Tropposurfer

Got zero time for Israel or Israelis. A nation that has turned into the fascists they loathed and suffered under both pre and during WWII. I'm NOT an anti-semite but I am a pro-humanitarian. Remember the journalist woman they shot (state sanctioned murder) a while back then lied through their teeth about it ?! Ya spend about 80 years disenfranchising and disempowering a group to the point they have no space, no peace, no rights, no place in their own ancestral lands and then cry foul that they are bad people and terrorists when they literally go mad from the abuse and react to your abuse by fighting back. Israel has systematically terrorised systematically carried out a Pogram of genocide against the Palestinian people (we saw last night go into homes and beat, arrest, shackle and kill 9 Palestinians in their homes) and have been aided and abetted by lots of Western countries in doing so.

Should be a bit of fun. Yummy eats to sample, cold beer in one of the open air cool bars

Maybe?, I retrieved an iPhone 13 from the ocean (about 5 metres of water) in Nice a while back (dropped from a boat too) it had been in the water for an hour or more and it worked fine, still working fine. The newer iPhones are pretty waterproof it seems.

I have a wonderful life here. OMG ???????????? maybe I AM sh!THEAD lol ???????????????????? !!! Oh well mai pen rai to that. Mind you I don't live on $2000 a month or a similar lowish to low income figure which can makes life somewhat restrictive. I/we have an idyllic life: Great golf, wonderful yoga, gym, fantastic beach nearby to swim and in season to surf a bit, incredible food, awesome barbie in the backyard, great sailing, few lovely friends, a darling squeeze, cheap beer, living in my boardies or Bermuda shorts Hawaiian shorts n sandals, a blo@dy beautiful home with a truly sick pool and garden in a quiet green spot, easy access to international flights, amazing countries all around to visit easily and cheaply, really wonderful Thai house-staff.

I spoke with a St Petersburg lass friend who has lived in Switzerland for about 5 years (since marrying a Swiss guy). She's a journalist (an award winning one too). Kat was one of many targeted by Putin and his FSB or whatever his neo-KGB is called. Kat cannot return even if she wanted to now as she would be killed. She did return a year or so back before the war started and had to run for her life as the escalation of suppression in Russia had gone off the scale since her last visit to family and her home in St Petersburg. Kat is a European journo and wrote/writes stories from all over both East and West Europe for years. Kat told me that many many Russians are simply apathetic and won't stand up against the Putin despot. Others love him and yearn for a neo-Stalinist ultra-nationalist nation and re-annexing of Europe to make The great Neo-Czarist Russia similar to the Soviet days but capitalist/totalitarian. Others are simply cowered under the brutal weight of Putins Russia. The exodus of many that we have seen and hear about in the Press, she says, are simply running away to not fight, to avoid facing what Putin and his cronies (aided and abetted by a totally corrupt system of oligarchical funding and corporate raiding) a 'head in the sand' mentality if you will. Kat also told me the regression and complete control Putin and his henchmen have over the country now is so tight, so all encompassing that there is NO free speech, NO ability to peacefully protect or hold rallies without being beaten, shot, arrested, and if not then then later taken away to prison/gulags. The Press is completely controlled by Putin and any descent is forbidden and crushed immediately and brutally. Ultra-nationalist spy and inform on more moderate people.

I know this well ... I have gorgeous women (not hounds like the one in dark clothing show in images) fighting over me all the time lol ????????????????. What can I say its the price ya pay for being a really 'hansum man'.

Ahh and the deflection, distraction of a false narrative begins to be circulated. How entirely predictable. I still say if they paid police a decent wage, vetted and trained far better, AND had ethics and conduct independent commissioner the RTP would be a far better policing entity. But I have heard that its impossible for porkers to fly ... so the chance of such sensible anti-corruption anti-grift protocols happening is ??? ...

It won't fix the endemic corruption but paying officers and training them better, and having independent ethics and behaviour body (doesn't exist here it seems) wouldn't hurt.

I never said thousands were being sent. I said there were thousands around the NATO nations in total, and could be if needed and offered used (paraphrase).

Hope you find a solution for your family member. This story is a good advertisement for all healthy folks to give blood regularly.

Ahh the joyousness of free speech ... NOT lol ???????? I wonder. Could it be because Mr P knows/feels Taksin is maybe a threat to him if he came back? I don't understand the in's and out's of politics here so if any members can weigh in and give a considered, informed, critical thinking comment I'd appreciate any offering.

I appreciate the input, opinions, diagnoses, and prognoses by all members, and with the greatest of respect to you all. ... do any of you have any actual psychological clinical training, experience of, or intimate contact (a few say they've lived, worked in places like Katherine NT) with Indigenous Australian peoples and their communities? Some here have hit the nail on the head. i.e. When a people are systematically and multi-generationally mutilated in every way that collective collapses into all forms of hopelessness and eventually self harm (you can't turn on the violators, they have more power, and the pain must be expressed somehow somewhere). Sadly as an ex clinician who worked for years in remote Indigenous communities the 'interventions' offered, and imposed, have not worked for the vast majority of communities and individual cases. Complete dry communities with some Elders driving this has seen vast improvements in all indicators of wellness. Endeavours to run cattle stations etc have also been really successful in a few cases. As to the notion that Indigenous folks sit about and have nothing to do, well, that's true to some degree but many Indigenous don't see or want a Western paradigm of industry and work. Not because they're 'welfare wanters' its because they crave and need being on-country and practising and searching for the Culture experience they are so starved for. They sense, but often don't know how to articulate this soulful-craving but when they speak of this stuff they 'change' before your eyes. The issue now, in my somewhat 'expert' opinion, with Indigenous communities driving their own recoveries is fraught with a fundamental intervention barrier/problem. Put in simple terms it is the avoidance of acknowledgment and grieving around the self-immolation in Community as a result of the multi-generational genocide perpetrated upon Indigenous folks. The second is focused on by the first not at all in my experience. The self-accountability as a result of the generational abuse is simply bypassed and thus healing and breaking cycles is unavailable. This collective refusal to traverse such vital acknowledgment and process will I fear see no ending to the shocking Indigenous morbidity from other Indigenous. Many lay-people and victims alike don't know this but multi-generational abuse creates all sorts of somatic morbidity issues for individuals and collectives, apart from the obvious obesity, heart, diabetes etc problems. The rampant sexual abuse of children and women, the appalling levels of socialised violence, the misinterpretation and loss of understanding of Culture whereby women are treated as less-than where intimidation, condescension, and open violence being challenged is turned away from or condoned in families and community is normal e.g. 'she needs to learn to not speak when she shouldn't' (said to me and other clinicians many times in Community). The fathering of and then abandoning of children by thousands and thousands of lost men serving only to create new generations of lonely sad and angry offspring, mothers left to raise children in violent misogynist family systems where all manner of abuses continue. The open hatred and targeting of any Indigenous person who tries to lift themselves out of the closed abuse systems e.g. 'You think you're better than us'.

Your absolutely right rabas, well said! The subtle and poor management of language as named by you, and by folks by floating (whether accidentally or deliberately) must be carefully managed and called out asap. Critical thinking folks must counter the false narratives our world is awash in. The notion that Putin would ask his people to attack NATO, and follow his ultra-nationalist nutter generals is ludicrous indeed. He has neither the resources i.e. the troops, conventional weapons, and enough home support for this madman against a well oiled, cohesive fighting force such as NATO a force which outnumbers, in every aspect, his nations capabilities tens of times over is farcical. Putin knows his nation and his hold of power cannot bare the consequences of responses by NATO should he ever attack NATO countries. The response if he should attack any NATO nation would be swift and devastating (conventional weapons)He knows this and is cornered. The BS he and others nutter in Russia have hinted around nukes is also total BS and won't happen. Why? Because to do so he'd irradiate and destroy millions of Russians in doing so and lay waste not only to parts of Western Europe in the fallout, and his Ukraine targets but his own national resources e.g. food production, oil etc. The issue of the US supplying the beast M1 tank has been touted as a lever on the Germans to release Leopards, and the free movement of other NATO nations for their Leopards to Ukraine through Germany, and the huge stockpile of ammunition and spares needed to service them in a conflict and is seems to have worked. The numbers of tanks possibly to follow from NATO nations is is the many hundreds of Leopards, with a mass total of many thousands of Leopards ready to roll. These tanks are more than a match for any Russian T series tank I have read. The capacity to assault in force by a nation that has proven its battle smarts is a definite shift in battlefield power balances. The Ukrainians have proven to be very capable in war using and with such new weapons their offensive capabilities cannot be underestimated. I have a feeling that we will see very effective assaults, with mass Russian surrenders, whole areas being abandoned by the Russians once these tanks become available. I have a sense that the Ukraine won't be sending such mobile gun platforms to be smashed by drone and missile strikes in the way the Ruskies have. I imagine they'll use them much more creatively and effectively.

Spent 35 years in AA around the globe. Some see the material originally written in the Big Book (basic text and guide to sobriety) and the 12 steps and 12 traditions texts (written a few years after the BB was written as the needed progression of understanding the pathway to and holding onto a sober life and in its traditions, and to serve and the principle guidelines to the unity of the 'fellowship' of AA) as being religious in its references to God in these texts. Some in AA see it as a some sort of extension/manifestation of a faith/religion, and in their journey come to a form of faith in a singular God as known in some of the major Christian faith's we all know of. Personally I do not and from an early time in my AA journey see the concept as many speak of but as a 'spiritual' journey not a God based one. You hear the phrase' The Higher Power' used by folks who hold a wider non-prescriptive idea of a Power outside of yet paradoxically inside of self that underpins the entirety of all matter and existence. One of the fundamental tenants of AA is the acceptance of others; who, how, and what they are, think and feel. Sadly as we are human some in AA insist on holding onto and projecting their biases and bigotries and declaring that this is what AA and its writings mean and demand of us.

Whoopee! Spend hundreds of millions on a sports stadium instead of stuff like major works on the shocking drainage, ocean outfalls, ugly and dangerous street wiring .... Just another opiate effort by those who hold the power in society doling out some 'opium for the masses' as Marx described. Gotta keep those pesky proletariate quiet at any costs, so the grift can continue unabated. Seems I woke up on the activist/cynic side of the bed today. Need to go practice some putting to calm the mind and return to a more Zen state.

So sorry to hear of your abuse. Glad you kept on living, pushing through and living your life. Big hug mate ????

Bullies are always cowards, and always calculate if they can succeed and stand-over the bullied. Bullying is a toxic-shame-based behaviour and as such is very cunning in its functioning ... how it hides itself due to its foundational positioning in our psyche. Teachers can see it sometimes, but usually being-shame based the bullying is disguised in front of others that may intervene and shown in semi-benign ways like mild name calling or laughing at another as common examples. Often this 'socialised, normalised' shaming or others is endemic in societies (we actually all do it, some do it a lot, and its widespread) and thus can be missed and dismissed as being benign. However when its 'safe' to bully then other malicious cruel shaming and other forms of abuse are meted out. This makes the 'lighter' forms of taunting having huge impacts on the bullied. In my psych work of many decades it was nearly always the teaching of the family that creates an individual who is 'thick-skinned' impervious to those who test whether a person is a possible target for bullying. Bullies have been bullied, or cowered by more powerful people in the lives - always, even though they may appear to be really tough kids and as though they are really 'hard-arsed'. When kids bully its easy to look into and see those who train them ... abuse them into being bullies as they are still in the family system. Some kids and then adults later (Trump is a perfect example) seem to be just sociopathic and enjoy hurting others from infancy. Strong self esteeming by family of the child does not set up in them a 'receptacle' for others to dump in. Im also believe from my work that family systems hand down such this 'setting-up' (usually without knowing it), and that some family systems need victims and scapegoats in order to maintain a sense of balance (albeit a tilted skewed balance). This is much more common than we feel comfortable to admit. The wider social circle of course has influence in the developing person in both affirming and dis-affirming ways. But, Freud was spot-on when he said; 'The first two years of life make the person.' (paraphrase). The recent rises in 'othering' in the kaleidoscope of the extreme right worldwide is an example of bullying on a meta-scale. The tragic, lonely death of this young girl should give us all pause to give no space for bullying in our own homes, family systems - small or meta, or in our society. When you see abuse of any kind stop it! How do we combat bullying? Build a balanced sense of self in our children i..e give them the gift of knowing they are valuable and loved unconditionally, know you are human and make mistakes, and that mistakes are okay, that its okay to be know you aren't and seen as not perfect, know that you are beautifully unique yet paradoxically the same as others. Do not shame others - especially children - create boundaries outside of and inside your kids, direct, challenge, and even admonish yes but shame NO. Showing is far more important than telling children about life. Never do the; 'Do as I say not as I do stuff' - poison! e.g when you screw up admit it and apologise e.g. 'I am sorry I snapped at you before son/daughter I was angry about something that was none of your creation or concern and I was wrong to give that to you in a mean way. I love you'. Show honour, kindness, compassion, loving but clear boundaries and respect to your wife and others. Find out how shame works in your parents family and exercise your healthy sense of shame all the time with your family ???????? Find out the mechanisms of bullying e.g. taunting, mocking, ostracising, criticising, insulting, gossiping - with specific person focus - ongoing, etc. Develop a relationship of openness with your kids and family so that you practice and exhibit this openness to talk and to listen to others, especially to and in your kids. Ask them directly about their feelings and about things liked bullying. good way to 'lay ground' for this is to make space and time to be together and enjoy each other and whatever you're doing. Feel and be open to being open and take the risk of being the parent and taking a lead to share about something. A good place to start is with something that you experienced as a child that has touched you in life with the family recently and share this with your kids (not to make them parent you though!). Having the talks about the other sex when they are moving through this crazy part of maturing. Being available, and others knowing you are available and safe is really powerful in supporting through bullying or anything else that comes in life. RIP dear child ????????????

Me and the rest of the Elite, 'up-ourselves' crew go through the diplomatic counters in the Fast Track zone so we NEVER stand in line haw haw haw ????????????

Its a nice jaunt in a boat, anchor for a few nights here and there, and enjoy the swimming and snorkelling too ????????

The saving grace, perhaps, for such folks who can afford incredibly tariff marked-up car is they can also afford damn good lawyers when sh!t goes wrong ????????

I relate .... I mean I've nearly lost my sh!t in a 7/11 when seeking my Chinese pork bun fix and finding they were clean out of them!

I flew with 5 suitcases in 2019 to retire (business class but still some airline excess to pay). The rest, the bulk of our home stuff was container shipped. I had zero problem at Phuket airport (direct via Singapore Airlines). I did enter on an a brand spanking new Elite visa so this might (?) have had some bearing on not having bags checked by Customs i.e. escorted by Elite concierge through the entire post-flight processes. I didn't see in your post what visa you are entering on. If your on a retirement visa then I doubt you'll have any issues with what you bring in as they'll see you are a valid long termer.

Where in the gods names was she looking as she drove into a tight area with a boom-gate in front of her, that she obviously knew was there as she lives in the bl@ody building??!! Obviously not where she was going that is for sure. How do you drive into a driveway and ever increasingly tight turn area and run right over a large object like a human being and not know you'd hit and driven over them?? The mind boggles at such deadly ineptitudes!

Did a search of my old home State health department. Here is, arguably, one of the worlds most grounded, respected, and efficient health systems recommendations on vaccinations for Covid 19. https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/covid-19/vaccine/Pages/booster.aspx#why-booster

The Sun. Use metal black or dark charcoal coloured baking type trays place outside each day in full sun, turn occasionally until perfect dried naturally sweetened fruit bliss ????