rudi49jr

Money, like always. Wildlife trafficking is extremely profitable, the big boys earn mega-bucks with it, and the risks are relatively low. And Thailand is a trafficker’s dream, because literally everybody can be bribed to look the other way.

Russian tank hits a mine and turns into a clown car. Jeez, how many guys were in that thing? They’re very lucky to escape with their lives, although they probably won’t hear too well for a while, after enduring a blast like that in a small confined space.

A Russian war correspondent posted pictures online of his visit to the HQ of the Wagner Group in Popasna (Luhansk). Not a very smart move, because one picture showed the address of the nearest bomb shelter. The Ukrainian army fired off a couple of HIMARS, which destroyed the Wagner HQ and presumably about 100 mercenaries were killed. Wagner boss and one of Putin’s best friends Yevgeny Prigozhin was also visible in one of the photos, but it’s not clear if he was at the base at the time of the attack. https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-himars-wagner-group-hq-russia-report-1733531

It’s a little like Rudolf Hess flying to Scotland in 1941 to hold peace talks with the British government. Hope it won’t last as long this time, though, since there were four more years of war after Hess’s attempt.

Finally! Now let’s hope they will follow through and these four guys (especially the former park chief) are thrown in jail for a very long time

Seeing as how police and/or army are actively involved in the drugs trade (and making billions and billions of baht in the process), I’d say 90-95% gets through. Every now and then they ‘seize’ a load, to show everyone that they’re really doing something against the drugs smuggling, but that is just to pull the wool over our eyes.

This is what he used to look like, by the way:

A couple thousand soldiers more or less means nothing to Stalin. I mean Putin. And apparently it does matter, seeing as how the Russian military (in the form of the Wagner group) are going around prison camps, trying to convince convicted murderers and rapists to become soldiers, in exchange for a wad of cash, and a clean record after six months. I don’t think there’s much enthusiasm for this ‘deal’ so far, though, since the odds of dying as a Russian soldier in Ukraine are quite high.

Medvedev warns of ‘possible’ incidents near EU nuclear facilities: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/08/12/ex-president-medvedev-warns-of-possible-incidents-at-eu-nuclear-facilities-a78560 This guy, like all those in the Putin clique, deserves a lot of bad things coming his way, preferably lethal and hopefully very soon.

People do all kinds of crazy things when they’re drunk out of their skull. But it was not like she was holding a gun to someone’s head, or robbing a bank, or beating someone up.

I’m always amazed at how Thai police and citizens get their panties in a bunch and get all outraged over stuff like this, calling it immoral and obscene, while mainly ignoring far more widespread (and far more immoral and obscene) things like organized crime, corruption, cronyism and nepotism.

Latvia designates Russia a state sponsor of terrorism and urges other countries to do the same. https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/latvia-designates-russia-a-state-sponsor-of-terrorism-over-ukraine-war/

Gotta love this

I already didn’t have much sympathy anymore for Steven Seagal, after he became extremely friendly with Putin, who gave him a Russian passport. But this beats everything: https://www.newsweek.com/steven-seagal-donbas-ukraine-himars-olenivka-prison-putin-1732386 Pathetic excuse for a human being. Maybe the Ukrainians can drop a little bomb on his head to shut him up.

And this guy is a lawyer? Who said anything about intent? Of course the guy didn’t intend for his club to go up in flames, killing 15 in the fire. But criminal negligence is bad enough as it is. He should not be allowed out on bail because he deserves to be behind bars for quite a while and if he gets bail he will probably do a runner and disappear.

Russia is deploying ‘butterfly mines’ in Donetsk and Kramatorsk.

They keep stooping lower and lower: https://poland.postsen.com/world/57077/Murderers-in-Russia-recruited-into-the-Wagner-Group-After-6-months-of-service-Putin-pardons-them.html Still waiting for the 100,000 North-Korean ‘volunteers’ to show up. Despicable. Russia should be labeled a terrorist country and treated as such. They have really gone off the deep end over there.

Joe Ferrari has probably been doling out wads of cash to quite a few people in a position of power, and we all know that money talks in Thailand, plenty of examples of rich people literally getting away with murder.

Known by many as Russian President Vladimir Putin's "she-wolf," Olga Kachura, 52, was killed when a Ukrainian missile hit her car as she was driving in the city of Horlivka, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, according to Margarita Simonyan, the pro-Kremlin editor of RT. https://www.newsweek.com/who-olga-kachura-first-female-russian-colonel-killed-ukraine-1731155 She was a lieutenant colonel in Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the 97th known colonel to be killed in the Ukraine war. Kachura has previously boasted on pro-Kremlin channels that she especially enjoys killing Ukrainians. She sounds like a nasty piece of work. Don’t think many Ukrainians will shed a tear for her untimely demise. On the contrary, I think they’ve been actively hunting her and they will probably be quite pleased they finally managed to take her out. Well done.

Actually the latest polls over the last weeks look quite good for the Democrats. Besides, there won’t be a lockdown because of monkeypox, which is not airborne like COVID.

Lots of Russians trying to get out of the country. Maybe they want asylum in Thailand?

How long they can keep their airplanes in a good enough condition to be able to fly safely is a different matter altogether, what with the sanctions and Aeroflot not getting spare parts for their planes anymore.

“How much longer can Prayuth legally stay in power.” As long as he likes. He is a coup leader, they changed the constitution already in 2016/2017, changing some laws so he can rule indefinitely would be easy-peasy for this regime.

Unfortunately that is a sickness that seems to be conquering the world: it’s always somebody else’s fault, it can never ever in a million years be your own fault.