herfiehandbag

Yes, the Prison diet and lifestyle seems to have suited him! I wonder whether he still controls his businesses, or have they "passed" to various other well connected parties; not that that had anything to do with the parole of course! I do hope that he has been left with sufficient cash to see him through...

Thinks, suspects, is convinced. Not knows.

This thread is not so much derailed rather, like some 1960s children's cartoon from American TV, the train has left the tracks and is rampaging bizarrely down divergent roads!

Perhaps they were no longer productive - in the informally fiscal sense?

Will make them easier to see (obviously) and this easier to avoid. I wonder whose brother owns the firm...

As ever, they spend so much time sitting on the fence that their backsides must resemble a Kit Kat bar!

Not targets, yet 17 hostage and more than 20 dead.

I would bet both of them that he failed to make the appropriate payments...

Umh, since Thai Airways A340s have been dumped ( sorry, I meant stored serviceable) for the last few years I doubt that there are any Thai International pilots current on the things!

What happened to the A340 and 4 C130s that were due to sweep in from the skies to rescue their people? Edit - I see from another thread that they don't actually have enough pilots for the A340! "Ding Dong - ladies and gentlemen, if there are any people who know how to fly one of these things, could they make themselves known to the cabin crew!"

Absolutely - should asked the army to do it. Of course you could have widened the base of the inquiry by co-opting a few civil servants and prominent businessmen.

Come on now, we all know she was different. Let the angry man be angry - it is after all what he does best! He might even go off bang before Thaksin goes on a diet of old rice and fish heads!

As ever, it is all about perceptions. Ask your average European tourist, with a passing interest in international affairs, what their impression of Thailand is: military coups, junta governments, elections ignored, corrupt police, hostile immigration bureaucracy, endless scams starting as you leave the airport ("sorry meter no working"), aggressive taxi/tuk tuk drivers, dodgy "accidental deaths" on "paradise islands" which are covered up or inadequately investigated; the list goes on and on. Add all these negative perceptions in and they go somewhere else. Make a real, sustained effort to put a stop to this and you may get real tourist growth, but it will take several years to put right the damage done by the imbecility of the last few years. Just a hint - tourism (and other civilian) ministers in paramilitary dress uniforms - people from determinedly non militaristic societies (much of Europe for example) take one look, and think no!

Yes. Smoke is used in battle, and in manoeuvring in sight of an enemy (as the IDF is doing on the borders of Gaza) to screen your own forces or blind the enemy. There are two types: base ejection in which a series of small smoke cannisters are ejected from the base of an artillery shell, to fall in a line across the battlefield, creating the "linear smokescreen" to hinder observation and hide your movement. BE smoke takes time to lay, but is (relatively) long lasting. Because the rounds use a mechanical time fuze (clockwork) they are expensive, usually in limited supply, and the gunnery procedures needed to create a screen are complex. If a quick smokescreen is required, to cover a rapid move across open ground, then white phosphorus is used, bursting on impact with the ground and creating a rapid but quickly dispersing effect. It is usually delivered by light artillery ( I don't think that Israel use that) mortars or hand grenades. it is not a particularly effective anti personnel weapon, and of little use against dug in troops ( bunkers) or buildings. It is a tool for covering movement. If it is used against personnel or buildings then it is against the law of armed conflict, If it has been used then it will have been used for covering movement at close quarters. Claims that Israel have used it are dramatic, but all armies use it. It is important to understand why and how it is used. If Hamas have planned and prepared for urban fighting then they may well have and in due course use it themselves, to cover movement - then again they may rely on standing on the street corner and spraying the presumed area of the enemy with AK fire on automatic whilst their mates run across the street - the "Beirut unload". Dispassionate observation of the available videos does show that their training, in some cases anyway, has progressed beyond that.

If one might pinch a quote from Alice in Wonderland: "Speak roughly to your little boy and beat him when he sneezes! he only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases!"

Of course what we don't know is what sort of a run it was. There is a whole world of difference between an individual 10km road run, in training shoes and PT kit, and what we used to call "endurance running" a 6 miler (10km) uphill and down dale, on rough tracks, in boots, combat kit, wearing your helmet and carrying 30kg in your webbing and a weapon. In my time at the idiot factory (1970s) we built up to the 10 miler over two terms, with PT to train and prepare us for it. Excellent practice for running away from the Russians! But seriously, these sorts of exercises need to be done with qualified PTIs in charge and medics to hand. Otherwise the temptation always rises in some people to "beast" the recruit, especially one who is struggling. "Beasting" can push someone beyond their limits, and that can result in this sort of incident. Add in an inadequate level of fitness, heat and humidity and you can be in real trouble. The officer is in charge yes, but advised by his PTIs and medics. His experience and enthusiasm should be tempered by that advice.

I used to wear "matching coloured" socks with sandals instead of shoes when at work (teacher). Mind you I always wore proper shirts (double cuff, silk knots securing the cuffs, tie) instead of the garish "colour of the day" polo shirts. Maybe they left me alone because they thought I was weird?

It is one of the glories of the internet. It gives a global reach to those of us previously confined to sitting at the back of the bus muttering to ourselves!

What on earth has the ludicrous "over sentencing" of a relatively junior official for misuse of official vehicles in a remote province in Thailand ( a sentence obviously related to him crossing someone with influence) got to do with Trump? Or, come to think of it, with justice?

So an instructor of great experience then! Don't they have any sort of cadre to prepare people to be instructors, let alone any requirement of sustained experience "in the field" before becoming one? Qualified Physical Training Instructor present? Medics present?

Yet you must give him some sort of credit. With or without knowledge he has, through a massive and sustained campaign of continuing deflection effectively closed down a thread. Perhaps one could consider it the internet equivalent of the political and military campaign against Gaza of which he accuses Israel!

As I recall the doors on Thai carriages ( locomotive hauled stock) open inwards. Mind you, I wouldn't lean on them!

I think the 9th paragraph of the PBS article explains everything.

Is that a subjective or objective opinion, for crying out loud!

I don't know if 40 babies were beheaded. It is clear that a large number of children and infants were slaughtered at that kibbutze. There are reports that some were beheaded, there may be photographic or video evidence, I don't want to see it. I am prepared to take the word of reputable news outlets, and that of the IDF. I read the reports, watched the video of the soldiers clearing bodies in bodybags, and went and threw up my breakfast. As I said I watched some footage of IDF soldiers clearing bodies from the slaughter in a Kibbutz. They were not young conscripts. They were reservists, mature men for the most part; probably (likely) family men. Such a task would destroy conscripts, boys and girls; probably why they used a reserve unit, older men, more resilient. I know soldiers, I was one for a long time, I can read them; cold fury, absolute cold fury. Something utterly, utterly terrible happened there. Looking at those men, listening to the IDF spokesman, I believe them.