Pakistan & Kashmir

NOVANEWS   by David Swanson   Afghan Women Behind the Wheel   KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — I’ve been fortunate to meet some very talented photographers and film-makers here in Afghanistan.  We’re planning an Afghan Film Festival for the United States this fall. One film director Sahraa Karimi has produced an engaging and illuminating documentary called “Afghan Women Behind the Wheel.”  When she told me the title with a bit of an accent, I thought the last word was “Veil.”  It could almost as well have been.  The film is about the limited rights and options of women in a country that is not just poor and war-ravaged, but in which many men passionately believe women to be inferior. The movie has great footage for anyone wondering what life in Kabul looks like, and it tells the stori...

NOVANEWS by David Swanson Audio Message from Afghanistan to ‘Stanford Says No to War’   . .                  

NOVANEWS   A recent photo showing the scene of a bomb blast in northwest Pakistan Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik says at least 1,500 people were killed in more than 1,330 bomb attacks across the Asian country in 2010. Malik also told Pakistani lawmakers on Friday that 4,968 people were injured in the 1,331 bomb explosions last year, a Press TV correspondent reported. Taliban militants have recently waged a campaign of bomb blasts in northwestern Pakistan, where government troops are fighting militants in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan. In the last several years, Taliban also destroyed hundreds of schools, especially in the areas of Swat Valley and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, previously known as the North-West Frontier Province, as part of their acti...

NOVANEWS   by Zabi Rashidi Orders Probe Robe Into Deadly UN Protest Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered his government to investigate deadly Koran-burning protests that killed up to two dozen people, including seven foreign UN staff, his spokesman said Monday. Angry protests over the burning of a Koran by a Florida pastor, Terry Jones began in the relatively peaceful northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif. Seven members of the UN mission to the war-torn nation were killed when the protesters attacked the world body’s office. A Norwegian, a Swede, a Romanian and four Nepalese guards were among the dead. Five Afghan protesters were also killed in clashes with police. A dozen other people were killed in two days of violent protests in the southern city of Kandahar. UN Office Attacke...

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...