Monday 1st November – Wikileaks & Rethink Afghanistan

8pm at the Cube Cinema, Stokes Croft, Bristol

Monday 1st November – Wikileaks & Rethink Afghanistan
8pm at the Cube Cinema, Stokes Croft, Bristol
Entry £3/£4 (but nobody refused entry for a lack of funds.)

The war grinds on and on...

The Afghan war grinds on and on with no end in sight. A brutal guerilla conflict set against the backdrop of regional power-plays and endemic corruption, the war has become a bitter pill in contrast to the original optimism that the fall of the Taliban was trumpeted with. Then in July this year the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks publishes thousands of pages of classified material that showed that the brutality, civilian death toll and confusion of the the conflict was far, far worse than NATO had been willing to admit.

Bristol Indymedia is please to have Dr Lee Salter (UWE) introducing the powerful documentary 'Rethink Afghanistan'. Dr Salter's talk will look at WikiLeaks and what this means for journalism, propaganda and the future of the war. Rethink Afghanistan examines the terrible costs of foreign military intervention and occupation in Afghanistan. The continuing application of purely military logic to complex political, social and developmental problems have extracted a catastrophic toll on the population.

Any understanding of the diverse local and tribal issues of Afghanistan and the Pakistani borderlands is distorted by the news-speak simplifications of 'Taliban' or 'Al-Qaeda'. Visiting Afghanistan himself and working with groups in the country engaged in the search for peaceful humanitarian resolutions to the tragic legacy of conflict in the country Greenwald’s documentary is powerful, articulate and emotive.

Including interviews with Afghan women’s groups, local charity and peace workers, ex-Mujahidin fighters, Soviet-era generals and Afghan politicians, this compelling documentary cuts through the bias and spin of mainstream media accounts to deliver a devastating indictment of the disastrous nine year military intervention.

http://www.bristol.indymedia.org
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/

Venue: Cube Cinema: Dove St South (off Kings Square), Bristol
Map: http://microplex.cubecinema.com/cubewebsite/directions.html

Embedded Video Description: Robert Greenwald on Rethink Afghanistan Pt. 1

Embedded Video Description: Rethink Afghanistan War (Part 2): Pakistan

Embedded Video Description: Rethink Afghanistan War (Part 3): Cost of War