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Anti-election protests paralyze Bangkok

BANGKOK, Thailand -- More than 100,000 anti-election protesters paralyzed Bangkok's key intersections on Sunday (Dec. 22) to hear their leader, an alleged multiple-murderer, demand February's nationwide poll be cancelled so he can ban the popular prime minister and her allies from power.

Some laid cremation wreaths in front of Caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's residence to spook her, though Ms. Yingluck was touring near the Mekong River in northeast Thailand where she derives most of her support.

Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban describes his "people's revolution" as democratic.

Mr. Suthep insists that after he blacklists Ms. Yingluck, her wealthy family, and their allies from politics, Mr. Suthep will clamp Thailand under a "people's council" of 400 unidentified appointees to "reform" the entire system of government.

About 18 months later, Mr. Suthep would permit an election to form a regime which would also empower plenty of other appointees.

A distillation of Mr. Suthep's speeches indicates his scheme resembles "positive liberty," an antique political theory which claims a

Is MoveOn Less Progressive Than the New York Times Editorial Board?

The New York Times is hardly a progressive newspaper -- but when it comes to the surveillance state and ongoing militarism of the Obama White House, the establishment’s “paper of record” puts MoveOn.org to shame.

And so, the same day that the Times editorialized to excoriate President Obama for his latest betrayal of civil liberties, MoveOn sent out a huge email blast sucking up to Obama.

The Times was blunt in its Saturday editorial: “By the time President Obama gave his news conference on Friday, there was really only one course to take on surveillance policy from an ethical, moral, constitutional and even political point of view. And that was to embrace the recommendations of his handpicked panel on government spying -- and bills pending in Congress -- to end the obvious excesses. He could have started by suspending the constitutionally questionable (and evidently pointless) collection of data on every phone call and email that Americans make.”

But, the newspaper added: “He did not do any of that.”

Man of the year

Truman’s True Warning on the CIA

Fifty years ago, exactly one month after John Kennedy was killed, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence.” The first sentence of that op-ed on Dec. 22, 1963, read, “I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency.”

It sounded like the intro to a bleat from some liberal professor or journalist. Not so. The writer was former President Harry S. Truman, who spearheaded the establishment of the CIA 66 years ago, right after World War II, to better coordinate U.S. intelligence gathering. But the spy agency had lurched off in what Truman thought were troubling directions. President Harry S. Truman.

Sadly, those concerns that Truman expressed in that op-ed — that he had inadvertently helped create a Frankenstein monster — are as valid today as they were 50 years ago, if not more so.

Governor Scrooge asks “Are there no workhouses for Ohio’s poor?”

During this holiday season nearly 134,000 Ohioans face the prospect of ringing in the new year hungry. Governor John Kasich has decided, despite Ohio’s stagnant job growth and high unemployment, that work requirements will be mandated in 72 counties for childless adults aged 18-50 in order to qualify for food assistance.

Ohio is still down 221,000 jobs from where it was in November 2007. Where these 134,000 people will work is a puzzling proposition. What is known is that they will no longer qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – what used to be called food stamps.

Kasich could have accepted a federal waiver that would have extended the federal food aid for all the counties in Ohio for at least one year without the work requirements. Reverend John Edgar, who works for the United Methodist Community Development for All People project wonders why anyone would want to “punish these folks in this economy.”

“It’s a horrible decision,” Edgar laments.

The war on marriage on Christmas

Very rarely does our government ask us what to have a war on. The proposal for missile strikes into Syria was a rare occasion when public pressure and other factors compelled Congress to demand a say. Public pressure then compelled Congress to say No.

But daily drone buzzings over various nations aren't occasions for public debate. We aren't being asked about another decade in Afghanistan or cooking up a future war on Iran. And our current president and his predecessor combined have wiped out eight wedding parties (six in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, and one in Yemen earlier this month) without our having ever been asked about any of them.

What if we were?

The clock is ticking in Kabul

With the year winding down, time is running out on the American effort in Afghanistan. Inaugurated over a decade ago, the climate abroad appears dampened with skepticism and the energy for war at home lessens every day. It is worth recalling that President Obama, when faced with Iraq and Afghanistan wars, regarded the latter as a confrontation of necessity. Yet this necessary appointment has come down to a most unfortunate set of circumstances, wherein the Obama administration must rely on a fickle partner to succeed.

The Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), which stipulates the working relationship between U.S. interests and Afghan security forces after American troops scale back from Afghanistan, awaits the signature of President Hamid Karzai. As far as the U.S. is concerned, the agreement is ready to see implementation in 2014. In fact, last month the Loya Jirga even endorsed the BSA. Considering the Loya Jirga is a national assembly of Afghan elders, it would seem the agreement has nothing but smooth sailing ahead.

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The Code of Shame

“I’m dying to know what it’s like to love somebody — to know what it feels like to be wanted.” — Art Corneau

So we need a documentary to break the Code of Shame. It’s called A Hard Name and came out in 2009; it ran on Canadian public television. (The film is online but, unfortunately, can’t be viewed in the U.S. “due to rights restrictions.”) Director Alan Zweig found seven ex-prisoners — five men, two women — and just let them speak. The result was the opening of a raw wound: the public exposure of something so deeply hidden, so wrapped in cynical taboo, I could barely listen without screaming: Why?

I hadn’t been aware of the film until Dave Atkins of Prison Alpha Ministry in Ottawa wrote to me about it, in response to my recent column about the Hollow Water First Nation Reserve, in Manitoba, where in the 1980s residents began addressing the hidden matter of childhood sexual abuse that was shattering their tiny community. They began talking about it publicly — they had no choice. The secret stain of it was claiming the lives of their children, who were disappearing into the void of alcoholism and drug abuse.

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