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Indian Express
a day ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Shashi Tharoor's ‘Osama episode' reminder for Americans after Trump-Munir lunch meet
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday reacted to American President Donald Trump hosting Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir for lunch, remarking that the 'people in US could not have forgotten the Osama episode so quickly'. The Chairman of the External Affairs Committee of the Parliament was referring to the Al-Qaeda leader who was the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers. US Navy SEALs killed Osama on May 2, 2011, after raiding a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan that was reported to be in close vicinity of the Pakistan Military Academy. Hoping the Pakistan military official got 'some food for thought,' the Thiruvananthapuram MP told reporters: 'I hope that in these interactions, the Americans reminded Pakistan of not enabling, guiding, training, arming, financing, equipping, and dispatching terrorists to our country from their soil. Some American Senators and Congressmen who met the Pakistani delegation did do this'. Tharoor was part of the Indian delegation that travelled to the US, Panama, Guyana, Brazil and Colombia to explain India's position on Operation Sindoor, which was launched in retaliation to the Pahalgam terror attack that claimed 26 lives. 'People in the US could not have forgotten the Osama episode so quickly… Pakistan's culpability in hiding this man until he was finally found in a safe house near an Army camp can not easily be forgotten and forgiven by the Americans. I hope while the General was being wined and dined, he got all these messages at the same time because that would also be in America's interest,' Tharoor said. #WATCH | Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala | On US President Donald Trump's lunch meeting with Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor says, 'I hope the food was good and he gets some food for thought in the process. I hope that in these interactions, the Americans… — ANI (@ANI) June 19, 2025 Speaking hours ahead of his lunch meeting with Munir, Trump lauded the role of the Pakistan Army Chief, a five-star general, in 'stopping the war'. Repeating his claim that he stopped the war between India and Pakistan, Trump said: 'I stopped the war between India and Pakistan. I love Pakistan, and Modi is a fantastic man…This man (Asim Munir) was extremely influential in stopping it from the Pakistani side and PM Modi from the Indian side. They (India and Pakistan) were going at it, and both are nuclear countries. I stopped a war between two major nations.' India has repeatedly countered Trump's statements and underlined that the cessation of hostilities was a bilateral decision. Hours before Trump's latest comments, Modi told the US President over a call that there was 'no proposal' for US mediation and 'no mention' of any India-US trade deal during the conversation. 'The discussion to cease military action took place directly between India and Pakistan through the existing channels of communication between the two armed forces, and it was initiated at Pakistan's request,' Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said in a briefing. 'Prime Minister Modi firmly stated that India does not and will never accept mediation. There is complete political consensus in India on this matter.'
Calgary Herald
2 days ago
- Politics
- Calgary Herald
No arrests at G7 summit protests, says security group
Article content 'Thankfully we were able to have that pilot safely exit the controlled airspace, land and then an investigation started into exactly what happened there,' he said. Article content 'Some of our partner agencies are looking at applicable regulatory offences, but at this time, it's not my understanding that any charges have been laid.' Article content Airspace restrictions in effect during the summit were lifted at noon Wednesday, while the Controlled Access Zone established around key summit venues is also no longer in effect. Article content Motorized vehicles are again able to access Highway 40 from the intersection on Highway 1 to the closure gate at the junction of the Kananaskis Lakes Trail. Article content The tunnel on Airport Trail N.E. in Calgary was expected to reopen Wednesday afternoon and the designated demonstration zones in Calgary and Banff are no longer in effect. Article content Article content However, the Highwood Pass/Highway 40 will not reopen to all vehicular traffic until this Saturday, according to ISSG. Article content Article content 'As foreign dignitaries continue to depart Alberta, residents in these communities may see some continued security presence for the coming days as the ISSG clears equipment, and police vehicles, and assists with clean-up duties at designated sites,' the security group said in a news release. Article content 'It's important to remember we're not finished,' Hall said. 'We have a lot of work to do to demobilize our security posture and all of our respective organizations need to wind down their operations. At some point, we'll tally all those costs and those will be made publicly available.' Article content In 2002, when the then-G8 summit was last held in Kananaskis Country, the City of Calgary's security-related costs totaled $34 million, according to Calgary Herald archives. That was the first summit held after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, which led to a more robust approach to security and policing in general, and the first held after a protester was shot dead by police in Genoa, Italy during the 2001 summit. Article content Article content This year's G7 gathering saw several security protocols in effect, including checkpoints blocking traffic, the closure of nearby hiking trails and common areas, motorcade training drills, temporary road closures in Calgary, airspace restrictions, the establishment of four designated protest zones in Calgary and Banff, and even wildlife monitoring. Article content At the summit itself, snipers were positioned on rooftops, adjacent businesses were sequestered and soldiers or police officers were stationed at trailhead parking lots in the G7 exclusion zone. Article content Costs for hosting the summit will be provided by Public Safety Canada, and operational costs incurred by the event will be covered federally through the Major International Event Security Cost Framework, according to a statement from the City of Calgary.
Winnipeg Free Press
2 days ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
As Israel strikes Iran, many wonder if the US will deepen its involvement
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — As Israeli strikes kill top Iranian generals, take out air defenses and damage nuclear sites, many wonder if President Donald Trump will deepen U.S. involvement in the conflict. Trump has long railed against what he refers to as the 'stupid, endless wars' waged by his predecessors, including in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the U.S. helped overthrow governments. But with Iran's government looking increasingly fragile, if the U.S. does get involved, its strikes could help severely damage the country's nuclear program or even end its 4-decade-old theocracy. 'I may do it, I may not do it,' Trump said in an exchange with reporters at the White House about whether he has decided to order a U.S. strike. 'I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do.' But the recent history of U.S. attempts to remake the Middle East by force is one of costly blunders and colossal failures — and there are plenty of hard-earned lessons for anyone who wants to try it again. Initial success is often fleeting U.S. special forces and Afghan allies drove the Taliban from power and chased Osama bin Laden into Pakistan within months of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. American tanks rolled into Baghdad weeks after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Both wars went on for years. The Taliban waged a tenacious insurgency for two decades and swept back into power as the U.S. beat a chaotic retreat in 2021. The overthrow of Saddam plunged Iraq into chaos, with Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias battling each other and U.S. forces. Israel may succeed in taking out Iran's air defenses, ballistic missiles and much of its nuclear program. But that would still leave hundreds of thousands in the military, the Revolutionary Guard and forces known as the Basij, who played a key role in quashing waves of anti-government protests in recent years. Ground forces are key but do not guarantee success Airstrikes have never been enough on their own. Take Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, for example. His forces withstood a seven-month NATO air campaign in 2011 before rebels fighting city by city eventually cornered and killed him. There are currently no insurgent groups in Iran capable of taking on the Revolutionary Guard, and it's hard to imagine Israeli or U.S. forces launching a ground invasion of a mountainous country of some 80 million people that is about four times as big as Iraq. A split in Iran's own security forces would furnish a ready-made insurgency, but it would also likely tip the country into civil war. There's also the question of how ordinary Iranians would respond. Protests in recent years show that many Iranians believe their government is corrupt and repressive, and would welcome its demise. But the last time a foreign power attacked Iran — the Iraqi invasion of 1980 — people rallied around the flag. At the moment, many appear to be lying low or leaving the capital. Be wary of exiled opposition groups Some of the biggest cheerleaders for the U.S. invasion of Iraq were exiled opposition figures, many of whom had left the country decades before. When they returned, essentially on the back of U.S. tanks, they were marginalized by local armed groups more loyal to Iran. There are several large Iranian opposition groups based abroad, but they are not united and it's unclear how much support any of them has inside the country. The closest thing to a unifying opposition figure is Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah who was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the theocracy to power. But many Iranians have bitter memories of repression under the shah, and others might reject Pahlavi over his outreach to Israel, especially if he tries to ride to power on the back of a foreign invasion. Chaos is practically guaranteed In Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya — and in Syria and Yemen after their 2011 uprisings — a familiar pattern emerged when governments were overthrown or seriously weakened. Armed groups emerged with competing agendas. Neighboring countries backed local proxies. Weapons flowed in and large numbers of civilians fled. The fighting in some places boiled over into full-blown civil war, and ever more violent extremist groups sprouted from the chaos. When it was all over, Saddam had been replaced by a corrupt and often dysfunctional government at least as friendly to Iran as it was to the U.S. Gadhafi was replaced by myriad militias, many allied with foreign powers. The Taliban were replaced by the Taliban.
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
After labeling transfers to Guantánamo as ‘fake news,' Trump deports Haitians from there
Only days after Trump administration officials denied plans to transfer undocumented migrants to an American naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, before deporting them, a U.S. military plane flew 20 Haitians from the military installation to Port-au-Prince on Tuesday. While 11 of the migrants who landed back in Haiti's gang-controlled capital had been picked up at sea near The Bahamas while reportedly en route to Florida, nine others had been transferred to Guantánamo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in the United States, two sources told the Miami Herald. 'Some said they had been in two [detention] facilities in a week,' a Haitian official told the Miami Herald after confirming the U.S. military flight's quiet arrival in the Caribbean nation. The aircraft landed at 12:05 p.m. Tuesday at Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Haiti's capital, where armed gangs control most of the roads in the surrounding area and the metropolitan area was plunged into blackout hours later after the main Péligre hydroelectric power plant was forced to shut down by protests. Deemed too dangerous for U.S. citizens, the airport has been off limits to U.S. commercial and cargo flights since November, when gangs opened fire on Spirit Airlines and also hit JetBlue Airways and American Airlines with bullets, forcing the Federal Aviation Administration to issue an ongoing ban. The Trump administration has scheduled the repatriation of another 61 Haitians back to the country on Wednesday. That flight is going to land in Cap-Haïtien, according to a source with knowledge of the plans. With the only international airport accessible to the outside world, Cap-Haïtien has received an average of one U.S. deportation flight a month. Tens of thousands of Haitians have also been deported home from the neighboring Dominican Republic. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to Miami Herald questions about why the Haitian migrants were transferred from the United States to the naval base in Cuba. Last week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt labeled reports that the administration planned to send thousands of migrants, including nationals from Western European countries, to the controversial detention facility at Guantánamo Bay as 'fake news.' 'Not happening,' Leavitt posted on X. Guantánamo Bay, which has a prison for suspected terrorists tied to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has long had a facility to house migrants, mostly Cubans and Haitians picked up at sea while their asylum claims are heard or they are resettled in a third country. But one of President Donald Trump's first official acts upon returning to the White House earlier this year was ordering officials to prepare Guantánamo to hold as many as 30,000 migrants. Trump's directive marked a dramatic expansion of the facility's use for immigration enforcement as part of his mass deportation campaign. In February, the administration sent more than 150 Venezuelans to Guantánamo before deporting them back to their home country. At the time, advocates and lawyers raised alarms that jailing them there was inhumane and violated the immigrants' constitutional rights. The following month, an undisclosed number of migrants at the facility were then transferred to a detention center in Louisiana. In recent weeks, top White House adviser Stephen Miller has put pressure on immigration officials to ramp up immigrant detentions to 3,000 a day —a goal that is likely to overcrowd already full detention centers. Guerline Jozef, executive director of the San Diego-based Haitian Bridge Alliance, said the transfer of Haitian nationals to Guantánamo Bay was 'covert' and their deportation from the base 'is not just a humanitarian crisis. It is a flagrant violation of international human rights and civil liberties. 'Guantánamo is a black site designed for secrecy and exclusion. Haitian immigrants—and asylum seekers—are once again being subjected to the same cruel, barbaric and inhumane treatment they were subjected in the 1990s, held without access to counsel, without notice to their families or legal advocates and deported under the cover of darkness,' Jozef said. 'These individuals have been stripped of their most basic rights under U.S. and international law.' Jozef, who lobbied against such a plan during the Biden administration and denounced the Trump administration's directive in January, said she and other advocates 'are deeply familiar with Guantánamo protocols. This is not how immigration detention is supposed to work. The decision to disappear Haitians and others into this military pipeline reveals the racialized logic of U.S. immigration enforcement. We cannot allow a system built for indefinite detention and torture to become the new front line of migrant removal. This is a human rights emergency and a moral disgrace.' For Haitians, the infamous military base in Cuba has a troubled history. About 34,000 Haitians were detained at the base in the early 1990s after the Haitian military led a coup against the country's democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The Haitians were detained at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard while trying to reach Florida in makeshift boats. At the base, they were held behind barbed wire fencing where, along with similarly detained Cuban refugees, they were subjected to inhumane conditions. The base was finally ordered closed in 1993 after a federal court ruling found that the government had unlawfully held migrants at the offshore detention center. Despite the court order, the U.S. maintained its right to hold refugees at the base and has long operated a migrant facility there where individuals picked up at sea and who claim fear of persecution in their home countries are taken for interviews.
Chicago Tribune
4 days ago
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Richard Kosmacher, co-owned Joy of Ireland and helped launch car-sharing operation, dies
Richard Kosmacher ran Irish import stores, most notably a shop on North Michigan Avenue for many years, before playing a role in the development of Chicago's car-sharing industry. 'Richard was just incredible at finding all these parking spaces and convincing these very reluctant parking operators who had no interest whatsoever in car sharing or what we were about, and he would somehow win them over,' said Sharon Feigon, former CEO of the now-defunct I-GO car-sharing service. Kosmacher, 66, died May 31 at Carle Foundation Hospital in downstate Urbana of complications from a fall that he suffered while in Urbana for his son's college graduation, said his wife, Melissa Sterne. He was a resident of the Albany Park neighborhood. Born in New York City's Queens borough, Kosmacher received a bachelor's degree in political science in 1981 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He then worked at a friend's shoe store in Milwaukee before embarking on entrepreneurial ventures. He and a partner, Michael Joy, opened retail concepts in different parts of the U.S. before settling on importing and selling items from Ireland, including ceramics and pottery. In 1991, Kosmacher moved to Chicago and opened Joy of Ireland in the newly constructed Chicago Place building at 700 N. Michigan Ave. The store struggled at first but eventually became successful, and in 1999 Kosmacher expanded into the empty space next door, opening a tea room that seated about 20. 'When he was at Joy of Ireland, he enjoyed sharing his love of the culture and artisan craftsmanship of people he had gotten to know over the years from traveling every year to Ireland and bringing that back and … spreading that throughout Chicago,' Kosmacher's wife said. Kosmacher stocked his gift store with imported Celtic jewelry, crystal, fine woolens and china. He told the Tribune in 1998 that his customers had demanding tastes. 'They prefer handmade crafts, not mass-produced (goods),' Kosmacher said. Sarah Boardman worked with Kosmacher at a store in Dallas and then moved to Chicago to work for him at Joy of Ireland. 'When you were a customer or if he was training you or if he was teaching you something new, or if he was listening, you were the only person in the room to him,' Boardman said. 'He just was laser-focused, and really good at teaching.' 'He loved it, and the Irish vendors we would go to, they just loved him,' she said. Kosmacher volunteered with The Employment Project, which taught job skills to formerly homeless people. 'You give them moral support and help them deal with their problems,' Kosmacher said in a 1998 Tribune article. 'You're there for them when they need a little extra support. It doesn't take a lot of your energy, but it means so much.' Kosmacher closed Joy of Ireland after business sagged in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He signed on with I-GO car sharing, a newly launched, not-for-profit program started by Chicago's Center for Neighborhood Technology. I-GO allowed people to rent cars on a pay-as-you-go system, with cars placed adjacent to or near CTA bus and train stops. 'He literally had no particularly relevant experience working at a nonprofit or anything to do with cars or sustainable development, but there was something about Richard — he was so enthusiastic,' Feigon said. 'He just won me over.' Kosmacher was I-GO's sales and marketing manager. 'The philosophy of car sharing is for people to use cars as little as possible,' he told the Tribune in 2006. 'Every time someone gets in a car there's a cost to the environment.' I-GO extended from Evanston on the north to Oak Park to the west to the South Shore neighborhood to the south. Part of Kosmacher's job was identifying parking spaces that I-GO could use, preferably those near public transit. 'He had a really great visual memory, in terms of remembering the neighborhood, the spaces and what was around it and how it all worked,' Feigon said. 'He just did it all with zest.' In 2013, the Center for Neighborhood Technology sold I-GO to Enterprise Holdings, the parent company of Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Kosmacher remained with the company for a time under Enterprise, and he eventually began working for Zipcar, a competing car-sharing service. Kosmacher soon joined a new venture, Mobility Development, aimed at bringing car sharing to communities often overlooked by larger car-sharing services. Mobility Development in particular pioneered car sharing in rural communities. Kosmacher served as Mobility Development's general manager for five years before semi-retiring. Most recently, Kosmacher had spent the past eight months as a substitute teacher in Chicago's public elementary schools. He worked in 30 schools over that time. In addition, Kosmacher was a Streets Are For Everybody (SAFE) ambassador, as part of a team within the Chicago Department of Transportation, working to provide safety education for drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists. 'He was really into transportation and logistics, and he loved teaching kids how to ride bikes and help them navigate the city,' Sterne said. Kosmacher is also survived by two sons, Gabriel and Evan; a sister, Karen Lazar; and two brothers, Steven and Jeff. Services were held.
