KARACHI, Nov 19 (IPS) – Balance is the absolute key, if you ask Alia Chughtai, a journalist who started a catering service with filmmaker Akhlaque Mahesar, by the name of Aur Chaawal (And Rice), two years ago.
Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb has described an anti-lockdown protest in his city as an “orgy of violence.” The Dutch demonstration devolved into a violent riot that saw police open fire on protesters.
Aboutaleb described the events of Friday night as an “orgy of violence,” after protesters packed Rotterdam’s central Coolsingel shopping street to voice their opposition to an ongoing partial lockdown, a ban on New Year’s Eve fireworks displays, and the possibility of a two-tiered system of freedom in the Netherlands, one of liberty for the vaccinated and restrictions for those without the jab.
The protest soon got out of hand, and police said on Saturday that 57 people were arrested. Protesters were seen torching police vehicles and launching fireworks at police, who shot at them in response.
Aboutaleb said that the cops had been “forced” to use their weapons. “On a number of occasions the police felt it necessary to draw their weapons to defend themselves,” he told reporters. “They shot at protesters, people were injured.”
Police say at least seven people were injured. Two of these injuries were caused by police bullets, and the victims are still in hospital. One officer was hospitalized, while several others were treated at the scene for minor injuries.
Australia’s Defense Minister derided a senior Chinese diplomat’s comments as “silly” and “comical,” after the latter dubbed Canberra’s trilateral nuclear-powered submarine pact with the US and UK a threat to peace.
During a television interview on Friday, Peter Dutton said acting Chinese Ambassador Wang Xining was “probably reading off a script from the Communist Party” when he warned that Australia would become the “naughty guy” if it procured the stealth-combat vessels through the AUKUS deal.
Wang, who is China’s most senior representative to the country after the previous ambassador’s term ended last month, told The Guardian on Thursday that Australia would be labeled a “sabre-wielder” rather than a “peace defender.” He said the Australian public “should be more worried” about the impact of the security pact their nation had made with the UK and the US.
There’s zero nuclear capacity, technologically, in Australia, that would guarantee you will be trouble free, that you will be incident free. And if anything happened, are the politicians ready to say sorry to people in Melbourne and in Adelaide?
However, Dutton “dismissed” the comments and countered that “most Australians [would] see through [their] non-productive nature.”
“We don’t see it from any other ambassador here in Australia. It’s quite remarkable,” the minister told the Nine Network, adding that “this type of diplomacy” was seen elsewhere in the world too.
“These provocative comical statements – it’s just so silly. It’s funny,” he added.
In September, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the deal to obtain at least eight nuclear-powered vessels as part of its new defense alliance. The pact angered not only China but also France, which claimed it had been “stabbed in the back” after Canberra unilaterally scrapped a multi-billion-dollar diesel-electric submarine contract with Paris.
Last weekend, Dutton had irked Beijing by stating that he could not conceive of a situation in which Australia would hesitate to support the US should armed conflict with China break out over Taiwan. Under its ‘One China’ policy, Beijing has pledged to reunify the island with the mainland.
Wang warned Australian politicians on Thursday not to do anything that would be “destructive to our relationship.”
Extinction Rebellion has targeted Colombian diplomatic missions across several EU countries, including France and Italy, demanding that the nation address deforestation, coal mining, and indigenous peoples’ rights.
The hard-line climate activist group staged simultaneous protests outside several of Colombia’s diplomatic missions on Tuesday, calling on Bogota to protect biodiversity and stop deforestation. It also urged the country’s government to take action against the El Descanso open-pit coal mine, which is said to be threatening the Yukpa indigenous people.
The French branch of the activist group targeted the Colombian Embassy in Paris, vandalizing its entrance. Footage from the scene shows activists dousing the mission’s entrance in black paint, while plastering placards over its walls.
Action de @xrFrance a l’ambassade de Colombie à #Paris pour dénoncer l’inaction du gouvernement Colombien pour la protection de la biodiversité et des peuples indigènes. pic.twitter.com/1hpf3vVxK4
Another protest held outside Colombia’s consulate in Milan, Italy, saw that mission vandalized too. The building’s entrance was covered in fake blood, with a pile of a black substance, which looked like charcoal or coal, left by its doors.
#ATENCIÓN| Así se vive la Minga Internacional en el Consulado de Colombia en la ciudad de Milán, Italia, donde defensores del medio ambiente alzan su voz por el respeto a la vida y del territorio ancestral del Pueblo Yukpa.
— Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia – ONIC (@ONIC_Colombia) November 16, 2021
Demonstrations also took place outside Colombia’s missions in Germany’s capital, Berlin, as well as in Madrid, Spain. Those protests appeared to be more civil, with activists rallying outside of the missions without vandalizing them.
American billionaire Bill Gates has claimed Covid-19 deaths and infections may drop below seasonal flu levels next year as more people get vaccinated and treatment improves, unless we encounter a new, more deadly variant.
Speaking on Thursday in a virtual interview at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, founder of Microsoft stated that vaccines, natural immunity and emerging oral treatments mean that “the death rate and the disease rate ought to be coming down pretty dramatically.”
The tech mogul, who has been particularly vocal during the pandemic, said issues around vaccine-production capacity are likely to be replaced by distribution challenges and even waning demand.
“The vaccines are very good news, and the supply constraints will be largely solved as we get out in the middle of next year, and so we’ll be limited by the logistics and the demand,” he noted.
He also told his audience that it remains to be seen how much demand there is for Covid-19 shots in places like Sub-Saharan Africa.
Calling for more work to eradicate flu, Gates claimed Covid-19 rates and deaths would possibly fall below those of flu by the middle of next year, unless more deadly coronavirus variants emerge.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has involved itself in the development of vaccines and virus surveillance, calling for a global response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The foundation has invested hundreds of millions dollars in the development and distribution of potentially lifesaving shots.
According to the World Health Organization, influenza kills up to 650,000 people each year. At least five million people have died from Covid-19 since the pandemic began in late 2019.
Austria will introduce a full lockdown that could last for three weeks on Monday in an attempt to tackle a new wave of Covid-19 infections. The government has also ordered the entire population to get vaccinated from February 1.
On Friday, conservative Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg told a news conference that a complete lockdown of the nation would begin on Monday and last for an initial 10 days.
He stated that the restrictions could be extended if infection rates did not start to fall, but he insisted the lockdown would not exceed 20 days.
The measures concern the entire Austrian population. The government has already imposed a partial lockdown on the unvaccinated in an effort to reduce hospitalization rates amid a surge in Covid-19 cases.
When the full lockdown ends, restrictions will remain in place for the unvaccinated.
Schallenberg’s announcement came after a meeting of nine state governors, two of whom had already vowed to introduce full lockdowns in their regions on Monday, in the western province of Tyrol.
The chancellor also announced that vaccinations would be mandatory from February 1. “We haven’t been able to convince enough people to vaccinate. For too long, I and others have assumed that you can convince people to get vaccinated,” he added, giving his rationale for the mandate.
Schallenberg said he lamented the political forces, radical opposition, and fake news fighting against vaccination.
Austria has one of the lowest vaccination rates in western Europe, with only 65% inoculated against the deadly virus according to data from Johns Hopkins university.
Infection rates are almost among the highest on the continent. The seven-day incidence rate stands at 971.5 per 100,000 people.
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President Joe Biden admitted during his address from the White House this week that, “The scenes we’re seeing in Afghanistan, they’re gut-wrenching, particularly for our veterans, our diplomats, humanitarian workers, for anyone who has spent time on the ground working to support the Afghan people.”
Yet the voices of the veteran community aren’t always heard in mainstream media, which tends to prioritize finger pointing and political bickering instead of focusing on the impact of such events on the people who served there, or the people who lost loved ones there. The depression and rage that flowed through the veteran community – as the US flag came down from the Embassy in Kabul, and as the U.S. failed to secure even a safe route out of the country for its own people, much less the Afghans who have supported the US-led effort there for the past 20 years – was swift and devastating to many in the veteran community, who often don’t engage with media, but turn to each other for support via chatrooms.
A statement released by former President George Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush read, “Many of you deal with wounds of war, both visible and invisible. And some of your brothers and sisters in arms made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror. Each day, we have been humbled by your commitment and your courage. You took out a brutal enemy and denied Al Qaeda a safe haven while building schools, sending supplies, and providing medical care. You kept America safe from further terror attacks, provided two decades of security and opportunity for millions, and made America proud. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and will always honor your contributions.”
The Cipher Brief reached out to two veteran leaders, Matthew Griffin and Scott Chapman, who wrote a fictitious letter they titled ‘Writing in Taliban’ as a way to share their outrage over recent events and how they believe – based on their unique on-the-ground experience – the Taliban will communicate this ‘victory’ to their followers.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Matthew “Griff” Griffin is a former Special Operations Army Ranger and a West Point Graduate. He served four combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq with the 2nd Ranger Battalion. Griff departed the military in 2006 and co-founded Combat Flip Flops; manufacturing fashion and lifestyle products in war zones, with profits supporting girl’s education, land mine clearance, and veteran’s charities.
Scott Chapman, Former Army Ranger
Scott Chapman served in 2nd Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment from 2001-2005. He deployed to Iraq during the 2003 invasion and to Afghanistan 4 times. After the military, Scott worked as a contractor providing security support to the Intelligence community where he deployed 17 times mostly at Forward Operating Bases (FOB) providing security support for Intelligence personnel and operations. Scott’s final duty rotation was at the US Embassy Annex in Kabul where he worked as a mentor for Local Guard Forces.
Author’s Note:We’ve spent the past week trying to find a way to communicate our thoughts to the American people in a manner that would intentionally evoke some of the anger, rage, action, and understanding that we feel. Writing in the voice of a Taliban felt right. If reading our letter from the Taliban makes you angry, cry, or contemplative–then our goal is achieved. Our hope is that it inspires you to take action by reaching out to your elected officials. They’ve been repeating the same failed playbook since World War II with your sons, daughters, and tax dollars. If you want this to keep happening, do nothing. If you don’t, then do something. If we all do a little, together we do a lot.
‘Written in Taliban’
OPINION/PERSPECTIVE — The first time I saw you was in the Khyber Pass. You came with your technology, elite fighters fueled by revenge, and the hubris to believe you could disprove history.
This was a war that you didn’t have the stomach to fight. But I’m glad you tried.
We bled you the same way we bled the Soviets in our Holy Land. We bled you the same way the Vietnamese bled you in their homeland. We did it patiently and deliberately.
Patience. Something Westerners never learn.
Our history is millennial. We don’t yearn for an early victory when the Infidel ravages our Holy Land. Our victory is celebrated decades from now. We’ve endured, then ravaged every standing military that crossed our borders. Why? How? We’re patient.
In 30 days, we’ll be stronger, richer, and have control over precious natural resources that you need for your pathetic life dictated by comfort. We will have women, riches, land, guns, and ownership of one of the greatest chapters in military history.
You lose.
If you want to try again, we welcome the challenge. You will fail regardless of how much money you burn in our deserts. For pity, here is free advice that may contribute to your future success; should you ever decide to invade again.
You recruit your warriors and supporters from a drug addicted, distracted, disillusioned population that’s obsessed with comfort and entertainment. A population obsessed with altering their mundane reality. Alcohol, marijuana, pills, and our new favorite — Tide Pods. Every time your doctors prescribe opiate painkillers, you line our coffers with gold. Your population’s thirst for our pristine heroin has never been more lucrative for our warrior tribes. We will keep feeding you poison for as long as you keep your hands out.
If your population wasn’t so spineless, undisciplined, and self-loathing, then you might be able to compile a raiding party with enough tenacity to outthink ours. Our fighters are born into war. Raised in it. It’s a way of life that evades your “first world” nations. They live a life of such immense misery and pain that they’re willing to fight barefoot in the snow for the opportunity to martyr themselves. They yearn for the opportunity to die. When they do have the blessed opportunity to sacrifice themselves, they sit above Mohammed at the right hand of God. Blessed in Allah for eternity
What honors do your fighters receive? Their empty sacrifice is remembered in the form of a “three-day weekend.” The majority of your population uses this sacred time to get drunk and grow more fat as a way to celebrate their fallen warriors. Sadly, we pay tribute to their death more honorably.
The colored pieces of cloth you pin on their chests are similar to the jewelry worn by our women. What good are accolades and vanity if you don’t have the stomach to endure a fight? We don’t offer the burden of healthcare to our fighters as they often want to die for Allah. Your fighters fight to live. Their inability to reconcile the inevitable outcome of our patience leads them to kill themselves. Your medications, counselors and non-profits will never undo the pain and suffering you’ve forced them to endure. It will never remove the pain we’ve caused your broken nation. You are your own worst enemy.
We will give your fighters credit. Some are creative, tenacious, and fierce. They outgun us in every way possible. But again, we simply wait them out. Allah is patient. You cycle them through our Holy Lands every 3 to 12 months for their combat rotations. After their tour is complete, they return to the comfort of their warm beds and endless entertainment. If you left them here, in our Holy Land, with no way out but to win, then you might of have had a chance of success. The longer you poisoned our Holy Land with your presence, your “rules of engagement” only strengthened our position. There is only one rule in war – that is to win.
Your commanders made you fight with your hands tied behind your back. Your rules also confused our fighters too. “We’re clearly the enemy; why are they letting us go?” Thank you for your compassion as it allowed our fighters to kill more Infidels. We began to feel as if your commanders were on our side. We’re thankful your most vicious dogs were never allowed off their leash.
Your showcase Generals make us laugh. You spend millions of dollars flying them around our country, inventing new ways to win while ignoring the guidance of our most capable foes. Your Generals make decisions to minimize risk to their fragile reputation with the ultimate goal of securing a lucrative retirement–jobs with suppliers that fuel your losing force. A self-serving circle that’s built on the backs of your youngest and most naive fighters.
Your retired Generals “earn” tens of thousands of dollars talking to your political, industrial, and financial leaders about “teams, winning, and discipline.” It’s a mockery of the war they refused to fight. It’s a mockery of the Infidel warriors who died in our lands. We urge you to continue following their vacuous personalities so we can further watch your once great nation collapse.
Your statesman and elected officials are spineless, narcissistic, and more cowardly than your Generals. They crave power over you above all else. They come to our country, hide behind blast walls, and only heed the word of the indigenous leader they put in power. I believe your soldiers call this a “self-licking ice cream cone.”
They’ve burned billions of dollars in a wasted effort to bring clean water, electricity, business, education, agriculture, and exports to a region that didn’t ask for it. You should have saved yourself the effort and simply given the money directly to us. Don’t worry; your diplomatic friends gave us plenty of your American tax dollars. If you want to give it another shot with your “soft power,” send those with real experience, not fancy degrees and silver tongues.
Over the next few months, we will make the world understand that you failed worse than any fighting force that’s ever invaded our lands. Today we celebrate victory.
As you evacuate your embassy, our fighters will be standing in the shade. Our RPG marksmen will be patient. We thank you for the parting gifts. You’ll find surface-to-air missiles staged in the back of Toyota pickup trucks that you purchased for us. We saw what Extortion 17 did to your nation and the morale of your fighting force. Do your citizens even remember that victory? We’ll be repeating and improving upon our victory while your citizens and sympathizers evacuate in disgrace. Every one of your foes around the world will know exactly how to break you. You are welcome to fly your empty drones, target our cell phones, and send your spies. But they, too, will ultimately fail. We’ll use their failures to show the world that you’re not all-powerful. You’re a false front–an empty shell. You lie, cheat, steal, and are easily defeated because you lack the spine to fight. This is your history now. We’re grateful Allah gave us the opportunity to show the world how to defeat the Infidels.
We look forward to seeing you again across the battlefield.
Praise be to God,
The Taliban
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of veteran views on this issue. Stay tuned for more and read different informed, national security perspectives in The Cipher Brief
Sporadic clashes broke out at massive Saturday demonstrations in major European cities, as thousands of people took to the streets of Vienna, Paris and Rome to express their discontent with Covid-19 restrictions.
The Austrian capital Vienna on Saturday saw the largest protest turnout since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. A total of 38,000 people took to the city streets to join a dozen demonstrations protesting government measures.
Austria se colocó en pleno apartheid sanitario esta semana, mirando a Viena ahora mismo, no lo pensarías, recuerda que dependen únicamente de la conformidad del pueblo, la resistencia es clave. pic.twitter.com/tKRAIJ2GLt
— Creo en la justicia divina y terrenal 💞💞🇪🇸🇪🇸 (@Ninita0011) November 20, 2021
Tens of thousands have taken to the streets today in one of the largest protests in the history of Vienna, Austria, after the government implemented a new COVID lockdown and became the first in the world to announce compulsory vaccination.pic.twitter.com/FFriWCZioG
The protests came a day after the Austrian authorities ordered nationwide compulsory vaccination from February 1 and imposed a full lockdown, starting Monday. The massive procession that spanned over several kilometers marched along Vienna’s central ring road. The city center was paralyzed for several hours as traffic was restricted.
Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party, whose members joined the rallies, put the number of protesters at 100,000. Some demonstrations were also attended by members of various far-right groups. The protests were generally peaceful but footage published by Ruptly video news agency showed several scuffles between the police and the demonstrators breaking out.
Law enforcement spoke of a total of five arrests. One incident saw a protester attempting to grab an officer’s gun and take it from its holster. In another incident, the officers were pelted with bottles and fireworks and had to use pepper spray in response.
#w2011 Die Situation in Wien eskaliert. Die Polizei scheint, trotz der bekannten Grossmobilisierung und zahllosen Gewaltaufrufen, äusserst schlecht vorbereitet. An mehreren Orten wurde die Polizei umzingelt und musste sich zurückziehen. pic.twitter.com/4VzZTbww2S
Hundreds of kilometers away from Vienna, in the French capital Paris, events took a more dramatic turn. There, a demonstration against the government Covid-19 measures coincided with the third anniversary of the Yellow Vests movement. Hundreds of protesters took part in the protest, which quickly turned into clashes between the demonstrators and law enforcement.
The protesters were building barricades and setting them on fire as well as pelting police with bottles and various other projectiles. Law enforcement responded with profuse amounts of tear gas, sometimes filling entire streets with thick smoke to disperse the crowds.
PARIS – Un conteneur est renversé pour utiliser les bouteilles comme projectiles.
Rome saw a massive demonstration against Italy’s Covid-19 health pass, also known as the Green Pass. Some 4,000 people gathered in the center of the Italian capital, according to the police. The demonstrators were waving national flags and chanting “Freedom” and “No Green Pass,” referring to the vaccination certificate needed to enter various public venues such as clubs or bars.
The crowd staged a sit-in in the Circus Maximus – an ancient Roman chariot-racing stadium converted into a modern-day park. They remained there after sunset, lighting the area with thousands of phones and colored smoke bombs. The rally was peaceful, though, as the police did not report any incidents.
Unlike Rome, Italy’s northern city of Milano saw clashes between protesters and the police as law enforcement officers sought to break up an unauthorized rally at the city center. Large police forces were deployed to the city center and several squares were cordoned off.
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MADRID, Nov 19 (IPS) – Kailash Satyarthi,? an Indian social reformer and co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Malala Yousafzai, spoke in a recent international forum about the devastating impacts of child labour.
French luxury giant Dior has taken down a controversial photograph that had been criticized in China for “smearing Asian women” by pandering to Western stereotypes while “distorting Chinese culture.”
The photo, which was part of the brand’s ‘Lady Dior’ exhibition in Shanghai, depicts an Asian model wearing a traditional dress and clutching a Dior handbag. It came under fire this week from Chinese media outlets for featuring “spooky eyes, [a] gloomy face and Qing Dynasty-styled nail armor.”
Although Dior has not released a statement regarding the controversy, it confirmed to fashion trade publication Business of Fashion that the photo had been removed from the exhibition. The brand has also reportedly taken the photo off Chinese social media platform Weibo.
The image, which was shot by Chinese photographer Chen Man, had drawn both media ire and public outrage. However, there were apparently no calls for a boycott of the brand.
In an editorial on Monday titled “Is This the Asian Woman in Dior’s Eyes?”, the Beijing Daily paper had noted that the image makes Chinese consumers uncomfortable. The publication criticized Man for “playing up to the brands, or the aesthetic tastes of the Western world.”
For years, Asian women have always appeared with small eyes and freckles from the Western perspective, but the Chinese way to appreciate art and beauty can’t be distorted by that.
Warning that both the brand and the photographer had “gone too far,” the China Women’s News paper ran an editorial on Wednesday that claimed it “indicated their intention of uglifying Chinese women and distorting Chinese culture.”
“Again, from… Dior’s ghost-style picture, which makes the public feel uncomfortable, it’s easy to see some Western brands’ ‘pride and prejudice’ in their aesthetics and culture,” said the newspaper, which is run by the All-China Women’s Federation.
Meanwhile, the Global Times noted that the “lingering controversy could pose a delicate situation” for Dior and other global brands – for whom China’s “massive” luxury market was one of the biggest sources of revenue. The paper said that the Chinese public had become “increasingly sensitive” toward the depiction and treatment of Chinese people and culture by foreign companies.
While pointing out that Chinese social media users had demanded the company and photographer explain their intention, a number of media outlets also highlighted how some netizens had praised the photo as a departure from typical standards of beauty in the country, often characterized by “fair skin and large eyes.”
