Free Republic

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...

Maoists are turning cannibals. They eat human flesh to terrorize villagers. This was revealed by the residents of Bandiguda, 45 km from the district headquarters town of Malkangiri. The district police, under the leadership of daredevil SP Satish Kumar Gajbhiye, risked in organizing a community policing programme in a far-flung area, known as the Red Terror Zone of the district. On August 3, 2007, the people of Bandiguda saw Mukunda Madhi of their village being lifted by 'Papular Dalam Commander' Bhagat, as Mukunda was suspected by the Maoists as a police informer. Next morning, Mukunda was brought back to the...

KATHMANDU: Though the Maoists are still on the US list of "terrorist" organisations, the US government has approved the visa for a senior Maoist leader, in what could be the dawning of Washington's realisation that the rebels are a key player in Nepal's politics today. Maoist MP Janardan Sharma aka Prabhakar, who is also one of the deputy commanders of the rebels' guerrilla forces, the People's Liberation Army, was given visa by the American embassy in Kathmandu to take part in the ongoing General Assembly that kicked off in September. Prabhakar is part of a Nepali delegation of MPs that...

NEW DELHI, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- The Indian state of Jharkhand, which has been hit by Maoist violence, has formulated a surrender policy for rebels under which former militants will be paid a monthly salary along with a one-time financial package for laying down their arms. Severely criticized both within and outside the state following the killing of 17 people in Giridih on Oct. 26, the state government is working on the new policy. “The proposed surrender policy, which my government will announce within a month … includes a monthly salary for surrendered Naxals besides the one-time package,” said Jharkhand...

Kathmandu (dpa) - The ambassadors from European Union member countries and EU representatives based in Nepal Thursday said they were disappointed over the withdrawal of the Maoists from the country's interim government. Issuing a statement, the ambassadors and representatives said the scheduled elections in November must be held on time and failure to do so will damage the credibility of the peace process. ``If the elections cannot be held on time with the full support of all parties, this will be a betrayal of the people's aspirations and damage the credibility of the peace process in their eyes and in...

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post saying Cindy Sheehan would probably not do very well against Nancy Pelosi, and therefore I was sorry she had decided to run. I said she was more valuable to the antiwar movement as an activist. I said leftists waste a lot of time on futile electoral contests, and cited examples of such contests. These remarks, which were couched in terms of deepest respect for Cindy Sheehan, have evoked much bile and wrath in this blog's comment section and elsewhere in the blogosphere. So much fun are commenters having discussing what a traitor...

n an unprecedented action, the ANSWER Coalition today received citations fining the organization $10,000 for the placement of posters announcing the September 15 March on Washington DC. The fines come after a campaign led by FOX news calling for the DC government to take action against those putting up posters for the September 15 demonstration. They have told us that we have 72 hours to remove every poster, or the fines will go into effect. Tens of thousands of dollars in additional fines are expected in the coming days. Bush’s Interior Department is threatening similar actions against ANSWER. The September 15 posters are...

An aggressive nationwide parallel policing and volunteering campaign unleashed by Young Communist League (YCL) members in Nepal has worried many in the Himalayan kingdom. Aside from ordinary people, those concerned about YCL activities include everybody from Prime Minister GP Koirala, former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, former US President Jimmy Carter and the US Ambassador to Nepal, James F Moriarty. The YCL - the junior wing of former Maoist rebels - was reactivated after the recent peace agreement between the Nepal's seven-party alliance (SPA) and the Maoists in November 2006. The Maoists claim that the YCL has more than 300,000...

Carter asks US to embrace Nepal MaoistsKATHMANDU: Former US President Jimmy Carter called on his country’s government Saturday to establish relations with Nepal’s former rebel Maoists, who remain on a list of US terrorist organisations. “My opinion is that the US should establish some communication with the Maoists. The people of Nepal have accepted them as political players,” Carter told journalists at the end of a four-day visit to Nepal. The US remains highly critical of the Maoists, despite the fact they signed a landmark peace deal last year and entered government in April. Earlier this week the US...

A band of former soldiers, ex-police personnel and victims of Maoist guerrillas have united in Nepal to form a Hindu army with suicide bombers to fight Islamic and Christian zealots as well as communists. Called the Nepal Defence Army, the group is headed by a former policeman who says he joined the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist as a schoolboy but has now begun waging war on his former comrades. The ex-cop, who today calls himself 'Parivartan' (change), claims his band has nearly 1,200 trained soldiers who possess arms and have the expertise to manufacture explosives. Earlier this year,...

PATNA, India, July 1 (Reuters) - Maoist rebels killed nine people, including five policemen, in eastern India's remote Bihar state early on Sunday during an attack on two police stations, officials said. Some 200 rebels were involved in the pre-dawn raid, stripping dozens of wounded policemen of their weapons after the raid before they fled into the darkness. Sunday morning's attack came after a two-day strike against the government's economic policies that was called by the Maoists earlier this week. The Maoists operate out of jungle bases across a swathe of 13 Indian states running up the eastern flank of...

When they fought their 10-year 'People's War' inspired by Chinese leader Mao Zedong's teaching that power comes "out of the barrels of a gun", Nepal's Maoist guerrillas were condemned by Beijing for "bringing disrepute" to their great leader. But now Maoist supremo Prachanda's son is on a China tour on the invitation of the country's intellectuals. Ever since the insurgents made their peace with the Nepal government and became a dominant partner in the ruling coalition, Beijing has been doing some quick re-thinking on its Maoist policy. As a sign of that, the son of Maoist supremo Prachanda Thursday flew...

Cameron's bag raises a few eyebrows Jun 23 04:33 AM US/Eastern Actress Cameron Diaz appears to have committed a major fashion crime in Peru. The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated Shrek films may have inadvertently offended Peruvians. They suffered decades of violence from a Maoist guerrilla insurgency by touring there on Friday with a bag emblazoned with one of Mao Zedong's favourite political slogans. While she 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'...

Nepal Maoists' chief Prachanda Friday asked former US president Jimmy Carter to intercede with Washington to take his party off the US list of terrorist organisations. Carter met the top leaders of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which is outlawed in the US, marking the first public interaction between the rebels and an American citizen of his stature. 'I told Carter we would like to establish amicable diplomatic relations with the US,' Prachanda said after the nearly hour-long meeting. 'We are ready to hold talks with Washington at any level.' The Maoist chief also said Carter wanted to know...

Approximately 300 Maoist rebels, called Naxalites, attacked an Indian police post at Rani Bodli in the central-western state of Chhattisgarh the night of March 15. Armed with guns, grenades and homemade firebombs, the attackers overwhelmed the 79-man post, leaving approximately 50 policemen dead and making off with weapons and ammunition. Eleven days before the Rani Bodli attack, Indian parliament member Sunil Mahato was assassinated in neighboring Jharkhand state -- an operation in which Maoists were allegedly involved. ... The Naxalite insurgency is located primarily in eastern India in a "red corridor" comprising the states of Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Karnataka,...

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...

KATMANDU, Nepal -- Former rebels were set to join the country's interim parliament on Monday in the Maoist communists' first step toward entering mainstream politics after agreeing to end their decade-long insurgency, officials said. The former rebels were originally allotted 73 seats but 10 more were added during the weekend, giving them 83 members in the 330-seat interim Parliament to be formed Monday. That would make the ex-rebels the second largest group in the legislature. It would be the rebels' first foray into the political mainstream since entering peace talks and signing a peace accord with the government last year...

Amidst confusing reports regarding his participation in an international ‘leadership summit’ to be organised by a leading Indian national daily in New Delhi, Maoist supremo Prachanda has finally decided to visit the Indian capital. At a press meeting organised by the Newa National Liberation Front, a Maoist wing, at the Maoist contact office in Kupandole, Kathmandu, on Thursday, Maoist leaders said chairman Prachanda would attend the summit "India: The Next Global Superpower?" slated for November 17-18, which will be hosted by The Hindustan Times daily. They said senior Maoist Dr Baburam Bhattarai would accompany Prachanda to New Delhi. The Hindustan...

Mob Rule at Columbia By Captain'sQuartersBlog.com www.captainsquartersblog.com | October 6, 2006 When Democracy for America invited me to participate in a panel debate about the war in Iraq on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 at Macalester College, I wondered whether the staunchly liberal setting would result in some sort of donnybrook due to my defense of the war. I needn't have worried; Macalester proved itself polite, classy, and welcoming, if predictably unenthusiastic about my point of view. No one chased me from the dais, and no one interrupted our debate. Unfortunately, Columbia University didn't demonstrate the same class and etiquette...