26, November 2020
US: Biden urges a cautious Thanksgiving as Trump rages on over election loss 0
On a day of grace and grievance, President-elect Joe Biden summoned Americans on Wednesday to join in common purpose against the coronavirus pandemic and their political divisions while the man he will replace stoked the fading embers of his campaign to “turn the election over.”
Biden, in a Thanksgiving-eve address to the nation, put the surging pandemic front and center, pledging to tap the “vast powers” of the federal government and to “change the course of the disease” once in office. But for that to work, he said, Americans must step up for their own safety and that of their fellow citizens.
“This is the moment when we need to steel our spines, redouble our efforts and recommit ourselves to this fight,” Biden said. “Each of us has a responsibility in our own lives to do what we can to slow the virus.”
President Donald Trump, who has scarcely mentioned the pandemic in recent days even as it has achieved record heights, remained fixated on his election defeat.
He sent his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and other members of his legal team to meet Pennsylvania Republican state senators in Gettysburg. Inside a hotel near the hallowed battlefields of civil war, they again aired complaints about the election and repeated allegations of Democratic malfeasance that have already disintegrated under examination by courts.
“We have to turn the election over,” Trump said from the Oval Office, where he joined the meeting by speakerphone.
“This was an election that we won easily,” he said. “We won it by a lot.” In fact, the election gave Biden a clear mandate, and no systemic fraud has been uncovered. Judge after judge has dismissed the Trump campaign’s accusations as baseless, and the transition to Biden’s presidency is fully underway.
Nevertheless, Trump repeated: “This election has to be turned around.”
Trump had been expected to appear in person in Gettysburg, but did not after another member of his legal team tested positive for the coronavirus. Few at the meeting wore masks.
Altogether, the forum heard — and cheered — yet another declaration from a U.S. president seeking to reverse a democratic election and the voters’ will because he wants to stay in power. The setting was about a mile from the scene of Pickett’s Charge, where Union troops repelled a desperate Confederate attack in July 1863 and helped turn the tide of the Civil War.
The president followed up by pardoning former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the second Trump associate convicted in the Russia probe to be granted clemency by Trump.
The pardon was part of a broader effort to undo the results of an investigation that for years has shadowed Trump’s administration and yielded criminal charges against a half dozen associates. The pardon voids the criminal case against Flynn just as a federal judge was deciding whether to grant a Justice Department request to dismiss the prosecution despite Flynn’s own guilty plea to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts.
For his part, Biden has largely projected serenity as the necessary elements of a presidential transition — money, access to office space and more — were held at bay for nearly three weeks by Trump’s machinations and a delayed ascertainment by the General Services Administration that he had won the election. On Wednesday, he addressed Trump’s raw tactics only in passing.
“Our democracy was tested this year,” Biden said, “but the people of this nation are up to the task.”
“In America, we have full and fair and free elections, and then we honor the results,” he said. “The people of this nation and the laws of the land won’t stand for anything else.”
And he offered an optimistic vision, calling on Americans to “dream again” and predicting that “the 21st century is going to be an American century.”
Biden pledged more virus testing, more protective gear and clearer guidance for businesses and schools to reopen when he becomes president. Until vaccines are distributed, he said, masks, social distancing and limits in the size of gatherings “are our most effective tools to combat the virus.”
Biden’s remarks came as COVID-19 cases are surging nationwide. Hospitalizations, deaths and the testing positivity rate were also up sharply as the nation headed into Thanksgiving, and public health experts have warned that the large family gatherings expected for the holiday are likely to extend and exacerbate the surge.
He has formed a coronavirus advisory board of scientists, doctors and public health experts, and plans to establish a COVID-19 coordinator in the White House to lead his administration’s response.
This week, however, Biden focused beyond the crisis stateside and unveiled his national security team on Tuesday, including his nominees for secretary of state, director of national intelligence and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Drawing implicit contrasts with Trump, Biden said the team “reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it.” He’s also expected to name Janet Yellen as treasury secretary in the coming weeks.
In urging Americans to be vigilant in their Thanksgiving plans, Biden said Wednesday he was taking precautions of his own, eschewing his traditional large family gathering and spending the holiday instead with just his wife, daughter and son-in-law.
He’s traveling with his wife, Jill, to Rehoboth Beach, the small Delaware beach town where the two have a vacation home. That’s where they’ll host their family for Thanksgiving dinner. Biden is expected to stay through the weekend in Rehoboth before returning to Wilmington for further work on the transition.
Trump will forgo his usual plans to celebrate Thanksgiving at his private club in Florida and will instead remain at the White House.
Source: AP
26, November 2020
Southern Cameroons Crisis: The death penalty still stands 0
Since the Southern Cameroons crisis moved from the streets to the trenches and bushes of Southern Cameroons, a lot has changed especially the region’s political landscape.
Political campaigns are no longer conducted in the open like it was before the crisis which put the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, including the military brutality and the human suffering that could be seen all over the place.
Southern Cameroons has changed for good though the old CPDM crime syndicate’s hawks and crooks like Peter Mafany Musonge, Yang Philemon and Dion Ngute are still in denial.
Over the last week, Musonge and Yang Philemon have been testing the water to see if Southern Cameroonians can take their poisonous bait.
They have been on the ground campaigning for their party which has been outlawed in the two English-speaking regions of the country.
They only know their people when elections are in the offing. For more than three years, thousands of Southern Cameroonians have been slaughtered by the Yaoundé government in plain sight, but to these “power hungry vultures” the mowing down of fellow Southern Cameroonians is not an issue to them.
Regional elections are on the horizon and these “fairweather elites” are back with old promises, thinking that an angry and a hungry people will buy into their lies and vain promises.
In a message sent to the Cameroon Concord News Group’s Global Headquarters in the United Kingdom, the separatists still hold that all those who have collaborated with the enemy should be punished and the death sentence hanging over the heads of people like Yang Philemon, Atanga Nji, Peter Mafany Musonge, George Tabetando, etc still stands.
“It will be hard to pardon these people who have been eating, drinking and dancing with the enemy. Many of our people have been killed by the Yaoundé government which has been enabled by some of our own people,” the message said.
“I hope while Yang and Musonge are peddling heresy in the name of elections, they also know that a death sentence is hanging over their heads like the Sword of Damocles,” the message stressed.
“Many families are still mourning their loved ones and thousands of families have been left homeless. Our people are all over East Cameroon begging for food and accommodation because the government burnt their homes and chased them away from their towns. We will never forget this and we must make those enablers among us to pay for their crime,” the message underscored.
“These elections are a non-event and any councilors who participate in that charade will be viewed as enemies and will be dealt with accordingly,” the message said.
“We are keeping our eyes on everybody. Those who betray us will have themselves to blame. The government has not yielded an inch of its authority and it wants us to down our guns. This is not going to happen,” the message underscored.
“We had thought that the national dialogue held in 2018 was designed to change a lot of things but the government’s scam is continuing. The government had hastily granted the two English-speaking regions a special status but we have only seen more people killed by government troops after their so-called special status. We now know that the only thing special in that status is the total extermination of the indigenous people of Southern Cameroons,” the message continued.
“It is hard to trust this government. The ruling party is a crime syndicate that should never be trusted. Its diaper wearing, corrupt and old members are hell-bent on destroying the youths of this country before they die. If our French-speaking colleagues have accepted their slave status, we will not accept that. It is now easy to pick up guns and we will do that until the marginalization that has been our fate ends,” the message stressed.
“We cannot drop our guns when our leaders are still in the dungeons of East Cameroon. Some are abroad and are doing their best to provide much-needed support. Though there are some disagreements among our leaders, we hold that the gaps can be bridged. These leaders should understand that we still have much to deal with. The Yaoundé government is still killing our people. We cannot let it do as it wishes. We must keep on fighting until the government listens,” the message concluded.
From every indication, Cameroon is not yet out of the woods. The days ahead are bleak and if the government does not end its charade, many more people will still die and the death sentence on the so-called elites will continue to be a millstone on their necks.
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Group Chairman/ Editor-In-Chief