BANGKOK, Thailand -- Burma has blocked the cyclone-stricken country from most international relief efforts, and is instead telling citizens to vote on Saturday for a new constitution which will entrench the military regime's domination.

Burma's junta apparently fears U.S. and other foreign aid groups will include subversive agents who could secretly give satellite telephones, weapons, cash and other help to Burmese dissidents and pro-democracy activists -- a perception frequently expressed in government-controlled media about Americans and others even before the cyclone.

Increasingly harsh demands by the U.S., United Nations, non-governmental aid agencies, and others to allow foreign relief workers into Burma were ignored on Friday, despite a spiraling death toll after Cyclone Nargis killed tens of thousands of people, and an estimated one million survivors struggling without help.

The junta said 22,997 people perished in the cyclone and 42,119 were missing in southern Burma, mainland Southeast Asia's biggest country and also known as Myanmar.

The U.S. Embassy in Burma estimated the toll may reach 100,000.

Barack Obama’s triumph on May 6 was a victory over a wall that pretends to be a fly on the wall.

For a long time, the nation’s body politic has been shoved up against that wall -- known as the news media.

Despite all its cracks and gaps, what cements the wall is mostly a series of repetition compulsion disorders. Whether the media perseveration is on Pastor Wright, the words "bitter" and "cling," or an absent flag lapel-pin, the wall’s surfaces are more rigid when they’re less relevant to common human needs and shared dreams.

"We’ve already seen it," Obama said during his victory speech in North Carolina, "the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn’t agree with all their ideas, the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives, by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy, in the hopes that the media will play along."

And how, they’ve played along. From the front pages of "quality" dailies to the reportage of NPR’s drive-time news to the blather-driven handicapping on cable television, the ways that media structures have functioned in recent

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