News Forum - UN boss says global vaccination is only way out of pandemic
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Thaiger,
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News Forum - 77 year old Australian separated from 20 others during hike on Koh Larn
The group must have forgotten to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for him on the way back. -
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News Forum - Thai student caught smoking cannabis, threatened to punch teacher
this is the classic example of addition trend due to freedom to narcotics. this shows the trend line of how the thailand society is going to grow, especially youngsters. I hope the government authorities are watching and they would take action to limit the spread of the menace. -
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News Forum - Student’s body ripped in half in freak motorbike accident in central Thailand
Rip, 400 CC bikes are commonly used by youngsters, especially the model in picture, this bike has a good sprint capacity. However if the back tires are worn out, this bike goes into toss. if body could be torn into half he should have been atleast 100kmph. really sad an engineer is lost. -
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News Forum - Royal Thai Air Force sends F-16 fighter jets to check air incursion by Burmese military planes
Thai Style "Top Gun" remake -
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Ukraine/Russian Conflict - General Discussion
Thank you for researching and posting that document, and I will try to find time to read its 160 pages, busy at work as I am this week but this being an area of interest that we all share. For now, I'll agree with your excerpt that politics and warfare are certainly not exact sciences, as regards their outcome, simply because of all the very many variables - we only have to recall "Mission Accomplished" to see how starting a war is easy but ending it can be far more difficult. I'm still missing the point you're making here that an academic's views are of no use though - the interview with the German reporter that Shishi posted was more centred on human nature - the respective motivations and aspirations of either side - than anything else, and put the Ukraine war into a factual historical context, going back to the conference in 2008, that few on this forum seem to even realise exist. Academics, through their extensive study of a subject, generally understand much more about history than anything else, and history is a very good teacher. I do note that many people these days say that history isn't important - these people are also the ones who say that Russia attacked Ukraine with no provocation, which simply isn't true. What we had in the interview was an academic, but it was not a theoretical discussion - it was based on what has led to the circumstances and events that we're now seeing. Mearsheimer conceded that he himself had no idea what would happen next - nobody does. On the ethical front - is Ukraine ethical? The government that the West supported in the Maidan coup was soon up to its axles in corruption. Their 'Anti Terrorist Operation" in Lukhansk used some highly questionable tactics too, of the kind we blame Russia of using today. Well it's true that Russia's GDP (despite having risen tenfold since 2000) is around the size of Italy's, but it is the largest country in the world, spanning 11 time zones, and has a large military, albeit much smaller than in the days of the USSR. It does possess an enormous nuclear arsenal, and its geography obviously confers to it more geopolitical heft than its GDP alone would suggest. While we're on the subject of Great Powers strutting on the world stage, is Britain one with its (soon to be reduced to) 70,000 soldiers? Obviously not, but it likes to think it is, and others still think that it is too. We could have befriended Russia after the fall of the USSR, but instead we laughed at it and ridiculed it as a basket case. We did business with it by cozying up to oligarchs and that shambling alcoholic Boris Yeltsin. Ordinary Russians lived in adject poverty at that time, government employees weren't getting paid, and the pace was going to rack and ruin. The thing we forgot was that Russians are hardy people, and have a very fierce national pride. Putin tapped into that, but he also lifted the standard of living for the ordinary Russian. Of course, just like Britain does, he invoked past glory to rally his people and make them proud and hopeful for their future. Sadly, the US saw none of this, or was in denial. All it did was assume that Russia was still down and march relentlessly eastward, using NATO (the old foe of the USSR) to do this, despite various warnings, even from Angela Merkel herself, that this would ultimately lead to trouble. So now what? We missed a change to get a huge and genuinely powerful country on our side. A country that is now embracing China, as Prof Mearsheimer noted, which really is a very Great Power indeed - one that openly competes with us, steals our intellectual property for future use against us, and is launching aircraft carriers that will challenge the US Pacific Fleet. It's now too late - the US's obsession with Russia over China will be its undoing, but the politicians over there are either too stupid to realise this, or the US knows that China is way to powerful to bully, and bullies Russia instead. Oh and the UN used to be a vehicle for preventing wars and brokering peace. These days, the US goes to war without going to the UN first, so why should Russia pay any attention to it. This old world order, where the US sets all the rules and others have to follow, is very rapidly unravelling - even Germany's Chancellor Scholz predicted that by 2050 we'd have a fully multipolar world. The sooner the US adjusts its foreign policy to reflect reality, rather than its own former hegemony over the world, the better. Its yapping poodle Britain should do likewise. Yes, well, we all inherit things that might give us a better start in life, or entitle us to punch above our weight. Who would Hilary Clinton be without Bill Clinton. Short men? You might have a point, but this one is the president of Russia.
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