Rogie

Alzheimer's? Well at least she won't be able to gloat over her exploits any longer. It's unusual for women to become murderers, and I'm putting Madame Thirith in that category - I don't know if she ever killed anybody with her own hands but by association she must be considered a murderer. Women murderers like Myra Hindley (along with Ian Brady, one half of the infamous so-called Moors murders), Rosemary West (wife of serial killer and sadist Fred West) are thankfully of the highest rarity. Female killers often operate as part of a team alongside a male partner-in-crime, or kill because they are under the thumb of a man or have been abused by men in the past. However killers operating alone such as Beverly Allitt, a registered nurse in Britain, are unusual. http://www.toptenz.n...ale-killers.php Nixon and his sidekick Kissinger duly added to the Hall of Shame! ______________________________________________________________ Ah, you posted that whilst I was getting carried away reading up about female killers! I'd already added Kissinger

That masterful account of why it's taken so long to bring some of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders to trial had me spluttering into my morning bowl of cornflakes. I know this won't happen, but honestly I'd love to see some of those men (and they were all men) you mentioned in your post Fountainhall held accountable . . . (even though some of them are dead now) . . . if the lazy and inept UN can be summoned out of their lethargy at last, why can't they be? Hall of Shame Zbigniew Brzezinski George Shultz The un-named American ambassador in Thailand (1985) James A. Baker Deng Xiao Ping Thaoun Prasith Thailand's Foreign Minister (in 1985) General Suchinda Krapayoon And not forgetting the cast of thousands - those faceless morons behind the scenes opting for expediency at the expense of justice.

For many of us growing up in an era when pornography was highly censored, and that was the females, I don't recall shots of nude males being commonly available outside of naturist mags until the early 80's (maybe Playgirl started before then, I can't remember) and they were really tastefully done usually taken from behind or the guy sat in a chair or reclining in one. So when eventually magazines started showing full frontal photos I was hooked. After that they just got raunchier and raunchier - until eventually they became so common you could pick up the mags for free, even outside some gay stores. So the stage was reached the free mags were just there to try and get you to buy the vids. So from scanning my copy of H & E in the 70's for the rare pic of a nude guy to becoming jaded with the plethora of in your face stuff took a long time but like Bob that's how I feel nowadays. It's precisely because this Board does debate real issues that I post here! Any dilution of the Board's integrity and I probably wouldn't bother.

I like the sound of that, even though I'm probably deluding myself the stuff on sale will work ok with an older guy. Is Siam Centre in Siam Square?

Is that why it's taken so long? . . . because of the UN. I seem to recall the Khmer Rouge took a long time to be finally rooted out; they hung on in pockets for years. Maybe that explains the delay as by the time they were finally defeated I would imagine there was little or no stomach left in a country whose morale had been thoroughly sapped, and the moment for 'instant' retribution had long passed (see below). However, to quote Fountainhall again: I agree they are important but looking back, it would have been better for the country if Pol Pot and his 'comrades' had been subject to a speedy trial, almost certainly ending in the death penalty as per Saddam. Although part of me would love them to have been torn asunder as per Gaddafi, which would have appeased the short-term blood lust of a nation eager for rapid closure, in the longterm it is better that a civilised response occur. However, to have had to wait this long is quite ridiculous.

I agree it's terrible. Surely there is some room for debate as to what counts as nudity. Why should a nice pair of rear cheeks, or even a saggy derri

Even though a hypothetical issue, I think it prudent to restrict any comments as applying only to this Message Board. On the other hand if another Board had a racy sub-forum that allowed and encouraged that sort of thing we on this forum would have some kind of yardstick to either copy or reject. Equally if we decided to set one up and it proved popular other Boards would be at liberty to copy us if they wanted to. It has been tried before on at least one other Board, but in the case of the only one familiar to me it wasn't deemed a success and was axed. I'm neutral about this idea but as I am the first to post a reply and the thread's been going 5 hours now, I'm sticking my neck out and saying it hasn't captured the imagination of our fellow-posters . . . so far at any rate.

As they used to say in Monty Python, this is becoming silly . . . but to paraphrase Dick Emery was it, or was it Kenny Everett, but I like it. All this about taking a dump and evacuating is actually quite serious for some people. Some folks have poor bowel control perhaps owing to nervousness about travelling in a plane or sitting in a confined space with lots of others. It's bad enough to worry if the existing toilets are going to be free in the event of having to go at short notice, so I can imagine their reaction to stripping them out and putting in more passengers. I'd guess the cargo (your luggage etc) goes in the 'hold' and dogs and other pets go somewhere that is pressurised if that's the right term, so I suppose bunk beds akin to youth hostels is fine provided you don't have any pet allergies.

Assuming that's public knowledge how did it become so? Did the government make a clean breast of it or were the details teased out by prying 'meddlers'? I have to say Bob if you'd written that on 1st April it'd like to think I wouldn't have fallen for it.

Pretty amazing so many have fallen for the blarney. I wonder, has Fountainhall ever succumbed?

A bit of a cliche I know but the phrase New World order comes to mind. Qatar, the tiny Gulf state that has turned into a big player in the Great Game WARNING! If the sight of royalty sporting a wondrous array of headgear offends, do not click on the link. http://www.telegraph...Great-Game.html

Hehehe, indeed not! It seems a suddenly very wealthy individual has been flushed out . . . http://www.nationmul...y-30170155.html

Yes they do and that's why people should make it their business to hold them to account, whether it be somebody with a proven track record shouting form the rooftops such as Bernstein (mentioned by Bob) or somebody writing for a tiny audience on a humble Message Board such as this. From what little I know about Thai politics and the media many journalists are happy to trot out the party line but it seems few are prepared to stick their necks out. Unfortunately, by so doing they are likely to be taking certain risks, risks that shouldn't be a factor in a democratic country such as Thailand, although as we know democracy comes in many flavours. As a Brit I agree we have plenty of homegrown (or imported from Europe!) woes right now. But you have to allow Bob that Britain is a mere dwarf compared with America, so by the law of averages America will have many more incidents that impinge on the world stage, and it would be quite unfair to say citizens of another country cannot comment and should mind their own business. In addition the book mentioned by Fountainhall, The Eleventh Day, has recently been published and so the events surrounding 9/11 are a hot topic. Whether the book really is a 'game-changer' I have no idea, I shan't be reading it myself as I am not particularly interested, and indeed in the reviews on Amazon some smart aleck is saying there's nothing new in it that wasn't aleady known (or could have been deduced), but be that as it may if somebody alleges something happened and the person or people who were supposed to have done it deny it, how much further can anybody else go to challenge it? Fair enough, and also fair game to challenge anyone departing from the 'consensus' to prove it! However, speculation is not a crime and it is human nature to do that. No one is forced to indulge and provided it is intelligently argued and not idle gossip long may folks have that right.

I don't know how influential the Bin Laden family were In Arabia, but they must have been very wealthy. The Saudis have a very powerful tool at their disposal in the form of withdrawing their cooperation, for example the screening of . . . . . . had serious consequences: http://en.wikipedia....h_of_a_Princess

It certainly is! But also very sad. The Harrier Jump Jet was something of an icon in Britain along with Concorde, the Aston Martin DB6 and the Beatles. The British armed forces are facing severe cutbacks and there's plenty bad news where this one came from.

It can only be a mystery if one is curious and I am not. i.e flows out of his pen (?) . . . implies to me he write eloquently but the sense of your sentence infers otherwise, but apologies if I have misconstrued your intent.

Wish there was a way to adorn my avatar Roger's juicy bits with a trendy pair of speedos but alas it would be contrary to his 1950's origins. Anyway I don't think he'd have the figure to sport them to best advantage

Let me see if I can guess. He's not the most powerful person in the country . . .yet, but he is often out of the country . . . perhaps he's in Germany?

Another strange and curious history, although it's hardly 'history' as its latest development has only just been announced! It's not worth starting a new topic so I've added it here. This is what the chief executive of Geron said 3 years ago: But . . . John Martin, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at University College London said: You sure about that Professor? Well, it turns out he's somewhat biased . . . Josephine Quintavalle from the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics said: I haven't been following the field of stem cell research and so I have no evidence for this but my first reaction is this company, Geron, adopted a 'death or glory' approach. I would imagine any small research group trying to do their research 'properly' will pay the price of Geron's rashness and find funding hard to come by. http://www.bbc.co.uk...health-15740133

Interesting photo Thaiworthy, well spotted! I hope your show 'brought the house down'! That reference to God's footprints reminds me of Adam's Peak in Sri Lanka. I remember getting up at some unearthly hour along with some other travel companions in order to climb it. I think it must have been during the pilgrim season as I recall it was very busy. http://en.wikipedia....Pada_(Sri_Lanka)

I agree with the gist of your comments. Not sure about the bit about serving no real purpose though. In many cases that is true, so for example at one time the only men you'd see with an ear ring were old sailors. Then in the early 70's in Britain they caught on amongst students and skinheads and now they are very common amongst all strata of boys and men and completely meaningless (IMO), so yes that is an example of something with no real purpose at all, other than as a fashion accessory. However, when you say the religious and cultural rituals serve no real purpose, yes that is true in a physical sense because they aren't in any shape or form an improvement on mother nature, but the fact is they persist, so must serve some other sort of purpose which will vary but will always be of enormous significance, both on a personal and 'tribal' level. I think cannibalism has almost completely died out, but if an anthropologist visiting a headhunting tribe in the 1930's was told they ate the brains of their victims because they believed by doing so gave them magical powers, you'd be a brave man to tell them it served no real purpose!

Even the best-organised person occasionally gets taken by surprise. It could just as easily worked the other way and be happening tomorrow. Speedos are fine and I count myself in the 'club' as preferring them to other styles, such as those grotesque swimming trunks that extend beyond the knee and halfway down leg, or baggy cargo-style shorts. Having said that the parade in Taipei was so speedo-friendly you missed a lot of the other styles on parade. So, the silver lining in a speedo-poor parade is you'd get a chance to focus on the range of costumes and other parts of the paraders' anatomy.

I agree with that. Last time I was in Pattaya I gave him just that - we met up early afternoon and he left after breakfast the following day. He was actually more like a friend as I'd met him before several times on previous visits. I arranged to meet him alternate days for a week and it worked like a charm. Because it was actually 4 days spread over a week I gave him an extra tip after the final meeting.

As a Brit, I'll diplomatically refrain from answering that. What concerns me is when those few at the top of the pyramid behave in less-than-exemplary fashion. It doesn't go unnoticed, especially nowadays in any country with a vigilant media. Folks down at the bottom of said pyramid think to themselves "Hot diggity dawg, if that guy can get away with ........." ( fill in the gap, you can choose from embezzlement, sexual impropriety, fraud, incompetence, stupidity, arrogance, belligerence, or add you own). We've seen it in Thailand, people are commenting that the behaviour of the common people is deteriorating, in particular their attitude towards money. Greece is another good example. Some European countries come across, to me at any rate, as being no better than gigantic Ponzi schemes I am sorry to say, and I do not wish to offend any Americans, from what little I know of these two gentlemen, they appear to me as distinctly second or even third-rate.