Cory1848

You may be right about that!

Well, this may sound absurd, but I own about 8,000 CDs and still buy them (what can I say … I like the tangibility of them, and many are rare/collectible and have some value, and they make me happy). Still, THB 25,000 for 200 CDs comes out to 125 baht per CD, and as someone here pointed out, the average value of used CDs is a fraction of that. Good luck to the seller …

This was a big story in Chiang Mai several years ago; Chiang Mai University had been the setting for a popular movie in China, so Chinese tourists not only (illegally) purchased and wore CMU uniforms but also swamped the campus, unintentionally disrupting the activities of actual students.

Western feminism is in fact divided on the issue. One school of feminist thought holds that prostitution provides economic empowerment and autonomy of choice to women who elect to engage in the trade -- and advocates legalization so that sex workers can get the same benefits (and earn the same respect) that other workers enjoy. This same school of feminism holds that women should feel free, if they want, to enjoy pornography, get drunk, smash their guitars on stage (as did Phoebe Bridgers in a memorable performance on Saturday Night Live a couple of years ago) -- in short, to engage in all the fun behaviors that men get to engage in.

Well, not always. I have many good friends in the US who are themselves Jewish and who are both appalled and saddened by Israeli policies. Plenty of people are capable of looking at the situation with open eyes. What might be antisemitic, however, is holding Israel to a higher standard -- being laser-focused on mistakes made by Israel while not giving a hoot about worse mistakes made by other governments. In the end, Israel is just another country, and like other countries it often behaves badly.

No, the person who posted that is mistaken. In 1941 for instance when the Nazis invaded the Baltics, Estonians invited them as liberators because they were chasing the Russians out. Etc.

No, Estonians are not at all pro-Russian, quite the opposite in fact, and culturally we are totally different (I’m an Estonian). However, 25 percent of Estonia’s population is Russian speaking, and there is much disagreement among that segment. And while many Russian speakers may have sympathy for their country of heritage, they’re not rushing to move there -- who in their right mind would want to live in Russia when they can live in the EU? It’s a complicated situation.

Yes, if he’s barred from office or convicted (or jailed), it’s likely that there will be some violence, but that’s something the country will just have to go through, because it's preferable to not holding him accountable for proven crimes -- the US does not have monarchs or dictators, at least not in theory. And I don’t believe the violence would be as widespread or the consequences as dire as you state; even his hard-core supporters are starting to fall off. He's beginning to look like a spent force.

Medieval indeed. Apart from the chilling effect this will have on the 280 million people who have to live under such a regime, there’s a silver lining for Thai tourism -- any unmarried or same-sex couples (or married couples who simply value their privacy) who may have been considering an Indonesian beach for a holiday may now come here instead. Just like when, for decades, Indonesia (and Malaysia) barred foreign visitors from Israel, greatly boosting Israeli tourist arrivals in Thailand.

Also, the Senate remains in Democratic control, and the Senate Finance Committee has the same right to request the returns. So they're basically out there.

Though I disagree, I respect your opinion, but I hope that (1) you acknowledge that you have a minority opinion, even in many Catholic countries; (2) you don’t proselytize; and (3) you would also favor laws making fathers, even those who have disappeared or abandoned their not-yet-born children, legally responsible for 50 percent of the cost of raising that child to age 18. What “disgusts” me is abortion laws that make the woman, the doctor, even the Uber driver liable, while the man who inseminates the woman and causes the pregnancy gets off scot-free.

While I have no argument with your pointing out war profiteering and, even more, the expansion of neoliberal capitalism (wholesale privatization and zero government regulation) into newly “liberated” regions, as described by Naomi Klein and others, such arguments, valid as they might be, often fail to take into account the agency of the people themselves who live in these regions: in this case, what do the Ukrainians themselves want? After 1989, given an opportunity to free themselves from decades of Russian imperialism, people in countries from Estonia to Albania chose to align themselves with Western institutions (or to “toe the Western political line” as you would put it), and as a result they are substantially more prosperous, and more free, than they were thirty years ago. The Ukrainians, free to travel in the West, see this new prosperity and want it for themselves. Who can blame them for that, and why shouldn’t the West welcome them? Nobody is forcing post-communist Europeans down these paths. That’s where your comparisons with other countries where the US (and others) have spent lavishly on military support fall short. The situation with Ukraine in many respects is quite different.

What seems to be a bad karaoke version of "My Heart Will Go On" was playing in the background during the fight ... just precious ...