The suffering of the people of Pakistan is largely unknown in the West. A veil of silence has been carefully drawn over the number of people killed every day by American drones and Taliban murders. But recently a small corner of the curtain was raised as the result of a particularly appalling event.

Yesterday Malala Yousafzai was brutally shot by gunmen as she was returning home from school. Masked assassins stepped onto a bus filled with terrified children, identified her, and shot her at point blank range in the head and neck.

Who are these men who wage war on defenceless schoolgirls? We know who they are because they have already admitted their guilt. The cowardly murderers who perpetrated this vile deed feel no need to hide away from public opinion. They feel no shame, for they are utterly shameless. The Pakistan Taliban has claimed responsibility for this act of bloodthirsty savagery.

A cheap, crude, anti-Islamic film entitled The Innocence of Muslims, produced and promoted by reactionary Christian fundamentalists in the United States and posted on the internet in July, has led to demonstrations in many countries around the world, including attacks on US embassies and in the case of Libya to the killing of four US diplomats at the US Consulate in Benghazi. We look into why all this is happening.

According to reports, the film originally had the title Desert Warriors and was not about Muhammad at all. Actors who had taken part in the film have claimed they were unaware of the fact that the film was about Muhammad, and that the storyline which transformed the film into the format in which it eventually appeared on the internet was the result of dubbing. The scripting was deliberately designed to be insulting to Muslims.

On Monday, September 3, most of the miners arrested during the Marikana massacre were released after an outcry of protest forced the state prosecutor to withdraw charges of murder against them. The strike at Lonmin continues as well as strikes and protests at other mines. The incident has clearly revealed the real content of the struggle between left and right in the run up to the ANC Manguang Conference.

It is revealing that the 270 miners and others arrested during the Marikana massacre were charged with murder of their 34 comrades who had been killed by the police. It says a lot about how little has really changed despite the 1994 transition from apartheid to formal capitalist democracy. The “common purpose” doctrine which was used to charge them was widely used by the apartheid regime to send MK and ANC fighters to the gaols, without having to go into the trouble to actually find any proof of their guilt. The doctrine states that people involved in a common activity are equally responsible for any damage that results from it, even if they have not physically committed it.