Global
NONG KHAI, Thailand -- You can see China's inexorable southern thrust along the Mekong River where tall, fanciful, Chinese buildings sprout nearby on the Laos side of this sleepy northern border, sparking hopes and fears about Beijing's influence and intent in Thailand.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief's recent visit to Bangkok amid a flurry of lucrative U.S. military and business deals, may lure Thailand to favor the U.S. and not China in the future, but the rivalry is heating up.
"Thailand has been leaning toward China, and away from the U.S., for two decades," said Benjamin Zawacki, Bangkok-based American author of "Thailand: Shifting Ground Between the U.S. and a Rising China."
"In the military sphere, relations with the U.S. are arguably still deeper, but the gap is closing swiftly," Mr. Zawacki said in an interview.
Many Thais celebrate Chinese ancestry which dates back more than 700 years, in contrast to the persecution they suffered in Thailand during U.S.-led anti-communist purges in the mid-20th century.
The diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games may go down in history as the official start of the cold war between the US, a handful of its allies and China. The American strategy, however, of using boycotts to pressure Beijing in the name of ‘human rights’, may prove costly in the future.
Do our “Defence Departments” really defend us? Absolutely not! Their very title is a lie. The military-industrial complex sells itself by claiming to defend civilians. It justifies vast and crippling budgets by this claim; but it is a fraud. For the military-industrial complex, the only goal is money and power. Civilians like ourselves are just hostages. We are expendable. We are pawns in the power game, the money game.
Nations possessing nuclear weapons threaten each other with “Mutually Assured Destruction”, which has the very appropriate acronym MAD. What does this mean? Does it mean that civilians are being protected? Not at all. Instead they are threatened with complete destruction. Civilians here play the role of hostages in the power games of their leaders.
A thermonuclear war today would be not only genocidal but also omnicidal. It would kill people of all ages, babies, children, young people, mothers, fathers and grandparents, without any regard whatever for guilt or innocence. Such a war would be the ultimate ecological catastrophe, destroying not only human civilization but also much of the biosphere.
While many march and celebrate a fictitious King today, his family, largely ignored, call on no one to celebrate the holiday till voting rights are protected, with the current reversal of laws by the Supreme Court, some things are worse than what they were in the late 60s when King and the movement were struggling to pass those very rights. I myself will not march to hypocrisy, while we lack democracy at home, a democracy that King gave his life for. What is often overlooked or whitewashed when it comes to the American (US) mythology of King, which has turned King into a fictional character, was King’s radical revolution of values.
Former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his prosecutors are reportedly finalizing the details of a plea deal that would practically water down, shelve, or drop altogether all three major corruption cases that have led to his high-profile trial in May 2020. If such news actualizes, Israel would officially sink to a new low in terms of political nepotism and corruption.
“The concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”
Even if Mitch McConnell’s viral gaffe last week is as innocent as he claims it to be, the stench of something deep — the unexamined racist fear and shame at the core of GOP policy — is unavoidably noticeable: There’s “them” and there’s “us” and never the twain shall meet. And we’ll make sure of that. (Shhhh … don’t tell anyone.)
The meeting—which drew more than 300 citizen participants—featured more than two dozen top-of-the-line intellectuals, organizers and activists offering their brilliance and their guidance on election protection.
We open with actress/activist MIMI KENNEDY and PDA Executive Director ALAN MINSKY with their deep insights into the forces attacking the remnants of our republic.
We’re then joined by ANDREA MILLER and RAY MCCLENDON, creators of the crucial “Georgia Way,” which against all conceivable odds turned two US Senate seats in Georgia to progressive campaigners who unseated Mitch McConnell.
They are followed by an astounding line-up of key players in saving American democracy, including: REV. RODNEY SADLER, CHRISTIAN NUNES, MIKE FOX, TATONKA BRICCA, SARA NELSON, DANNY SHEEHAN, LORI PESANTE, ROBERT WILSON, JAMES FUKUDA, DANNY GOLDBERG, KENNY BRUNO, JOHN BRAKEY and JAN GOODMAN.
It is ironic that even former right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had rejected a Knesset (Israeli Parliament) bill which proposed to give the government greater power to control and suppress online content. This was in 2016, and the bill was introduced by Netanyahu’s Likud party rival, Gideon Sa’ar.
Writer/director Pawo Choyning Dorji’s heartfelt Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom will charm the pants off of you – or, rather, the robes off of you. Because this captivating feature was shot mostly in the hard-to-get-to Kingdom of Bhutan, a Buddhist nation of less than 1 million inhabitants straddling the Eastern Himalayas between India and the Tibet region of the People’s Republic of China. Indeed, Lunana was largely lensed on location in the actual village of that same name, a remote, tiny hamlet, which translated into English Lunana means: “The Dark Valley.” Minus electricity, let alone Internet connectivity and cell receptivity, Dorji’s crew had to shoot on location there using solar power batteries.