Global
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thaksin Shinawatra enters 2025 as purportedly the most powerful politician in Thailand, the billionaire who could not be stopped even after two coups and juntas, 15 years in self-exile, and a stack of prison sentences against him.
Mr. Thaksin is now so larger-than-life that many allege he manipulates Thailand's government through his seemingly timid daughter Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 38, who was elected by Parliament in August and appears to eagerly agree with his advice.
Mr. Thaksin, a two-time ex-prime minister who currently holds no political office, is this year's man to watch.
Unfortunately, he began 2025 grappling with allegations that he voiced racist views.
"African people, who have black skin and flat noses that make it difficult to breathe, are hired for millions of baht [Thai currency] to be models," Mr. Thaksin said during a campaign rally in Chiang Rai city on January 6.
"Thai people look much better," Mr. Thaksin, 75, said. "There is no need for [our people to get] nose, jaw, or breast augmentation.
In this chaotic news cycle, America’s worst plane crash in a generation already feels a generation old.
But the administration’s response to the tragic January collision that killed 67 people over the Potomac is worth revisiting. Not only because the loved ones of those lost deserve answers, but because it highlights a MAGA playbook we’ve seen repeatedly now — and we’ll see again very soon.
The return of one million Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north on January 27 felt as if history was choreographing one of its most earth-shattering events in recent memory.
Hundreds of thousands of people marched along a single street, the coastal Rashid Street, at the furthest western stretch of Gaza. Though these displaced masses were cut off from each other in massive displacement camps in central Gaza and the Mawasi region further south, they sang the same songs, chanted the same chants, and used the same talking points.
“Some experts worry that, if the country went to war, many reserve units might be unable to deploy. A U.S. official who works on these issues put it simply: ‘We can’t get enough people.’”
I recently heard an interview on OnPoint Radio with Jane Clayson. The interview
subject was an internist named Stuart B. Mushlin. He had practiced in the Boston area
for 40 years and had recently written a book describing 20 difficult to diagnose patients
that he had encountered during his career. The book was titled “Playing the Ponies and
Other Medical Mysteries Solved”.
In the interview, Dr Mushlin expressed many of the same concerns that I have had with
the Big Business of medicine, and so I wrote the following letter to him:
Dear Dr Mushlin: Thank you for writing the book and also for taking the time to reveal
some unwelcome truths about the sad status of America’s healthcare system.
The Great White Father in Washington has spoken. Let mere mortals hark and obey.
Gaza is a ‘mess’ said President Trump and must be ‘cleaned up.’ 2.1 million human refuse are befouling this potentially prime beachside property. `We just clean out that whole thing’ quoth the Great Developer.
Trump said the answer to this thorny problem is to move all these Palestinian refugees to neighboring Egypt and Jordan. Voila! Problem solved!
Why didn’t the world think of this earlier? Small problem: Egypt, has 107.5 million people crammed into a fertile area the size of the small US state of Maryland. Overpopulated Egypt is so crowded that its people have taken up camping in cemeteries.
Egypt can’t feed its people without millions in US aid delivered through a network of corrupt suppliers. Trump had nothing to say about the corrupt former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, who took large bribes for decades from the Egyptian government – and possibly from others such as Ukraine and Israel.
Chinese Criminals' International Scams & Kidnappings
By Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Beijing and Bangkok are trying to stop criminal gangs from China scamming and kidnapping Chinese travelers in Thailand, causing frightened Chinese to cancel their holidays to this tourist-friendly tropical country which they now perceive as wild and dangerous.
"I have instructed security agencies to raise the level of security for tourists," Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said in January after two high-profile Chinese disappeared in Thailand and emerged after being trapped in Myanmar.
"Tourism is the country's main source of income. I don't want it to be affected."
Scammers even imitated President Donald Trump's voice in a failed attempt to convince Ms. Paetongtarn to send money to Hong Kong.
Organized crime gangs from China allegedly influence Thailand's interior ministry, police, and immigration department to get lengthy Thai visas, invest in property, run nightclubs, marry Thais, smuggle drugs, and use this relatively laidback Southeast Asian country as a hedonistic sanctuary, officials said.