John Drake

It is occurring. Last week I had Fedex deliver a used book (US$17) I ordered from South Africa. The fedex driver collected 52 baht on delivery and gave me a tax receipt. Used books I've ordered through ThaiPost, however, have not been imposing the tax.

I'm pretty sure both impulse and Carville realize the next federal elections are 21 months away.

That's true love, if I've ever seen it.

This is one of the few times I see that a post deserves a "confused" emoji (I didn't put the one that is there already). But you seem to criticize USAID for being "sneakiest liars on the planet." That is where the lies are coming from, after all. And then you turn around and condemn Trump for shutting down USAID.

Plenty of people there with green and purple hair already had access before these guys. Nobody complained then.

Yep. Department of Energy with 172 subscriptions. Money laundering scheme?

It seems that USAID may have only purchased 236 subscriptions for a Politico service called Politico Pro. That amounts to around $34K per subscription. I wonder how many other federal agencies have signed up for this "deal?" You can't find prices on the Politico webpage. You need to contact them. Yeah. https://www.politicopro.com/plans/

Anyone interested in USAID and CIA activities during the Secret War should look up the name, Pop Buell. Buell is long dead. And there was another important coordinator who as of seven or eight years ago was still here in Thailand. So I don't want to give out his name. The point is that this is a dirty agency, putting on a pretty face. We need transparency, because what they're doing now is tens if not hundreds of times more malicious and deceptive than during the 1960s and 1970s.

Apparently barely, rye, fish, and potatoes. Ah, potatoes! Another "traditional" European food taken from the Americas.

Millennia??? Anything with tomatoes only goes back as far as the Columbian Exchange and the end of the fifteenth century. Tomatoes are food from the Americas. As were chilies. And wasn't pasta from China? Seems to me that Italians and Europeans are poaching other people's foods and traditions.

It's a boneheaded idea that will just increase the attention on the Middle East. The US should be refocusing on China and the Far East. That's where the major problem lies. Let Israel and the Palestinians solve their own problems. Too many resources are being devoted to a relatively minor geopolitical region and conflict.

This was true during the Vietnam War and in the Secret War in Laos. You had USAID operatives assigned to individual villages, regional USAID directors, and USAID coordinators operating with CIA field agents. I know in Laos that the key USAID guy just packed his bags after the country fell and moved into Thailand where he set up shop again. They and the CIA case officers worked hand in hand with Air America, because aircraft were the only way you could move around the country.

I'm seeing a confused emoji on every post critical of USAID. I guess there is still at lest one of the agency's employees in Bangkok at the embassy. Now, with time on their hands.

Ought to give permanent space to Alex Jones. Watch legacy media's heads explode.

This investigation should be nationwide. And it should be broadened to all acts of political intimidation and threats towards students and faculty. Best way to start is to pull their funding. And tax their endowments. Taxing endowments for all universities should take place anyway.

What Americans wanted and mostly thought they were getting was an agency that helped developing nations in the aftermaths of catastrophes or gave them advice on healthy and safe high yielding agricultural practices (could use that in Thailand), clean water and local level financial management. What they were getting were exports to foreign countries of tranny operas, DEI kid shows, and recommendations from anti-farm zealots to eat bugs and stop agricultural development. And not to mention the money going to ngos that ran pro censorship campaigns both inside and outside the US. Then there are the intelligence agencies who were using it as a blind to overthrow governments and impose puppets who steal from their own people. All this modeled in Vietnam 60 plus years ago. All it did was make enemies and lose minds.

Overseas staff given 30 days to get out. How many, I wonder, are packing their bags at the Bangkok embassy? https://www.usaid.gov/

fiddledeedee

Can't do that. There are probably already a large group of people who have just been employed to do the new procedure and nothing else. Likely a lot of family relations and important people already raking in salaries.

Alas, Thailand.

Greenland?

The logical end result of so-called hate speech laws and restrictions. You either have free speech or you don't. Looks like the UK doesn't.

Transfer and disburse the employees to new offices in Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, and Barstow. Close down and sell the current buildings in DC. Or turn them into apartments for Haitians and Venezuelans with asylum status.

That is precisely what USAID has been doing since the Vietnam War.

All this talk about USAID and how it helps versus China in developing countries, all this talk needs to get back to what appears to be an uncomfortable fact: what has USAID money done to help the US in these nations? Where we unload millions and billions, the countries turn around and vote against us or our allies in the UN, they denounce us publicly, complain about American culture, and even object to our nationality, claiming we're not Americans but United Statesian. Take our money and deny our nationhood. Time to cut them all off.