ORLANDO (Florida) – “I see the fanatics of ‘cancel culture’, not only in the violent squares but also in the institutions, remove statues, modify books and cartoons, change the names of the streets out of a sense of guilt towards a common history that they would like to rewrite. Will we surrender in front of this? No, we will not. We will fight it head on”. This is one of the passages of the speech that the honorable Giorgia Meloni, president of the ECR (the European Conservative Party) and leader of Fratelli d’Italia, gave in Orlando, Florida, at the political conference of the American Conservatives and Republicans, held over the weekend, to which she was invited by the CPAC to participate as a speaker among the most important political leaders on the international scene.
KABUL – Italy and Afghanistan: faraway, so close. After the “Taliban” opening in recent days, with the invitation of the spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid to reopen the tricolor embassy in Kabul, today the Italian Foreign Minister, Luigi Di Maio, declared that Italy wants to guarantee a government presence in the Islamic Emirate. “With the countries of the area and with our partners we are reflecting on the creation of a joint presence in Afghanistan with mainly consular functions and which serves as an immediate point of contact”, said Di Maio in the briefing on Afghanistan in the Parliament. (more…)
KABUL – The image of the American general who, lastly, boarded the plane which, with its take-off, marks the end of twenty years of mission in Afghanistan, went around the world. He is Christopher Donahue: 17 US military missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, North Africa and Eastern Europe. And the image, tweeted by the U.S. Department of Defense, was taken at night: the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division (which is part of the 18th Airborne Corps based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina) walks alone, with his weapon in his right hand, ready to board C-17 with the Kabul airport hangar in the background, just before the deadline set by the United States for evacuations (and the ultimatum of the Taliban). (more…)
OTTAWA – Over 1,100 people already evacuated and the promise of “tireless” work to continue ripping people out of conflict-ravaged Afghanistan “as long as it is safe to do so”. This, in a nutshell, is what emerged from today’s press conference which saw four ministries of the Trudeau government intervene on the Afghan question. Maryam Monsef (Women), Marco Mendicino (Immigration), Harjit Sajjan (Defense) and Marc Garneau (Foreign Affairs) took stock of the situation, answering questions from journalists. (more…)
TORONTO – The question is: how many Canadians are still stuck in Afghanistan? The federal government will not disclose it. “Security reasons”. “Due to the security situation in Afghanistan, Global Affairs does not disclose the number of Canadians registered in the Canadian overseas registration database (Roca),” reads an e-mailed statement from a Global Affairs Canada (Gac) spokesperson to Global News, on Sunday night. And, above all, it is unknown if, how and when all these people (and with them the 20,000 Afghans that the government announced on Friday that it wants to welcome) will be able to “land” in Canada. (more…)