Trudeau accuses India of involvement in assassination in Canada – National & International News – TUE 19Sep2023

Trudeau accuses India of involvement in slaying of Sikh leader in Canada.

Speaker McCarthy faces ouster threat as shutdown looms.

NATIONAL NEWS

Speaker McCarthy faces ouster threat as shutdown looms

If Congress fails to pass a spending resolution by the end of the month, the US will see its third government shutdown in the last decade. Certain government services that millions of Americans rely on will cease to function as normal, and those receiving Social Security checks could be facing a cut in their benefits.

This doesn’t seem to be overly troubling to some Republican members of Congress; in fact some are openly calling for it. Republicans that control the House are unlikely to come up with a spending resolution that the Democrat-controlled Senate will sign off on and vice versa. This in part because Republican hardliners are insisting that any spending resolution include a wish-list of their own priorities, which will be dead on arrival in the Senate.

Adding to this chaotic mix is a sideshow of threats from the far-right to call a vote to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Members of the so-called Freedom Caucus are unhappy with McCarthy’s previous compromises on spending with President Biden, and with his hesitancy to call a vote to impeach Biden (for charges yet to be determined).  All of this makes it even more likely there will be no resolution, even a temporary one

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has warned his fellow Republicans that a shutdown would be “a loser” for their party. House Democratic Minority Leader has aptly described the GOP as being in a state of “civil war”. 

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Trudeau accuses India of involvement in slaying of Sikh leader in Canada

Yesterday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called an emergency meeting of the House of Commons with some shocking news. Canadian investigators (with help from the US) had found ‘credible evidence’ that the government of India had been behind the June assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist leader. Nijjar was gunned down by masked assassins outside a Sikh temple in a suburb of Vancouver, BC. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” Trudeau said. 

During his address, Trudeau said he had raised his concerns at high-level international talks and even brought it up with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a recent face-to-face meeting. 

Sikhs are a religious and cultural minority in India who have long sought a state of their own. In recent years, since Modi’s Hindu ultra-nationalist BJP party came to power in India, incidents of violent oppression of minority groups have become routine, and the government’s support for this violence has become blatant. The revelation that India’s government may be targeting its political adversaries for assassination on foreign soil echoes the bad old days of the KGB targeting defectors to the West. However, the KGB in general used stealthier methods like poison-tipped umbrellas. 

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