Turd Reich

Thailand’s First Female Prime Minister Flees Country Before Court Ruling: Yingluck Shinawatra was inaugurated in 2011 as Thailand’s first female Prime Minister. In 2014, she was ousted by military coup, then arrested and tried for negligence for a rice subsidy program that paid farmers well above the market rate for their crop, but cost the country billions. She faces ten years in prison. Today, hundreds of supporters gathered outside the court awaiting the verdict, but Yingluck failed to appear, leading Thailand’s Supreme Court to issue a warrant for her arrest. The court rescheduled Yingluck’s verdict date for September 27, and the $900,000 bail posted when the trial began two years ago has been confiscated. However, just ahead of this writing, Reuters reported that sources close to the Shinawatra family said Yingluck has fled the country. Thailand’s top immigration official said there were no records of Yingluck having left the country through proper channels.

Yingluck’s promise of rice subsidies to poor farmers helped bring her party to power in 2011, but critics claimed it was a scheme to buy votes. After she was ousted in 2014, Thailand’s military-appointed National Legislative Assembly impeached her; the military has ruled the Southeast Asian nation ever since. Yingluck is the sister of exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was himself overthrown in a military coup in 2006. His ouster started a decade of tumult and division that has pitted a poor, rural majority in the north that supports the Shinawatras against royalists, the military, and their urban backers.

Angola Elects New President For the First Time in Almost 40 Years, But Will Anything Be Different?: Provisional results from Wednesday’s election suggest Angola’s ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party has the lead in the country’s parliamentary election, receiving 64.5 percent of the vote in the first batch of results. The main opposition Unita party, which has reportedly received 24 percent of the vote, disputes the electoral commission’s count. If the MPLA party wins, the presidency would pass to former Defense Minister João Lourenço, the chosen successor of President José Eduardo Dos Santos, but the latter, whose 38-year reign makes him the world’s second-longest serving president, will remain in control of the MPLA party. And even though Dos Santos will no longer be president, his children still hold several key positions of authority. The MPLA has been the only party in power since Angola’s independence from Portugal and the start of the Angolan Civil War in 1975.

Rohingya Militants Blamed in Myanmar Border Attacks: Early today, at least 32 people, including 11 members of Myanmar’s security forces, were killed after an estimated 150 Rohingya militants ambushed border posts in northern Rakhine state, according to Myanmar’s army chief. Rakhine state is riven along religious lines between the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority, who are reviled by many Buddhists and perceived as illegal immigrants. Tensions have risen in recent weeks, and Myanmar’s army has sent more troops to the area. Today’s violence follows a milestone report on conditions inside Rakhine by a commission led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The report urges immediate action to heal the divide, including the removal of restrictions on movement and citizenship imposed on the roughly one million members of the Rohingya community in Rakhine. The UN believes these security “clearances” may have amounted to ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, which the army and Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government vehemently deny.

Middle East Peace–Not As Easy As It Sounds: President Trump put his son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of finally bringing peace to the stalemate that is the Israeli-Palestinian standoff. But with no clear path forward recommended by the administration, one wondered just how successful Kushner would be when he jetted off to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas this week. The issues are so intractable that sincere efforts by previous administrations have failed to get the two governments to trust one another long enough to formulate a peace agreement. For example, Palestinians want an independent state, and Israel continues to construct settlements on the West Bank border with Israel, gobbling up what Palestine sees as its territory. Then there’s the Palestinian government split between Fatah and Hamas, the latter having called for the complete destruction of Israel, so Israel refuses to negotiate with a government that includes Hamas.

Trump took office with hopes of striking what he calls the “ultimate deal” between Israelis and Palestinians. But all three leaders have been embroiled in their own domestic turmoil, making a clear roadmap for a successful negotiation that much more important if the US hopes to broker a peace deal. A statement from Netanyahu’s office after his meeting with Kushner said the talks were “substantive” but gave no details on progress or further steps. It was similarly unclear whether or not Kushner offered any clarity during his three-hour meeting with Abbas, which his spokesperson called “positive,” without discussing details. The spokesperson also said Abbas reiterated his desire for an American commitment to a Palestinian state. Boy, these sound like truly groundbreaking meetings–you can’t help but feel such overwhelming hope that a resolution to this decades-long crisis is well on its way, no?  

• Samsung leader Jay Y. Lee given five-year jail sentence for bribery (Reuters)
• EU states begin returning refugees to Greece as German reunions slow (The Guardian)
• Hezbollah seizes much of Islamic State enclave on Syrian-Lebanese border(Reuters)
• India Supreme Court rules privacy a ‘fundamental right’ in landmark case(CNN)
• Brazil opens huge swathe of Amazon rainforest to mining (DW)

Flowers Against Fascism: When Patriot Prayer, a group of far-right activists, gather at a rally tomorrow at a beach near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, they will be met by peace activists offering them flowers to wear in their hair. They will also be stepping in dog poop. Lots and lots and lots of it. Hundreds of San Franciscans plan to carpet Crissy Field with generous amounts of canine excrement.After Tuffy Tuffington created a Facebook page for the idea, the dog owners of San Francisco responded in droves. Many will stockpile their pets’ poos for days in advance and then deliver them neatly packaged to the site in order to uhh…welcome the rally-goers.

The presence of Patriot Prayer, whose free speech events in the Pacific Northwest have frequently ignited violence in notoriously liberal San Francisco, has city authorities on high alert. Elected officials unsuccessfully pressured the National Park Service to deny the group a permit, and the police department will deploy every available officer for the event. But for many in the city, an unwelcome visit from members of the far-right is a great opportunity to fight back in the spirit of “the city by the bay”–with “flower power, drag queens, a little creativity, and an assist from the animal kingdom.” (The group will also gather on Sunday to “clean up the mess and hug each other.”)

*More Reads Will Be Here On Monday – Please stay tuned, and until then, have a great weekend!

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