Latest news with #PsyOps
Express Tribune
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Leaked doc: RAW behind April 22 killings
The role of Indian Intelligence Agency "Research and Analysis Wing" in the Pahalgam false flag operation has been exposed through a document that has been leaked through the social media application "Telegram", sources said on Thursday. The sources said that the document was also clear evidence of the involvement of the Indian government in the Pahalgam attack. The contradiction between the instructions given in the document and the implementation of the plan led to the false flag, sources opined. The document had instructed that the anti-Pakistan narrative should be made to the media 36 hours after the attack. According to the document, this accusation should be made on the ISI after 36 hours but the media immediately blamed Pakistan for the false flag operation and ruined the plan of the Indian intelligence agencies. It is clear from the document and these contradictions that Indian intelligence agency "RAW" was also given instructions from some quarters. The sources informed that the document coming out on social media in this way also seemed to be a manifestation of anti-Hindutva thinking within RAW. According to the sources the Indian government was investigating how the document was leaked on social media. The document leaked on social media has made shocking revelations. The document titled "Psy Ops" and Narrative Control clearly stated: "The narrative of the incident should be structured in such a way that it emerges as an attack on the state and non-Muslims". The RAW Document said this time will be very important to raise this incident. The RAW document also gave the directives that media assets will be mobilized at the scene of the incident 36 to 48 hours before the attack. The RAW document also said that an operation will be carried out in Anantnag district. The document said that on the pretext of monitoring the movement of tourists, our field operators will be deployed at specific places. Within two to four hours of the attack, statements of witnesses will be taken under the artificial intelligence system, the RAW document said. Pictures of the incident will be recreated with the help of blurred videos and a misinformation campaign will be run through more than 200 social media accounts instead of a central hashtag, the leaked document said. Trends will be spread without control to blame the ISI and an attempt will be made to divert the discussion from Kashmir to global Islamic conspiracies. As per RAW document, the Northern Command will link correspondence found near the attack site to ISI and the Northern Command will forensically leak alleged ISI documents. The operation has been planned keeping in mind presence of US Vice President JD Vance in India and international community will also be appealed for solidarity on counter-terrorism.
The Guardian
09-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Accountant 2 review – Ben Affleck's autistic assassin returns for solid sequel
Ben Affleck may have given up Batman, but he's not done with superheroes. In the 2016 film The Accountant, Affleck played Christian Wolff, one of many aliases for an autistic mathematical savant who worked as a forensic accountant and money launderer for every stripe of black money organization. A plethora of confusing and/or outright sad flashbacks served as his superhero origin story: a cold military PsyOps father trained Chris, bullied for his difference and struggling with tantrums, and his neurotypical brother to become lethal fighting machines. The film, written by Bill Dubuque (co-creator of Netflix's Ozark), treated Chris's neurodivergence as a superpower, the key to exceptional skill in all fields – a noble intention, though one squandered by the misanthropic stupidity of everything around it. In practice, Chris was a pretty standard-issue movie assassin, and The Accountant a solid but overly complicated and forgettable action movie that did not need nor set up a second chapter. Nevertheless, business persists. Like Another Simple Favor, this year's SXSW opening night premiere film, The Accountant 2 is a long-gestating sequel from Amazon MGM Studios to a modest 2010s movie costarring Anna Kendrick that performed well outside of theaters; The Accountant was low-key the most-rented movie of 2017 in the US, gaining a relatively loyal if quiet following. And also like Another Simple Favor, The Accountant 2 is not so much a redux as fan service that leans into the inherent ridiculousness of the enterprise. The Accountant 2, which reunites Dubuque with director Gavin O'Connor, is an even more convoluted, impenetrable, outlandish spectacle of male hyper-competence than its predecessor, doubling down on what one might call divorced dad camp. That's mostly for the better. The Accountant 2 is a more fun affair than The Accountant, if you're a fan of very loud shoot 'em ups, nonsensical crime webs and rogue good guys fighting obviously very bad guys, though this outing is sadly missing Anna Kendrick. (Her Dana, Chris's erstwhile accounting accomplice/romantic interest, is presumably living well outside Chicago.) Chris, meanwhile, has spent the intervening eight years – the sequel was in development for at least six – keeping to himself in his Airstream of black-market alternative payments. He's still receiving arrangements from his handler Justine (Allison Robertson), a nonverbal autistic savant based at the Harbor Neuroscience treatment center in New Hampshire, but mostly laying low in Boise. Chris gets back in the action game, however, at the call of Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), a former ally of sorts from the treasury department's financial crimes enforcement office, who all inexplicably have guns and combat training. The death of someone close to both plunges them into an investigation that involves, in no particular order: an organized crime network based out of a fish shop; Central American human trafficking gangs; the cruelties of the migrant journey from El Salvador to Texas; a series of high-profile hits around the world; one missing autistic youth in Juarez; and an elusive assassin known as Anaïs (Daniella Pineda). I'm not explaining more for the sake of spoilers and because I genuinely could not follow the labyrinthine and once again poorly integrated plot, but suffice to say, it's both a lot and inconsequential. The plot is not the point. The point is that Chris calls on his estranged hitman brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) for assistance, allowing for the film's chief pleasure: two macho actors chopping it up as brothers who don't know how to be brothers. Just two lifelong loners – no partners, no kids, no friends, no dependents – wondering if they're happy. The Accountant had an air of overweening self-seriousness to its proceedings, occasionally leavened by Chris's inability to read social cues (with Affleck's performance of neurodivergence boiling down to just avoiding eye contact); the sequel attempts more goodnatured humor, laughing with Chris's idiosyncrasies – hacking a dating algorithm but struggling with the dates, figuring out how to line dance, continually surprising people with his Clark Kent-style pocket protector to action hero reveal. Affleck still plays Chris as a slightly more socially awkward version of an unflappable movie assassin; Bernthal, who played Braxton in the first movie with a sort of impenetrable worldly panache, goes fully off the chain, chewing every scene as a hitman of supreme confidence and desperate vulnerability who cannot sit still. Not exactly continuous, but highly watchable. Together, the pair carry what could and nearly does devolve into an illegible pursuit of indecipherable crime under a hail of gunfire. All that, plus an Avengers-esque hub of teenage autistic savants using their special abilities to outwit and out data hunt everyone else. ('That's my people,' says Chris.) I wouldn't necessarily call it progressive to show neurodivergent youth hacking through every privacy law imaginable in the name of ability. But it is a nice sentiment of inclusion – the film cast many autistic actors for the roles – and a gesture at celebrating difference, though of course that difference only skews in favor of extreme skills. Still, sentiment aside, this is a movie of cinematic adrenaline and ludicrous set-ups – ironically for its hero, stupid pleasures, but the fun kind of stupid, the kind that draws loud cheers from a crowd at a SXSW premiere and gets people streaming on the couch. It's neither groundbreaking nor exceptional, but it does deliver above the admittedly low bar for a questionable sequel, with enough juice for another at-home hit. The Accountant 2 is showing at the SXSW film festival and will be in cinemas on 25 April
