PeterRS

I just listened to the interview. Carter Malkasian has much of interest and of fact to say. I only wish the interview could have been much longer for I feel he could enlighten us on many, many more issues that will be vital if the world is not to get into such a complicated conflict again. Over the course of today, I have been watching various news programmes, most including the views of politicians, military men and commentators. According to several Ministers and former Ministers, the UK government seemed genuinely taken by surprise by Biden's announcement. It then talked to other NATO members to see if a small military team could remain in the country. Without the USA, there was just insufficient interest. The other point made clearly by several is that effectively there has been no war in Afghanistan for the last 5 or so years. US forces, including those of NATO members, were there primarily to help train up the Afghan military, to provide command and control, some air support and to keep the Taliban as firmly as possibly in their own areas. US troop levels were less than 10% of their peak and deaths of US servicemen totalled less than 100 during this more than 5 year period. Most UK troops had left its main base in Helmand Province in 2014. A smaller number remained with the Americans and will be pulled out soon. Only 2 British troops were killed during this period. The one lesson I wish the US had drawn from the adventure in Vietnam is the manner of its departure. In Vietnam, many US troops had to stay on specifically to train up the army of the corrupt government of South Vietnam. Despite Nixon's PR speeches about how successful this was, the fact is that it was spectacularly unsuccessful. Several major operations involving both US and South Vietnamese forces prior to the US departure had seen commanders disappearing and many troops without the guts to fight. The same seems to be generally true now, with a few notable exceptions, in Afghanistan. The decision to pull out all remaining personnel from Saigon in a fleet of 18 helicopters making round trips from the top of the US Embassy to nearby naval vessels, left behind a heaving crowd of desperate Vietnamese helpers and their families unable to get out. I had the pleasure of knowing Hugh van Es, the Dutch photographer who took one of the most iconic photos of that war - the last helicopter as it was about to leave Saigon. The helicopters were supposed to have a maximum load of 8 people but most were taking off with 12 or 14. Photo: Hugh van Es

23,418 new cases yesterday and 184 new deaths. Stay safe out there.

I totally agree with the first part. But not the second. What has the US achieved in Afghanistan? As you rightly point out, the original mission was accomplished many years ago - and in Pakistan at that, not in Afghanistan. But the US stayed partly because it had no real plan for what it was doing and what its exit strategy would be. So the US attempted, as it did in Iraq and as it attempted to do in Vietnam, to convert a society it did not understand (how many Iraqi, Vietnamese and Afghan experts worked in the State department? Almost none). Afghanistan is made up of a very large number of tribes unified for the most part only by common adherence to one religion. The US tried to fashion it into a country-wide democracy. It attempted to break down tribal values regarding education for women and their role in society and there being no need to adopt strict Islamic dress. 100% I agree these are laudable goals. But having gone much of the way, at least in terms of opening up Afghan society and the position of women, it decides to withdraw all its troops leaving the country about to be taken over yet again by strong Taliban Islamic militants who will overturn every gain made in the last two decades. That surely is the real tragedy of the US adventure in Afghanistan.

My OP was about what the US does when it leaves a country it has earlier invaded. The issue of other NATO and participant countries is a separate matter. You imply the USA has already evacuated "thousands of them." Funny, that's not what is being reported. As of August 7 the US had evacuated less than 1% of the more than 80,000 Afghans who assisted it. That does not even reach one thousand - and still leaves more than 79,000! "The plight of thousands of other Afghans who worked for U.S. troops or diplomats is even more uncertain and it's not clear if the administration will opt to fly them out. At the current tempo of 700 evacuees a week, it would take more than two years to fly out the roughly 20,000 Afghans who are in the SIV pipeline along with their families. "Meanwhile, the Taliban is on the march, advancing on major cities and setting off panic among Afghan civilians." https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-evacuation-afghans-likely-drag-after-american-troops-leave-n1276245

Are you sure it includes the translators etc.? All the reports state it is to evacuate the Embassy staff and Afghan personnel who work in the Embassy. Nowhere do the reports state that the troops will evacuate the tens of thousands of Afghanis who have helped the troops in the field.

If you read my post I was referring specifically to the powers-that-be who have been making regular pronouncements of this opening up date or that opening up date, only for them to eat their words when no dates are met and the situation in cities and the country as a whole just goes from bad to worse. Of course hope is vitally important. But rather than overly optimistic prognostications, a harsh dose of reality is surely far better at this time. That and providing a great deal of much needed assistance to all those who have been so badly affected by incompetent and corrupt government actions.

Say what you wish, there is absolutely no denying the fact that the invasion of Afghanistan was entirely at the instigation of the United States, firstly on September 26 2001 through covert infiltration of CIA operatives and thereafter with military force. As a US ally, the UK also infiltrated MI6 operatives only days later. The war was not a NATO instigated war. NATO as an organisation was not involved until later. But UK forces played a major role very quickly and several hundred of its military were killed and many more wounded. The UK and other countries still have forces there which will not be withdrawn until the US withdrawal. Some of the nations you list were part of the original Operation Enduring Freedom campaign. Others joined later as part of the NATO lInternational Security Assistance Force. But let's not forget that many of these nations in your list contributed just a few dozen soldiers and/or support staff up to in some cases a few hundred. Very few had more than 1,000 or more troops in the country at any one time. And let's also not forget that the NATO countries did not resolve to leave Afghanistan. So to put any blame on them is pointless. The fact is they are withdrawing only because the United States announced unilaterally that it planned to leave. According to General McMaster on CNN this morning, the first date of the US departure from Afghanistan was not conveyed to NATO by the Trump administration which regarded NATO as an inconvenient, irrelevant sideshow rather than as allies. McMaster added that Biden also did not inform NATO officially in advance of his announcement in April and further failed to consult neighbouring countries in advance as it had hitherto promised to do! McMaster added his view that the departure from Afghanistan now is a disaster. But the points you raise do not directly reply to the points I made. The fact is that the USA, often through the CIA, has been involved in operations in overseas countries from the time it, along with the British, arranged the ouster of the duly elected Prime Minister of Iran in 1953. In siding with the corrupt, repressive Shah, it thereby cooked its own goose when the Iranian public rebelled, the Shah was booted out and a violently anti-US regime installed in 1979, a regime that remains in power today and that has spread all manner of havoc in that part of the world. The main point of my OP was the lack of consideration given to the extreme urgency of getting those who had helped the USA out of the country before they are murdered by the Taliban. As stated, precisely the same happened after US invasions of Vietnam and Iraq. It is not as though the mandarins in Washington were not aware of the promises they made to those poor people. It is more the incompetence of those in the administration responsible for getting those people to freedom. That is the disgrace.

So after 20 years the US is almost out of Afghanistan. The peace talks with the Taliban which have been going on for three years next month were clearly a sham. Now the Taliban has speedily controlled far more territory than anyone involved seemed to have anticipated and we can surely expect the entire country to be taken over once again by that ultra Islamic bunch. Women will be forced out of schools, will have to wear strict Islamic dress, music will be banned, adulterers stoned, gays thrown from buildings - and goodness knows what else. That country has been fought over almost more than any other since the British disaster around 1840. In more recent times, the Soviet invasion at the end of 1979 achieved little apart from enabling the CIA to furnish a huge amount of weaponry to the local guerrillas, weapons that would eventually come back to haunt them. The CIA had actually been involved in Afghanistan even before the Russians arrived. As for their the Russian adventure, British journalist Patrick Brogan probably summed it up best when he wrote, "They got sucked into Afghanistan much as the United States got sucked into Vietnam, without clearly thinking through the consequences, and wildly underestimated the hostility they would arouse." The end result was a country all but ruined by war of whose population a third (over 5 million) had became permanent refugees. The guerrillas which saw the back of the Soviet forces in 1989 were led by the Afghan Mujahideen backed by the US, the UK and other powers using it as a proxy in the Cold War. Having thereafter backed the moderate Northern Alliance under Ahmad Shah Massoud, the western powers were left rudderless when two Al Qaeda operatives posing as cameramen filming an interview blew themselves up along with Massoud two days before the 9/11 attacks. Soon thereafter the US troops and their allies attacked with the aim of quickly flushing out Osama bin Laden. As in Vietnam, they found themselves stuck in the Afghan mud! President Biden may well be happy that his troops will all have departed by next month. But as has become a pattern, the USA's departure after invasion leaves a stink in the air. Just as happened at the end of the Vietnam war and just as happened at the end of the Iraq invasion, the US is leaving behind tens of thousands (if not many more) Afghanis and their families without whose help they would have had little chance of any success. And in all three cases it is not as though they did not have time to plan for these intelligent and now desperately afraid people's exit. Trump announced the withdrawal of troops 10 months ago. Biden, having hinted it for months, finally announced it four months ago. Yet the excuse now given for leaving behind so many who aided the US is that there has not been enough time to process the paperwork! I find that not merely utterly disgraceful. In my book it comes close to a war crime! Who in future is going to believe what have become essentially US lies? "Don't worry! We will look after you," surely rings more than hollow when a translator working for the USA for years is looking down the barrel of a Taliban gun seconds before becoming a corpse in the dust.

I'm sure lots loved it. The viewing figures must have been great to have kept the original running for 7 series. So many romantics around! LOL

Oh dear! I loathed Fantasy Island when it was aired decades ago and gave up watching after a couple of episodes. I won't be watching the new series. Thankfully we all have different tastes.

How many times have we heard similar nonsense by those hoping to influence both the public and the powers-that-be that miracles will happen, only for them to lose face in having to climb down when reality hits them in the face?

One of the problems clearly concerns what its termed, for reasons i totally fail to understand, the Modern Pentathlon. This requires fencing (using only épées), freestyle swimming, pistol shooting, cross country running and ending with equestrian show jumping! This combination was thought up by Baron de Coubertin and seems both futile and crazy. The event has been part of the Games since 1912 and has remained despite several strong attempts to remove it. The problem with the show jumping part is that athletes rarely make the best riders. Show jumping horses usually develop a rapport with one rider for several years. But in the Modern Pentathlon athletes are not paired with horses they know or with which they will have had any prior experience. It is purely the luck of a draw made 20 minutes beforehand who rides on which horse. I happened to be watching when one horse was clearly unhappy during the round and then totally failed at one fence more or less running through it and throwing the rider. What followed was a disgrace with the horse trainer running on to violently hit the horse with his fists. He was quickly banned from the Games and sent home. If you think that was only a ridiculous one-off, do please watch this video. Many top athletes, including those in medal positions up to that time, scored zero in the jumping when their horses either were just not prepared to jump or threw off their riders. They therefore ended up close to last place. It was a total farce. Soon several allegations of animal cruelty were being alleged. Why should any event based exclusively on skills required by soldiers during World War 1 be part of today's Olympics? Madness! From Deutshe Welle "Bucking horses urged on with a riding crop although they clearly don't feel like jumping over obstacles or even entering the course. Howling riders who have completely lost their nerve. Numerous falls by riders that just about walk away without serious injuries. "Sweating animals with wide eyes who, even after several throw-offs, have to ride on until the finish line is finally reached and the agony is over. No one needs to see scenes like these. The show jumping portion of the modern pentathlon on Friday was anything but good advertising for equestrian. What occurred in Tokyo's Baji Koen Equestrian Park was far from normal show jumping and should instead be described as animal cruelty." https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-animal-cruelty-on-display-at-the-olympics/a-58790373

I believe it was only you! I have read this poster's contributions on two chat room sites. He means what he says - even though there may sometimes be a lack of forethought before writing.

The frenzy on social media is unsurprising since many Thais still remember the disasters of the 1997 Asian Economic crisis. During the boom years that preceded it, the government was determined to maintain the long-standing exchange rate of US$1 = 25 baht. To do so it had to keep increasing interest rates. But due to various economic pressures, it also decided to dismantle foreign exchange controls. This led to some banking institutions and several finance companies borrowing overseas at much lower interest rates and then relending in Thailand at much higher rates to make major profits. When the speculators arrived in force in 1997, they were successful at the third attempt after Thailand had spent almost its entire foreign exchange reserves attempting to defend the $/baht peg. Crony capitalism had taken a hard knock. The crisis led to several major financial institutions and at least one bank going bust, including the country's largest Finance One. They all held non performing loans on their books amounting to over $3 billion. But many of the borrowers could not repay. The property market collapsed leaving many upstart companies also bankrupt. By December 1997, 56 finance companies had collapsed permanently. Another 58 required emergency funding of 660 billion baht. Bangkok Metropolitan Bank had gone bust but was eventually taken over by Siam City Bank. So a reduction in the guarantee by such a large amount inevitably caused a great deal of concern. Does it mean the country is heading for another meltdown? Very unlikely, I believe. But some may not agree.

Your assumptions are partly downright wrong - and partly vastly too simplistic! Many restaurants have closed for good. One of my favourites off Saladaeng in Bangkok Le Table de Tee closed for good during the first lock down in April last year. It was a small niche restaurant that could take not more than 20 diners per evening. Many others will never open their doors again. Restaurants and bars are once again closed in Thailand. Some are able to offer meal delivery. Many of those that survive have fired huge numbers of staff in the hope they can keep losses to a minimum. I spent a few days in a good hotel in Hua Hin last November. Most floors were closed off and staff numbers had again been drastically cut. Many other hotels across the entire spectrum of prices have been closed for many months if not for a year. I have little sympathy for gogo bar owners who in the past did indeed raise drinks prices when the tourism economy was in a bad way. But I have no time for anyone who criticises hotels and restaurants for having overcharged guests prior to the pandemic. I think Thailand has always had a hospitality and restaurant industry with standards of service and cuisine that are as good as anywhere - and better than most.

With apologies to @captainmick and others, again on the equestrian events. For the Olympics and Paralympics a total of around 325 horses are flown in on 19 chartered aircraft. 247 flew through Liege in Belgium where there are special arrangements for equine transport. There they had to wait for 60 days of stringent health checks and then a 7 days quarantine for covid checks before being loaded on specially adapted Emirates Boeing 777 cargo flights via Dubai. Most are in 2 per stall - i.e. per pallet. On board they are accompanied by vets and trainers. Once in Japan, the horses have their own specially built Olympic Village. Leaving aside the substantial costs of that 67 day wait, the actual cost of flying one horse obviously depends on distance, weight and other factors. The website CBS8 estimates that cost can be up to $30,000 although the average is obviously considerably less. Even if it is $20,000 that still amounts to $6.5 million In theory, 19 Emirates 777s can carry more than 6,000 athletes. This will still represent a much cheaper cost because horses require much more expensive ground handling at departure and arrival airports. Since a total of 11,090 athletes took part in the recently concluded Olympics, all could have been accommodated in just double the number of aircraft required for the non-human horses! Given that athletes came from such a large number of countries, the above costs/estimates are bound to be mere ballpark figures. But with the Olympics getting more and more expensive to mount, I for one simply cannot see the value of paying huge amounts for a few events requiring horses. But I do realise it will be the panjandrums on the Olympic Committee and the viewing figures of NBC that will ultimately decide. https://www.insider.com/olympic-horses-travel-tokyo-plane-passports-in-flight-meals-grooming-2021-7

Great for those using the 800,000/400,000 baht retirement option which has to remain unspent!

As a postscript to the Olympics, there is an interesting little article on the BBC's website. We are used to seeing the big boys go home with the most medals - in this case the USA and China. But is that a fair way of looking at a country's achievements just because both are huge countries with huge populations and huge sporting programmes at almost all levels of society and massive sports facilities? Frankly it is not! What if the medals table is arranged on the basis of total population? Would that not be fairer? On the basis of total population, the USA would have been ranked 60th. The top 10 would have been San Marino, Bermuda, Bahamas, New Zealand, Jamaica, Slovenia, Fiji, Georgia, The Netherlands and Hungary. How about based on GDP per capita? On this basis, the top 10 would have been China, ROC (Russia), Kenya, Ukraine, Uganda, Ethiopia, India, Brazil, Iran and Uzbekistan. There are other anomalies. The UK, many Commonwealth countries and those from the former Soviet Union tend to have a better sports infrastructure than many others. India excels at cricket, but that is not an Olympic Sport. It also excels at hockey, but that yields only 2 gold medals, one for men and one for women, whereas a top male gymnast has the possibility of up to 8 gold medals and a table tennis champion 4 gold medals. An individual in my bete noire the equestrian events can win up to a staggering 6 gold medals. Yet a high jumper or a javelin thrower can win just one. To judge success merely on account of the number of medals won without taking into account several other key factors inevitably discriminates badly in favour of the big boys. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58143550

Another disgrace among the litany of so many by Prayut and some of his government, especially the dreadful Minister of Health!

The Washington Post has a paywall. Could you kindly copy and paste for those of us too mean to cough up the subscription! Many thanks. On the topic, the Winter Olympics seem to have little more success at minimising losses than the Summer Games. Perhaps that is because some of the host cities have been mere towns or even villages. The 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics was held in a village with just 3,000 tax residents. They were left with a $6 million debt, although the New York State government helped take over much of that. Albertville in the French Alps fared little better in 1992. The French government spent around $1.2 billion to upgrade the region's infrastructure. Neither during the Games nor thereafter did Albertville and its neighbouring towns see any increase in tourism. The government was left with a debt of $67 million. Nagano in Japan had around 350,000 residents when it hosted the Olympics in 1998. As the Games neared, a quarter of the hotel rooms reserved for visitors were cancelled. Ski villages nearby which normally ran at 80% occupancy saw that drop to 60%. During the bidding process, Nagano officials plied the Olympic Committee members and their entourages with first class air tickets, stays at luxury resorts and pricey entertainment. No one now knows how high the loss of those Games rose. A member of the local Olympic Committee ordered all financial records burned before auditors could get near them! South Korea's 2018 Games in Pyeongchang is believed to have cost $13 billion against the original estimate of $7 billion. Bigger cities did little better. Vancouver in 2010 was left with a hangover estimated at $1 billion. It is unlikely it will ever be repaid in full. Nothing beats Sochi in 2014, though. That cost overrun is estimated to have risen from a budget of round $11 billion up to a staggering $51 billion. https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/10-olympic-games-bankrupted-host-countries.htm https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/south-koreas-pyeongchang-winter-olympics-costs-benefits-of-hosting.html

I know nothing about the case beyond what i read in the media. But should I find it strange that a 27 year old Thai male out to collect wild orchids was aroused by any 57 year old woman? The blurry photo of the arrested man in the Phuket Daily News looks like he is around 164 cms in height and has a full head of fluffy hair. The photo of the man on the motorcycle in the Bangkok Post photo looks taller with hair having receded slightly at the temples. Not that this proves anything. Merely an observation. A South China Morning Post description of the incident states the woman was swimming below the waterfall. It adds she was "partially clothed". Her purse had been robbed of 300 baht which according to the police the suspect used to buy "drugs, drinks and phone repairs." If you have what is clearly quite a large motorbike, after paying for phone repairs, how much would be left over for booze and drugs? Again something seems a bit odd here. Yet one more oddity is that the Ton Ao Yon waterfall is not well known, it's hard to find and very difficult to access. Several websites also state the pathways are confusing and you need good shoes to avoid sharp rocks. https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3144249/thai-police-arrest-suspect-killing-swiss-woman-island

So glad you did. Double gold medallist skater Yuzuru Hanyu is one of the greatest and cutest of all athletes and has become a huge superstar in his native Japan. Only another 6 months before the next Winter Olympics. Will he still be taking part? I sure hope so. At the risk of hijacking the thread, here are two lovely photos - especially the one where he is bending down (oops!) Although it should have no effect on his athleticism and artistry, there is a lot of discussion on Japanese and other social media about his sexuality. He often appears with slightly gay mannerisms. His coach in Canada is openly gay and a gay designer often makes the costumes he wears.

I should not have used the term 'amateur' as it does connote someone who is not paid. As @reader rightly points out, many sportsmen and women receive cash from sponsors and governments. The term 'professional athletes' who make their full-time careers from their sports might have be enmore appropriate. The Dvokovics, McIlroys, Morikawas, the US and some other countries' baseball and basketball players are multi-millionaires many times over. I do not believe the Olympic ideal was that they should be the ones competing for medals. Cassius Clay was an amateur when he won the boxing gold before turning professional and changing his name to Muhammad Ali and becoming arguably the greatest boxer of all time. How many other non-professional golf, tennis and other athletes could use the Olympics as a springboard to international success? After all, even the golf majors have some amateur athletes playing alonside all the professionals. That beef apart, though, @fedssocr brings up the very pertinent issue of graft. It has been the blight of the mega international sports events for many decades. The IOC and FIFA which controls the Soccer World Cup have been the worst. The top officials, like the dreadful Sepp Blatter who was fired from FIFA and is the subject of legal proceedings, usually seem to get away with lining their pockets and it is their Committee members and Country heads who end up kicked out or in jail. Surely if the rotation of cities was every 12 years, say, rather than every 4, this could reduce the possibilities of corruption? The ease and cost of travel to the locations would not be too high for most people who really want to watch future Olympics and World Cups. But it is the TV cash that will no doubt be the largest factor in the decision making as to location and the sports to be included. If NBC reckons it got value for money having paid out US$7.7 billion for the 2020 rights, we probably won't see much change. Only if viewing figures for the equestrian events were very low is there much chance of these events disappearing. On the other hand, I think the figures for the new sports introduced this year will probably be through the roof given their appeal to youngsters. Maybe that will spur the introduction of more youth appeal sports. I can't wait for sepak takraw to be included! It could lead to that sport spreading to many more countries outside Asia.

That trend was started by Montreal which I believe took more than 30 years to pay off its Olympics bill which had ballooned to 13 times its original estimate. As an article in The Guardian pointed out five years ago, "No other Olympics has so thoroughly broken a city." Yet Athens in 2004 came close and many of the stadia built for the Olympics were soon decaying. They were just not needed. As with every Games, the International Olympic Committee came out with a profit not far short of US$1 billion. Athens ended up with debts of $350 million in addition to its decaying stadia. Increasing the number of sports which require the construction of additional facilities has worked in the past. For Tokyo in 1964 they were a means of renewing Japan's image as a member of the world community following World War 2. Seoul in 1988 was to mark the end of martial law and the start of a democratic country (although that did not really start till 1992). Beijing in 2008 was to put a kinder, gentler face on to a dictatorship with funds no object. Now though, the cost of hosting the Games means that far fewer cities are prepared to bid. It's not only the number of different venues, the number of personnel and accommodating them is also a huge problem. The swimming venue accommodates all the swimming and diving events. They can then become of value to the community. If a city has no stadium, then the example started in Sydney is one possibility. A 60,000 seat stadium for the Games which is then reduced in size to 40,000 to become more suitable for soccer or other regular sports. Facilities for judo, karate, boxing and other smaller scale sports are probably easy to build if they do not already exist. But I stick to my original point that building new facilities including an arena and allied requirements for equestrian events should not in future be required for an Olympic Games. Like Topsy, the scope of the Games has steadily increased from 17 sports with 23 different disciplines in Rome in 1960 to 33 and 46 respectively for Tokyo 2020. 83 countries were represented in Rome; 205 in Tokyo (odd, since there are only 193 officially recognised countries in the world!) Rome had 150 medal events; Tokyo 339. Such continued expansion surely cannot continue. Either the IOC locates the Games in one city which becomes the Olympics venue at least for several Games, or we will find that only cities in authoritarian countries will end up being prepared to pay for them.

Naturally sailors, rowers, skateboarders, javelin throwers and their ilk require equipment. But with all respect they are individuals with a piece of equipment necessary for their sport. If you take your argument to its logical conclusion, soccer would be out as it requires a ball! I suppose it's all down to individual preference. You like dressage. I loathe it. I hate to think how much training a horse requires to go through that routine. And you cannot name me any other sport - sport(?) - that requires a non human to compete! It makes no sense. If you have horses, why not camel racing? Why not sled dog racing? Why not rodeo riding? Having horses involved happens only because their events were one of the first to be included in the early Olympics when the organisers were desperate to find any sports at all? I believe one criterion should definitely be popularity of a sport. My nieces are both horse crazy. Oddly they have no interest in the Olympic equestrian events! Incidentally equestrian events were not included in the Melbourne 1956 Olympics due to Australia's strict 6-month quarantine policy. So it is not as though they have always been part of the programme. So I am curious. Given that some sports are kicked out at every Olympics, which ones would you drop out for Paris and Los Angeles?