Asia

NOVANEWS   By Hamid Waheed Covert operations under media support have emerged as one of most powerful tool to psychologically defeat a community and force it to follow desired line of order.  The hostile media controlled by the global and regional powers  focus on molding ideas, building perceptions, and convincing under educated people of poor third world countries. Pakistan in general, the province of Balochistan in particular presently face this hostile media onslaught on lines of Kurd Model. The main theme projected says that security apparatus is the main coercive tool being used against the natives to deprive them of their livelihood. They blame Pakistani media for not reporting on the brutal realities of Balochistan in any meaningful manner. Despite the fact that the provinc...

NOVANEWS   Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair of West Midland PSC   by David Swanson KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — In honor of April 4, 1967, and April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke out against war and when he was killed, I spent my first full day in Afghanistan on April 4, 2011, avoiding violence and discussing nonviolent activism with those practicing it here. The previous night I had spoken with a number of foreign aid and development workers here in Kabul, all of whom were upset, both at Afghans who in recent days had killed workers like themselves and at a preacher in Florida whose burning of a Koran had enraged Taliban types from a safe distance. Attacks in multiple cities on April 1st and 2nd looked planned and coordinated. April 3rd saw a nonviolent protest in Jalalaba...

NOVANEWS     80 years old Madivi Bheema beaten by Salwa Judum   Burnt House   Villagers living in fear and withuot Shelter   Woman raped by Salwa Judum (Koya commandos)   Woman raped by Salwa Judum (Koya commandos)   A 13 member fact finding team of Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisations visited the Chintalnar Area of Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh to probe into the incidents of atrocities perpetrated by the Salwa Judum and the state forces on the adivasis living in this area between 11th and 16th of March 2011. The incidents was propagated by the police as an ‘encounter’ between the CRPF and Maoists in which, according to the police, 36 Maoists were killed. Also 3 SPOs were killed and 9 others were injured. The police ...

NOVANEWS   Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair os West Midland PSC by crescentandcross Many blame a Florida pastor’s desecration for dozens of deaths in Afghanistan. Is it more complicated than that? An Afghan protester beats a burning effigy of President Obama during a rally in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, on Sunday. A little more than two weeks ago, Florida pastor Terry Jones orchestrated a bizarre mock-trial against the Quran in his Gainesville church. At its conclusion, Jones set fire to the holy book. In a different era, the episode would probably have been little more than an afterthought. And, to be sure, it’s just one example among many acts of fringe Islamaphobia in a post-9/11 America. However — driven in large part by the power of the Internet — video of the burning has trig...

NOVANEWS By Yousaf Alamgirian   No one can ever appreciate the attack on UN staff members serving in Afghanistan as UN staff was always there to facilitate the aggrieved masses. It was an unfortunate that innocent lives have been taken during the attack. No community can declare the same as a justified move. But one thing which has to be kept in mind that why the Muslims world over have come out for protests. It was the fanatic Terry Jone’s dirty resolve to set ablaze The Quran. It seems even advanced societies are behaving so radical that they are not prepared to honor each other religions. The societies where one can’t hurt any individual’s self esteem and even staring at someone is considered a crime how comes that a Terry Jones can take so big a decision which has now i...

NOVANEWS   An Endless Journey Must End By Sajjad Shaukat   India claims that Kashmir movement has slowed down and the situation is returning towards normalization. But since the partition of the Sub-continent, after passing through various faces, this war of Kashmir’s liberation has become an endless movement which continues unabated. As regards the latest phase of Indian state terrorism, like the past, intermittent curfews, crackdowns, arrests, detentions and massacre by the Indian forces have continued against the non-violent mass uprising (Intifada) of Kashmiris. Thus more than 3000 innocent people have been killed during this new phase of the struggle. In this connection, on July 10, 2010, a rigid curfew was imposed in most of Indian-held Kashmir (IHK), while shops and bu...

NOVANEWS by Michael Farrell     As a college student in the 60s, I heard a lot of concern that we were going to lose the war in Vietnam because of the home front – that Jane Fonda and Abbie Hoffman were giving material comfort to the enemy. I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about that, and the nature and extent of Free Speech, as well as about the nature of personal responsibility. When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they were under a set of assumptions based on the thought of people like John Locke, Thomas Paine and Hobbes. Paine as the citizen of the world was arguing from the point of view of maximum freedom with a strong dose of personal responsibility. Locke, the philosopher looking at the world from the point of view of post-Restoration, Protestant England, was ...

NOVANEWS   Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair of West Midland PSC   From the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Reconciliation of Civil Hearts: The ordinary voice of peace from Afghanistan Salam, ‘aleikum! – - سلام علیکم!   We welcome you and the possibility of peace to this forgotten but gorgeous place. We thank you for your hearts of peace in joining us today. We, the ordinary youth of Afghanistan, have a message of peace for you, for all the respected leaders of our disconnected world and in particular, for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Winner President Obama. We are struggling because it seems that nowadays, the voice of war has its space and its rights; we wonder if the voice of peace has equal space and rights. We wish to raise our voice of peace to give it a chance, without fea...

NOVANEWS   Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair of West Midland PSC   OUR SECTARIAN DIVIDE   By General Mirza Alsam Beg The sectarian divide of the Muslim World has been the cause of serious conflicts in the past, and continues to have its toll, particularly for the last thirty years, with external forces exploiting this weakness. The countries which have suffered most are Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Palestine’ Lebanon and Pakistan, and the one being targeted now, is Bahrain, from where the New Great Game begins. On a larger canvas, one would find that, during the last thirty years, sectarianism has grow into “two centers of power”, namely the Pakhtun Power and the Shia Power, determining the security parameters of the entire Asian region. These ‘centers of power’ can be called, t...