BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's embarrassed and disgraced Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra resisted demands on June 25 that she resign, shrugging off warnings by politicians, analysts and the media of a possible military coup after she criticized a Royal Thai Army commander during a leaked phone call with Cambodia's de facto leader Hun Sen.

"Analysts said another coup would create more problems than it would solve. It would be a disaster for the country, which has still not fully recovered from the consequences of the previous coup in 2014," the conservative Bangkok Post warned in a June 20 editorial.

"Despite assurances from the army chief about protecting democracy, concerns are mounting over a possible military intervention," Bloomberg news reported on June 20.

Ms. Paetongtarn faces a no confidence vote in parliament on July 3, and a hearing at the Constitutional Court on July 8 inquiring into her leaked conversation with Hun Sen.

Either action could end her prime ministry.

On June 24, US President Donald Trump announced a truce between Israel and Iran following nearly two weeks of open warfare.

Israel began the war, launching a surprise offensive on June 13, with airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, missile installations, and senior military and scientific personnel, in addition to numerous civilian targets. 

In response, Iran launched a wave of ballistic missiles and drones deep into Israeli territory, triggering air raid sirens across Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Beersheba and numerous other locations, causing unprecedented destruction in the country. 

What began as a bilateral escalation quickly spiraled into something far more consequential: a direct confrontation between the United States and Iran.

On June 22, the United States Air Force and Navy carried out a full-scale assault on three Iranian nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan—in a coordinated strike dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer. Seven B-2 bombers of the 509th Bomb Wing allegedly flew nonstop from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to deliver the strikes. 

The belief that all people are equal and want peace is comforting. But comfort does not make it true.

The 20th century offered a brutal lesson: whole nations can be reshaped by totalitarian rule until their populations lose the moral instincts of free societies. And unless force intervenes, they do not return to normal on their own.

We see this in the starkest form in North Korea. One bloodline, one culture, and one language split in two by ideology. The result? One half of Korea became a global democracy; the other became a dynastic death cult. Over decades, North Koreans have been deprived not just of material comforts, but of history, truth, even selfhood.

They have not simply been ruled by terror. They have been reprogrammed.

This is not unique to North Korea. It is the trajectory of any regime that fuses violence, ideology, and control. It is Russia, where generations have been raised to see imperialism as pride, lies as patriotism, and trauma as normal. It is Iran, where children are taught to chant death slogans before they can read. It was the Soviet Union, where memory was rewritten, neighbors denounced, and conscience dissolved.