Pakistan

Robbie Martin is our final guest for this season as we dissect the 2012 docudrama Zero Dark Thirty. We discussed the difficulty in defining what kind of film this is – somewhere between a spy thriller, a documentary and a dry European art house movie. We get into the well-documented CIA support for the film and ask why this is the only major movie about the Abbottabad raid to get ‘Bin Laden’ and why it wasn’t particularly successful. Was the film meant to serve as a substitute for any real evidence of what happened in Abbottabad in 2011?

Washington and Brussels pronounced Islamabad the guilty party for the failed Resolute Support Mission and the strengthening of terrorist groups in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani-American relations have been deteriorating lately, having suffered a series of crises. Several reasons for this have been posited, the most probable being the further deepening of differences in the approaches to the solution of regional challenges.

On this episode Christoph and I turn our attention to Kazakhstan and the June 5th mass shooting. We examine the attack itself, breaking down what happened and the governments swift response. We explore the socioeconomic problems facing western Kazakhstan and how this may have played a decisive role is spurring on these attacks. We discuss the recent land protests across the Central Asian nation, and give a historical overview of Aktobe, including the role of western Kazakhstan in propping up the ruling regime.

By Jack Serle | Bureau of Investigative Journalism | July 1, 2016 The US government today claimed it has killed between 64 and 116 “non-combatants” in 473 counter-terrorism strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya between January 2009 and the end of 2015. This is a fraction of the 380 to 801 civilian casualty range […]

21st Century Wire says…

EUpocalypse, run the jewels and girls gone wild + this day in history w/St. John's Dance and our song of the day by SassyBlack on your Morning Monarchy for June 24, 2016.

Brian CLOUGHLEY | Strategic Culture Foundation | 19.06.2016 The prospect of Hillary Clinton being President of the United States of America is one to fill our minds with dread concerning the likely posture of Washington in foreign affairs should she ever attain the Oval Office. There is no doubt she would continue or even increase […]

Although people often conflate democracy and liberalism, there is a fine distinction between politics and culture; a democratic system of governance falls in the category of politics while liberalism, as a value system, falls in the category of culture. When we say that Islam and democracy are inconsistent, we make a category mistake as serious as the Islamists’ misperception that democracy is somehow un-Islamic. They too mix up democracy with liberalism.

Al-Manar | May 25, 2016 The Afghan Taliban on Wednesday announced influential religious figure Haibatullah Akhundzada as their new leader after confirming supremo Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s death in a US drone strike. “Haibatullah Akhundzada has been appointed as the new leader of the Islamic Emirate (Taliban) after a unanimous agreement in the shura (supreme council), […]

According to Seymour Hersh, the original plan of the Obama Administration regarding the disclosure of the execution of Osama bin Laden to the press was that he had been killed in a drone strike in the Hindu Kush mountains on the Afghan side of the border. But things didn’t go as planned during the operation as a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound and the whole town now knew that an operation was underway.