beautifulthailand99

Adam Curtis's Traumazone is a peerless 7hr look at how the USSR collapsed and the chaos it unleashed, and ends with the rise of Putin. A must-see for anyone who wants to know how we got here and the best 'documentary' I have ever seen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_1985–1999:_TraumaZone Trailer All 7 hours

I find r/Ukraine is full on propaganda, fair enough that's what it there for and it's explicit purpose. I read and contribute to r/UkraineRussiaReport that has a lively mix of Pro-UA, Pro-Russia and neutral. So all posts are hotly debated, torn part and critiqued. It has been an amazing source and clearing house of commentary, information links and OSINT that you simply don't get elsewhere. But it's a not an echo chamber and if you come with straight out propaganda you will get ripped anew one. It's got 75k members. WillyOAM the Aussie ex-infantryman is great as well on YouTube.

Thus is beyond tragic in so many ways.

A link would help.

From that Guardian article you qouted. The strength of the proposal is that seized assets would be deemed to have been returned to Russia after the payment of reparations. The proposal’s weakness is that it assumes Ukraine will win a military victory and a defeated Moscow will be prepared to pay reparations for the damage it caused to Ukraine, something that now seems unimaginable.

From that link I provided from Carnegie. I call grandstanding - who will buy this debt ? Anybody here willing to invest in this bond ? Alternatively, under a plan reportedly already circulating among G7 nations, the assets could be used as collateral for bonds. Ukraine’s allies would first demand that Russia repays the debt, and if it refuses to do so, the frozen assets would be confiscated, according to the Financial Times. Selling the bonds would raise funds and the flow of money could be regulated. It would also avoid many of the risks described above, as officially Russia’s assets would remain unappropriated until the bonds are repaid. The difficulty is finding someone to buy those bonds. Central banks are unlikely to step in: that would effectively be akin to printing money and a return to the quantitative easing policies of the 2009 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. For their part, commercial banks are unlikely to buy the bonds without guarantees (in effect, debt securities) from Western governments. Thus, transferring Russia’s frozen assets to Kyiv this way would prove costly for the West and its taxpayers.

No cost for you, of course, in blood and treasure from your Thailand lair, but western taxpayers may think differently if they understand the costs and risks more fully. He may of course be grandstanding, fully expecting it to be lost in the thicket of implementation. Trump may use such threats in his shotgun diplomacy if he comes to power next year.

The danger of course in sequestrating foreign assets from the western banking system for whatever reason is it sends the message to worldwide autocrats that it could happen to them. So China and a host of other countries will begin repatriating their assets to safer havens. If that happens, then there will be a retreat from the dollar and linked currencies and bond market crisis as countries will be forced to raise interest rates on bonds and increase the servicing costs of the debt they already hold. Any remaining western assets in Russia will of course be seized as well to add to the bounty that Russia already has from the fire sale of well known brands to local oligarch such as MacDonalds and Starbucks. The China/Russia/Iran/NK/BRICS Global South alternative financial universe is already expanding at pace - sequestration will be a key signal for many players to move over there. Indeed, China has set up its own Bank to deal with it. The sun is setting on dollar western hegemony. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Development_Bank https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/91556 Above all, they fear that doing so would deter sovereign wealth funds, central banks, corporations, and private investors from the Global South from investing in European assets. A potential outflow of investment in euros would have serious consequences: a rise in borrowing costs and inflation, as well as a fall in tax revenues. Some might say that there is nothing to worry about: after all, losing an investment is a calculated risk in high-yield investing in emerging markets, especially when, as in Russia’s case, the threat of sanctions has existed for years. Yet this argument, which is based on a fundamental principle of capitalism—that there is no profit without risk—has a major flaw. For many systemically important Western firms, writing off Russian assets would spell disaster. Take Euroclear, used by foreign investors to buy Russian stocks and bonds. If its clients’ assets were seized, it could face a slew of lawsuits and even bankruptcy. Bailing out companies like Euroclear would ultimately cost European governments even more than direct aid to Ukraine. An exchange of frozen assets is therefore the most logical solution, but so far no one is willing to break the deadlock.

Thanks for that Chat GPT says ; Yes, tax authorities from different countries often collaborate and share information through agreements and conventions to ensure compliance with tax laws. One such agreement that facilitates this is the Double Taxation Agreement (DTA) between countries. The United Kingdom and Thailand have a Double Taxation Agreement in place, which helps prevent individuals from being taxed on the same income in both countries. This agreement also includes provisions for the exchange of information between the tax authorities of the two countries. Under this agreement, Thai tax authorities can request information from the UK tax authorities regarding the tax status and activities of a UK citizen residing in Thailand. Likewise, UK tax authorities can request similar information about a Thai citizen residing in the UK. These information exchange agreements are designed to promote transparency and prevent tax evasion. So, if there are suspicions or if it's part of a routine check, the Thai tax authorities could contact their counterparts in the UK to verify the tax status of a UK citizen residing in Thailand.

Oh dear, never mind.

TVF Keyboard Warrior Brigade - Catering Corp (Retired)

First recorded destruction of a HIMARS battery reportedly by an Isklander-M missile. NOEL Reports is a trusted Ukrainian source.

Just imagine what could happen if Russian agents managed to penetrate the highest political levels in the U.S.! Unimaginable...and that would be wild !

So can the Thai tax authorities, contact the UK tax authorities to check the tax status of a UK citizen residing in Thailand ?

I had to look that up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act Crikey ! Europe: The costs of implementation in Europe are shown (below) with available documentation to be greater than U.S. revenue estimates in only three of its countries. Implementation in UK, Germany, and Sweden alone will cost more than US$10 billion. United Kingdom: The United Kingdom government has estimated that the cost to British businesses will be £1.1 billion to £2 billion for the first five years (approximately two thirds of the estimate total additional global tax revenue expected), in order to locate approximately 177,185 U.S. citizens.[68][69] The cost there is then approximately £6,000 to £11,000 per resident US citizen or £17 to £31 per capita. HMRC estimates its own one-off IT and staff project costs at approximately £5m, with ongoing annual costs of £1.4m from 2016.[68]

Maybe this is the good cop bad cop routine - get us all het up about eye watering increases and then Sretta swoops in with a 3 months free deal. Plus it gives him some freebie to offer in bilaterals.

and Challengers, Caesar howitzers and an endless menagerie of mothballed hardware that has proved difficult to service and oft-times didn't work. Shells seemingly of the right calibre wouldn't fit in the barrels, and barrels would wear out unable to be replaced. Once Ukrainian air defences had been degraded to virtually nothing at the front lines the arrival of TOS thermobaric rockets and FAB glide bombs have cause terrible carnage on the hapless often forced conscripts on the Ukrainian front. It’s total slaughter there now. No wonder they are retreating.

The West needs to have a good debate about how much they pay for hugely expensive tech from the military industrial complex and whether that is good value for money. Russia has rearmed at pace and can produce tank busting Lancets in pop-up factories in shopping malls for 10s of thousands of dollars not millions. That's why the next Wunderwaffe wont win the war for Ukraine.

Aye never forget - he's needed to get his gas to kill the Kurds from somewhere , didn't he !

Here's an archive version https://archive.is/khgHx . Possibly, aircraft carriers are expensive dinosaurs in the new age of asymmetric warfare. Just ask the Russian who lost Moskva to cheap tech - maybe in the future they will become status symbols for second rate navies like the Thais who can use them to cosplay rather than war. If an aircraft carrier was to be sunk in the Med by Iranian proxies it would truly stun and horrify the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleksii_Arestovych self promotes as one that could broker peace, but he is in exile now reviled by many nationalists as a Russian stooge (he isn't). He jokes that Zelenskiy should sue the US and the other partners for breach of contract https://unherd.com/2024/01/oleksiy-arestovych-zelenskyys-challenger/ OA: Ukrainian nationalism is the idea of less than 20% of Ukrainians. This is the problem. FS: What about the remaining 80%? OA: I think for most of them, their idea is of a multinational and poly-cultural country. And when Zelenskyy came into power in 2019, they voted for this idea. He did not articulate it specifically but it was what he meant when he said, “I don’t see a difference in the Ukrainian-Russian language conflict, we are all Ukrainians even if we speak different languages.” And you know, my great criticism of what has happened in Ukraine over the last year, during the emotional trauma of the war, is this idea of Ukrainian nationalism which has divided Ukraine into different people: the Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers as a second class of people. It’s the main dangerous idea and a worse danger than Russian military aggression, because nobody from this 80% of people wants to die for a system in which they are people of a second class. Zelenskiy was ready to fold as I said it would have tacitly meant letting the Russian dominated oblasts go to Russia (which has happened, and I can't see the clock going back) - but extreme nationalists won't let that happen. His curse was to be an actor and wowed the world with his performance -some moustachioed nonentity would have folded easily once Russian might had shown their teeth and claws. These are the Rumfeldian known knowns about Putin and Russia and ones that western intelligence should surely have known. They gave them just enough to keep going, but not enough to win. https://harpers.org/archive/2023/10/the-tragedy-of-volodymyr-zelensky/ This has been evident not only in his failure to stand up to extremist forces at home, but also in his dealings with Ukraine’s allies, as exemplified by his infamous phone call with Donald Trump in July 2019 when he was asked to investigate the Bidens. Zelensky’s efforts to ingratiate himself with Trump were bad enough, but perhaps can be explained by virtue of America’s importance to Ukraine and Trump’s transactional approach to politics. More troubling was Zelensky’s eagerness to denigrate others for little discernible reason. A transcript of the call records him carping about how the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the French president Emmanuel Macron were not doing enough for Ukraine, telling Trump that he was “absolutely right. Not only one hundred percent, but actually one thousand percent” when he said of European leaders that “all they do is talk.” He likewise echoed Trump’s view that the recently recalled American diplomat Marie Yovanovitch was “a bad ambassador.” As the French journalist Sylvie Kauffmann put it in the New York Times: This popular maverick comedian turned real-life politician after playing one in a TV series, this promising reformer that President Emmanuel Macron of France had hosted at the Élysée even before he was elected, was in fact another spineless, unprepared leader jumping into President Trump’s every trap. The lack of moral courage Zelensky displayed during the exchange was not only personally embarrassing; it also boded poorly, as Kauffmann noted, for his ability to deal with the domestic problems he had been elected to confront. What's left has a chance of joining NATO if they get that peace deal and concede the reality of the ground and a 'free' Ukraine will have been won at huge financial and cost in lives. If Europe (and the US) offers good will but not serious cash, I can see it becoming something of a failed state on the periphery of Europe, with power going back to oligarchs and warlords who have the military might. There is lots of chatter about extreme corruption in the country and if rumours are to be believed Zelenskiy isn't immune. What do I see happening ? An Armistice (Zelenskiy will have to go though) - huge defences on both sides of the border and a frozen conflict. After that is anybodies guess - the US will have moved onto China, and its focus and efforts will be elsewhere. The extreme nationalists will be going nowhere, and they will be very angry and armed and trained to the teeth and if central power falters they will be the kingmakers in a new era, and it won't be pretty for anyone that they consider not 100% behind Slava Ukarainia. https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA2510-1.html Armistice Agreements In armistice agreements, like those that ended the Korean War in 1953 and the Transnistria conflict in Moldova in 1992, the two sides commit to stop fighting and often create mechanisms, such as demilitarized zones, to prevent the resumption of violence.[34] Although armistice agreements can be quite detailed (the Korea agreement was nearly 40 pages long), they generally do not address the political drivers of the conflict, which means tensions can endure and diplomatic and economic relations between the parties often remain at a minimal level. Armistice agreements that have mechanisms for monitoring and ensuring compliance to reduce the risk of conflict resuming are more durable than those that do not.[35] An armistice in Ukraine would freeze the front lines and bring a long-term end to active combat. Russia would stop attempts to occupy additional Ukrainian territory and cease missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Ukrainian forces would stop their counteroffensives—strikes on Russian-held areas of Ukraine and on Russia itself. There would still be ongoing, unresolved territorial disputes (that is, divergent positions on the location of Ukraine's borders) between Kyiv and Moscow; these would be contested politically and economically, not militarily. The key political issues beyond territorial control, ranging from Russian payment of reparations to Ukraine's geopolitical status, would remain unaddressed. The sides would likely conduct only minimal trade; the borders would be largely closed. The line of control would likely become highly militarized, like the inner German border during the Cold War.

I wasn't wrong paper tiger it is. This is what a hollowed out dying US hegemon looks like pleading for reasonableness from your enemy. Second video. And an astonishing article in The Atlantic, you can almost smell the fear - it truly is an Arabist Viet Cong. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/03/houthis-yemen-war-palestine/677637/

They actually want to flog off an aircraft carrier now the Prince of Wales. Like the real thing, it doesn't work. And whatever you do don't mention the Ajax tank. The Tories have destroyed the British Armed Forces far more than leftist blow hard malcontents like me ever could. But they make good ads.... God Save the King ! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13138221/Britains-cash-strapped-Navy-forced-sell-aircraft-carrier-HMS-Prince-Wales.html

To be fair to Germany, their guilt runs very deep and rightly so. My dad never trusted them to his dying breath in 1996 having fought them in WW2.

Well it's true continuing this war is just condemning 100s or thousands of young men on both sides to their slaughter. It's WW1 in 1915 not WW2 defeating Nazism. The weasel Lindsay Graham that praised Zelenskiy to his face and said this was a great deal for the US seems to have gone quiet recently. All of this was hugely predictable to anyone with half a brain which makes it all the more evil to me that the powers that be are so cynical and so calculating in the playing of the "Great Game". They must think we are stupid, but then most people are or are distracted or just too busy to figure it all out. A few years back, my brother's family went to Ukraine for a city break - their taxi driver was quite knowledgable and took care of them for their stay. He mentioned that I a European was married to a Thai woman and expressed his displeasure that such a thing would happen. He said in our country we have a saying a cow shouldn't marry a horse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrystia_Freeland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_McFaul