#Pakistan High Commission

[mariacallous]

Afghan refugees who fled their country to escape from decades of war and terrorism have become the unwitting pawns in a cruel and crude political tussle between Pakistan’s government and the extremist Taliban as their once-close relationship disintegrates amid mutual recrimination.

On Oct. 3, Pakistan’s government announced that mass deportations of illegal immigrants, mostly Afghans, would start on Nov. 1. So far, at least 300,000 Afghans have already been ejected, and more than a million others face the same fate as the expulsions continue.

The bilateral fight appears to center on Kabul’s support for extremists who have wreaked havoc and killed hundreds in Pakistan over the last two years—or at least that is how Islamabad sees it, arguing that it is simply applying its own laws. The Taliban deny accusations that they are behind the uptick of terrorism in Pakistan by affiliates that they protect, train, arm, and direct.

Mass deportations are a sign that Pakistan is “putting its house in order,” said Pakistan’s caretaker minister of interior, Sarfraz Bugti. “Pakistan is the only country hosting four million refugees for the last 40 years and still hosting them,” he said via text. “Whoever wanted to stay in our country must stay legally.” Of the 300,000 Afghans already ejected, none have faced any problems upon returning, he told Foreign Policy. As the Taliban are claiming that Afghanistan is now peaceful, he said, “they should help their countrymen to settle themselves.”

“We are not a cruel state,” he said, adding: “Pakistanis are more important.”

The Taliban—who, since returning to power in August 2021, have been responsible for U.N.-documented arbitrary detentions and killings, as well forcing women and girls out of work and education—have called Pakistan’s deportations “inhumane” and “rushed.” Taliban figures have said that the billions of dollars of international aid they still receive are insufficient to deal with the country’s prior economic and humanitarian crises, let alone a mass influx of penniless refugees.

The expulsions come after earlier efforts by Pakistan, such as trade restrictions, to exert pressure on Kabul to rein in the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani Taliban, whose attacks on military and police present a severe security challenge to the Pakistani state. Acting Prime Minister Anwar ul-Haq Kakar said earlier this month that TTP attacks have risen by 60 percent since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, with 2,267 people killed.

The irony is that Pakistan bankrolled the Taliban throughout their 20-year insurgency following their ouster from power during the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Taliban leaders found sanctuary and funding from Pakistan’s military and intelligence services. When the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, then-Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan congratulated them, as did groups such as al Qaeda and Hamas. But rather than continuing as Islamabad’s proxy, the Taliban have reversed roles, providing safe haven for terrorist and jihadi groups, including the TTP.

“While it’s still too early to draw any conclusions on policy shifts in Islamabad, it appears that the initial excitement about the Taliban’s return to power has now turned into frustration,” said Abdullah Khenjani, a former deputy minister of peace in the previous Afghan government. “Consequently, these traditional [Pakistani state] allies of the Taliban are systematically reassessing their leverage to be prepared for potentially worse scenarios.”

Since the Taliban’s return, around 600,000 Afghans made their way into Pakistan, swelling the number of Afghan refugees in the country to an estimated 3.7 million, with 1.32 million registered with the U.N. High Commission on Refugees. Many face destitution, unable to find work or even send their children to local schools. The situation may be even worse after the deportations: Pakistan is reportedly confiscating most of the refugees’ money on the way out, leaving them in a precarious situation in a country already struggling to create jobs for its people or deal with its own humanitarian crises.

Border crossings between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been clogged in recent weeks, as many Afghan refugees preempted the police round-up and began making their way back. Media have reported that some of the undocumented Afghans were born in Pakistan, their parents having fled the uninterrupted conflict at home since the former Soviet Union invaded in 1979. Many of the births were not registered.

Meanwhile, some groups among those being expelled are especially vulnerable. Hundreds of Afghans could face retribution from the Taliban they left the country to escape. Journalists, women, civil and human rights activists, LGBTQ+ advocates, judges, police, former military and government personnel, and Shiite Hazaras have all been targeted by the Taliban, and many escaped to Pakistan, with and without official documents.

Some efforts have been made to help Afghans regarded as vulnerable to Taliban excess if they are returned. Qamar Yousafzai set up the Pakistan-Afghanistan International Federation of Journalists at the National Press Club of Pakistan, in Islamabad, to verify the identities of hundreds of Afghan journalists, issue them with ID cards, and help with housing and health care. He has also interceded for journalists detained by police for a lack of papers. Yet that might not be enough to prevent their deportation.

Amnesty International called for a “halt [to] the continued detentions, deportations, and widespread harassment of Afghan refugees.” If not, it said, “it will be denying thousands of at-risk Afghans, especially women and girls, access to safety, education and livelihood.” The UNHCR and International Organization for Migration, the U.N.’s migration agency, said the forced repatriations had “the potential to result in severe human rights violations, including the separation of families and deportation of minors.”

Once back in Afghanistan, returnees have found the going tough, arriving in a country they hardly know, without resources to restart their lives, many facing a harsh Himalayan winter in camps set up by a Taliban administration ill-equipped to provide for them.

Fariba Faizi, 29, is from the southwestern Afghanistan city of Farah, where she was a journalist with a private radio station. Her mother, Shirin, was a prosecutor for the Farah provincial attorney general’s office, specializing in domestic violence cases. Once the Taliban returned to power, they were both out of their jobs, since women are not permitted to work in the new Afghanistan. They also faced the possibility of detention, beating, rape, and killing.

Along with her family of 10 (parents, siblings, husband, and toddler), Faizi, now eight months pregnant with her second child, moved to Islamabad in April 2022, hoping they’d be safe enough. Once the government announced the deportations, landlords who had been renting to Afghans began to evict them; Faizi’s landlord said he wanted the house back for himself. Her family is now living with friends of Yousafzai, who also arranged charitable support to cover their living costs for six months, she said.

With no work in either Pakistan or Afghanistan, Faizi said, they faced a similar economic situation on either side of the border. In Pakistan, however, the women in the family could at least look for work, she said; their preference would be to stay in Pakistan. As it is, they remain in hiding, afraid of being detained by police and forced over the border once their visas expire.

[tatsumybeloved]

u guys… LOOK AT HIM. desi adult danny fenton. pakistani&indian king.

in my verse,, he is always (w an exception to that one fic) desi and named Daniyal Murad. jack is pakistani sorry not sorry and maddie’s his stepmom and she’s still white, i just gave him a bio mom and she’s indian. (is this bc i’m pakistani and indian?? also Yes.)

okay so pakistan + india is very diverse in terms of culture, ethnical groups and range of skin. so if someone asks me why he’s so dark in a negative way i will seriously toss u in the trash. and if in a genuinely curious way, well the more u know!

i commissioned the kind ohhriyo on ig to draw my vision. and ohhriyo brought him to LIFEEE. exactly the way i imagined him. i Need u to See the Vision. so thankful to onion.

u give a girl money and this is the first thing they’re gonna do. Correction: what i’m going to do

i have gone crazy over him and still am going crazy. i literally had to clutch the wall when i first saw him. i fell to my Knees. i have made my friends see the light and they’re all obsessed with him too. i need to drape myself over his arms like heroines do in bollywood. u don’t understand i have the very Deep and Feral urge and need and want to bite him. he’s literally how it’d feel when u touch a cloud. he’s so Meow. so Meow. in the cats clawing something and their mouths twisting way. he leaves me faint i can never get over him. i’ve driven my friends up the wall w the way i’m fawning over him they’re probably sick of me 😭

i hc that he grew into jack’s mass and build due to genetics although they can be very funky. the shoulder-to-hip ratio is high bc he has a male ballet dancer’s physique and their shoulders have to be wider than their hips. i hc him to have done ballet. that and add in jack’s figure, u have the perfect recipe for broad shoulders. he isn’t supposed to have that broad shoulders but the artists style is like that. no complaints tho! he’s got lean muscles bc of his ballet and fighting background as phantom. u guys should read up on their strength and all the intense training they have to do to be so controlled and strong it’s crazy.

and he’s an adult man in my fics: so let him be flirty and dress whatever way he wants. let him be slutty. he’s Serving Cunt. idk i have this hc that as he grew older and more comfortable in his own skin he’d have tons of game. and i know this from person experience i have a friend who was an awkward mess and very like danny turn into a Huge Flirt after time and i’m like bro ???? how much did u change? good for u !! that and me and danny r like this 🤞🏽 i grew into my own skin too after some time and grew comfortable in dressing in diff ways and showing off skin + other things. danny would go thru it too

and yes i gave him piercings bc i Loveee piercings. i gotta give all my fav characters piercings

look at the jhumkas!!! the traditional nose ring!!!! Insane !!!!! so whenever i write abt him… keep this vision in ur head ty and gn.

(he doesn’t look so desi ik but the artists style is like that and they didn’t know how to make his skin brown and etc)

desi danny fenton u r so dear to me <3333

#danny fenton #danny phantom #adult danny fenton #adult danny #this tag is bc i write solely for the dp/dc crossover fandom #dpxdc

[thehopefuljournalist]

According to a new survey, lawmakers are playing an increasingly important role in holding corporations and governments accountable for failures to tackle the climate crisis.

The research was done by Columbia Law School, and was commissioned by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). It revealed that the number of climate-related court cases has more than doubled since 2017 and is steadily rising around the world.

Their report confirms a trend highlighted in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023, which claimed that individuals and environmental organizations were, more and more, turning to the law, as it became clear that the pace of transition to net-zero emissions was too slow.

“Climate litigation is increasing and concerns about emissions under-reporting and greenwashing have triggered calls for new regulatory oversight for the transition to net zero,” the Forum report said.

The UNEP report catalogues a number of high-profile court cases which have succeeded in enforcing climate action. In 2017, when climate case numbers were last counted, 884 legal actions had been brought. Today the total stands at 2,180.

The majority of climate cases to this date (1,522) have been brought in the US, followed by Australia, the UK, and the EU. The report notes that the number of legal actions in developing countries is growing, now at 17% of the total.

Climate litigation is also giving a voice to vulnerable groups who are being hard hit by climate change. The report says that, globally, 34 cases have been brought by children and young people, including two by girls aged seven and nine in Pakistan and India.

Here are five of the climate breakthroughs achieved by legal action so far.

1. Torres Strait Islanders Vs Australia

In September 2022, indigenous people living on islands in the Torres Strait between northern Queensland and Papua New Guinea won a landmark ruling that their human rights were being violated by the failure of the Australian government to take effective climate action.

The UN Human Rights Committee ruling established the principle that a country could be in breach of international human rights law over climate inaction. They ruled that Australia's poor climate record was a violation of the islanders’ right to family life and culture.

2. The Paris Agreement is a human rights treaty

In July 2022, Brazil's supreme court ruled that the Paris climate agreement is legally a human rights treaty which, it said, meant that it automatically overruled any domestic laws which conflicted with the country’s climate obligations.

The ruling ordered the government to reopen its national climate mitigation fund, which had been established under the Paris Agreement.

3. Climate inaction is a breach of human rights

Upholding an earlier court ruling that greenhouse emissions must be cut by 25% by 2020, the Netherlands Supreme Court ruled that failure to curb emissions was a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The December 2019 ruling stated that, although it was up to politicians to decide how to make the emission cuts, failure to do so would be a breach of Articles 2 and 8 of the Convention which affirm the right to life and respect for private and family life.

4. Companies are bound by the Paris accord

Corporations, and not just governments, must abide by the emissions reductions agreed in the Paris climate treaty. This principle was established by a 2021 ruling in the Netherlands brought by environmentalists against energy group Royal Dutch Shell.

The court ordered Shell to cut its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 bringing them in line with Paris climate targets. The judge was reported as saying there was "worldwide agreement" that a 45% reduction was needed, adding: "This applies to the entire world, so also to Shell”.

5. Courts overturn state climate plans

Up until now, three European governments have been defeated in the courts over their climate plans.

In March 2021, Germany’s highest court struck down a climate law requiring 55% emissions by 2030 cuts, ruling it did not do enough to protect citizens’ rights to life and health. The same year, the French government was ordered to take “immediate and concrete action” to comply with its climate commitments. And in 2022, the UK’s climate strategy was ruled unlawful for failing to spell out how emissions cuts would be made.

#climate change #climate #hope #good news #more to come #climate emergency #news #climate justice #hopeful #positive news #long post #important #good post #links #for future reference #law #climate law #paris agreement #paris climate agreement #government #democracy #politicians #economics #politics

[world-of-wales]

Wait, what? Could you explain the M and India UK thing?

It all dials back to the Commonwealth and uk- india ties in terms of it. So, a little background - commonwealth was the second international organization/group joined by India after the UN. But the commonwealth was the first it joined as an independent sovereign state. Now at that time india was one of the first countries who put forth the demand that republics should also be able to join the CW and countries like them should not be expected to keep the monarch as the head of the state to be a condition for joining what is being called a voluntary organization. Because if they keep the monarch as the head of state, then the whole idea of independence from colonization loses its meaning. So the Indian leaders at that time put forth the demand that republics should be allowed in too, and these countries will be a part of the CW but no authority of the UK or the head of atate/monarch will extend to them. That was accepted because it was a fair demand and made sense. Hence, india joined the CW.

Even back then i.e post indepence in 1947 till the time of the london declaration in 1949, there was a lot of debate and controversy over the whole joining buisness and even then a large section of politicians and leaders were like this is stupid, why are we going back under their influence after having a 100 year long struggle to get out of it. But the then government including Jawaharlal Nehru (my fav Indian pm) who was his own foreign minister, were like India will need to have some sort of connection and some sort of ties with other nations internationally to make sure it can work in the global world. And even today, the Commonwealth forms the bedrock of india's contemporary relations with a number of African states and its dealings with canada, australia, etc.

JLN and his interim government agreed with the influence argument so they put forth the demand for the joining of republics with their own heads of states. It was agreed upon by the UK. But even after that, since india's independence a large section has been against the Commonwealth with the same arguments and people,intellectuals, politicians like shashi tharoor, the southern state CMs, some North Indian parties feel that India should leave the CW.

Now flash forward to the wedding in 2018, meghan came out wearing a veil embroidered with the national flowers of all the CW states, including guess which ones? The republics which are sovereign!!! Including - india (lotus), Pakistan (jasmine) and Bangladesh (water lily)

This thing was picked up by journalists and they ran with it on social media and in newspapers that the royals still think we are theirs. The whole of South Asian twitter was a mess, everyone was criticizing the UK, asking for the high commission to be summoned in front of parliamentary committes to see why they thought it was okay. In india politicians from both sides - the ruling bjp and the opposition parties jumped in. It basically became a f*ck CW, f*ck UK narrative. Now add to this the whole history of colonization and that makes it even worse.

The whole problem that people had with it was that, despite nearly 75 years of independence, UK still thinks we are theirs so why don't we kick them to the curb, we don't need the CW to have trade and other diplomatic ties with other states anymore. Pakistan, Bangladesh etc also had the same issues but it was the most amplified in india.

So in the official circles, for the first time, formal demands were being made that India should leave CW in 2018 because of that Givenchy wedding outfit and the attitude which it must have accompanied. It was always a thing in india, on the fringes of politics, to leave the CW as an agenda for some sections, but nobody ever took any initiative for it except making statements. The government didn't do it formally because let's be honest, 2018 was just a year off the next national elections and they had bigger fish to fry back then but I know it was pretty much a done deal as per the news coming out from 'sources' close to the cabinet, plans were being made. But it was sorted out later, a lot of it because bjp shares common ties with the Tories in the UK so they could smooth it over.

#ash's asks #anons

[menalez]

Here is a critique: Argue all you want with many feminist policies, but few quarrel with feminism’s core moral insight, which changed the lives (and minds) of women forever: that women are due the same rights and dignity as men. So, as news of the appalling miseries of women in the Islamic world has piled up, where are the feminists? Where’s the outrage? For a brief moment after September 11, when pictures of those blue alien-creaturely shapes in Afghanistan filled the papers, it seemed as if feminists were going to have their moment. And in fact the Feminist Majority, to its credit, had been publicizing since the mid-90s how Afghan girls were barred from school, how women were stoned for adultery or beaten for showing an ankle or wearing high-heeled shoes, how they were prohibited from leaving the house unless accompanied by a male relative, how they were denied medical help because the only doctors around were male.

But the rest is feminist silence. You haven’t heard a peep from feminists as it has grown clear that the Taliban were exceptional not in their extreme views about women but in their success at embodying those views in law and practice. In the United Arab Emirates, husbands have the right to beat their wives in order to discipline them—“provided that the beating is not so severe as to damage her bones or deform her body,” in the words of the Gulf News. In Saudi Arabia, women cannot vote, drive, or show their faces or talk with male non-relatives in public. (Evidently they can’t talk to men over the airwaves either; when Prince Abdullah went to President Bush’s ranch in Crawford last April, he insisted that no female air-traffic controllers handle his flight.) Yes, Saudi girls can go to school, and many even attend the university; but at the university, women must sit in segregated rooms and watch their professors on closed-circuit televisions. If they have a question, they push a button on their desk, which turns on a light at the professor’s lectern, from which he can answer the female without being in her dangerous presence. And in Saudi Arabia, education can be harmful to female health. Last spring in Mecca, members of the mutaween, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue, pushed fleeing students back into their burning school because they were not properly covered in abaya. Fifteen girls died.

You didn’t hear much from feminists when in the northern Nigerian province of Katsina a Muslim court sentenced a woman to death by stoning for having a child outside of marriage. The case might not have earned much attention—stonings are common in parts of the Muslim world—except that the young woman, who had been married off at 14 to a husband who ultimately divorced her when she lost her virginal allure, was still nursing a baby at the time of sentencing. During her trial she had no lawyer, although the court did see fit to delay her execution until she weans her infant.

You didn’t hear much from feminists as it emerged that honor killings by relatives, often either ignored or only lightly punished by authorities, are also commonplace in the Muslim world. In September, Reuters reported the story of an Iranian man, “defending my honor, family, and dignity,” who cut off his seven-year-old daughter’s head after suspecting she had been raped by her uncle. The postmortem showed the girl to be a virgin. In another family mix-up, a Yemeni man shot his daughter to death on her wedding night when her husband claimed she was not a virgin. After a medical exam revealed that the husband was mistaken, officials concluded he was simply trying to protect himself from embarrassment about his own impotence. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, every day two women are slain by male relatives seeking to avenge the family honor.

The savagery of some of these murders is worth a moment’s pause. In 2000, two Punjabi sisters, 20 and 21 years old, had their throats slit by their brother and cousin because the girls were seen talking to two boys to whom they were not related. In one especially notorious case, an Egyptian woman named Nora Marzouk Ahmed fell in love and eloped. When she went to make amends with her father, he cut off her head and paraded it down the street. Several years back, according to the Washington Post, the husband of Zahida Perveen, a 32-year-old pregnant Pakistani, gouged out her eyes and sliced off her earlobe and nose because he suspected her of having an affair.

In a related example widely covered last summer, a teenage girl in the Punjab was sentenced by a tribal council to rape by a gang that included one of the councilmen. After the hour-and-a-half ordeal, the girl was forced to walk home naked in front of scores of onlookers. She had been punished because her 11-year-old brother had compromised another girl by being been seen alone with her. But that charge turned out to be a ruse: it seems that three men of a neighboring tribe had sodomized the boy and accused him of illicit relations—an accusation leading to his sister’s barbaric punishment—as a way of covering up their crime.

Nor is such brutality limited to backward, out-of-the-way villages. Muddassir Rizvi, a Pakistani journalist, says that, though always common in rural areas, in recent years honor killings have become more prevalent in cities “among educated and liberal families.” In relatively modern Jordan, honor killings were all but exempt from punishment until the penal code was modified last year; unfortunately, a young Palestinian living in Jordan, who had recently stabbed his 19-year-old sister 40 times “to cleanse the family honor,” and another man from near Amman, who ran over his 23-year-old sister with his truck because of her “immoral behavior,” had not yet changed their ways. British psychiatrist Anthony Daniels reports that British Muslim men frequently spirit their young daughters back to their native Pakistan and force the girls to marry. Such fathers have been known to kill daughters who resist. In Sweden, in one highly publicized case, Fadima Sahindal, an assimilated 26-year-old of Kurdish origin, was murdered by her father after she began living with her Swedish boyfriend. “The whore is dead,” the family announced.

As you look at this inventory of brutality, the question bears repeating: Where are the demonstrations, the articles, the petitions, the resolutions, the vindications of the rights of Islamic women by American feminists? The weird fact is that, even after the excesses of the Taliban did more to forge an American consensus about women’s rights than 30 years of speeches by Gloria Steinem, feminists refused to touch this subject. They have averted their eyes from the harsh, blatant oppression of millions of women, even while they have continued to stare into the Western patriarchal abyss, indignant over female executives who cannot join an exclusive golf club and college women who do not have their own lacrosse teams.

But look more deeply into the matter, and you realize that the sound of feminist silence about the savage fundamentalist Muslim oppression of women has its own perverse logic. The silence is a direct outgrowth of the way feminist theory has developed in recent years. Now mired in self-righteous sentimentalism, multicultural nonjudgmentalism, and internationalist utopianism, feminism has lost the language to make the universalist moral claims of equal dignity and individual freedom that once rendered it so compelling. No wonder that most Americans, trying to deal with the realities of a post-9/11 world, are paying feminists no mind.

To understand the current sisterly silence about the sort of tyranny that the women’s movement came into existence to attack, it is helpful to think of feminisms plural rather than singular. Though not entirely discrete philosophies, each of three different feminisms has its own distinct reasons for causing activists to “lose their voice” in the face of women’s oppression.

The first variety—radical feminism (or gender feminism, in Christina Hoff Sommers’s term)—starts with the insight that men are, not to put too fine a point upon it, brutes. Radical feminists do not simply subscribe to the reasonable-enough notion that men are naturally more prone to aggression than women. They believe that maleness is a kind of original sin. Masculinity explains child abuse, marital strife, high defense spending, every war from Troy to Afghanistan, as well as Hitler, Franco, and Pinochet. As Gloria Steinem informed the audience at a Florida fundraiser last March: “The cult of masculinity is the basis for every violent, fascist regime.”

Gender feminists are little interested in fine distinctions between radical Muslim men who slam commercial airliners into office buildings and soldiers who want to stop radical Muslim men from slamming commercial airliners into office buildings. They are both examples of generic male violence—and specifically, male violence against women. “Terrorism is on a continuum that starts with violence within the family, battery against women, violence against women in the society, all the way up to organized militaries that are supported by taxpayer money,” according to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, who teaches “The Sexuality of Terrorism” at California State University in Hayward. Violence is so intertwined with male sexuality that, she tells us, military pilots watch porn movies before they go out on sorties. The war in Afghanistan could not possibly offer a chance to liberate women from their oppressors, since it would simply expose women to yet another set of oppressors, in the gender feminists’ view. As Sharon Lerner asserted bizarrely in the Village Voice, feminists’ “discomfort” with the Afghanistan bombing was “deepened by the knowledge that more women than men die as a result of most wars.”

If guys are brutes, girls are their opposite: peace-loving, tolerant, conciliatory, and reasonable—“Antiwar and Pro-Feminist,” as the popular peace-rally sign goes. Feminists long ago banished tough-as-nails women like Margaret Thatcher and Jeanne Kirkpatrick (and these days, one would guess, even the fetching Condoleezza Rice) to the ranks of the imperfectly female. Real women, they believe, would never justify war. “Most women, Western and Muslim, are opposed to war regardless of its reasons and objectives,” wrote the Jordanian feminist Fadia Faqir on OpenDemocracy.net. “They are concerned with emancipation, freedom (personal and civic), human rights, power sharing, integrity, dignity, equality, autonomy, power-sharing [sic], liberation, and pluralism.”

Sara Ruddick, author of Maternal Thinking, is perhaps one of the most influential spokeswomen for the position that women are instinctually peaceful. According to Ruddick (who clearly didn’t have Joan Crawford in mind), that’s because a good deal of mothering is naturally governed by the Gandhian principles of nonviolence such as “renunciation,” “resistance to injustice,” and “reconciliation.” The novelist Barbara Kingsolver was one of the first to demonstrate the subtleties of such universal maternal thinking after the United States invaded Afghanistan. “I feel like I’m standing on a playground where the little boys are all screaming ‘He started it!’ and throwing rocks,” she wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “I keep looking for somebody’s mother to come on the scene saying, ‘Boys! Boys!’ ”

Gender feminism’s tendency to reduce foreign affairs to a Lifetime Channel movie may make it seem too silly to bear mentioning, but its kitschy naiveté hasn’t stopped it from being widespread among elites. You see it in widely read writers like Kingsolver, Maureen Dowd, and Alice Walker. It turns up in our most elite institutions. Swanee Hunt, head of the Women in Public Policy Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government wrote, with Cristina Posa in Foreign Policy: “The key reason behind women’s marginalization may be that everyone recognizes just how good women are at forging peace.” Even female elected officials are on board. “The women of all these countries should go on strike, they should all sit down and refuse to do anything until their men agree to talk peace,” urged Ohio representative Marcy Kaptur to the Arab News last spring, echoing an idea that Aristophanes, a dead white male, proposed as a joke 2,400 years ago. And President Clinton is an advocate of maternal thinking, too. “If we’d had women at Camp David,” he said in July 2000, “we’d have an agreement.”

Major foundations too seem to take gender feminism seriously enough to promote it as an answer to world problems. Last December, the Ford Foundation and the Soros Open Society Foundation helped fund the Afghan Women’s Summit in Brussels to develop ideas for a new government in Afghanistan. As Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler described it on her website, the summit was made up of “meetings and meals, canvassing, workshops, tears, and dancing.” “Defense was mentioned nowhere in the document,” Ensler wrote proudly of the summit’s concluding proclamation—despite the continuing threat in Afghanistan of warlords, bandits, and lingering al-Qaida operatives. “[B]uilding weapons or instruments of retaliation was not called for in any category,” Ensler cooed. “Instead [the women] wanted education, health care, and the protection of refugees, culture, and human rights.”

Too busy celebrating their own virtue and contemplating their own victimhood, gender feminists cannot address the suffering of their Muslim sisters realistically, as light years worse than their own petulant grievances. They are too intent on hating war to ask if unleashing its horrors might be worth it to overturn a brutal tyranny that, among its manifold inhumanities, treats women like animals. After all, hating war and machismo is evidence of the moral superiority that comes with being born female.

Yet the gender feminist idea of superior feminine virtue is becoming an increasingly tough sell for anyone actually keeping up with world events. Kipling once wrote of the fierceness of Afghan women: “When you’re wounded and left on the Afghan plains/And the women come out to cut up your remains/Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains.” Now it’s clearer than ever that the dream of worldwide sisterhood is no more realistic than worldwide brotherhood; culture trumps gender any day. Mothers all over the Muslim world are naming their babies Usama or praising Allah for their sons’ efforts to kill crusading infidels. Last February, 28-year-old Wafa Idris became the first female Palestinian suicide bomber to strike in Israel, killing an elderly man and wounding scores of women and children. And in April, Israeli soldiers discovered under the maternity clothes of 26-year-old Shifa Adnan Kodsi a bomb rather than a baby. Maternal thinking, indeed.

The second variety of feminism, seemingly more sophisticated and especially prevalent on college campuses, is multiculturalism and its twin, postcolonialism. The postcolonial feminist has even more reason to shy away from the predicament of women under radical Islam than her maternally thinking sister. She believes that the Western world is so sullied by its legacy of imperialism that no Westerner, man or woman, can utter a word of judgment against former colonial peoples. Worse, she is not so sure that radical Islam isn’t an authentic, indigenous—and therefore appropriate—expression of Arab and Middle Eastern identity.

The postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault, one of the intellectual godfathers of multiculturalism and postcolonialism, first set the tone in 1978 when an Italian newspaper sent him to Teheran to cover the Iranian revolution. As his biographer James Miller tells it, Foucault looked in the face of Islamic fundamentalism and saw . . . an awe-inspiring revolt against “global hegemony.” He was mesmerized by this new form of “political spirituality” that, in a phrase whose dark prescience he could not have grasped, portended the “transfiguration of the world.” Even after the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power and reintroduced polygamy and divorce on the husband’s demand with automatic custody to fathers, reduced the official female age of marriage from 18 to 13, fired all female judges, and ordered compulsory veiling, whose transgression was to be punished by public flogging, Foucault saw no reason to temper his enthusiasm. What was a small matter like women’s basic rights, when a struggle against “the planetary system” was at hand?

Postcolonialists, then, have their own binary system, somewhat at odds with gender feminism—not to mention with women’s rights. It is not men who are the sinners; it is the West. It is not women who are victimized innocents; it is the people who suffered under Western colonialism, or the descendants of those people, to be more exact. Caught between the rock of patriarchy and the hard place of imperialism, the postcolonial feminist scholar gingerly tiptoes her way around the subject of Islamic fundamentalism and does the only thing she can do: she focuses her ire on Western men.

The most impressive signs of an indigenous female revolt against the fundamentalist order are in Iran. Over the past ten years or so, Iran has seen the publication of a slew of serious journals dedicated to the social and political predicament of Islamic women, the most well known being the Teheran-based Zonan and Zan, published by Faezah Hashemi, a well-known member of parliament and the daughter of former president Rafsanjani. Believing that Western feminism has promoted hostility between the sexes, confused sex roles, and the sexual objectification of women, a number of writers have proposed an Islamic-style feminism that would stress “gender complementarity” rather than equality and that would pay full respect to housewifery and motherhood while also giving women access to education and jobs.

Attacking from the religious front, a number of “Islamic feminists” are challenging the reigning fundamentalist reading of the Qur’an. These scholars insist that the founding principles of Islam, which they believe were long ago corrupted by pre-Islamic Arab, Persian, and North African customs, are if anything more egalitarian than those of Western religions; the Qur’an explicitly describes women as the moral and spiritual equals of men and allows them to inherit and pass down property. The power of misogynistic mullahs has grown in recent decades, feminists continue, because Muslim men have felt threatened by modernity’s challenge to traditional arrangements between the sexes.

What makes Islamic feminism really worth watching is that it has the potential to play a profoundly important role in the future of the Islamic world—and not just because it could improve the lot of women. By insisting that it is true to Islam—in fact, truer than the creed espoused by the entrenched religious elite—Islamic feminism can affirm the dignity of Islam while at the same time bringing it more in line with modernity. In doing this, feminists can help lay the philosophical groundwork for democracy. In the West, feminism lagged behind religious reformation and political democratization by centuries; in the East, feminism could help lead the charge.

At the same time, though, the issue of women’s rights highlights two reasons for caution about the Islamic future. For one thing, no matter how much feminists might wish otherwise, polygamy and male domination of the family are not merely a fact of local traditions; they are written into the Qur’an itself. This in and of itself would not prove to be such an impediment—the Old Testament is filled with laws antithetical to women’s equality—except for the second problem: more than other religions, Islam is unfriendly to the notion of the separation of church and state. If history is any guide, there’s the rub. The ultimate guarantor of the rights of all citizens, whether Islamic or not, can only be a fully secular state.

To this end, the postcolonialist eagerly dips into the inkwell of gender feminism. She ties colonialist exploitation and domination to maleness; she might refer to Israel’s “masculinist military culture”—Israel being white and Western—though she would never dream of pointing out the “masculinist military culture” of the jihadi. And she expends a good deal of energy condemning Western men for wanting to improve the lives of Eastern women. At the turn of the twentieth century Lord Cromer, the British vice consul of Egypt and a pet target of postcolonial feminists, argued that the “degradation” of women under Islam had a harmful effect on society. Rubbish, according to the postcolonialist feminist. His words are simply part of “the Western narrative of the quintessential otherness and inferiority of Islam,” as Harvard professor Leila Ahmed puts it in Women and Gender in Islam. The same goes for American concern about Afghan women; it is merely a “device for ranking the ‘other’ men as inferior or as ‘uncivilized,’ ” according to Nira Yuval-Davis, professor of gender and ethnic studies at the University of Greenwich, England. These are all examples of what renowned Columbia professor Gayatri Spivak called “white men saving brown women from brown men.”

Spivak’s phrase, a great favorite on campus, points to the postcolonial notion that brown men, having been victimized by the West, can never be oppressors in their own right. If they give the appearance of treating women badly, the oppression they have suffered at the hands of Western colonial masters is to blame. In fact, the worse they treat women, the more they are expressing their own justifiable outrage. “When men are traumatized [by colonial rule], they tend to traumatize their own women,” Miriam Cooke, a Duke professor and head of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies, told me. And today, Cooke asserts, brown men are subjected to a new form of imperialism. “Now there is a return of colonialism that we saw in the nineteenth century in the context of globalization,” she says. “What is driving Islamist men is globalization.”

It would be difficult to exaggerate the through-the-looking-glass quality of postcolonialist theory when it comes to the subject of women. Female suicide bombers are a good thing, because they are strong women demonstrating “agency” against colonial powers. Polygamy too must be shown due consideration. “Polygamy can be liberating and empowering,” Cooke answered sunnily when I asked her about it. “Our norm is the Western, heterosexual, single couple. If we can imagine different forms that would allow us to be something other than a heterosexual couple, we might imagine polygamy working,” she explained murkily. Some women, she continued, are relieved when their husbands take a new wife: they won’t have to service him so often. Or they might find they now have the freedom to take a lover. But, I ask, wouldn’t that be dangerous in places where adulteresses can be stoned to death? At any rate, how common is that? “I don’t know,” Cooke answers, “I’m interested in discourse.” The irony couldn’t be darker: the very people protesting the imperialist exploitation of the “Other” endorse that Other’s repressive customs as a means of promoting their own uniquely Western agenda—subverting the heterosexual patriarchy.

The final category in the feminist taxonomy, which might be called the world-government utopian strain, is in many respects closest to classical liberal feminism. Dedicated to full female dignity and equality, it generally eschews both the biological determinism of the gender feminist and the cultural relativism of the multiculti postcolonialist. Stanford political science professor Susan Moller Okin, an influential, subtle, and intelligent spokeswoman for this approach, created a stir among feminists in 1997 when she forthrightly attacked multiculturalists for valuing “group rights for minority cultures” over the well-being of individual women. Okin admirably minced no words attacking arranged marriage, female circumcision, and polygamy, which she believed women experienced as a “barely tolerable institution.” Some women, she went so far as to declare, “might be better off if the culture into which they were born were either to become extinct . . . or preferably, to be encouraged to alter itself so as to reinforce the equality of women.”

But though Okin is less shy than other feminists about discussing the plight of women under Islamic fundamentalism, the typical U.N. utopian has her own reasons for keeping quiet as that plight fills Western headlines. For one thing, the utopian is also a bean-counting absolutist, seeking a pure, numerical equality between men and women in all departments of life. She greets Western, and particularly American, claims to have achieved freedom for women with skepticism. The motto of the 2002 International Women’s Day—“Afghanistan Is Everywhere”—was in part a reproach to the West about its superior airs. Women in Afghanistan might have to wear burqas, but don’t women in the West parade around in bikinis? “It’s equally disrespectful and abusive to have women prancing around a stage in bathing suits for cash or walking the streets shrouded in burqas in order to survive,” columnist Jill Nelson wrote on the MSNBC website about the murderously fanatical riots that attended the Miss World pageant in Nigeria.

As Nelson’s statement hints, the utopian is less interested in freeing women to make their own choices than in engineering and imposing her own elite vision of a perfect society. Indeed, she is under no illusions that, left to their own democratic devices, women would freely choose the utopia she has in mind. She would not be surprised by recent Pakistani elections, where a number of the women who won parliamentary seats were Islamist. But it doesn’t really matter what women want. The universalist has a comprehensive vision of “women’s human rights,” meaning not simply women’s civil and political rights but “economic rights” and “socioeconomic justice.” Cynical about free markets and globalization, the U.N. utopian is also unimpressed by the liberal democratic nation-state “as an emancipatory institution,” in the dismissive words of J. Ann Tickner, director for international studies at the University of Southern California. Such nation-states are “unresponsive to the needs of [their] most vulnerable members” and seeped in “nationalist ideologies” as well as in patriarchal assumptions about autonomy. In fact, like the (usually) unacknowledged socialist that she is, the U.N. utopian eagerly awaits the withering of the nation-state, a political arrangement that she sees as tied to imperialism, war, and masculinity. During war, in particular, nations “depend on ideas about masculinized dignity and feminized sacrifice to sustain the sense of autonomous nationhood,” writes Cynthia Enloe, professor of government at Clark University.

Having rejected the patriarchal liberal nation-state, with all the democratic machinery of self-government that goes along with it, the utopian concludes that there is only one way to achieve her goals: to impose them through international government. Utopian feminists fill the halls of the United Nations, where they examine everything through the lens of the “gender perspective” in study after unreadable study. (My personal favorites: “Gender Perspectives on Landmines” and “Gender Perspectives on Weapons of Mass Destruction,” whose conclusion is that landmines and WMDs are bad for women.)

The 1979 U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), perhaps the first and most important document of feminist utopianism, gives the best sense of the sweeping nature of the movement’s ambitions. CEDAW demands many measures that anyone committed to democratic liberal values would applaud, including women’s right to vote and protection against honor killings and forced marriage. Would that the document stopped there. Instead it sets out to impose a utopian order that would erase all distinctions between men and women, a kind of revolution of the sexes from above, requiring nations to “take all appropriate measures to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women” and to eliminate “stereotyped roles” to accomplish this legislative abolition of biology. The document calls for paid maternity leave, nonsexist school curricula, and government-supported child care. The treaty’s 23-member enforcement committee hectors nations that do not adequately grasp that, as Enloe puts it, “the personal is international.” The committee has cited Belarus for celebrating Mother’s Day, China for failing to legalize prostitution, and Libya for not interpreting the Qur’an in accordance with “committee guidelines.”

Confusing “women’s participation” with self-determination, and numerical equivalence with equality, CEDAW utopians try to orchestrate their perfect society through quotas and affirmative-action plans. Their bean-counting mentality cares about whether women participate equally, without asking what it is that they are participating in or whether their participation is anything more than ceremonial. Thus at the recent Women’s Summit in Jordan, Rima Khalaf suggested that governments be required to use quotas in elections “to leapfrog women to power.” Khalaf, like so many illiberal feminist utopians, has no hesitation in forcing society to be free. As is often the case when elites decide they have discovered the route to human perfection, the utopian urge is not simply antidemocratic but verges on the totalitarian.

That this combination of sentimental victimhood, postcolonial relativism, and utopian overreaching has caused feminism to suffer so profound a loss of moral and political imagination that it cannot speak against the brutalization of Islamic women is an incalculable loss to women and to men. The great contribution of Western feminism was to expand the definition of human dignity and freedom. It insisted that all human beings were worthy of liberty. Feminists now have the opportunity to make that claim on behalf of women who in their oppression have not so much as imagined that its promise could include them, too. At its best, feminism has stood for a rich idea of personal choice in shaping a meaningful life, one that respects not only the woman who wants to crash through glass ceilings but also the one who wants to stay home with her children and bake cookies or to wear a veil and fast on Ramadan. Why shouldn’t feminists want to shout out their own profound discovery for the world to hear?

Perhaps, finally, because to do so would be to acknowledge the freedom they themselves enjoy, thanks to Western ideals and institutions. Not only would such an admission force them to give up their own simmering resentments; it would be bad for business.

The truth is that the free institutions—an independent judiciary, a free press, open elections—that protect the rights of women are the same ones that protect the rights of men. The separation of church and state that would allow women to escape the burqa would also free men from having their hands amputated for theft. The education system that would teach girls to read would also empower millions of illiterate boys. The capitalist economies that bring clean water, cheap clothes, and washing machines that change the lives of women are the same ones that lead to healthier, freer men. In other words, to address the problems of Muslim women honestly, feminists would have to recognize that free men and women need the same things—and that those are things that they themselves already have. And recognizing that would mean an end to feminism as we know it.

There are signs that, outside the academy, middlebrow literary circles, and the United Nations, feminism has indeed met its Waterloo. Most Americans seem to realize that September 11 turned self-indulgent sentimental illusions, including those about the sexes, into an unaffordable luxury. Consider, for instance, women’s attitudes toward war, a topic on which politicians have learned to take for granted a gender gap. But according to the Pew Research Center, in January 2002, 57 percent of women versus 46 percent of men cited national security as the country’s top priority. There has been a “seismic gender shift on matters of war,” according to pollster Kellyanne Conway. In 1991, 45 percent of U.S. women supported the use of ground troops in the Gulf War, a substantially smaller number than the 67 percent of men. But as of November, a CNN survey found women were more likely than men to support the use of ground troops against Iraq, 58 percent to 56 percent. The numbers for younger women were especially dramatic. Sixty-five percent of women between 18 and 49 support ground troops, as opposed to 48 percent of women 50 and over. Women are also changing their attitudes toward military spending: before September 11, only 24 percent of women supported increased funds; after the attacks, that number climbed to 47 percent. An evolutionary psychologist might speculate that, if females tend to be less aggressively territorial than males, there’s little to compare to the ferocity of the lioness when she believes her young are threatened.

Even among some who consider themselves feminists, there is some grudging recognition that Western, and specifically American, men are sometimes a force for the good. The Feminist Majority is sending around urgent messages asking for President Bush to increase American security forces in Afghanistan. The influential left-wing British columnist Polly Toynbee, who just 18 months ago coined the phrase “America the Horrible,” went to Afghanistan to figure out whether the war “was worth it.” Her answer was not what she might have expected. Though she found nine out of ten women still wearing burqas, partly out of fear of lingering fundamentalist hostility, she was convinced their lives had greatly improved. Women say they can go out alone now.

As we sink more deeply into what is likely to be a protracted struggle with radical Islam, American feminists have a moral responsibility to give up their resentments and speak up for women who actually need their support. Feminists have the moral authority to say that their call for the rights of women is a universal demand—that the rights of women are the Rights of Man.

my god this dude wrote the world’s worst thesis and sent it to the worst candidate possible (a muslim-born woman from the middle east that regularly talks about the issues feminists apparently never talk about)

#btw ive gotten several of these anti-feminist rant messages and eventually i will probably get bored of u and block u jsyk #i know these are all dumb copy pastas from reddit probably but i get enough msgs as is #anonymous #long post

[beardedmrbean]

Two bomb explosions near candidates' offices in the Pakistani province of Balochistan killed at least 28 people and wounded dozens on the eve of general elections, officials said.

The first blast killed 16 people in Pishin district, north of Quetta city.

A second explosion left 12 people dead in Qila Saifullah to the east. There was no immediate claim for the attacks.

The vote has been marred by violence and claims of poll-rigging. Former PM Imran Khan is barred from contesting.

Police are still trying to determine the cause of the two blasts.

Resource-rich Balochistan - Pakistan's largest, and poorest, province - has a history of violence. It has seen a decades-long struggle for greater autonomy by various groups, some of them armed. Islamist militants, including the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), operate along the border with Afghanistan.

The bomb in Pishin, a town about 100km (62 miles) south-east of the Afghan border, went off in front of an independent candidate's party office. The provincial authorities said 25 people were also wounded.

Images on social media showed cars and motorbikes blown apart by the force of the explosion. Officials told the BBC the candidate was meeting his polling agent at the time.

The second blast targeted the election office of the JUI-F party. A senior police official told AFP news agency it took place in the main bazaar of Qila Saifullah, about 190km (120 miles) east of Quetta.

Twenty people were wounded in the incident and the number of casualties in the two attacks could rise, officials said.

There have been violent incidents in both Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces in the week before Thursday's vote, and the violence in Pishin and Qila Saifullah was not unexpected.

In mid-January, Baloch Liberation Army-Azad (BLA) insurgents released a pamphlet after claiming responsibility for bombing an election training office. The pamphlet urged people to boycott the elections. Soon after, reports of hand grenade attacks on political party offices were reported from various cities in the province.

Many voters in Balochistan feel neglected by the country's political parties, given the province has so few seats in parliament. They often feel candidates are foisted on them, with few if any links to Balochistan.

And many feel the vote is unfair. "It is a selection," numerous people told BBC Urdu in the city of Turbat last month.

Following Wednesday's attacks, the Balochistan government said Thursday's vote would proceed as planned.

"Rest assured, we will not allow terrorists to undermine or sabotage this crucial democratic process," provincial information minister Jan Achakzai posted on X, formerly Twitter.

More than 128 million voters are eligible to cast ballots in the election. In Pakistan's first-past-the-post system, 266 of 336 National Assembly seats are directly elected.

But many people are questioning the credibility of the vote as Khan and his party, the PTI, have been sidelined.

The PTI won the largest number of seats in the last general election but Khan was jailed on corruption charges last year and disqualified from running for public office. Last week he was convicted in three other cases and faces years in prison - he says all the charges are politically motivated.

The authorities deny carrying out a crackdown, but many PTI leaders are behind bars, in hiding or have defected. Thousands of the party's supporters were rounded up after protests - at times violent - when Khan was taken into custody last year.

PTI candidates are having to run as independents following the electoral commission's decision to strip the party of its cricket bat symbol. Electoral symbols are vital in helping voters mark their ballots in a country with high rates of illiteracy.

The man tipped to win Thursday's election is three-time former PM Nawaz Sharif, who himself was behind bars at the last election. Analysts say it appears he has done a deal with the military to facilitate his return to politics.

A high turnout will be key to the PTI's chances, many analysts say. How to tackle, and who to blame for, the country's economic crisis will be high in voters' minds. Results must be announced within 14 days of the election.

#nunyas news

[skippyv20]

Kalash people of the high mountain passes of Pakistan.  They are trying to protect their way of life from absorption by Muslim religion and traditions.  The women of the Kalash have much greater freedom than women in most of Pakistan.  They are fair skinned with light eyes and may be descended from Alexander the Great’s soldiers. They go about unveiled, mix freely with men and wear bright coloured headdresses.  Unique to them are the menstrual rooms.  Every Kalash woman during her period is separated from the rest of the community, as are women for 20 days after giving birth.  This gives them freedom to talk, dance, sing, pray and gossip  without household duties and  having to adhere to the rules of their wider society.

Photo credit, Asian Human Rights Commission

Thank you❤️

[warningsine]

Violent clashes have broken out in Pakistan between security forces and supporters of former prime minister Imran Khan after he was arrested on Tuesday.

Protests are erupting nationwide, and at least one person has been killed in the city of Quetta.

The United States and UK have called for adherence to the "rule of law".

Mr Khan was arrested by security forces at the High Court in the capital, Islamabad.

Dramatic footage showed dozens of officers arriving and detaining the 70-year-old, who was bundled into a vehicle and driven away.

He was appearing in court on charges of corruption, which he says are politically motivated.

Mobile data services in the country were suspended on the instructions of the interior ministry on Friday as protests grew, many of them taking place in front of army compounds.

Pakistan's army plays a prominent role in politics, sometimes seizing power in military coups, and, on other occasions, pulling levers behind the scenes.

Many analysts believe Mr Khan's election win in 2018 happened with the help of the military. Now in opposition, he is one of its most vocal critics, and analysts say the army's popularity has fallen.

Footage from Lahore posted on Twitter appeared to show a crowd breaking into the military corps commander's house destroying furniture and belongings inside.

Speaking from Washington, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he wanted to make sure that "whatever happens in Pakistan is consistent with the rule of law, with the constitution".

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, speaking alongside Blinken, noted that Britain enjoyed "a longstanding and close relationship" with Commonwealth member Pakistan, and wanted to "see the rule of law adhered to".

On Tuesday evening, supporters of Imran Khan gathered outside the Pakistan High Commission in London to protest against his arrest.

'Chaos and anarchy'

Mr Khan was ousted as PM in April last year and has been campaigning for early elections since then.

General elections are due to be held later this year.

Speaking to the BBC's Newshour, Mr Khan's spokesman, Raoof Hasan, said he expected "the worst" and that the arrest could plunge the country "into chaos and anarchy".

"We're facing multiple crises. There is an economic crisis, there is a political crisis, there is a cost of livelihood crisis and consequently this occasion will be a catharsis for them to step out and I fear a fair amount of violence is going to be back," he said.

A member of Mr Khan's legal team, Raja Mateen, said undue force had been used against him at the court.

"Mr Khan went into the biometric office for the biometrics. The rangers went there, they broke the windows, they hit Mr Khan on the head with a baton," said Mr Mateen.

Mr Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party called on its supporters to protest. In the hours after he was detained, violence was reported from cities including Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar.

On the streets of Islamabad, hundreds of protesters blocked one of the main highways in and out of the capital.

People pulled down street signs and parts of overpasses, lit fires and threw stones. During the hour or so that the BBC was there, no police or authorities were visible.

Protesters said they were angry about Imran Khan's arrest.

"This is absolutely the last straw," said Farida Roedad.

"Let there be anarchy, let there be chaos. If there is no Imran, there's nothing left in Pakistan. No one is there to take over."

Writing on social media, police in Islamabad said five police officers had been injured and 43 protesters arrested.

It said at least 10 people, including six police officers, had been injured in the south-western city of Quetta in clashes between Mr Khan's supporters and security forces - with one protester killed.

A statement from the inspector general of Punjab police said the arrest of Mr Khan had been ordered because he was accused of "corruption and corrupt practices".

The case involves allegations over the allotment of land in the so-called Al-Qadir Trust, which is owned by Mr Khan and his wife, Dawn newspaper reported.

Mr Khan, who is being held at an undisclosed location, denies breaking any law.

In a video message filmed as he travelled to Islamabad - and released by the PTI before his arrest - Mr Khan said he was ready for what lay ahead.

"Come to me with warrants, my lawyers will be there," he said. "If you want to send me to jail, I am prepared for it."

Security was tight in the centre of the capital for the former PM's court appearance.

Dozens of cases have been brought against Mr Khan since he was ousted from power.

The security forces have tried to detain him on a number of previous occasions at his Lahore residence, but were blocked by his supporters, resulting in fierce clashes.

On Tuesday, police had blocked roads into Islamabad, so the number of supporters with Imran Khan was not as high as on previous occasions, making it easier to arrest him.

He was elected prime minister in 2018, but fell out with Pakistan's powerful army. After a series of defections, he lost his majority in parliament. He was ousted after he lost a confidence vote in April 2022, four years into his tenure.

Since then, he has been a vocal critic of the government and the country's army.

In October, he was disqualified from holding public office, accused of incorrectly declaring details of presents from foreign dignitaries and proceeds from their alleged sale.

The next month, he survived a gun attack on his convoy while holding a protest march.

On Monday, the military warned him against making "baseless allegations" after he again accused a senior officer of plotting to kill him.

#Imran Khan #pakistan #politics #protests #news

[usafphantom2]

Pratt & Whitney delivers the 1,000th F135 engine

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 09/02/2022 - 16:00in Military

The F135 engine, which drives the F-35 Lightning II, reached the production mark of 1,000 units. In the coming years, series production will continue at a high level, as the F-35 is satisfied with a high demand.

The F135 fighter engine was delivered to the U.S. Department of Defense, reaching this production milestone 13 years after the delivery of the first F135 series engine.

The F135 is an additional development of the F119 turbofan that drives the F-22 Raptor. According to the manufacturer, it offers a significant increase in performance compared to the previous generation of engines. This includes a boost of more than 40,000 pounds (178 kN), a precise and responsive integrated engine control system that allows the pilot to fully focus on the mission, as well as an unparalleled observable signature that allows the F-35 to perform operations in modern access/area (A2AD) environments.

The F135 has continuously progressed in reliability and availability. According to Pratt & Whitney, it now reaches twice the specification for the number of flight hours between two prescribed engine changes.

Jill Albertelli, president of Pratt & Whitney Military Engines, said on the occasion of the delivery of the 1,000th F135: "Each of these 1,000 engines is a safe, affordable and reliable 5th Generation drive in the hands of our customers. The F135 forms the pinnacle of hunting propulsions and ensures that our women and men in uniform fulfill their missions in the most modern threat environments and can return home safely."

Pratt & Whitney has invested more than half a billion dollars in technologies and production processes since 2009 to reduce the unit costs of the F135. Currently, they represent only about 50% of unit costs at the beginning of the program.

The manufacturer produces the F135 at its factory in Middletown, in the U.S. state of Connecticut. In addition to Middletown, the production sites of the F135 also include the factory in West Palm Beach, Florida, as well as a FACO (Final Assembly & Check-Out) factory operated by IHI in Japan.

Tags: Military AviationF-35 Lightning IIF135Pratt and Whitney

Previous news

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. It has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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[pakistanpressreleases]

British High Commission and Pakistan’s Youth Programme Forge Partnership for Empowerment

http://dlvr.it/T5jPMc

[jcmarchi]

How to safeguard your business from AI-generated deepfakes

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/how-to-safeguard-your-business-from-ai-generated-deepfakes/

How to safeguard your business from AI-generated deepfakes

.pp-multiple-authors-boxes-wrapper display:none; img width:100%;

Recently, cybercriminals used ‘deepfake’ videos of the executives of a multinational company to convince the company’s Hong Kong-based employees to wire out US $25.6 million. Based on a video conference call featuring multiple deepfakes, the employees believed that their UK-based chief financial officer had requested that the funds be transferred. Police have reportedly arrested six people in connection with the scam. This use of AI technology is dangerous and manipulative. Without proper guidelines and frameworks in place, more organizations risk falling victim to AI scams like deepfakes. 

Deepfakes 101 and their rising threat 

Deepfakes are forms of digitally altered media — including photos, videos and audio clips — that seem to depict a real person. They are created by training an AI system on real clips featuring a person, and then using that AI system to generate realistic (yet inauthentic) new media. Deepfake use is becoming more common. The Hong Kong case was the latest in a series of high-profile deepfake incidents in recent weeks. Fake, explicit images of Taylor Swift circulated on social media, the political party of an imprisoned election candidate in Pakistan used a deepfake video of him to deliver a speech and a deepfake ‘voice clone’ of President Biden called primary voters to tell them not to vote. 

Less high-profile cases of deepfake use by cybercriminals have also been rising in both scale and sophistication. In the banking sector, cybercriminals are now attempting to overcome voice authentication by using voice clones of people to impersonate users and gain access to their funds. Banks have responded by improving their abilities to identify deepfake use and increasing authentication requirements. 

Cybercriminals have also targeted individuals with ‘spear phishing’ attacks that use deepfakes. A common approach is to deceive a person’s family members and friends by using a voice clone to impersonate someone in a phone call and ask for funds to be transferred to a third-party account. Last year, a survey by McAfee found that 70% of surveyed people were not confident that they could distinguish between people and their voice clones and that nearly half of surveyed people would respond to requests for funds if the family member or friend making the call claimed to have been robbed or in a car accident.

Cybercriminals have also called people pretending to be tax authorities, banks, healthcare providers and insurers in efforts to gain financial and personal details. 

In February, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that phone calls using AI-generated human voices are illegal unless made with prior express consent of the called party. The Federal Trade Commission also finalized a rule prohibiting AI impersonation of government organizations and businesses and proposed a similar rule prohibiting AI impersonation of individuals. This adds to a growing list of legal and regulatory measures being put in place around the world to combat deepfakes. 

Stay protected against deepfakes 

To protect employees and brand reputation against deepfakes, leaders should adhere to the following steps:

Educate employees on an ongoing basis, both about AI-enabled scams and, more generally, about new AI capabilities and their risks. 

Upgrade phishing guidance to include deepfake threats. Many companies have already educated employees about phishing emails and urged caution when receiving suspicious requests via unsolicited emails. Such phishing guidance should incorporate AI deepfake scams and note that it may use not just text and email, but also video, images and audio. 

Appropriately increase or calibrate authentication of employees, business partners and customers. For example, using more than one mode of authentication depending on the sensitivity and risk of a decision or transaction. 

Consider the impacts of deepfakes on company assets, like logos, advertising characters and advertising campaigns. Such company assets can easily be replicated using deepfakes and spread quickly via social media and other internet channels. Consider how your company will mitigate these risks and educate stakeholders. 

Expect more and better deepfakes, given the pace of improvement in generative AI, the number of major election processes underway in 2024, and the ease with which deepfakes can propagate between people and across borders. 

Though deepfakes are a cybersecurity concern, companies should also think of them as complex and emerging phenomena with broader repercussions. A proactive and thoughtful approach to addressing deepfakes can help educate stakeholders and ensure that measures to combat them are responsible, proportionate and appropriate.

(Photo by Markus Spiske)

See also: UK and US sign pact to develop AI safety tests

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, deepfakes, enterprise, scams

#2024 #advertising #ai #ai &amp; big data expo #AI Ethics #ai news #amp #approach #artificial #Artificial Intelligence #assets #audio #authentication #banking #biden #Big Data #Business #clone #Cloud #communications #Companies #comprehensive #conference #course #cyber #cyber security #cybercriminals #cybersecurity #data #deepfake

[newspaperadspk]

Unlocking Opportunities: Government Jobs in Karachi, Pakistan, and Beyond

In today's competitive job market, the pursuit of stable employment is often akin to navigating a maze. However, for those seeking security and opportunities for growth, government jobs stand as beacons of stability and promise. In the bustling metropolis of Karachi, Pakistan's economic hub, the demand for government jobs is perennially high. Let's delve into the realm of government employment in Karachi, exploring not only the prospects within the city but also the broader landscape across Pakistan, including the vibrant job market in Lahore.

Government Jobs in Karachi: A Gateway to Stability

Karachi, with its sprawling urban landscape and diverse population, serves as the epicenter of Pakistan's economic activity. As such, the city offers a plethora of employment opportunities across various sectors, with government jobs being highly sought after. These positions provide not only financial stability but also the prestige associated with public service.

One of the primary advantages of government jobs in Karachi is the assurance of job security. Unlike many private sector roles susceptible to economic fluctuations, government positions offer a sense of stability, often accompanied by attractive benefits such as pensions and healthcare coverage. Moreover, the merit-based selection process ensures fairness and transparency, allowing individuals from diverse backgrounds to compete on an equal footing.

Government jobs in Karachi span a wide range of sectors, including education, healthcare, administration, and law enforcement. From teaching positions in prestigious government schools to administrative roles in various ministries and departments, there are ample opportunities for individuals with diverse skills and qualifications. Additionally, Karachi serves as the headquarters for several federal and provincial government institutions, further enhancing the job prospects within the city.

Exploring Opportunities Beyond Karachi: Jobs in Pakistan

While Karachi boasts a vibrant job market, opportunities for government employment extend far beyond the city limits. Pakistan, as a nation, offers a multitude of avenues for individuals aspiring to join the public sector workforce. With its federal structure, comprising provinces and territories, the country presents a decentralized system of governance, resulting in a wide array of government entities at both the national and provincial levels.

Cities such as Lahore, the cultural capital of Pakistan, also play a significant role in the country's job market. Lahore, much like Karachi, hosts numerous government institutions and offices, catering to the employment needs of its populace. From prestigious universities to government hospitals and administrative offices, Lahore offers a diverse range of government jobs across various sectors.

Moreover, the advent of digitalization has further expanded the horizons of government employment in Pakistan. With initiatives such as the E-Recruitment System by the National Testing Service (NTS) and the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC), the process of applying for government jobs has become more accessible and transparent. Aspiring candidates can now search and apply for vacancies online, streamlining the recruitment process and ensuring greater efficiency.

Tips for Aspiring Candidates: Navigating the Job Market

For individuals aspiring to secure government jobs in Karachi or jobs in Lahore, or any other city in Pakistan, diligent preparation and strategic planning are paramount. Here are some tips to enhance your prospects in the competitive job market:

Research and Identify Opportunities: Stay informed about upcoming job vacancies by regularly monitoring official government websites, newspapers, and job portals. Familiarize yourself with the eligibility criteria and application process for each position.

Enhance Your Skills and Qualifications: Invest in continuous learning and skill development to make yourself more competitive in the job market. Consider pursuing certifications, advanced degrees, or specialized training programs relevant to your desired field.

Prepare Thoroughly for Exams and Interviews: Many government positions require candidates to undergo written exams and interviews as part of the selection process. Devote sufficient time to study relevant topics, practice sample questions, and refine your interview skills to maximize your chances of success.

Network and Seek Guidance: Connect with professionals working in the public sector, attend job fairs, and participate in networking events to expand your professional network. Seek guidance from mentors or career counselors who can provide valuable insights and advice.

Stay Persistent and Optimistic: The journey to securing a government job may be challenging, but perseverance and a positive attitude can make all the difference. Stay focused on your goals, learn from setbacks, and keep striving towards success.

In conclusion, government jobs in Karachi, Pakistan, and cities like Lahore offer a gateway to stability, security, and opportunities for personal and professional growth. By navigating the job market strategically, enhancing your skills, and staying persistent, you can unlock the doors to a rewarding career in the public sector. So, seize the moment, embark on your job search journey, and pave the way towards a brighter future filled with endless possibilities.

#career #jobs #jobsearch #jobseekers #jobs in pakistan #employment

[xtruss]

No Wonder Why Marriott Hotel Was Bombed! The Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing occurred on the night of 20 September 2008, when a dumper truck filled with explosives was detonated in front of the Marriott Hotel in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, killing at least 54 people, injuring at least 266 and leaving a 60 ft (20 m) wide, 20 ft (6 m) deep crater outside the hotel. The majority of the casualties were Pakistanis; at least five foreign nationals were also killed and fifteen others reported injured. The attack occurred only hours after President Asif Ali Zardari made his first speech to the Pakistani parliament. The Marriott was the most prestigious hotel in the capital, and was located near government buildings, diplomatic missions, embassies and high commissions. During the investigation, three suspected terrorists were arrested by the Pakistani police. They were suspected of having facilitated the suicide bomber. However later they were acquitted of all charges as no evidence was ever presented against them. A few months after the hotel's bombing the Government of Pakistan had re-constructed it (citation needed), and the Islamabad Marriott reopened officially on 28 December 2008.

[hollywood-handle]

Pakistan High Commission issues visas to Indian team for upcoming Davis Cup tie

The Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi announced via a release on Sunday that it has issued visas for Indian players and support staff for the upcoming Davis Cup World Group 1 playoff tie to be held on the grass courts of Islamabad on February 3-4. The All India Tennis Association (AITA) had initially seen an appeal to have the tie in a neutral venue rejected by an International Tennis…

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#Davis Cup #Davis Cup News #Express Sports #Ind vs Pak #Ind vs Pak Davis Cup #Ind vs Pak tennis #india davis cup #India vs Pakistan #India vs Pakistan Davis Cup #India vs Pakistan tennis #Indian Davis Cup team #indian express #indian tennis team #Ramkumar Ramanathan #rohan bopanna #sports news #tennis #tennis news

[thxnews]

UK High Commissioner Visits Solar Farm

Spearheading Green Energy in South Punjab

UK's Role in Pakistan's Solar Energy Boom The British High Commissioner, Jane Marriott CMG OBE, recently visited the Atlas Solar Farm in South Punjab, highlighting the vital role of UK-Pakistan collaborations in the global transition to green energy. Additionally, supported by the British International Investment, this solar farm stands as a beacon of sustainable development, providing clean and affordable power to a vast number of households in Pakistan.   Impact of the Atlas Solar Farm The Atlas Solar Farm, with its impressive capacity to generate an additional 100 MW of clean energy, serves over 100,000 residential consumers. Moreover, this initiative plays a crucial role in reducing CO2 emissions by approximately 106,000 tonnes annually, exemplifying the commitment to environmental stewardship and the fight against climate change.   A Testament to International Cooperation British High Commissioner Jane Marriott commented on Pakistan's immense potential in solar energy. Additionally, she highlighted the UK's significant investment in fostering innovation in this field. Furthermore, her visit underscores the UK's commitment to nurturing a healthier, more sustainable future through such partnerships.   Strengthening Regional Relationships During her time in South Punjab, the High Commissioner engaged with various development partners. Her meetings with local officials and stakeholders further emphasized the UK's support in addressing financial challenges in the region, including efforts to reduce Punjab's unsustainable debt.   Exploring Economic Ties In addition to focusing on energy projects, Jane Marriott's visit to the MG Apparel manufacturing plant highlighted the robust economic ties between the UK and Pakistan. As one of the leading Pakistani exporters of clothing to the UK, the plant represents the strengthening business relationship between the two countries.   Round-Up The visit of British High Commissioner Jane Marriott to the Atlas Solar Farm in South Punjab marks a significant milestone in the UK-Pakistan green energy collaboration. This project not only exemplifies the UK's commitment to promoting sustainable energy solutions globally but also reinforces the strong ties between the two nations in various sectors, from environmental initiatives to economic development. As these collaborations continue to flourish, they pave the way for a more sustainable and interconnected world.   Sources: THX News & British High Commission Islamabad. Read the full article

#AtlasSolarFarminPakistan #BritishHighCommissioner'svisit #BritishInternationalInvestmentsupport #CleanpowerinSouthPunjab #CO2emissionsreductionefforts #JaneMarriott'senvironmentaladvocacy #SolarenergydevelopmentinPakistan #Sustainableenergyinitiatives #UK-Pakistangreenenergycollaboration #UK'sroleinglobalsustainability

[morningmantra]

Imran Khan will be sued in the High Court

Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan and head of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was also sued in the High Court.

Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan and head of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was also sued in the High Court. Peshawar, Islamabad: Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan and head of Pakistan   Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, has been sued in the High Court. The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday upheld the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) order canceling…

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#featured #gdvrnews #international news