Asia

Human Rights Watch | – – 288 Villages, Tens of Thousands of Structures Torched (New York) – Newly released satellite images reveal that at least 288 villages were partially or totally destroyed by fire in northern Rakhine State in Burma since August 25, 2017, Human Rights Watch said today. The destruction encompassed tens of thousands […]

Afghanistan

“Tell me how this Ends”- Gen. Petraeus has decided Forever War Doesn’t

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com | – – It took 14 years, but now we have an answer. It was March 2003, the invasion of Iraq was underway, and Major General David Petraeus was in command of the 101st Airborne Division heading for the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Rick Atkinson, Washington Post journalist and military […]

Buddhism

Eyewitness: the Rohingya horrors and Aung San Suu Kyi’s whitewash

contributors

By Ellen Wiles< | (The Conversation) | - - It was a bright autumn morning, and I had just dropped off my two children at nursery and was scrolling through Twitter, when I spotted a video of another mother’s two children. The youngest was a one-year-old boy, the same age as my own youngest; the […]

Buddhism

Rohingya Refugee Women Bring Stories of Unspeakable Violence

contributors

By Naimul Haq | (Inter Press Service) | – – COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (IPS) – Yasmin, 26, holds her 10-day-old baby, who she gave birth to in a crowded refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, a southeastern district bordering Myanmar. Three weeks ago, when she was still in her home in Hpaung Taw Pyin village in […]

Afghanistan

How “ghost soldiers” could frustrate Trump’s plans for Afghanistan

contributors

By Jessica Purkiss | ( The Bureau of Investigative Journalism) | – – Frank “Gus” Biggio arrived in Nawa, a district in Afghanistan’s embattled Helmand province, in the summer of 2009. Then, he recalled, it was “a violent, lawless, ungoverned place”, like an “apocalyptic scene out of a movie”. The battle to secure the district […]

Afghanistan

What if we Gave Seven Wars and No Americans Noticed?

contributors

By Andrew J. Bacevich | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – Consider, if you will, these two indisputable facts. First, the United States is today more or less permanently engaged in hostilities in not one faraway place, but at least seven. Second, the vast majority of the American people could not care less. Nor can it be […]

Donald Trump

Plummeting in Polls, will Trump ‘Wag the Dog’ with Iran, N. Korea?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Voice of America reports that on Thursday, Trump met with US military leaders to discuss Iran and North Korea, then staged a photo opportunity with them. He asked the journalists, “You guys know what this represents? . . . Maybe it’s the calm before the […]

Buddhism

Can the West Help the Rohingya of Myanmar/ Burma?

contributors

By Ludovica Marchi | (LSE: British Politics and Policy) | – – Violence in Myanmar has resulted in more than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims leaving the country and seeking refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh.Ludovica Marchi argues that the EU should take advantage of its good relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to help ease […]

Colonialism

Colonial Legacy: When Dutch ‘Policing’ Op tried to bring down Indonesian Republic

contributors

By Anne-Ruth Wertheim | (Informed Comment) | – – (This essay irst appeared in Dutch in De Groene Amsterdammer) Inexplicable sounds entered our internment camp Seventy years ago this year the Netherlands began its first so-called ‘policing operation’ – an attempt to bring down the Indonesian republic by force. As is clear from Wim Wertheim […]