beautifulthailand99

Trump Media shares have soared 50% on the launch on the NASDAQ - Teflon Don wins again ! https://www.ft.com/content/99f713a5-71fa-4a28-b1ee-5b6f8998887e

China started selling US treasury bonds rabidly two years ago. They went from 2 trillion to less than 600 million now. I expect them to sell all out within 2024. Money's going home or to gold and other fungibles. There is an increasingly important BRICS Central Bank headquartered in Shanghai which is very much a work in progress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Development_Bank

European electorates have no idea what their leaders are subscribing too in making Russia an increasing adversary or the financial fallouts that will chip away at their baked in entitlements in terms of social welfare, pensions and healthcare. We are heading for a great reckoning, probably followed by a Great Depression and war and currency debauchment. Popular unrest has only just begun, and it's going to get pretty ugly. An alternative financial universe is unfolding before our eyes, and the days when the dollar or the Euro for that matter could dictate the terms are on the way out. Trump Media has just soared 50% on the NASDAQ for instance WTAF - my belief is what has been outlined will never happen. Too many have to agree, and there are too many severe downside risks to get agreement, and Trump is coming. No one can triangulate that madness.

Not surprisingly, the young now for the most part don't want to fight in a failing war, and who can blame them. An estimated 700k draft age men have fled the country indeed I met one and recounted his tale here a few weeks ago. https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-faces-an-acute-manpower-shortage-with-young-men-dodging-the-draft/ Prolonged time on the frontlines is also drawing bitter complaints from battle-weary Ukrainian combatants demanding to be demobilized or rotated out with lengthy recuperation time. Their relatives want the same thing: On Sunday, dozens of families of frontline soldiers crowded into Kyiv’s Maidan Square to demand their husbands, fathers and boyfriends be relieved from combat, arguing they’ve done their bit and now must be demobilized or given considerable rest and relaxation. But that can’t happen until more Ukrainians sign up and are trained.

Those polls if correct though show little difference between the militants and the civilians, they are all the bad guys then, and how do you deal with that in the future ? Business as usual after ceasefire doesn't cut it. Not by a long chalk.

It was the fact that every span collapse as well I would have naïvely though they were stronger and had ways to isolate total collapse.

I have watched a Thai man sit in squalor hunched with dirty hands wiping his nose and scratching his body, cutting up fruit and shrink wrapping it to look fresh. I wouldn't ever buy any of the food they bring to the loungers. Just stick to beer and coconuts.

Well the explicit policy objective of the attack on Gaza by Israel was to totally eliminate Hamas and looks to have been a spectacular failure. Future Hamas operatives will be trained and supported by Iran, Hezbollah the Houthis and others and Israel is going to have to occupy Gaza completely so we have a scenario now for endless war or a truly epochal genocide of Gazan Palestinians which will guarantee that moving forward Israel will be besieged and pretty much alone. I feel that "my Israel right or wrong" cheerleaders are spectacularly missing this point. Hamas explicitly refer to the woman and children deaths as martyrs and welcome the propaganda message their deaths and suffering bring to the world. I believe the ferocity and brutality of October 7th was to bring on exactly this response and Israel rage-stormed into it.

They fought an anti-colonial struggle to get the colonists from their land. They support the underdog. Haganah widely admired the IRA terror campaign against the British and made linkages with them during WW2. Indeed, Haganah terrorist later PM Menachem Begin had Michael Collins as his password ! https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2003/may/23/guardianletters

Well that carpet bombing of Gaza reducing it to rubble doesn't seem to have changed hearts and minds and has almost certainly acted as a recruiting sergeant for any loss of militants in the coming years. With an Israel facing much diminished global support from their 'friends' where do they go now ?

I tend to agree with the sentiments that said these atrocities have happened in France Nice, Batalan, Spain La Ramblas,UK Manchester Arena Bombing and many others and to say that Russia is unique in this intelligence fail and as a result of being distracted by Ukraine is a bit of a stretch and just Western trolling IMHO.

Every cloud and that. Some can't resist thieving land when the opportunity arises. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68650815 Just ask Daniella Weiss, 78, the grandmother of Israel's settler movement, who says she already has a list of 500 families ready to move to Gaza immediately. "I have friends in Tel Aviv," she says, "so they say, 'Don't forget to keep for me a plot near the coast in Gaza,' because it's a beautiful, beautiful coast, beautiful golden sand".

I think we can all join in with the applause and what amounts in real terms shorn of codacils to a vote of support from the US. Russia didn't clap though .....

A charitable reading at best - Israel has never looked more alone on the world stage than it does now, and cheerleaders for the rage bombing on Gaza have played their part in that outcome with applause at the Security Council outcome and an unprecedented US abstention.

Found it - before you were 'famous'...

Thanks for the concern - is that your photo btw ?

I met Chuan at Trat Aiport a few years back by chance - sought him out, did a big wai and said he was one of the best PM's that Thailand had had. (lying of course) he and his party were greatly amused by a farang recognising and bigging him up and got a great photo with him as a result. He said you are a very clever farang - thank you !

Hey up there's room for more than one I have a stake in my Pattaya(Jomtien) cesspool. We wear that badge with pride.

Which isn't an absolutely not - as the machines ping around you and in your drugged state where you struggle to keep your eyes open and you drift into a twilight zone a thought will pop into your head - did I get my apostrophes right. And you will curse that thought. Then nothing....just peace. Them's the rules....

Democratic reform and wise heads at the helm might have had a chance of doing that - instead it's full steam ahead to disaster. If you own Bangkok real estate you're on a 20-year lease at best and it's already happening at the fringes. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/01/just-four-pupils-left-how-the-sea-rose-up-on-a-thai-village

I say this with a very heavy heart, and it echoes what I am seeing in pro-Ukraine channels that I monitor, but if you want to see the fall of the Putin regime then more of these attacks will aid that end. It truly is Putin's 911 moment. I have no doubt that western intelligence is wargaming such scenarios because in financial costs terms they are cheap as chips. Whether they would aid them through proxies, I have no idea - but it would be in a menu of options. This is a terrifying moment though because if they continue a paranoid failing, Putin is a very dangerous global wild card indeed. When Putin came to power in 2000, he offered the Russians a bargain: to provide prosperity and security in exchange for surrendering their freedoms. A quarter of a century later, Putin’s national security incompetence has proved staggering. In 2022, his spies and generals assured him that Russian forces would sweep to victory and occupy Kyiv in just three days, grossly underestimating Ukraine’s fighting capabilities and spirit as well as the West’s response. In 2023, those same spies completely failed to predict or check a major mutiny by Wagner chief Evgeny Prighozin. And in 2024, they dismissed US intelligence on imminent terrorist attacks and failed to defend the Russian people. Putin has made Russia less secure and less prosperous. https://archive.is/m0rfR

I would draw the line at 30 like Logan's Run.

This is terrible, they are saying mass casualty now. I'm no engineering expert but surely this shouldn't happen in this way, is this a tragic example of the US's crumbling infrastructure ? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/26/baltimore-bridge-maryland-ship-collapse-latest-news/