Global
BANGKOK, Thailand -- The horrific suffering of five Thai farmworkers held by Palestinian militants ended with their freedom on January 30, alongside three released Israelis, after intense diplomatic efforts frayed relations between Bangkok and Tel Aviv.
Surprisingly, throughout the 15-month hostage crisis, tens of thousands of Thais continued to flock to the coveted higher-paying agricultural and construction jobs in the Jewish state after the October 2023 attack.
The hostages' desperate families have been waiting in anguish in this Buddhist-majority Southeast Asian nation, praying at temples and frantically trying to get officials to help them.
"It is confirmed, my son did not die," a weeping Wiwwaeo Sriaoun, mother of one freed hostage, said.
"I will hug him when I see him. I want to see if his health is OK. I am worried about his health," she told Agence-France Presse while watching the news at their home in northeast Thailand's Isaan region.
Only one Thai hostage Pinta Nattapong, along with the bodies of two dead Thais, remained in Gaza. The dead were identified as Sudthisak Rinthalak and Sonthaya Oakkharasri.
In the wake of catastrophic fires that have devastated Los Angeles, America’s top anti-green Luddites——Donald Trump and Gavin Newsom—-met at a southern California airport, where Melania greeted the Governor with exceptional warmth.
In service to the coal, oil, nuke and gas burners at the core of climate chaos, her husband’s“drill baby drill” war is devastating a green-powered future built on wind turbines, solar farms, battery storage, electric cars, micro-grids and more.
Trump’s alleged rival, Gavin Newsom, has escalated that attack in California. In 2022, he betrayed a state-approved plan to transcend the states last two atomic reactors with a renewable-based energy system set to compete in global markets.
But forcing Diablo Canyon’’s prolonged operations, Newsom risks a radioactive apocalypse that would dwarf the Los Angeles fires, while currently costing the state at least $11 billion in over-market charges through 2030.
Simultaneously, Newsom’s hand-picked Public Utilities Commission has hit the state’s rooftop solar industry with a multi-billion-dollar wave of bankruptcies, costing at least 17,000 jobs.
When I was a child attending Cleveland Indian baseball games at the old Municipal Stadium a thin man in an Indians’ baseball cap ran up and down the aisles hawking scorecards and calling out, “Scorecard, scorecard, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.”
He was right. The scorecards would give you the player’s name, number, and position. Then you would open to a page where you could engage in the fine art of keeping score, tracking the runs, hits and errors, through esoteric notations on the scorecard.
Baseball has changed over time. Designated hitters changed the game’s strategy; limits on visits to the mound and the pitch clocks sped up play. Scorecards are now digital. And the Cleveland Indians changed their name to the Guardians.
Which brings me to Syria.
The topic of Syria seems to have the full attention of the Senate Intelligence committee when it comes to reviewing the deposed Assad Regime, but lacks an understanding of the role that the CIA has played in putting al-Queda, or whatever you want to call it, in the driver’s seat in Damascus.
As Trump and his minions take a wrecking ball to the American economy and social contract, he may have done one thing right. He has issued an executive order to release documents on the political assassinations (JFK, RFK, and MLK) as well as the attack on 9/11. While this is very welcome news for the thousands of dedicated researchers who have studied these events for several decades, the order lacks specifics. Interested parties such as Jefferson Morley's JFK facts, the Mary Farrell foundation, Jim DiEugneio's Kennedys and King website, Len Osanic's fabulous site Black Op Radio (and others) are working diligently to achieve an acceptable outcome. More than 70% of the population support this on a bipartisan basis. Our country yearns for transparency.
Before I start I want to express sympathy for the people who have died in a plane crash in Washington, and I want to condemn Trump’s disgusting proposal to kidnap people and lock them up in Guantanamo.
I’m very happy to be in Cuba. I feel closer to Cuba than I do to people in the United States with red hats reading MAGA. Cuba is, in fact, closer to the continental United States than is Hawaii or Alaska or any of the U.S. colonies in the Pacific or about 916 of the United States’ 917 foreign military bases. The people of the U.S. and Cuba have managed, against the odds, to share a great deal of culture and good will, poetry, music, food, and drink. But we sure are divided by governments.
I just searched the internet in the United States for the words “free Cuba” and discovered that it means the overthrow of the Cuban government. I tried searching for “Cuba libre” and learned that it means a drink. But what if I want to search for “a Cuba free of hostile actions by the U.S. government”? The internet is of no help.
