Far East

NOVANEWS NY Times Covers Up Washington’s Monstrous Evil By Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening  The NY Times on Monday ran a lengthy piece (“One Woman’s Mission to Free Laos from Millions of Unexploded Bombs”) on Channapha Khamvongas, a 42-year-old Laotian-American woman on a mission to get the US to help Laos clean up the countless unexploded anti-personnel “bombis” that it dropped, which are still killing peasants — especially children — half a century after the so-called “Secret War” by the US against Laos ended. The article explained that Khamvongas, as a young adult in Virginia, had read a book by anti-war activist Fred Branfman, Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life Under an Air War (originally published in 1972 and reissued in 2013), which featured accounts and hand drawings by...

NOVANEWS by Dr Richard Falk   After more than 30 years I recently spent a week in the Philippines, giving a few arranged talks at universities, meeting with NGOs, and old friends who shared their understanding of this fascinating fast growing country of approximately 105 million people living on an archipelago that consists of more than 7,107 islands. Additionally, of course, Manila is a mega-city that exhibits traffic at its worst, colorful jeepneys by the hundreds that are a distinctive national mode of urban transportation, a kind of customized bus service in smaller vehicles colorfully adorned, and now almost as many malls as churches epitomizing the economic and social intrusion of neoliberalism in the guise of globalization. Probably because of the large number of afflu...

NOVANEWS By Tony Cartalucci Global Research, Image: Monks mingle in the background with protesters marching against attempts to recognize and empower stateless Rohingya refugees. Racism, bigotry, and savagery are hallmarks of this street mob which also so happens to be the same mob supporting “democracy icon,” Aung San Suu Kyi. Not unlike other US-backed “color revolutions” around the world, Myanmar’s “Saffron Revolution” is sold as an ultra-liberal pro-democracy, progressive movement, with one of the West’s most successful neo-colonial creations to date, Aung San Suu Kyi, portrayed and revered as a modern day, secular “saint” of neo-liberalism and Western democratic values. Underneath the pageantry and spin, however, is harbored ultra-right racism and unhinged violence that if ev...

NOVANEWS "Semper Castleton," an expat living in Thailand for more than twenty years, reports on the power struggle between NWO fronts and the military. Either way, the Thai people will not gain the democracy they seek.  Three years ago, Castleton reported here "that Thailand is now on the slippery slope to a police state." His fears have been realized.   by Semper Castleton  For the past few years, Thailand has been controlled by a coalition government based on the political machine by Taksin Shinawatra , the deposed Prime Minister ousted by the 2006 military coup . This government has been fronted by his sister (some people say daughter) Yingluck Shinawatra. (left, Shinawatra supporters, typical Soros color revolution) It has been a weak coalition. However, it has allowed Taksin Shinaw...

NOVANEWS For the U.S. government, old lies die hard, even lies as discredited as blaming the North Vietnamese for the Tonkin Gulf incident in 1964, the non-event that launched the Vietnam War and caused ongoing tragedies for those who bombed and those who were bombed, as Myra MacPherson reported from Hanoi. By Myra MacPherson This is Vietnam as seen through the lens of five American ex-soldiers: They returned to their former battlefield, where three saw fierce fighting, to live full time among and to aid the people burdened by two terrible legacies of that war. These tragedies are the thousands of children and farmers who still are blown up or injured by bombs dropped half a century ago that didn’t explode back then. And the chillingly large number of children and adults who suffer from...

NOVANEWS By THOMAS FULLER BANGKOK — More than 50 government soldiers and police officers have been killed in Myanmar in recent days in clashes with an armed ethnic group, the state news media said on Friday, in the latest setback for the government’s national reconciliation efforts. The fighting near the border with China between the Kokang, an ethnic Chinese minority, and government forces is a renewal of a longstanding battle for territory in an impoverished, mountainous area with a history of drug trafficking. The clashes left 47 soldiers and seven police officers dead and 73 members of the government forces wounded, the state news media said. A statement attributed to the Kokang said three of their fighters had been killed. As during previous fighting in the area, civilians fled ...

NOVANEWS An Interview With Allan Nairn on Indonesia and Guatemala by CRAIG HUGHES and JOHN M. MILLER During the 2014 presidential campaign in Indonesia, investigative journalist Allan Nairn released previously unpublished discussions with presidential candidate and notorious military leader Prabowo Subianto. Prabowo, who received significant training and support from the United States government, has been implicated in mass killings in Indonesia, East Timor and West Papua during the 1980s and 1990s. Nairn’s articles were based on a 2001 interview between the two, and Prabowo talked candidly about the risk of committing massacres in front of the press and his view that Indonesia was not ready for democracy. As a result of the reports, Nairn was criminally charged at the request of the ...