jts-khorat

Now imagine the potential structural damage you do not see and for which you need to dig up the fpoundations and check the internal static elements, if walls got bent that much, that covering elements were popped off. I guess a lot of people owning expensive condos will be left with literally zilch. 😱😢

The earthquake obviously had happened and the crane on top of the building was behaving erratically. Just listen to what the guy with the phone camera says: he is alarmed by the woman to the fact that the building is swaying, you can see the hook of the crane move. After the building swayed for a few moments, commented as such by the guy with the camera, you can hear the inner column structure break before the building collapses.

Answering to myself 🙂 There is a heavy crane now set up at the site of the building collapse and rubble is being moved. But I guess I need to echo posters before me, chances for even a minor positive outcome are very slim.

Several countries already have started sending teams, in the case of Myanmar it is India, I heard the EU also has offered direct and indirect help to both affected countries: From the speed with which the Bangkok governor enacted a State of Emergency, I assume that some kind of pre-planned emergency planning and response is currently acted upon. But of course, if you have a skyscraper-size heap of rubble in fornt of oyu with people somewhere in it, there is not all that much that can be done without heavy machinery.

Strong aftershocks are common after fault slip quakes. I would guess, a good number of the high rises in Bangkok could have structural damage (so far I heard of 200 calls about damaged buildings in Bangkok, so I guess thousands is more likely). If having a choice, I would not stay in one for a few days, to be sure.

As they are all sent regardless of judges orders, what you are advocating is the death sentence for somebody cheering on a Spanish football club (a professional footbaler no less). And that was only one obvious error in a mere 213 sent; how high is the acceptable error rate? I would be banned if I would verbalize of what I think of you.

Your own definition says they are...

The way to go is surely NOT to create concentration camps in Cuba and El Salvador, so that the judicative of the US has no access to what happens there.

Have you read *when* those investments will actually happen? It might create a few question marks, if this is actually a real investment, if you are inclined to dig that deep.

I think "Lebensraum" was more a thing of the 40s. Your verbiage places you right where I thought you should be. Just to remind you: you are also living in a foreign country. The difference between you and some guy from Venezuela entering a country following the then legal procedure (according to your own post) is quite small.

Maybe look a bit deeper. Over the last 80 years, the allies (foremost what is now the EU) have bought American weapons to a large percentage. Now they want to spend more, but only with local arms manufacturers, cutting out the Americans whereever possible (and no military kit besides maybe fighter jets of the Americans is that superior, that it is not immediately replaceable with an European alternative). Just by not buying more F-35, the US is loosing tens of billions in one go. At the same time, Trump wants to start wars in Gaza, Iran and Yemen (and Panama, Greenland and Canada) and is in a depening conflict with China. Where is this improving anything for Americans, I wonder?

... or not. Case in point: a soccer player having a tattoo with a football and a crown, and because of the crown he was deemed (quite certainly wrongly) a gang member and deported. Not the only case in the press, where an error seems fairly obvious. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/03/21/deported-soccer-player-venezuela-tattoo/82589688007/ This is the danger of incarcerating people without trial and judiciary overview. How to get them back, if they will not get a trial? When do they start to deport American citizens? I hear, the idea has already been floated in Trump's inner circle. If you are American, good times are to come.

I am sorry to say, you have an issue understanding simple sentences. Is English your first language? I said, that the Americans are following a playbook once initiated by the Nazis in the 1930s. Very obviously, we are at the very beginning of this process ... but we are following it to the dot on the i and the cross on the t so far. When and how this process will end in 2025 USA is -- so far -- an open question. Large internment camps on US territory were the end point the last time the 1798 Alien Enemies Act has been used, but the current usage of internment camps in El Salvador and Cuba could be a possible and obvious starting point for something much worse. The killing of 6 million Jews also was a process, I actually do not believe that 1933 anybody would have thought it possible that it could ever go that far (else one would have to ask, why so few of those desperate to flee were accepted into the USA or the UK, who were both quite ambivalent towards them at the time). But here we are, students of history, and maybe able to change it (?) when it matters. Laughing about it, "because it can never happen here" is definitely the wrong reaction, methinks.

It is a vicious cycle, and for those that are here longer, it has been seen before. The early 2010s-2020s where similar to the mid-1990s, where everybody was just surfing an endless wave of credit in the drive to become rich. Then 1997 happened. I think Covid marked the end of the last cycle, and things are sorting itself out naturally right now. I know a lot of Thais who have lost everything: house, farmland, small business, etc. In the end, there are always those profiting from this down-event, buying things for Satang on the Baht, thereby fueling the next bubble cycle. It will be interesting to see on which fantasy that one will be based.

Careful what you are cheering on here. Having camps for undesirables following a completely arbitrary definition (crown tattoos, which might just be a follower of a football club)... check Herding them there without proper trial and justice oversight, using dehumanising transport methods... check Have them work for their upkeep... check Having an unclear "length of stay" or what to do with them "afterwards"... check Starting outside conflicts and planning annexations to keep the public busy and disorganized... check Planning on dismantling the judicative completely (just the news today)... check Sound like a known playbook, and it is -- I might say -- a very efficient one, as we Germans were able to prove just a while ago. It leads to quite a bit of collateral damage, because such things always derail at some point, but obviously the Americans must learn their own little history lesson.

Raising a hand during a speech is a different thing to a salute. Your argument might hold water, if he then would not have turned and *repeated* his offensive gesture, just to make sure that the audience could not mistake his intention. Cue in all those Republicans who later called it a "Roman salute", so that it was an intentional gesture got confirmed in a mad dash to downplay this action. And the audience cheered him for it, so he definitely also was not "trolling", as another poster on here wrote, or all those people would have been duped. Or is somebody telling me that American Republicans are easy to dupe??! I take that then as the next-best thing.

I guess doing literal Nazi salutes -- oh, sorry, of course I meant "Roman salutes" -- and getting cheered for it by the audience is kind of a give-away. And Musk was not the only high-ranking Republican doing them during public conventions.

This coming from the nastiest Trump fan on here, posting literally hundreds of times a day... Are you having a schizophrenic episode, or simply no self-awareness?! I hope you have a responsible carer with your medicine nearby.

Still waiting for the "better" plan instead of platitudes and word fluff. Sanctions, bombings and threats have failed. What I suggested is diplomacy, not committees, but maybe you did not answer specifically to my point. What are the specific actions you would suggest to change something? What is your exact timetable to achieve something meaningful?

That is true; however this extra spending is not just defense against Putin, it doubles also nicely as defense against Trump. I really do not understand Trump's foreign policies: before the Europeans accepted American soldiers on their territory and political influence as a very close ally for a relatively small investment. Now the Europeans spend more money, but instead of buying US weapons, it will be almost exclusively European arms manufacturers profiting. If you count the numbers, in the end it will cost the US more instead of less, while at the same time having lost their influence. And if China is the true target, would Trump not want to have the Europeans on his side, instead of the EU linking up to Silk Road 2.0 (because for trade with the US they have to pay tariffs, while with China they don't)? It does not make any sense at all.

Then maybe go back and read what I wrote. Of course it brought something good. You practiced volitional actions, acting out of proper reasons, loosening the fetters binding you to wordly things, cultivating your Sila (morals). So a lot was gained, and only some (quite smallish) piece of paper invested in the learning process. I call this a good investment for sure. Even for those less inclined to see the spiritual side, it definitely was money well spent on a life lesson: I know people who have lost houses and life savings on qualitatively pretty much the same lesson.

If you start a conversation with a threat (tarriffs in the situation with the EU, outright extortion in the case of Ukraine and bombings in the situation with the Iran), do not expect people to flock to you as friends. If you want to create a beneficial situation to you by brute force instead of persuasion, you better have the might and endurance to see it through. That is why some call it bullying, and when those victims of the mobbing are finally able to smack the bully in the mouth, they are generally the ones cheered in the end. This why the EU has many more sympathies compared to the US (outside of the US), and why there seems to be a sliver of understanding or even support for Iran in light of obviously superior powers ganging up subdue them. Let's not make this a discusison if this is right or wrong (Iran is definitely not right here), but this is what is currently happening due to the inept threats and failed diplomacy in the Middle East.

Even here, (Theravda) Buddhism has something interesting to say. You do meritious deeds not in the expectations of being thanked, or even of making a difference. You do the good deed because you acted in interpretation of the things you knew (she is a poor girl) -- therefore it was the right action -- and therefore it helps you to cultivate your own good volitions and have a better life through it. What the other person makes of it in the end is really not your concern. In a perfect world, they would feel thankful, but it is their decision alone; as it is your decision alone how the perceived rejection (or not) of your action makes you feel in turn -- as you know you did the right thing, it should not be a negative emotion, but move towards equanimity.

You just have described the concept of Kamma in two easy to understand paragraphs. What you infer from it and how you act after this self-reflection is what makes all the difference.

Then you tell me a better way. If bombs cannot reach those locations any more, and -- my base assumptuion -- none of us wishes a nuclear strike annihilating whole countries -- then the only way left is talking. I agree that the position of Iran towards Israel is unacceptable. But we have seen over the last decade, that sanctions and threats have not diminished Iran's way towards nuclear capability. I frankly understand the Iranians in this point. As we have seen with North Korea, a tiny country with starving people has an outsized diplomatic reach globally due to it having 1-5 really weak nukes. Ukraine gave theirs up, look how that went. Having a nuke is the obvious only solution for a smaller country to withstand the pressure of a superpower. This is a conundrum for which I have no good solution. But the Ayatollahs are old, and they have a populace who would rather not live under sanctions. This is the only lever I see, besindes sinply accepting that Iran will have a nuke very very soon.