandate for Conde. Others sported the red, yellow and green of the Guinean flag.

“We never doubted for a moment that we would win this fight,” said Ibrahima Diallo, one of those returning.

“We want to accompany the process of democratic transition that will lead to credible and transparent elections so that Guinea can turn towards development,” he added.

Fellow returning activist Sekou Koundouno, expressed his relief that the people of Guinea “have rid themselves of the despot Alpha Conde who had taken the institutions and the army hostage”.

Source: AFP

17, September 2021

Canada: Conservative challenger O’Toole takes aim at stumbling Trudeau as nation votes ⁰

Erin O’Toole is closer to becoming Canada’s next prime minister than any Conservative Party leader has been since 2015, when rockstar candidate Justin Trudeau swept a dour three-term incumbent into the history books under a wave of Trudeaumania. O’Toole is no rockstar – his vibe is closer to affable-roadie-turned-band-manager. But a tone-deaf act of hubris by Canada’s flashy frontman could yet score O’Toole the top gig.

When Liberal Party leader Trudeau called these snap September 20 legislative elections back in August, the task looked simple on paper. Reliant on making nice with other factions in the House of Commons since losing his majority (not least due to an embarrassing blackface photo scandal) in 2019 – way back in the Before Times – Trudeau hoped to parlay widespread approval of his handling of Canada’s Covid-19 crisis into votes, a stable majority and a fresh five-year term coming out of the pandemic.

After all, Canada has enjoyed a G7-leading vaccine rollout, escaped abject disaster with the second-lowest Covid-19 fatality rate among G7 nations, and has so far recouped some 95 percent of the jobs lost during the pandemic, outshining its basket-case neighbours to the south on all counts. And through it all, Trudeau was there at the mic – relatably shaggy, bearded and working from home – providing regular updates on the pandemic in progress. (Meanwhile, the hot-button nitty-gritty was being hashed out elsewhere: Healthcare and schools are provincial responsibilities in Canada, not federal ones.)

So as a leader just 15 seats short of a majority in Canada’s 338-seat lower house, why not brazenly call an election two years early? With Monday’s election now strikingly tight, Canada’s political observers have been counting the ways why not.

The consensus suggests Trudeau miscalculated: 1) how little appetite there was (particularly among his own Liberal supporters) for a pandemic election amid a Delta-fuelled fourth wave; 2) progressives’ impatience with lofty Trudeau promises after six years in power, with his ethics woes still close to mind and a creeping suspicion (even among Liberals) that the feminist, Pride-parading modern leader they elected is a cynic at heart; 3) the single-minded loathing Trudeau inspires on the right; 4) the indelicate optics of calling an election on August 15, the very day Kabul fell; and 5) just how primed his rivals were across the board to pull the plug on Trudeau.

Enter stage right, Erin O’Toole.

Conservative Party leader Erin O'Toole speaks to supporters during an election campaign visit to North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on September 3, 2021. — Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole speaks to supporters during an election campaign visit to North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on September 3, 2021. © Jennifer Gauthier, Reuters

In the year or so since O’Toole won the Conservative Party leadership, the burly 48-year-old father of two reportedly shed 35 pounds by lacing on his running shoes daily. But he has also shed a significant number of the hardline “blue Tory” stances that won him that Conservative primary, successively dropping pledges against a carbon tax and an assault-weapon ban, to take a run at Trudeau’s job.

Born in Montreal in 1973, O’Toole moved as an infant to Bowmanville, Ontario, now a far-flung suburb in Toronto’s eastern sprawl, after his father took a manager’s job at the General Motors plant nearby. Erin and his two younger sisters lost their mother to breast cancer when he was nine. O’Toole credits his mother’s work sponsoring a family of Vietnamese refugees, thousands of whom were welcomed to Canada in 1979 under Conservative prime minister Joe Clark, with instilling in him a sense of service.

O’Toole doesn’t have the spectacular political pedigree of Trudeau – who was born in 1971 to a sitting prime minister, the charismatic Liberal iconoclast Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and grew up in the limelight.

In this June 25, 1980, file photo, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, left, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, centre, facing left, and his son, future Canadian PM Justin, then 8, speak outside No. 10 Downing Street, in London. © Lawrence Harris, AP Photo/File

But the senior O’Toole, too, introduced his son to the heady buzz of the campaign trail, holding local office before serving five terms as a Conservative in Ontario’s provincial legislature.

At 18, O’Toole enrolled at military college and became an officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force four years later, flying as a tactical navigator on workhorse Sea King military search and rescue helicopters and rising to captain. He has quipped about his teen dreams of Top Gun and ultimately settling for the wingman role. “I walked into the recruiting centre thinking I was going to be Maverick. And not only was I not Maverick, I was Goose. And I was on an old, antiquated helicopter,” O’Toole told Canadian newsmagazine Macleans last year.

O’Toole, who is younger than Trudeau but looks older with his thinning white hairline, has leaned on his armed forces service to drive home his party’s character message about Trudeau. “When Mr. Trudeau was partying – and we’ve all seen the photos – I was doing search and rescue missions in the military,” O’Toole told a crowd as a chippy last week of campaigning began. “Every Canadian has met a Justin Trudeau in their lives – privileged, entitled and always looking out for number one,” he went on. “He’ll say anything to get elected, regardless of the damage it does to our country.”

Canada’s Globe & Mail newspaper has noted that if elected O’Toole would be the country’s first prime minister in more than 50 years with military experience. He served in the regular forces of a peacetime military until 2000, when he moved to the reserves to study law in Halifax. He worked as a corporate lawyer in Toronto, notably for Procter & Gamble, and founded a charity for veterans called True Patriot Love, after a lyric in Canada’s national anthem.

When a Conservative federal legislative seat opened up on his old stomping grounds in 2012, O’Toole leapt at the opportunity and won the by-election. Re-elected three times as MP, he would serve briefly as veterans affairs’ minister in 2015, three years as shadow foreign affairs minister, and stand twice for the Conservative leadership before winning on his third try last year.

In his bid to update his party and bring Conservatives back to power in Ottawa, O’Toole has torn a page from the playbooks that brought success to his conservative contemporaries in Britain and the United States. He’s been vocal in his pro-choice and pro-LGBTQ views, echoing compassionate conservatism à la David Cameron. He’s made a play for working-class votes, mining for disillusioned Liberals like Boris Johnson poached support from old Labour Party bastions. And he’s engaged in sloganeering – “Canada First”, “Take back Canada” – that openly mirrors Donald Trump. O’Toole similarly lobbied to cancel “cancel culture”, mocking “woke” campaigns to re-dedicate public buildings named for founders of the notorious Residential Schools system that brutally oppressed generations of indigenous Canadians, before walking back his comments amid accusations of race-baiting.

Not that grassroots Conservatives are always along for O’Toole’s ride. At a party convention in March, the rookie leader backed a resolution to add “climate change is real” to the Conservative policy book. Delegates rejected it. When a Liberal bill to ban LGBTQ conversion therapy was tabled in the House of Commons in June, O’Toole backed it – but the Conservatives’ deputy leader voted against.

O’Toole, who tested positive for Covid-19 last year, has himself been vaccinated against the coronavirus. But while Trudeau required Liberal candidates to get the jab before campaigning, O’Toole declined to mandate vaccines for his own candidates, even as they knocked on voter doors and visited senior care homes. The Conservative said he preferred rapid testing and calls health decisions a matter of personal choice. As a result, Trudeau, who is seeking to mandate vaccines for public servants and domestic travel, has painted O’Toole as beholden to anti-vaxxers and unequipped to lead a party within which more radical views appear to thrive.

“He can’t even convince his own candidates to get vaccinated,” goaded Trudeau during a televised debate this month. “Mr. O’Toole can’t even convince his party that climate change is real.”

“I’m driving the bus,” O’Toole shot back.

Smiling in button-down shirts and sneakers on the trail, O’Toole hasn’t looked the part of the stuffy humourless Tory leader of old. His pledge to deploy more than $50 billion in new spending over five years, too, is a far cry from Conservative doctrine. Pandemic spending has seen Trudeau run Canada’s highest budget deficit since World War II, easy pickings for a fiscal conservative. But O’Toole’s platform only pledges to balance the budget within ten years and “without cuts”.

“We’re not your dad’s Conservative party anymore,” O’Toole told voters during a campaign stop on Wednesday.

Statistical tie

Down the home stretch, pollsters say Trudeau and O’Toole are in a statistical tie ahead of Monday’s vote. Canada being a parliamentary democracy, there are practical limitations to popular vote polling. The election isn’t a one-horse race – it’s 338 horse races, one in each district – and Trudeau’s and O’Toole’s names only feature on ballots in their own Montreal and greater Toronto ridings, respectively. In 2019, Conservative candidate Andrew Scheer won the popular vote yet still fell 36 seats short of Trudeau’s Liberals. But this time, pollsters say, it’s different.

New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh speaks to the press in front of his poutine truck during an election campaign stop ahead of the TVA debate, at a park in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on September 2, 2021. © Christinne Muschi

Under O’Toole’s big-tent rejig, the Conservatives are losing some support in Western Canada, but they can afford to shed votes there and still retain their seats. Meanwhile, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, the TikTok-savvy 42-year-old progressive who has pointedly claimed the sunny hopey-changey mantle from Trudeau after keeping his minority government afloat, looks to be plying key votes away from the Liberals in key Ontario battlegrounds. Trudeau’s fate is squeezed between the two.

“The consensus (seat projection) seems to be a Liberal minority, because of the more efficient distribution of Liberal support compared to Conservatives’ support (which has big wins in the West),” Nanos Research founder Nik Nanos told FRANCE 24. “For the Liberals to win a majority, we would need NDP support to switch to the Liberals in the close of the campaign. It is still possible but unlikely today,” added Nanos, the Ottawa-based firm’s chief data scientist.

Others are more circumspect. In Toronto, Ipsos Global Affairs CEO Darrell Bricker says a majority appears off the table for any party. But as to who will lead Canada’s next minority government, “It’s true suspense,” Bricker told FRANCE 24. “I will genuinely say, on the record and off, I don’t know.”

When Trudeau called the election in August, Bricker said, “I think most political observers couldn’t believe he was doing it.” Ipsos polling showed 56 percent of voters didn’t want an election, with Liberal voters those least in favour. “I don’t know how he missed that… The only people who wanted an election were opposition voters, particularly Conservatives,” he said. Trudeau “didn’t understand how Canadians would view the Machiavellian aspects of this – and his position with Canadians, from being this beacon of goodness and light into being just another politician, and potentially even more cynical than other politicians,” Bricker said. Trudeau’s unwelcome election call “kind of played into all that. It just blew up on him and exploded. And he hasn’t been able to shake it.”Trudeau criticized at debate for calling Canadian election

If the election call itself made the election a referendum on Trudeau, Conservatives were happy to oblige. And the social conservatives among them, at least for now, seem happy enough to look the other way to oust a long-loathed nemesis.

“O’Toole is only rising because people are so upset with Justin Trudeau. So he’s going up basically as the alternate choice,” said Bricker. “He hasn’t offended anybody. He’s become an acceptable option, as opposed to… building any momentum like Trudeau did in 2015.”

The pollster explains that in Canadian politics of late, progressives need to adore a candidate. “They need to feel that they’re voting for hope, they need to plug into emotion around a political leader. The right doesn’t,” Bricker explained. “For the left, it’s like American Idol (or Canadian Idol or Eurovision). For the right it’s like a job interview…. If you look like you can do the job, you’re okay.” The upshot is that, for now at least, O’Toole equivocating on policy doesn’t matter. “Because it’s not about him.”

“The Conservative vote is about one thing right now and that’s Justin Trudeau gone,” Bricker said. “So they are willing to put a lot of stuff away for that,” he said, adding the data shows the biggest motivation for fully half of Conservative voters is removing Trudeau. “I’ve never seen that before,” the pollster said.

The mood on the campaign trail was far different in 2015 for Trudeau, shown here clowning around with campaign team members in Montreal on that Election Day, October 19, 2015. © Andy Blatchford/The Canadian Press via AP/File

Nanos, for his part, says the Conservatives pivoted to casting the ballot question as one of character. “This has been more about O’Toole exceeding very low expectations,” the data scientist said, downplaying the effect of the Conservative’s fluctuating policy. “His steady performance and more progressive and spending platform compared to previous Conservative campaigns has helped inoculate him and the Conservatives from Liberal fear-mongering,” Nanos said.

Caught between a rockstar and a hard place?

Now comes the tense wait. After polls close across Canada’s six time zones on Monday, counting an unusually high number of mail-in ballots requested amid the pandemic could delay the final calls in tight races.

Much of what follows is down to convention. If Trudeau’s Liberals don’t win the highest number of seats on Election Day, he is within his rights as the incumbent to delay conceding the race while he tries to form a government. If Trudeau does make good on late projections and salvage his minority government with a plurality of seats, he may yet emerge a wounded leader, his rivals left and right given a proverbial shot in the arm by a vote of the Liberal’s own making that spun out of his grip.

And what if the rookie O’Toole ekes out a win? “O’Toole’s problem is that he’s got a party that doesn’t necessarily agree with him,” said Bricker, making the business of heading a minority government a particular challenge. The Conservative “sugar high” of ousting Trudeau, as he called it, would be short-lived with a pandemic to manage. From O’Toole’s perspective, Bricker quipped, “the old analogy is the dog that caught the car: ‘I’ve got it. What am I going to do with it?’

Source: France 24