World

NOVANEWS Lalgarh: 8 months after ‘arrest’, Raju and Jaydeb produced before Jhargram court Rajeesh | August 24, 2010 at 11:51 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/pglpM-1UZ OUR CORRESPONDENT Raju’s wife Kanika (top) and mother-in-law at their Jirapara home on Friday. (Picture by Samir Mondal) (Picture by Samir Mondal) Midnapore, Aug. 22: West Midnapore police have been accused of arresting two alleged Maoists from Lalgarh and holding on to them for eight months before producing them in a Jhargram court on Friday. The district police, however, have denied that it was they who arrested Raju Adak and Jaydeb Bera, who had disappeared from Lalgarh in December. Officers claimed the duo were brought to Bengal from Jharkhand police’s custody. West Midnapore sup...

  NOVANEWS   I told them I was not a Maoist: Anti-Vedanta leader Lada Sikaka Majhi Rajeesh | August 22, 2010 at 8:32 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/pglpM-1Ut Both the SPs of Rayagada and Kalahandi deny that anti-Vedanta activist Lada Sikaka Majhi (35) was tortured in custody. But the deep injury marks on Majhi's body have something else to say. Majhi is associated with the Niyamgiri Surakshya Parishad, which is opposing the Vedanta Group's proposed mining lease in Niyamgiri hills, spread over Kalahandi and Rayagada districts, both about 550 km south-west of Bhubaneswar. It is meant to be a captive unit of the group's R8,400-crore, 500,000-tonne aluminium plant in Orissa. On August 9, Majhi was on his way to Raipur in Chhattisgarh in a vehicle, along w...

NOVANEWS Spy: Stolen U.S. dollars exit Afghan airport controlled by Karzai brother August 24, 2010  by Michael Leon   Ahmed Wali Karzai From Jeff Stein in the Post Afghan intelligence service reports in the hands of NATO-led forces say that the major exit point for stolen American dollars is through the airport in Kandahar, controlled by President Hamid Karzai’s brother. According to a Washington Post report on Friday, U.S. and Afghan authorities, “alarmed by an exodus of money from Afghanistan … are trying to constrict a flow of cash through the country’s main airport,” in Kabul. The airport, according to the report, is “believed to be a major conduit for drug proceeds and diverted foreign aid.” But a former CIA official who works with Afghanistan’s spy service said the airport at Kand...

NOVANEWS August 23, 2010  by Hanan Habibzai Justice means peace,peace means freedom,war means violence and violence is crime. Peace can be restored only by the prosecution of war criminals in Afghanistan. By Hanan Habibzai  STAFF WRITER Nearly two weeks ago, some eight Aid Workers were put to death; this has further made the life insecure in Afghanistan where peace and development are most desired. Such wanton killings only further destabilise the country and the region. Today Afghanistan is home to the US and NATO forces who landed here for some hidden agendas but the declared objectives were to bring peace and development to Afghanistan, that’s not only a distant dream but its totally ignored. These foreign forces have patronised their warlords who are working through them to firm their...

NOVANEWS ”Al-Qaida’ prepares for Israel-Iran war,” Drumming Up a War August 23, 2010 by Michael Leon    More war drums pounding as new report says: Al-Shehri warns against “the greater state of Israel.” - Looks like the neocons want war fast: By JPOST.COM STAFF  Al-Qaida is ready to exploit a war “by the Jews against Iran,” the Sunni group’s second-in-command in Yemen, Saeed al-Shehri, said in an audio message this month, according to the Daily Beast. The mostly Shi’ite nation of Iran is an enemy to Al-Qaida, and al-Shehri predicted that after Israel attacked Iranian nuclear installations, Iran would blame Saudi Arabia – which reports say may let Israel fly through its airspace to attack Iran – and use the opportunity to seize the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Al-She...

NOVANEWS August 23, 2010  by Gordon Duff  TALIBAN LEADERS? “HIT SQUADS” MEANT TO “LIQUIDATE” TALIBAN LEADERS KILLING EVERYONE BUT… By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor Months ago, JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) began to roll out their strategy for Afghanistan.  After the total failure of the Marjeh operations, it was decided that US Army Special Forces would organize a program to decapitate the Taliban, removing its infrastructure and crippling its operations.  Special Forces had done the same thing twice before, once in Vietnam under Operation Phoenix, killing tens of thousands of Vietnamese civilians suspected of opposing the extremely unpopular US backed government.  The same program was rolled out again in Central America, with both American personnel and mercenaries aga...

NOVANEWS August 24th, 2010 My latest, posted on TomDispatch: America’s march to a disastrous war in Iraq began in the media, where an unprovoked U.S. invasion of an Arab country was introduced as a legitimate policy option, then debated as a prudent and necessary one. Now, a similarly flawed media conversation on Iran is gaining momentum. Last month, TIME’s Joe Klein warned that Obama administration sources had told him bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities was “back on the table.” In an interview with CNN, former CIA director Admiral Mike Hayden next spoke of an “inexorable” dynamic toward confrontation, claiming that bombing was a more viable option for the Obama administration than it had been for George W. Bush. The pièce de résistance in the most recent drum roll of bomb-Iran alerts, how...

NOVANEWS August 23, 2010 6:24  Tags: Acid attack, Juwariya Atique, Samar Atique, I am indebted to Stroppyblog for highlighting the case of Samar And Juwariya Atique, two sisters who were viciously attacked when a jug of acid was thrown in their faces, Southall Black Sisters has more: "Donations are desperately needed to finance the medical costs and rehabilitation of Samar (31) and Juwariya (25) Atique whose young lives and hopes were brutally crushed in October 2009 by two men who threw a jug of acid on their faces as the women were returning home from a day's work in a rickshaw. Their crime - Juwariya had turned down a marriage proposal from one of the men! They sustained severe burns and injuries to their faces, their eyes and their upper bodies. In acid attack cases, the v...

NOVANEWS The Spin Stops Here: Help Counter the Media Spin on the Iraq War in 3 Easy Steps August 21, 2010  by Robert L. Hanafin Just as mainstream media helped the Bush administration beat the war drums for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, media is now collaborating with the Pentagon to spin the Iraq War as a success while most of Iraq remains in shambles. I personally believe that going along with the media and Pentagon spin will do more to get our troops home faster than saying the Iraq War has been a shame. However, 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq along with 75,000 military contractors (most of them mercenaries). Robert L. Hanafin, Editorial Board Member, Veterans Today News Network   Days of Dissent, this Aug 23 – 31. Readers are invited to join a coalition of anti-war g...

NOVANEWS The Iraq War – It’s Not Really Over August 22, 2010  by Robert L. Hanafin Mainstream television news has begun making a big show of the withdrawal of America’s “last combat troops” from Iraq, but the painful saga continues for our service members.  Many being show by local TV stations returning home to their tearful and joyous families in the coming days will ultimately be sent to serve more tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan and how many media outlets will raise the hard questions as to why or how? In fact, members of two different units heading to Iraq and Afghanistan are calling on their commanders right now to halt their deployments because they are not physically or mentally ready to deploy. Posted by: Robert L. Hanafin, Major, U.S. Air Force-Retired, GS-14, U.S. ...