Cameroni

Please. This is the real world, not some woke fantasyland. Great powers such as the USA and Russia and China have spheres of influence. Why do you think the US invaded Panama? China claims the South China Sea? Great powers do not tolerate non-friendly or hostile neighbours. It's just not acceptable. And if those neighbours remain hostile they pay the price. Whether it's Panama, Phiiippines or Ukraine. This was true in the 19th, the 20th and the 21st century and will be the case in the next century.

The Vivo Xfold Pro 5 is an absolute world class phone. Nothing Apple has comes even close.

The fact is that many "no name" Chinese manufacturers make phones that far surpass the best Apple makes. For instance Vivo's Xfold Pro 5 is vastly better than the Apple flagship. The best camera and video phone now is the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. The Samsung Fold 7 is better than anything by Apple. So is the 25 Ultra To cap it all the Samsung eco system is now far superior to Apple's. No wonder Apple is losing the smartphone competition.

Churchill was a flip flopper. On the one hand he agitated against German rearmament because he was an Imperialist and feared Germany could endanger the empire, and on the other he wrote how he admired Hitler's patriotism and love of country, speaking in effusively and even in an admiring tone of Hitler, singing his praises and what a splendid fellow he was.

No. That's not the relevant quote at all. The relevant quote is in the link I provided above: "In it, Churchill wrote: “Those who have met Herr Hitler face to face,” […], “have found a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable manner, a disarming smile, and few have been unaffected by a subtle personal magnetism.” Hitler and his Nazis had surely shown “their patriotic ardor and love of country.” https://www.historyonthenet.com/winston-churchill-and-hitler-what-did-churchill-think Churchill was an imperial warmonger, but he was also one of Hitler's bootlickers, so let's not pretend he had 20/20 vision. He didn't. He could no more foresee the future than anyone else.

Except Churchill said the exact opposite as well of course. "In fact, according to Jacobin Magazine In 1935, Churchill expressed his “admiration” for Hitler and “the courage, the perseverance, and the vital force which enabled him to . . . overcome all the . . . resistances which barred his path.” Winston Churchill famously wrote, in the same year, “Great Contemporaries”. According to the International Churchhill Society, one of the most controversial chapters in Great Contemporaries (And in the opinion of scholars the one least like the rest) is “Hitler and his choice.” Some critics maintain that the essay implies approval of Hitler, rendering Churchill a hypocrite." https://www.historyonthenet.com/winston-churchill-and-hitler-what-did-churchill-think Which makes Churchill a bit of a hypocrite. Of course if you play both sides, you can't fail but be right eventually. Churchill was in no more of a position to predict the future events than anyone else.

Nobody's talking about "surrendering". Putin said he only wants the Donbas, not all of Ukraine. A very reasonable demand.

March 1938 – Anschluss (Austria) After Hitler annexes Austria, Churchill criticizes the inaction of Britain and France: “The gravity of the events which have occurred cannot be exaggerated. Herr Hitler’s counsels of violence and treachery are moving forward with ever-greater momentum… Do not suppose this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.” September 1938 – Czechoslovakia Crisis (Pre-Munich) As Chamberlain prepares to negotiate with Hitler, Churchill warns: “Czechoslovakia is to be destroyed. Do not delude yourselves. Do not suppose that this is the end. Hitler will not stop. He cannot stop. He does not mean to stop.” October 5, 1938 – After Munich Agreement Chamberlain returns claiming “peace for our time.” Churchill responds in Parliament: “We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat. And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning, the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup…” 1939 – After Hitler Seizes the Rest of Czechoslovakia (March) Churchill seizes on Hitler’s betrayal of the Munich promises: “All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. She has suffered in every respect by her association with France and England. … We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude.” September 1939 – War Begins Britain declares war after Hitler invades Poland. Churchill is brought back into government as First Lord of the Admiralty, vindicated after years of warning that Hitler could never be trusted. Summary From 1933 onward, Churchill consistently warned that Hitler’s word was worthless, that Nazi Germany was rearming at breakneck speed, and that appeasement would only embolden aggression. His phrases — “dangerous delusion,” “beginning of the reckoning,” “total and unmitigated defeat” — captured his lonely but accurate stance in the wilderness years. Your whole long posts contains within it its own refutation. For if Churchill was right, and Britain and France could not be trusted for betraying Czechoslovkia and not standing by the security guarantees they gave her, and if future acts are solely predicated on past behaviour, then by the logic of your own post Britain and France would never have declared war because of Poland. However Britain did declare war on Germany because of Poland. Past behaviour was not an indicator of future action. So neither would Hitler's past behaviour necessarily have been an indicator of future action.

What big money? What are you talking about? I spend normal money. Paying your electricity bill and petrol for the car is big money? On what planet?

Cherries and strawberries, pineapple, mangoes, apple, watermelon, oranges, tangerines, cantaloupe melon and pomelo.

Not at all. I have a steak and burger now and then, but burger is only 50 baht here. Check the other costs above.

Life is not just noodles and pineapple I'm afraid. There's electricity bills, petrol for the car, car hire, health insurance, internet, haircuts, dental check ups, gym, Lazada, massages, supplements, I mean...I spend 50 bucks on fruit alone per month.

This was one thing Merkel and France got right, if they'd been listened to the expansion of NATO into the USSR sphere of influence would not have happened. Merkel warned against it at the time. This was all ignored and NATO pushed for eastwards expansion, so war with Russia became the end result. Should have listened to France and Germany at the time.

Neither we, nor Churchill, are in a position to know that. Churchill decided not to accept the peace offer. And that was that.

No way. Impossible to live a decent life on 650 USD. If accomodation is 400 to 500 USD, which is realistic, that leaves you with 150 to 250 USD. Impossible to live on that.

That only became apparent after the fact, and if you look at Stalin he was even more insane. Truman's decision to okay the murder of 140,000 Japanese civilians in Hiroshima in one day, about 100,000 more than died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the entire 6 years of the war, was arguably also the decision of an insane mind. The same for Churchill's decision to kill workers, men, women children and the elderly with area bombing. Putin is of positively sound mind compared to this cabinet of lunatics.

Yes, they did actually, much like Boris Johnson flew in to warn Zelensky that if he didn't fight Russia the West would not support him, back in the day the British egged on Poland to refuse any sensible peace deal about the territories they stole from Germany after the latter lay defeated and helpless after WW1. In fact the Brits had the option to sign a peace deal in 1940. But Churchill rejected the offer. Some historians now are arguing that Britain started WWII. And of course the Americans slapped an oil embargo on Japan prior to Pearl Harbour and left Japan almost no choice but to go to war. So did Poland invade sovereign Germany post 1918 and annexed German territory, it was purely a defensive war by Germany to reconstitute its territorial integrity. Ukraine actually invaded those parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empre in Galicia which it later incorporated. As part of the Polish-Lithuanian reign of terror earlier it could be said that Ukraine too is partly culpable in the offensive wars that entity started.

Didn't Obama send a killing team to murder Osama ben Laden? Didn't Bush have many of his political opponents killed and imprisoned? They're all serial killers, I think , and have to be freaks, because who would go to those extremes? As for the war crimes in Ukraine, bad, but the British did worse in Germany, the Americans did worse in Japan. I don't see how the West can jump on any high horse regarding killing civilians.

Putin is not using extra-judicial powers to rule Russia. He is not atttempting to put in place a new legal order. He's just an elected president. I don't think Putin needs any defense from the false accusation of "Dictator". He's an elected president. Legitimate to the core. People say that repressing political opponents and imprisoning makes him a dictator. But Germany did the exact same thing with Horst Mahler. The Brits are doing the same thing now with the Palestine protestors. Imprisoning political opponents does not a dictator make.

Indeed the same war can start out as a good war and turn into a bad war, like when Germany attempted to reconstitute its territorial integrity in 1939 after Poland annexed German territory when Germany lay defeated after WW1. Clearly that was a good just war. However, when Germany then was tempted to turn a war that was just into a colonial war in Russia, it became a bad war and Karma was swift and harsh for Germany.

Dictatorial power in its original, Roman form is a formally delegated and time-limited power to defend an already existing republican constitution through the use of extra-legal force. But the relation between sovereignty and dictatorship changed in the French revolution. The revolutionary governments relied heavily on dictatorial action to create a new situation of normality that would allow a new constitution to come into force. The revolutionary governments, like the absolutist sovereign, claimed the power to decide on the exception, but they did not claim to be sovereign. Rather, they claimed to exercise the authority to decide on the exception in the name of the French people, even while they were ruling the French people by the use of dictatorial methods (D 132–47). Sovereignty and dictatorship had become fused in the novel institution of sovereign dictatorship: A sovereign dictator is a dictator who does not defend an already existing constitution but attempts to create a new one and who does so not by his own authority but in the name of the people In essence, dictatorship, in the modern sense, is a by-product of democracy, largely invented by the French during their revolution. Schmitt argues that it is also highly compatible with democracy, indeed, a required part of it. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/#SovDic I don't see how Putin can be described as a dictator, since he does not meet the criteria.

If you study the work of Carl Schmitt, the foremost authority on the concept of "dictatorship" this may yield a few surprises. Dictatorship, is a necessary legal institution in constitutional law and has been wrongly portrayed as just the arbitrary rule of a so–called dictator.. The attribution of extraordinary powers to an individual emerges as a crucial tool in times of crisis when the existing order is unable to cope with pressures. Indeed, the practices of Italian and German states, France, and Cromwell’s England, pertaining to different situations, such as political crises, revolutions, and counterrevolutions, allows Schmitt to dissect two basic forms of dictatorship: a commissarial one, which is established with a mandate to restore the pre-existing order, and a sovereign one, which arises at the vanguard of change with a mission to bring forth an order which is yet to materialise. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2014/03/11/book-review-dictatorship-by-carl-schmitt/ Putin, very clearly, is neither. Zelensky, however, could be described as the former type of dictator, the first category.

They're all gangsters and thugs, from Obama to Bush to Trump, I mean they send killing teams to kill people, Obama did it, Bush did it and Trump would do it. Unfortunately that is the state of statecraft today. However, Putin was elected. There was opposition to his election but they did not get as many votes. If you check Carl Schmitt's definition of dictatorship there is no way that Putin is a dictator. Of course it's regrettable how cavalier the Russian army is towards murder of civilians, but so were the British in WWII. Let's not see the West climb on a high horse, when they were not better in warfare. Worse in fact.

I know, well even if it were true, which it probably isn't, we can all make demands. Whether those demands will be met is another story. It is very laudable for Trump to engage with Putin. Without Trump the slaugther would have continued for years. Now we may have a resolution if Zelensky is sensible.

Trump is not Neville Chamberlain and Putin is certainly not Hitler. That comparison falls at any number of hurdles, for a start Putin could never even conquer all of Ukraine, let alone Poland, the Baltics, Sweden or Finland. The Russian economy is already not strong enough and more akin to Spain and Russia could never pose a threat to Western Europe. Trump did not "chicken out" he took the very courageou step to engage and meet with Putin, which he knew would be attacked by Europeans and Democrats. However, it is absolutely the right decision, the only way a peace can be made is a proper negotiation, not with any tariffs. Putin is not a dicator of course, he's an elected president.