One Man's Opinion

Not to be outdone by scandals in the Catholic Church and other Western religious institutions, Buddhist monks in Thailand continue to  compete very favorably in the wide world of religious scandals. In complete contradiction to their core beliefs, a somewhat significant part of the country's monks have embraced greed, lust and the other capital sins, with great enthusiasm. While some of their fellow monks burn themselves as protest against repressive regimes, these Thai monks are on their way to burn in hell for their worldly ways.

You gotta love this Pope! It's not just for his new and bold takes on so many issues, moral and otherwise, but for a most endearing and redeeming quality: his sense of humor. Twice now, he has joked about the Argentine reputation for being arrogant, and he has done so in a most unusual way. The first time, he joked about how a countryman of his might commit suicide, which, of course, is a sin.  The second time, he has just said that, being from Argentina, people expected him to take the name Jesus II as Pope, which shows that he's not afraid to "take the Lord's name in vain." No better Pope than one that cracks a good joke...or two.

Needless to say, what is going on in Baltimore is inexcusable. Destruction and looting have nothing to do with legitimate protests over Freddie Gray's death. But, at the same time, one can  understand the anger and frustration of blacks in the U.S. as they watch what has become a common practice: the killing of black men by police in dubious circumstances. There have been too many of these cases, and not much seems to de done about it. In a very real way, for blacks,  the police is the enemy,  and there's no escaping from it. Most of the time, they get away with murder. Black lives don't matter.

We are told that Russian hackers have read Obama's email. Why shouldn't they, if he has read most of the world's leaders'. There really is no way in which he can complain that a foreign government is doing to him what he has done to them ten times over. Anyway, this will be material for the "stand-up routines" he is so fond of.

Traffic safety is no small thing, and everything that can be done to enhance it should be done. Speeding  is the major cause of accidents, so fines for it should be stiff, in order to deter drivers from it. The Finns have a very strict view on this, coupled with a system of fines in which the amount not only reflects how serious the speeding is, but also the driver's capacity to pay it. In other words, the rich pay more for the same traffic violation. Much more. Many thousands of dollars more. So much so, there is a real issue of fairness in such a scheme. People should be punished based on what they do and the consequences of what they do. Punishing them on the basis of their wealth is just wrong, and does not speak well of an enlightened society in so many other ways.

In the final analysis, it's the facts that truly matter, not what you call them. The systematic killing of a large group of people  -- 1.5 million -- of one race or national origin is an atrocity, an abomination, whether one chooses to call it "genocide" or not. Turks who refuse to accept this historical reality only demonstrtate the kind of fanaticism that led them to engage in the extermination of Armenians in the first place. The Armenians know the truth. So does the rest of the world.

It's oops time once again! Obama has apologized once more for a drone  killing of, this time, two men who had been kidnapped by al-Qaeda. So, in order to get rid of the "bad guys", the innocent victims get killed in the process. But, the President has said that this is " war", so we all must grin and bear it. This is what happens when " war" is conducted by remote control, as if part of a video game. Pretty soon, the dead are just figures on a screen.