rattlesnake

Yes indeed, with regards to what we were talking about the other day, about the German guy killing a kid on a scooter, in this report they clearly say "two farangs", not "two foreigners". Then the news anchor goes on to say "Phuket, again! But this time New-Zealanders". The exasperation is palpable.

I did not say Hamas would not exist without Netanyahu, I said it would not exist without the Israeli establishment. Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told the New York Times that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”).

But given (as I demonstrated earlier in this thread and as is also well explained in the below article) that this attack would not have happened if Hamas had not been purposefully engineered by the Israeli establishment, a rational and objective observer can only be wary of the unilateral portrayal of Hamas as an independent threat, inherently embedded into the Palestinian civilisation, with the subsequent implied justification/tolerance of indistinct annihilation (cf. Jordan Peterson's infamous tweet "give 'em hell Netanyahu" which is quite representative of this trend). Nothing is farther from the truth: without the Likud's active and Messianic-driven interference, a two-state solution would have happened a long time ago and Hamas would not exist. Why Netanyahu Bolstered Hamas The Israeli prime minister followed a decades-old divide-and-rule strategy that fuels endless war. [...] For years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip—money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-netanyahu-bolstered-hamas/

A common sense statement indeed.

Exactly.

have they "finally got him" now then?

Political prisoners.

Indeed I can. Pretty good stuff on Tik Tok, in terms of truth. It probably won't last, it never does.

As a seasoned conspiracy theorist, I can assure you that TikTok is one of the very few large platforms where you can still speak the truth (or "misinformation" as they say in the media). That's why they want to ban it, the Chinese threat is just the justification they have come up with.

Yes, I also think it is notable and other reports will have to be monitored to see if it an actual trend or if it is just a one-off slip-up by the news channel staff (which does happen).

"Farang" does not imply the same thing as "negro" would in a Western news report. It is a colloquial term, and while it can have derogatory undertones in some contexts, it is generally not used to belittle foreigners. On a more general note, I do expect that the very nationalist Thais will grow increasingly irritated at the political endeavour to "blend" Thailand in the global market as the current PM is intent on doing ("increased cooperation with the EU", easing visa processes, boosting tourism in the country…). This is likely to cause friction.

Yes there is, and those who deny it do so because they don't want to look for the reason.

I am not denying fertility has been declining for many years, I am saying (and I am sure you understood me perfectly the first time) that it has crashed over the past couple of years. One wonders why you would refuse to acknowledge this plain fact.

The marker seems to be 2022 in a lot of articles I have been reading. Here are a few examples, but there are a lot more: Births in Italy heading for new record low in 2023 - stats office In 2022 as a whole, births fell 1.7% to 393,000, a 14th consecutive drop and the lowest number since the country's unification in 1861. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/births-italy-heading-new-record-low-2023-stats-office-2023-10-26/ Why is Switzerland's birthrate declining so drastically? https://www.nzz.ch/english/why-is-switzerlands-birthrate-declining-so-drastically-ld.1772392 Fewer and Faster: Can We Stop the Global Fertility Collapse? And yet Finland’s total fertility rate was 1.32 in 2022, the lowest birth rate since the country started keeping track in 1776. [...] The strange thing with fertility is nobody really knows what’s going on. https://www.aei.org/articles/fewer-and-faster-can-we-stop-the-global-fertility-collapse/ Births in Italy heading for new record low in 2023 - stats office https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/births-italy-heading-new-record-low-2023-stats-office-2023-10-26/ Among the countries confronted with this situation, China is facing perhaps the most severe challenges, with falling births already producing a decline in the overall population since 2022. https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Child-care-subsidies-can-help-address-China-s-population-crisis In 2022, Japan's overall fertility rate stood at 1.26 percent, well below the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) standard of 2.1 required for a stable population. https://www.newsweek.com/japan-alarm-population-crisis-last-chance-1874181 Brazil census shows population growth at its slowest since 1872 "In 2022, the annual growth rate has been reduced to less than half of what it was in 2010 (1.17%)," census technical coordinator Luciano Duarte said in a statement. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-census-shows-population-growth-its-slowest-since-1872-2023-06-28/

Same as in every country in the world since 2022. What is the explanation for this sudden and simultaneous wordlwide drop in fertility, across all continents and populations?

Can't see what happened on the video. Yes, the headline at the top of the video says "farang" which I find surprising, to my knowledge they used to use the proper word for foreigner in official news reports. Otherwise, there isn't any particular stigmatisation of the guy in the report, just (understandable) exasperation at the fact that he just said "sorry" repeadedly before speeding off without assisting and the boy died.

It is not astonishing at all, when you actually look at his policies. Protectionism works.

I agree, but there are also those who were never bar girls and are still married, but are just not happy with the tedium of a 9-to-5 in the West (or Europe, should I say, admittedly I overgeneralised when I included the USA which I can't speak about).

Wrong there GOAT: ปี

It is an enduring stereotype that their life will improve once they move to a Western country and sadly (based on my experience of knowing Thai expatriates in France and the UK), once they realise they were wrong, it is often too late or very complicated to go back to Thailand, plus there is a face thing which leads them to lie to the folks back home about leading the high life when they are only really working menial jobs and living in apartments, struggling to get by like everyone else without an ounce of fun in their existence.

I consider Hamas and Israel to be two sides of a same coin, as I have demonstrated earlier in this thread, so you will never see me engaging in the Israel vs. Hamas dichotomy. I will look at the topic you linked later on today.

Yes I am. I don't have time to go on all the topics.

Nutcases everywhere.

Highlighting fabricated stories about slaughtered babies does not equate to denial of the real victims. Again, accuracy is essential.

I just wanted to match your statement "child killers" to an actual figure, for context purposes. This is such a delicate and contentious issue, with lots of omissions, distortions and even outright lies being disseminated (this is a general observation and not directed at you specifically), that I believe pinpoint accuracy is necessary.