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Thailand Ranked 106th in English Proficiency Out of 116 Countries
This is similar to the situation where people insist on speaking Welsh in the UK where the question is why. -
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Gulf of America.
Damn! Whole lotta truth here. Too bad it has: 1. too many words for MAGA attention span. 2. too many BIG words for the same reason. Two thumbs up! -
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Gulf of America.
The US is falling back on the mantra that it doesn't have friends, only interests. Cock-face Vance was right on one thing, Europe and the US are no longer aligned in terms of strategic alignment. The US has basically abandoned the principles of the Atlantic Charter, where the US and UK agreed that neither country would seek territorial expansion, and both countries would seek to free occupied countries from the Nazi jackboot, and allow them to determine their own form of government, Essentially, both agreed to deploy their power as a force for good globally, echoing the West Africa Squadron that Imperial Britain deployed for an astonishing 60 years to fight the scourge of slavery. Western European states, through the Coal Union, EEC, EC, and EU, broadly echoed that policy. People forgot that prior to 1939, the borders in Europe were not a settled thing. We fought and killed each other over lines drawn on a map. For Western Europe, that was all settled in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The final play was the collapse of Yugoslavia. Europe hasn't changed. The US, for now, has changed. A US First policy now means the US does not see itself as a Force for Good in the world. It no longer cares about how it is perceived. Everythin the US now does is guided by the principle; does this benefit the US. The US is now an expansionist country, seeking to expand the territories under its control, by force if necessary, as that will benefit the US. It has no interest in ending the Ukraine War for the benefit of Ukraine or indeed Russia. It only has an interest in ending that war because it benefits the US. If Roosevelt had taken that view, he would have determined it was not to the benefit of the US to send troops to Europe, or to fight across the Pacific, and that it would have been far better to make a deal with the Axis Powers. But he didn't take that view. His actions saved countless millions of the defenceless and oppressed. But for him there would not now be a Jewish people. In the new Dog eat Dog world, where does "Europe" go. its now seen as a terrible strategic mistake by the UK to exit the EU, as it assumed there would always be a strong transatlantic NATO to guarantee the security of Europe and the maritime trade routes north of the Tropic of Cancer, to offset a pan-European military. That's all gone now. This is how it must have felt after the collapse of the League of Nations. Friends became enemies. In WW1, Japan was an ally of the West. 20 years later, it was brutally massacring troops of its old friends. Europe gets criticised for how much it spends on the military. But that's not the only measure. Combined, Europe has 1.9 million active troops. The EU alone has 1.3 million. By comparison, the number of active US uniformed is less than 1 million. So how does Europe have more troops but spend less? I have no doubt Europe needs to spend more, but not at the primitive levels suggested by the Whitehouse Dimwit. The US is demanding Europe to increase spending inline with its own highly corrupt approach to defence procurement. https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-sessions-open-probe-into-department-of-defense-after-failing-gao-audit-for-fifth-time/ They don't even know where 61% of their stuff actually is. I bet a lot of that stuff only exists on paper. They might as well not exist if they don't know where it is. The power of the US military might be exaggerated. If the US becomes a more introspective country, then they might end up looking at themselves more. And these things might come true. Having lived in the US for many years, looking back, I can recall statements of a sort I would never hear in my country. For instance, I heard it many times, from people in the South, the Midwest (eg Missouri), that Californians weren't considered "real Americans", that they were "wierd". In my country, there will be people who don't feel British; Scottish, Irish, Welsh nationalists, and that's fine. But I never heard it cut the other way; "the Scots aren't proper British because they vote differently to me", The Yugoslav Civil war genuinely shocked people. This was a sophisticated society, with an apparent rule of law, similar aspirations in life to me, and apparently living in a happy federation of equals. Of course it turned out some were more equal than others. What shocked was the barbarity, the return of scenes we had seen in WW2, of massacres, concentration camps, destroyed cities, in modern European cities, not in some 3rd World Hell Hole. Since then, we've become somewhat immune to such scenes, We shouldn't be. The Ukraine is another example; two sophisticated societies not reproducing WW2 but now WW1. I saw shocking inequalities in the US. In North Mississippi, seeing near Oxford what I can only describe as shanty towns was a shock. There is massive wealth inequality, I think greater than what you see in Europe, mostly based on race, but not entirely. MAGA is a symptom of that, But I think the MAGA politicians don't realise what they have unleashed, and they won't be able to control it, because, frankly, they can't deliver.- 1
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No more need to comment/speculate about the faith of the Ukraine.
Perhaps because Ukraine isn't worth it. Perhaps because they are not militarily capable, having run down their military's since the end of the Iron Curtain. Perhaps because in their hearts they know it's American Great Game BS. Perhaps because they can't afford it. Perhaps because they know that doing so would result in unemployment after the next elections. Perhaps because most Euro people don't believe in it. I can think of many reasons for not doing so, and can't think of any logical reason why Ukraine is so important that it's deserves risking nuclear winter if NATO countries attack Russia directly. -
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