Saturday, May 7, 2016

London Mayor Sadiq Khan Hails Triumph of "Hope Over Fear; Unity Over Division"

British Pakistani Muslim Mayor Sadiq Khan of London told Londoners in his historic victory speech after the official confirmation of his landslide win that “I’m so proud that London has today chosen hope over fear and unity over division”

Sadiq Khan (L) and Donald Trump (R)
Mayor Sadiq Khan was referring to the nasty and divisive Islamophobic campaign of his defeated Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith.  Question: Is Donald  Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for US President in 2016, paying attention to what just happened in London? If elected, would Trump ban Sadiq Khan's entry into the United States?

Prior to Sadiq Khan's historic win, several British Pakistanis have been elected and served as mayors of major British cities like Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester.

The landslide win of Mayor Sadiq Khan has made history in multiple ways:

1. Khan has won more votes than any other politician in the entire electoral history of the United Kingdom.

2. Khan is the first elected Muslim mayor of a major European capital that served as the seat of the global British Empire for several centuries. The British Empire was once so large that the sun never set on it.

3.  Khan, whose father was a London bus driver, is the first mayor of the British capital to emerge from the working class.

4. Khan comes from a family of two generations of immigrants: His grandparents migrated from what is now India to the newly created state of Pakistan in 1947 and his parents migrated from Karachi to London in 1969. Sadiq Khan was born in London in 1970.

The Conservative party campaign of Zac Goldsmith resorted to the desperate tactics like the use of anti-Muslim bigotry to overcome Sadiq Khan's big lead. British Prime Minister David Cameron made the false allegation of Sadiq Khan's links to ISIS supporters.

Cameron appealed to London's British Indians of Hindu faith in a letter highlighting the warm welcome he, Zac Goldsmith and the Conservative party government extended to Narendra Modi, the Hindu Nationalist prime minister known for the state-sponsored 2002 massacre of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat state.  The election results show that these cynical actions of the Conservatives backfired.

Goldsmith's Trump-like tactics of fear and division have backfired with a landslide win for Mayor Sadiq Khan in London. It's clearly a triumph of hope over fear, unity over division. Will Americans take their cue from Londoners to deal a historic defeat to Donald Trump on Tuesday, November 8, 2016? Let all Americans of good-will come together to make it happen.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Will London Make History With Sadiq Khan? 

Furies of 1947

Trump Phenomenon

Islamophobia in the West

Pakistani Diaspora

British-Pakistanis

Silicon Valley Pakistanis

Modi Accelerating Hinduization of India

Gujarat Pogrom under Modi

9 comments:

Imran S said...

Do not underestimate the gullible nature of american electorate. This is the same electorate who elected George Bush Twice. First time they can be excused for it but second time they were well aware of his agenda. They elected him because of Fear. USA is not UK. I think the american Public has tilted conservative in nature over the past 30 years. The only thing they have progressive is Abortion and LGBT rights. Trump is the first Republican nominee who is liberal on these issues and poses a big danger to Democrats. He even talks about building infrastructure at home and that is democratic agenda. The republican Administration is opposing him because of that. I think He has a decent chance of becoming the next US President. It is time to buy property in Pakistan. The property values in Pakistan will sky rocket once Trump is president. You will see a lot of Pakistanis start looking at backup plans.

Riaz Haq said...

Imran: " I think He has a decent chance of becoming the next US President"

It appears unlikely given his support base. Here's why: John McCain and Mitt Romney, the last two Republican candidates since 2008, won the majority of white votes but failed to win the general election. Each of them got 60% of the 70% white votes that add up to 42% of the overall electorate. In addition, each of them got only 6% of Black votes and about 26% of the Asian and Hispanic votes that prevented them from gaining the overall majority needed to win. Trump's campaign rhetoric has managed to anger all minority groups, particularly Mexicans and Muslims. He will get even fewer minority votes than McCain and Romney polled in the last two general elections.

http://www.riazhaq.com/2016/02/understanding-trump-phenomenon-in.html

Riaz Haq said...

Is #China to Blame for Political Extremism in #America? Where Jobs R Cut by #Chinese Trade, Voters Seek Extremes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/business/economy/where-jobs-are-squeezed-by-chinese-trade-voters-seek-extremes.html?_r=0

COURTLAND, Ala. — In this forlorn Southern town whose once-humming factories were battered in recent years by a flood of Asian imports, Rhonda Hughes, 43, is a fervent supporter of Donald Trump. Her 72-year old mother is equally passionate about Senator Bernie Sanders.

Disenchantment with the political mainstream is no surprise. But research to be unveiled this week by four leading academic economists suggests that the damage to manufacturing jobs from a sharp acceleration in globalization since the turn of the century has contributed heavily to the nation’s bitter political divide.

Ms. Hughes avoids discussing the election with her mother, but their neighbor Benjamin Green, 83, knows just what Washington needs. “It’ll take a junkyard dog to straighten this country out,” he said.

Cross-referencing congressional voting records and district-by-district patterns of job losses and other economic trends between 2002 and 2010, the researchers found that areas hardest hit by trade shocks were much more likely to move to the far right or the far left politically.

“It’s not about incumbents changing their positions,” said David Autor, an influential scholar of labor economics and trade at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the paper’s authors. “It’s about the replacement of moderates with more ideological successors.”

Mr. Autor added: “In retrospect, whether it’s Trump or Sanders, we should have seen in it coming. The China shock isn’t the sole factor, but it is something of a missing link.”

In addition to Mr. Autor, the research was conducted by David Dorn of the University of Zurich; Gordon Hanson, a professor at the University of California, San Diego; and Kaveh Majlesi of Lund University in Sweden.


“Exposure to import competition is bad for centrists,” Mr. Hanson said. “We’ve known that political polarization and income inequality track each other, but that pattern is simply a correlation. We’ve now found a mechanism for how economic changes create further political divisions.”

Parker Griffith experienced the move away from the political middle firsthand.

A so-called Blue Dog Democrat who represented Courtland and the rest of Alabama’s Fifth Congressional District, he switched to the Republicans in 2009 and metamorphosed into a moderate Republican. But that wasn’t enough to save his seat.

Dr. Griffith was beaten in the Republican primary in 2010 by Morris J. Brooks Jr., who has emerged as one of the most right-wing members of Congress.

“If you’re under economic stress and you can’t provide for your family, the easiest answer is to find someone to blame,” said Dr. Griffith. “Mexicans, illegal immigrants, Obama.”

Representative Brooks has said that he would consider “anything short of shooting” illegal immigrants to get them out of the country and that he favored imposing heavy tariffs on China to “level the playing field” and punish Beijing for what he sees as currency manipulation.

------

As the South industrialized in the second half of the 20th century, poor Alabamians who once toiled on farms were able to secure a toehold in the middle class. In the shadow of Tennessee Valley Authority dams that supplied cheap power, thousands of workers sewed jeans and T-shirts, and could earn upward of $20 an hour in heavily unionized factories.

But the collapse of the apparel industry here in the first decade of the 21st century, following China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, reversed that process.

Nearly 10,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared. At 7.4 percent, the regional unemployment rate is well below its peak of 12.8 percent in 2010, but remains far above the national average of 5 percent.

Riaz Haq said...

Ivy League economist ethnically profiled, interrogated for doing math on #American Airlines flight. #Islamophobia https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/05/07/ivy-league-economist-interrogated-for-doing-math-on-american-airlines-flight/?postshare=1761462719589907&tid=ss_tw-bottom

Finally the pilot came by, and approached the real culprit behind the delay: that darkly-complected foreign man. He was now escorted off the plane, too, and taken to meet some sort of agent, though he wasn’t entirely sure of the agent’s affiliation, he would later say.

What do you know about your seatmate? The agent asked the foreign-sounding man.

Well, she acted a bit funny, he replied, but she didn’t seem visibly ill. Maybe, he thought, they wanted his help in piecing together what was wrong with her.

And then the big reveal: The woman wasn’t really sick at all! Instead this quick-thinking traveler had Seen Something, and so she had Said Something.

That Something she’d seen had been her seatmate’s cryptic notes, scrawled in a script she didn’t recognize. Maybe it was code, or some foreign lettering, possibly the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard American Airlines Flight 3950. She may have felt it her duty to alert the authorities just to be safe. The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.

The curly-haired man laughed.

He laughed because those scribbles weren’t Arabic, or another foreign language, or even some special secret terrorist code. They were math.

Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.

Had the crew or security members perhaps quickly googled this good-natured, bespectacled passenger before waylaying everyone for several hours, they might have learned that he — Guido Menzio — is a young but decorated Ivy League economist. And that he’s best known for his relatively technical work on search theory, which helped earn him a tenured associate professorship at the University of Pennsylvania as well as stints at Princeton and Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

Singh said...

Sadiq khan got 44% and Goldsmith got 35% votes .............. I do not think its a landslide victory

Riaz Haq said...

Singh: "Sadiq khan got 44% and Goldsmith got 35% votes .............. I do not think its a landslide victory"

57% for Khan vs 43% for Goldsmith is a landslide.

Khan picked up 44 percent of first preference votes to Goldsmith's 35 percent. The Labour candidate then picked up enough second preference votes to cross the 50 percent threshold, with 57 percent to Goldsmith's 43 overall.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/05/british-muslim-sadiq-khan-set-win-london-mayor-vote-160506152611855.html

Omarr Khan said...

Being a proud Pakistani and living in the great city of London for many many years I'm delighted at the number of Pakistani origin politicians who have been chosen to represent their communities at Westminster and I'm sure they will do a tremendous amount of work for all their constituents and will also be a bridge between our two countries.
I am also hugely proud and delighted to have Sadiq Khan as my Mayer in London, during the election campaign he was pitted against a right wing conservative candidate named Goldsmith, a brother to our Jamaima Khan, who conducted a very racist campaign against him, accusing him of sharing ideology with known terrorists but the great people of London saw right through his lies and voted for Sadiq in huge numbers.
Our community has come along a long way from my fathers generation who came here to do the jobs the British did not want to do themselves, our young men and women here now are highly motivated, educated, gifted and hardworking and I forecast a very very bright future for our Pak/Brit community.

Muzaffar K. said...

Mayor of London ... MUSLIM
Mayor of Birmingham ... MUSLIM
Mayor of Leeds ... MUSLIM
Mayor of Blackburn ... MUSLIM
Mayor of Sheffield ... MUSLIM
Mayor of Oxford ... MUSLIM
Mayor of Luton ... MUSLIM
Mayor of Oldham ... MUSLIM
Mayor of Rochdale ..... MUSLIM.

Now all UK schools are ONLY serving HALAL MEAT !

All this achieved by just 4 million Muslims out of the 66 million population !!!

This is an eye opener

Here Hamza Yakasai Quotes regarding Islam, by some Western philosophers

1. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
"Islam will rule the world one day, because in it there is a combination of knowledge and wisdom".

2. Herbert Wells (1846-1946)
"Until the effectiveness of Islam again, how many generations will suffer atrocities and life will be cut off ? Then one day the whole world will be attracted to it, on that day there will be PEACE and on that day the world will be inhabited again .

3. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"I understand that the Muslims did it through their own intelligence and awareness which the Jews could not do. In Islam it is the power that can lead to peace".

4. Huston Smith (1919)
"The faith which is upon us now and which is better than us in the world, is Islam. If we open our hearts and minds for it, then it will be good for us".

5. Michael Nostradamus (1503-1566)
"Islam will be the ruling religion in Europe, and the famous city of Europe will become the Islamic State capital."

6. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"I read Islam and realized that it is to be the religion of all the world and all humanity. Islam will spread throughout Europe and in Europe the big thinkers of Islam will emerge. A day will come when Islam will be the real stimulus of the world. ".

7. Gosta Lobon (1841-1931)
"Islam only talks about peace and reconciliation. Invite Christians to appreciate the faith of reform."

8. Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"The whole world will accept Islam religion one day and if it can not even accept the real name, it will accept it by a name of metaphor. West will accept Islam one day and Islam will be the religion of those who have studied in the world. "

9. Johann Geith (1749-1832)
"We all have to accept Islam religion sooner or later. This is the real religion. If I am called a Muslim, I will not feel bad, I accept this as a right thing."

Riaz Haq said...

A little lad from a remote village in #Pakistan went on a remarkable journey - he's now #Manchester first citizen—-as Lord Mayor. #England #UK - Manchester Evening News

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/little-lad-remote-village-pakistan-16281715


Manchester’s new lord mayor has been sworn in - marking a long journey from a remote village in Pakistan.

Longsight councillor Abid Latif Chohan grew up in the Punjab region of Pakistan before moving to Manchester to work as a lawyer.


He said it was a ‘huge honour’ to take on the prestigious role and the he looked forward to serving the city.

Coun Chohan vowed to help make Manchester a 'fairer and more inclusive place to live and work'.

He took up the chains from Coun June Hitchen, who said the past year had been a 'wonderful journey'.

She told the town hall's latest full council meeting: “Our city is truly remarkable. I can’t thank you enough.”


Paying tribute to outgoing mayor Coun Hitchen, colleague Pat Karney - the town hall's city centre spokesman and Harpurhey representative - said he was ‘awestruck’ by her ascent from a 15 year-old machinist in Miles Platting to becoming the town hall's ceremonial chief.

He said: “I do think young women and girls - 10, 20, 50 years from now - will read your story and take pride and admiration in what you have achieved.”