Global

BANGKOK, Thailand -- While visiting Bangkok in 2003, then-President George W. Bush designated Thailand a "non-NATO treaty ally" and congratulated Thaksin Shinawatra, the popular, elected, civilian prime minister.

Three years later, a desperate, panicking Mr. Thaksin secretively alerted Mr. Bush about "a threat to democracy in Thailand" by "extra-constitutional tactics" just before a 2006 military coup toppled him.

Today, Mr. Thaksin is a prisoner beginning a one-year sentence -- reduced by the king from eight years -- for financial corruption, ending 15 years as an international fugitive by voluntarily returning to Bangkok on August 22.

This is where so-called "Thai-style democracy" gets tricky, opaque, and imaginative.

Hours after Mr. Thaksin returned and was arrested, Parliament ended a three-month standoff and elected Mr. Thaksin's Pheu Thai Party colleague, a politically inexperienced real estate tycoon, Srettha Thavisin, 60, as prime minister.

Mr. Srettha, a billionaire relatively unknown to the public, said he will "improve the living conditions of all Thai people."

Freedom’s just another word for . . . blowing up your children? Giving them cancer?

Militarism is obsolete, for God’s sake. Its technology is out of control. The latest shred of news that has left me stunned and terror-stricken is this, as reported by Reuters: “The Biden administration will for the first time send controversial armor-piercing munitions containing depleted uranium to Ukraine. . . . It follows an earlier decision by the Biden administration to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, despite concerns over the dangers such weapons pose to civilians.”

At the zenith of the mass protests in Egypt on January 25, 2011, Twitter, Facebook and other Western-based social media platforms appeared to be the most essential tools for the Egyptian Revolution. 

 Though some observers later contested the use of the terms ‘Twitter Revolution’ or ‘Social Media Revolution’, one cannot deny the centrality of these platforms in the discussion around the events which attempted to redefine the power structures of Egypt. 

 It was hardly a surprise that, on January 26, the Egyptian regime decided to block access to social media in a desperate attempt to prevent the spread of the protests. 

August 15, 2019

 “Instead of demanding blue-ribbon safety science and encouraging honest, open and responsible debate on the science, liberal blogs shut down discussion on this key public health and civil rights issue, and silence critics, treating faith in vaccines as a religion; the heresy of questioning dogma meets with anathema and excommunication.”…”Many vaccines contain dangerous amounts of known neurotoxins like mercury and aluminum and carcinogens like formaldehyde, that are associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, autoimmune problems, food allergies and cancers that might not be diagnosed for many years.”…“No matter how toxic the ingredients, how negligent the manufacturer or how grievous the harm, vaccine-injured children cannot sue a vaccine company!”….” Pervasive financial entanglements with vaccine makers and the other alchemies of agency capture have transformed the FDA and CDC into pharmaceutical industry sock puppets.” - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr   (

Ever since Donald Trump became a former president, news outlets and commentators have cited polls showing that many Republicans believe violence might be needed to save the country. As Trump’s legal woes increase, so do mainstream media alarms about the specter of violent responses. But we’ve heard virtually nothing about connections between two decades of nonstop U.S. warfare overseas and attitudes favoring political violence at home.