News Stories

[KiraYamatoFan]

Originally Posted by Sugetsu

^ i could do that, but then what do i tell my coworkers if they see me looking at that pic?

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

There are those who still insist that the British empire militarily supported the export of Opium to China because they need to protect FREE TRADE. That they aren't drug lords, they just want to protect capitalism and the Free Market System.

Let's just say people claim bullshit all the time to make their own countries look good, everywhere.

Like you said, even Britain doesn't teach that bit from that angle in history classes. In the US, I wouldn't be surprised if the subject of massacring Native Americans in the 19th Century is very barely touched at all. In Canada, we don't even mention some of the things a man like Jeffrey Amherst did by distributing smallpox-covered blankets to the First Nations people.

Regardless, there's nobody who can be foolish enough to believe Japan wants to grab more land by force in a near future considering their sociopolitical situation for now almost 70 years. People in Japan aren't fooled that easily nowadays into such ambitions and that comes hand-in-hand with the current geopolitical situation where there's no empire.

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by KiraYamatoFan

Like you said, even Britain doesn't teach that bit from that angle in history classes. In the US, I wouldn't be surprised if the subject of massacring Native Americans in the 19th Century is very barely touched at all. In Canada, we don't even mention some of the things a man like Jeffrey Amherst did by distributing smallpox-covered blankets to the First Nations people.

maybe because it is California but at least in my high school history class our history teacher did not gloss over the Native American massacre or broken treaties. We spend quite a bit of time on the Trail of Tears.

[Ithekro]

Yeah, we spent time on what we did to the native in middle school. We also remind ourselves that some of them helped us, and that we helped some of them, but in the end we kept moving them into smaller and smaller pieces of land and fighting wars with them.

What we did gloss over was Reconstruction and at least in my high school years, World War One. In eighth grade we are suppose to get to Reconstruction, but the Civil War takes up too much time, plus that was the year Ken Burn's series on it came out. We didn't get past 1865. My high school US History teacher skipped to the 1920s because it was closer to his lifetime and gave him more time to focus on World War II, Vietnam, and modern history up to (at that time) Desert Storm. Our text books only went up to Desert Shield, but we had enough material to handle the war bit since we'd been alive for it. I even updated my book by added the note about Nixon's death to the list of President.

Another thing we didn't gloss over was the interment camps for the Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II. We aren't far from Angel Island here, so it came up.

[Bri]

The problem with the Yasukuni shrine is not just the interred war criminals but also the attached war museum that promotes a far right wing view of the war with Japan as a victim. Even the politicians avoid visiting that place.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Bri

The problem with the Yasukuni shrine is not just the interred war criminals but also the attached war museum that promotes a far right wing view of the war with Japan as a victim. Even the politicians avoid visiting that place.

And? Everyone loves being victims. And the surviving Japanese civilians of the time would argue that they ARE victims.

And what's your problem with Japan's Right Wing? Don't they deserve to have a Right Wing? Or do they not deserve to have one because they are somehow a people who are inherently evil?

There are Right Wings in every country. Please explain to me why Japan doesn't have the permission to have Right Wingers.

[Bri]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

And? Everyone loves being victims. And the surviving Japanese civilians of the time would argue that they ARE victims.

And what's your problem with Japan's Right Wing? Don't they deserve to have a Right Wing? Or do they not deserve to have one because they are somehow a people who are inherently evil?

There are Right Wings in every country. Please explain to me why Japan doesn't have the permission to have Right Wingers.

Far right, read more carefully.

The view that Japan was forced to start the pacific war is a minority extremist view, not a representation of the opinion of the people or historic fact. The visits by government officials adds some legitimacy to this view. Even the emperor refuses to visit the place.

[SaintessHeart]

Private Contractors Will Probably Join The Fight Against ISIS

Eric Prince, founder of the controversial security contractor Blackwater, recently claimed that for-hire ground troops were the missing element of the US-led campaign against jihadists in Iraq and Syria.

“If the old Blackwater team were still together, I have high confidence that a multi-brigade-size unit of veteran American contractors or a multi-national force could be rapidly assembled and deployed to be that necessary ground combat team,” Prince wrote on the website of Frontier Services Group, a security and logistics contractor where he is now the executive officer and chairman.

“A competent professional force of volunteers would serve as the pointy end of the spear and would serve to strengthen friendly but skittish indigenous forces,” he continued.

Prince’s private expeditionary force may seem a bit far-fetched. Then again, one of Barack Obama’s favored analogues for the situation in Syraq is Somalia, a place where the US pursued a “strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines,” as the president explained in his speech announcing US military action against ISIS. And in Somalia, security contractors are playing a fairly significant and hands-on role in stabilizing the country.

In terms of his larger point, Prince may be hinting at something that’s inevitable. After all, in Somalia, private security contractors are one of those “partners on the front lines” that Obama referred to.

Here’s a photo tweeted by George Mason University Horn of Africa scholar Tres Thomas of two employees from the US-based private security and investment company Bancroft Global Development operating with the Somali military:

An African Union (AU) peacekeeping force and the national military have quietly made progress against Al Shabaab, an Al Qaeda affiliate, in Somali in recent weeks — earlier this month, Shabaab was expelled from Barawe, a coastal city and one of the last major population centers the group controlled.

But it’s not as if Bancroft just showed up to provide the finishing touches on an already successful mission.

This paragraph from a US Joint Special Operations University study demonstrates that the company played a significant role in shaping the AU force’s strategy against Shabaab in the months after the group’s blitz through the country in 2007 and 2008:

Bancroft was first approached by Ugandan leadership and invited to work with the [Ugandan military] contingent in Mogadishu in November 2007 … The Ugandans were well aware that the Somalia campaign would take them into unknown military territory, especially with regards to the challenges of urban warfare. This is where they sought Bancroft’s expertise. After a few reconnaissance trips, Bancroft deployed an initial team of four advisers into Mogadishu in early 2008. Within four months, their team had expanded to 12. After being impressed with their work in the field, Burundi approached Bancroft in August 2008 to provide them with similar assistance.

“Bancroft Global Development’s urban warfare training” proved vital to the peacekeepers’ success in eventually kicking Shabaab out of the Somali capital of Mogadishu and most other major cities, the study states.

And while it adds that Bancroft scrupulously adhered to a UN embargo on small arms importation to Somalia, much of that ban was actually lifted in 2012, meaning that contractors could take on more traditional combat-advisory type activities — note that both of the purported Bancroft employees in the photo that Thomas tweeted are armed.

Bancroft has diversified within Somalia as well, anticipating a time when they could use their years of involvement in the country to pivot towards more peacetime-orientated activites.

As the Wall Street Journal reported in April of 2013, the company is developing a secured hotel and conference complex along a relatively quiet stretch of Mogadishu beachfront. The Journal described the property as “a fortified compound sprawled across 11 acres of rocky white beach [offering] 212 rooms including $500-a-night villas, several dining rooms, coffee and snack shops, and a curving slate-colored pool where sun-seekers can loll away Somali afternoons.”

Private security contractors are controversial. Opponents claim that these companies are effectively above the law in the countries where they’re hired. They’re sent to some of the most unstable places in the world, weak states where a private contractor’s power and organizational capacity can outstrip that of the local government (G4S’s operations in South Sudan are a case in point). Private contractors have a mercenary character to them — they seem like hired guns, sent to foreign countries with little apparent oversight or consent. They can also covertly implement US policy in a way that strikes many as unaccountable.

At the same time, Bancroft’s story demonstrates that a private-sector component to the anti-ISIS campaign could be inevitable, as these companies provide a level of expertise, funding, capability, and willingness that other potential on-the-ground actors simply don’t have. They can take risks that a foreign government cannot, while also serving as a cats’ paw for US policy — as the SOCOM study noted, the Burundian and Ugandan militaries paid Bancroft using money from a US bilateral assistance package, and the company was given an official US State Department contract in 2010.

Maybe companies like Bancroft won’t be sending combat forces of the type that Prince envisions. But if history is any guide, they’ll be involved in the fight in some form or another — assuming they aren’t already.

Actually PMCs aren't that bad, provided the staff aren't just gun fanatics and are real soldiers, like that of Executive Outcomes. They did pretty well in fixing the RUF in the 90s until they got pressured to leave. The ones in the 2nd Iraq War were the real bad names to the industry.

[JokerD]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Private Contractors Will Probably Join The Fight Against ISIS



Actually PMCs aren't that bad, provided the staff aren't just gun fanatics and are real soldiers, like that of Executive Outcomes. They did pretty well in fixing the RUF in the 90s until they got pressured to leave. The ones in the 2nd Iraq War were the real bad names to the industry.

Gun fanatics are fine, just don't be those combat junkies or trigger happy people.
Most special forces are fine, but those 'normal' infantry who had to go through protracted urban ops are really prone to overkill or spray and pray...
(Interesting... I just thought of some US police forces being that way)

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by JokerD

Gun fanatics are fine, just don't be those combat junkies or trigger happy people.
Most special forces are fine, but those 'normal' infantry who had to go through protracted urban ops are really prone to overkill or spray and pray...
(Interesting... I just thought of some US police forces being that way)

They already had an official US volunteer in there (Jordan Matson, ex-US Army). If it wasn't for the economy I think more Americans would have just bought a ticket there to send those extremists on their way, ex-military or not.

The world has gotten so used to the US fixing all of these violent problems that nobody else wants to. And at this rate, US would be the only one capable of fixing such problems if everyone dismantles their military thinking US will protect them.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

The idea of US "world police" is a disturbing one, such dependence is not a good thing.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Mr Hat and Clogs

The idea of US "world police" is a disturbing one, such dependence is not a good thing.

That is the problem. Only Russia is challenging them despite it being a shadow of its former self. China is only building their military to bolster nationalism and secure their interests in the South China Sea - it will go as far as its face-saving gestures will.

We are relying too much on the US to deal with these religious nuts - although I admit that nobody sends a 1200-pound message better than them; I think it is time we pick up the slack and stop sitting at the sidelines to watch while those nuts run through the desert shoving their perverted brand of Islam down other people's throats.

When they are done with the land of sands, they are coming after the rest of us. I don't particularly savour the idea of painting my neighbour's house with their blood in the name of self-defence.

[Ithekro]

Honestly the shrine issue is at worst an internal matter in Japan.

[Yu Ominae]

Protests are back online.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...k-9787447.html

The emotional toll PTU faces in dealing with the protests.

[LoveYouSaber]

Originally Posted by Yu Ominae

Protests are back online.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...k-9787447.html

The emotional toll PTU faces in dealing with the protests.

I think I had the rather special experience of being "blocked" by a police friend I had instead (normally it's the other way round - people "unfriending" police officers as well as pro-government/anti-protesters people.) I am glad that the friend "unblocked" me several days earlier. And I'm still at a loss at why I was blocked (haven't been in contact yet, maybe would do so after this whole incident ends) - I encouraged the friend prior to the tear gas incident that I understood the police are just carrying out orders and that there was no need to feel upset. I got "blocked" afterwards when I changed my picture to the yellow ribbon and said something sarcastic about the current Chief Executive. I did not think I had been provocative to my friend at all

Anyway, my feelings towards the police is still the same. They are only carrying out orders and heaven forbid if one day they decided to start taking actions on their own. And I certainly agree that they are having the most difficult time - kind of like being sandwiched between people holding two very different opinions and the worst part is they aren't supposed/allowed to take/show any stance on this.

[JokerD]

Texas health care worker tests positive for Ebola
Texas health worker with Ebola wore full protective gear

Expect more of these missteps, even in first world countries. Even if the procedures for dealing with infectious diseases are in place, not putting them into practice will make people rusty.

[KiraYamatoFan]

Originally Posted by JokerD

Texas health care worker tests positive for Ebola
Texas health worker with Ebola wore full protective gear

Expect more of these missteps, even in first world countries. Even if the procedures for dealing with infectious diseases are in place, not putting them into practice will make people rusty.

This is just unacceptable. If a change has to be implemented, everyone to get those drills on immediately.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by KiraYamatoFan

This is just unacceptable. If a change has to be implemented, everyone to get those drills on immediately.

That is not Ebola you silly Canuck. That is the T-VIRUS. I hope you have your gun license and 870 ready; too bad for mainland UK for their firearms act.

[KiraYamatoFan]

When I said drills, I was talking about practicing situations where a patient with Ebola would come in. What happened in Texas was total sloppiness.

[SaintessHeart]

Steel yourselves for the next crash.

China steel now as cheap as cabbage, weighing on global price

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — As global steel prices face downward pressure from falling demand, the situation in China is making the problem all the more intractable, as overcapacity is prompting Chinese steel enterprises to cut their prices in order to boost exports.

Data from the China Iron & Steel Association (CISA) showed Monday that domestic steel prices have been falling for 12 straight weeks, with the Steel Composite Price Index down more than 13% compared since the end of last year, even as the nation’s construction activity and real-estate market are cooling significantly.

The average price for the range of steel products on offer has fallen to 3,212 yuan ($520) per metric ton for the first half of the year, down 28% from the average price in 2012, CISA data showed.

And as a People’s Daily report said Monday, the price level means the steel is now almost as cheap by weight as Chinese cabbage.

“Sharply slowing steel demand growth in an oversupplied sector is the key reason for China’s currently low steel prices,” CIMB analysts said in a recent note.

Standard & Poor’s also cited Chinese oversupply as the largest headache for steel makers in the rest of Asia, and is likely to remain so.

A recent survey by CISA said the steel-billet inventory of key enterprises was up 36% in July, compared to a year earlier, steel-product inventory climbed 21.3%.

Pressures arising from expanding inventories and sluggish domestic demand have made for cut-throat competition among China’s steel mills, resulting in meager profits. The margin for China’s large and medium-sized steel companies was 0.54% for the first seven months of 2014, CISA said.

And the problems are affecting the global markets too, as the Chinese firms cut prices to try to boost exports so as to make up for the weak domestic sales.

Customs data released Monday showed China’s net exports of steel product reached a record 7.2 million metric tons in September, up 4.5% from the last all-time high, posted in May, according to The Wall Street Journal.

That’s bad news for the exporters, as many of them are suffering from the price-for-volume strategy.

The average price for exported steel products was only $793 per metric ton in the first half of this year, down 9% from a year ago, with companies breaking even at that level, getting benefit only from associated tax breaks for exporters, CISA said.

Meanwhile, due to overcapacity, steel prices in both China and Europe have fallen more than 10% so far this year, while the price of iron ore — the key component for smelting steel — touched a five-year low in September, a Bloomberg report said earlier last week.

In a forecast issued last week, the World Steel Association said global steel consumption would likely post a slower pace in 2014 as a whole, with “weaker performance in the emerging and developing economies.”

Among the main contributing factors to the downbeat forecast, the association said, was China’s structural shift to its economy and the cooling-down of its property market.

[JokerD]

Originally Posted by KiraYamatoFan

When I said drills, I was talking about practicing situations where a patient with Ebola would come in. What happened in Texas was total sloppiness.

The nurse in Spain wiped her face with her gloves on. How can you detect and prevent those thing even during drills...