Elaine Unterhalter, UCL In August 2021 the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, and since then secondary education for girls in the country has been banned. However, there have been reports of clandestine girls’ schools operating despite the ban. Teenage girls … Continue reading The history of secret education for girls in Afghanistan – and its use as a political symbol
Mathew Guest, Durham University This autumn’s Brazilian presidential election offers a glimpse of how 21st century populist leaders are using religion to enthuse their support base. The incumbent, right-wing firebrand Jair Bolsonaro, rose to power in 2018 with support from … Continue reading Brazil: how populist politicians use religion to help them win
Edl Schamiloglu, University of New Mexico Some of the cases of the mystery ailment that has afflicted U.S. embassy staff and CIA officers off and on since 2016 in Cuba, China, Russia and other countries most likely were caused by pulsed electromagnetic energy, according to a report by a panel of experts convened by national intelligence agencies. The report’s findings are similar to those of another report released by the National Academies in 2020. In that report, a committee of 19 experts in medicine and other fields concluded that directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy is the “most plausible mechanism” to explain … Continue reading Experts suggest US embassies were hit with high-power microwaves – here’s how the weapons work
. Victoria Honeyman, University of Leeds The scenes as American and British troops withdrew from Afghanistan were heartbreaking. People desperate to leave the country they love, offering up their children for transportation to a more peaceful country, being crushed to … Continue reading Global Britain is becoming a stooge of the US
Clare Corbould, Deakin University Since the September 11 terror attacks, there has been no hiding from the increased militarisation of the United States. Everyday life is suffused with policing and surveillance. This ranges from the inconvenient, such as removing shoes at the airport, to the dystopian, such as local police departments equipped with decommissioned tanks too big to use on regular roads. This process of militarisation did not begin with 9/11. The American state has always relied on force combined with the de-personalisation of its victims. The army, after all, dispossessed First Nations peoples of their land as settlers pushed … Continue reading ‘Fortress USA’: How 9/11 produced a military industrial juggernaut
The long relationship between the British and Pakistani armies is transforming, from one based mostly on pomp, ceremony and personal friendships, to one based on shared strategic interests. The Pakistan Army can sometimes be more British than the British Army, at least when it comes to pomp and ceremony. Its cavalry officers have the best horses, and they play in the top polo competitions in Argentina and England; many of their sons go to Britain’s top boarding schools; and they even fashion their moustaches in the same manner as Field Marshal Herbert Kitchener. According to Carey Schofield in her book … Continue reading The British and Pakistani Armies: Sharing Both a Personal and Institutional Future
Mutasim confirmed to be missing in the UAE. PHOTO: FILE ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan on Monday officially confirmed that a senior Taliban leader, Mullah Agha Jan Mutasim, who had started dialogue with Kabul-backed negotiators in Dubai, has been missing in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). After a mysterious silence for nearly two weeks, the Afghan Foreign Ministry on Monday confirmed that Mutasim is missing. “The Afghan government confirms that Agha Jan Mutasim has disappeared in the UAE and we are talking to UAE senior officials to determine his fate,” the Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Ahmed Shakaib Mustaghni said in Kabul. “The talks, unfortunately, have … Continue reading Taliban leader goes missing in UAE
US Secretary of State John Kerry couldn’t hide his frustration anymore as the US-sponsored Palestinian peace process continued to falter. After eight months of wrangling to push talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority forward, he admitted while on a visit to Morocco on April 4 that the latest setback had served as a “reality check” for the peace process. But confining that reality check to the peace process is hardly representative of the painful reality through which the United States has been forced to subsist in during the last few years. The state of US foreign policy in the … Continue reading New US reality: An empire beyond salvation
Exclusive: Sharp increase in under-18s ‘at risk’ of being radicalised into jihadists Government scheme identifies 940 children in danger of being drawn into violent extremism SIMON HOOPER from The Independent.co,uk The number of children and vulnerable adults identified as potential violent extremists by a controversial Government anti-radicalisation initiative has surged by more than 25 per cent in the past year. Since last April at least 940 people have been referred for assessment under the Channel programme because of concerns they are at risk of being drawn into terrorism, according to official figures. The numbers, disclosed by the Association of … Continue reading British under-18s ‘at risk’ of being radicalised? #SignsOfARadicalBaby #RT
Tanks in the streets of Tehran, 1953. (Photo: Wikipedia) In Manufactured Crisis, investigative journalist Gareth Porter details the manipulation and fabrications that have accompanied the current Iranian nuclear situation. The main difference between this and the Iraq war conspiracy, the author says, was that the neoconservatives who were carrying it out never got the war on Iran they wanted. Obtain this book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, from Truthout with a minimum contribution. Just click here. You will be enhancing your knowledge, supporting progressive authors and backing the vital journalism of Truthout. Have we narrowly averted a … Continue reading Current Iran “Crisis” Began With Overthrow of Democratically Elected Government in 1953
Mohammed Abbasi 