American Buddhist Net

The Italian archaeological mission in Pakistan has discovered a large number of Buddhist sites and rock shelters in Kandak and Kota valleys of Barikot in Swat in the North West Frontier Province which depicted the carvings and paintings from the bronze and iron ages.

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The United States intends to build an anti-terror training center in the southern Kyrgyz province of Batken. The exact location of the facility, which is projected to cost $5.5 million, has not yet been determined.

The move is likely to be perceived by the Kremlin as further American encroachment into what has traditionally been Moscow’s sphere of influence, analysts say.

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Former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency Hamid Gol says the United States is seeking to create and train terrorist groups in the region.

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KABUL -- The military helicopters swooped in from behind the three-vehicle convoy as it wound through a remote road in southern Afghanistan, and survivors of last week's deadly attack said they had no idea they were in danger until the lead four-wheel drive vehicle exploded.

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Some mullahs in Afghanistan are distributing condoms. Others are quoting the Quran to encourage longer breaks between births. Health experts say contraception is starting to catch on in a country with the world's second highest maternal death rate.

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KATHMANDU, Nepal— Dawa Steven Sherpa is only 25 but has already climbed Mt. Everest twice. The last time he was on top of the Earth’s highest point, he picked up a small stone for President Barack Obama.

The stone was given to Nepal’s prime minister, who gave it to Obama at the United Nations in September to symbolize the growing problem of global warming, which threatens the world’s highest mountain range—the Himalayas.

“Everest is changing,” said Dawa Steven, as he is called. “A few years ago, the summit was a large icy area where 50 people might fit. Now only 20 can be there—the cornice [of snow] is slowly breaking off and more rock is exposed. It may be global warming.”

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..."I don't think the Iranians, even if they got the bomb, are going to drop it in the neighborhood," Barak said. "They fully understand what might follow -- they are radical but not total 'meshugah.' They have a quite sophisticated decision-making process and they understand realities."

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The quote just above contradicts the headline. I agree with the quote, not the headline. Threats against Iran seem to me to have much more to do with US control of Central Asia, and keeping Russia and China contained and on their toes. War with Iran, of course, risks war with Russia or China or both, though I doubt either nation would do anything to invite an attack. Constantly threatening Iran also cloaks US military escalations in Afghanistan and Pakistan by keeping the public distracted. Notice also that none of the rhetoric surrounding the "Iranian threat" works very well when argued or discussed in even the most basic ways. It does work very well though when sound bites and scary pictures are beamed across the TV to passive audiences who willingly accept their intellectual defeat with a bowl of popcorn. ABN

Orozbek’s daughters are making green tea. As my eyes adjust to the darkness inside his family’s yurt, the little girls fuss with plastic cauldrons of water around a small tin stove stuffed with yak dung.

Here on the Alichur Plateau (at approximately 3,900 meters/12,800 feet), we’re closer to a provincial Chinese hub than the Tajik capital in Dushanbe, three days’ drive in the opposite direction. The region is populated sparsely with ethnic Kyrgyz nomads such as Orozbek. Little vegetation grows here. The skittish yak is the only beast suited to the dry, cold and brawny sun.

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A night-time raid in eastern Afghanistan in which eight schoolboys from one family were killed was carried out on the basis of faulty intelligence and should never have been authorised, a Times investigation has found.

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As the Uzbek-Japanese symposiums titled "Ancient Civilizations and Religions in Uzbekistan: In Search of Origins of Japanese Culture" in Japan have concluded, Uzbek and Japanese scientists have resolved to set up a scientific society.

The symposiums were organized at the initiative of the Fund Forum and took place on 15-18 February at Toyo University in Tokyo and Nara University in Japan's Kansai Region.

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Australian television network, ABC, is scheduled to broadcast a documentary portraying sexual slavery in Afghanistan, involving boys as young as ten.

The documentary entitled, "The Warlords Tune" shows boys involved in the practice of bacha bazi or "boy play", where young boys become entertainment for prominent men, including businessmen, police and warlords.

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A Japanese-Uzbek symposium titled "Ancient Civilizations and Religions in Uzbekistan: In Search of Origins of Japanese Culture" was held at Nara University on 17 February.

The symposium focused on the 1300th anniversary of Nara, the first capital of Japan. The organizers of the event included the Fund Forum, Nara University, the Japanese-Uzbek Archeological Expedition in Uzbekistan, and the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan.

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A new mythical animal is on the prowl on the Chinese internet.

The Yake lizard is the latest creation of China’s nimble and imaginative netizens as a way to poke fun at the authorities and their bid to corral online debate and to block access to sites the censors deem inappropriate.

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Here is a link to the original Xinjiang propaganda video that has given rise to the Yake lizard: Xinjiang Yakexi (Xinjiang is Good). About a year ago, Chinese censors were confronted with obscene Grass-mud-horse videos and songs. With luck, we will get some Yakexi songs soon. Here is another link about the "Grass-mud-horse": China: Censors Bar Mythical Creature. ABN

WASHINGTON — Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, kept a remote U.S. base in the country manned last year at the local governor's request despite warnings from his field commanders that it should be closed because it was vulnerable and had no tactical or strategic value.

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A whopping 71 percent of Americans believe that Iran currently has nuclear weapons, according to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey.

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I am not all that trusting of public opinion polls, but if this one is correct, we are, without question, a nation of morons with a very dangerous psychopathic streak. ABN

...“It’s a spectacular own goal [for the US],” said one official. “They want to wreck talks,” said a close aide to Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai.

“Mullah Baradar was independently in contact with the Afghan government to find a way for reconciliation and the Pakistanis knew that from their secret agents.”

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Violence in Afghanistan pays and offering the criticism of loyal opposition does not. So thinks Abdullah Abdullah, the losing presidential candidate in Afghanistan’s 2009 election. In an interview with EurasiaNet in Kabul, Abdullah derided Afghan government plans to contain the Taliban insurgency, complaining that new policies could end up undermining democratization and increasing the chances of renewed inter-ethnic strife.

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Unfortunately, "renewed inter-ethnic strife" is probably the whole point, as far as the a**holes in charge are concerned. Robyn

(WSWS) — The German government has now reclassified its military mission in Afghanistan as intervening in a civil war or, as they say in legal jargon, a “non-international armed conflict.” This was announced by Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle (Free Democratic Party—FDP) on Wednesday in a government statement to the Bundestag (parliament). Previously, the government had described the Afghan intervention as a stabilization operation to assist with peacekeeping.

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Existing in the shadows, the US base-building program is staggering in size and scope and also extraordinarily expensive.

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MOSCOW — How can a photographer defame her country?

Uzbekistan tried to answer that question this week in a slander trial that harkened back to the days of Soviet censorship. The answer, in part: by showing people with sour expressions or bowed heads, children in ragged clothing, old people begging for change or other images that, according to a panel of experts convened by prosecutors, “could lead a foreigner unfamiliar with Uzbekistan to the conclusion that this is a country where people live in the Middle Ages.”

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Maybe in some ways it is like the Middle Ages in Uzbekistan. So what? Is anybody really all that impressed with "modernity"? Robyn

Kazakhstan’s government is mulling a plan that would enable China to lease a large swath of Kazakhstani land for agricultural use. The proposed deal is stirring passionate opposition in the Central Asian state, with critics expressing concern about the country’s sovereignty.

Controversy has been brewing since December, when President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced that China had expressed a desire to lease a million hectares of Kazakhstani land. Under the proposal, Chinese growers would cultivate soybeans and rapeseed, which is used to produce vegetable oil, on the leased land. The government insists that opponents of the lease-scheme are overreacting.

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Webster G. Tarpley
February 6, 2010

For her Jan. 29 speech at the Ecole Militaire in Paris, Mrs. Clinton was evidently wearing that stylish new French perfume from the House of Sarkozy called Chantage – meaning blackmail. Mrs. Clinton gloats because she thinks she has the Chinese leadership in a bind. As she stated, she knows that China increasingly depends on oil from the Gulf. She demanded that China vote for crippling sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council this month, while Sarkozy — the craziest of all western leaders against Iran — controls the presidency of that body. For China, approving crippling sanctions against Iran means in all probability the loss of 10% to 12% of its oil imports, the aborting of some $80 billion in development projects by Beijing in Iran, the sacrifice of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil which the Chinese have locked in via futures contracts, and, above all, a farewell to the best chance of getting a secure overland oil pipeline far away from the US-UK fleets — the pipeline from Iran via Pakistan into China.

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Despite having served for years as a distinguished Pakistani diplomat, Akbar Zeb reportedly cannot receive accreditation as Pakistan's ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The reason, apparently, has nothing to do with his credentials, and everything to do with his name -- which, in Arabic, translates to "biggest dick":

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A new investigation by journalist Anand Gopal reveals harrowing details about US secret prisons in Afghanistan, under both the Bush and Obama administrations. Gopal interviewed Afghans who were detained and abused at several disclosed and undisclosed sites at US and Afghan military bases across the country. He also reveals the existence of another secret prison on Bagram Air Base that even the Red Cross does not have access to. It is dubbed the Black Jail and is reportedly run by US Special Forces.

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America's Secret Afghan Prisons

The deaths were caused because ten out of 12 deadly missile strikes missed their targets causing heavy casualty. The remaining two successful drone strikes killed three al-Qaeda leaders, wanted by the Americans, The News reports.

The rapid increase in the US drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan can be gauged from the fact that only two such strikes were carried out in January 2009, which killed 36 people.

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The Kintsvisi monastery is a place where the past manages to keep the present at bay. The monks who reside at this sanctuary, situated in the heavily wooded mountains of Georgia’s Shida Kartli region, live according to the same basic guidelines that were in place at the time of its founding more than a millennium ago.

Every Sunday, the monks rise at 3am for four hours of prayer in the monastery’s main building. Surrounded by murals dating from the early 13th century, the monks pray with uncommon devotion.

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Swamped by court challenges and under pressure from a hostile army, Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, has found solace in an unusual form – the ritual slaughter of goats.

Zardari has a black goat killed every day at his Islamabad house to ward off "evil eyes" and protect himself against "black magic", according to a report in Dawn, Pakistan's paper of record.

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New civil rights for Pakistan's long-oppressed 'wedding dancers' offer hope of a better life

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