Global

This is big. A new civil rights era births itself in terrible pain.

Black men die, over and over. I can only hope that peace is the result, serious peace, bigger than new laws, bigger than better trained police — agape peace, you might say, peace that is, in the words of Martin Luther King, “an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.”

“‘We’re out here, and this is peaceful,’ Bishop Walter S. Thomas, pastor of the New Psalmist Baptist Church, shouted to the crowd. After a pause, they continued, singing ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ Helicopters shined spotlights on the group, the thwack-thwack of their rotors competing with the music.”

In 2005, amid reports that the London subway bombers had used cellphones as detonators, the White House secretly established the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 303, which granted the government the ability to unilaterally shut down all cellphone service in an area of its choosing when it feels it needs to.

The details of the procedure are still not public, and a series of lawsuits aiming to at the very least get the basics of how the law even theoretically works have faced massive official opposition, with the White House and DHS desperate to avoid any oversight.

The power has become increasingly controversial in recent years, as cellphone communication has increasingly replaced landline phones, and would be more essential than ever during “emergencies,” the very time the administration wants to be able to silence them.

 Nearly 50 years after Mormons opened small
churches here converting Buddhists, animists and other Thais, they
have now announced plans to construct their first big temple in
Thailand, enabling their families to be "sealed" together for
eternity, posthumous weddings for dead ancestors and other "highest
sacraments."

The Mormons' nearest Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS)
is in Hong Kong, about 1,000 miles northeast of Bangkok.

Over the years, Mormons have converted more and more people in
Thailand, prompting LDS President Thomas S. Monson's announcement.

"The Bangkok Thailand Temple will be the first in this Asian nation,"
LDS said in a statement on April 5 from their Salt Lake City, Utah
headquarters.

"It may be some time before an exact location, construction schedule,
dates for groundbreaking, etc. are provided," LDS public affairs
officer Karlie Brand replied when asked for details.

"Some members speculate that the Church office building on New
Petchaburi Road in Bangkok, acquired by the Church in 2008, may be

Chris Woods' excellent new book is called Sudden Justice: America's Secret Drone Wars. The title comes from a claim that then-President George W. Bush made for drone wars. The book actually tells a story of gradual injustice. The path from a U.S. government that condemned as criminal the type of murder that drones are used for to one that treats such killings as perfectly legal and routine has been a very gradual and completely extra-legal process.

Drone murders started in October 2001 and, typically enough, the first strike murdered the wrong people. The blame game involved a struggle for control among the Air Force, CENTCOM, and the CIA. The absurdity of the struggle might be brought out by modifying the "Imagine you're a deer" speech in the movie My Cousin Vinny: Imagine you're an Iraqi. You're walking along, you get thirsty, you stop for a drink of cool clear water... BAM! A fuckin missile rips you to shreds. Your brains are hanging on a tree in little bloody pieces! Now I ask ya. Would you give a fuck which agency the son of a bitch who shot you was working for?

BANGKOK, Thailand -- "As the insurgents entered his office, the
admiral placed his pistol against his right temple, and pulled the
trigger."

Hours earlier, then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk rejected Cambodia's
surrender and "states only that those still heading the government of
the republic must be condemned to death."

After 40 years, insider Chhang Song for the first time has publicly
described crucial details of his government's fate when America lost
its war and retreated, enabling Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge guerrillas to
seize control five days later on April 17, 1975.

Most testimonies about Cambodia at that time portray the nearly two
million people who perished during Pol Pot's 1975-79 ultra-Maoist
regime.

Other accounts trace Washington's role in Cambodia's destruction,
including a U.S. bombing strategy which slowly began in 1965 under
President Lyndon Johnson and escalated during President Richard
Nixon's massive assaults in 1973.

Chhang Song, born in 1939, was the last minister of information in the

“Sir, you are an idiot.”

Wow, an insult wrapped in such old-fashioned politeness. I let the words hover and reach, as I always do, for peace: that is to say, for clarity, connection, common humanity.

Last week I raised the idea of unarmed policing, as practiced in half a dozen countries around the world. I wasn’t calling for immediate gun surrender but, rather, the diversion of human energy away from short-sighted, violent responses to conflict situations — at pretty much every level of society, from interpersonal to geopolitical — and to the complex, courageous, creative task of building a culture of peace.

Being called an idiot for making such a plea is to be expected, of course — it happens all the time, and I relish it because it means my words have reached people on the other side of the great political divide. That’s what building peace is all about.

Are you surprised that there has been little mobilization to help Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, which is overrun by militants, and besieged by the Syrian army? Palestinians – and Syrians - there are killed in a myriad of ways, including starvation.

I am not surprised. Even before Palestinian refugees found themselves embroiled in Syria’s conflict, I appealed to all parties involved, including the Palestinian leaderships (alas, there are several) to spare the refugees the burden of war, and for Palestinians to set their differences aside to avoid a repeat of Lebanon, Kuwait and Iraq.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
--Robert Frost

After a speech I gave this past weekend, a young woman asked me whether a failure by the United States to properly surround and intimidate China might result in instability. I explained why I thought the opposite was true. Imagine if China had military bases along the Canadian and Mexican borders with the United States and ships in Bermuda and the Bahamas, Nova Scotia and Vancouver. Would you feel stabilized? Or might you feel something else?

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The U.S. did not meet Thai military officials in
Hawaii during March to plan their 2016 multinational military training
exercise and instead indefinitely postponed future contact, signaling
an ongoing rift between the two allies after Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha
seized power in a coup last year.

"Decisions concerning the exercise will be made over the course of the
next months in consultations with Thailand, the co-host of the
exercise, and other participating countries," said a statement issued
by the U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) and the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok,
according to Stars and Stripes which is an authorized Department of
Defense news outlet.

"The United States has indefinitely postponed a planning meeting with
Thailand for next year's Cobra Gold exercise, a decision that comes
months after the U.S. scaled down its part in one of the world's
largest multinational military events," Stars and Stripes reported
from Tokyo on April 16.

Shortly after the U.S.-Thai meeting fell through, Gen. Prayuth