By MACDONALD STAINSBY - June 12, 2013

Mongolia is clearly under the domination of resource extraction on a level few countries have ever suffered through. Even with all the money flowing in, the bottom half of the country sees only the rise in prices with a rising currency, and have a harder time with the land and securing basic goods than ever.

By Deepal Jayasekera - 27 May 2013

A wave of attacks in Afghanistan last Friday and over the weekend followed the Taliban’s announcement last month that it was preparing a “spring offensive.” These bombings have demonstrated the weakness of the Afghan regime, against which Taliban forces can launch attacks at will.

By Gamini Karunasena and Evan Weerasinghe - 29 April 2013

Evidence is mounting that a mass grave found recently in Sri Lanka, containing hundreds of dead bodies, could be a burial site for some of the tens of thousands of rural youth massacred under the United National Party (UNP) government of President R. Premadasa between 1988 and 1990...Altogether, 154 skeletons and material were examined using forensic and archaeological techniques, which indicated that the deaths were caused by blunt instruments, as well as gunshots and decapitation.

By John Pilger - 17 April 2000

After two and a half years in power, the Khmer Rouge was overthrown by the Vietnamese on Christmas Day, 1978. In the months and years that followed, the US and China and their allies, notably the Thatcher government, backed Pol Pot in exile in Thailand. He was the enemy of their enemy: Vietnam, whose liberation of Cambodia could never be recognized because it had come from the wrong side of the cold war. For the Americans, now backing Beijing against Moscow, there was also a score to be settled for their humiliation on the rooftops of Saigon.

By Peter Symonds - 9 April 2013

Amid sharply rising tensions, Washington is not simply responding to North Korean threats, but is engaged in reckless provocations of its own that risk the outbreak of war...The Obama administration’s confrontational stance toward North Korea is part of a far broader strategic shift — the “pivot to Asia” — that is aimed at containing China militarily and undermining its economic and political influence throughout the region.

By Alex Lantier - 30 March 2013

On Thursday, US officials announced that B-2 stealth bombers had flown from Whiteman Air Force Base in the United States to South Korea. They dropped dummy bombs on a bombing range on the island of Jik Do...The B-2 flight was a threat to the North Korean regime in Pyongyang that Washington can launch nuclear strikes on its territory at any time. A small, poor state dependent on China for critical food and fuel supplies, it is massively outclassed militarily by the United States and its allies in the region...

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers - Thursday, 28 February 2013

US political leaders and media pundits trumpet North Korea's recent testing of missiles and nuclear weapons as a great threat. But the US mass media do not tell the whole story. Without the context of history and current events, the actions of North Korea look insane, but when put in context we find that the United States is pushing North Korea on this path. North Korea is really not a significant threat compared to what the United States is doing with nuclear weapons, the Asia Pivot and war games off the Korean coast.

In late 2011, Obama prioritized reasserting America's Pacific presence. His Asia pivot was announced. It involves advancing America's military footprint. Doing so aggressively is planned. China's growing economic might and military strength are targeted. So is checking Russia at the same time.

By Dustin Lewis - January 28, 2013

Around 1,000 leading cadre of the regrouped Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) agreed to pursue a strategy of “people’s revolt” against the coalition government that includes their former allies, during their seventh general convention on January 9-14. The event was the first of its kind since a radical faction of the United Communist Party of Nepal (UCPN) split last June and retook the CPN-Maoist name that the party held during its decade-long insurgency that resulted in the ousting of the Nepali monarchy in 2007.

By MICHAEL D. YATES - Counterpunch

The Vietnam War should never be forgotten. It was a stain on our country and on humanity itself. To glorify it is an ignominious crime. We should instead honor the Vietnamese people, who fought more valiantly and suffered more for their liberation from foreign rule than we ever did for our own.

Corporate predators seek cheap labor worldwide. Countries like China, India, Honduras, Jordan, Haiti, and Bangladesh provide it. Transnational giants are unaccountable. Global sweatshops supply them. Workers endure horrific conditions. Some work up to 90 or more hours weekly. They're wage slaves. They earn sub-poverty pay. They're subjected to punishing harassment, beatings, sexual abuse, and rape.

Fifty-one years and counting! On August 10, 1961, America began spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Operation Ranch Hand waged herbicidal warfare for 10 years.

By James Cogan - 25 July 2012

Over the past two weeks, American military commanders and strategic analysts...have publicly criticised the size of Australia’s defence budget...The criticisms amount to an open intervention into Australian politics, seeking to pressure the minority Labor government to boost military spending in order to ensure that Australian forces can serve as a credible partner in the US preparations for a confrontation with China in the Asia-Pacific region.

By Fred Branfman - Znet

I was...stunned when, as I was translating Noam’s questions and the refugees’ answers, I suddenly saw him break down and begin weeping. I was struck not only that most of the others I had taken out to the camps had been so defended against what was...this most natural, human response. It was that Noam himself had seemed so intellectual to me...had so rarely expressed any feelings about anything. I realized at that moment that I was seeing into his soul...When I think of Noam this is what I see.

By John Chan - WSWS

China and Russia are conducting a major joint naval exercise in the Yellow Sea from April 22 to 27. The drills are a response by the two countries to their growing concerns about the Obama administration’s aggressive “pivot” to Asia that includes a military build-up and the strengthening of US alliances throughout the region.