Nestled in the hills of Laguna Beach, CA overlooking the Orange County coastline, a slight hint of salt in the breeze as Gen Y TV spoke with documentary filmmaker and political commentator, Stephen K. Bannon. With his latest film, “The Undefeated,” about to debut in 80 million homes through major cable and satellite companies, Bannon’s eagerness to talk to youthful viewers pushed his personal victory aside. For the next hour, I spoke with this truly humble gentleman about the existing opportunities and challenges that face my generation.

A graduate of Harvard Business School, a Surface Warfare Officer for the US Navy, and a former investment banker for Goldman Sachs, Bannon is a remarkable example of how filmmaking can come at any age and point in one’s life. Technology has enabled anyone with a digital camera to creatively express opinions as entertainment, and as a result, Bannon has written and directed four documentary films in less than two years. With our country’s finances spiraling out of control, Bannon has particularly shed light on issues that are currently affecting America’s wellbeing. He emphasized the importance of storytelling and the necessity for being passionate about the topic you are conveying. He further explained the amount of time and effort that must be committed to a project, and said, “be prepared to spend a year of your life” hashing out the story.

Moving into the specifics of his work, I asked why he chose to dedicate a film to Sarah Palin, to which he replied, because “her story has never been told.” He immediately followed with, “she is an incredibly accomplished executive who took on a corrupt and compromised political class virtually single-handed.”

The many misconceptions of Palin personified by the mainstream media opened Bannon’s film. He used this approach to gain an emotional reaction from the audience and demonstrate the influence pop culture has on the younger generation. But what started out as a conversation about independent filmmaking quickly turned to the state of the economy and the daunting problems that are soon to be inherited by those 18-35 years-old.

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**Video embed updated

**Post updated with link to downloadable video.

With breaking news out of Palestine today that a top aide to President Mahmoud Abbas has been literally caught with his pants down, rape tapes seem to be popping up all over the pious Muslim world.  And some are
horrifically worse than others.

Last month on the FOX Business Network, Colonel Oliver North revealed a startling piece of information.  Conservative mullahs and elements within the Haqqani terror network – known as the backbone of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the Af/Pak theater – are working to take the Haqqanis down from the inside.  Their key weapon is a disturbing video that shows the serial sexual assault of several young girls.

Colonel North explained that no one in American intelligence had yet seen this video.  Here it is:

***STRONGEST POSSIBLE CONTENT WARNING.  NOT SAFE FOR WORK***

DOWNLOAD VIDEO HERE.

Transcript here.

When I travelled to Afghanistan to research my novel, The Apostle, contacts of mine introduced me to a mid-level Taliban commander in the Haqqani network.  Over tea and considerable time talking together, he provided me with some very good, inside-baseball information on the Haqqanis and how their network operates. (more…)

This is the kind of story that might be expected to draw a journalist’s attention, for it has the kind of elements that should outrage the average reader: a commander playing politics with the military, troops called upon to execute a mission they had neither expected nor been trained for, and subsequent accusations that heavy casualties might have been avoided, but for politically-motivated shell games.

The commander in question is the commander-in-chief, who has made it the policy of his administration to reduce troop deployments in the “bad war” (Iraq) while increasing the number of boots on the ground to fight the “good war” in Afghanistan. While the President has followed through on the latter, the former has yet to happen in any substantive way and our troops have paid the price for this political sleight of hand.

On February 17, 2009, the Defense Department announced, to great fanfare, that it was deploying an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, including the 5^th Stryker Brigade, 2^nd Infantry Division. The problem with that, which would soon become evident when the 5^th Stryker entered combat, is that the Brigade was trained to fight one kind of war and then, apparently for the sake of political expediency, deployed to fight quite another.

One of the 5^th Stryker’s units, the 1^st Battalion, 17^th Infantry Regiment (1-17) has been particularly hard hit since arriving in Afghanistan last fall, suffering twenty-one combat deaths in one battle in the Arghandab district alone. One of the battalion’s company commanders, Capt. Joel Kassulke was replaced after that action, a move that angered some of the Captain’s troops, according to this Army Times article. The problem, some soldiers said, was not their commander, but mismatched training: (more…)

Fourth of a series.  Find parts one, two and three here.  And don’t miss this report, either.

Martha Coakley declares that terrorists are “gone from Afghanistan” and has no idea the Taliban are either terrorists or our sworn enemies.

No one ever accused Martha Coakley of having any foreign-policy experience.  After all, as a career lawyer, prosecutor, state attorney general and lifelong Democrat party hack, the “Massachusette” can’t rationally be expected to be as up on the nuances of the “war on terror” as, say, Joe Biden.

Still, her remarks during her one debate with Scott Brown on January 11 should trouble anyone who hopes that a potential successor to the warm body currently occupying the deceased Lion of the Senate’s seat would have, shall we say, a greater grasp of the geo-political situation.

First, in her own words, her foreign-policy credentials:

I have a sister who lives overseas and she’s been in England and now lives in the Middle East.  I’ve spent a lot of time on my own traveling, ‘cause I’m interested in it.  Less so as attorney general, and my responsibilities don’t take me overseas.

Unbelievable?  See for yourself:

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