News Stories

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

And Americans had a capacity of expending a ludicrous amounts of material and ordinance to get their jobs done...material and ordinance that the Vietnamese did not have access to. So I don't think that it's exactly fair to imply (such as Westmoreland was fond of after the war) that the North's willingness to take heavy casualties in combat was somehow a sign of them lacking morality.

I'm not trying to imply anything. I'm not any kind of military analyst, so it's all second-hand opinion. I was just amused by SH wishing he'd worked under him.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

I'm not trying to imply anything. I'm not any kind of military analyst, so it's all second-hand opinion. I was just amused by SH wishing he'd worked under him.

At least he bothered about his troops. Ours are just office dwelling academic generals.

[Anh_Minh]

And if I had to serve in an army, that's exactly the kind of general I'd want to serve! One that is very, very far from the frontline.

[Fireminer]

Well, then you're doom!

[ganbaru]

For Rep. Ted Yoho, government shutdown is ‘the tremor before the tsunami’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...35e_story.html

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

For Rep. Ted Yoho, government shutdown is ‘the tremor before the tsunami’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...35e_story.html

As it is there is a large chuck of the US citizens who genuinely believe they don't need a government.

Maybe we can find out if that is truly the case, once and for all. And I will be hopeful that this gets dealt with permanently before Obama finished his term. It would certainly be helpful to whoever taking over that this mess of an economic hostage taking not get turned into a yearly event.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

And if I had to serve in an army, that's exactly the kind of general I'd want to serve! One that is very, very far from the frontline.

As his aide of course

[Anh_Minh]

His aide, his doorman, his cook. What do I care, as long as nobody asks me to charge a machinegun nest?

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by risingstar3110

One thing that do affect Giap reputation was him sacrificing so many lives to earn victories. And while i would have preferred peace over war, negotiations over battles, however who i am to judge here. I am sitting in my comfortable room reading news with my tablet. While men like Giap would be lucky not to soak themselves in mud with an empty stomach, thinking about the life of HIS men, those he nurtured up from peasant farmers to become a capable soldiers, before being sacrificed on the battlefield for a greater cause/ victory. And for all the 60-70 final years of his life, Giap was not driven into a madman, or worse megalomania. So in someway, i do believe he knows the weight of his comrades sacrifices. That part of him earned my respect (aside all of the military achievement of course)

It is easy to judge a general for spending the lives of his men to achieve victory when you're not sitting in his boots, yes.

Of course it's also easy to think a general being willing to accept 50% casualties to achieve victory is unacceptable when you're not the one who has to seriously contend with the United States Air Force being able to bomb you with near complete impunity.

YouTube

https://youtu.be/LQFFU_UH-uQ

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The Vietnamese (and Giap) had to fight their war with the understanding that if they did ANYTHING operationally near US ground forces, that said US troops would immediately start calling in massive quantities of air and artillery assets against the NVA/VC troops. And shrapnel and Napalm doesn't care how much of a tactical genius your commander is. Massive casualties are unavoidable under these tactical conditions.


US Army/Marine units would have been similarly devastated if the NVA/VC could throw that much ordinance at them.

Originally Posted by risingstar3110

Dien Bien Phu aside, as it started the end of colonial area (which we all would like to forget). But if you compare Vietnam to India-Pakistan then, we now can see peaceful liberation under mercy/compassion can still costs millions of human lives due to the power gaps it leaves (especially as future wars still can break out, and both coutnries have nuclear weapons as well). Then of course Korea Peninsula, probably the "how Vietnam could have been". But we know just like in Vietnam, peace of the whole Korea will definitely be as hard earned, as a bitter and prolonged war there now, may drive all the 50-years social developments, social stability down the sink. Then of course with half of the country, and 33% of Korean Peninsula population being isolated from the world, under military dictatorship, and suffered famine from time to time. You can't say it definitely was a better solution than Vietnam now.

See, but that's an entirely different matter than being willing to take losses to achieve victory. That's more fundamentally asking if the cost of any war justifies the outcome you get from it. And the way you answer that is entirely subjective. And honestly that could be asked about any war. The United States took only a fraction as many deaths as the Vietnamese, but we spent decades trying to answer the question of whether or not Vietnam was *worth it*. And in many cases it's hard to figure out which side winning a war would have been an objectively better outcome.


I certainly find it a hard thing to comment on. While the Vietnamese communists weren't nice people, the Southern government wasn't exactly any less thuggish. And they certainly didn't have a fraction of the revolutionary creds that the VietMihn did.

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

I'm not trying to imply anything. I'm not any kind of military analyst, so it's all second-hand opinion. I was just amused by SH wishing he'd worked under him.

Well yeah. That's an entirely reasonable perspective! It's easy to respect a general in abstract, and much harder to casually say you'd like to be one of the men serving under his command.


Legend of Galactic Heroes had a really...effective scene demonstrating that even serving under inspirational commanders can be hell when it actually comes to battle.

YouTube

https://youtu.be/2uR5SF4fx9Q

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[ganbaru]

Results from Public Policy Polling surveys of 24 Republican-‐held House districts, Oct. 2-‐4, 2013
http://front.moveon.org/wp-content/u...use_Survey.pdf

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

Well yeah. That's an entirely reasonable perspective! It's easy to respect a general in abstract, and much harder to casually say you'd like to be one of the men serving under his command.

In my opinion, as a soldier, your life is forfeit when you are in uniform. For nothing more than the mission.

Of course, when it is a civil insurgency, things change and gray areas grow wider. The guy who tried to chuck a molotov at your armoured car; technically speaking he is an enemy. But he is a civilian you have to protect too as a citizen. What would be your choice?

That is the problem US faced in Vietnam. Their generals telling them that they are there to "liberate" Vietnam from the communists, but they have shoe-shine boys blowing them up with shoeboxes.

So what are they protecting? What are they fighting for? Unlike the VPA, they do not have a singular enemy, and they do not have the stomach like the Russians to employ a "kill-them-all" policy.

So whose life is more important? The ones they are sent to liberate, or their own which they need to continue the mission with?

Legend of Galactic Heroes had a really...effective scene demonstrating that even serving under inspirational commanders can be hell when it actually comes to battle.

Actually the only thing I remember about that anime is the disgustingly large amount of BL/yaoi innuendo within. Can't you use a better reference?

Originally Posted by ganbaru

Results from Public Policy Polling surveys of 24 Republican-‐held House districts, Oct. 2-‐4, 2013
http://front.moveon.org/wp-content/u...use_Survey.pdf

At least it is good to know that the GOP people are mostly rational. Other than the teabaggers.

Gap supplier hid labour abuse in secret books: report

A Bangladeshi factory that produces garments for The Gap and Old Navy kept two sets of books to conceal how it is coercing employees to perform 17-hour shifts every day of the week, a new report says, underlining the inability of clothing retailers to improve working conditions among their suppliers.

The report says management at the Next Collections Limited factory, which is owned by local business giant Ha-Meem Group, issued phony pay slips to cover up the fact that employees are forced to work twice as many hours.

The workers were paid cash, were often shortchanged on their overtime pay and were at their stations until 10 or 11 p.m., sometimes even up to 3 a.m. the next day.

“They were exhausted, skinny, dazed and with deep shadows under their bloodshot eyes. In nearly 30 years of interviewing workers across the developing world, we had never seen workers who looked so exhausted,” said the report by the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights.

The institute also reported that workers were physically abused and female employees who became pregnant were denied their legal paid leave and forced to quit.

The Pittsburgh-based NGO said that the hours listed in the bogus computer-generated pay stubs were contradicted by handwritten documents, such as night sign-off sheets, which record actual overtime and the food stipends issued to keep the employees working late.

“We received this report yesterday and are carefully reviewing it. If true, these allegations are in direct violation of Gap’s contract with this vendor,” Gap spokeswoman Laura Wilkinson said in an e-mailed statement.

She said Gap wants people who work for its supply chain to be treated “with fairness, dignity and respect.”

One worker interviewed in the report, Morium Begum, an assistant button machine operator, said she lost her baby, seven months into her pregnancy. She was forced to work more than 14 hours a day, every day of the week.

Her pay stub said she had done 50 hours of overtime in June 2013 but in fact she worked 210 hours of extra time, the report said.

The Wall Street Journal, which was shown the report’s findings before its release, said that on a recent Saturday night, bright fluorescent lights flickered well past 10 p.m. at the factory.

A manager told the Journal that the company had to meet production targets set by foreign clients.

“It is easy, because auditors and buyers never come around late at night to check these things,” the factory manager said in an interview. “Sometimes, it is the only way to meet the orders on time.”

The report said it was easy to fool retailers visiting the factory, which is located outside the capital, Dhaka, and employs 3,750 people.

Earlier this summer, the report said, “white foreigners” – buyers from Gap and Old Navy – visited the factory late in the morning of June 22.

A loudspeaker alerted the workers ahead of the visit. They were instructed to respond to questions by claiming that conditions were good and that they needed to do “just two hours of overtime a day.”

The bathrooms had been cleaned and the workers handed masks and caps.

Gap monitors only spent 20 minutes per floor before going to the office to meet management, the report said.

“How easily Gap and Old Navy monitors have allowed themselves to be duped. A high school student would know better,” the report said. “All you need to do would be to drive past the Next Collections facility, where the lights are always on as workers toil well into the night”

Ms. Wilkinson, the Gap spokeswoman, said her company regularly audits its suppliers’ factories, including Next Collections.

“Half of our audits are unannounced and our team in Bangladesh includes local experts who are in regular communication with the workers.”

Even though their overtime contributions are secretly entered in off-the-book records, the workers are routinely cheated of up to 15 per cent of their overtime wages, the report said.

Workers are paid on the seventh day of the month, when accountants set up several stations on each floor, the report said, describing how people were called one by one to receive cash along with a bogus pay slip.

“They receive no record of the actual amount of money they receive, but they are asked to sign a salary sheet, which is retained by the accountants and which, presumably, Gap and the other buyers never see,” said the report, which was based on interviews conducted at a safe location near Dhaka.

One of the interview subjects, Taniya Begum, a 24-year-old sewing line supervisor, told the report’s authors that she was told to resign when she became pregnant. She would have been owed the equivalent of $724 for a 112-day maternity leave.

"Do you think your father owns the factory? We will not keep you. You must resign and leave the factory immediately. I do not want to see you again," a manager yelled at her, the report said.

The report said that her husband, Mazharul Islam, who also worked at the factory, was beaten up, told to resign and forced to sign a blank sheet of paper.

“I thought they would kill me. I was all alone. Six or seven people were violently beating me with sticks. I was forced to sign the blank sheet. I put down my signature, despite the fact that they did not pay my salary for August and other dues,” he said in the report.

[AnimeFan188]

"Hezbollah has Iranian Chemical weapons":

"The Saudi journal Al Watan reported this morning (Sunday) that Khaled Al Daher, a
Lebanese member of parliament on behalf of the Future Movement, said that the
Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah recieved chemical weapons delivered to it
from Iran.

According to the report, Al Daher said that "the Iranian Revolutionary Guards was
involved in the creation of Hezbollah's long-range missile bases across Lebanon,
and some of their weapons contain chemical warheads." Al Daher further specified
the location of some of the bases."

See:

http://www.israeldefense.com/?Catego...ArticleID=2496

[ganbaru]

Originally Posted by AnimeFan188

"Hezbollah has Iranian Chemical weapons":

"The Saudi journal Al Watan reported this morning (Sunday) that Khaled Al Daher, a
Lebanese member of parliament on behalf of the Future Movement, said that the
Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah recieved chemical weapons delivered to it
from Iran.

According to the report, Al Daher said that "the Iranian Revolutionary Guards was
involved in the creation of Hezbollah's long-range missile bases across Lebanon,
and some of their weapons contain chemical warheads." Al Daher further specified
the location of some of the bases."

See:

http://www.israeldefense.com/?Catego...ArticleID=2496

They might prefer to use chemical weapon for targeting Jerusalem instead of conventional warhead.

[JokerD]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

They might prefer to use chemical weapon for targeting Jerusalem instead of conventional warhead.

Err... isn't there muslims in Jerusalem as well? If I were them, I would attack the settlements instead...

[ArchmageXin]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

As it is there is a large chuck of the US citizens who genuinely believe they don't need a government.

Maybe we can find out if that is truly the case, once and for all. And I will be hopeful that this gets dealt with permanently before Obama finished his term. It would certainly be helpful to whoever taking over that this mess of an economic hostage taking not get turned into a yearly event.

Holy god...

Maybe America need to take a page out of Imperial China, and demand all Congressional leader pass some kind of civil service exam prior to election.

[Anh_Minh]

And/or the Vatican. Lock them up and feed them only bread and water till they vote a budget.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

And/or the Vatican. Lock them up and feed them only bread and water till they vote a budget.

Well have little boys serve them there until they go nuts.

[ArchmageXin]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Well have little boys serve them there until they go nuts.

Should we add mandatory Castration (and given now we have female law makers), mandatory vaginal mutilation?

[ganbaru]

Schumer To Boehner: Prove That A Clean Spending Bill Won't Pass
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...-cr-won-t-pass

"Someone goes into your house, takes your wife and children hostage and then, says, let's negotiate over the price of your house."

[KiraYamatoFan]

"Someone goes into your house, takes your wife and children hostage and then, says, let's negotiate over the price of your house."

That's a good way to put it.

Boehner and his GOP people are just one sorry bunch of tossers who deserve to get sacked after the next election. Hell... Don't they see the moral conundrum in what they are proposing? It's basically about cutting down affordable healthcare on 25 million of Americans (25 million!); that's equivalent to hanging those people dry, worse than leaving a fellow comrade wounded on a battlefield.