PeterRS

Agreed. No one can deny that homophobia was pretty widespread before that particular version of the Bible was published. In England and Wales (before they were joined by Scotland and Northern Ireland), the Buggery Act of 1533 was passed. The Act defined buggery as an unnatural act against the will of God and man. Same sex sexual activity was thereafter punishable by death. Interesting, though, that when the crowns of Scotland and England were united in 1603 with King James VI of Scotland becoming also King James 1 of England and Wales, it was well known that although married he was homosexual and enjoyed the company and favours of a wide coterie of handsome young men, particularly the Dukes of Buckingham and Lenox and the Earl of Somerset. Historian Michael B. Young described him as "the most prominent homosexual figure in the early modern period." Yet James wrote a well-known book in which he railed against the sin of homosexuality! Kings were clearly above the law as James died aged 58 after suffering a stroke. The law was changed in 1868 to abolish the death penalty in favour of a long term in prison. It was under this law that Oscar Wilde was convicted at the end of the century. I believe the purpose of the film is not to suggest that homosexuality suddenly appeared in 1946, but that the word first appeared in a translation of The Bible in that particular year. This gave the conservative movement and Evangelicals a name to hang their loathing of the LGBTQ community. Interesting perhaps to note that the Greek word arsenokoitoi was correctly translated as far back as Martin Luther's 1534 translation in German. That and several future German and several other European language publications of The Bible translated the Leviticus sentence as "Man shall not lie with young boys (knabenschander - a word acknowledged to mean boys beween 8 and 12 yo) as he does with a woman, for it is an abomination." Moving foward to Leviticus 20:13, again the word is translated as "young boys". In Corinthians, yet again arsenokoitoi was at that time translated as "child molesters." Further, it was the Germans who created the word homosexual in 1862 but they did not use it in the publications of their Bibles. It's surely reasonably clear that the translators of the 1946 version in the USA deliberately inserted "homosexual" to further their own conservative agenda. As such, they altered the text of the most widely read book of faith with deliberate intent to stoke decades of homophobia.

A new documentary has just opened in New York, London and Los Angeles. 1946: The Mistranslation that Shifted Cultures has as its premise the mistranslation of just one word in a 1946 publication of The Bible - in 1 Corinthians 6:9. It has long fuelled the Christian anti-gay movement that continues to thrive today, particularly with the Christian Right. The word "homosexual" first appears in translations of The Bible in 1946 when the Greek word malakoi was confused by scholars with a compound Greek word arsenokoitai. The former is defined as someone who is effeminate and leading a lazy, decadent life, whereas the latter basically means "male bed". While this could be interpreted as a man bedding a man, scholars then believed it also referred to abusive predatory behaviour and pederasty. When this version of the Bible was published, one gay seminarian took issue with the translations. He commenced a correspondence with the Head of the Translation Committee. As a result, the Committee agreed that there had indeed been a mistranslation. When the next publication of The Bible appeared in 1971, the Committee had changed the word "homosexuals" to "sexual perverts." By then, though, hundreds of millions of Bibles with the wrong translation had been circulated and purchased with the result that conservatives had had plenty of time to band together to push their anti-gay agenda. The Guardian article continues - The documentary [focuses] on the academia and research, featuring interviews with language experts and biblical scholars to provide context not just for the mistranslated verse, but the other “clobber” verses that have been cited by the Christian right as a condemnation of homosexuality. They explore Sodom and Gomorrah, and the historical context behind the Leviticus verse denouncing when “a man lies with a male as with a woman”; scholars believe the verse is not alluding to homosexuality, but to ritual pagan prostitution . . . The documentary, which opens this week, first premiered in 2022 and has already won 23 festival awards. But Roggio [producer and director Sharon Roggio] admitted that the film was struggling to get wider distribution. Even before its premiere, the documentary received a lot of backlash in the form of conservative articles, radio shows, videos and sermons all attempting to debunk the research – despite some never having watched the documentary, Roggio said . . . for gay Christians like Roggio, this mistranslation means everything. It means that “no one can dictate your relationship with God,” she said. “We’ve been told how we have to live as Christians, by putting away our identity, a part of ourselves. But you can totally be gay and Christian.” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/01/christian-homophobia-bible-mistranslation-1946-documentary

I forgot to add that one of the books that has most affected me during my many decades living in Asia is Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia by renowned British journalist and historian William Shawcross. Shawcross has impeccable credentials apart from the fact that his father Lord Shawcross was the lead British prosecutor at the WWII Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal. I read the original version when it was first published. The 2002 revised edition is fractionally less critical of Kissinger and Nixon but still a masterful piece of reporting and a devastating account of a foreign policy disaster. Of the revised edition, The Boston Globe wrote, "Remarkable and compelling . . . FIrst and foremost an American political thriller . . . where American officials spied on each other, lied to each other and falsified reports . . . ALL TOO REAL!" The New York Times wrote, "Sideshow excels . . . it has the sweep and shadows of a spy novel as it portrays the surreal world of power severed from morality." https://www.amazon.com/Sideshow-Kissinger-Nixon-Destruction-Cambodia/dp/081541224X

I mentioned Ben Hur recently. Although I was then very young, I just did not like his acting much, and that increased over the years so that I avoided most of his movies. He seemed to me such a stilted actor without the fluency of movement and speech that all major actors have. Decades later when he had all but given up movies (or they had given up him!) and before his dementia took hold, he appeared on the London stage in 1999 with his wife reading excerpts from something or other. The British critic Sheridan Morley who was related to several major British actors - his father was Robert Morley, Noel Coward was his godfather, his grandmother was Dame Gladys Cooper and one of his cousins is Dame Joanna Lumley whom many recall with much fondness from her appearances in the Absolutely Fabulous TV series - loathed the Hestons' performance. He wrote in his review that Heston's performance was "monumentally terrible" and that his wife was"suffereing from a talent by-pass." He then added that the management should recompense the patrons for having to sit through the performance during which, he added, the most moving thing about Heston on stage had been "his hairpiece." Ironically this disastrous review came at a time when Heston was publicly excoriating his felllow American actors for their reluctance to appear in live theatre, blaming it on their arrogance, greed and fear of bad reviews. Clearly bad timing!

This again is where some retired expats could easily help. Not perhaps in the actual teaching of English but in leading conversation classes at different levels of proficiency. This would surely also help Thai students thinking for themselves, a facility which seems sadly lacking in the Thai education system.

I am fortunate that for overnight flights I am able to treat myself to business class. With a window seat, there is usually a small compartment for personal belongings which it would be almost impossible for a thief to access without waking you. Best of all are the Qatar Q Suites which have doors in addition to small compartments and I am certain the excellent and attentive staff would recognise if someone was trying to access your little suite. I only had one problem with Qatar, but it was totally my fault. I had stupidly left my iPad in the suite on my return to BKK. It was quickly found and back in my possession a couple of days later.

So now Russia has gone even further in its actions against the LGBT community. On Thursday a landmark ruling by the country's Supreme Court declared what it terms "the international LGBTQ movement" an extremist movement and banned all its activities in the country. The landmark ruling on Thursday is set to further erode the rights of Russia’s LGBTQ community, who have faced an intensifying crackdown in recent years, as President Vladimir Putin seeks to shore up his image as defender of traditional moral values against the liberal West . . . Under Russian legislation, an organisation designated as extremist faces immediate dissolution, and its leaders face charges of up to 10 years in prison, according to the UN Human Rights Chief . . . In recent years, the Kremlin has introduced or expanded on a raft of anti-LGBTQ laws, a conservative shift that has intensified following the invasion of Ukraine. Presidential elections are due next year, with Putin widely expected to extend his rule. In July this year, Russia passed a law banning doctors from conducting gender reassignment surgeries, except in cases related to treating congenital physiological anomalies, in children. In December 2022, Putin signed into law a bill that expanded a ban on so-called LGBTQ “propaganda” in Russia, making it illegal for anyone to promote same-sex relationships or suggest that non-heterosexual orientations are “normal.” The package of amendments signed by Putin included heavier penalties for anyone promoting “non-traditional sexual relations and/or preferences,” as well as gender transition. The new law was an extension of legislation introduced in 2013, which banned the dissemination of LGBTQ-related information to minors. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/30/europe/russian-supreme-court-outlaws-the-lgbtq-community-as-extremist/index.html

That is what I have requested in my Thai will lodged with my lawyer and my partner. Please remember instructions on what is to be done with our bodies must be in writing and witnessed. If not, I believe the practice is to have the body sent back to your country presumably at the expense of your estate (but please correct me if that is not the case).

So we now now that israel knew of the blueprint for the detailed Hamas plans a full year before its ghastly attacks, yet disrgarded them as "aspirational" and :imaginary". The plans were exactly as happened a year later. Israeli Intelligence even code-named the attack plans "The Jericho Wall." The senior officials in the IDF just did not believe Hamas had the ability to carry out the plan. Prime Minister Netanyahu was apparently warned "again and again and again" about the iklihood of such an attack. https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/12/01/nyt-israel-intelligence-hamas-attack-blueprint-ac360-vpx.cnn

I doubt it. I have never been trained as a spy or interpreting intelligence. In one of my first jobs, though, I did have to sign the UK's Official Secrets Act. Although I was only in the job for 18 months, I was shocked to discover quite recently that my obligations under that Act remain in force for my lifetime! Hopefully MI5 and MI6 do not read this forum!

I suggest you read some of the earlier spy novels by John Le Carre who had himself worked for the UK Intelliigence Services - both the domestic MI5 and international MI6. Le Carre's prose makes it perfectly clear how Intelligence Services need to sift through every morsel of intelligence. Clearly the wrong conclusion may sometimes be arrived at. But at least when 'dots' are passed up the chain, someone must be looking at them much more closely than just assuming there is nothing to them. The USA screwed up. Israel screwed up. Britain screwed up massively re the Cambridge Spy Ring which operated on behalf of the Soviet Union for decades. After the defection of the first two in 1951, suspicion fell on the third, Kim Philby. But he passed every test and understandably had to resign from MI6. Although a Soviet defector had unmasked Philby as a spy in 1961, he was permitted to continue his job as a journalist in the Middle East, at the same time almost unbelievably returing to work for MI6. He finally defected to Moscow in 1963. The last two were elevated to high positions. Sir Anthony Blunt, spy No. 4 worked in Buckingham Palace as Surveyor of the Royal Art Collection. In 1979 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced in the House of Commons that Blunt had been revealed to be a spy for the Soviet Union 15 years earlier. But he had been allowed to continue in his work in return for confessing all he knew. The fifth member of the 'Ring' John Cairncross had worked as a code breaker at Bletchley Park alongside Alan Turing. He was unmasked at the same time as Blunt, and similarly given immunity from prosecution in return for information about all his spying activites. Having passed on a great deal of secret information to their handlers over such a long period of time and given all the leads that seemingly pointed to both, that they were not imprisoned is a major stain on Britain's Intelligence Services. But the Intelligence World has changed a great deal since the 1960s. Clearly it needs to change even more in future.

More utter nonsense, given that you express your own views without any back-up or source material. I have never been anti-Semitic and have said so many times. But I have every right - subject to the Board administrator's approval - to condemn Hamas for its frightful atrocites (as I have done more than once) and at the same time condemn Israel for murdering well over 14,000 Palestinians, more than two thirds of whom are innocent women and children, and laying waste to vast tracts of Gaza.

I think CNN summed up his life and work succinctly this morning. To many he was revered; to many others he was reviled.But we should not, I suggest, consider his legacy without recalling that his German Jewish family fled to the USA in 1938 after suffering many humiliations at the hands of the Nazis. Nor that he was very much a product of the Cold War during which he was determined to protect American interests. I have read much about his career, mostly those parts which are more reviled today. Of his achievements, there is the ending of the Vietnam War for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize (although this rather hides his many actions in the pursuit of that war), the major change in policy towards Mao's China, his many attempts to find a solution to the crises in the Middle East, and a gradual detente with the Soviet Union. On the negative side of the balance, I suppose the illegal invasion of Cambodia which resulted in the rise of the Khmer Rouge with the estimated murder of between 1.5 and 2 million Cambodians, and engineering the murder of the elected President and the consequent coup in Chile are the ones that first come to mind. To that and other errors of judgement/deliberate policy decisions we have to add his agreement in advance by promising the USA would not interfere in any way when Pakistan invaded East Pakistan, a war that resulted in savage butchery and the consequent genocide of around 3 million Bengalis. As he said to Nixon when the war ended with the establishment of the state of Bangladesh, "Congratulations, Mr. President. You saved West Pakistan," a reference to a possible invasion by India with assistance from China. The late Christopher Hitchens was no fan of Kissinger. Indeed, one of his books is titled The Trial of Henry Kissinger. As the San Francisco Chronicle reviewer wrote, "he presents damning documentary evidence against Kissinger in case after case." In a two-article piece for The Guardian written in 2001 before some of the documents about Kissinger and the Presidents he worked under were declassified, there is this paragraph about the fact that after leaving office he became a fixture on the lists of those who were desperate to have him as one of their dinner guests - Everybody "knows", after all, that Kissinger inflicted terror and misery and mass death on that country [Cambodia], and great injury to the United States Constitution at the same time. (Everybody also "knows" that other vulnerable nations can lay claim to the same melancholy and hateful distinction, with incremental or "collateral" damage to American democracy keeping pace.) Yet the pudgy man standing in black tie at the Vogue party is not, surely, the man who ordered and sanctioned the destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of inconvenient politicians, the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers and journalists and clerics who got in his way? Oh, but he is. It's exactly the same man. Later in the article he adds one sentence about Chile - Kissinger once observed that he saw no reason why a certain country should be allowed to "go Marxist" merely because "its people are irresponsible". https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/feb/24/pinochet.bookextracts Another expert who knew him and had been curator of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library said this morning, "Kissinger was a much greater hawk than most realised. His major flaw was that he failed to understand the human consequences of his strategic decisions." I wonder if the world will see his like again, a man with such huge influence on the occupants of the White House.

This sort of thing seems to happen with increasing regularity. I for one wonder how it is possible for reasonably large sums of cash to be carried around and placed in back pockets or in wallets in backpacks placed in a bus overhead compartment and thus remain out of sight of the owner. In this case, the headline mentions losing all his belongings. Yet the article seems at odds with that as it mentions merely a wallet and various documents. Whichever is correct (assuming the theft actually happened), having a reasonably large amount of cash in a backpack which the owner does not keep on his lap or under his seat with one or both feet on it beats me! That said, I do sometimes carry cash in a backpack - especially if I am going to Japan where cash is still frequently preferred - but that stays under my aircraft or bus seat where I can see that no-one touches it.

I wonder if you have in fact read the Official 9/11 Report. That makes it quite clear that the road to 9/11 had been quite clearly marked by dots, many dots of information which intelligence services had received and in some cases had passed on, but as @reader correctly points out those higher up the intelligence tree paid no attention to them. It is surely part of the job of intelligence services to analyse all the information they receive, research them and then come to a decision as to which might not be real. Prior to 9/11 - as it seems has also happened prior to the massacre in Israel - too many of the dots were not even investigated. In other words, no research was done. If an intelligence officer learns that there are young men seeking to learn to fly but only interested in take off and in-flight procedures with no interest in how actually to land a plane, that was certainly a huge dot that at the very least should have been investigated. It was not. But who anywhere seriously wants to fly yet has zero interest in how to land an aircraft? Sadly that was not something from a movie.

A fascinating list. But not all the movies can have been shown with intermissions in all countries, for I vividly recall seeing Titanic in Hong Kong with no intermission. Interesting perhaps that with the exception of the Lord of the Rings movies and 2 or 3 others, all others on the list seem to have been made in the 1900s. A poster earlier made reference to the long movie Oppenheimer. I saw it in the Paragon iMax Theatre. Personally I am glad it had no intermission as for me that would have killed much of the dramtaic tension. But I fully accept that others prefer intermissions.

Thanks. I note it refers merely to one country. Sorry the Titanic information is not correct. When it was released in 1997, the running time was 3 hours and 17 minutes. This required 17.7 standard reels of fiim running at 25 frames per second. Last year 5x35mm reels of the original film were sold at auction. Given the size of the projectors, it would frankly have been impossible for 17.7 reels to be loaded in one reel on to even a specially modified 1990s projector. This image is one for standard reels on a standard projector. On the other hand, as @kokopelli3 points out above, the old projectors were gradually removed from many major cinemas early in the 2000s when they were replaced by digital projection. Movies now come on a special hard drive and all the equipment in the projection booth has been significantly downsized. I have no idea where the information about queen-size bed reels of fiim could have come from. But I'd love to see a photo. https://www.shortpedia.com/en-in/did-You-Know/did-you-know-facts/did-you-know-the-famous-titanic-movie-was-177-reels-long-when-released-1637703653

While I do not go as far as @Department_Of_Agriculture, it is perfectly clear to those who have considered Israel's treatment of Palestinians over a long period of time that the Israeli government absolutely does not want a 2-state solution, whatever Netanyahu and his cronies parrot time after time. Yet the Palestinians cannot absolve themselves of blame. Those who attended the 2000 Camp David Summit between President Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat are all very clear that a deal was very close but it was Arafat who killed it. On the other hand, I am reasonably certain that had an agreement in fact been reached, it would have quickly collapsed as Barak's government lasted less than a year to be replaced by the ultra right-wing hawk Ariel Sharon and his fellow believers who have ruled Israel virtually ever since. I would be delighted if Netanyahu could be hauled before the Internatinal Criminal Court. Unfortunately, Israel does not recognise the Court and I am not sure if that could be possible. On the other hand, after the ghastly massacres in Israel and Gaza, I hope he is kicked out of office very quickly and finally brought to book for his criminal actions he has taken every action to avoid for many years. In the meantime it seems President Biden could be in considerable trouble in his own country for his unwavering support of Israel, the more so given the Israeli Intelligence failures we are now learning about. Did the USA not have spy satellites over Gaza for the last few years and was it not aware of what Hamas and its affiliates were doing as they rehearsed the Israel raid? After all, these were done in plain sight and were even capured by Hamas on video! Could the USA not have warned Israel? Perhaps we will learn more in the fullness of time.

To a certain extent I agree with you - but only a certain extent. What happened in Israel was ghastly and horrific in the extreme. In the light of what is now being discovered and revealed by the israeli media, and particularly the failures of Israel's Intelligence and military services and hence its government, I find it more than appropriate that it has been called by more than a few "Israel's 9/11". For those who have actually read the Official 9/11 Report, you will recall that planes flying into the World Trade Centre just would not have happened had someone bothered to connect all the dots emanating from various parts of the country and which should have been perfectly obvious to the intelligence and other services. But in the USA there was not even anyone like the anonymous officer V as in Israel who saw what was happening and did connect the dots. But senior intelligence officers basically did not believe her. Clearly they had not read the Official 9.11 Report. As more detais are revealed through leaks - there will ALWAYS be leaks - what israel is now doing in Gaza seems increasingly like a "fuck you". "Our intelligence forces made a huge mistake but you Palestinians are now going to pay for it - big time." I urge readers to look at another Guardian article, this time from a surgeon who has a practice in London. Prof Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon . . . told of horrific scenes at al-Ahli Arab and Dar al-Shifa hospitals as they ceased to function and said he witnessed the use of white phosphorus munitions. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have denied using such weapons. “Having seen this massacre unfold, the creation of an uninhabitable Gaza Strip was the aim and the destruction of all the components of modern life at which the health system lies was the main military objective,” said Abu-Sittah, who has a practice in west London and has worked in Gaza since 2009, as well as in wars across Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon . . . For six weeks he shuttled between Gaza’s hospitals. It immediately became apparent about half of the wounded would be children, he said. As time passed, medical workers went from treating patients suffering from blast injuries to those exposed to fragmentary missiles, sniper injuries and incendiary bombs – which Israel has denied using. On the day al-Ahli Arab hospital, the oldest in Gaza, was struck on 18 October, Abu-Sittah heard the whistling sound of a missile followed by an explosion. The blast killed hundreds and sparked protests across the Middle East as Israel and Hamas traded blame over the deadly blast. It was a litmus test, Abu-Sittah claimed, for what the IDF had planned to do to the rest of the health system. Following the attack four paediatric hospitals were targeted, he said. Last week Israel targeted the al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals in Gaza’s north, and arrested Shifa hospital’s director and several medics. “There’s a pattern in which the aim of this war was to turn Gaza into an uninhabitable death war zone,” said Abu-Sittah, who witnessed a phone call from the IDF warning the al-Awda hospital’s medical director to evacuate otherwise the hospital would be targeted. Over time medical supplies dwindled and painful procedures were performed without anaesthetic before operating was no longer possible. Patients’ wounds were cleaned with store-bought washing liquid and vinegar, said Abu-Sittah, while others became infected with larvae . . . Since leaving Gaza 10 days ago, Abu-Sittah said he felt an overwhelming sense of guilt for those left behind. “My fear is even those who are steadfast enough to stay will eventually leave on their own and we will have what the Israelis want, which is another 1948,” he said. “This war is the continuation of the 1948 Nakba.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/27/london-surgeon-says-saw-massacre-unfold-working-gaza-hospitals

No, that's not the claim of Palestinian or other peoples. It is the claim of an increasing number of Israel's own Defence Forces and reported in Israel's own media. The claims were repeated in yesterday's Guardian newspaper. Israel’s military and intelligence officials were given a highly detailed warning that Hamas was actively training to take over kibbutzim on the Gaza border and overrun military posts with the aim of inflicting substantial fatalities, according to reports in the Israeli media. The claim made by Israel’s Channel 12 on Monday evening was based on leaked emails from the Israeli military’s 8200 cyber-intelligence unit discussing the warnings. Those emails revealed that a senior officer who reviewed the intelligence considered the danger of a massive surprise attack by Hamas across the Gaza border to be “an imaginary scenario”. The hugely embarrassing leak describes in shocking detail what would turn out to be key elements of Hamas’s planning for its massacre of 1,200 Israelis on 7 October, including that Israel spotters were aware of senior Hamas officials present as observers during training preparations. According to the leaked emails, Hamas went as far as giving the mocked-up kibbutz used in training a name and even practised raising a flag over its synagogue. Plans were also intercepted that discussed overrunning a border military base and killing all of its occupants. While much of the focus of recent scrutiny for the intelligence failure before the 7 October attack has looked at what information was available to senior political and military figures, including Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the new leaks and briefings suggest serious failings within the Israel Defense Forces’ intelligence reporting and distribution system as well. The source of the warning is a highly respected career military intelligence NCO identified in Israeli media reports as V who warned her chain of command during the summer that Hamas was planning a large-scale incursion. Further emails leaked to Channel 12 suggest the initial warning was corroborated a few days later with evidence that other Hamas units were involved in similar training aimed at apparently different targets. Some officials appear to have been impressed by the intelligence but a senior intelligence officer who reviewed the material in July was more sceptical and suggested it was necessary to distinguish between what Hamas was doing for “show” and what was “realistically” the purpose of the training. In another subsequent email, a colleague of the soldier who gave the initial warning said they emphatically disagreed with this assessment, while V herself suggested they were seeing a concrete “operational plan without a timetable for implementation” and that Hamas was planning for a “big event”. Other very senior officers, including the head of the 8200 unit, have suggested in briefings to Israeli journalists that they were not shown V’s warning, despite the email chain discussing it . . . Haaretz described the same training exercise on the mocked-up border kibbutz with reference to the 8200 unit email chain, which it said concluded with a Hamas message from those involved in the exercise saying: “We have completed the murder of all of those on the kibbutz.” Haaretz described V’s warning six months before 7 October that Hamas had completed training exercises simulating a raid on kibbutzim and IDF outposts on the Israeli side of the border. “V concluded that Hamas had completed its preparations, because senior Hamas commanders had turned out to view the exercises – something that was also reported by IDF spotters based on the border. Just like the spotters, her warnings were brushed off dismissively,” it said. “While they were distributed to senior officers, to her own unit and to field intelligence, a senior intelligence officer wrote to her in response, praising her work but adding: ‘It sounds imaginary to me,’ almost exactly echoing the language of the leaked 8200 emails.” According to this telling of events, V’s direct commander backed up her assessment, insisting it was a real exercise and not a display. The warnings were reiterated by the soldiers involved a few weeks before 7 October when an unnamed senior intelligence officer visited their base and the intelligence was presented to him. Despite the warnings, however, even of the eve of 7 October, when senior officers discussed the prospect of an imminent Hamas attack, senior officers in the IDF were describing the evidence as “weak”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-military-had-warning-of-hamas-training-for-attack-reports-say The BBC has reported that training for the attack on Israel had started as far back as 2020 with Hamas joined by five other armed Palestinian groups. BBC Arabic and BBC Verify have collated evidence which shows how Hamas brought together Gaza's factions to hone their combat methods - and ultimately execute a raid into Israel which has plunged the region into war . . . Brigadier General Amir Avivi, a former IDF deputy commander in Gaza, told the BBC: "There was a lot of intelligence that they were doing this training - after all, the videos are public, and this was happening just hundreds of metres from the fence (with Israel)." But he said while the military knew about the drills, they "didn't see what they were training for". https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67480680

From my very first visit to Thailand decades ago, I was definitely in the #1 category - visual. Nowadays i don't know how anyone can be initially anything other than visual for surely the other categories follow on from that? Thinking back over decades, I do not think i have ever changed. In the early days of my attending some of the now legendary go-go bars, perhaps some of the guys were not as interesting as others. But the majority for someone brought up in the west looked pretty stunning. Face was my first attraction, soon followed by a slim body and a willing smile. In terms of boys from the bars, I was never interested in size or being tactile or not, perhaps because I am the one who loves being tactile. Genital-focussed sex for me is important because I have a very obvious like and dislike. But that is never part of the first discussion. Going off on a slight tangent, I realy liked the model for a go-go bar posted many years ago by @macaroni21's earlier incarnation. I think it could have become extremely popular. Sadly it would never have worked - partly because the owners were far too set in their ways and the b-i-b might have considered it a way to force an increase in their earnings. And yet another short tangent, I loved the reference to "last century". I guess many of us reading this Board will soon be amongst the last to have said, "See you in the next millennium!"

Our thoughts for now are obviously on the Thai workers, especially those prisoners of Hamas terrorists. But how much thought did we give to the 30,000 Indian, Bangladeshi, Nepalese and Filipino workers who suffered horribly for years in the camps when building the stadia for last year's Soccer World Cup in Qatar? In February 2021, The Guardian newspaper wrote that 6,500 migrant workers were killed while working on the sites. And still Qatar has not provided proper compensation to those who were paid a pittance for their work. As Adam Smith wrote, mobility of labour was one of the essential elements of capitalism that would enable nations to become richer. I doubt if he included moving overseas to work in that theory, but the fact is that today vast numbers of people work overseas because they can make better wages and save more than in their home countries. Approx. 2 million Filipinos work overseas. It is estimated that if they withdrew their labour, the hospital systems in several countries would be close to collapse. Over 6 million Turks have emigrated and work outside Turkey. 113,186 Thais work legally overseas and remitted an estmiated 299 billion baht back home during the last two years. But the total number of those working illegally elsewhere, especially in Asian countries, is far higher. As Kritaya Archavanitkul a professor at Mahidol University stated at a seminar a few years ago - “The problems of deception, tricking people to work as forced labour or in the sex industry are more prominent. Every year, an increasing number of people are becoming victims of such crimes, while there are still no concrete measures to protect or support Thai workers in other countries,” she said. https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/general/40026706 https://www.nationthailand.com/in-focus/30334588#

As the article points out, Singapore comes top because although the country essentially has four official languages, English is spoken by the vast majority of the population. Four decades ago when I moved to Hong Kong, English was also widely spoken. Even taxi drivers spoke some English. With the end of British colonial rule, that language facility is understandably slowly disappearing in favour of Mandarin as the second language. As for Thailand, it is tempting to suggest that its not having been colonised by the British is one reason for such poor rankings. Yet that cannot be an explanation since Vietnam and Cambodia were French colonies, yet their education systems clearly place much greater emphasis on English teaching than Thailand. Indeed, having talked with Thai students over many years, I am convinced this is the root of the problem. With few exceptions, the quality of English teaching is dire. In those schools where a Thai is the teacher, it seems that he or she is barely a lesson or two in advance of the students. I know that some English teachers are in fact younger Brits, but I think not so many as the pay is very poor. Not intending to demean anyone, I found an example of another type of English teacher some years ago. I was leaving Siam BTS station to go to Paragon when I saw a rather large well-dressed African American lady seemingly around mid-50s and looking very lost. I asked if I could help. With a very strong accent from the American South, I could hardly make out that she was quite pissed off. I asked if she was a tourist. No, she explained, she was working. As, I asked? A teacher! A teacher of English! She had tried to find out where Paragon was by asking the official at the exit gates. When she said "Paragon", he did not understand! I then suggested she just turn around as there was a sign clearly stating Paragon. She thanked me profusely and I helped her through the ticket gates. Earlier she had told me she knew nothing about Thailand until a few months earlier when some US administration department had asked her if she would like to go to Thailand to teach English for three months. She liked the idea, but found Thailand too hot, too difficult, didn't like the food, and generally was looking forward to going home. That got me thinking. Clearly the Thailand Education Department contacts Embassies asking them to send some English speakers to teach English to young Thai kids. I assume the Department arranges accommodation and much higher than usual teacher salaries. But, I wondered, what on earth is the point of engaging teachers with any kind of difficult-to-understand dialect? Again with respect to that lady, if I had some difficulty understanding precisely what she was saying, I sincerely doubt that most of her students even understood a small fraction. It would be the same with a teacher from East Anglia in England or any number of other areas with strong regional accents. It all seemed like the typical Thai solution to a problem that no one had ever bothered to think through. I remember when I first met my present partner. I assumed he spoke some English. We met for dinner in Terminal 21. I spoke slowly, clearly and in short sentences. He seemed to me to understand. Months later, he told me he had understood very little. Now he is all but fluent - but then he's had a good teacher 🤣

False sources? Who are you trying to fool? They are all available for all the world to read, along with many dozens of others. And you still provide not one source for your inflammatory views. Just as well you won't answer any more because you have no answers. I am happy for these posts to be moved to another thread.

Sorry I can not open that web page. I get a message "Access denied". A truly great film and I think David Lean's best. It seems, though, that the US version shown a month after the premiere in London was edited down by 20 minutes. David Lean at first suggested he had decided it was too long for audiences. Years later he changed his opinion and said that producer Sam Spiegel had insisted on the cuts so that there could be an extra showing per day! With respect this was only correct for the much older black-and-white movies. Most movies thereafter required several reels of film. The average length of a 24 frames per second reel with sound is only 11 minutes. So each reel has a sound built-in to give the projectionist the cue to be ready to start the next reel. In older movies, even into the 1970s, you can often seen the flash of a white cross in a circle at the top right of the screen - another cue that the reel is about to change. It's perhaps strange that we do not mind intermissions during almost all theatre dramas, but object to them in cinemas. I believe the answer has to lie with the director. If he is happpy with intermissions, he can time them at an appropriate time in the drama of the movie. To allow cinemas to decide intermissions at arbitrary times could easliy destroy the dramatic impact of the movie.