BANGKOK, Thailand -- Coup-crazy Thailand is spooked about another possible putsch, after Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej condemned a fortune teller who met the frustrated leader of the 2006 coup.

The prime minister expressed outrage that the influential fortune teller, Varin Buaviratlert, also reportedly predicted Mr. Samak's government was going to be overthrown.

Many Thais are easily frightened by the specter of the supernatural in this deeply superstitious, Southeast Asian Buddhist country, which freely incorporates Hindu and animist beliefs.

Thais frequently perform elaborate rituals to improve their luck against perceived dangers from ghosts, bad karma, unlucky feng shui, wrong-sounding family names, the birth of a baby, curses, and a slew of other real and imagined phenomenon.

Their social insecurity has been worsened by nearly 20 coups, and attempted coups, since the 1932.

The prime minister's current coup fears, and the soothsayer's predictions, are shaking the confidence of some people while boosting the hopes of others -- and attracting sarcastic barbs.

For nearly 200 years Americans could exercise their enumerated constitutional right to buy a firearm without ID. How many of you New World Order Useful Idiot Corporatist Ass Whores pretending to be "progressive" will stand up for THAT right?

Robert O'Rourke
Los Angeles

Dear Free Press Editors,

I just read Jason Miller's essay called Jesus Knows a Camel... dated 4/7/08. I can't argue with any of it but his statement that Israel is a murderous state. I am a left wing liberal but I am pro-Israel. I have read many smears of Israel on left wing sites. I don't know why it is but people who smear Israel on the left obviously are ignorant of the history and context of what's been going on there since 1948. I suggest that you don't have your writers write about issues when they don't know the history. Stick to what you know. Leave Israel to the experts. It is so complicated that if one just reads the newspaper these days and that makes them think they actually understand the issues--it's not possible. It will take a lot more study. Newspapers do an abysmal job of covering Israel. They always leave out half the story.

There is so much background information that is needed to really understand. So stop blaming the victim. You may think you get it, but you obviously don't if you let that sort of commentary on your site.

The Arab world has used the Palestinians as a political football

Rosalynn, Jeff, and I arrived in Israel Sunday, 4/13/08, after a very exciting and successful election monitoring mission in Nepal (see prior trip report). Since Israel had declined to approve a previously planned visit by three of us Elders (Kofi Annan, Mary Robinson, and me), I expected a similar negative reaction when I substituted this trip on behalf of The Carter Center. Sure enough, all my requests to meet with ministers of the government were publicly rejected and, more seriously, three requests from our Secret Service detail to work with Israeli security were rejected. This was our first experience of this kind in more than 125 foreign nations we've visited since leaving the White House. (After several news stories on this subject, when we returned to Israel, Shin Bet security met us at the airport and worked with us.)

Lurid headlines have been blooming in my fair city, Chicago, along with the daffodils. A dozen dead, 40 injured in less than a week. The mayor calls a gun summit. The police chief promises to send SWAT teams in full battle dress to troubled neighborhoods.

“If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating fundamentally the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.” — Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

Like the war on terror, violence in the ’hood is mostly a macabre abstraction. It’s a game that others play, a spectator sport — unless, until, we’re affected personally.