Global

Israel kills Palestinian children as a matter of policy. This claim can easily be demonstrated and is supported by the latest findings of a Human Rights Watch report.  

 The question is: why?  

 When the police or military shoot a child anywhere in the world, though utterly tragic, it can be argued, at least in theory, that the killing was an unfortunate mistake. 

 But when thousands of children are killed and wounded in a systematic, 'routine' and comparable method within a relatively short period of time, the killing of children must be deliberate. 

BANGKOK, Thailand -- While visiting Bangkok in 2003, then-President George W. Bush designated Thailand a "non-NATO treaty ally" and congratulated Thaksin Shinawatra, the popular, elected, civilian prime minister.

Three years later, a desperate, panicking Mr. Thaksin secretively alerted Mr. Bush about "a threat to democracy in Thailand" by "extra-constitutional tactics" just before a 2006 military coup toppled him.

Today, Mr. Thaksin is a prisoner beginning a one-year sentence -- reduced by the king from eight years -- for financial corruption, ending 15 years as an international fugitive by voluntarily returning to Bangkok on August 22.

This is where so-called "Thai-style democracy" gets tricky, opaque, and imaginative.

Hours after Mr. Thaksin returned and was arrested, Parliament ended a three-month standoff and elected Mr. Thaksin's Pheu Thai Party colleague, a politically inexperienced real estate tycoon, Srettha Thavisin, 60, as prime minister.

Mr. Srettha, a billionaire relatively unknown to the public, said he will "improve the living conditions of all Thai people."

Freedom’s just another word for . . . blowing up your children? Giving them cancer?

Militarism is obsolete, for God’s sake. Its technology is out of control. The latest shred of news that has left me stunned and terror-stricken is this, as reported by Reuters: “The Biden administration will for the first time send controversial armor-piercing munitions containing depleted uranium to Ukraine. . . . It follows an earlier decision by the Biden administration to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, despite concerns over the dangers such weapons pose to civilians.”