ozimoron

There's an excellent French restaurant in soi 11 or 13 (I forget) Sukhumvit I think. Also I've been to a good Italian on the ground floor of terminal 21. The farang food I find in Pattaya is good but not really standout. I'm not a steak eater. Most of the food I eat is Thai. I always ask for no sugar.

For decent farang restaurants there's no comparison, Bangkok wins hands down. For Thai food there no difference.

It varies a lot. I frequently eat Thai out of a small home restaurant in a dead end soi near me. 50 baht for most meals, extra 10 with fried egg. About once a week I'll get a salmon steak out of Alex's Bistro (KTK) for 260 with 10% discount. Lately I have been getting either fish or chicken with brussels sprouts and beans from the roast counter at central festival. The food hall at central marina is not bad either for khao mun gai. An open air restaurant on the corner of klang and soi 10 named Dang Dum (red black) is excellent for Thai / Chinese and Pat Thai is their signature dish. Then there is a decent small restaurant next door to Piyanas on Klang, I can't remember the name of it. About once a month I get a hankering for palak panir and the Jai Jinendra vegetarian Indian on P Klang, very close to road 2 does a good one for about 230 plus a garlic naan. Occasionally Hemmingways or the Wine Connection where I ate tonight.

who? when? If you want to accuse somebody of antisemitism you need to prove it, not just say it. That's creepy.

Nobody on this board ever suggested it was or should.

Why would they when Israel will continue to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state. They used to want one - until the settlements took up 40% of the occupied west bank, making the solution unviable. They do, however, want a Palestinian state but, like Israel, they don't want the other side to have a state.

In a recent poll, only 31% of poll respondents said they supported sending Israel weapons, while 43% opposed the idea. The slaughter of children and civilians is radicalizing a new generation inside of the occupied territories and across the Muslim world. The median age of the Palestinian population is 19.6 years old—millions of young people who could fuel a fire that could rage out of control for a generation. It no longer matters how many Hamas militants are killed; Israel is creating a far larger number of replacements. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/22/2213202/-Netanyahu-s-Gaza-War-Has-Failed?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

Extremists on both sides of Israel-Hamas War are determined to kill a two-state solution Then an extremist Jewish settler slaughtered 29 Palestinian men and boys as they knelt in prayer in a Hebron mosque in 1994. Hamas suicide bombers blew up buses to butcher Israelis on Jerusalem’s streets. A Jewish extremist shot and killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at a peace rally in Tel Aviv in 1995. https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-israel-hamas-war-two-state-solution-20231217-norll7wml5fotiexa2dyav2e3q-story.html

Israeli and American policymakers have also yet to focus on the transformation of some of Hamas’s military leaders shifting from a local, nationalist, religious ideology resisting the Israeli occupation and calling for a Palestinian state into a global jihadist ideology. If such a transformation takes root, Hamas would essentially move away from the Muslim Brotherhood ideology to a radical, Wahhabi Salafi jihadist paradigm. Extremists within the Wahhabi paradigm do not accept the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/hamas-gaza-israel/

"If your conclusion is that Israel is the only or the main responsible for the situation, you're wrong,” Barak tells Bremmer, “But if you mention as a matter of fact that this government doesn't want to see two-state solution, that's objectively accurate.” Barak thinks Netanyahu’s policies have counterintuitively promoted the idea that Hamas in Gaza is an asset while the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is a liability, not the other way around, all for political reasons. This dynamic has led to a “poison pill” against any political process, which is now even more difficult to achieve following the October 7th attacks and subsequent invasion. https://www.gzeromedia.com/gzero-world-clips/how-netanyahu-used-hamas-to-avoid-talks-of-a-two-state-solution

Meanwhile, Israel’s communication minister Shlomo Kahri said on Wednesday: “There will be no Palestinian state here. We will never allow another state to be established between Jordan and the [Mediterranean] sea”. Asked by Sky News’ Mark Austin whether there was “still a chance for a two state solution”, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, said in December that a “new paradigm” should be built. Pushed on whether that would involve Palestinians having a sovereign state, Ms Hotovely replied: “The answer is absolutely no”. https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-what-is-a-two-state-solution-and-do-israelis-and-palestinians-want-one

I think Israel should have a state, they just don't deserve one until they stop running interference in Palestinian affairs in order to prevent formation of a state. Meantime, the entire upper echelons of Israel's government and military, along with Hamas should answer for war crimes.

As long as Israel actively blocks a Palestinian state they don't deserve a state themselves. It's incredible that a population who suffered so greatly during WW2 at the hands of the nazis could themselves turn so evil.

Neither side wants the other to have a state. Stop telling me what I think. You are getting creepy.

A different rational person might think it's like the deficit, use it when oil is expensive and replenish it when oil is cheap, thus helping to control the price against predatory OPEC policies.

Israel doesn't wants a 2 state solution and have chewed up much of the west bank in illegal settlements, putting a 2 state solution out of contention unless they get their land back.

AFAIK, Jews can live in the US. 6 million already do. Why should we talk about how many Gazans are kids? It's a well known fact that the ME has one of the highest reproductive rates in the world. That's a characteristic of any poor country

Those wars were mainly short lived or not actual wars between sovereign states. They mostly actually ended. They may have overlapped but were largely unrelated. I'm really discussing the bigger picture, at least regional wars if not world wars between states who represented democracy vs fascism. I'm not concerned with parochial grabs for power or land but real political winds of change in the world.

It's totally irrelevant whether the bombs were dumb or smart. The vast bulk of them were dropped accurately and hit their intended targets. It's nuts to think that the Israeli airforce, uncontested in the sky, missed a significant proportion of their bomb drops. Not only that, but with over 200 2,000 lb bombs it would be hard to miss.

Just stop projecting.

The land, like all land, belonged to the denizens of that land at the time.

Ever since Roman times the world has constantly been in a battle between the Patriarchs (oligarchs) and the Plebeians (democracy). Obviously the Plebeians vastly outnumbered the Patriarchs and so democracy was never the flavor of the month for the rich. Nothing has changed. The oligarchs use their money to influence courts and create propaganda wherein they seek to convince plebeians to vote against their own best interests. Other than that they simply use military force to retain or gain control. The US civil war was a triumph of democracy over oligarchy. WW1 and 2 were a triumph of the patriarchs over the plebeians. The end of WW2 saw the tide of fascism beaten back. Now we are seeing it become ascendant again.

Without the UN, US and NATO, the world would be in endless wars.

You were discussing the present. And I dispute that prostitution was ever the main driving force behind Pattaya. Bangkok in the 80's and before simply blew both Pattaya and Phuket out of the water when it came to bang for the buck.