Global

BANGKOK, Thailand -- If Thailand's U.S.-backed military government
allows an election next year, the junta leader and his supporters are
expected to dominate thanks to heavy censorship, an appointed Senate,
and restricted or self-exiled opposition politicians.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who seized power in a bloodless 2014
coup when he was army commander, is widely perceived as manipulating
an extension of his prime ministry.

"Why are you so interested in me?" the often moody Mr. Prayuth asked
reporters who wanted to discuss expectations he would remain in power
after the election.

"I will decide when I will announce.  It's entirely up to me. What's
the point of exposing myself to criticism so soon?" he said on
September 19.

"The laws on the election of members of parliament and selection of
senators were announced in the Royal Gazette on September 12, 2018,
paving the way for an election between February and May 2019," said
New York-based Human Rights Watch.

" Thailand's military junta should immediately lift restrictions on

I’m very, very strange. I think democracy would actually be a good thing, not just grounds for bombing other countries. As long as we’re stuck with electing supposed representatives, I want to make that system approximate as closely as possible actual democracy. This attitude results in some bizarre positions. For example, I want candidates to lay out a detailed policy platform with hard commitments to particular actions. Even weirder, I don’t really care what a candidate looks like or what he or she does consensually in bedrooms or what political party, if any, he or she swears obedience to — er, excuse me, belongs to.

U.S. politics is remarkably devoid of content, in general, and especially at the higher levels, and especially on unpopular positions supported by both big parties. Almost never will a candidate for the U.S. Congress outline a basic desired budget. Virtually none has a position on the level of military spending. Very few Democrats, and not that many Republicans, have any foreign policy platform at all. Campaign websites are dominated by personal stories, vague “principles,” and fluff.

The Collapse of the War Systemis the hopeful and predictive title of a 2007 book by John Jacob English, who’s actually Irish, and it may prove a valuable stepping stone for many trying to partially back their way out of support for endless war yet not prepared to acknowledge the more coherent and empirically substantiated wisdom of complete abolition. Whether any of the authors of the following books which I routinely recommend to people had read English’s book I do not know, but it also makes a nice lead-up chronologically and logically to them:

These words did in G. Harrold Carswell nearly five decades ago:

“I am Southern by ancestry, birth, training, inclination, belief and practice. And I believe that segregation of the races is proper and the only practical and correct way of life in our states. I have always so believed and I shall always so act.

“I shall be the last to submit to any attempt on the part of anyone to break down and to weaken this firmly established policy of our people.

“If my own brother were to advocate such a program, I would be compelled to take issue with him and to oppose him to the limit of my ability.

– Senator Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican, September 28, 2018

The Ohio Linux Fest (OLF) will be at the Ohio Convention Center this October 12-13. OLF is like a Comfest for people who love computers, and specifically the free software known as GNU/Linux (winks at Richard Stallman).

OLF is also for people who prefer the term open-source, work at corporations and just call it Linux. If you didn't get the point of distinction, I could spend this article explaining the distinctions between copy-left, copyright, MIT vs. BSD and GPL 2 v 3 and you would probably not have any better idea of why you should care. So instead just take my word for it that there are good reasons for people who work with technology to care about these things and read on.

OLF certainly caters to people who are already familiar with Linux and know what a kernel is, but it is also a kid friendly community event. If you are Linux curious you will still find a lot to learn with various introductory sessions that will hold your hand while introducing you to new concepts.

Never before has the Republican Party so explicitly shown its true colors. It is now so far off to the right the Clintons look like raging communists. The all-male Republican membership of the Senate judiciary committee refused to interview a female sexual assault victim themselves. They hired a prosecutor to interrogate the victim and say next to nothing to the accused. Senators whom had previously railed against Trump lost all moderate credibility when they leapt to the defense of a Supreme Court nominee accused of sex crimes and perjury. The entire party has been astoundingly flagrant in its disrespect and disregard for women.

Read this headline: “To Avoid Repeating Catastrophic Mistake of Iraq Invasion, Senate Bill Would Forbid Attack on Iran Without Congressional Approval.”

Consider these facts:

The Senate voted to let Bush attack Iraq.

So did the House.

The pair of them continue to fund the U.S. military occupation of Iraq to this day.

I stumbled upon Moroni for President purely by chance and boy, am I glad that I did. It just so happened to fit into my schedule covering the LA Film Festival so I popped into the ArcLight Theatre, not knowing what I’d see. Based on its name, I thought it might be a satire based on Trump about a moron running for the White House. But to paraphrase an old saying, don’t judge a film by its title. It turned out that Finnish filmmaker Saila Huusko and Dutch co-director Jaspen Rischen’s directorial debut was actually a documentary about someone named Moroni Benally, who indeed was actually running for president.