AndreasHG

It's not that I just "think": I know. I trust my senses when it comes to judging the quality of what I eat. As a child I was used to eating homemade cakes (not unusual in Europe), and I enjoy cooking and baking cakes myself, even if only for my own personal pleasure, using the best ingredients I can find (e.g. real butter, milk, sugar, eggs, flour, fruits, etc.). Starbucks locations receive frozen baked goods from Starbucks suppliers. They don't bake anything: they just defrost their bakery and sell it as "fresh" sometimes even after two days from the moment of defrosting (small pieces), sometimes after several days (cakes sold in slices).. Do some research on the internet. With thousands of current and former employees, there are no secrets to how Starbucks works. It is not by chance that Starbucks' business model is consistently facing headwinds since a while (Microsoft PowerPoint - Q4 and Full FY24 Earnings at a Glance_Ready for Review.pptx).

Interesting video by BBC. 'I want the war to end and for us to win' - Russian hopes for 2025 https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/ce327we7w7zo

The Ukrainians are treated by the Russians in the same way all the ethnic minorities subjected to their empire are treated: with no mercy. Why do you think Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Avars, Armenians, Dargins, lose their lives by the thousands in the Russian army for a few dollars of sign-in bonus, monthly wage, and a super-bonus in case of death? It's because they live in appalling conditions, deprived of freedom, and barely able to satisfy their families' basic need. It's desperation that provides the Russian army with its cannon fodder. It has always been this way: under the tzars, the soviets, and now under Putin. Remember the Holodomor: The famine affected the Ukrainian SSR as well as the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (a part of the Ukrainian SSR at the time). Its consequences are evident in demographic statistics: between 1926 and 1939, the Ukrainian population increased by only 6.6%, whereas Russia grew by 16.9%. Russia has never been kind with the ethnic minorities subjected to its imperial rule.

Of course I am serious: below is the GDP (in USD) per capita of the Russian Federation compared to some benchmark countries in Europe and nearby. Russia's per capita GDP is lower than any of them, thanks also to the Ruble, which has been trashed yesterday for the second time in a bit more than one month. Poor Russia is a giant only when compared to Ukraine. Besides commodities and raw materials, Russia has never been able to produce anything in any meaningful quantity. Data are from the IMS: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/RUS/TUR/BGR/ROU/POL/FRA/GBR/DEU/USA

She has not been arrested because of what she published or anything she has done or said. Apparently, she has been arrested in retaliation for the arrest of an Iranian-Swiss citizen (“drone expert” Mohammad Abedini-Najafabad) in Milan, Italy, on December the 16, at the request of the United States. He faces charges of conspiring to export sensitive U.S. technology to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated foreign terrorist organization. In the US, Abedini is accused of providing material support to the IRGC by supplying navigation systems for military drones, including those used in a January 2024 attack that resulted in the deaths of three U.S. servicemembers in Jordan. Where? In Iran, of course. But I would add to the count also the Palestinians in Gaza, the Libanese and the Yemenites, all of them expendable hostages of the Iranian regime and its proxies.

You can write to the daughter of the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, a key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mrs. Arzu Aliyeva, who owns the airline, together with other members of Azerbaijani political elites, and voice your displeasure. I am sure both lham Aliyev and Vladimir Putin will appreciate and prepare to welcome you when you'll be back in Moscow. You can find Mrs. Arzu Aliyeva in Baku. Arzu Aliyeva - Wikipedia

Misha, frankly speaking, your comments are childish, mis constructed and misinformed. The International Civil Aviation Organization (a United Nations agency which helps 193 countries, which would include Russia, to cooperate together and share their skies to their mutual benefit), states, under the Montreal convention, that "States and States alone maintain sovereign authority over their airspace". "This authority carries with it the responsibility to issue risk advisories regarding any threats to the safety of civilian aircraft operating in their airspace. Said threats may include, but are not limited to, armed conflicts, ash clouds due to volcanic eruptions, missile tests and rocket launches, etc." "States also have authority to close their airspace where certain safety threats may warrant that action". Even "ICAO does not possess the authority to over-ride sovereign States in order to close their airspace or reroute airline traffic". Airlines have some discretion in their decision making. "Aircraft and airline operators are responsible for assessing global airspace risks communicated by States, and/or third parties, before deciding where they fly". But do you really expect the flag airline company of Azerbaijan, a country which is a member of Russian dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and which is de-facto and de-jure a military ally of Russia, to dispute the Russian authorities claim that the Russian territory is safe? Do you really expect the Azerbaijan Airlines to tell the whole World that Russia is lying, and its skies are dangerous to fly, because the Russian air defenses are crap? If you do, you are childish. https://www.icao.int/Newsroom/Pages/ICAO-Clarifies-International-Conflict-Zone-Guidance.aspx

Stop posting nonsense. I understand that the St. Petersburg troll factory must keep you guys busy, but there is a limit and that limit is decency. The Korean Airlines flight was shot down by a Soviet Sukhoi Su-15 on September 1, 1983. It took the Soviets 5 days to recognize that the Boeing had been shot down and another three days to admit that they knew where the wreckage was located. But even when admitting the downing of the Boeing 747 by a missile attack, the Soviets kept on lying. For 9 years and until 1992, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin finally disclosed five top-secret memos dating from a few weeks after the downing of KAL 007 in 1983. The memos contained Soviet communications (from KGB Chief Viktor Chebrikov and Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov to General Secretary Yuri Andropov) that indicated that they knew the location of KAL 007's wreckage while they were simulating a search and harassing the American Navy; they had found the sought-after cockpit voice recorder on October 20, 1983 (50 days after the incident); but they had decided to keep this knowledge secret, the reason being that the tapes could not support that KAL 007's flight to Soviet territory was a deliberately planned intelligence mission. What would be the point of lying for 9 consecutive years if the killing was the result of a legitimate, proportionate and well-considered action? It's simple: the action was not legitimate, not proportionate, and it was even reckless. This was a cold-blooded murder of the 269 people on board, including 22 children under the age of 12 and 23 active crew members plus 6 deadheading crew members. Russia never paid any compensation to the families of victims of the Korean Air Lines (KAL) Flight 007 disaster. Compare it to the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by the US Navy, on the morning of 3 July 1988. The Department of Defense (DoD) officials initially said that Vincennes had shot down an Iranian F-14, but issued a retraction within hours and confirmed Iranian reports that the target was instead a civilian Airbus. In February 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay Iran US$131.8 million. US$61.8 million of the claim was in compensation for the 248 Iranians killed in the shootdown: $300,000 per wage-earning victim and $150,000 per non-wage-earner. As part of the settlement, the US agreed to send Iran two Airbus A300-600s, the first Western planes to be supplied to the country since 1980 (after the 1979 Iranian revolution). This is what a decent country does.

Actually I already replied to a similar comment and I stand by what I said. Of course, for a Russian who has never experienced living in an open society is difficult to understand. ” Cover-ups in open, democratic societies simply don't work. In the event of an incident, the simple implementation of follow-up, corrective and prevention measures, involving tents of people, playing different roles within an organization, is almost impossible to hide and a clear sign that something went wrong. Cover-ups only work under totalitarian regimes, or in the sick minds of conspiracy theorists and in Hollywood movies, which spare no effort to undermine Americans' trust in national institutions. Those who don't understand this do not understand the true nature of open, democratic societies, vs totalitarian ones. And very likely don't deserve to live as free men and women in an open society. ”

Then rest assured the downing of the Azerbaijani flight will be blamed on the Russians

If there was even a remote possibility that a Ukrainian drone caused this incident, you can rest assured Russia would have already denounced it. The reality is that drones are not designed to shoot down planes.

Thaibeachlover, this is nonsense. I know you are paid to post these meaningless comments. Below the list of presidents Ukraine elected in contested democratic elections since its independence for 1991. Side by side to the Russian ones. Note that during Medvedev presidency Putin was the prime minister. and was the de-facto man in charge in Russia. Since 1999 Putin effectively ruled Russia poisoning opponents, having then shot in front of their homes or at the doorsteps of the Kremlin, thrown from high-floor windows, murdered in prison, etc., etc. Putin is the epitome of the many criminals who ruled Russia as dictators, tzars or tzarinas. Any idiot understands it.

What is the exact type of violence that is appropriate, once an inmate has been handcuffed and restrained? What can he do of so damaging? Insulting the correction officers' mothers, sisters and wives? Since when correction officers have been appointed prosecutors, judges, jurors and executioners, with the right to impose a death sentence, to be carried out on the spot and without appeal? This is not America. This is Syria, Sudan, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Myanmar, maybe China, you name it... But it's not America.

This is a stark (and also rather inaccurate) statement. Can you explain on what basis you believe that "Ukraine itself is an artificial creation"? What do you know about Ukraine's history that justifies your statement? What do you know about the Ukrainian language that makes you believe it is "artificial"? What have you seen in Kiev, Lvov, Moscow and St. Petersburg, that supports the idea that Ukraine is an artificial country? What is it that Ukrainians shall know, to accept the idea that they are not Ukrainians after all? And that dying for Ukraine, as they are doing by the thousands since 2014, has no justification. I look forward to hearing what supports and justifies your point of view, if any, of course, and to share it with my Ukrainian friends asking for their opinions.

Does it really matter what motorbikes are or are not allowed to do in Thailand? Don't motorcyclists do as they please anyway?

China has stopped rewarding excellence in education a long time ago. Ideological conformity is what is rewarded nowadays in China. And the price will become evident only in the years to come as one of the legacies of Xi Jinping's ruling. Xi Jinping’s Ideologization of the Chinese Academy – The Diplomat - https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/xi-jinpings-ideologization-of-the-chinese-academy/

Cover-ups in open, democratic societies simply don't work. In the event of an incident, the simple implementation of follow-up, corrective and prevention measures, involving tents of people, playing different roles within an organization, is almost impossible to hide and a clear sign that something went wrong. Cover-ups only work under totalitarian regimes, or in the sick minds of conspiracy theorists and in Hollywood movies, which spare no effort to undermine Americans' trust in national institutions. Those who don't understand this do not understand the true nature of open, democratic societies, vs totalitarian ones. And very likely don't deserve to live as free men and women in an open society.

The only problem is that this means more suffering and death in Ukraine. If it were not for the price paid by Ukraine, I would say let the war continue until the Russians understand that living under a dictatorship, and the false sense of security it can provide, comes at a very high price. But even when the war is over, Russia's troubles will only have just begun.

In an article published today by the Washington Post, Max Boot updates the readers on the downing of the Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243. Of the 67 passengers and crew, 38 died, and many of the 29 survivors are in bad shape. "Russian spokesmen blamed a bird collision, but a preliminary Azerbaijani investigation — backed by Western aviation experts and U.S. officials — concluded that a Russian antiaircraft missile most likely brought down the plane. Azerbaijani officials told local media that not only did Russian fire damage the airplane, but Russian authorities also jammed its electronics and denied it permission to land, forcing it to divert across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan." Evidently the Russians hoped that the plane would sink to the Caspian seabed making any investigation on the causes of the incident extremely difficult. "Such accidents, admittedly, happen in wartime everywhere. On Sunday, a U.S. guided-missile cruiser in the Red Sea mistakenly shot down a Navy F/A-18 fighter that it probably mistook for a Houthi drone or missile (the pilot and a weapons officer survived with minor injuries after ejecting). In 1988, a U.S. warship battling Iranian gunboats in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian passenger aircraft that it mistook for an Iranian fighter aircraft, killing 290 people." "But when civilized nations commit such offenses, they apologize and make reparations. They don’t refuse to admit what they did or try to blame someone else for their actions." "That, however, has been the Kremlin’s reprehensible pattern dating from the 1983 downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 — making its protestations of innocence in Wednesday’s case all the more dismissible." "A decade ago, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, went down over a portion of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed forces, killing 298 passengers and crew. The Kremlin denied responsibility and spun out various conspiracy theories, blaming the crash on either a Ukrainian fighter jet or some kind of elaborate CIA plot. (A Russian website even bizarrely claimed that the passengers were already dead when the plane took off.) Eventually a Dutch-led investigation proved that the airplane had been brought down by a Russian Buk surface-to-air missile system fired from the Russian-controlled region of Ukraine." This pattern is repeated every time there is an incident in Russia. Think about Chernobyl: The Chernobyl disaster began on 26 April 1986 with the explosion of the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Pripyat. As the plant was run by authorities in Moscow, the government of Ukraine did not receive prompt information on the accident. On April 28, radiation levels set off alarms at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden,[67][68] over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) from the Chernobyl Plant. That day, the Swedish government contacted the Soviet government to inquire about whether there had been a nuclear accident in the Soviet Union. The Soviets initially denied it. It was only after the Swedish government suggested they were about to file an official alert with the International Atomic Energy Agency that the Soviet government admitted that an accident had taken place at Chernobyl. At first, the Soviets only conceded that a minor accident had occurred, but once they began evacuating more than 100,000 people, the full scale of the situation was realized by the global community. Lying through your teeth, even when unnecessary and easily refuted, must be encoded in Russia's DNA. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/27/azerbaijan-flight-crash-russia-ukraine-history/

LOL. At present the only thing Farage stopped is the Conservative Party. The Conservatives are responsible for bringing havoc upon themselves, having done a terrible job with immigration, which was allowed to increase exponentially after Boris Johnson's 2019 election victory and especially after Brexit. But Reform UK gave the Tories a helping hand. By dividing the right-leaning votes, Farage delivered a victory of historic proportions to Labour. And as long as voters on the right remain divided, Labor won't have to worry about ending up in the opposition. Farage and Reform UK are Labour's best friends.

Reading BS from notoriously biased websites is not research: it's stupidity. There is a very simple way to assess how much Central Banks believe in the official inflation data related to their currencies. It's a simple, mistake-proof (and idiot-proof) test. I did some research and below are the data. Do you see anything that stands out? But with regards to economic data, the Russian numbers must be really ugly, so much that Rosstat doesn't even bother to cook them anymore. It just stopped publishing them. Here is a list of the main indexes Russia stopped publishing: https://www.hhs.se/en/about-us/news/site-publications/2023/russias-data-warfare/ https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2022/07/secret-economy-what-hiding-the-stats-does-for-russia?lang=en Now, since you are a serious researcher, share a link to those indicators and prove that both the Swedish and the Carnegie's publications are mistaken, and that those indicators are still available. In my opinion you should be up to the task, and I am looking forward to see the result of your research project.

When it comes to quality of the (sweet) bakery, my favored is Paul bakery, not available in Hua Hin. The scent and flavor of the real butter and the few selected natural ingredients used in its recipes are a triumph of simplicity and pastry art. Starbucks is a chemical laboratory not a bakery. Its chemists and physicists playing with artificial flavours, colorants and preservatives to bake eyes appealing cakes. Those cakes stay fresh on the shelves for days in a row, worryingly without showing any sign of decay. I never performed the test, but I am under impression that they may glow of an innatural violet light when observed in the dark. But it's just my opinion, and to each its own.

Frankly speaking (and with due respect) if you really believe that the ‘only reliable and consistently good experience has been with Starbucks’, then I believe you set the bar unusually low when it comes to food. No surprise you get food poisoning.

Leaving the EU didn’t help at all: quite the opposite. Are you sure about leaving also the ECHR? Because if it goes the same way of Brexit, the consequences for the UK can be devastating.

The ones who shall feel ashamed for the death of the Russian soldiers are those who send them to their death: Putin and his accomplices. What are they dying for? To add some more square kilometers to the already largest country by landmass on planet Earth? To increase the number of subjects of an empire that in its thousand-year history has only been able to produce misery, servitude and bloodshed? Is it worth it? Are human lives worth so little? The answer is yes. In Russia human lives are as disposable as Tampax tampons.