Our guest, Mike Wong, was born and raised in San Francisco, and became a soldier during the Vietnam War. He was very influenced by the anti-war movement. So when he received Vietnam orders, he went AWOL, then turned himself in to the Presidio stockade with his lawyer, pleaded guilty to AWOL, and attempted to press a limited conscientious objector case.

By Kerri Ritchie - Wed April 21, 2010

Sri Lankan asylum seekers who were removed from an Indonesian port earlier this week say they are now being kept in cramped conditions in a detention centre which is like a prison.

By Joseph Huff-Hannon - Thursday 8 April 2010

"His business is finished in Kyrgyzstan … in essence people were simply fed up with the previous regime, and with its repressive, tyrannical and abusive behaviour. They want to build democracy here."

By James Petras - January 3rd, 2010

The decades-long wars and occupations of Moslem countries have diverted hundreds of billions of dollars of public funds to a militarist policy with no benefit to the US, while China modernizes its civilian economy...While the White House and Congress subsidize and pander to the militarist-colonial state of Israel with its insignificant resource base and market...China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 10 fold over the past 26 years.

By Matt Wade - October 31, 2009

FEARS over declining media freedoms in Sri Lanka have intensified after a newspaper editor was held by police and questioned about a report alleging tension between military officials and the Government...He now expects to be charged with "arousing the public against the Government" and could face two years in jail if found guilty...Sri Lanka has been ranked as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists.

By John Pilger - October 30, 2009

Year Zero had begun shortly after sunrise on April 17, 1975 when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge guerrillas entered the capital, Phnom Penh. They wore black and marched in single file along the wide boulevards. At one o'clock, they ordered the city abandoned. The sick and wounded were forced at gunpoint from their hospital beds; families were separated; the old and disabled fell beside the road.

At stake is nothing less than who holds the future highground in the competition for the world's energy resources.

The government is preparing for what amounts to a long-term military occupation of areas captured recently in the North. A savage assault is being prepared on the working class and the business elites are pressing for it to begin right away.

The 26 year conflict was not, however, a "war on terror" but a communal war to establish the political supremacy of [the] Sinhala ruling elite and to divide the working class.

By Justin Podur - May 17, 2009

The devastating 2004 tsunami had the effect of clearing territories under [Sri Lankan] government control, destroying thousands of fishing communities on coveted coastal real estate. In the areas controlled by the government, these territories were rebuilt for corporations...As the Sri Lankan army moves north, it is finishing the work of the tsunami: moving whole Tamil communities into internment camps, destroying organizations of resistance, and asserting territorial control.

By John Pilger - Znet Commentary

For me, the most tenacious distant voices have been the Tamils of Sri Lanka, to whom we ought to have listened a very long time ago...[H]aving succeeded in persuading the United States and Britain to proscribe [their] insurgents as terrorists, [Sri Lanka] affirm[s] [they] are on the right side of history, regardless of the fact that [their] government has one of the world's worst human rights records and practices terrorism by another name.

2009/04/16 - BBC News

Singapore has warned foreign protesters against trying to disrupt an Asia-Pacific summit in November due to be attended by US President Barack Obama...The city-state's home affairs minister, Wong Kan Seng, said the threat from terrorists and anarchists was real.

By GRANT PECK - April 6, 2009

The former chief of the Khmer Rouge's most notorious prison said his group would not have risen to power in the 1970s if it weren't for the policies of former U.S. President Richard Nixon and his top diplomat, Henry Kissinger...[His] remarks on U.S. influence in the region were part of his account of the years before the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 regime. They echoed U.S. critics such as Noam Chomsky, who charged that Washington's policies ensnared Cambodia in the Vietnam War, destabilizing the country to the point that the Khmer Rouge could take over.

By Annie Kelly - April 09, 2009

As the Sri Lankan military mounts a spring offensive designed to eliminate the Tamil Tigers and end their bloody 26-year struggle for an independent Tamil homeland, the civilian population of the Tamil-dominated regions is terrorised, displaced and fears the worst...The wave of disappearances and arbitrary arrests has led a host of human rights organisations to sound the alarm.

A colossal humanitarian tragedy is underway in Sri Lanka and no one is saying a word. The world must step in. Now. Before it's too late!