News: Asia
» 2007
July 8, 2008
Paul: Congress supports bombing Iran
Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul says members of Congress have voiced support for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran. "I hear members of Congress saying 'if we could only nuke them'," said the congressman Thursday. "If we do (attack) it is going to be a disaster," he told the Alex Jones Show. The 72-year-old veteran politician added that the atmosphere in Congress indicates that a military strike on Iran has already been condoned.
Read article on the Press TV website (Iran)
July 4, 2008
Judge orders Google to give YouTube user data to Viacom
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - A US judge has ordered Google to expose to Viacom the video-viewing habits of everyone who has ever used YouTube in a decision condemned by the Internet giant and privacy advocates.
Read AFP news story at google.com
Comment: The ruling, which could have serious privacy implications for internet users worldwide, orders Google to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses.
July 2, 2008
US Admiral Warns Against Israeli Strike On Iran
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Wednesday warned against the possible Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, saying that it would plunge the already volatile area into deeper chaos and added that it would be very stressful on the United States. "My strong preference, here, is to handle all of this diplomatically with the other powers of governments, ours and many others, as opposed to any kind of strike occurring," Admiral Mullen told reporters at a Pentagon press conference on Wednesday. "This is a very unstable part of the world. And I don't need it to be more unstable," he added.
Read news report on the RTT News website (USA)
June 11, 2008
Wonder medicine plant claims to cure cancer
Scientists have finally identified and named a wonder plant that has been creating waves here for some time now. The plant traditionally called Kam-sabut is claimed to be able to cure cancer cases which doctors have given up on. Researchers from Manipur University's life science department say the plant belongs to the Euphorbia ceae family but was of a new species and a new name Croton Caudatus Gieseler has been allotted by the Botanical Survey of India, Shillong following a submission of a research report submitted by a MU team. Extracts of Euphorbia ceae of at least 10 species are used by Columbian traditional healers to treat ulcers, cancers, tumours, warts and other diseases.
Read article in The Statesman (India)
June 6, 2008
Bush Overstated Evidence on Iraq, Senators Report
WASHINGTON – A long-delayed Senate committee report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq's weapons programs and Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaeda.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
June 5, 2008
EU vision for Asia-Pacific
KEVIN RUDD has outlined an ambitious vision for Australia and the other nations of the Asia-Pacific to form a community modelled on the European Union by 2020. In a speech to the Asia Society in Sydney last night, the Prime Minister said the new body would share a "comprehensive sense of community" in security, trade, economics and politics.
Read article in the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Comment: Democracy in the European Union has now been almost completely subverted by corporate interests. As such, Rudd's proposal here should clearly be viewed with great suspicion.
May 29, 2008
Bolton dodges attempted 'war crimes' arrest
The environmental campaigner George Monbiot last night tried and failed to make a citizen's arrest of the former Bush administration official John Bolton over alleged "war crimes" committed during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN, ended an hour-long discussion at the Hay festival, Monbiot, who had earlier challenged him for alleged breaches of the postwar Nuremberg Principles, defining war crimes, moved towards the stage waving a charge sheet. But security staff intervened and bundled Monbiot out of the tent as 20 supporters chanted "war criminal" and waved placards.
Read article in The Guardian (UK)
Comment: Monbiot's Charge Sheet for the attempted arrest of John Bolton specifically cites the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg's ruling that "to initiate a war of aggression … is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime".
May 28, 2008
Bush 'plans Iran air strike by August'
The George W Bush administration plans to launch an air strike against Iran within the next two months, an informed source tells Asia Times Online, echoing other reports that have surfaced in the media in the United States recently.
Read article on the Asia Times Online website
May 19, 2008
DNA damage 'caused by pesticides'
New research in India suggests exposure to pesticides could have damaged the DNA of people in farming communities, leading to higher rates of cancer. Scientists at Patiala University, Punjab state, did the study, tracking a group of farmers for several months.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: Many pesticides are manufactured by some of the same pharmaceutical and chemical companies that would like to ban vitamin supplements and force GM foods onto our dinner plates.
May 19, 2008
Democracy and the Web
Users of the Internet take for granted their ability to access all Web sites on an equal basis. That could change, however, if Internet service providers started discriminating among content, to make more money or to suppress ideas they do not like. A new "net neutrality" bill has been introduced in the House, which would prohibit this sort of content discrimination. Congress has delayed on this important issue too long and should pass net neutrality legislation now.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: To learn more about the need for net neutrality and internet freedom, click here.
May 12, 2008
Quiet US Confession: Weapons Were Not Made In Iran After All
Longstanding accusations against Iran arming militants in Iraq
In a sharp reversal of its longstanding accusations against Iran arming militants in Iraq, the US military has made an unprecedented albeit quiet confession: the weapons they had recently found in Iraq were not made in Iran at all. According to a report by the LA Times correspondent Tina Susman in Baghdad: "A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was cancelled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin. When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all."
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website (Canada)
April 30, 2008
Afghan 'health link' to uranium
Doctors in Afghanistan say rates of some health problems affecting children have doubled in the last two years. Some scientists say the rise is linked to use of weapons containing depleted uranium (DU) by the US-led coalition that invaded the country in 2001. A Canadian research group found very high levels of uranium in Afghans during tests just after the invasion.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
April 30, 2008
Mass Protests against GM Crops in India
India-wide coalition against GM Brinjal in the wake of toxic GM cotton
As India edges closer to what is probably the last year of field trials for Bt Brinjal (eggplant, aubergine) before commercial approval may be granted, large scale resistance has been building up all over the country. Bt Brinjal, if allowed in India, would be the first food crop in the world with the Bt gene inserted into it that is to be directly consumed by human beings. Indians feel that they are about to be made guinea pigs by USAID, and by Monsanto and Cornell University that have developed this crop.
Read press release on the website of the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) (UK)
April 25, 2008
Malaysia's ex-PM Mahathir wants Iraq war leaders on war crimes charges
LONDON (AFP) - Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has called for an international tribunal to try Western leaders with war crimes over the war in Iraq, a spokesman for the organisers said. In a speech at Imperial College, London, Mahathir called for a tribunal to try US President George W. Bush plus former prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and John Howard of Australia for their part in the conflict, said a spokesman for the Muslim group the Ramadhan Foundation, which set up the event. Spokesman Mohammed Shafiq told AFP that Mahathir, who was in office from 1981 to 2003, wants to see the trio tried "in absence for war crimes committed in Iraq.
Read AFP news story at yahoo.com
February 11, 2008
How the spooks took over the news
In his controversial new book, Nick Davies argues that shadowy intelligence agencies are pumping out black propaganda to manipulate public opinion – and that the media simply swallow it wholesale.
Read article in the Independent (UK)
February 4, 2008
Poland Agrees to Host U.S. Shield
The United States and Poland reached "an agreement in principle" on missile defense Friday, prompting an angry reaction from Russia over the weekend. Poland agreed to let the U.S. military install missile interceptors on its territory after Washington consented to a demand by Warsaw's new center-right government to beef up the country's air defenses.
Read editorial in the Moscow Times (Russia)
Comment: Moscow has adamantly opposed the plans of U.S. President George W. Bush to install 10 interceptors in Poland and a radar installation in the Czech Republic, which Washington says are meant to protect against an attack by Iran or other "rogue states." The Kremlin - which believes the U.S. missile shield is directed against Russia - has threatened to target the Polish and Czech sites and to deploy missiles in the Kaliningrad region, which borders Poland.
January 24, 2008
Publish the secret document on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, ministers are told
Ministers were ordered yesterday to make public a secret document about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that could shed light on the origins of the Government's claim that Saddam Hussein needed just 45 minutes to launch non-conventional warheads at British troops. The unpublished draft document was drawn up by John Williams, who in 2002, before the invasion of Iraq, was the head of information at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and one of the senior government spin-doctors. Yesterday the Information Tribunal ruled that the Williams report should be made public so that people could make their own judgment as to whether its contents could have influenced the official dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), including the 45-minute claim.
Read article in The Times (UK)
Comment: Given that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq, the people of Asia and the world already know that the original reason given for the invasion of that country was a lie. However, the American and British-led military conflict in Iraq and the related threats to Iran, North Korea and other Asian countries are not primarily about fighting 'terrorism' or conquering oil fields. Instead, they are part of a deliberate long-term strategy by American and British-controlled pharmaceutical and petrochemical investment groups to escalate a major international crisis as a means of creating a psychological "state of fear" and maintaining global economic control.
January 5, 2008
Cutbacks to Iraqi food rations threaten malnutrition and starvation
Under conditions of widespread malnutrition, run-away inflation and mass unemployment, the Iraqi Trade Ministry is preparing to slash the provision of subsidised food and basic hygiene necessities under the Public Distribution System (PDS).
Read article on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS)
Comment: The PDS was introduced by Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime as a short-term answer to the UN economic sanctions imposed during the Gulf War of 1990-1991. It is estimated that these sanctions led to as many as one million Iraqi deaths, including those of 500,000 children, between 1991 and 1998. Denis Halliday, the then United Nations Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq, resigned in protest in October 1998, declaring: "We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral." Notably, therefore, by the time of the March 2003 invasion, virtually the entire Iraqi population was to some extent reliant on food rations to meet even their basic nutritional requirements. Nevertheless, the US military has utterly failed to ensure that they received them. As such, the UN's retrospective and continued approval of the US-led military occupation of Iraq only further cements the final erosion of its credibility, thus heralding the ultimate demise of its role as servant to the people of the world.