mfd101

Mr Sombat hors de combat.

If my b/f and I had been passing we would have stopped to offer any assistance.

The only good thing coming out of all of this is that the Europeans are now wringing their hands and starting to think seriously about actually building their own defence capabilities. The preliminary outcomes are interesting: UK has announced it will send troops to Ukraine (but anxiously awaiting others - the Scandinavians probably, I think). And Macron has said - surprisingly in my view - that France won't. The only point of sending them (in my view) would be if they're ready & equipped to fight. 'Peacekeeping' when there's no real peace is ridiculous. Meantime the poor Ukrainians continue to slug it out.

Ah, so that's why the Russian attack 3 years ago came from the north and making straight for Kiev!

Never mind. Noone will be found or - if found - punished.

Shouldn't that be: "lifted off of the people"?

Fine in Bangers. And here at the edge of the jungle and the end of the world I have my b/f, whose English has improved considerably over the 13 years of our togetherness and was already OKish when we met as he served in a bar in Bangers & had an English half-BIL.

Um, you're referring to Thai & Lao? or Thai & Khmer? See my response above.

You have less than half a point. While Lao & Thai are closely related in origin, they are NOT - for the most part - mutually intelligible. As to Khmer & Thai they are completely unrelated languages (Austroasiatic & Kra-Dai).

So Thais would have been better off (today) if they HAD been colonized by the British ...

Nonsense. Most of the poor & uneducated peoples of Isaan speak at least 2 languages (Thai/Khmer and Thai/Lao are the most common). In my family here the old people speak Khmer for preference and (mostly) poor Thai. Their offspring are fluent in both. Their grandchildren (mostly) still understand Khmer but refuse to speak it because of the rabid Thai nationalism taught in schools. As for English, zilch.

Desperately poor people do desperately stupid things.

I guess at least 50% of Thais consume no imported goods whatever. Too poor & no interest in what the rest of the world has to offer. So no obvious effect on them at all.

As we see on a daily basis in Thailand, corruption breeds incompetence. Russia not much different.

And all that after they've only just finished & opened & used the new and vastly costly Parliament Building. Built beside the river ...

That’s not the consensus. So what is the alternative consensus? 2-state solution? That was all ready & agreed in the 70s but, at the last minute, Yasser Arafat couldn't bring himself to sign the piece of paper. If there is a different consensus now, noone seems to have heard of it. Or if they have heard of it, noone wants to implement it, least of all any Arab state, not to mention the Palestinians themselves. It's very difficult to negotiate with your opponent when killing them all has become your God-given mission.

The reality is there is no solution. Meantime Trump's creativity will continue to entertain us all. And it might even strike sparks off the Saudis & Egyptians. Alternatively, emigration to The West - spread across 20 or so countries - might be an option, though noone will be offering. The intellectual elites from amongst the Palestinians left for The West two generations ago.

Next she'll be off to Washington DC to discuss the future of Israel with the Great Disruptor.

Don't think so. Netanyahu hasn't been around for all the time since 1948. Nothing has changed since the 1960s - rebuild, fight, destroy, rebuild, fight destroy etc etc etc.

The beauty of disruptors - even ignorant & irrational ones - is that they force other people to justify their long-held but frozen views on controversial matters. Horrible though he is, Trump is a great disruptor. Proof of the pudding was on Netanyahu's nervous but frozen smile as he stood beside Trump. And the candles burning late in the night in Cairo, Amman & Riyadh. Noone can tell what the outcome will be. But it will be different & possibly better than the outcome currently in prospect ie no change, more of the same, and more still.

Last First Second is the normal order on official documents in many countries of the world. Just not in the Anglophone parts. Get used to it.

Couldn't happen to a nicer f/wit.

I found my boy - performing what, I guess from the information provided above, was coyote dancing on stage - in Dec 2011, 1 week after arriving for the first time in Thailand. What attracted me was that, of the 7 or 8 lads on stage coyote dancing, he was the only one with a big grin and looking like he was enjoying life. 13 years later we are still together, happily married (in Oz) and living in Surin.

Um, I'm sorry to be old and out of touch but could someone tell me what a 'coyote dancer' is? (I did try the OED but no luck.)

One royal clodhopper way way out of his depth.