“The loose network among relatives offers the grim solace of knowing that others too have suffered the same curse.”
Every terrible rift is the occasion for peace and the place for the peacemaker. And often peace is nothing more, at first, than connecting, pulling the injured or ostracized back into the social circle and beginning the process of healing.

Peace is not a state of “perpetual pre-hostility,” as it has been described by military strategists — that is to say, perpetual armed readiness and checkpoints and unending displays of superior force, eventually and inevitably lapsing into horrific violence. That may be the state of the world, but it’s not peace, nor is it sustainable. It’s the downward cycle in which we are caught — and in which we fully and enthusiastically participate, with bloated national defense budgets and uncounted trillions spent globally to stay armed, terrified and isolated.

Yet as my friend David Nekimken pointed out, while the policies of what Dr. Martin Luther King called “spiritual death” may be all around us, if we look we can also see “spiritual life” glowing from within the dark.

Barack Obama is about to address a nation whose greatest potential liability is its Disneyesque illusion of atomic power.

Despite the nation's huge debts and fears of foreign terror, America's 104 licensed reactors are the most dangerous threat to our future. After a half-century of operations, the industry still cannot get more than $11 billion in private insurance against possible accidents whose human and property damage could easily run from mere trillions to the simply incalculable.

In the face of terror or error, earthquake or tidal wave and more, every tick of the atomic clock marks a moment in which a single glitch at a single reactor could forever bankrupt the nation.

Escalating decay at clunkers like Vermont Yankee, New York's Indian Point and so many others define our worst untold crisis.

Yet Obama may ask Congress to bilk taxpayers to build still more.

To: Dr. Bob Fitrakis, the editor of the freepress.

I want to complain to you about your article which has been posted by New York Time on Thursday 20th 2011 about Vang Pao was one of the world's most notorious drug dealers. First of all I want to ask you a few questions as follow:

1. How do you know that Vang Pao was a drug dealer?
2. Have ever been with Vang Pao for the last fifty years?
3. Have you ever been in Long Tieng before?
4. Who to believe?
a.) All the American personnels who woked in Long Tieng including the raven.
b.) All Vang Pao military personnels including muself and my friends T-28 pilots.
c.) Albert McCoy and Mr. Poe (Tony).  

To me, all the accusations in your article are a big liar, not even one percent true. If you want to know the fact, I suggest you to contact General Craig.W.Duehring, the former Assistant Secretary of Air force who was a raven during that period of time.

Good evening Dr. Fatrikis,

In reading your article about General Vang Pao, I have found your article to be baseless, frictional and absolutely irresponsible as a professional. I am a Hmong and many of my extended family members served during the war, and some were very closed to Maj.General Vang Pao. None have ever observed such disgraceful accusation.

As an American, I sense your intention to be nothing more than an act of character assassination to an honorable figure due to questionable reasons. The facts that thousands of Americans today are in jail around the country does not make president Obama a criminal for their crime. Another fact, according to law enforcement report, tons of illegal drugs are floating around the country daily, does not make president Obama and governmental leaders drug traffickers.

It is this kind of unfair and bias writing such as yours which created hatred and human rights violations around the world because people like you abuse your role and responsibility.