Global

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Millions of mourners are gathering for the
opulent royal cremation on October 25-29 of Thailand's king who had a
Golden Death Mask placed over his face and has lain, for the past one
year, in a coffin blessed by chanting Buddhist monks and a distraught,
weeping public.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej ("Poom-ee-pon Ah-doon-ya-det"), also known as
Rama IX, died in a Bangkok hospital after a lengthy illness on October
13, 2016, aged 88.

He was still reigning as a constitutional monarch after 70 years on the throne.

Today, his coffin and urn rest atop a tall, glistening, golden
catafalque in the Grand Palace's exquisite Dusit Maha Prasad Hall
under an ornate spired roof.

The hall's porticos feature wood-carved golden images of the Hindu god
Vishnu astride his mythical half-man half-bird winged Garuda, because
Thailand's monarchs are presented as living incarnations of Vishnu.

Bhumibol's passing has left many Thais feeling orphaned in a society
where the late monarch is still described officially and informally as
"father".

Amidst the hellish chaos of the Donald Trump catastrophe, it’s more essential than ever to understand how he got into the White House and who put him there. Then we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

In her recent blame-everybody-else-while-doing-nothing screed, “What Happened,” Hillary Clinton fingers James Comey, the Russians and Bernie Sanders.

But, in fact, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry put this madman in office.

This trio of multi-millionaire corporate Democrats won the presidential races of 2000, 2004 and 2016. Then they lay down, said hardly a word and did even less as they let George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump rule the land.

All three presidencies were stolen by stripping large numbers of black, Hispanic, Asian-American and young citizens from the voter rolls, and then electronically flipping the vote count. In 2000 and 2016, the thefts were finalized by the Electoral College.

Along the way, the United States House, Senate and a thousand state, federal and local offices also have been flipped. The Supreme Court has come along for the ride.

The raging fires and toxic smoke clouds pouring through Northern California can only be described as apocalyptic.

Were they sparked by Pacific Gas & Electric’s centralized grid?

And where are our federal government and national media?

More than 40 people are dead; many more are missing. Given how fast the fires raced through the region, it’s possible that other humans—as well as farm animals, pets and wildlife—have been incinerated.

In many cases, the margin for escape was five minutes or less. Some people who did not leave their homes at the first sign of danger died. Some stood in home swimming pools for hours while everything burned around them. Flames  leaped over Highway 101 and other major roads, creating firestorms with temperatures of 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit and more.

ffering official, token comfort to the families of fallen American soldiers has been a virtually reflexive ritual since George Washington, and rightly so. The dead are men and women who gave their brief lives for belief in the country, even when their government let them die for a lie or a fraud.

The jury is not out and the verdict is in: Laguna Playhouse’s production of Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men is “guilty” as charged of being an excellent, tautly written, directed and acted drama. Suggested by Rose’s own stint serving on a jury, Twelve goes behind the scenes to watch the jury deliberations of a dozen men over what appears to be an open and shut homicide case in New Yawk City. They are in a rush to leave the sweltering jury room - as in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, also about racial injustice, it is literally the hottest day of the year - and the weary men want to leave the courthouse, go home, to a Dodger game (in Brooklyn, not Chavez Ravine - this is a 1950s period piece), etc.

But with the death sentence hanging over the teenaged defendant - a minority (unspecified which ethnic group he belongs to in this production) - Juror # 8 (Seamus Dever) proves to be the lone holdout. An architect, the sole dissenting vote on the first ballot, steps up and bravely holds forth in this gripping one-acter, as he strives to sway the other mostly eager-to-leave 11 jurors to consider that there may be reasonable doubt. Will he prevail?

America’s endless war quietly moves across the broken nations of the world. Every so often, U.S. soldiers die, as four Green Berets did several weeks ago in . . . Niger.

And the news was more about the adequacy of presidential condolences to the families of the slain soldiers than the point of our military presence there, i.e., why they died. An official sentiment was uttered by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Oct. 5:

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the fallen service members who made the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of the freedoms we hold so dear.”

They died for a cliché. This is the best the country could offer, but it’s hardly surprising, much as it rips the grief and the outrage wide open. They died in defense of no one’s freedom except those who wage and profit from endless war, and the fake media fuss over the nature of their condolences simply further shields this fact from public view.

“In America, if you say ‘Brian Wilson,’ people think the Beach Boys, but in Nicaragua if you say ‘Brian Willson,’ people think of the peace activist,” said Frank Dorrel, Associate Producer of Paying The Price For Peace: The Story of S. Brian Willson & Voices From The Peace Movement. Dorrel made his comments at a Q&A following a screening of the 97 minute documentary, which was screened at the LA Live Regal Cinema 14 as part of the 8th annual Awareness Film Festival, which took place Oct. 5-15.

As Bo Boudart’s award-winning nonfiction film recounts, what made the other Brian Willson so prominent is the Vietnam vet’s commitment to the cause of peace, culminating in an enormous sacrifice, which this plot spoiler adverse critic won’t ruin for you. (Let’s just say he was railroaded…) Yes, as the title indicates, Willson paid an unimaginable price for peace, but this documentary is also about the antiwar movement. Although Boudart’s sprawling film focuses on Willson, it is also a compendium of the struggle for peace from the Vietnam War to the bloody U.S. intervention in Central America up to the ongoing armed conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.

One month ago, I initiated here at Unz.com a discussion of the role of American Jews in the crafting of United States foreign policy. I observed that a politically powerful and well-funded cabal consisting of both Jewish individuals and organizations has been effective at engaging the U.S. in a series of wars in the Middle East and North Africa that benefit only Israel and are, in fact, damaging to actual American interests. This misdirection of policy has not taken place because of some misguided belief that Israeli and U.S. national security interests are identical, which is a canard that is frequently floated in the mainstream media. It is instead a deliberate program that studiously misrepresents facts-on-the ground relating to Israel and its neighbors and creates casus belli involving the United States even when no threat to American vital interests exists. It punishes critics by damaging both their careers and reputations while its cynical manipulation of the media and gross corruption of the national political process has already produced the disastrous war against Iraq, the destruction of Libya and the ongoing chaos in Syria.

President Donald Trump’s move to decertify the Iranian nuclear Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), entered into a little over two years ago, was applauded by Israel, Saudi Arabia and a couple of Persian Gulf States, but by no one else. Quite the contrary, as the European and Asian co-signatories on the agreement, having failed to dissuade Trump, have clearly indicated that they will continue to abide by it. Also, the decision to kick the can down the road by giving Congress 60 days to increase pressure on Tehran in an attempt to include other issues beyond nuclear development like its ballistic missile program and labeling the country’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group are likely to create confusion as Washington is unable to communicate directly with Iran. That uncertainty could possibly lead to a fraught-with-danger Iranian decision to withdraw completely from the agreement.