soalbundy

smugness is a companion to my arrogance, what have you got to offer?

You have to consider the timelines that this took place in, India (the jewel in the crown) was very gradual and despite certain conflicts never erupted into a war, all the troubles later, the Muslim and Hindu riots and the separation from Pakistan happened after independence. Canada, Australia, New Zealand all gained independence without any trouble. America was an exception but was way more complicated, not everybody wanted independence and the French, Englands arch enemy, was also in the mix, it was also the first one to go, we learnt after that.

It's a pendulum, the hand wringing comes from those most affected, politicians and editors, we aren't going to have fascist states in Europe. It is only my opinion but I think the European voter is more sophisticated than the American voter, certainly someone like Trump or MTG would never get off the ground in Europe. The term far right in Europe means something different to far right in America, Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Strauss in Bavaria, Germany were considered far right, in America one would have called them center right, nobody would have considered storming a parliament.

The interesting thing about life is that one can alter very little with planing, things happen. Chinese and Russian systems aren't written in stone, neither are those of the west considering how a few woke groups can alter continents to become spineless shadows of themselves, our system is as vulnerabel as their autocratic ones are. Consider the harbingers of change in both China and Russia, the former due to high unemployment and the 'let it rot' movement among the young and the precarious adventure in Ukraine of the latter. Add to the mix of an independent central Brics bank and very many different member states and their autocratic power is even more weakened just as our systems are weakened by debt and lack of influence. I presume both China and Russia have considered this but desperation for the financial future and the chance to punch the arrogant west on the nose is a powerful argument for Brics. I don't think Europe has much to fear, psychologically we don't have as far to fall as the US and have had hundreds of years of parliamentary governments and great experience in diplomacy and innovation, our battles lie behind us, the states in America are only loosely affiliated and thanks to Trump and his ilk there appears to be genuine hatred between liberals and conservatives, I wouldn't even rule out a mini civil war in the future once the true extent of the loss of international power becomes evident and the rest of the world refuses to pay for the 'happy consumers' standard of living.

All high-tech countries are now suffering from low demand and higher production costs, in part due to high interest rates, Thailand is not alone, China has to export large parts of its production due to low local consumption.

As far as automobiles are concerned producing cars abroad, eg. Thailand, was a necessity in order to avoid crippling import tariffs, these CKD (completely knocked down where the car is assembled from parts sent from Japan, Germany etc) agreements lowered the import tariffs, the more certain parts could be locally produced the lower the tariffs would be. In fact despite the low wages in Thailand the locally produced parts were more expensive than those from Germany because of the high labour intensity and relatively low production numbers. This all benefited Thailand because there was a technological knowledge transfer and enabled many firm start ups producing spare parts which of course was the reason for the high tariffs in the first place. As far as cars are concerned there is no extra monetary gain in producing abroad, just the opposite, it requires huge investments but without this you wouldn't be able to sell cars there at all which is why Japanese and German companies also produce in high wage countries such as the USA.

gotta pick a pocket or twoooooo.

Anything for a PC quiet life, as long as they don't have to walk with a monster parade.

I always use the same PC to log into WISE and have had this notice (suspicious) several times, same with google but it was easily solved.

I asked about this law some time ago at Surin IO. It seems they don't take it too seriously, I asked hypothetically if I went to BK for the weekend would I have to report this, he hummed and haahed, ''how many nights''? "Just two" "No that will be OK" "What about three nights"? " I don't think it would be necessary, it concerns longer absences" "How long"? He threw up his hands and just said 'it depends' with a facial expression of 'leave me alone, I don't care'.

Why rant? It is as it is, nothing lasts forever, the world is always in flux so change is inevitable. When the British empire waned the British sensibly bowed out gracefully but I doubt such behaviour can be expected of the Americans, they tend not to solve problems but instead try to overwhelm them. It was Churchill who said, "Americans always makes the right decisions.....after they have tried everything else." It would be wise for the number one American sycophant, the UK, to join Brics if they really intend not to rejoin the EU. The individual states in the EU are going to have to spring over their shadow and agree to a European central bank with a mandatory Euro currency eventually backed by gold. I suspect all those countries not in a block and with independent central banks will have to join the Brics as the only powerful financial entity. America can become self sufficient, especially with energy, but hard times for 'the land of the free' are coming with internal and geopolitical unrest being the order of the day. America's demise will affect us all negatively in the short term but if Brics are wise the future could be bright.

But not good for expats as the Baht will soar.

He did control it, only one died.

San Francisco obviously doesn't have enough weirdos.

ingenuity verses the cops......the cops lost, could have been a scene from 'Dad's Army'

Well they still can't find that Malaysian passenger plane and no satellite saw it go down.

They only show themselves at 'pride' events.

Yet but it is in the making and a lot of progress has been made, even India and China are prepared to bury their differences in this and the gold backed Brics currency, that's how urgent this project has become. If the Euro is to survive it will, in the future, also have to be gold backed after reducing sufficient debt reduction. For the US it will be impossible to do considering their enormous pile of debt, something has to give, hopefully without a series of wars.

what a coarse fellow.

The beauty of the coming new Brics currency is that it will be backed by gold, which is why especially China and Russia are buying so much gold. This will make it a powerful currency against fiat currencies, this will be dangerous for America as there will be no need or desire to buy America's debt. Having said that the Brics countries cant have any desire to see America fail since they export so much to the US. There is going to be a huge geopolitical reset in the next 20 years and the US will have a lot less influence, in fact that is already happening. The CIA will no doubt employ its 'dirty tricks department' to try to hinder Brics but that will fail, all empires fail in the end.

Do I take that as a compliment or are you taking the pi$$? I have merely shown a small amount of knowledge that I have assimilated over 30 years of study, obviously none of it stems from me but from great enlightened men or from those who have put a great deal of work and money into their hypothesis's and who have tried to underline the work of gurus and holy men with scientific fact. I am not what one could call enlightened, that comes from grace not from study because the intellect has no way of fully grasping the concepts so I can only stroke the surface but I truly believe what they have taught. I have however meditated on Ramana Maharshi's "who am I" method, 'neti neti' not that, not that, with some success.

Some adults shouldn't be allowed to leave the house alone. Their own immoral acts and stupidity led to their demise, I have no sympathy.

Hopefully the worm is turning and the fad of 'woke' will soon be buried.

No, we are not in control. Things happen due to causality and there is your reaction to causal events. Reactions are predetermined by genetics, your upbringing as a child, past experiences as an adult, your country of birth, education, religion, society, etc. There are certain religions and philosophies that try to mitigate and alter the afore mentioned properties, to build a new house on the foundations of the old with some success. Zen Buddhism, the dissertations in Hinduism (Bagavat Gita, Advaita Vedanta etc.) then there are individuals who try to produce a life's map to overcome the pattern into which you have been stamped, Meister Eckhart the 14th century German Christian Monk, Buddha, the gurus Ramana Maharshi and Nisargatta, Markus Aurelius the Roman emperor and philosopher to name but a few. Unfortunately those predetermined properties that I mentioned will determine whether you are open to such teachings and causality will play a role whether you come into contact with them. Modern spiritual teachings, leaning on the old teachings and to some extent on modern physicists such as Tom Campbell and Donald Hoffman and several others consider that all that exists in reality is consciousness controlling the avatar that we call a body existing in a self evolving illusory field produced by consciousness that we call the universe, which is merely an interface for consciousness to reduce its entropy as it too evolves, some call it God, Brahman, Atman, the absolute, it has many names. As Nisargadatta said "That which changes is not real, that which is real does not change", Buddha's dissertations on "No Self" and "The World is Empty" is the same idea. Your true self is eternal undifferentiated consciousness which was there at the birth of the avatar and will witness its death.

Divorce was too complicated? Killing him and going to prison was easier.