Based on a US Congressional source, the Siniora government is reportedly able, with US approval, to offer the following face-saving proposal to Hezbollah to end the current crisis: 1. Hezbollah can keep its landline optic telecommunication cables for use in its Resistance struggle against (...) > continue

Pakistan’s constitutional shenanigans permit the fox to eat the lion. > continue

The last five years in South Asian politics have proved to be extremely embarrassing to the mainstream media, its self-anointed pundits and the pollsters as far as ascertaining the wishes of the people are concerned. In the 2004 elections in India, an easy victory for the “Shining India” of the NDA was predicted. Similarly, in the just concluded Constituent Assembly elections in Nepal, the winner by a large margin, the CPN (M), had been forecast to come in at a distant third, behind the Nepali Congress and the CPN (UML). > continue

Chido Makunike looks at the various competing interests in Zimbabwe, the MDC, ZANU PF, Mugabe and the West in relation to what the Zimbabwean are hoping to get out of democracy. > continue

Rarely has there been such an enthusiastic display of international unity as that which greeted the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Support for the war was universal in the chanceries of the West, even before its aims and parameters had been declared. nato governments rushed to assert themselves ‘all for one’. Blair jetted round the world, proselytizing the ‘doctrine of the international community’ and the opportunities for peace-keeping and nation-building in the Hindu Kush. Putin welcomed the extension of American bases along Russia’s southern borders. Every mainstream Western party endorsed the war; every media network—with bbc World and cnn in the lead—became its megaphone. For the German Greens, as for Laura Bush and Cherie Blair, it was a war for the liberation of the women of Afghanistan. [1] For the White House, a fight for civilization. For Iran, the impending defeat of the Wahhabi enemy. > continue

If the Nepali Congress and UML run away from the task of building the new Nepal, the people will never forgive them, says Maoist leader Prachanda > continue

Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups today issued an urgent call to cease restrictions on Gaza’s fuel supply and stop the unprecedented harm to Gaza’s humanitarian needs. The above-listed rights groups warned: > continue

The province of Sindh in southern Pakistan is a rural region of dusty mudbrick villages, of white-domed blue-tiled Sufi shrines, and of salty desert scrublands broken, quite suddenly, by floodplains of wonderful fecundity. These thin, fertile belts of green-cotton fields, rice paddies, cane breaks, and miles of checkerboard mango orchards-snake along the banks of the Indus River as it meanders its sluggish, silted, café-au-lait way through the plains of Pakistan down to the shores of the Arabian Sea. > continue

Varadarajan: What was your reaction to the election result? Were you surprised by the scale of Maoist victory? Prachanda: No, we were not surprised. We knew the media and other parties were underestimating us but we were active amongst the people and knew we had great support. At the same (...) > continue

After first “congratulating the people of Nepal on their historic Constitutional Assembly election,” the United States is now seeking to subvert the electorate’s mandate by lobbying against the Maoists heading the next coalition government. According to political and diplomatic sources, the U.S. (...) > continue