beautifulthailand99

They are evil - more finessed and coiffed and elegant with their Harvard MBA's than the say the thug Putin but evil nevertheless. Only psycophathic sociopaths get to the very top in a hyper power - and they achieve that by deluding and scaring the great masses with their lies and deceptions..

Funny how these American most ly neocons never have a bad war whilst prosecuting hugely expensive and ultimately fruitless wars in foreign lands always combined with resource greed and then have the gall to criticise the same behaviour from others. Plus they never learn that some peasant in funny clothes with thrift shop weapons can embarrass and frustrate them on that quest. But not really funny but bloody tragic.

He is an alcoholic malevolent Russian troll with virtually nil influence in the Kremlin now except to make Putin look smart in comparison. He was the placeholder who kept the seat warm while Putin was on the benches. He is a Mike Pence without the morals we can easily ignore anything that comes out of his fetid mouth.

How about this one ?

Google "ai taylor swift 4chan" if you are curious. No big deal in the scheme of things.

Cheers I saw that - websites certainly in English are very sparse with listings. Maybe a fb group in Thai is a better place?

I saw a large classic shop house in the Jomtien Complex with a fair amount of foot traffic going past it advertised outside for 5.5 mill. Huge ones in Rungland Village South Pattaya have a ticket price outside of 6 mill in a renovated state. Any body have any recent anecdotes or info? A family member is beginning looking and in no real hurry. Also, they look like brick <deleted> houses at least the older ones what sort of structural stuff can go wrong in the long term? On walkabouts there are seemingly hundreds for sale one is definitely spoilt for choice.

Forgiveness starts with an apology and repentance. The US/Britain and their allies haven't said a peep about Iraq and Libya whose nation states we effectively cast into failed states. The Arab street knows all too well that their autocratic leaders are tolerated because of their oil and nothing else. We can't expect any moral support when our own interests are threatened. So here we are hand wringin' and calling for more air strikes and bombings and doubling down on that strategy. It didn't work in those countries and Afghanistan and I would wager it won't work now except to help set the whole world on fire. China can wait and bide it's time it's 3000-year-old civilisation stands on the brink of a great pivot of power as the sun sets on the American Empire.

Reactionaries, I often find which to start their arguments from a year zero of their determination and sweep untidy historical facts under the carpet such as their fury at the UN chief’s comment that Hamas attack ‘did not happen in a vacuum’. Actions have consequences, destroy countries with high-tech weaponry and the blowback will be severe. The Houthis it would appear are battle-hardened from years of fighting and appear fearless. If our strategy is to bomb them back into the stone age as a deterrence we have better be prepared for the cost of that open ticket. A few drone strikes on Saudi oil fields as before could be the match that starts an oil spike that will destroy Biden's chances of election and usher in President Trump. There are no good choices left anymore only less bad ones and pressuring Israel into a ceasefire by it's allies the explicit demand that the Houthis have made ought to be one that is easily engineered. Or is it an open chequebook for us in the West regarding Israel - even ww3 ultimately? Do we get to vote on this? China has helpfully said can they please stop we have business to attend to getting all our stuff delivered to the world.

The Yememis have long memories of the good times they had under British rule.

This place booked through Agoda- nice breakfast included and free bikes to use if hat's your thing. The air was clean thankfully not smoking in the fields yet and the temperature was pleasantly cool. https://www.facebook.com/baannanbnb/

Cheap readily available tech has changed the landscape immeasurably in the last 5-10 years. The world of tanks/battleships/and multi-million-pound drones have been seriously threatened by cheap tech. Just one example is the Russian Lancet loitering munition has been deadly effective in Ukraine and they appear unjammeable. The West's industrial/military complex is focused on high-cost big-ticket items and needs security guarantees from the government before they can begin. Red tape and safety and environmental concerns also degrade the timescale from commissioning to from commissioning to inception. This is why the West is talking about conscription and the like they are going to have to put hugely more resources into their armies and industries if they hope to keep up with the new "Axis of Evil" and the increasingly angry populace are becoming restless from the collapsing welfare states and cost of living crises. I'm not sure a western woke Generation Z deprived of affordable housing, secure employment, pensions and a welfare state is ready to add risking their lives in a hot war. We are cursed to live in interesting times - we oldies have profited from the post-war boom this coming generation is in a pre-war bind.

Nan - just back from there with the missus. Very friendly, quiet, helpful smiling, don't cheat - the small hotel owner picked us up from the airport for free and took us back. It's the old Thailand of yore. The place is spotlessly clean as well - people don't litter and not a ganja shop/massage/brothel/bar in site. They are in a "safe zone" on the city limits apparently. Oh and everything very very cheap but not nasty. A farang and his Thai wife were renting a big 2-story detached house down a quiet soi near the centre with a big garden for 5k a month.

First official remix

Belief in God usually arises as a fear of something besides which the existence of God is unprovable and therefore speculating on their existence or non-existence is unprofitable. So your grievance if it exists is due to natural phenomena therefore there is no need to bring "God" into it.

Could you not use Google translate where you both talk into the phone clearly and slowly it's pretty good these days.

Crikey I provide recent articles and commentary from the New York Times and Bloomberg whilst you signpost some no-name You Tuber who whilst no doubt well-intentioned presents anecdote as fact as well as shilling their clicks through buymeacofee, Patreon and the like. There's no debate to be had if that's your approach and as far as I'm aware "trust me bro" doesn't cut it in this parish. I look at the world as it is not as I would like it to be and there is absolutely no point in thinking that Russia is a basket case and will collapse any time soon. In essence, the West has sanctioned itself and accelerated a pivot of Russia away from the democratic West to the authoritarian GlobalSouth and China - a seismic shift which will shape the emerging darkening world. I wouldn't want to be young growing up in this world. Another very recent source JP Morgan fresh off the presses. January 24, 2024 https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/outlook/economic-outlook/is-the-world-economy-deglobalizing Russia: A dramatic example of trade flexibility Trade with Russia since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine presents a dramatic recent example of trade flexibility. Global manufacturing supply chains have demonstrated such resilience over the last 18 months that they essentially have saved Russia’s economy. Trade flexibility is the primary reason the IMF has dramatically revised up its forecast for Russian GDP since April 2022. Then, the IMF projected a 10.6% drop by 2023 (relative to the 2021 level). Now the IMF sees the Russian economy larger by 0.13%. To determine the shifts that helped keep Russia’s economy afloat, we performed the same analysis we did to examine reshoring away from China, looking at exports to Russia from 2021 to 2023. As the share of exports from the United States and Europe to Russia collapsed, they were offset by large export share gains by China and (to a lesser extent) India, and countries in Western and Central Asia, including Turkey, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan.

Because NYT and Bloomberg are well-known Kremlin news channels. There's propaganda on both sides - more repressive and ridiculous in Russia obviously but it helps no one in the West if a false or misleading account is punted as to what we would like to happen rather than what is happening. We were told early on in the war that Putin was going die, be removed in a coup had cancer and other such nonsense none of which happened. He appears stronger than ever and all that shovels trope that was punted early on in the war that they were running out of ammo and weapons. Turns out they were digging the almost impenetrable Surovikin line that caused the counter-offensive to fail. Reddit Ukraine/Russia War Report is a great place to see raw data, opinions and videos from both sides hotly debated and discussed by thousands of contributors.

The Russian economy is in no more trouble than Western ones indeed it may in some instances be better off. A forced fire sale of Western assets to his oligarch mates has cemented Putin's power amongst the elites. Not that they have any choice in the matter should they demur. As to conscription Zelenkiy's previous aide and now critic Oleksiy Arestovych now resident in the US opines that 50% of Ukrainian men are resisting conscription whereas currently in Russia owing to a variety of factors they are oversubscribed with volunteers. A very interesting video for anyone with an hour to spare. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-15/russia-s-war-economy-sees-key-sectors-shrugging-off-sanctions https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/putin-companies-economy-boycott-elites-benefit-ukraine-war.html Mr. Putin has turned the exits of major Western companies into a windfall for Russia’s loyal elite and the state itself. He has forced companies wishing to sell to do so at fire-sale prices. He has limited sales to buyers anointed by Moscow. Sometimes he has seized firms outright. https://unherd.com/thepost/oleksiy-arestovych-zelenskyys-challenger/

Correct it was Ganhdi who said with an eye for an eye the whole world goes blind.

I can't imagine this 40 year old rust bucket has any secrets that China hasn't got already - probably just a matter of protocol and contract being enforced.

Well as I am left-wing and anti-Zionist I don't see them as slurs - far from it. He has lived all his life in Israel and sees himself as a patriot as well as serving his country in politics and the army. I know whose cup I would rather sup from. In 2010, Levy described Hamas as a fundamentalist organization and held it responsible for the Qassam rockets fired at Israeli cities: "Hamas is to be blamed for launching the Qassams. This is unbearable. No sovereign state would have tolerated it. Israel had the right to react". "But the first question you have to ask yourselves", he continued, "is why Hamas launched the missiles. Before criticising Hamas I would rather criticise my own government which carries a much bigger responsibility for the occupation and conditions in Gaza [...] And our behaviour was unacceptable."[14] On Netanhayu he has had the grace to apologise publically - we need more like him and less of the blowhards everywhere and all the time or we are truly doomed as a race. https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-05-11/ty-article-opinion/.highlight/i-was-wrong-about-netanyahus-restraint/00000188-0740-d927-a1a8-8f471ba90000

The superb Israeli journalist and ex-advisor to the Israeli PM Shimon Peres, Gideon Levy has an excellent conversation about just this in the latest edition of the New Statesman. There are sane voices in the madness hopefully in time they will prevail as he says the only hope is the next generation. This generation is lost. Levy, now 71, has seen many attempts to achieve peace throughout his career, first as an aide and spokesman for Shimon Peres, then as leader of Israel’s Labor Party, and later as a reporter and writer for the leading Israeli daily Haaretz. But, as he explains below, none of those attempts could have possibly succeeded because no one was committed to a true two-state solution. https://www.newstatesman.com/international-content/the-international-interview/2024/01/israel-palestine-one-two-state-solution GL: For many years, I would have agreed with Leibowitz. Not anymore. The decisive moment is the Nakba [the Arabic word for “catastrophe”, which Palestinians use to refer to the 1948 displacement of Palestinians, which culminated in the creation of the state of Israel]. The decisive moment is 1948. A people came to a populated land and took it over. That’s the core of everything. The problem is that ever since 1948, Israel never changed its policy and its attitude towards the Palestinians. What happened in 1948 is happening now on a daily basis. Gaza is a part of 1948. Therefore, any solution which will not include some kind of accountability of 1948 and some kind of compensation – not only in terms of money – will not be a just solution. That’s the way Palestinians see it. They cannot care about the connection between the Jews and the land of Israel, based on [the] mythology of the Bible. The fact is that over so many hundreds of years, Jews didn’t come here. And so, if we do not touch the core of the wound, we will never heal it. And that’s the core of the wound.

Err I live just outside of London and go to the centre regularly. Have lived there for over 40 years and never seen a crime of had one committed on me must have lived a sheltered life. Roads are way much safer as well as is the clean air I breathe all year round. Expensive though I 'll give you that.

By the look of some of the posts on this thread, it's already happening. I believe you are ex-services so you will be used to blustering armchair generals willing folks like you onto their deaths from the comfort of their bar stools. Make that a US jumbo-sized popcorn sir ! “What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.” ― Joseph Heller, Catch-22