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State Bank of Pakistan releases coin to commemorative 555th birth anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak

Karachi, Pakistan: The State Bank of Pakistan has released coin worth Rs 55 to commemorate the 555th birth anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak.

On the important occasion of the 555th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the State Bank of Pakistan is issuing a commemorative coin of Rs 55, which has the following metal composition, shape and characteristics, Nickel, Brass, Copper 79%, Zinc 20% and Nickel 1%, 30 mm diameter, weight 13.5 grams, on the obverse side of the coin there is a crescent moon in the middle and a five-pointed rising star facing northwest.

According to a statement issued by the State Bank denomination of the coin is written in bold letters ‘‘55’’ and ‘‘Rupiah’’ in Urdu script on the right and left sides of the star and crescent respectively. The obverse features a picture of the memorial of Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji in the center. Above the memorial is the inscription ‘‘555th Birthday Celebrations’’ and below the memorial building is ‘‘SRI GURU NANAK DEV JI’’ while along the lower edge of the coin is inscribed ‘‘1469-2024’’, reflecting the period from his birth till date.

State Bank of Pakistan releases coin to commemorative 555th birth anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak
State Bank of Pakistan releases coin to commemorative 555th birth anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak

Baba Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of the Sikh tradition, is one of the greatest personalities born in the land that is now a part of Pakistan. Sikhism is a global religion with millions of followers across the world and its holiest places are located in Pakistan. The coin is being issued through the exchange counters of all field offices of SBP Banking Services Corporation.

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PTI Protest Call: Despite road blockades, PTI workers move on towards Islamabad

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.

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CTD Punjab claimed to kill three TTP terrorists near Rawalpindi

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.

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Ukraine to receive 500,000 artillery shells by yearend from the Czech Republic

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.

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PTI Protest Updates: Bushra Bibi stays away from protest

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.

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Bushra Bibi leveled serious charges against Saudi Arabia

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.

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US reopens Kyiv embassy after warning issued following big Ukrainian strike on Russia

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”.

US reopens Kyiv embassy after warning issued following big Ukrainian strike on Russia

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.

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Moscow won’t allow the US to silence the UNSC on Israeli violence against Palestinians

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.

Moscow says it won’t allow US to silence UNSC on Israeli violence against Palestinians Monitoring Desk: Russian envoy in United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said that the UN Security Council should bring peace, stability and prosperity to the Middle East and Russia would not allow United States to silence UNSC over the issue of 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 in an effort to encourage further continuation of Israel's ruthless operation," he said in a speech at the Security Council.

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.

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From Valdai to Margalla Dialogue —- All roads to Civilisations go through Islamabad

By Shazia Anwer Cheema

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.

 

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12 more men in uniform embraced martyrdom for the motherland in Pakistan

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.

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