South Asia

from noborders, 2 November 2009: "A public forum to build resistance against mass deportations organised by Stop Deportation. Saturday, 7th November 2009, 12-5pm
@ the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London -- Mass deportation flights are a new and urgent challenge to all those working for the right to freedom of movement for all. Many deportees have tried to stop or escape from these flights, some even self-harming in desperation. Outside, protests and actions are being organised in the UK, Europe and the destination countries. More are needed! more

from mostly water, 15 October 2009: "A critical debate is underway to determine whether or not the US will send up to forty thousand more troops to Afghanistan. The debate is said to include a wide-range of opinion, but even at the top political and military levels, there isn’t profound understanding of insurgencies in general or the particular dynamics of the Afghan one..." more

from imc-uk, 9 September 2009: "via oilbarrel.com - If evidence were ever needed as to the resilience of oil companies and their willingness to do business in some of world’s most hostile environments then surely it would be worth drawing on the story of Afghanistan. The war-torn country is currently in the middle of its first licensing round but has reported brisk interest from international oil companies, both large and small..." more

Updated daily: Articles from external newswires filtered for the keywords: Sri Lanka, Tamil, LTTE... more

from wsws, 21 January 2009: In a speech to an international conference on January 15, Britain's defence secretary John Hutton delivered the UK government's sharpest public criticism of its European NATO allies as regards the US-led occupation of Afghanistan. Urging an increase in NATO troop deployment to the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, Hutton accused his European counter-parts of expecting the US to do all the "heavy lifting" and said it was time for them to "step up to the plate." more

from various sources, 25 November 2008: "Throughout its history, capitalism has functioned through geographical displacement of crisis – attempting to offload the worst impacts onto those outside the core. This article presents a short survey of what this crisis might mean for the Global South..." more

from RINF, 14 November 2008: "During Hurricane Ike, U.S. Customs and Border Protection for the first time flew the Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle in “support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s relief efforts,” the insider tech publication reported... The deployment of the robotic killing machines in the United States for “disaster management” is troubling to say the least and a harbinger of things to come. more

posted 12 November 2008: "In this month’s Underreported Struggles: 400,000 Guatemalans Reject Development Model, Philippines Indigenous People Unite for the Land, Riot Police Target Algonquin Blockade, Chagos Islanders Denied the Right of Return, and 17 other stories that you probably haven’t heard about..." more

from sumoud, 30 October 2008: SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Three years ago, the man known as Internment Serial Number 669 stopped eating. Ahmed Zaid Zuhair, a compact 43-year-old with 10 children in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, had been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 without charges and decided to join a mass hunger strike in protest. The U.S. military was determined not to let him succeed. Since then, according to court documents reviewed by The Associated Press, guards have struggled with him repeatedly, at least once using pepper spray, shackles and brute force to drag him to a restraint chair for his twice-daily dose of a liquid nutrition mix force-fed through his nose. more

via mostly water, 25 October 2008: "the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 (and then of Iraq in March 2003) were conceived as opening salvos in a long-term "war on terror" whose actual, inter-connected goals included defeating anti-U.S. Islamic fundamentalist forces (including ideologically), overthrowing states not fully under U.S. control or fueling anti-U.S. Islamist movements, restructuring the entire Middle East and Central Asian regions, and seizing deeper control of key sources and shipment routes of strategic energy supplies..." more