PeterRS

So the gunman's father turned him in knowing that his son is liable to get the death penalty. I wonder why - and how many fathers would do the same rather then help their sons flee?

I am sure like many, I flip through youtube videos quite frequently. Usually I am looking for specific videos or specific content. Occasionally I come across something so special it virtually takes my breath away. I am a particular fan of voices, loving opera, musicals as well as some pop. Rarely, however, do I come across any artist who has the technique to combine all three. Perhaps once every five years or more. This week I have been literally blown away by a voice that is, to me, totally unique. Dimash is a young 31 year old singer from Kazakhstan, not a country particularly known worldwide for its vocal talents. This young man, though, is the exception, a totally extraordinary musician. He is first and foremost a singer with an incredible pure tone, but one with a range of nearly 6 octaves. For a male singer, a range of 2 to 2 1/2 octaves is about the average. Clearly he uses his head falsetto voice, but you cannot hear the break often noticed between the standard chest register and the falsetto register. He was trained in opera in Kazakhstan and has sung on stage with some of the classical greats including Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras and Andrea Bocelli. He is also a songwriter and likes to sing his own compositions. He speaks all of 12 languages. Internationally he became huge in Asia when he appeared in China on a Hunan television contest in 2018. He is now a superstar in many countries, especially China. He has many youtube videos with 2.85 million subscribers and "S.O.S" has 32 million views. Rather than just play one of his songs on its own, I'll start with a vdo of a regular pop music commentator who knew nothing about Dimash and who is hearing his voice for the first time. This vdo covers two songs. The first is "S.O.S" a French song written for a musical in the 1970s. As the commentator says, the rendition of "S.O.S." is "insane" A second song "Ave Maria" (not the well known version by Gluck) is also included. Just so you can hear "S.O.S." without commentary, it is included as a second vdo below. For anyone wanting to hear Dimash 'live', he is performing at Madison Square Garden in NYC on October 5.

I happened to notice this 6-month old vdo when I played the two excellent vdos posted above by @floridarob. It is I believe equally fitting and equally relevant - perhaps even more so. I especially like the line which gains the first major round of applause. The conservative commentator and journalist David Brooks' thought-provoking speech refers to a 1950s belief in the USA that "it's up to you to find your own truth, find your own values". In 1955 the journalist Walter Lipmann understood this was going to be a great problem. He said if what is right and wrong depends on what each individual feels, then we are outsde the bounds of civilisation. Brooks than adds, "without a moral order it's hard to have trust, it's hard to find your meaning in life, and so America - and I think Britain too - has become a sadder society. Rising mental health, rising suicide, 45% of high school students say that are persistently hopeless and despondent, since 2000 the number of Americans without close personal friends is up four-fold, since 2000 the number of Americans who say they are in the lowest happiness category is up by 50%. We've just become sadder." He then points the finger at Trump and his coven of educated elite. The key factor of the educated elite, he suggests, is that are not pro-conservative, they are anti-left. "They don't have a positive conservative vision of society. They just want to destroy the institutions that the left now dominates. And this means, in the first place, they are astoundingly incompetent . . . Pete Hegseth gave away our bargaining chips with Putin before we even had negotiations. Elon Musk has 25-year olds firing people who were controlling our nuclear codes . . . ". . . The educational elite destroyed the social fabric through inequality, we destroyed the moral fabric through privatising morality. and we destroyed the institutional fabric - what's happening right now." He then goes on to give his ideas on how to right the wrongs. It is an excellent really thought-provoking speech and I hope others will watch it.

As widely reported, on September 4 in its largest ever single raid, US ICE workers raided a Korean US$4.3 billion plant being constructed in the US State of Georgia. The plant was to make batteries crucial to car company Hyundai's plans to start making cars in the USA later this year. The plant would have created 8,500 jobs for Americans. After the South Korean Foreign Minister flew to Washington to seek assurances from Marco Rubio that none of the detained would be physically restrained, South Koreans are livid that photographs have appeared of the workers in handcuffs and shackles llike criminals. Seeing so many of their countrymen in chains was a reminder of olden times when Koreans were colonial subjects. Yesterday 317 Koreans finally returned home on a chartered Korean 747. The issue that prompted ICE to move against the Koreans is that whilst they all had visas, they were the wrong type of visa. This is a practice for South Koreans with specialist skills that has been going on for years without any complaints. Obtaining long term visas for South Koreans working on investment projects has long been an issue between both countries. Now a working party has been set up to examine the issuance of a new type of visa for specialist work similar to that undertaken by the Koreans. But how much South Korean investment will now find its way to the USA is under question, given the absolute fury among South Koreans. And this at a time when the USA is seeking foreign investment, especially from friendly countries and allies like South Korea. So Trump has shot himself in the foot - again! https://www.reuters.com/world/us/south-korean-workers-return-home-cheers-week-after-us-immigration-raid-2025-09-12/

It may surprise some but this practice of providing change with several 10 baht coins has been going on for a long time - 20 years in my estimation, if not longer. The folders always used to have a flap at the bottom right side into which 2 or more coins would be lodged, the hope being the customer would not notice. Always check change, especially if you are going to tip afterwards.

@Moses once again with his his customary blah, bah blah when it comes to Central Europe and the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine. Not worth the time to respond. In any case, @Moses has his own Board which has very few posters and even fewer subjects for discussion. Why does he not post there instead of boring readers here with his Russian propaganda?

This is a completely silly discussion, and if I played a part in it I apologise. Have it your own way. But for your interest I was top of my maths class at school LOL

To suggest it is "strange indeed" is putting it far too mildly. In this day and age to suggest that a law passed centuries ago by a new country should remain unchanged given massive changes in society is an outright abomination.

I have never had the faintest idea how Michelin stars are awarded other than their inspectors are anonymous - or so I am told. But then my understanding is they also limit the number of hostelries they visit in all countries. It would clearly be totally impossible to visit every restaurant. In the USA its own site states it visited 1,557 restaurants. It also states that the number in the UK was 1,062. And you are wrong in your list of cities. You are clearly unaware that inspectors also now visit restaurants in Atlanta and the state of Colorado. And perhaps ironicallywhen you add up the poulations of the 5 areas you listed and add in Atlanta and Colorado, you have within 1% the population of the UK. So while my total number was out, the US still has 50% more restaurants visited than the UK. But it certainly does not have 50% more Michelin starred restaurants! And you are again totally wrong. To suggest that the restaurants the inspectors visit in the UK are all serving non-British food is still nonsense. In the first 48 listed on the first UK page of the Michelin's own Guide, 6 serve "Traditional British" cuisine and 9 serve "Modern British" cuisine. Another 11 serve what is termed as "mdern cuisine" which includes cuisine from Britain and other countries. A total of 63 restaurants in the UK serving "Traditional British" food were awarded Michelin stars. And that blows a big hole in your suggestion that Michelin stars go only to restaurants serving other cuisines. Now compare that with the USA restaurants. 5 are listed as serving American cuisine and 6 Californian Cuisine. The UK has 220 Michelin starred restarants while the USA has 235. Your facts were a little more than slightly out!

To some, this will seem a somewhat petty reason to engage in a global conflict. But this involves NATO. All countries that signed up for NATO membership agree on Article 5. This is a core principle of NATO membership and it involves collective defence. It states quite simply “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. At approx. 1:30 pm on 9 September, 19 Russian made kamikaze drones entered Polish airspace after being launched from the Russian Federation. At least four were shot down in Polish territory as a result of which four Polish airports had to be closed including the main one serving Warsaw. Wreckage of the remaining drones were stewn across the Polish countryside, smashing into homes and damaging cars. The Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has stated - "This situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two" The BBC reported this is the first time Russian drones have been downed over NATO territory since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia's defence ministry said there had been "no plans" to target facilities on Polish soil. What? No plans? Are their drones so incredibly inefficient that all 19 effectively misfired? Belarus, a close Russian ally, claimed the drones entered Polish airspace accidentally after their navigation systems were jammed. Poland is to the west of both Ukraine and Belarus. Why Russia would have fired kamikaze drones so close to Polish airspace is not known. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c2enwk1l9e1t

I found most of @stevenkesslar's post heartwarming and thank him for it. But that does not necessarily mean I agree with it. Yes the gay movement finally overcame its many obstacles - more or less - but it took time. It may have been a movement based on love but the opposing side did not sit back and willingly let the gays march in. Many actually resorted to murder. Just in the USA alone who murdered Sal Mineo and why? Who murdered Harvey Milk and why? Who murdered Julio Rivera and why? Who murdered Than Nguyen for why? Who murdered Nicholas West and why? Who murdered Matthew Shepard and why? Who murdered Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder and why? Who murdered Steen Fenrich in New York, had his body dismembered and the words "gay nigger number one" scratched on his skull along with his social security number? The "why" in this case is not necessary as it is obvious. That poor man's step-father murdered him and then killed himself. The fact is that love has not won. It has made giant strides but it is still attacked and is still on the defensive in many places. The Conservative agenda is still very much a homophobic one. In an article in The Guardian on 1 September 2023, New York journalist broadcaster Dan Clark who had come out 20 years earlier wrote, "I have never, in my adult life, felt less safe to be gay in public in the USA." He then added - "A recent Gallup poll found the sharpest decline in acceptance of same-gender relationships among adults in the US since at least 2001, the earliest data available from the polling firm." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/01/lgbtq-homophobia-rise-new-york The names I have quoted above are merely a small fraction of those murdered in the USA only because they were gay. To their murderers they were not men; not living, breathing, loving human beings. They were objects of hate and violence. Exactly the sort of hate and violence that is now being preached by Kirk and his hideous group of followers and others around the USA, much of it directed at the gay community and using lies, ghastly insinuations and bigotry to fuel their agenda. If he did not deserve to die, did 21-year old Matthew Shepard deserve to be beaten, tortured and then left to die such a hideous and prolonged death? His killer's girlfriend had informed the police that he had been motivated by anti-gay sentiment. Gays have not killed hate. They have not killed bigotry "all over the planet". Try telling that to gay men in the 64 countries that still have anti-homosexual laws in their criminal code. In six countries the penalty is death. In another five countries the penalty is vague but death is a definite possibility. In Brunei, a gay man can even be stoned to death. We must face facts. We have not won!

And you still believe what is written in that rag?

Your post is rubbish as you have clearly not been to Britain and eaten some fabulous dishes in a vast number of cafes and restaurants. For many decades the British have travelled overseas a great deal - far more than Americans. They learned aeons ago that they were not prepared to put up with the typical British stodge they had been served till then. Then food writers like Elizabeth David in the 1950s became hugely popular by introducing different forms of continental cuisine. I learned my basic Italian cooking from one of her books! Add to that the introduction of a wide range of celebrity chefs whose influence was spread though television. There was soon a vast change in the food served in most British restaurants. At the top end, Britain now has 208 Michelin-starred restaurants; the USA whose population is over five times larger than the UK's has 235 Michelin-starred restaurants. Go figure! No doubt that's in part because far too many Americans gorge themselves and become far too overweight on fast food. You mention Indian restaurants. For more variety, like many British people try some of the simple Chinese restaurants in British cities serving various types of utterly delicious Cantonese, Shanghainese, Szechuan, Beijing, Chiu Chow and Hunan cuisine. Or Thai restaurants are found in most cities serving dishes that would give many restaurants in Thailand a run for their money. On a personal point, though, you mention haggis which is of course a Scottish dish. You may not happen to like it when it is served in its simplest form with bashed neeps and chappit tatties (mashed turnips and potatoes). But pour some Drambuie liqueur over it and it becomes a very different almost gourmet dish. 😀

I am delighted. Please recall that my post stated the conversations took place ten years ago. A new generation of Asians is clearly changing the profile.

With the perfectly ghastly, snake-like Roy Cohn as his mentor, Trump was certainly never good. Down in hell, Cohn will be exhilarated at how well his pupil is doing!

As I wrote in another thread, in the USA it all comes down to money. Cash is king. As long as they have their own money or it is being fed to them by the mass of special interests, bigots, liars, cheats, scammers and the whole host of rotten humanity is provided with a platform to spew out their dirt. It's called "free speech" in the USA. And as I wrote yesterday, unless free speech is guarded by a host of caveats, people like Kirk and Bannon and Trump and many, many others - including those calling themselves Christians whose churches happen not to have to pay taxes - have an open playing field. We had a thread recently about the televangelists prompted by the death of the loathsome Jimmy Swaggart. These men used the airwaves to con millions to enrich themselves. They did not as a result murder anyone as far as I know. But the crazies in the USA are now basically using exactly the same tools. The result has been murder, and it will continue if @floridarob's peaceful future has any hope of happening.

Interesting point made in several of today's media. The presence of American troops in Qatar and its largest air base in the Gulf States with all the intelligence capability surrounding them failed to stop Israel breaching Qatari defences - and by extension US defences. Other Gulf states have noted this very strongly.

I find this post total rubbish. How anyone can claim that the 2nd amendment is applicable in 2025 and that guns manufactured for the battlefield can be used on American streets in a country where there are more firearms than people is, in my view, ridiculous! Equally the freedom of speech amendment is total nonsense UNLESS it is accompanied by a whole host of caveats. Charlie Kirk believed in anarchy. Full stop!

As I have written elsewhere, I started my career as a general trainee with the BBC. In those far off days, standards were high and the BBC news department in particular was particularly regarded worldwide for its quality and accuracy. I cannot speak of BBC television today for the little I see is on an annual two week visit to the UK. The World Service on BBC radio used to be broadcast around the clock each day. The foreign language news programmes used to broadcast in 45 different languages several times a day. I understand the English Service is still in existence but the number of languages for foreign language news has been reduced to 27. That apart, and accepting that there have been a few scandals as with programmes on the pedophile Jimmy Savile after his death and most recently its fired primary television news reader for exchanging indecent images of underage boys, I am told by former colleagues that the quality of most of its news-type programmes is still pretty high. The quality of some of its senior management and its own internal reporting standards need revamping, but there is seemingly no desire to dumb down as with any networks eslsewhere. But the recent programme on Thailand is clearly a major exception. Complaining to the BBC through its complaints page is a useless exercise in frustration. I happen to enjoy badminton, but while its sports pages have a dedicated badminton page, it never reviews the world's main badminton events. It is also massively out of date. The last "news" item about badminton is on 8 March 2020! Complain and it advises your letter will be passed to heads of departments. Then you get a mail saying these people do not agree. I do not believe any of the complaint letters actually are read by anyone. Heads need to be bashed together - but it will never happen.

I remember chatting with some Japanese and Taiwanese guys around ten years ago. They were in their own groups of 2 or 3 and the conversation developed around nightlife. I asked what they liked most about Bangkok. The universal opinion was that all planned in their separate groups to go for massages, then to a gogo bar and finally to a disco like DJ Station. I rather innocently asked what type of boys they liked to take off from the bars. None, was the answer. They only went to see the shows. None of them had ever offed a guy! Going to a disco to end the evenings was the priority. Given that this was the relatively new market starting to invade the gay scene in Thailand, it made me just a litte concerned about the future. Bars with boys for offs would obviously survive with the western tourists who still visited in some numbers and other individual Asians. But if a majority of Asians were not in the market for offs, I wondered how the bars would survive in the longer term. I still wonder!

Dropping a relatively ingenue reporter into Thailand and expecting them to make a series of programmes that will convey the reality of life in the country is a typical BBC habit, it seems. There are plenty of reporters, some like Jonathan Head who has been based in Bangkok for more than 20 years, who work for the BBC and who could do what I am certain would be a much better job. But he knows the pitfalls and the corruption and the police and the laws. He would probably turn such an assignment down. On the other hand, there are some excellent BBC reporters. I think particularly of two the BBC managed to infiltrate into Myanmar - the latest being Quentin Sommerville last year - who really gave viewers a far better idea of what real life was like with the militias fighting the junta forces.

I have been to only one Michelin-starred restaurant in my life, although several times. That prints its basic menu for checking in advance. It also has a relatively short list of daily specials inside. There are certain foods that I utterly dislike and that is one reason for my wanting to know what is being served. I have been to two or three very fine restaurants in different countries with no menus whatever. You just take the set menu of the day. But I am one of probably just a few that loathe oysters, for example, and if the starter happened to be oyster based, my meal would be all but ruined.

Which adjective would I use? Inevitable. I had never heard of this guy, not being an American, but I know well there are enough nuts, especially extreme right-wing ones, that at some point someone was going to attempt murder. A huge problem with extremist leaders like Trump is that they only encourage counter extemes. And in a country like the USA where there are more guns than people, the urge for one - or indeed some - to express their beliefs in the most extreme way by resorting to a firearm is in my view inevitable. I am sad for this man's family and loved ones, but I am even more sad for all those innocent people who over the years have been murdered by guns. What I now fear most is that we are going to witness more extreme cases of the counter extreme. So far, it seems to me, the war in the USA has ben a a war of words. Now it is a war of death and, again in my view, no amount of increasing protection is going to stop the further violence that will result. And to extend the premise a little further, Trump's extremism will not stop at the USA's borders. We have already witnessed the utter madness of the crook Netanyahu bombing Israel's ally Qatar. This tiny nation state has problably - but this is clearly a guess as none of us know the real facts - done more to get Israeli hostages released than any other, a typical Arab state which Israel has traditionally condemned in past decades. It is also a large base for American troops. Now the Prime Minister of Qatar has furiously stated that Israel has "killed all hope" that Hamas will ever release the remaining israeli hostages. For how much longer will Israel's moderate population put up with a leader intent on wiping out many tens of thousands of Palestinians, on the utter destruction of the Palestinian State, and continually kowtow to the very small group of ultra-right wing aggressive Orthodox Jews in his country? We all know that the root cause of all the fighting is to keep Netanyahu out of jail. Yet how many have been slaughtered in that process? That the world in general has stood by and allowed this to happen is an atrocity in itself. Have we all gone stark raving mad? Have we lost all sense of proportion, of shame, and of sheer human decency?

I have never used poppers but many years ago I did bring some into Thailand as I have a Thai friend who loves using them. Before my fight, I tore off all the wrappings placed a couple inside shoes covered by dirty socks and others in my toiletries bag with a lot of other materials. Surprisingly my bag was opened at BKK but the check was cursory at best. However, checks now may be more rigorous since popers are highly flammable.

Never use such apps. But I honestly cannot believe you are so incredibly busy that you have no time to read the forum. You have made many, many dozens of posts so clearly you had time to make them and read many of the responses! Do you have a new job? Or do you now spend so much more of your time looking up gay travel sites to answer some of your questions?