Global

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. 

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."

Can Israel be pressured? Or is Tel Aviv the only exception to the global political order in which every country, big or small, is subjected to pressures and subsequent change in attitude and behavior? 

he “Peaceful Atom” has transformed Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine into a nuclear war.

Like all nukes anywhere, Ukraine’s 15 operating atomic reactors are pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction. As a global threat to the future of human life on this planet, they have escalated this crisis to a danger level that parallels the apocalyptic US/USSR madness of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

As Putin’s troops penetrate the Ukrainian countryside, even a relatively minuscule attack on any of those power plants could blow out radiation far in excess of a nuclear weapon attack. They could (again) blanket Ukraine, Belarus and much of Europe with lethal radioactive fallout arriving in the United States within ten days. Their downwind death toll could dwarf Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Fittingly, the Russian assault quickly focussed on Chernobyl, whose April 26,1986 Unit 4 explosion blew out apocalyptic clouds that have since killed more than a million people worldwide.