EU, Britain attempt breakthrough in Brexit talks

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6 December 2020

EU, Britain attempt breakthrough in Brexit talks

The EU and Britain’s chief Brexit negotiators will make a last-ditch bid to break months of deadlock on Sunday, as trade talks limp back to Brussels, surviving on borrowed time.

Michel Barnier and his UK counterpart David Frost will once again try to find common ground on the critical issues that have split both sides since talks began in March.

The extra time came after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen held an emergency phone call on Saturday.

Both sides agreed that “significant differences” remained, but that talks should continue — at least until their next scheduled call on Monday.

EU Common Fisheries Policy and EEZs

Sabrina BLANCHARD, AFP

“Whilst recognising the seriousness of these differences, we agreed that a further effort should be undertaken by our negotiating teams to assess whether they can be resolved,” the leaders said in a statement following their conversation.

“We are therefore instructing our chief negotiators to reconvene tomorrow in Brussels. We will speak again on Monday evening.”

The high-level intervention came after Barnier and Frost broke off talks late Friday after day and night negotiations over seven days in London failed to reach a deal.

While much has been agreed, the sides cannot close out the thorniest debates over fishing rights, fair trade rules and an enforcement mechanism to govern any deal.

‘Anything is possible’ –

Britain formally left the EU in January, nearly four years after a referendum on membership that divided the nation.

But it is bound to the EU’s tariff-free single market until the end of the year — by which time the two sides must try to agree on the exact nature of their future relationship.

“Anything is possible. The three open issues are linked by Britain’s intent to keep sovereignty a priority, and Europe‘s fear of UK freeloading,” a source with close knowledge of the talks told AFP.

Without a deal, the bulk of cross-Channel trade will revert to World Trade Organization terms, a return to tariffs and quotas after almost five decades of close economic and political integration.

As night fell in London on Friday, EU and UK negotiators were locked in last-minute debates over a post-Brexit trade deal

Tolga Akmen, AFP

Talks through this year have finalised most aspects of an agreement, with Britain set to leave the EU single market and customs union, but the three core issues are unresolved.

“We will see if there is a way forward,” EU chief negotiator Barnier said Saturday. “Work continues tomorrow.”

Johnson has insisted Britain will “prosper mightily” whatever the outcome of the talks, but he will face severe political and economic fallout if he cannot seal a deal.

“If we fail to get an agreement with the European Union, this will be a serious failure of statecraft,” Conservative lawmaker Tom Tugendhat, chair of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told the Lowy Institute in an interview published Saturday.

European capitals have remained remarkably united behind Barnier through the fraught Brexit process, but some internal fractures have now begun to surface.

France on Friday threatened to veto any deal that fails short of their demands on ensuring fair trade and access to UK fishing waters.

Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Denmark share Paris’s concerns that the EU side could give too much ground on rules to maintain competition.

There are just days left to finalise a deal, with an EU leaders’ summit on Thursday looming large.

Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin, whose country could be most affected among EU states by any no-deal scenario, welcomed the continuation of discussions.

“An agreement is in everyone’s best interests. Every effort should be made to reach a deal,” he tweeted.

‘Owe it to citizens’ –

The German government, which holds the rotating EU presidency, also welcomed the reprieve.

German MEP Manfred Weber, the head of the European Parliament’s conservative EPP group, saying it was “now or never” for a deal.

“Boris Johnson needs to make a choice between the ideology of Brexit and the realism of people’s daily lives,” he said on Twitter.

“In the middle of the Covid crisis we owe it to our citizens and businesses to find an agreement.”

EU’s continued ban dealt another blow to PIA: Sherry Rehman

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6 December 2020

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EU's continued ban dealt another blow to PIA: Sherry Rehman

ISLAMABAD: The Parliamentary Leader of the Pakistan People’s Party in the Senate, Senator Sherry Rehman, has said the European Union’s decision to retain its ban on PIA in its member countries is another blow to our national airline which is a clear vote of no confidence in two years of gross mismanagement and neglect by the PTI government.

“It is rather shocking that despite the previous suspension, conditions laid down in ART 205(c)(2) of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) regulations were not met by CAA and it appears that now the only way the ban can be lifted is by the Pakistan’s aviation regulatory body to clear a new safety audit,” she said in a statement on Saturday.

Sherry said what is questionable is the government’s inaction and flat refusal to take responsibility for landing an already troubled airline in such international disgrace. “Nobody seems to be take responsibility for this combination of criminal negligence and indifference to the squandering of our national assets,” she questioned.

She said it’s not only EASA but the US and the UK authorities who have also banned PIA. The national airline is facing a loss of millions along with being disgraced internationally.

The Senator said it has lost its coveted international routes and clearances, while a coterie of cannibalising corporate raiders look to be actively colluding to shut the airline down.

Senator Sherry Rehman said that the government should take this EU ban as a reminder that despite being banned internationally, PIA is still flying domestically, and questions will be asked about what it is doing to guarantee the safety of the lives of domestic passengers who have little option but to fly PIA.

Talking about the fake license issue, the PPP Parliamentary Leader in the Senate, said the Aviation Minister had claimed that there were 262 fake licenses but recently the Secretary Aviation told IHC that only 28 licenses were fraudulent.

She said we are still facing the aftermath of such reckless statements, but no one is made answerable in Madina ki Riasat. “In any other government many heads would have rolled, but here there is total indifference to public safety, parliamentary caution or moral obligation to be answerable to the people,” she said.

Sherry Rehman said the entire ‘Licencegate’ issue tells us that the public is on its own, that questions in Parliament mean nothing, or beget only tirades, and that the revival of PIA is part of the many false promises made to Pakistan by ‘Tabahi Sarkar’.

She said in any other country or government, those responsible would have been taken to task and would not be allowed to cover up their egregious misdemeanours. “We still must insist on an investigation as to why EASA conditions were not met,” she said.

‘The Bhagavat Gita’ book review: Twin view of a sacred scripture

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6 December 2020

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'The Bhagavat Gita' book review: Twin view of a sacred scripture

Express News Service
Let us begin with The Bhagavad Gita translation first. It is a verse-by-verse translation, with the Sanskrit shlokas on one page and the English translation on the facing page. There is no interpretation, no commentary; just a literal translation. With over 2,700 translations of the Gita between 1785 and 1979 in 50 identified languages, why do we need another translation? For several reasons. There is an inevitable loss when translating from Sanskrit to English—a loss of context, exact meanings, and of course, the beauty of the Sanskrit poetry which cannot be reproduced in English, no matter how hard one tries. Some words cannot be translated to English with complete fidelity. For example, ‘duty’ is at best a partial translation of the Sanskrit word ‘dharma’. Given these limitations, it becomes all the more important to not compound this loss by translating words without understanding their context.

Debroy tells us that some less than adequate understanding of Sanskrit leads to ‘Gudakesha’ (another of Arjuna’s names which means one who has conquered sleep, derived from ‘gudaka’—sleep, and ‘isha’—lord) being translated as someone ‘whose hair is in a bun’, which is etymologically possible, but contextually implausible. Then there are problems that arise from an incomplete reading of the Mahabharata itself.

Consider also what is lost in translations that substitute words for convenience or otherwise. For instance, in 1.36, Arjuna laments to Krishna, ‘O Janardana! What pleasure will we derive from killing the sons of Dhritarashtra? Although they are criminals, sin alone will be our lot if we kill them.’ To understand why the Kauravas are criminals, you have to read the footnote that tells us that according to the shastras, ‘there are six types of criminals—arsonists, poisoners, those who bear arms to kill you, those who steal wealth, those who steal and those who steal other people’s wives.’ If you substitute the word criminal with evil, you lose something in the translation.

This translation seeks to avoid all such pitfalls. If you want to appreciate Sanskrit, the shlokas are reproduced in Devanagri. In cases where the Sanskrit sentence flows to the next one, rather than combining the translations across all these shlokas, the translation sticks to a verse-by-verse cadence. That makes the job of a reader trying to match the shloka to the English translation easier. Given all this, this book should become a go-to reference for people wanting a faithful, accurate, and copiously footnoted English translation of the Bhagavad Gita. More than 800 footnotes, spread across 60 pages, provide additional notes and context without interrupting the flow of the translation.

The first book is a faithful, verse-by-verse translation. But a more fundamental question may arise in the mind of the reader: how should I read the Gita? Why should I read it? For that, we should turn to the second book—The Bhagavad Gita for Millennials. It seeks to, and succeeds in, introducing the reader to the world of the Gita in its various dimensions. The book also answers several questions as a typical reader may have about the Mahabharata and the Gita. Like, who composed the Mahabharata, why was Krishna Dvaipayana called Vedvyasa, what is the BORI (Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute) Critical Edition, was the Gita written by one or multiple authors, is the Gita a later interpolation into the Mahabharata, and so on.

Which leads to another natural question—the historicity of the Mahabharata. Or the historicity of the most famous character in the epic—Krishna. Archaeologist BB Lal answered the question on the historicity of the Mahabharata more than half a century ago when he led the excavation and found evidence of several Painted Grey Ware sites dating back to the second millennium BCE. We can rely on the evidence presented by the Chandogya Upanishad that references Krishna, the son of Devaki, the account of the Greek traveler Megasthenes, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini’s 5th or 6th century BCE work, Ashtadhyayi, and so on. The circumstantial evidence points to Krishna as a historical person. It is important to point out that it is the historicity of Krishna that is covered, not his divinity—an important distinction that should not be conflated.

But what makes this book unique is probably the second chapter. The author takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of why there is no substitute to reading the Gita in its original Sanskrit. Because translations cannot be completely recreated, they are often trans-creations, and no translation can capture the beauty of the Sanskrit poetry in the Gita. Having said that, we are told how to break up a Sanskrit shloka to rearrange it in a linear fashion. Several verses are thus subjected to the process of dissection, revealing the order in which the words are to be read, opening a pathway to understanding even seemingly difficult shlokas.

Having introduced the reader to the mechanisms of reading, rearranging, and understanding the shlokas in the Gita, the book then elucidates several shlokas and their concepts by taking the reader on a journey in the form of stories from the texts. Most are from the Mahabharata, for obvious reasons, but several from other texts also such as Upanishads and the Puranas.

What then is the suggested order of reading these books? For me, the answer is obvious—read the Millennials book first, keeping the translation as a handy reference. Start on it, but do not treat it as a weekend read. The translation is for a slower, more careful, more contemplative reading.

Madhya Pradesh’s ‘freedom of religion’ law to provide for upto 10 years in jail for offence

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Newsdesk

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5 December 2020

0

BHOPAL: Conversion through marriage or by any other fraudulent means will attract prison term of up to ten years and fine of up to Rs 1 lakh under the proposed Madhya Pradesh Religious Freedom Act, an official said on Saturday.
A marriage solemnized only for the purpose of converting a person will be held as null and valid, he said.
If a person wants to undergo conversion, he or she would need to make a declaration before a district magistrate at least a month in advance under the proposed law.
Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan held a meeting on Saturday to discuss the proposed law, said an official of the state Public Relations Department.

मध्यप्रदेश सरकार ‘म.प्र. धर्म स्वातंत्र्य अधिनियम 2020’ लाने वाली है। मुख्यमंत्री श्री @ChouhanShivraj ने आज मंत्रा… https://t.co/Ovevxkhs4h

— CMO Madhya Pradesh (@CMMadhyaPradesh) 1607181130000

Under the proposed law, no person in the state will be able to convert anyone directly or otherwise through marriage or by any other fraudulent means by luring or intimidating anyone, the official said, quoting the chief minister.
A person involved in converting another person by misleading, luring, threatening or through marriage will be prosecuted.
The sentence could be up to 10 years in the cases of religious conversion of minors, groups, or of those belonging to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
Blood relatives, including parents of victims of such religious conversion, can file complaint, the official said.
A marriage solemnized with the intention of religious conversion would be considered null and void.
These cases would be investigated by a police officer not below the sub-inspector’s rank.
On November 28, governor of the BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh gave assent to the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020, against forcible or fraudulent religious conversions.
The ordinance provides for imprisonment of up to 10 years and a maximum fine of Rs 50,000 under different categories.

European Union, U.K. leaders to hold crunch talks to break Brexit impasse

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Newsdesk

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5 December 2020

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European Union, U.K. leaders to hold crunch talks to break Brexit impasse

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the European Union‘s top official are set to discuss the state of play of post-Brexit trade discussions later Saturday after negotiators paused talks in light of their inability to bridge an array of differences.

With the discussions stuck over the same issues for months, Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU’s executive European Commission, will see if there is a route to a deal.

With the U.K.’s post-Brexit transition period due to conclude at the end of the year, the discussions are clearly facing a crunch point, not least because of the necessary approvals required from both sides. Without an agreement in place, tariffs will end up being imposed on traded goods at the start of 2021.

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EU, Turkey share common interest on neighborhood: Borrell

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5 December 2020

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EU, Turkey share common interest on neighborhood: Borrell

BRUSSELS- Anadolu Agency

The <a title="EU" href="/search/EU">EU</a> foreign policy chief on Dec. 4 said <a title="Turkey" href="/search/Turkey">Turkey</a> and the bloc share common interests on developing a good neighborhood.

Addressing the Rome Mediterranean Dialogue Forum, Josep Borrell said that at the last European Council meeting on Oct. 1, EU leaders decided to seek positive engagement with Turkey and evaluate the situation according to whether more positive approach would be seen from the Turkish side.

“There are not very much positive signals that came from Turkey during these months both in Cyprus and on the drillings [in the Eastern Mediterranean], the talks between Greece and Turkey has not been developing” Borrell noted.

He stressed that the EU has to take steps in light of the developments.

“I am strongly convinced that Turkey and European Union has a common interest on developing a good neighborhood. Turkey is there and will still be there [in the region]” he said.

“And it [Turkey] has regional ambitions. And we have to understand that Turkey also is hosting 3.5 million refugees from Syria that we have to help to take care of them. And we are doing, and we will have to continue doing that because the help is not to the Turkish government but to the Syrian refugees,” he added.

Borrell said they need to ask for better engagement to resolve territorial water disputes, to respect the sovereign rights of EU members, and to seek a better understanding of how to share gas field revenues, adding that Turkey is also asking for it.

The EU foreign policy chief said it is time to look at whether Turkey and the bloc can have a better partnership and neighborhood.

“If it is not possible, the European Union Council will have to take the decision that the only European Union can take. Because, the sanctions regime is a matter of the member states.

“So, let’s see what we can do [at the] next European Union Council [meeting]. I cannot advance the result of the discussion and just preparing it and offering alternatives,” Borrell added.

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