Only a year ago the military junta began a sustained assault on the people of Myanmar’s Rohingya district. Over a period of three months, the generals engaged in a campaign of rape, murder and fire, slaying in cold blood thousands of innocents, and burning more than 300 villages, determined to drive out the Muslims who had lived there for centuries.
Gold doesn’t tarnish, but the Golden State lies blackened. It happens almost every year, but California’s current bout of fast-burning wildfires, following last year’s conflagrations, leads inevitably to a sobering thought: If communities built amid the picturesque West Coast wildlands can’t be protected from rampaging flames when spring flowers and grasses turn tinder-dry in summer, maybe they shouldn’t have been built there in the first place.
A consequence of the technology boom is an improvement in the capability of fighting the nation's inevitable wars. When man takes a leap forward in what he is able to accomplish with his brain, the military finds a way to exploit it on the battlefield. Sad, but that's the unhappy way the world works.
As corporate mission statements go, Google's is simple enough: "Don't be evil." This isn't asking much from its employees. It's vague and meaningless, as most corporate mission statements are. It's a mantra only suitable until the going gets tough. Who applauds evil, anyway?
Elections have consequences is a maxim that's as true as ever, but it's a maxim that has lost some of its punch in a "can-you-top-this?" culture. The punditry insists, as always, that every election is the most important one of everybody's lifetime. It's hyperbole, of course, but it's also true that the 2018 midterms are very, very important. "It's the economy, stupid," is giving way to a maxim waiting for someone to coin: Immigration determines what kind of nation we'll be, and most Americans like the nation we already have.
Who knew so many of the sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome were advanced alcoholics? But some of them have obviously come down with delirium tremens, or D.T.
America's high-tech colossi dominate the globe. Silicon Valley, loosely defined in a mixture of metaphors, is the ultimate Big Rock Candy Mountain. Amazon, Uber, Apple, Microsoft, Lyft, Intel, Facebook, Google, Instagram, Ebay, Twitter, Lyft, were all made in America. Europe's high-tech companies, by contrast, are puny. Only Spotify, a Swedish music-streaming app, makes much of splash globally.
Capital punishment continues to be a hot-button issue nearly everywhere. Several public-opinion polls indicate that state-sanctioned killing is not as popular in America as it once was. Two decades ago polls showed that 80 percent of Americans approved of taking a life for a life, though some approved reluctantly. Now approval is down to a considerably smaller majority. There's a spirited movement of conservatives to abolish the death penalty altogether.
Puerto Rico is braced for Alberto, Beryl, Chris and Debby and other named storms, which will be churning out of the Atlantic any day now. The hurricane season is bearing down on us, and bracing is probably all the island can count on. The local government's record of hurricane relief does not inspire confidence.
Soldiers who give their "last full measure of devotion," as Abraham Lincoln described death on the battlefield, deserve the highest honor a nation can bestow. The fundamental honor is a dignified burial. That right and honor has been long denied to thousands of men who fell in Korea. North Korea can heal the open wound on the American conscience by finally returning the remains of its long-lost sons.
Eliminating law enforcement on the nation's southern border is a cherished goal of a noisy segment of undetermined size among Democrats. Cooler Democratic heads think it's party suicide, and it wouldn't help the nation, either. But cool heads in the party are scarce. Playing the "I'm crazier than thou" game is more fun.
"April is the cruellest month," wrote T.S. Eliot, the poet, literary critic and aspiring weatherman.
America's high-tech colossi dominate the globe: Amazon, Uber, Apple, Microsoft, Lyft, Intel, Facebook, Google, Instagram, eBay, Twitter, Lyft and others were all made in America. Europe's tech companies, by contrast, are puny. Only Spotify, a Swedish music-streaming app, has made much of splash globally.
Mitt Romney coined the term "self-deportation" in 2012 to describe his plan for stemming the flood of illegal immigrants pouring over the border. If illegals couldn't get jobs here because they have no documentation, they would decide to go home.
Ours is not an age for reflection, patience and slow-dancing. Our age demands instant gratification. Sooner than that, if possible. Thus the slow-dancing in the latest exchange since the famous Singapore handshake, originating in a hand-carried letter to Pyongyang. The response came back in another hand-carried letter, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continuing as postman.
