beautifulthailand99

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/

As a part-time resident living just round the corner in View Talay 2A that article is a pile of piffle.

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

Tucker Carlson or maybe Donald Junior.

I was a Corbyn-loving, anti-Brexit remoaner who hated Trump with a passion - indeed if one could be bothered to see my posting history on here that's what I did. I've flipped in my dotage to a degree but I have always been a pacific hippie at heart so anything that makes war less likely and saves lives I'm for. I think it was Tucker Carlson that turned me. He was the gateway pundit that got me to this imperfect place.

He ended an endless pointless war. Let the rest of the world sort out their own problems - most Americans would be pushed to say who or what is a Kurd and furthermore, why should they care? Charity begins at home - Trump gets that in spades. One thing I like about the Thai military is they busy themselves at home doing their 'stuff' and let the rest of the world do what they will. Indeed in WW2 they rolled over in a day and saved the country from ruin. If we really cared about people does anyone know much about or really care about the genocide in Congo - 6 million have died, maybe we should? US and Western concern follows the resources and strategic interests if these boxes aren't ticked then power says go hang. The irony of Western ex-pats in Thailand cheering on Western wars to which they mostly no longer contribute tax-wise whilst moaning about being taxed in Thailand isn't lost on me. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/17/world/africa/democratic-republic-of-congo-elections.html

Exactly he may be a narcissistic liar in chief and of low moral scruples and not the leader that any country needs but in his "naivety" he sees that waging war as a way to solve problems is an utter waste of money and manpower. The elites of virtually every country regardless of their political makeup seem to think that war and willy-waving are part of the job description. Trump says no to that dogma and, indeed look at Iraq and Afghanistan as a huge waste of wealth and manpower and for what? They have made the world a less safe place. His base knows they want America, first, middle and last and let other countries fight their wars and pick up the bill and on that, I agree 100% with him. Michael Moore called it right 7 years ago and he will be right again and there's not a damn thing you can do about it - he is a phenomenon of our age for better or for worse. This is how the world ends not with a bang but with a Joker. https://youtu.be/TEHekdQSiXg?si=5o1UglLYwP4SmcKe

I'm with you Trump for Peace - cut deals not war.

Or the US or US to be Frank. They seem recklessly fearless on a suicide mission and may well along with Israel draw us into World War 3. Buy gold.

I've given up getting angry now and thankfully live back in the UK for most of the year. Societal dysfunction in allowing what is for the most part peasant farmers to destroy the air of the nation shows some real rotteness in the system. You would think that if some peasants dumped a load of crop on a rich person's estate they would get short shrift from the authorities but the air mai been rai.

Aka in Trump money the failing fake news sites (coughs) looks around......!

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.