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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

When he signed up to play lacrosse at Ohio State, Tate Stover never anticipated weekends like the one he had in the fall of 2013. Stover should’ve been studying for Calculus 2 exam and yet he found himself on the back of a bus traveling six hours for a game with Maryland.
  “We had access to laptops and everything but the studying got really hard at that point,” the 2013 Olentangy High School graduate says. “I just needed to go somewhere, get some coffee and start studying.”
  After less than a season with Ohio State, he decided to continue his career playing for Capital University, a Division III program almost eight miles down the street from Ohio State’s campus.

Since science fiction’s golden age in the 1950s, the Hugo Awards have honored the best of science fiction and fantasy writing in the form of novels, short stories, films and even fan media. The awards are voted on not by an exclusive panel but by the attendees of the World Science Fiction Convention (aka Worldcon). It’s considered by many to be the most prestigious SFF genre fiction award.
  Well, at least it used to be.

Lightning flashed across Kentucky skies a few nights ago. "I love storms," said my roommate, Gypsi, her eyes bright with excitement. Thunder boomed over the Kentucky hills and Atwood Hall, here in Lexington, KY's federal prison. I fell asleep thinking of the gentle, haunting song our gospel choir sings: "It's over now, It's over now. I think that I can make it. The storm is over now."

I awoke the next morning feeling confused and bewildered. Why had the guards counted us so many times? "That was lightning," Gypsi said, giggling. The guards shine flashlight in our rooms three times a night, to count us, and I generally wake up each time; that night the storm was also a culprit.

As the day continued we saw large pools of water had collected at each entrance to Atwood Hall. Prisoners from drought-ridden areas wish they could collect the rainwater and send it home. Fanciful notions, but of the kind, at least, that can help us remember priorities. I suppose it's wise, though, to focus on what can be fixed. The elevator here, for instance.

The cellphone video “reality footage” just doesn’t stop. Black men are shot, killed, handcuffed. The shortcomings of their prematurely terminated lives soon become public knowledge, vaguely justifying the shocking wrongness of the officer’s action — always poisoning the grief.

The family, the loved ones, the sympathetic sector of the American (and global) public demand “justice.” Even when they get it, or sort of get it, in the form of an arrest or some official expression of regret, the victim — the human being they valued — is still dead.

Nothing changes.

At least it seems as though nothing changes, but of course change, in the form of outrage, revulsion, disbelief — and, ultimately, awareness — is stirring in the collective mind. How it will manifest in the form of specific social policy is, of course, unknown. The status quo, after all, has plenty of defenders — and they’re armed.

Andreas Schüller is an attorney on the staff of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. He is the lead attorney on a suit being brought by ECCHR and Reprieve against the German government on behalf of three Yemeni survivors of a U.S. drone strike. The case will be heard May 27th in Cologne.

Blackwater guards are in one incident at least finally being sentenced to prison for murder today. But their boss will be speaking at the University of Virginia on Wednesday.

Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater, visited Charlottesville 8 years ago and explained some of what's wrong with private mercenaries.

He said that the Pentagon is useless to politicians because it doesn't make campaign "contributions". But when you take a big chunk of that enormous military budget and give it to private companies, you free it up to come back (some portion of it) to politicians every campaign season.

Thus you trade higher costs and less oversight for a built-in generator of systemic pressure for more wars. It's win-win-win.

Former Washington insider and four-star General Wesley Clark spilled the beans several years ago on how Paul Wolfowitz and his neoconservative co-conspirators implemented their sweeping plan to destabilize key Middle Eastern countries once it became clear that post-Soviet Russia “won’t stop us.”

As I recently reviewed a YouTube eight-minute clip of General Clark’s October 2007 speech, what leaped out at me was that the neocons had been enabled by their assessment that – after the collapse of the Soviet Union – Russia had become neutralized and posed no deterrent to U.S. military action in the Middle East.