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A Maoist leader has again claimed responsibility for the death of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, whose assassination unleashed the pogrom against Christians in Orissa.He affirms that the authors of the killing left two letters at the scene of the crime, but the government kept them quiet in order to blame the Christians and allow them to be killed "for electoral purposes." ...

New York Senator Hillary Clinton acknowledges a 3-minute ovation during the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, August 26. Democratic women Senators appears on stage at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, August 26, 2008. U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is expected to accept the Democratic presidential nomination at the convention on August 28. US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama watches New York Senator Hillary Clinton addressing the Democratic National Convention on a TV screen in Billings, Montana on August 26. Vice Presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden (R) (D-DE) stand at the podium...

At least nine people, including six policemen, have been killed in clashes between security forces and Maoist rebels in India, officials say. Two rebels and a civilian were also killed in the shoot-out in Gaya district of the northern Bihar state. The fighting started when the police challenged a group of Maoists who were attempting to rob a bank, police say. More than 6,000 people have died during the rebels' 20-year fight for a communist state in parts of India. The rebels later managed to escape from the area after the clashes. Police are conducting a search operation. In April,...

BHUBANESWAR, India (Reuters) - At least 24 policemen were killed when a landmine exploded under a security vehicle in Orissa on Wednesday, in an attack police blamed on Maoist rebels. The attack, in the remote Malkangiri district, comes a fortnight after the rebels sank a police boat and killed 38 officers of an elite anti-insurgency unit in the same area. "All 24 police personnel are dead," officer Sujeet Naik told Reuters, blaming the strike on rebels who are known to be strong in the forested region. Police said the Maoists had stepped up violence in response to a security campaign...

Nepal's former Maoist guerrillas have indicated a sudden shift in their position on the deployment of the UN in the thorny peace process, saying the world body could be asked to stay on even after its tenure ended next month. "The UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) will be needed as long as there are two armies in Nepal," Maoist deputy chief Baburam Bhattarai said. UNMIN was sent in by then UN secretary general Kofi Annan when both the Maoists and the other major parties asked for arms monitors to keep watch over the barracks and weapons of the Nepal Army...

India's Maoist movement is expanding its operations as its People's War develops along ideological and pragmatic lines. Dr P V Ramana looks at the rise of the rebellion and the country's poorly co-ordinated counter-insurgency strategies. While discussion of the threat posed to India by radical Islamist violence tends to dominate security assessments, the country's Maoist insurgency has been steadily expanding its areas of influence and building up its military capability. This expansion has been so great that in 2007 Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the Maoists as the "single biggest internal security challenge facing India". The proscribed Communist Party...

BHUBANESWAR, India (Reuters) - Hundreds of Maoist rebels in India's eastern Orissa state attacked police stations in a district close to the capital, killing 14 people and looting weapons, police and officials said on Saturday. All but one of the dead were police officers and there was no word of casualties among the Maoists. The other victim was a civilian. The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of the poor and landless and regularly stage raids in the swathe of eastern and central India in which they have a presence. Prime Minister Manmoham Singh has declared their decades-old...

Cameron Diaz Apologizes for Maoist Bag Jun 24 09:52 PM US/Eastern LIMA, Peru (AP) - Cameron Diaz apologized Sunday for wearing a bag with a political slogan that evoked painful memories in Peru. The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated "Shrek" films visited the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru's Andes on Friday wearing an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People" printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan. The bags are marketed as fashion accessories in some world capitals, but in Peru the slogan...

AGUAS CALIENTES, Peru -- Actress Cameron Diaz appears to have committed a major fashion faux pas in Peru. The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated "Shrek" films may have inadvertently offended Peruvians who suffered decades of violence from a Maoist guerrilla insurgency by touring here Friday with a bag emblazoned with one of Mao Zedong's favorite political slogans. While explored the Inca city of Machu Picchu high in Peru's Andes, Diaz wore over her shoulder an olive green messenger bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People" printed in Chinese on the flap, perhaps Chinese...

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) -- Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it's time to replace an "on your own" society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity. The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an "ownership society" really is an "on your own" society that has widened the gap between rich and poor. "I prefer a 'we're all in it together' society," she said. "I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none."...

RAIPUR, India (Reuters) - Maoist rebels stormed a police camp in the troubled central Indian state of Chhattisgarh on Thursday, killing 55 members of the police and tribal militia in one of the deadliest attacks by the insurgents in years. Between 300 and 400 rebels attacked the camp, surrounded by dense forest in the southern part of the state, throwing grenades and petrol bombs and setting fire to it before escaping with a cache of arms and explosives. "We have pulled out 55 bodies from the burnt police camp," R.K. Vij, a top police officer, told Reuters over the telephone....

The Maoists launched a co-ordinated assault Maoist rebels have attacked a security post in central India, killing 50 police officers, police say.The attack, one of the worst in decades of insurgency, happened in the rebel stronghold area of Dantewada, in Chhattisgarh state. The Maoists, who have fought a 30-year insurgency, say they are fighting for the rights of landless farmers and neglected tribes. Thousands have died in their campaigns in central and southern India. Co-ordinated assault The rebels attacked the security post - manned by 75 policemen - in Bijapur just before dawn on Thursday. Under cover of darkness,...

The question of Maoist weapons has become contentious The leader of Nepal's former Maoist rebels says they still have thousands of combatants not confined in camps and weapons not stored away in containers.The remarks by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who still uses his war name, Prachanda, appear to fly in the face of the registration and confinement process. The first stage of the process, being supervised by the United Nations, began in January and has just been completed Concern over public displays of weapons by the Maoists has risen recently. Under November's peace agreement, the Maoists' army moved into 28...

There is something about Bolivian President Evo Morales that doesn't inspire confidence in a prosperous, democratic future for his country. And it's not only the fashion statement he makes with the striped sweater he wears like a uniform. For a good many Bolivians it's the erosion of civil liberties under his leadership. Just ask Marcela Nogales, a 47-year-old mother of two pre-teens who holds a master's degree in auditing and financial control from Bolivian Catholic University in a joint program with Harvard University. Mrs. Nogales, who was the general manager of the Central Bank of Bolivia for five years until...

Maoist Rebels Spread Across Rural India By Anuj Chopra The Christian Science Monitor | August 24, 2006 ULGARA, INDIA - A sprawling, yet largely hidden, war is raging in India's rural countryside, and after years of ignoring it, Delhi is signalling a military counteroffensive. India's Maoist insurgents, also called Naxalites, have expanded their area of operations from just four states 10 years ago to half of India's 28 states today. In 165 districts, they claim to run parallel "People's" governments. This year alone, fighting between rebel and government forces has claimed more than 500 lives - many civilian. Prime Minister...

If you've been waiting until the Christian fascist movement started filling stadiums with young people and hyping them up to do battle in "God's army" to get alarmed, wait no longer. In recent weeks, Battle Cry, a Christian fundamentalist youth movement, has attracted more than 25,000 to mega-rally rock concerts in San Francisco and Detroit and this weekend they plan to fill Wachovia Stadium in Philadelphia. They claim their religion and values are under attack but, amidst spectacular lightshows, hummers, Navy Seals, and military imagery on stage, it is Battle Cry that has declared war on everyone else! Their leader,...

I called my family back in Kathmandu today. Everybody is scared and everything is in chaos. Armed Maoist outsiders have infiltrated the valley, like textbook Communist takeover, and every neighborhood from what I hear is in virtual lockdown. Maoists are knocking at every house to take young men out to fight the police and the army for the final takeover. My family is in the area already known to have Maoist infiltrators. The number of strange faces in the slums and thugs roaming the streets at night have increased significantly in the last couple of hours. My cousins are in...

Kolkata, April 22: Maoists should not be excluded from the consolidation of the democratic process in Nepal, CPI(M) politburo member Sitaram Yechuri said here today. "Maoists in Nepal have very strong political influence and their inclusion in the consolidation of the democratic process will have an impact on Maoists in India,'' Yechuri, the convenor of the Indo-Nepal solidarity committee, told reporters here. "Excluding the Maoists will be a great disservice to the movement in Nepal," Yechuri said. Integration of the Maoists in the democratic process in Nepal would have a "salutary effect" in India it as would be difficult for...

A little update for freepers tracking events in Nepal. It now appears that the state might collapse. Two things are currently happening. First, my contacts in Kathmandu valley report that the political parties and Maoist alliance are pushing for a republic and second, waves of (yes, uniformed) Maoist fighters have now entered the capital from the outlying hills and are now controlling parts of the valley outside the city's beltway. Fighting is confirmed in the following areas of the city Thapathali, Maitighar and Bhotaity. From a strictly historical perspective, this looks very very bad. We've seen all of this before....

Kathmandu: Fourth-graders in Nepal wouldn’t have to study math if the country’s communist rebels took control. But they would learn how to make bombs and grow vegetables. Nepal’s Maoist rebels, fighting a decade-old insurgency against the monarchy, now have influence in nearly every district of this country of 27 million people, and citizens increasingly are wondering how their life would change if the rebels actually took power. So a group of Nepalese teachers made a low-profile visit recently to three “model schools” run by the Maoists. The rebels say the schools provide the ideal communist education. “The stress was on...

Under pressure to crack down on a Maoist rebellion, Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, will review counter-insurgency plans at a meeting with state chief ministers to be held on April 13. In the wake of a recent hijacking of a train by Maoists in the northern state of Jharkand and the storming of a jail in neighbouring Bihar, Mr Singh has been criticised for failing to prevent the collapse of local government in vast swathes of the country. Thirteen state governments met in New Delhi on Friday to thrash out a strategy to combat Maoist guerrillas operating with increasing impunity...

Aucayacu - Peru's brutal rebel movement, the Shining Path, long thought to be all but extinct, is on the warpath again, boosted by an alliance with drug traffickers. Its Maoist guerrillas almost vanished after the capture of their founder and leader, Abimael Guzman, in 1993, with only a few hundred left sheltering in remote highlands. But those mountains are now the setting for a dramatic growth in cultivating coca to produce cocaine, and veteran fighters are now serving new masters, the drug barons. The Shining Path once forced the whole country to its knees in a war that claimed 70,000...

DHARBAGUDA, India, March 9 (Reuters) - The landmine catapulted him out of the truck. As he lay on the ground in agony, his left leg broken and bleeding, Khurrum Bojji watched Maoist guerrillas move in on the injured. "When they saw a boy giving water to the injured, they brutally killed him with an axe," he said, lying in a hospital a week after an attack that killed 55 people. "After that we didn't dare move, we just played dead until the police arrived." Panda Lakshmi too said she played dead, and heard the screams and pleas of at least...

Kathmandu : Nepal's Maoist guerrillas took advantage of the ceasefire called by them in September to buy arms from India, the official media here reported Friday. The Rising Nepal daily, the mouthpiece of the government headed by King Gyanendra, said the information was given to the Royal Nepalese Army by an ex-Maoist "combatant". The informer, the daily said, was a 13-year-old girl from Ilam district in eastern Nepal. Ishwara Neupane aka Richa, who reportedly surrendered to security forces and was presented at a press conference at the district administration office in Jhapa, also in eastern Nepal, was quoted as saying...

Kuala Lumpur, Dec 18 - A British parliamentarian from the Respect party, George Galloway, here Saturday said that Iran is entitled to peaceful nuclear activity. Speaking to IRNA in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the Perdana Global Peace Forum at Putra World Trade Center in Kuala Lumpur, he asked, "why should Iran be denied the right to nuclear activities for peaceful purposes, if other countries are given such a right?" Known for being frank and outspoken, Galloway said that international laws give all states the right to peaceful use of nuclear energy and that neither US President George...

While the New York Times has proven itself to be selective in it's reporting all the details about the war in Iraq, it seems to have no problem running attack ads on President Bush in regards to the same. As Bill O'Reilly reported on FOX News tonight, World Can't Wait's "next phase of the battle to drive out the Bush regime by placing a full page ad in the NY Times" ran on page A17 in the Times today The ad along with coordinated fliers make radical claims including the following: "Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is...

NEW DELHI, July 8: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers as they are commonly known, are providing military training to the Maoist rebels of Nepal in Bihar near the Nepalese borders. Some French trainers have also been hired, a Maoist rebel leader revealed to the South Asia Tribune.

JALPAIGURI (Indo-Nepal-Bhutan-Bangladesh Border), July 24: Over 165 Maoist cadres are being trained in Bhutan at present, as Bhutan has been included in the future Maoist country, ‘Dandkaranya Desam’. The United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and Kamtapur Liberation Organization (KLO) are imparting the training. A senior leader of the Standing Committee of a Maoist outfit confirmed this to the South Asia Tribune.

Kathmandu, Nepal's rebels may be teaming up with Maoist guerrillas in the Indian state of Bihar for joint attacks on security forces. The People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) says it is a joint force comprising Maoists from Nepal and the outlawed Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) of Bihar. The outfit was reportedly behind the attack on an Indian police post Tuesday night. Around 250 to 300 people attacked the Simraini police picket in Bagaha district, about 8-10 metres from the India-Nepal border, around midnight, heavily outnumbering the 13 policemen posted there at that time. The attackers, using loudspeakers, described themselves as...

KATHMANDU, Oct 28 - US ambassador to Nepal James F Moriarty on Thursday said that US aid to Nepal would be dangerous, as it would weaken the mainstream political parties and empower the king, The Kathmandu Post daily reported Friday. Speaking during a programme at Tansen, Palpa yesterday Moriarty hinted that US aid to Nepal would be resumed only if the power is handed over to the parties and added, "US suspended aid to Nepal owing to the Feb 1 takeover that increased the gulf between the parties and the king." He also suggested the king to take one step...

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepal's Maoist rebels announced a three-month cease-fire from Saturday, their chief said in a statement, in a move to win support of political parties after King Gyanendra seized power in February. "During this period, our People's Liberation Army (PLA) will be in defensive positions," Prachanda said in a statement made available to Reuters. "The PLA will not launch any offensive from its side." "We believe our move will encourage all forces, within and outside Nepal, who want peace through a forward-moving political solution," the elusive Maoist chief said. The Nepali army said it had heard about the...

King Gyanendra of Nepal has lifted the state of emergency, which was imposed since February 1, 2005. The state of emergency was lifted as per Article 115 (11) of the Constitution, effective from midnight, said a Royal Palace notice issued late night. The King had imposed the state of emergency after dismissing Sher Bahadur Deuba government and suspended fundamental rights and press freedom. The state of emergency needs to be approved by the House of Representatives within three months for further extension, as per the Constitution. The King's imposition of emergency had invited international criticism and many international donors cut...

NEW DELHI, (AFP) - India will resume military aid to Nepal unconditionally, dropping an earlier demand for King Gyanendra to first restore democracy, the Indian foreign ministry said. "This confirmation came from Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh... The minister said India would resume arms supplies to Nepal," said a ministry official, who declined to be named. Private television channel NDTV said Singh briefed reporters onboard a flight from Jakarta to New Delhi after the Asia-Africa summit that the ban on military supplies to Nepal would be lifted without condition. New Delhi's change in stance came after a meeting between the...

The last e-mail Marla Ruzicka sent me was in January, when I’d just gotten out of Iraq after a brief visit, and she was getting ready to go in for a long one. She said she’d had a rough few months, since the last time we’d seen each other there, and I asked her what she meant, and how she was doing. Marla, 28, was unforgettably energetic and excited and committed and funny, a quintessential ultra-blonde California girl as goofy at first glance as a young Goldie Hawn, but as genuinely committed to helping people as, well, as anybody I...

Eighteen Maoist rebels died in a fierce clash with the army a week ago, the Nepal army said Wednesday. A statement issued by the Royal Nepalese Army said 18 guerrillas who had fled to Salyan district in mid-western Nepal, following a 12-hour gun battle in another district, died of injuries. Their bodies were found in the Dhakadam area of Salyan, the statement said. The deaths come six days after the guerrillas attacked a security camp in Khara in Rukum district, considered the cradle of the nine-year-old insurgency that has left thousands dead. While security forces lost three men in trying...

Vigilantes May Be Nepal's Secret Weapon Against Rebels By SOMINI SENGUPTA Published: April 11, 2005 APILVASTU DISTRICT, Nepal - In the fifth century B.C., this was where the Buddha came of age. Today, as this country sinks deeper into civil war, it is the epicenter of a violent tit for tat between pro-palace villagers and their enemies in a Maoist insurgency. Since mid-February, in village after village in this district, ax-wielding vigilantes have attacked those they suspect of being Maoists; the rebels have retaliated by hunting down those they consider responsible. Thousands of villagers have fled across the nearby border...

Kathmandu: A European rights group has said its team was barred from meeting two senior Maoist leaders from Nepal being held in Indian prisons. The team travelled through India in March to participate in a conference organised by the World People's Resistance Movement (Europe and South Asia), a London-based organisation. The delegation wanted to meet Nepalese Maoist leader C. Prakash Gajurel aka Gaurav, jailed in Chennai after he was arrested with a fake passport, and Mohan Baidhya alias Kiran, arrested in West Bengal where he had undergone a cataract operation. The team also tried to visit Beur prison in Bihar...

KATHMANDU (AFP) - Pakistan has offered Nepal five million dollars in trade credits and talks on a free trade agreement after the first meeting of senior economic officials of the two countries in a decade, Nepal's finance ministry said. Nepalese Finance Minister Madhukar Shumsher Rana and Pakistan's Minister of State for Economic Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar concluded two days of talks by signing an agreement to boost trade and investment in the fields of health, textiles, pharmaceuticals, tourism and civil aviation. The economic package by Pakistan comes after India cut military aid to the Hindu kingdom following a February 1...

KATHMANDU (AFP) - Pakistan is ready to provide arms and counter-insurgency training to help Nepal face down an increasingly bloody Maoist revolt, Islamabad's outgoing ambassador here Zamir Akram said in an interview. "We are ready to share our experience and, hopefully, this will help Nepal," Akram said in the interview with the Rising Nepal published on Friday. "So, we are ready to help in whatever way we can. Pakistan is also facing terrorist threats on our western border. We have developed some kind of expertise, especially in the use of high-tech equipment by the terrorists," he told the state-run English...

We did it... We protested churchill. There was a collection of pro-Churchill moonbats that showed up, and we protested them as well.

TROUBLE SPEAK Ward Churchill copied 'original' art piece Takes a swing at TV reporter who confronted him -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: February 26, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Professor Ward Churchill Adding to a growing list of allegations, controversial University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill appears to have violated copyright law by claiming a reknowned artist's work as his own. Churchill, whose integrity has been challenged since news broke earlier last month of his paper blaming victims of 9-11 for the attacks, made an Indian-theme serigraph in 1981 called "Winter Attack" and printed 150 copies. But one of the buyers,...

For Pritam, the massacre was also sweet revenge. Two years ago, he was abducted by Maoists along with five villagers, shot and dumped in the paddy fields. But Pritam survived and vowed revenge. Pritam — a Madese, a term for people of Indian origin settled in the Terai — began organising farmers and, with the money collected from them, bought sophisticated weapons. “The ferocity of Maoist attacks, especially targeting the Madese people, provoked anger and I had to use this to defend the people here,” he said. On February 19, Tiger’s men heard that over 300 rebels had gathered in...

Though by no means unexpected, the Sher Bahadur Deuba government’s dismissal completes the two-and-a-half-year strangulation of Nepal’s multi-party democracy. King Gyanendra has plotted the royal takeover meticulously, ever since he sacked Deuba’s caretaker ministry in October 2002 for, it was said, failing to hold a snap-poll within six months of parliament’s dissolution. Deuba’s successor and pro-monarchist Rashtriya Prajatantra Party leader Lokendra Bahadur Chand’s government fared no better and was replaced by another headed by RPP leader Surya Bahadur Thapa. When he too failed to deliver what the king wanted, he was left with little option but to reinstate Deuba in...

Nepal's king has today sacked his government and declared a state of emergency. Gyanendra, who assumed the throne in 2001 when his brother, the former king, was killed in a massacre, denied that the move was a coup. However, soldiers surround the prime minister's house as armoured cars patrol the country's capital, Kathmandu. In an announcement on state-run television, the king accused political parties of plunging the Himalayan kingdom into crisis by failing to hold elections or end the civil war with Maoist rebels. "I have decided to dissolve the government because it has failed to make necessary arrangements to...

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nawa Raj Joshi was a teacher for more than 30 years in a small village in western Nepal, until one day Maoist rebels decided they didn't like his politics. "They beat me with rifle butts and kicked me, and forced me to flee," he said. "But my wife and two sons were not allowed to leave." A few years later, the rebels came back, this time for his son. "They asked him to accompany them, and he couldn't say no. We think they are trying to force him to join them." Joshi's story is an every-day one...

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- When the Organization of American States asked its press freedom expert, Santiago Canton, to report on the state of the independent press in Venezuela, they must have known it was a sensitive mission. President Hugo Chavez's radical populist government does not take kindly to criticism nor does it appreciate outside scrutiny of its internal affairs. It's doubtful, though, that anyone at the OAS expected Canton to fall victim himself to the kind of tactics the Venezuelan press faces every day. Just moments after beginning the final press conference of his four-day visit to ...

Copyright 2004 Associated Press Associated Press Worldstream DISTRIBUTION: Asia; England; Middle East Police: Suspected communist rebels blow up police truck, 13 feared dead. LUCKNOW, India A land mine planted by suspected communist rebels blew up a police truck in northern India on Saturday and 13 policemen were feared killed, a police officer said. The attack took place near Naughar, a village 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state, said Shailaja Kant Mishra, the inspector-general of police. Mishra said the exact casualties were not immediately known, but that "13 policemen were feared dead." The policemen...

PATNA, India, Aug 12 (Reuters) - A raid on an Indian police post by Nepal's Maoist rebels and arrests of their comrades on Indian soil could be indications that a bloody revolt in that country could be spilling over. A group of armed men, including some Nepalis, overran the post and took away weapons last month in thick forests in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, which shares a long border with Nepal, the head of a special Indian police unit said. The attack on the police post came shortly after 12 Maoists, including some middle-level operatives, were arrested from...

50 children and 12 teachers were abducted from their school. Imagine how frightened they are. I'd like to start a prayer group to pray for their safe, quick release. I'll pray every 3 hours today and tomorrow starting at noon Pacific Standard Time, then 3PM, 6PM and 9PM PST. This is an invitation to join me in a group prayer for their safe return home. Maoist Rebels Abduct 50 School Children in Nepal KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Maoist guerrillas abducted at least 50 students and a dozen teachers from a school near the Nepali capital to try to force them to...

KATHMANDU: Fifteen Maoist rebels were killed in two gun battles on Thursday in Nepal amid a spurt in violence after a coalition government took form, a security official said. The official said the rebels who died in clashes in the western Gorkha and Dailekh districts included a Maoist local commander named Bikram Ghale. The Maoists, who are fighting to overthrow the monarchy, have stepped up attacks since Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba last week sealed a deal to form Nepal’s most broadly backed government in two years. The rebels on Friday killed the mayor of Pokhara, one of the kingdom’s...