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Al Qaeda Flag Flies High Above Christian Churches
Days ago, al-Qaeda's Egyptian leader, Ayman Zawahiri, portrayed the overthrow of Muhammad Morsi and the Brotherhood as a "Crusader" campaign led by Coptic Pope Tawadros II who, according to Zawahiri and other terrorists, is trying to create a Coptic state in Egypt.
Since then, not only are Egypt's Christians and churches now being attacked in ways unprecedented in the modern era, but new reports indicate that al-Qaeda's black flag has been raised on some of them, specifically St. George Church in Sohag. Considering that it was al-Qaeda linked terrorists who initiated one of the bloodiest church attacks in recent history, the 2010 Baghdad church attack where nearly 60 Christians were slaughtered (click here for graphic images), that al-Qaeda is singling out Egypt's Christians bodes ill.
The Islamic terrorist organization's incitements against the Copts are just the latest to emanate from Islamists—from the top of the Brotherhood leadership to the bottom of the "Muslim street"—creating something of an "open season" on Egypt's Christians.
Days after the overthrow of Morsi, the supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Badie, was first to attack by name Coptic Pope Tawadros for supporting the popular June 30 Revolution, which saw tens of millions of Egyptians take to the streets. After Badie's demonization of the Copts, assaults on Christians began in earnest. Many churches were attacked and burned and several Christians were murdered in Upper Egypt; over in the Sinai, a young Coptic priest was shot dead, while the body of Magdy Lam'i Habib, a Christian, was found mutilated and beheaded. Due to the many death threats to Pope Tawadros, he has left the papal residence at the St. Mark Cathedral—which was earlier savagely attacked, when Morsi was still president.
This anti-Christian fury is far from sated and has taken on genocidal proportions. While Al Jazeera was covering (and distorting) events in Egypt, a Libyan man named Tamar Rashad called in and said "I want to offer the good news to [Pope] Tawadros that, Allah willing, the day is coming when no Copt will ever again tread the ground of Egypt—and no churches. We will no longer allow churches to exist." When the TV host appeared to protest, Rashad interrupted him saying, "It's already decided, take your cameras and go to the churches and you'll see what's going to happen soon, Allah willing."
To make matters worse, Sheikh Yusif al-Qaradawi, one of the Islamic world's leading preachers and spiritual father of the Muslim Brotherhood, has given his formal stamp of approval to persecute Copts, recently posting a video saying that "Christians" and others "were recruited [by Egypt's military] to kill innocent Muslims."
As expected, all these incitements against the Copts issued by several top Islamist leaders have so upped anti-Copt sentiment that it has become difficult in the last few days to keep up with the attacks on them—so many and nonstop are the reports emanating from Egypt. All throughout Upper Egypt—in Minya, Asyut, Sohag—Christians and their churches are under attack; dozens of Coptic homes and businesses have been set on fire. Due to the risk to Christian lives, many churches are no longer holding regular worship services.
The situation has gotten so dire that Ibrahim Eissa, a popular Egyptian journalist and TV personality, apparently unable to keep silent over the plight of the Copts, recently said on live TV: "The Christians have suffered in Egypt, over the course of 2 ½ years. Their churches have been burned, their children killed. The Maspero Massacre occurred, where several Copts were slain. Catastrophic fatwas appeared, calling them infidels and inciting against them…. No one has suffered as much as they. Today, if any Christian attempts to join a protest, he does so at the risk of defying dozens of fatwas calling for his death and decapitation and the burning of churches, especially in Upper Egypt."
With the ouster of Muhammad Morsi, Egypt's Islamists have finally gotten the pretext they need to cleanse the nation of its Christian minority, the Copt's—ironically, Egypt's most native sons.
The unprecedented hate currently being visited on them is fueled by Islam's "How Dare You?" phenomenon: As conquered non-Muslims, Christians must live as dhimmis, that is, according to traditional Islamic teaching, barely tolerated "infidels" who must be humble and submissive—to the point that they are not permitted to raise their hands to Muslims even when attacked.
Far from assuming their "proper place," Egypt's Christians supported the June 30 Revolution against the will and threats of the Brotherhood. Thus, to Egypt's disenfranchised and bitter Brotherhood and its supporters, Egypt's Christians, beginning with their pope, are all now free game.
Related Topics:AlQaedaEgyptIslamPersecution of ChristiansTerrorism
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Impact of Terrorist Organizations in the Middle East
Archana Jyoti
Terrorism is a significant variable in security studies and it is hindering a wide range of safety. Likewise, because of the emotional expansion in psychological militant assaults in the course of the most recent twenty years, have economies have found a way broad ways to work on the political, social, and financial circumstances by diminishing outer struggles and fear monger assaults.
The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) distinguishes psychological oppression as a danger or genuine utilization of illicit or vicious power by a non-administrative individual or gathering to accomplish a political, monetary, strict, or social objective through dread. This is on the grounds that these exercises are intended to make mental impacts and their belongings go past the survivors of fear-monger occurrences.
Definitions of terrorism are dubious because of issues of marking activities as psychological warfare advances the judgment of the entertainers, which might reflect philosophical or political predisposition. Definition of terrorism as characterized by the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is termed as "a non-state entertainer's compromised or genuine use of unlawful authority and viciousness to attain a political, monetary, strict, or social purpose through dread, coercion, or scaring." The people in issue, or the victims of fear-based oppression, have little in common with the fear-mongers, but they address a larger human population whose response the fear-mongers need. It is critical to comprehend that fear mongers are sane entertainers. They have a particular reason for their utilization of savagery and guess that it will make a response from the crowd that they are focusing on.
According to the GTD (2018), the Middle East has accumulated the greatest number of losses on the planet, notably since roughly 2001. Due to challenges such as high unemployment rates, money shortages, single-item financial elements, low levels of per capita payments, and slow monetary growth in the Middle East, these countries must rely on foreign speculation to beat these problems. Given the financial needs of these countries, bringing in an unfamiliar endeavour can play an important role. Differentiating the effects of capital flight and fear- based negative events in these countries might help policymakers improve or maintain business as usual.
In 2016, Iraq had 2,965 terrorist attacks, Afghanistan had 1,342, and Syria had 366. Conversely, there were 30 fear-monger assaults in all of Western Europe around the same time. However, the Global Terrorism Database notes that the number of fear-mongering attacks in Europe is increasing, the situation in the Middle East is far more concerning—a region where assaults are a piece of day-to-day existence for some residents.
The costs of psychological warfare, on the other hand, go far beyond literal annihilation. There are also significant social and financial consequences in the Middle East. ISIS has scoured a large number of historical heritage places in Iraq and Syria. Given their social and historical significance, the worth of many of these locations is incalculable. According to some sources, the sale of stolen antiques on the black market may be ISIS' second-largest source of revenue, after oil. Some of these antique relics have been discovered in London's antique shops. UNESCO has added a number of important locations to its list of endangered places due to pillage and obliteration, including six new sites in 2013.
The emotional drop-off in the travel business inside Syria and Iraq adds to these disasters. The Syrian Ministry of Tourism has attempted to aid the tourism business by distributing a series of YouTube recordings. The recordings show Syria's recognisable blue waves and beautiful seashores, in an effort to rehabilitate a country that many associate solely with war atrocities. In 2011, just before the Syrian civil war reached its most destructive stage, 8.5 million tourists visited the country, contributing almost $8.3 billion to the economy (around 13.5 percent of Syria's GDP). In 2014, however, only 400,000 tourists visited Syria. Several nations, including Tunisia and Egypt, have seen similar drops in the travel industry following psychological oppressor attacks, causing massive economic damage.
Oil is one of the Middle East's most basic endeavours, and terrorism has a huge impact on it. Oil offices have been identified by psychological militants in a few Middle Eastern countries, causing supply shortages. Because of ISIS attacks, Iraqi oil production dropped by as much as 320,000 barrels per day at one time. Various oil offices are included in ISIS' jurisdiction. The profits from oil sales go to the psychological militant group, diverting funds that would otherwise go to public foundation programmes. ISIS held 60% of Syria's oil reserves in 2014, and the group made approximately $3 million per day from the illegal oil trade. Despite the fact that ISIS has recently lost a lot of territory, it still controls large wells in northern Iraq, preventing Baghdad from collecting much-needed cash.
Psychological oppression has a considerably greater impact on the Middle East's economy than it does on the European economy. Given that the Middle East has seen the sharpest increase in illegal intimidation over the past 15 years, it appears to be a basic mistake that assessments have not attempted to gauge the absolute cost of psychological tyranny.
Organizations in Western nations which store these investigations are, maybe justifiably, more concerned about the impact of psychological persecution on their own countries. It is simple for the Western world to excuse the expense of psychological warfare in the Middle East since it is both far away and a piece of day-to-day existence for the area's kin. Interestingly, demonstrations of terrorism in the West are considered perilous abnormalities.
While the actual effects of terrorism in the Middle East should be the primary focus of counterterrorism efforts, the financial consequences should not be disregarded. Estimating the cost of psychological warfare as a means of identifying knowledge gaps and obstacles has merit. Counterterrorism authorities should help alleviate the excessive financial repercussions that fanatic gatherings have on the Middle East by recognising and securing vital territorial income streams like the tourism industry and oil.
The Deadliest Enemies: China's Overseas Military Bases in Central Asia and Uyghur's Turkestan Islamic Party
Uran Botobekov
Abdul Haq al Turkestani, the leader of Uyghur Jihadists
Amid the burgeoning sentimental relationship between Beijing and the resurrected Taliban's Emirate 2.0, the al Qaeda-affiliated Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) has aggravated its propaganda war against Communist China, hence cleverly concealing its historically faithful jihadi bonds with the Afghan Taliban. Despite the Taliban's assurances of non-interference in China's internal affairs, Beijing is building up its military presence in post-Soviet Central Asia. One example is its establishment of military bases in the Af-Pak-China-Tajik strategic arena near the isthmus of the Wakhan Corridor in Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan province.
Although China did not camouflage its contentment with the failed US policy in Afghanistan and sought to leverage the Taliban victory as its foreign policy asset, Beijing has faced the Taliban's elusive stance in curbing the Uyghur jihadists challenges. Today, the Celestial is well conscious of its harsh realities. With the withdrawal of the US forces from Afghanistan, Beijing lost a safe buffer zone in the strategically critical Afghan-Chinese borders area in Badakhshan, which has afforded with free secure area for over 20 years. While the US's presence in the region disturbed China, it nevertheless provided Beijing with relative stability and protected from the infiltration of global al Qaeda elements into the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Therefore, by showcasing its concern over its instability in the neighboring country, Beijing prefers to pressure Taliban on security matters, claiming that Afghanistan should not become a safe haven for terrorist organizations such as the Turkestan Islamic Party. On October 25, during the bilateral meeting in Qatar's Doha, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pressed Taliban's Acting Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to make a clean break with Uyghur jihadists of TIP and to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a hotbed of global terrorism.
The Taliban's Interim government is accustomed in responding to such external pressures from its neighbors and the international community. The typicality of its response lies in the denial of the presence of Central Asian and Uyghur terrorist groups on Afghan soil, further wittily dodging the topic of its ties with al Qaeda. Taliban strategists seeking international recognition have apparently developed cunning tactics to carefully conceal their ties to al Qaeda and Central Asian jihadi groups, while maintaining the bayat (oath of allegiance) of veteran strategic partners in holy jihad.
And this time, Taliban representative Suhail Shaheen voiced a stock answer, stating "many Uyghur fighters of TIP have left Afghanistan because the Taliban has categorically told them there is no place for anyone to use Afghan soil against other countries, including its neighboring countries." But the Chinese authorities are well aware of the Taliban's insincerity on this matter. In turn, the Taliban realized that the authorities of China and Central Asian states did not believe their statements. As a consequence, Beijing denied the Taliban's claims, claiming that approximately 200-300 Uyghur militants of TIP currently live in the Takhar province near Baharak town.
Certainly, to calm Chinese concerns and encourage deeper economic cooperation with Beijing, the Taliban has removed TIP Uyghur jihadists from the 76-kilometer Afghan-China border area in Badakhshan to the eastern province of Nangarhar in early October. The Taliban's double play testifies their walk on a fine line between pragmatism and jihadi ideology, especially when they simultaneously want to look like a state and maintain a historical relationship with al Qaeda.
A short look at Taliban-China relations
Since the mid-1990s, the Af-Pak border arena has remained at the center of China's security and counter-terrorism strategy. Chinese policymakers were concerned that the TIP's Uyghur militants found refuge in Afghanistan's border region of Badakhshan and are waging a decades-old holy jihad to liberate Eastern Turkestan from the iron claw of Beijing. Within this framework, China's counter-terrorism policy aims to prevent the challenge of the TIP Uyghur jihadists who have been deeply integrated into global al Qaeda's structure over the past quarter-century. This undertaking surfaced on Beijing's agenda since the collapse the pro-Moscow regime of Mohammad Najibullah in 1992 and became extremely acute after the Taliban's lightning seizure of power in August 2021.
In order to break the long-standing and trusted jihadi ties between TIP and the Taliban, Beijing has emerged as a pragmatic backer of the Taliban's new rule, promising economic and development support through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). For its part, the Interim Afghan government, seeking international recognition, has called China a most important partner and pushed for deeper cooperation with Beijing.
Following the steps of its historical diplomacy of flexibility and pragmatism from the Qing dynasty, Beijing has forged a pragmatic and operative relationship with the Taliban for nearly thirty years. Since Taliban's first rise to power in 1996, this pragmatic relationship has been centered in China's counterterrorism strategy. Guided by the "Art of War" strategy of the ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, Beijing decided to "defeat the enemy without fighting". In 1999, China launched flights between Kabul and Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur region, and established economic ties with the Taliban who patronized Uyghur militants of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM – now TIP).
In December 2000, China's Ambassador to Pakistan Lu Shulin met with the Taliban's founder leader Mullah Omar in Kandahar, in which Lu voiced Beijing's position on the need to stop harboring Uyghur jihadists operating in Afghanistan. Consecutively, the Taliban anticipated that China would recognize their government and prevent further UN sanctions. During the meeting, Mullah Omar assured Lu that the Taliban "will not allow any group to use its territory for any activities against China." But this deal was only half materialized. While Omar did restrain Uyghur jihadists to attack China's interests in Af-Pak zone, he did not expel them from Afghanistan. And Beijing did not oppose new UN sanctions against the Taliban, it only abstained.
Following the collapse of Mullah Omar's so-called Sharia regime after 9/11, China did not sever its ties with the Taliban leaving room for strategic change in the future. Putting eggs in different baskets, in 2014-2020, China secretly hosted Taliban delegations in Beijing several times and provoked them to active struggle against foreign invaders for the liberation of the country. However, China's central focus in their contacts with the Taliban has always been to curb the Uyghur jihad against the Celestial and build a first line of defense in the Wakhan Corridor along the Af-Pak-China-Tajik strategic arena.
Hence, according to China's Counter-Terrorism Strategy, securing BRI strategic projects overseas from TIP attacks and blocking the Salafi-Jihadi ideology in Xinjiang became even more important for Beijing since the Taliban overtook the power. Counterterrorism and concerns of Islamic radicalization were the justification for China's crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, where the CCP has imprisoned more than 1.5 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz Muslim minorities in concentration camps, manically depriving them of their religion, language and culture since 2014.
China's military footprint in Central Asia
Predictably, the abrupt US withdrawal from Afghanistan encouraged Beijing to continue its aggressive and assertive foreign policy toward Central Asia to expand its BRI projects in the region. If before, in exchange for its economic assistance, Beijing demanded from Central Asian nations to adhere the "One-China policy" (recognition Taiwan as part of PRC) and support its war against "three evils" (separatism, religious extremism and international terrorism), then now it is also stepping up the military footprint in the region.
On October 27, the Tajik Majlisi Namoyandagon (lower house of parliament) approved China's proposal to fund the construction of a $10 million military base in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province near the intersection of the Af-China-Tajik borders arena. The agreement which reached between Tajikistan's Interior Ministry and China's Public Security Ministry, indicates the new base would be owned by the Rapid Reaction Group of the Interior Ministry.
This is not Beijing's first overseas military base in Central Asia. China already operates a military base located 10 km from the Tajik-Afghan border and 25 km from the Tajik-Chinese border in the Tajikstan's Gorny Badakhshan province on the isthmus of the Wakhan corridor. Thus, the Chinese base overlooks a crucial entry point from China into Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In accordance with secret agreements signed in 2015 or 2016 between China and Tajikistan, Beijing has built three commandant's offices, five border outposts and a training center, and refurbished 30 guard posts on the Tajik side of the country's border with Afghanistan.
In July 2021, the Tajik government offered to transfer complete control of this military base to Beijing and waive any future rent in exchange for military aid from China. The Chinese military base in Tajikistan has no regular troops of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), but has representatives of the People's Armed Police (PAP). It is worth pointing out that China, concerned about the activities of TIP's militants in Xinjiang and their potential links with transnational terrorism, adopted the first counter-terrorism legislation on December 27, 2015. The law provides a legal basis for various counter-terrorism organs, including the PAP, empowering it with broad repressive functions. PAP members currently serve at China's overseas military base in Tajikistan, the main function of which is counter-terrorism monitoring of Tajik-Af-Pak border movements.
It is imperative to note that China is concentrating its military facilities not in the depths of Tajik territory but precisely on the isthmus of the vital Wakhan corridor at the Af-Pak-China-Tajik borders intersection. In the mid-90s, Uyghur militants fled China's brutal repression via the Wakhan corridor to join the Taliban, al Qaeda and TIP in Afghanistan. In their propaganda messages, TIP ideologists often mention the Wakhan Corridor as a "Nusrat (victory) trail" through which the "long-awaited liberation of East Turkestan from the Chinese infidels will come."
The mastery of the Af-Pak-China-Tajik strategic arena is currently critical to Beijing for several reasons. First, the holding the Wakhan Gorge allows China not to depend solely on the will of the Taliban to prevent attacks by Uyghur jihadists of TIP. Secondly, it gives China an additional lever of pressure on the Taliban to sever their ties with Uyghur militants, playing on the contradictions between Tajikistan and the Afghan Interim government. And finally, Beijing is well positioned to protect its future investments in the Afghan economy through the BRI project.
China's aggressive and assertive move into Russia's traditional sphere of influence does not make the Kremlin nervous as much as the US military presence in the region. Quite possibly, China's expansion of its military presence in Tajikistan was coordinated with Russia, which considers Central Asia to be its southern flank. Because Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are part of the Russian-led CSTO military alliance, opening a foreign military base in one of them requires the consent of this military block. Now, the two most considerable regional powers, Russia and China can be expected to pursue common counterterrorism strategies through the coordination and information-sharing on TIP Uyghur jihadists and Russian-speaking fighters based in Taliban-led Afghanistan.
Propaganda war between Communist China and Turkestan Islamic Party
As Beijing tries to fill the power vacuum left by the United States and expand its political and economic influence over the Afghan Taliban's Interim Government, the veteran Uyghur jihadi group of Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) and newly emerged Katibat al-Ghuraba al-Turkestani (KGT) are respectively intensifying their ideological war against the China's Communist regime.
The media center Islam Avazi (Voice of Islam), the TIP's propaganda machine, systematically and vociferously criticizes the Chinese Communist government as "atheist occupiers" and "Chinese invaders" for occupying the lands of East Turkestan. Recently the TIP's main mouthpiece in its weekly radio program on the Uyghur-language website 'Muhsinlar' stated that "China's overseas military bases are evidence of its evil intentions to occupy new Islamic lands through creeping expansion." Then the Uyghur speaker insists that "temporarily settling in new lands, the Chinese kafirs (disbeliever) will never leave there, a vivid example of which is the tragic experience of East Turkistan, whose religion, culture and history are Sinicized, and its titular Muslims are being brutally repressed."
Our research indicates that despite their longstanding involvement in the global jihad in Afghanistan and Syria and their strong alliances through oaths of allegiance (bayat) with al Qaeda, Taliban and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the central ideology of Uyghur Jihadists is the fight against the Chinese Communist regime. The strategic goal of the Turkestan Islamic Party is to liberate the historical lands of East Turkestan, now known as Xinjiang, from the occupation of the Chinese "communist infidels" and to build its own state with Sharia rule there. In their regular statements, audios and videos, TIP propagandists raised the victimization of Uyghur Muslims during China's occupation of East Turkistan, which has long been a key theme in TIP's ideological doctrine.
Amid establishing Chinese overseas military bases in Central Asia, TIP's media center Islam Avazi has sharply intensified anti-Beijing propaganda. Both the Taliban and TIP have double standards in this regard. Criticizing the Chinese Communist regime, TIP deliberately avoids and never condemns Taliban's recent close ties with the China. At the same time, when the Taliban recently criticized New Delhi for persecuting Muslims in Indian-administered Kashmir and call themselves defenders of the oppressed Muslim Ummah, they tried to sidestep the topic of China's crackdown on Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
Future of Uyghur Jihad in Post-American Afghanistan
Thus, even though the TIP remains an essential player of global jihad and a vanguard for the Uyghur cause, China's pressure on the Taliban and its military bases in Central Asia will force Uyghur fighters to curb their jihadi ambitions in post-American Afghanistan. Undoubtedly, as before, the Taliban will continue their attempts to marginalize Central Asian jihadi groups in Afghanistan, making them completely dependent on their will and exploiting them for their political purposes.
It is difficult to predict to what extent the Uyghur jihadists have the strength and patience to withstand Taliban moral pressure and Chinese intelligence persecution in the new Afghanistan. Interestingly, researchers at the Newlines Institute claim the Taliban's collaboration with Chinese military advisers present in Afghanistan. According to a senior source within the Taliban, "some 40 advisers from China (including some military ones) deployed to Afghanistan on October 3." Therefore, it will be difficult for TIP to maintain its developed propaganda apparatus, to enhance its organizational capabilities in the new realities of Afghanistan, when Chinese overseas military bases are breathing down its neck.
Beijing's military footprint on the Af-Pak-China-Tajik border arena will force TIP to demonstrate its diplomatic and strategic ability in seeking support and solidarity from numerous umbrellas jihadi organizations such as al Qaeda, Jalaluddin Haqqani's Haqqani network, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, HTS, and even Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K). Suppose al Qaeda continues to weaken, and IS-K grows stronger via targeted attacks and successful recruitment. In that case, Central Asian jihadists may change their jihadi flag and join IS-K. The most capable defectors from al Qaeda to ISIS were Uzbek, Tajik and Uyghur foreign fighters in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, as their experience has shown.
Any TIP's move to take the jihad back to Xinjiang for its liberation, undoubtedly, will face steep odds. Beijing's repressive security measures, such as high-tech mass surveillance and mass detention of Uyghurs in so-called re-education camps, have long deprived TIP of its network in Xinjiang. Worries that TIP is poised to ravage Xinjiang, therefore, seem overblown. With demographic changes in the Xinjiang region, where the Han population is almost the majority, the TIP has lost its social underpinning and perspective of waging jihad within the country.
In conclusion, wary of antagonizing Beijing and its dependence on Chinese economic largesse, the Taliban Interim government will progressively reduce its support for Uyghur jihadists. The establishment of Chinese military bases on the isthmus of the Wakhan Corridor and the strengthening of its anti-terrorism initiatives, combined with the monitoring of the Af-Pak-China-Tajik arena, call into question the extent to which TIP can conduct operations against China's BRI.
Lastly, a rapprochement between China and the Taliban leaves TIP cornered, limiting room for maneuver and forcing some Uyghur Muhajireen (foreign fighters) to carry out a hijrah (migration) to Syria's Idlib province to join their fellow tribesmen from Xinjiang. Nevertheless, despite this grim appraisal of TIP's prospects in post-American Afghanistan, it can capitalize from its commitment to transnational jihad and expand its international network exploiting the Syrian melting pot. Indeed, given the physical remoteness from China's overseas military bases, the Syrian quagmire will give the TIP a certain latitude, strengthening its ability to assert itself on the global jihad.
Author's note: This article was first published by a SpecialEurasia Research Institute, which partners with Modern Diplomacy.
Can the Taliban tame ETIM?
Muhammad Nauman Akhter
Uighur jihadists of Turkestan Islamic Party
The Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) is also known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is a Uyghur Islamic extremist organization founded in the Xinjiang province of China. TIP is the new name, although China still calls it by the name ETIM and refuses to acknowledge it as TIP. The ETIM was founded in 1997 by Hasan Mahsum before being killed by a Pakistani army in 2003. Its stated aim is to establish an independent state called 'East Turkestan' replacing Xinjiang. The United States removed it from its list of terrorist Organizations in 2020. The group and its ties to Muslim fundamentalism have compounded Chinese concerns about the rising threat of terrorism within the country.
In Tianjin, the Taliban's political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar again pledged to "never allow any force" to engage in acts detrimental to China. Suhail Shaheen, the Afghan Taliban's spokesperson, said in an exclusive interview with the Global Times that many ETIM members had left Afghanistan because Taliban had categorically told them that Afghanistan can't be used to launch attacks against other countries. The Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had also asked the Taliban to crack down on the ETIM, which is based out of the Xinjiang province. In view of the Taliban's pro-China stance on the ETIM, the article will assess the feasibility of the Taliban's promises of not providing sanctuaries to the groups which are direct threat to the national security of China.
First, this statement surprises the experts in view of the Taliban's historic relationship with the ETIM. According to a recent United Nations Security Council report, ETIM has approximately 500 fighters in northern Afghanistan, mostly located in Badakhshan province, which adjoins Xinjiang in China via the narrow Wakhan Corridor. Most of Badakhshan is now under Taliban control, but according to some reports, Tajik, Uzbek, Uighur and Chechen fighters comprise the bulk of the local Taliban rank and file, rather than Pashtun fighters. This scenario appears very challenging for the top leadership of the Taliban to deny sanctuaries to such loyalists.
Second, ETIM is operating in Afghanistan since 1990. It has strong links with the local Taliban commanders. The local Taliban commanders may put pressure on the top leadership or hinder the extradition of ETIM members from Afghanistan. Zhu Yongbiao, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at Lanzhou University, thinks that ETIM members in Afghanistan still have some influence. It may not be easy for the Taliban to fully cut ties with all ETIM members in Afghanistan as it may hurt other military militants that used to support it.
Third, the Taliban's capacity to tame the ETIM is limited because its all members and leadership have scattered across Afghanistan, Syria and Turkey. Zhang Jiadong, a professor with the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, told the Global Times, "In recent years, the ETIM also changed its living areas overseas. The exact number of ETIM members is hard to know but "its core members are living in countries including Pakistan, Syria, and Turkey. More of them stay in Syria than in Afghanistan and have been keeping a low profile in recent years".
Fourth, the ETIM has developed close ties with international militant organizations, including Al Qaeda. Moreover, Al Qaeda has significant influence over the Taliban. Al Qaeda has ability and resources to sabotage the extradition of ETIM members from Afghanistan. Some militant organizations including IS-K have developed the ideological differences with the Afghan Taliban. IS-K recently used a Uyghur fighter for suicide campaign in Afghanistan just to show fissure between the Taliban and ETIM. So, this trend can be a challenge for the Afghan Taliban.
The Taliban's new stance of not providing sanctuaries to the ETIM contradicts with some of its founding principles. The Taliban's new version on ETIM is not easy to follow. Time will be the true judge of the feasibility of Taliban's new stance.


In our previous post, we began exploring Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) using Math.NET and F#, and showed how this linear algebra technique can be used to "extract" the core information of a dataset and construct a reduced version of the dataset with limited loss of information.
Today, we'll pursue our excursion in Chapter 14 of Machine Learning in Action, and look at how this can be used to build a collaborative recommendation engine. We'll follow the approach outlined by the book, starting first with a "naïve" approach, and then using an SVD-based approach.
We'll start from a slightly modified setup from last post, loosely inspired by the Netflix Prize. The full code for the example can be found here on GitHub.
In the early 2000s, Netflix had an interesting problem. Netflix's business model was simple: you would subscribe, and for a fixed fee you could watch as many movies from their catalog as you wanted. However, what happened was the following: users would watch all the movies they knew they wanted to watch, and after a while, they would run out of ideas – and rather than search for lesser-known movies, they would leave. As a result, Netflix launched a prize: if you could create a model that could provide users with good recommendations for new movies to watch, you could claim a $1,000,000 prize.
Obviously, we won't try to replicate the Netflix prize here, if only because the dataset was rather large; 500,000 users and 20,000 movies is a lot of data… We will instead work off a fake, simplified dataset that illustrates some of the key ideas behind collaborative recommendation engines, and how SVD can help in that context. For the sake of clarity, I'll be erring on the side of extra-verbose.
To make our life simpler, and to be able to validate whether "it works", we'll imagine a world where only 3 types of movies exist, say, Action, Romance and Documentary – and where people have simple tastes: people either love Action and hate the rest, love Romance or hate the rest, or love Documentaries and hate the rest. We'll assume that we have only 12 movies in our catalog: 0 to 3 are Action, 4 to 7 Romance, and 8 to 11 Documentary.
//                Action .... Romance ... Documentary .
We create 3 "templates", representing the taste profiles for our 3 types of users, and a "user factory", a function createFrom. CreateFrom takes a profile, and an Id, and creates fake ratings for that user: with a probability of 40%, the user has seen and rated a movie, otherwise, there is no rating available.
Fictional user 42 is created using the "Romance" template; User 42 has seen and enjoyed movies 4 and 5, and disliked movies 9 and 10 – and we have no ratings for the remaining 8 movies.
Note: results will be different each run, because we are randomly generating users.
We can now get to work. First, we'll pull these ratings into a Matrix using Math.NET, in a similar fashion as in our last post, denoting a missing rating by a 0.
If I were to guess the missing rating for User 4 / Movie 2, I'd probably guess 5-ish: the ratings for Movie 2 look a whole lot like Movie 1, and User 4 rated Movie 1 a 5; given how similar they are, it's a reasonable bet to think User 4 would rate Movie 2 similarly to Movie 1. Conversely, Movie 2 and Movie 3 are nothing alike, so I wouldn't put too much weight on the rating User 4 gave to Movie 3.
return the top-rated movies based on our estimate.
The hard part here is to produce a sensible estimate for how our user might rate an un-tasted movie. The approach we'll take is the following: for each "candidate" movie, we'll measure how much it resembles the other already-rated movies, and how the user rated them. If two movies are very similar (determined by how others have rated them, hence the "collaborative" part), we expect the user to rate them in a similar way; if they are very dissimilar, the rating of the other dish doesn't provide much information. Our final rating will be a weighted average of the known ratings, weighted by their degree of similarity.
Grab all the movies in the catalog ("sample"), choose the unrated ones, and return a list sorted by decreasing estimated rating.
Now that we have a skeleton, we just need to fill the blanks, and supply a similarity and rating function to the recommender.
So how could we measure similarity between two items?
If the only thing we have available is user ratings, one approach is to consider how much other users agree on how they rate items. If everybody else rates the two items in a similar way, chances are, our user will, too. We can now restate our problem as "given these two vectors of ratings, can we define a measure for how similar they are"?
The Math.NET library comes in handy here: the Euclidean similarity is based on the Euclidean distance (a.k.a. "2-Norm") between the ratings vectors, which is built-in. The cosine similarity measures the Cosine between vectors, and the Pearson similarity the Pearson correlation, which is included in the MathNet.Numerics.Statistics namespace. Note that these have all been slightly transformed / rescaled, so that the similarity values range from 0 (dissimilar) to 1 (identical): we need these values to be positive in order to be able to perform a weighted average – and this also makes the interpretation of the "similarity value" fairly straightforward.
Let's check if it works with FSI.
Thankfully, it looks like a vector is 100% similar to itself.
Movie 1 is "69.9% similar" to Movie 0, based on the Pearson correlation similarity.
Movie 0 and 4 are only "22% similar", based on Cosine similarity.
Interestingly, the "degree of similarity" we observe varies quite a bit depending on the similarity measure we select – which means that first they don't measure exactly the same thing, and then that some testing will be required to figure out which one works best on a particular dataset.
Now that we have a similarity measure, we are almost ready to produce recommendations. Given that items that haven't been rated are denoted by a zero, we want to eliminate them from the comparison (if two movies have a 0 value, it doesn't mean they are similar) – we'll compare only two movies across users who have rated both.
if v1.[i] > 0. && v2.[i] > 0.
This isn't the most elegant code ever (probably has something to do with the fact that this isn't exactly "proper algebra"), but it works: we take 2 vectors, and construct a list of all the elements which are both non-zero. If that list is empty, we return nothing, otherwise we re-hydrate the two corresponding vectors.
We are now ready to wire things up and generate recommendations.
// have rated both movies, and compare.
Each column represents a movie in that new space. Note that the new matrix is much more compact than the original: we still have 12 columns, but the ratings have now been reduced to 8 values instead of 100 originally.
First, in all three cases, the top recommendation is still Movie 6 – which is still the "correct answer". That's pretty cool: we got rid of all the annoying discarding of zeroes part altogether, and the algorithm is way more efficient, because we compute similarities on vectors of size 8 instead of 100.
On the other hand, while the recommendation order is good, the estimated ratings we produce are degraded; the simple model showed a strong difference in ratings between the top recommendation and the rest, where the SVD model shows much less differentiation – which I presume is due to the inclusion of the zeroes in our dataset. On one hand, using raw SVD compensates for the missing values, by essentially extracting factors which aggregate ratings for multiple movies into one broader category, and capturing the direction of the effect; on the other hand, the inclusion of zeroes draws the estimated ratings towards an average rating, and loses predicted rating accuracy.
I hope these 2 posts gave you a sense for what SVD was, why this was an interesting technique – and that Math.NET and F# together are a pretty nice combo for Linear Algebra. If I have time (a somewhat unlikely hypothesis) I may revisit the question of empty entries and how to deal with them later; this blog post discusses the Netflix prize and hints at some possible approaches.
Another interesting question is how to use this approach at scale. If you beef up the sample dataset from this post to more realistic numbers, you'll notice two things: SVD slows down quite a bit as the dataset expands, and without too much effort you'll hit unpleasant snags like System.OutOfMemoryException, for sample sizes that are nowhere close to "big data" (say, 10,000 users). That's a problem, if you consider for instance that the Netflix dataset was about half a million users across 20,000 movies – and that's why I got so interested in the Azure Cloud Numerics project recently. Cloud Numerics is still in preview, and currently limits cluster sizes to 2 compute nodes (I don't think a cluster can get any smaller…), but even with such a limited setup, I managed to crank through a SVD on a 100,000 x 1,000 matrix, in about 10 minutes (and all in F#!), which I found promising. I launched a 1,000,000 x 1,000 SVD as well, but after one hour waiting for my results, I got bored and killed it – I am genuinely looking forward to trying it out on a "real" cluster.
By the way, if someone out there has experience with Hadoop and whatever exists on top of it for linear algebra, I'd love to hear about it, and how it performs on similar operations!
That's it for today – if you have comments or question, I'd love to hear them!
But you better don't do example son ML without understanding it yourself and with really bad explanations.
Just stick to what you know, and avoid coolness factor.
Enough just to show data manipulation, nice way to do dimensions mapping domain into ranges, live graph changes due to data changes, scaling, etc..
Thanks for commenting! Maybe I should clarify my intent with this post first. It's part of a series, where I take the code samples from the Machine Learning in Action book, and convert them from Python to F#. As such, it's not meant to be a perfect recipe for how to write a recommendation engine (this would take more than a single post) - and I stick closely to the original code, taking minor liberties here and there and adding comments on my own.
Can you clarify what your issues are with the post, maybe point at specific points you think should be improved upon? And maybe you have code of your own to show?


The preparation of asking people out to go on dates just to find out if a person fits you or not is tasking, its time consuming and also expensive. There is a process of asking a person out, and it's about going on multiple dates just to even decide if there's a future for you and the other person. If there is, then its a success, if not, then you just wasted a few hundred bucks, worse thousands of dollars and time.
This is a hassle and that is the reason why there are people that instead opted in going to online dating sites and dating apps instead because it provides ease of use and not to mention saves them money as well. But what makes it a very ideal place to pick up a potential date is because of its convenience like the ones that you see below.
Getting to know is as easy as sending a chat message: Getting to know someone is easy because you are just simply sending messages to the other person. The best part is that you can message as many people as you like and you can even be open to the possibilities that you can message other people at the same time and even go far as using multiple apps and message multiple people from there as well. If you have that idea in a big way, surely you already thought about increasing your chances in getting dates more than the usual.
People in dating sites are already there to look for dates: The reason why its easier to get a date in online dating sites and apps is that people that go here are already looking for dates. If you go to a bar, not all people there have the plan to be swept off their feet. Some just wants to go there and drink. In the park, not all people want to be asked even politely if its okay to date them, because they're just there to relax, but with dating apps it's different.
It saves you from disastrous dates: There are things that you can't really ask someone especially if you're telling them all the sweetest things and pick up lines that you can think of. There are things that you can only say on the first date, things that you can say on the second date and so on. This means even if you're talking in person there is this unwritten stalling process that you have to go through. Its expensive and it wastes a lot of your time. If you see something or hear something that completely puts you off from that person, that fact is you already spent a lot of time and money, so you still lost. But with online dating like dating apps that can be prevented.
Online dating has been considered as the future of dating. Not as a replacement but as the far better option for it because it's less of a hassle and your credit card will love you. Why? Because in online dating getting to know someone is very easy, people that are going into these places are already given to be looking for dates and they save you from disastrous dates. If you're looking for a good dating app, click the hyperlink.


Ray Ruawhare has worked on effects and animation for everything from NZ On Air's Eric the Goldfish to movie Predicament. In 2004 he produced From Len Lye to Gollum, a comprehensive documentary on the history of animation in New Zealand. Ruawhare was one of the founders of animation and effects conference AnimfxNZ.


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Lake Powhatan
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Just outside of Asheville in North Carolina's Mountains region, little Lake Powhatan offers a refreshing change of pace to the city. The reservoir lies completely within the Pisgah National Forest and boasts a popular National Forest campground that is in…
Beaver Lake NC
One of the most-visible lakes in the North Carolina Mountain region is unassuming little Beaver Lake. The small man-made reservoir is only about 65 acres in size-and completely private. Framed by nearby mountains, the lake is entirely owned by the…
Finger Lakes of the South
East, Mountains, North Carolina, South, Tennessee, USA
Three reservoirs on the Little Tennessee River in northwestern North Carolina and Southeastern Tennessee offer some of the most spectacular wilderness scenery in the eastern United States. The Finger Lakes of the South – Cheoah Lake, Calderwood Lake and Chilhowie…
Cedar Cliff Lake
Nestled within the dramatic Blue Ridge Mountains, Cedar Cliff Lake is one of North Carolina's most picturesque bodies of water. It is thin and elongated, with a surface area of 121 acres and a shoreline length of 4.5 miles. The…
Cliffside Lake
Surrounded by the breathtaking Nantahala National Forest in the Highlands District of North Carolina, Cliffside Lake is sparkling eight-acre lake in the heart of the Cliffside Lake Recreation Area. The Recreation Area offers fishing, swimming, camping, and in conjunction with…
Bass Lake NC
Sitting snug amongst rhododendron trees, white pines and the 3,500-acre Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Bass Lake is the picture of both tranquility and nobility. Ducks find their way into the small body of water for a quiet swim, disturbed…
Wildcat Lake NC
In 1932 construction of a dam on Wildcat Creek impounded 13-acre Wildcat Lake. Originally created as a reservoir for the hydroelectric plant and an emergency water source for the fire company, Wildcat Lake's uses have grown to include recreation. Tucked…
Tucked away amidst the ancient Appalachian Mountains is the largest private lake in North Carolina – Lake Toxaway. Lake Toxaway, spanning 640 acres, was built in 1902 by a powerful entrepreneur, E. H. Jennings. Jennings, who visited the wild, undeveloped…
High up in the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina's largely wild, westerly Graham County is Lake Santeetlah. Owned by Brookfield Renewable Energy Partners, the lake was impounded on the Cheoah River in 1928 for hydroelectric energy. The reservoir covers 2,881…
Lake Rhodhiss
Lake Rhodhiss spans 3,060 acres in Burke and Caldwell Counties of west central North Carolina, lying between Lake James and Lake Hickory. A view of surrounding mountain peaks and wildlife, coupled with Rhodhiss' sprawling quiet, makes the lake a beauty.…
Nantahala Lake
Nantahala Lake is one of the most pristine lakes in North Carolina. Located within the Nantahala National Forest at an elevation of 3,012 feet, the 1,605-acre lake is surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. Nantahala Lake…
Lake Hiwassee
Lake Hiwassee is located in the mountainous region of North Carolina's southwestern Cherokee County. Sitting in the Nantahala National Forest, it is almost completely surrounded by wilderness and is fed by six major tributaries. "Hiwassee" means "savannah" or "meadow" and…
Lake Glenville
Nestled among the forests and mountain peaks of southwestern North Carolina lies the highest lake east of the Mississippi, Lake Glenville (aka Thorpe Reservoir) at 3,492 feet. Lake Glenville, popular for its unspoiled beauty, sandy beaches, coves, waterfalls and luxurious…
W. Kerr Scott Reservoir
W. Kerr Scott Reservoir is a 1,475-acre reservoir located near Wilkesboro, North Carolina in the Mountains tourism region. Built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1962 for flood control, the lake also offers a fresh water supply, recreation,…
Lake Chatuge
Georgia, Mountains, North Carolina, Northeast Georgia Mountains, South, USA
Beautiful Lake Chatuge (pronounced "sha-toog") spans 7200 acres and two states, stretching 13 miles from Hayesville, North Carolina, to Hiawassee, Georgia. From the Cherokee for "land where the waters meet," Lake Chatuge offers spectacular views of both the Tusquitee Mountains…
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It may be 30 years on but for those involved in the miners' strike, memories are still raw. The anger at the hardship suffered by strikers and their families still runs deep, as does the bitterness between those on the picket lines and those who crossed them. Divided communities take a long time to heal; some never do. Despite the hard times there were many stories that spoke of fortitude of individuals and generosity of strangers. There was even mention of camaraderie between police and mineworkers on the more peaceful picket lines. Others like Orgreave were much more violent.


Doogee Y7 Plus VS Leagoo S10: Will You Go For Camera & Battery Or Design & Performance?
The Doogee Y7 Plus is another great and affordable smartphone that will make a great alternative to the Leagoo S10. Both phones are coming from a Chinese company and they offer beautiful body design with generous inbuilt memory. In this article, we will be joining a fight between the Doogee Y7 Plus and the Leagoo S10 smartphone.
In terms of design, the Doogee Y7 Plus features smooth curved edges with the small bezel on the bottom of the screen. It's built with all metal and it has body dimensions of 76.09 mm x 160.4 mm x 9.4 mm and weighs 160 gram. As for the Leagoo S10, it looks more promising and beautiful. The phone is built and design with the combination of metal and plastic. Apart from that, it offers a full bezel-less screen display and onscreen fingerprint scanner. The Doogee Y7 Plus has a front mounted fingerprint scanner and it's available in Black, Blue, and Purple colors, while the Leagoo S10 is available in Blue color.
On the front, both phones have a similar wide notch with a large screen display size.
The Doogee Y7 Plus has a screen size of 6.18 inches FHD+ under IPS capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1080 x 2246 Pixels and 403 PPI density, while the Leagoo S10 has a screen size of 6.21 inches FHD+ under AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1080 x 2248 Pixels and 402 PPI density. Both phones have display protection and they will offer clear visuals as well. The Leagoo S10 has an edge on the display and it also has a higher screen to body ratio as well.
On the camera department, the Doogee Y7 Plus is blessed with an impressive combo rear cameras of 16 Megapixels + 13 Megapixel with dual LED flash and a front facing camera of 8 Megapixels with f/2.0 Aperture, Face unlock, and Wide-angle lens – 80°, while the Leagoo S10 has a dual rear cameras of 20 Megapixels + 5 Megapixels with dual LED flash and a front facing camera of 13 Megapixels with F2.0 Aperture, and Face recognition. The Doogee Y7 Plus will take better photos than it's rival.
The Doogee Y7 Plus is powered by a MediaTek Helio P25 (MT6757CD) chipset with an octa-core processor that clocked at a speed of 2.5GHz, while the Leagoo S10 is powered by MediaTek Helio P60 MT6771 chipset with an octa-core processor that clocked at a speed of 2.00GHz. Both phones have a 6GB RAM with support for 4G LTE network and they also run on the same Android 8.1 Oreo operating system. The Doogee Y7 Plus has an internal storage of 64GB which is expandable, while the Leagoo S10 has an internal memory of 128GB which is also expandable via micro SD card.
The Doogee Y7 Plus has a nonremovable battery capacity of 5080 mAh with fast charging technology, while the Leagoo S10 has a nonremovable battery capacity of 4050 mAh with both fast and wireless charging technology. On the price, the Doogee Y7 Plus is selling at a price of $229, while the Leagoo S10 is selling at a price of $300.
On the overall, the Leagoo S10 has a good looking body design and it will perform better than it's rival, while the Doogee Y7 Plus has a massive battery capacity that will last longer and it also offers an improved camera set-up as well. Depending on what you want on a new phone, the Doogee Y7 Plus is more affordable though, so it will make a wise buy.


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Jacket Full of Danger is Adam Green's fourth solo album, released in 2006. It revisits the string-laden melodrama of his second album Friends of Mine, mostly abandoning the uptempo country folk sound of his previous release, Gemstones.

Lyrically, the album explores the same mournful terrain as Gemstones with Green's familiar obsession with drugs, surrealism and failed relationships.

The album's cover art is an illustrated photograph by American artist Galen Pehrson and was featured in Artforum 10.6Vol-9UK The image depicts Green with a suite of  illustrated characters, each character refers or symbolizes a social theorist, philosopher, or semiotician: Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, and most notable Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan engaged in a "dance".

In the UK, the album was preceded by the single "Nat King Cole" which also features artwork by Pehrson.

Track listing
All songs written by Adam Green

"Pay the Toll" – 2:15
"Hollywood Bowl" – 1:33
"Vultures" – 2:02
"Novotel" – 1:39
"Party Line" – 2:17
"Hey Dude" – 1:39
"Nat King Cole" – 2:32
"C Birds" – 2:04
"Animal Dreams" – 1:48
"Cast a Shadow" – 1:57
"Drugs" – 2:03
"Jolly Good" – 2:01
"Watching Old Movies" – 2:00
"White Women" – 2:59
"Hairy Women" – 1:33

"Cast a Shadow" is an interpretation of the Beat Happening song of the same name.

Personnel
Adam Green - voice, guitar, tuba on 9
Steven Mertens - bass except on 12, 15
Bill Moulten - bass on 12, 15
Joan Wasser - cello
Parker Kindred - drums
Chris Isom - guitar
Emily Lazar - mastering
Nathan Brown - organ (Wurlitzer), piano
Dan Myers - recording, mixing
David Gold - viola on 2
Antoine Silverman, Lorenza Ponce - violin
Jane Scarpantoni - violin, strings arrangement

2006 albums
Adam Green (musician) albums
Rough Trade Records albums

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Tag: Riddell Sports Group
Eggers Imprints expands operations
Brown Deer-based screen-printing company Eggers Imprints opened a second location in Sun Prairie earlier this month and has plans to hire up to 70 employees over the next two years. Eggers is a contract decorator whose largest clients include promotional marketing and sports companies. The company specializes in screen printing, embroidery and product fulfillment. The new 30,000 square-foot facility in Sun Prairie will allow Eggers Imprints to increase its production capabilities seven-fold, said Dan Eggers, Eggers Imprints owner and founder. The company's expansion plans come after Eggers Imprints purchased the assets of a prominent Under Armour distributor in Sun Prairie that was recently sold to another company. Eggers said the acquired assets include screen printing and embroidery equipment but did not disclose the company he acquired the assets from nor the financial terms of the deal. "I saw an opportunity and it allows our company to grow along with our employees and their families," Eggers said. "I wrote off 2020, it's been a rough year for everyone. But if we can get the infrastructure in place to start 2021 stronger than we ever were, now is the time to do it." Eggers Imprints' new facility at 1753 N. Bristol Street is located in the same building where team sports and corporate apparel dealer Kollege Town Sports previously operated. In February, BSN Sports, a marketer and distributor of sporting goods, acquired certain assets from Kollege Town, which is a division of Illinois-based Riddell Sports Group, according to a BSN Sports press release. In April, Riddell Sports Group Inc. laid off 109 employees from its Kollege Town division in Sun Prairie, according to a Department of Workforce Development WARN notice. Eggers, who would not confirm that he acquired assets from Kollege Town Sports, said part of his hiring plans include rehiring employees that had been laid off by the company he purchased assets from. "What I'm really proud of is we're trying to hire the workforce that was laid off in February," Eggers said. "They were laid off before the pandemic, so that was a double-whammy for them." Eggers Imprints has 35 employees located in Brown Deer and 17 at its Sun Prairie facility. As part of the hiring process, Eggers plans to hire employees with disabilities, he said. "I'm a big supporter of special needs and so we have 5 special needs employees in Milwaukee that have been with us for 9 or 10 years," Eggers said. "I sit on a national charity board and I'm going to bring that infrastructure to Madison, partner with Madison organizations to hire people with disabilities."


OptiLogix is the leading European manufacturer of OEM hardware for the Call Recording industry.
The world's broadest range of "passive tap" voice recording interfaces for analog, digital extension, BRI (ISDN-2) and E1/T1 (PRI-ISDN) are developed and produced at our Research & Development and state-of-the-art RoHS2 compliant Electronic Assembly facility in The Netherlands within 20 minute reach from Schiphol International Airport.
OptiLogix sales and support offices are located in the United Kingdom and in The Netherlands.
We offer our international OEM partners (Call Recorder manufacturers) a leading edge over their competition, not only because of the technically proven market performance of our products, high-tech innovations and competitive prices, but also because we listen, understand and act responsively to our customers needs.
OptiLogix, your innovative OEM partner in Voice Recording Technology!


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Chinese Immigration to New Zealand
By Provisas Team
Published On May 31, 2019 | Last Updated On December 15, 2020
New Zealand offers way more in terms of growth opportunity and quality of life than China. Every year there are thousands of people applying for NZ visa for the very same reason.
It comes as no surprise that New Zealand is now a hotbed for Chinese Immigration. In fact, it has surpassed the UK which use to attract maximum people of China. There are many reasons for Chinese people to make New Zealand their new home. What they like the most is the freedom the country provides.
New Zealand is a land of dreams. It provides everything that a person can need to grow completely. The cities and towns are ultra secure with almost zero crime rate. That's because NZ is a country which takes a person character very seriously. The legal system is also supportive of peace. In fact, its the prosperity and the legal freedom that the country provides is what attracts the Chinese people to New Zealand.
It is not just the skilled workers that come from China to New Zealand. The immigration pattern indicates that wealthy Chinese people are also investing heavily in NZ and moving here for a permanent settlement. Let's explore what else the country offers to Chinese people.
Why Chinese Immigration to New Zealand is Such a Big Thing?
There are many good reasons for Chinese Immigration to New Zealand. Chinese Immigration to New Zealand gives the people China a new hope and a robust future.
New Zealand is home to some of the best education institutes in the world. We have a very practical approach to teaching our students. Our education courses are completely job oriented and the curriculum is revised from time to time keeping the local and global demand in mind. This makes our university pass outs job ready. Something which is seldom seen in other countries. What's more, our education is not expensive. For PR holders and citizens school level education is almost free and university level education is highly subsidized.
New Zealand also has the best public health care system in the world. State of the art medical centers is present in every major part of the country. Doctors are very well trained and are equipped with the latest technology that prevails in the field of medical science. For PR holders and citizens, medical care expense is negligible. You can live a long and healthy life without worries in New Zealand.
New Zealand is really a secure country when compared to China, or for that matter any other place on earth. Violent crimes are rare. The crime rate is really low and limited to petty incidences. The legal system is pro-citizens and there are no oppressive rules and laws in the country. NZ takes pride in taking an individuals character way too seriously. We don't allow shady characters to enter our land under any circumstances. Natural citizens of the country are by nature law-abiding and very adjusting to the migrant population. Policing system of New Zealand is tech-savvy and some of the cities are like 100 percent under surveillance. Another big point to make New Zealand your new home.
For the right person, New Zealand offers the best platform to boost your career. Your skills should match the one country requires. For this one can refer to the short term and long term skills shortage lists. If your qualifications and characters fall under the eligibility criterion then very soon you would be a part of the NZ job market. New Zealand is a robustly growing economy and is always looking for the right persons to contribute towards its growth.
New Zealand offers ample avenues for business people and entrepreneurs from China. The country is the hotbed for launching tech-related startups. If you have a zeal and an idea to back it up, then come over. We have everything else you need. People can also make investments in the country and be eligible for PR. To know more about this option it would be wise to get in touch with us.
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GRAND HAVEN - Grand Haven celebrated Parents Night on Saturday, May 3rd.
"We would like to express our thanks to all our parents, relatives and friends. Without you, this wouldn't be possible for our young athletes.


Prototheca, Chlorella, Rhinosporidium and Pythium: Global Status is one in a series of GIDEON ebooks which explore all individual infectious diseases, drugs, vaccines, outbreaks, surveys and pathogens in every country of the world. Data are based on the GIDEON web application (www.gideononline.com) which relies on standard text books, peer-review journals, Health Ministry reports and ProMED, supplemented by an ongoing exhaustive search of the medical literature.
Prototheca, Chlorella, Rhinosporidium and Pythium: Global Status includes separate sections on Protothecosis and chlorellosis, Pythiosis, and Rhinosporidiosis.


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Articles on Finding a Job
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How can remote work help meet the UN's Sustainable Development Goals? Find out how the environment, economy, and more can be improved with remote work.
UN's Sustainable Development Goals Initiative and Remote Work
By Rachel Jay, Content Specialist
The number of people telecommuting in the U.S. increased 159% between 2005 and 2017. Over the last five years, remote work grew 44%, and over the last 10 years it grew 91%.
As more and more people join the remote work environment, its impact on communities, the environment, and the human race will continue to increase. In 2015, the United Nations (UN) released its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to "achieve a better and more sustainable future for all."
These 17 goals, created by the United Nations Development Program and adopted in 2015 by 193 countries, are "a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity."
Remote work can help meet the goals of the UN in a multitude of ways. In particular, eight of the SDGs can benefit from employers and employees embracing telecommuting and all of its benefits.
(Image credit: un.org)
Remote work supports eight of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
Flexibility can be used to better accommodate people who have historically been left out of the traditional workforce. Whether it's due to medical issues, mental health issues, a disability, a rural location without many job opportunities, or lack of access to transportation, many people are unable to find jobs that can financially meet their needs.
These barriers to employment can be eliminated or reduced with flexible work.
DeChe, A FlexJobs member, successfully found remote work via our services after spending five years trying to find work that paid a living wage. She suffered through homelessness, joblessness, and low-paying roles that could not support her. She was able to find a full-time, remote job that lets her work from home and pulled her out of poverty:
"Throughout the years my husband and I had been looking for a job. In fact it was so bad we actually went homeless and were living out of our car. … As soon as I signed up [for FlexJobs], redid my resume, and started on the applications, I was getting jobs left and right. All in the past two weeks, I've had five people email or call me for an interview and Amazon actually asked me to work for them … it was miraculous!"
Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
Within SDG No. 3 is a particular focus on reducing traffic accidents: "By 2020, halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents." Globally, approximately 1.35 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes, and between 20 and 50 million more people suffer non-fatal injuries.
Remote work lessens or eliminates commutes, taking more cars and people off the roads each day. According to FlexJobs' "State of Telecommuting in the U.S. Employee Workforce" report, the 3.9 million people who work from home save 7.8 billion miles traveled, avoid 530 million vehicle trips, and reduce traffic accidents costs by $498 million every year.
Additionally, remote working gives people more time and energy to focus on their diet, exercise, relationships, leisure, and passions—all contributors to better well-being and healthier lives.
According to Mental Health America, mental illness and substance abuse cost employers around $80 to $100 billion. Reducing the friction between work and life can dramatically reduce the stress and anxiety of workers, and help to prevent mental illness from starting or progressing.
Mikaela, a FlexJobs reader, provides a great example of remote work and healthy living merging together:
"Working environment is key to productivity and health for me. … The benefits of a healthy mind increases productivity, reduces stress, increases the quality of decision-making and problem-solving. There are less distractions than in an office setting and my mind can fully focus. … The quality of my life would increase dramatically with a healthy and happy mind and body, which is why I believe working remotely will highly increase the quality of my work and life."
Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
UN SDG No. 5 supports an equal playing field, and remote work and flexible schedules aid in achieving gender equality. With more of a focus on results, and not time-in-seat, working parents can often better handle work and life responsibilities. Parents who are able to flex their schedule and work when it is most convenient for them can often maintain a professional job and perform at a high level.
Our sister site, Remote.co, found that remote companies have more women CEOs and founders. Its data found that 28% of mostly or completely remote companies have either women CEOs, founders, or presidents and 19% have women CEOs, compared to the 5.2% of women CEOs at S&P 500 companies.
In an article written by FlexJobs CEO Sara Sutton about how remote workplaces benefit women, she said: "Remote work eliminates some of the obstacles that tend to throw women off the traditional leadership course: inflexible schedules, long hours away from home, and long commutes."
With more of a focus on productivity, and less on likeability, politics, or hours spent at a desk, remote jobs can help women excel and close the gender equality gap.
FlexJobs readers who were asked what their "better" is in relation to life and work said:
"Better for me as a woman is being able to have a career I love while being able to help my children with homework. Better is… being able to work from anywhere earning a living while still having the flexibility to pick up a sick child from school." —Vindra Gayapersad
"Better is being able to revitalize my career as I step back into the workplace full-time after being a part-time, stay-at-home mom for over 15 years. Being able to find a job with good benefits, a flexible schedule, and one that will allow me to do what I do best—help others. All this as I get ready to transition to being a single parent of three beautiful and extraordinary kids." —Greer Gaston-Anderson
Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth; full and productive employment; and decent work for all.
Remote work can provide a solution to unemployment and under-employment. With telecommuting, an employee can work from their home office in a completely different city, state, or country from their employer. A talented graphic designer who can't find professional, well-paying work in their rural location, can have access to jobs in other locations they would have never known about pre-technology.
As Sutton noted in a LinkedIn article, "… Nothing is more suited to help the workforce keep up with globalization more than telecommuting and flexible work. The market no longer has to be harnessed by time zones, geographic boundaries, or technological limitations."
A job seeker looking for work will have increased options if they expand their search to include remote opportunities. This can cut unemployment rates and reduce time to find a job. With remote workers having been found to be more productive and loyal, longevity in their jobs and careers can increase.
The sentiment expressed by FlexJobs reader Michelle Shaver sums it up: "Better is utilizing my knowledge and skills in a remote position to help a company reach its goals, while allowing me the freedom of location and time to work when and where I choose instead of being tied to a desk 24/7."
Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries.
Economic development is a step in reducing inequality among our cities and states, a main driver of SDG No. 10. Flexible work can bring jobs to those who may not otherwise have access. Flexible work can provide better salaries, reduce expenses for workers, and therefore boost the local economy.
According to research from the World Economic Forum, the job market in rural areas is 4.26% smaller now than in 2008. In 2018, FlexJobs partnered with Teleworks USA to help close the urban vs. rural employment gap, specifically in Eastern Kentucky, which has an unemployment rate that's nearly double that of urban areas.
Through the FlexJobs and Teleworks USA partnership, Kentucky residents were given access to remote jobs, training on working remotely, and assistance with preparing for virtual job interviews. As a result, 334 remote jobs were created for eastern Kentucky residents.
Subscribers who live in rural areas and found a flexible job from FlexJobs point out the necessity of remote work:
"I live in rural Arkansas. … Being able to make from-home earnings [that are] much higher than the average pay for my area is wonderful. In no time, I'll be able to purchase a new car, but this job is going so well I plan to travel the world and continue to do this work…" —Mandi
"We had just moved to a rural area and in order to continue working in my field, I would need to commute an hour each way daily. … I thought that I had to choose between having a career and having time with my family because that had been my choice for many years. Now I realize that I can do just about anything remotely, and I love it!" —Jennifer
Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.
One aim of SDG No. 11 is to ensure people have access to safe and affordable housing. With increasing housing prices in many cities across the U.S., working remotely eases the need to live in city centers and allows options for housing locations that are further from the office and much more affordable.
Another target of this goal is to strengthen links between urban and rural areas for the benefit of both. With a remote job, professionals can live in smaller or rural areas, potentially helping to expose that area to different avenues of wealth and mentorship; especially valuable for young people who are developing personal and professional interests.
Creating safe and sustainable cities also involves air quality and road safety. Remote workers who no longer commute to work can help reduce traffic congestion and road wear and tear, reduce greenhouse gasses emitted, and reduce oil costs.
In Boston, Governor Charlie Baker is looking to ease traffic congestion by offering tax breaks for each employee that a company lets work remotely. Less traffic and more money back in the pockets of businesses can contribute to a safer and sustainable city.
FlexJobs reader Karen had this to say about the environmental savings of working remotely:
"Being able to work from home for me, not only saves immensely on my daily carbon emissions, it also allows for me to teach my children the importance of taking care of this planet that we live on. Whether it's taking them on a walk to pick up trash or help our community plant trees for our local memorial park, those small teachable moments are more than I'd be usually be allowed. Every little thing counts."
Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
Part of goal 12 encourages companies to adopt sustainable practices. Employers can save about $11,000 per employee who works remotely part-time. Companies with remote workers need less office space, have lower utility bills, have less office equipment to purchase and maintain, and can spend less money expanding into new territories.
Translated to multiple workers—think of a company with hundreds or thousands of people who don't need to be in the office every day—and you're looking at big bucks. The businesses that pilot and then roll out flexibility, and see the environmental and bottom-line benefits, serve as important case studies and encouragement for others to adopt this sustainable practice.
Mariam Rowhani shared about how working remotely helps both her company and herself live more sustainably:
"The earth is suffering because of humanity's carbon footprint. By being a remote worker, I drive less and waste less gasoline. It is far healthier for me and much less stressful. Also it helps employers from having to provide electricity and cuts down on office waste when managing multiple employees. And it is about working smarter, which improves productivity and focus."
Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
The environmental impact of virtual work can't be understated. FlexJobs' telecommuting report estimated that 3 million tons of greenhouse gases are avoided each year and oil savings reach $980 million due to the 3.9 million people working remotely at least half time. That's the equivalent of taking 617,000 cars off the road. To put it in perspective, it would take the planting 91 million trees to offset the same level of emissions, according to 2017 data from Global Workplace Analytics.
Global Workplace Analytics also notes that office equipment energy consumption rate is twice that of home office equipment energy consumption, and 70% of employees report they would see their companies in a more favorable light if they helped them reduce their carbon emissions.
Laura, a FlexJobs reader, shared this:
"I have now worked exclusively at home for almost 24 years. By the estimate above, I've avoided emitting 86,400,000 tons of commuting-related greenhouse gasses annually (that's the equivalent of planting over 2 billion trees!). The wear and tear on my vehicle is also reduced exponentially. My car stays in the garage almost every weekday, unless I have any work-related errands to run, reducing wear and tear on my car, oil changes, and gas usage. When I started working at home, it was a convenience, but looking at these numbers, I now see it as my own contribution to saving the planet."
There is also the added benefit of remote workers being able to continue working through major weather events, such as floods, snow storms, and heat waves. This adds resilience to the economy and decreases risks to individuals even if disasters continue to increase due to climate change.
Work Flexibility, the Environment, and the UN's SDGs
Remote work supports roughly 50 percent of the UN's SDGs. The benefits to companies, employees, and the environment are clear. Learn more how you and your company can begin contributing to environmental sustainability through flexible work arrangements.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE UN'S SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS >>>
Photo Credit: bigstockphoto.com
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NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct to cost $7,996.95 USD
Lenses and adapters Nikon NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct
Matthew Allard ACS 10th Oct 2019
The NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct is going to cost $7,996.95 USD and it will start shipping at the end of this month.
The NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct is a full frame, manual focus only, large aperture, standard 58mm prime. It is the fastest lens in Nikon's history. The inspiration for building this lens dates all the way back to 1977 when the original AI Noct-NIKKOR 58mm f/1.2 standard prime lens was released. The name Noct comes from "Nocturne" (a musical composition inspired by or evocative of the night).
The NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct is positioned at the very top of the S-Line. Nikon was able to build this lens because of the advanced design flexibility afforded by the Z mount.
According to Nikon, the optical design incorporates a large-diameter ground aspherical element, which reduces spherical aberrations and distortion in order to achieve high sharpness and accurate rendering. An ARNEO coat, along with a Nano Crystal Coat and fluorine coat, has also been applied to individual elements to greatly suppress flare and ghosting for clean, color-accurate imagery when working in strong lighting conditions.
The Noct has 17 lens elements, 10 lens groups, and 11 aperture blades. It also has an 82mm front filter diameter and the minimum focus distance is 64 ft. (0.5m.) from the focal plane.
Nikon also says that their engineers have achieved optimum continuity of bokeh with Noct. But it's not just the bokeh that's so impressive—it's the ideal smooth transition from the tack-sharp focal plane to the beautifully blurred background. Even when your subject-background distance is inadequate, Noct produces stunning depth and emphasis.
I got to have a quick play with the lens back at CP+ in February. The NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct is a beast of a lens and it weighs in at a whopping 70.6 oz. (2kg).
From my short time using the lens these were my takeaways:
Exceptionally sharp, even when used wide open at f/0.95
Very round bokeh
Beautiful soft fall off and rendering of out of focus areas
Nicely weighted focus ring
Very solidly made
Image copyright: Newsshooter
The lens is nice to use and despite it only being manual focus it is easy enough to get sharp focus at f/0.95. The focus rotation of the barrel was quite big for a stills lens, but it certainly helps when getting focus at wide apertures.
Just like other Nikon Z mount lenses, the NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct has a small electronic display on the top of the lens which allows you to quickly confirm aperture, focus distance, and depth of field settings. Also, like other S-series Z-mount lenses, there is a programmable control ring that can be set for intuitive adjustment over a variety of camera and exposure settings.
The Noct has also been updated with an assignable Fn button for lens-based control over shooting settings.
In a nice touch, Nikon has included both feet and meter markings on the lens barrel.
In a lot of ways the lens reminded me of the Zeiss Otus, both in terms of feel and look. I have a feeling Nikon is making this lens in the hopes that it will be optically better than any other full frame lens that is currently available.
For $7,996.95 USD the NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct lens comes complete with the custom Trunk Case CT-101 and HN-38 Hood.
The limiting factor of this lens is that it is only available in Nikon Z mount. Who knows, maybe someone will try and do a PL mount conversion.
If you own a Nikon Z6 or Z7 and have deep pockets, as well as a penchant for the ultimate optical performance, this lens is probably for you.


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Lives at stake
This is what's really happening on the Mediterranean Sea
On June 10th the Aquarius, a search-and-rescue ship operated by aid groups in the Mediterranean Sea, was refused safe harbour in Italy and Malta after rescuing 629 people.
Over a hundred of these people were children travelling without their parents, along with six women who were pregnant.
The Mediterranean search-and-rescue ship MS Aquarius. Photo: Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet (Flickr)
In the same week as the Aquarius was refused safe harbour, the crew of a U.S. ship in the midst of carrying out routine operations off the Libyan coast, caught sight of an overcrowded rubber dinghy in distress. The sailors saved 41 lives. It is unknown how many were lost at sea.
People continue to die in the Mediterranean
It took five days for the Italian government to agree to accept that these deeply traumatised people would be allowed to enter Europe, where they are entitled under international law to seek asylum.
Since then, several ships have run into similar problems, forced to drift in the sea, with hundreds on board until political agreements are reached. And people continue to die in the Mediterranean. In one week in June, Spain rescued 933 from the sea and recovered four bodies.
While in each recent incident a solution was ultimately reached to accommodate those onboard these ships – Spain for example agreed to welcome those on-board the Aquarius, and France has offered to host those who wish to seek asylum in France, this piecemeal approach puts people's lives at risk.
Fleeing the horror of Libya
Only one in five people who travel through North Africa ultimately attempt the trip to Europe. And, of those who do, a significant number have been duped by people smugglers into believing that Europe is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or they are fleeing the horror of Libya .
Whilst these search-and-rescue ships may not dock at ports in northern Europe, the people on board, many of them vulnerable and traumatised and all of them with rights, are our shared responsibility.
When lives are still being lost on the Mediterranean Sea, each and every one of us can and should step up and speak out.
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Conflict in Libya
What's happening in Libya? Five facts you need to know.
Lost in the desert or drowned at sea: The perils of the world's most dangerous migration route
Tortured and on the run from militias: The young men who escaped Libya
Rescuing hope
Humanity at its best: the eight moments that gave us hope in 2018
Learn more about the IRC.