Global

For decades, the U.S. public seemed largely indifferent to most of the horrible suffering of war. The corporate media outlets mostly avoided it, made war look like a video game, occasionally mentioned suffering U.S. troops, and once in a blue moon touched on the deaths of a handful of local civilians as if their killing were some sort of aberration. The U.S. public funded and either cheered for or tolerated years and years of bloody wars, and came out managing to believe falsely that a large percentage of war deaths are of troops, that a large percentage of war deaths in U.S. wars are U.S. troops, that wars happen in a mysterious place called a “battlefield,” and that with rare exceptions the people killed by U.S. troops are people who need killing exactly like those given death sentences in U.S. courts (except for the ones later exonerated).

Israel’s war on Palestinian sports is as old as the Israeli state itself. 

For Palestinians, sports is a critical aspect of their popular culture, and since Palestinian culture itself is a target for the ongoing Israeli attack on Palestinian life in all of its manifestations, sports and athletes have been purposely targeted as well. Yet, the world’s main football governing body, FIFA, along with other international sports organizations, has done nothing to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against Palestinian sports. 

I had a breakthrough yesterday — and I don’t mean metaphorically.

Wars rage, countless humans suffer, the rich get richer, life goes on. I still have my morning coffee. But not yesterday.

What happened — about 5 a.m. — was a fleeting . . . oh so fleeting . . . insight into life beyond its small certainties and routines. When life suddenly spins out of control, the Great Unknown is momentarily present. I have decided to write about it, or try to write about it, to honor the vulnerable everywhere.

That hour of the morning is not my normal get-up time, but as I enter geezerhood (I turned 75 half a year ago) I find myself waking up throughout the night and heading with sudden urgency to the bathroom. No big deal. This is part of the routine.

In this special emergency edition of the SOLARTOPIA GREEN POWER & WELLNESS SHOW we confront the horrifying realties of the fifteen Ukrainian nuclear power plants now teetering on the brink of the Apocalypse.

Finally, France will be leaving Mali, nearly a decade after the original military intervention in 2013. The repercussions of this decision will hardly be confined to this West African nation, but will likely spread to the entirety of the Sahel Region; in fact, the whole of Africa. 

Prior to any analysis of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, prior to the casting of blame and outrage — at Putin’s hubris, at NATO’s pernicious westward expansion over the last three decades — there’s this:

“Our world has become so interdependent that violent conflict between two countries inevitably impacts the rest of the world. War is outdated — nonviolence is the only way. We need to develop a sense of the oneness of humanity by considering other human beings as brothers and sisters. This is how we will build a more peaceful world.”

Too simple? Yada yada?

BANGKOK, Thailand -- More than 30 years after a Thai janitor stole a blue diamond from Saudi royals and the murder of four Saudi diplomats, Riyadh has agreed to stop punishing Bangkok with financial sanctions which cost billions of dollars in lost trade, tourism, and jobs.

Greed, sleaze, betrayal and bloodshed over the still-missing blue diamond and the four unsolved murder cases, resulted in Saudi Arabia's expulsion of more than 200,000 Thai workers, a ban on Saudi tourists traveling to Thailand, and a drop in imports and exports between the two countries.

Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha's surprisingly successful meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman at Al Yamamah Palace in Riyadh on Jan. 25 suddenly changed all that.

Relations now "must be better than the last 32 years," Prime Minister Prayuth said.

"Both countries have agreed to fully restore diplomatic ties, including the appointment of ambassadors."

A joint Saudi-Thai statement said Mr. Prayuth "expressed his sincere regrets for the tragic cases that took place in Thailand between 1989-1990."