PeterRS

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.

Doing nothing? Israel has done vastly more than nothing! You call the destruction of much of north Gaza, the murder of more than 10,000 Palestinians, the majority being women and young children, many babies, and the displacement of more than a million individuals "doing nothing"? Fine, call it what you like. For most of the world it is a response to Hamas' ghastly murders and kidnappings devoid of any sort of proportion. The right wing government of Netanyahu has for years been determined to brush over the "two state solution" in favour of expanding Israeli settlements and treating Palestinians as animals. And never forget this same Netanyahu is the one who proposed encouraging Hamas in Gaza and whose security forces totally failed to see the Hamas atacks coming - despite several warnings! You present no sources. Mine include - https://ecre.org/eu-external-partners-eu-divided-over-gaza-as-humanitarian-crisis-displacement-and-death-toll-increases-leaked-document-reveals-israeli-plan-for-permanent-displacement-of-the-strip-population-in-the/#:~:text=One%20million%20people%2C%20half%20the,bombardment%2C%20with%20significant%20numbers%20killed. https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-death-toll-numbers-injured-5c9dc40bec95a8408c83f3c2fb759da0 https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-death-toll-numbers-injured-5c9dc40bec95a8408c83f3c2fb759da0

Outside the world of pop, I cannot think of any artist/musician whose recordings continue to sell better year after year even 50 years after his/her death. I guess Frank SInatra must be up there somewhere but then he's only been gone for 25 years or so. In the classical sphere, Pavarotti will surely be up there for many years to come, but again it's only been 16 years since his death. The one who proves us wrong died 50 years ago this coming Saturday. Since then the recordings of soprano Maria Callas continue to outsell those of any other EMI artist before and since. Extraordinary, the more so when you realise she was only 53 when she died and had spent many of her earlier years away from singing. Yet there is something about that voice that results in her continuing appeal. That she was a consummate stage actor in addition to being one of the most in-demand opera singers of her time hardly matters today since there are now very few alive who actually saw her in her prime. Perhaps part of the reason is that through her voice she became the characters she was portraying. In essence she was The Diva. We tend to think of her as Greek; yet she was actually born in New York to Greek immigrant parents. Her mother lavished little attention on her as she had been desperate for a son. Then she realised her daughter was a decent singer and around the age of five pushed her to lessons despite Maria having little interest. With a deteriorating marriage, Maria's mother took her to Greece aged 13. According to both her later husband and her soon-to-become good friend, the famed mezzo-soprano Giulietta Simionato, during WWII her mother forced her to go out with various men. Both denied she had ever become a prostitute but the experience haunted her throughout much of her life. Soon Callas ceased all communication with her mother. In Athens she was not permitted to enter the Music Conservatoire. So she took private lessons. Eventually she moved to Italy where one of the great conductors of the day took her under his wing. But she started her main career singing a variety of roles that no soprano would even consider today. The great, heavy dramatic roles of Wagner's Brunnhilde and isolde were interspersed with the high, far lighter soprano and often coloratura roles in La Traviata and Lucia di Lammermoor. Soon the doors to the great opera houses of the world were opened for her, mostly in her new bel canto repertoire. Desperate for love in what had till then been very much a loveless life, in 1949 she married the industrialist Giovanni Meneghini. He was soon managing much of her career, but she remained unhappy. She had always been overweight and around 1953 decided that for the roles she was then singing she needed to be much slimmer. So she lost 37 kgs. Some thought this dramatic weight loss must have affected her voice for it is from the diaphragm that the voice is produced and must be supported. But there is no doubt that the 'new' Callas looked one of the most beautiful in the opera firmament. Wherever she went she was front-page news, not only for the magnificence of her performances but also not a few scandals. It was in 1957 that an event occurred which totally changed her life and career forever. Although still married to Meneghini, at a society party in New York she was introduced to the Greek Shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, one of the world's richest men. Although he was 19 years older, this was to lead to an intense affair that brought even more headline attention. That the two were in love is certain. But whether Onassis loved Callas as much as she loved him is still a matter of debate. It certainly became the most talked about affair of the decade, the more so as both still remained married. In 1966 Maria renounced her US citizenship to facilitate the end of her relationship with Meneghini, certain that she would soon be marrying Onassis, even though aware that Onassis was compulsively unfaithful. But three bullets in Dallas were to put an end to those dreams, even though both were soon single again. After the assassination of JFK, Onassis discovered an even more valuable prize. Although arguably a man with ugly features, he exuded immense charm in addition to his immense wealth. He saw in Kennedy's widow a wife who could open so many doors for him. She saw in him the degee of wealth necessary to take her out of the papparazi limelight and protect her and her children. It was a marriage that rocked the world. For Maria it was a devastating blow from which she would never recover. She had already given up so much to be Onassis' other half. Now that he was gone, she went into a state of desperate depression. She had all but given up performances on the opera stage. Eventually she took part in two world tour recitals, the critics lamenting at how the once glorious voice was frayed and a travesty of what it had once been. Onassis was an ill man. He entered hospital in Paris in early 1975. The relationship with Jackie was by now virtually at an end. His one visitor was the woman he had scorned: Maria Callas. He had taken with him to the hospital Maria's final gift to him: a red cashmere Hermes blanket. Although she was not with him when he died in March that year, thereafter she became a virtual recluse, stayiing in her own Paris apartment and rarely moving outside. She died of a heart attack just two years later at the ae of 53. Many believed she had in fact died of a broken heart. There are dozens of recordings of Callas in her prime. There is also the superb black-and-white video of Act 2 from Zeffirelli's production of Puccini's Tosca at the Royal Opera House with the excellent Tito Gobbi as Baron Scarpia. Here Scarpia attempts to persuade Tosca to sleep wth him in return for letting her lover out of prison. She agrees but after obtaining the release papers, she kills him. There are also books galore about her life. Two worth mentioning are Greek Fire: The Story of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis by Nicholas Cage is well worth a read for the insight it brings to that strange relationship; and Maria Callas: The Woman Behind The Legend by Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington who was also Greek by birth is another riveting story.

Your sources? Without them you have nothing!

You clearly have not been reading the news or watching television. Hamas killed approx. 1,000 Israelis and citizens of other countries. It was an indescribably calculated and dreadful crime. But the mass slaughter of 15,000 Palestinians (s0 far - of which the majority were women and children) and the destruction of much of north Gaza with the consequent displacement of far more than 1 million people (or half the population of Gaza) has been described as a war crime. Besides, Israel labels all the hostages is releases in return for its own hostages as "terrorists". Under Israeli law, a boy throwing a stone can be imprisoned without access to legal counsel, without any form of due process and for as long as Israel wishes to keep him there - in other words, indefinitely. If the case ever gets to court, it is before a military court with Israeli interpreters, not a civil court like Israeli citizens. What Israel is doing is indescribably dreadful, as the world is making clear. As israel's own noted human rights group B'Tselem makes clear, “The power to incarcerate people who have not been convicted or even charged with anything for lengthy periods of time, based on secret ‘evidence’ that they cannot challenge, is an extreme power. Israel uses it continuously and extensively.” As for yout comment on Ukraine, did Ukraine invade Russia? No! It is at war with Russia ony because it was invaded by Russia. Your argument is hollow.

Sorry to say I also don't get it either! Given the title of the thread, let's be honest! This is just a free advertisement for Siam Roads. That organisation is run by @Moses as a business which gets a lot of PR from the gay chat site he himself owns and operates - sawatdee network. Given that @Moses frequently posts here in other threads with a very pro-Russian and frequently very anti-western line (often without accurate or even any source material I should add), I believe this is an important point for those who might wish to use the services of Siam Roads. But that I guess is his privilege under the membership rules. The essential point here is not that the guides themselves are pro-Russian - or indeed express any political views. I believe from reports that they are all extremely good at their jobs. Yet, given the political times we live in and the illegal invasion of Ukraine (as defined by the United Nations) and the fact that the USA and NATO countries are spending massive amounts of cash and materiel helping Ukraine against Russian aggression with its Iranian - and perhaps even North Korean and Chinese allies, even as one who has loved his four visits to Russia I would not patronise any Russian-based business at the present time. Similarly I would not patronise a business run by either Hamas or Israel or any other country presently at war. (Specifically I do not include countries whose politics alone I do not agree with. The essential here is "war".) So I do not believe @Moses should be given a free ride here. If it means a three-month ban on my posting, so be it. I feel very strongly on this issue and if I am not permitted to express it, whatever action the moderator takes is perfectly fine with me.

Interesting article in today's Guardian about Napoleon in art. Most of us know the painting by Jacques-Louis David showing Napoleon on his horse crossing the Alps, a truly dominant leader yet a curiously static portrait. David's rather kitsch painting of Napoleon's coronation is equally well known. One of David's pupils was less adulatory. Antoine-Jean Gros had seen Bonaparte at the Battle of Pont d'Arcole. A dark painting with only Bonaparte's determined face highlighted, Gros is obviously enamoured at this time of Napoleon's greatness. Later Gros was to become much less enchanted with his subject. He depicts the Battlefield at Eylau. Now he portrays a more thoughful, subdued and melancholy leader, a preface perhaps of what was to come in the disastrous advance on Russia. Then there was the great British artist Turner who virtually paints Napoleon's epitaph. Here is shown alone, apart from a guarding British soldier in the background. War: The Exile and The Rock Limpet portrays him in exile on St. Helena, a little man staring down at his shadow in a pool, day-dreaming perhaps of what might have been. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/nov/23/ridley-scott-artists-napoleon-short-turner

Regretably it is not the cinema's choice to make. It is the studios and the movie distributors. But I can remember at least one time when there was an intermission 'built in' to a movie. When Ben Hur came out, it had a running time of 3 hrs. 32 minutes. Not surprisingly it did have an intermission and no doubt the cinemas were pleased, for it gave them a chance to sell tons of ice creams and soft drinks, as well as the merchandise which accompanied the movie. Today, as long as i know how long a movie will last - and I can't think of any that is as long as Ben Hur - I'm happy to avoid drinking for a couple of hours and then have a pee in advance before sitting through it. If in desperate need, there is usually a toilet somewhere nearby.

It would be a nice gesture, I think, if they named the guided tours after the boy who died earlier this year in England of an apparent suicide.