Monitoring Desk: Despite road blockades, worker arrests, and a police crackdown, followers of Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) are moving fast towards Islamabad for a protest on November 24, 2024. The civil administration has closed down 21 entry points to the capital city so protestors cannot enter for a protest at D-Chowk. Jailed former prime minister Imran Khan announced the protest as his ‘final to liberate the country’ from subjugators.
Party Chairman Barrister Gohar, said that there was no question to postponing the protest call and PTI leaders such as Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur, former president Arif Alvi, Shibli Faraz, Information Secretary Sheikh Waqas Akram, and other will lead the protest to Islamabad.
Rawalpindi, Pakistan: The Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab killed three TTP terrorists (officially known as Khawaji) at Chakri, 30 km away from the capital city of Islamabad.
According to initial information released by CTD, three terrorists were gunned down while two managed to escape and the incident took place in the Chakri area. CTD claimed that the persons killed were terrorists belonging to TTP and they had planned a terror attack in Rawalpindi-Islamabad but were intercepted and killed by CTD officials.
Monitoring Desk: In dire need to counter Russian aggression, Ukraine will receive 500,000 shells of various calibers by the end of this year from the Czech Republic, reports Ukrinform.
Referring to Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský’s announcement, Ukrinform reports that the Czech Republic will continue to support Ukraine in repelling and stopping Russian aggression.
“As you know, my country has launched an initiative on ammunition. By the end of the year, 500,000 large-caliber shells will be delivered. We will not stop there. We will continue to provide the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the necessary support,” the Czech Foreign Minister emphasized.
Islamabad, Pakistan: Owing to the fear of arrest, former first lady Bushra Bibi has decided to avoid the PTI protest on November 24. She will stay at the Chief Minister House of KPK while PTI followers try to reach D-Chowk, Islamabad.
Meanwhile, the Capital city of Islamabad has been sealed. Still, traffic from GT Road, Murree-Islamabad routes, and Rawalpindi-Peshawar routes are open this time, and only entry points to Islamabad from Margalla Hills and Rawalpindi have been sealed. This strategy of administration is much better than previous strategies when Rawalpindi was also cut off from the rest of the country. Till now only the Red Zone area has been cordoned off by Rangers that is manning the security of important government buildings such as Parliament House, Supreme Court Building, Pakistan Television, and Radio Pakistan buildings.
The Srinagar Highway is closed at Zero Point, while routes leading to Islamabad via GT Road are barricaded at T-Cross.
Monitoring Desk: The former First Lady of Pakistan Bushra Bibi has leveled a serious allegation against a brotherly Muslim country in her recent video message to her party workers.
In her video message, she claimed:
“When Imran Khan returned from Medina, General Bajwa got a call asking, “Who have you brought here? We want to abolish the Shariah system; you have brought in the contractors of Sharia.”
Her allegations referred alleged intervention of a brotherly Muslim country in Pakistani politics, direct contact of this country with the then Chief of Pakistan Army, and also claimed that this brotherly Muslim country is planning to abolish the Shariah system in the country.
Bushara Bibi who is very active in Pakistani politics nowadays was also addressing judges and lawyers, asking them to support his jailed husband. Her statements raised several questions that should be answered not only by the PTI leadership but also by the state of Pakistan why no action has been taken against her for inciting the public against the state as well as meddling in Pakistan’s foreign relations with a brotherly Muslim country?
Certain elements within the government in the Center claim that Bushar Bibi was hitting hard on Saudi Arabia at the behest of Goldsmiths because Saudi Arabia has taken a firm position against Israel over the Palestinian issue.
Another question that should be answered by the PTI leadership is how can she address the party when she has no appointment in the party.
Meanwhile, her statements of inciting violence and provoking the judiciary for political interest should be responded to by the government.
Monitoring Desk: The United States reopened its embassy in Kyiv after it had shut for the day due to what Washington called the “threat of a significant air attack”.
Kremlin called shutting and opening of the US Embassy a “media hype strategy of Washington”.
It may be mentioned that Ukraine attacked Russia with UK-made long-range missiles the day before yesterday and this move was followed by an announcement of Washington to shut down the US embassy in Kiev. The embassy was opened a day later. Russian media claimed shutting down of the US embassy for some hours after was actually a media hype creation tactic of Washington.
Monitoring Desk: Russian envoy to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said that the UN Security Council should bring peace, stability, and prosperity to the Middle East and that Russia would not allow the United States to silence the UNSC over the issue of the Gaza crisis.
According to TASS news Agency, Nebenzya said that Moscow will continue to call for an end to violence against Palestinians and will not allow the US to muzzle the UN Security Council as Washington seeks to support Israel’s operation in Gaza.
“We will continue to stand firmly for ending violence against the Palestinians. Without a shadow of a doubt, we will continue to expose the abuses and sanctimony with which the US is handling the situation. We will not allow the Americans to gag the entire council with their hands to encourage further continuation of Israel’s ruthless operation,” he said in a speech at the Security Council.
The emergent realities of global security are fundamentally transforming the frame of references and trajectorial approaches toward them. New security architecture based on new security arrangements, new economic framework, and new civilization initiative provides an ideological underpinning for the future of global security architecture. Economic security, border security, and civilizational security may be intertwined but are not a total sum proposition like the post-Cold War phenomenon. International security in the past at least from the advent of Western colonization has always translated into a game of chess in which the king plays the central role and all the moves are taken to protect him or follow his position. So considering the world a grand chessboard makes the global security framework a total sum game of winning and losing. This has for sure divided the world into either friends of the king or enemies of the king, hence weaponizing economy, culture, and border security to further advance neo-liberal exceptionalism. It would be unnecessary to be too clichéd to discuss the colonial and post-colonial narratology regarding the cultural, civilizational, and economic destruction of the colonized. Although still in practice and fully functional as operative tools. The philosophy of consolidation of power to one axis has pushed the world into an overwhelming security dilemma, be it border and economic security or security of culture and traditions.
The colonial mindset of exceptionalism combined with post-Bretton Woods financial institutions gave us almost eight decades of unending wars, sanctions, currency monopolies, compromised supply chains, and defamed cultures and traditions. The less than 30% privileged exceptional ideas are being forcefully replicated in the population adhering to thousands of years of civilizations, oral history, folk wisdom, and protection management. The Western century of enlightenment was considered the enlightenment for the entire global population putting aside the obvious fact that Western enlightenment was a geo-political phenomenon related to specific geography and political evolutionary processes rest of the world had its own spatio-temporal enlightenment acquired much earlier than the border west. The question here is not who got out of the darkness first and why, but rather, whether or not Western enlightenment and the Western ideals born out of it such as liberal democracy, world order, humanity, and freedom of expression have practically any constructive capability to make a better world for the greater good of humanity? The answer to that is No. These Western liberal ideas are fundamentally flawed in relevance to the claims of being universal. Such as western liberal democracy is a shady term to install an aligned regime in any non-Western country, the Western idea of humanity is relative to the Western understanding of who needs empathy and the Western model of the economy is a weapon to coerce national economies.
The three centuries of brutal self-oriented Western experiments from colonization to globalization have destroyed the ideational and material culture of the rest of the 70% population, having civilizations of thousands of years old. The oldest civilizations of human history are situated in regions that are in Latin America, the Middle East, Far East, Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia and these are the areas that have been subject to brutal wars and bloodshed by those who had history of less than 300 years. The aftermath in the form of a security dilemma begs to be resolved. The ancient collective wisdom and long-standing histories of the world civilization have joined together to reconstruct the new global security architect. Survival of living civilizations such as Cimmerians, Scythians, Chinese, Elamite, and Harappa and Indus Valley Civilization is based on the narrative of cohabitation instead of survival of the fittest therefore the collective wisdom of these regions is coexistence while Western collective thoughts believes in ‘purge and replace’. Thus Thucydides Trap is a historical fallacy misconstrued in the West as the justification to be in constant conflict with the emerging power. Thucydides has never advocated such an idea attributed to him he rather emphasized in his writings that politicians always have options.
From the BRICS Summit in Kazan, the SCO Summit in Islamabad, the Sochi Valdai Dialogue, and the Beijing Xiangshan Forum to the Margalla Dialogue Islamabad, all events of the year 2024 pivoted towards finding the solutions for coexistence instead of a ‘clash of civilizations’. All the geographic locations that have the ancestry of ancient civilizations have joined together to promote peace and a shared future. In all these events, statesmen, scholars, leading experts in finance and economies, militaries, border defense, think tanks, and security sat together and discussed the pressing topic of survival against the hegemonic forces. In all these settings, Security Cooperation, Global Prosperity and Stability, Multipolarity, Evolving International Order, Global South, World Peaceful Development, and International Mechanisms and Global Security Governance were major points of discussion for finding a ‘Right Way’ to get along with hegemonic Global North.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in the 21st annual Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi stated that Russia does not view Western civilization as an enemy, but he questioned the Western attempt to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. He also emphasized that the world is moving toward a multipolar order, which is being threatened by the “violent anarchy” fostered by the West in its efforts to maintain global dominance.
In Margalla Dialogue, COAS Gen Asim Munir also talked about coexistence while mentioning Indian extremist ideology that is a threat to synchronicity and stated that atrocities being inflicted by India in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and human genocide in Gaza and Lebanon were not serving humanity. He indicated that that Pakistan is of utmost importance for trade in Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East and it has always played a positive role in regional and global peace. By indicating this, Gen Asim Munir might have in his mind the great Silk Road that in the ancient world used to connect all civilizations of that era.
In Kazan, while addressing BRICS leaders, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed a similar viewpoint and stated that peace and development face severe challenges and collective wisdom and strength provide a base for building a community with a shared future for mankind. Like Gen Asim Munir, President Xi talked about peace in the Middle East and a comprehensive ceasefire in the Gaza Strip stopping the flames of war from spreading in Lebanon and ending the miserable suffering in Palestine and Lebanon.
The reason for referring lookouts of President Putin, President XI, and Gen Asim Munir is to display that representatives of the oldest civilizations of the world believe in coexistence, upholding peace, striving for common security, strengthening global security governance, and exploring solutions to address both symptoms and roots of hotspot issues. On the other hand, the countries having a living history of fewer than 300 years belonging to Global North are full of warmongers who are blind to see bleeding humanity in Indian Occupied Kashmir, Gaza, and Lebanon, and pushed Ukraine into Europe in unending war. One can justify their acts by stating that Western economies are built on the concept of a ‘war economy’ that is a transformation of the colonial economy. However, the exceptional rise of the Chinese economy in the last thirty years that trades peace and connectivity against wars has confirmed that the ‘war economy’ strategy is not as effective as it was in the 19th and 20th centuries. The 21st century brought new realities and is standing against and protectionism of Western hegemonic design. Additionally, the rise of today’s Russians from the ashes of the Soviet Union is another reason to believe that prosperity is possible without selling a ‘war economy’ although the West again sold a war economy to Ukraine to dent Russian rise.
In the first two decades of the 21st century, it has been proven that the Global South emerged to play an active and leading role in the global economic governance reform, and making development the core of international economic and trade agenda. Pakistan being the most important link of the Global South since the inception of the 21st century is under attack (war on terror—terrorism in Pakistan, digital terrorism, economic terrorism against Pakistan, etc) because the warmongers understand that a stable Pakistan would surely help the rise of Global South therefore this strategically important country is the target of warmongers. Understanding the situation, COAS Gen Asim Munir is trying hard to make Pakistan a destination of peace and prosperity while connecting economic powerhouses of the Global South under the umbrella of the SIFC initiative.
To my understanding SIFC is just not an investment platform rather it is launched to link global economic interests with Pakistan so that all emerging global powers would help Pakistan come out of the sluggish situation that Pakistan is facing today. A prosperous and resilient Pakistan is not in favor of Pakistan only rather it is a must for the goals set by Global South to be achieved before 2030 and we need exchanges among civilizations, enhanced communication and dialogue, and support for each other in taking the path to transformation suited to our respective national conditions.
In the end, I would like to share what President XI believes in. At the Kazan Summit, he talked about the power of old civilizations and added that his Global Civilization Initiative is for the purpose of building a garden of world civilizations in which we can share and admire the beauty of each civilization. To achieve this target, all toads to Sochi, Kazan, Beijing, and Shanghai go through Islamabad.
Monitoring Desk: 12 more men in uniform embraced martyrdom for the motherland in Pakistan, said Inter Service Public Relations (ISPR) of the Pakistan Army.
On 19 November 2024, Khwarij (the official name of TTP terrorists) attempted to attack a Joint Check Post in the general area of MaliKhel in Bannu District.
In the ensuing fire exchange, six khwarij were sent to hell. The attempt to enter the post was effectively thwarted by its own troops, which forced the khwarij to ram an explosive-laden vehicle into the perimeter wall of the post.
The suicide blast led to the collapse of a portion of the perimeter wall and damaged the adjoining infrastructure, resulting in the Shahadat of twelve brave sons of soil including ten Soldiers of the security forces and two soldiers of the Frontier Constabulary. President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed their sorrow over the incident and said that the Pakistan Army is offering sacrifices for the betterment of Pakistan.
Sanitization operation is being conducted in the area and the perpetrators of this heinous act will be brought to justice. Security forces and law enforcement agencies of Pakistan are determined to eliminate the menace of terrorism and such sacrifices of our brave men further strengthen our resolve.
It may be mentioned that on the night of 15/16 November 2024, terrorists attempted to attack a security forces’ post in the general area Shah-e-Mardan of Kalat District and Army troops fought gallantly as a result of which six terrorists were sent to hell, while four terrorists were injured. However, during an intense exchange of fire, seven brave sons of the soil, having fought gallantly, embraced shahadat. Sanitization operations are being carried out to eliminate any terrorists found in the area.
Security forces of Pakistan, in step with the nation, remain determined to thwart attempts at sabotaging the peace, stability, and progress of Balochistan, and such sacrifices of our soldiers further strengthen our resolve.
As we age, our minds and mental health become more important. We should try to maintain and improve them. Education is a perfect way to do that. Learning is not only beneficial for our minds but also keeps our bodies healthy. Lifelong learning is a form of self-initiated education that is focused on personal development. It helps us achieve satisfaction and personal fulfillment.
Learning new skills will help you to keep your prospects of life up to date. It gives you insight into recent advancements and changes. It will keep you stimulated and give you the ability to handle different challenges. Keeping your mind stimulated and keeping a cycle of information makes your mind happy. As a result, your mindset becomes satisfied as compared to the bitterness that comes with old age. The result is you become happy. Lifelong learning can be in any way. It can be taking classes or courses. It can be working or a new job in a different field that requires preparation for meetings and work. We can learn from new colleagues. Learning helps us to improve our mental health. You may think learning new things can increase our stress levels. However, there are different forms of stress-free learning. Learning in your way at your own pace is important. You can reflect on what you have learned. It is not a typical university student learning to pass an exam. It is real learning just for the sake of improving your knowledge and mental capacity. This type of learning boosts your well-being. It improves your quality of life. There are many great and fun ways of learning without the hassles of tests and exams. Many studies have shown that people engaged in learning reported feeling better about themselves in general and have had more hope in their lifelong goals and general aspirations. We can learn how to cook new recipes, fix broken things at home, and learn a new hobby like painting or writing.
Why lifelong learning makes us happy in the long term because we as a human have a natural drive to explore new things and ideas. We want to improve our quality of life by learning new things. If we don’t learn new essential skills it hinders us internally. We feel incapable and then become bitter about life. We can learn what makes us humans. We have a natural curiosity about things. As a child, we learn to ride a bike and as an adult, we learn to cook new dishes. Both of them are very enjoyable experiences for us. Personal fulfillment comes if we learn with our natural interest, curiosity, and motivation. We are not learning for someone else but just for ourselves. This learning should be voluntary, self-taught, and often informal and usually does not require any cost.
Lifelong learning renews our self-motivation. Sometimes we are stuck in mundane tasks of daily life and do not know what inspires us. Then suddenly reading a book gives you a different motivation. You feel good and younger. You re-ignite your interests and goals. Suddenly you feel that your boredom is gone and you start living with a purpose. And you never know where your actual interests can lead you by focusing on them. It will improve your personal and professional development. Everyone who learned computer and internet skills although they have never used it in their earlier life, feel more confident and has excess to more knowledge. If you are busy acquiring knowledge you are developing other skills also. They can be interpersonal, problem-solving, or critical-thinking skills. They in turn help you in personal and professional development. This will make you feel good and improve your confidence. Seeking new information is also a fun way to engage with others. As a result, you feel happy and socially connected. It prevents isolation in old age. Avoiding isolation is generally good for mental health in old age. It will give you increased satisfaction and a sense of purpose.
One most important benefits of lifelong learning is that it keeps your brain active, healthy, and young. It does not only make you capable but it helps in preventing and minimizing the cognitive decline in old age. If loss of brain function is avoided you can spend your golden years living independently, having control over your life, and making your own decisions. Learning stimulates the brain leading to the development of new neural pathways. It improves your memory and delays the development of dementia. It strengthens cognitive reserve by challenging the brain to recall and apply new information. That is why the brain is protected against degeneration. In old age, it is very important to have cognition. Otherwise, you may live longer, but your quality of life is worse. So aging healthily requires lifelong learning. It is as simple as if you do physical activity your muscles get strong and they do not decline easily. If you use your brain it is going to improve and does not degenerate easily. Being physically active also has a beneficial effect on the brain. If you want to learn you should better learn in a diversified manner. Diversity means it should be recreational learning, self-directed learning, and formal classroom learning.
To begin the journey of lifelong learning at any age first, you have to recognize what are your interests. Then you can see what you can learn. You can make a list and become proactive in the learning process. You can formulate your learning goals and commit.
I believe that lifelong learning is a beautiful thing. Out of all the things which are important for our well-being I enjoy it most. Learning in a stress-free environment just for the sake of learning is important for our growth as a person. If you stop learning and adapting to new things after a certain age. Your soul becomes rotten. To be alive fully and keep our brain active we should not let curiosity inside us die till the last breath.
The author Dr. Attia Anwar is a consultant family physician with a postgraduate degree from the Royal College of GP UK. She is a strong advocate of health and well-being and wants patient participation in decision-making regarding health.
Monitoring Desk: The former First Lady of Pakistan Bushra Bibi has leveled a serious allegation against a brotherly Muslim country in her recent video...
Monitoring Desk: Russian envoy to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said that the UN Security Council should bring peace, stability, and prosperity to the...
The author Dr. Attia Anwar is a consultant family physician with a postgraduate degree from the Royal College of GP UK. She is a strong advocate of health and well-being and wants patient participation in decision-making regarding health.
