JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
-
- English Instructor (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe)
- Berlitz Japan, Inc. (ベルリッツ・ジャパン株式会社), Kansai
- Salary: ¥125,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month
-
- FT English Teachers for Kids - Osaka
- Kohgakusha Co., Ltd. （株式会社興学社）, Osaka
- Salary: ¥255,000 ~ ¥275,000 / Month Travel Expenses, Encouragement of Japanese learning*
-
- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
0
yabits
A note on my post above, regarding two years of munitions supplies from the communist nations to North Vietnam:
Those supplies include many tons of small caliber ammunition that would not fall into the category of the type of ordnance that is causing so much of the problem today. This serves to bolster the probability that it's U.S. ordnance that is more than 90% of the problem.
Posted in: Vietnam War leftover ordnance has killed 42,000
0
yabits
According to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, 15 million tons of bombs were dropped by the U.S. in Indo-China. (Over 80,000 bombing runs in Laos alone -- the most bombed country per head in the history of the world.) Nearly ten percent of the munitions did not detonate, according to VVMF.
Source: http://www.vvmf.org/index.cfm?SectionID=285
That makes approximately 1.5 million tons of unexploded U.S. ordnance.
A released CIA document mentions two years of munitions supplies from the Soviet Union, China and communist bloc nations to North Vietnam during the years 1967 and 1968 as 91,000 tons and 55,000 tons respectively. (This was the height of the war.) If we estimate on the high side that 85,000 tons were sent for each year of the nine-year war, that comes to a total of 765,000 tons.
Source: http://www.faqs.org/cia/docs/62/0000969858/COMMUNIST-MILITARY-AID-DELIVERIES-TO-NORTH-VIETNAM-DURING-1968.html Make sure you browse the original document from the link at the bottom of that page. The stats are on page 7 of 17.
If we estimate again on the high side that twenty percent of the communist-supplied ammo did not detonate -- highly unlikely -- that brings 153,000 tons as opposed to 1.5 million tons -- a 1-to-9 ratio.
Like I said, you weren't even close in your statement that "maybe more than half" were killed by U.S. munitions. The number is closer to 90% in Vietnam and nearly 100% in Laos and Cambodia, since the communist forces weren't the ones dropping ordnance on those two countries.
Posted in: Vietnam War leftover ordnance has killed 42,000
0
yabits
LOL!! You ain't even close.
Posted in: Vietnam War leftover ordnance has killed 42,000
0
yabits
Can't be played out till the whole thing hits bottom. Everyone with more than half a brain knows President Obama inherited this awful mess.
Posted in: Minnesota court rules for Franken in Senate fight
0
yabits
Bush momentum.
Posted in: Minnesota court rules for Franken in Senate fight
0
yabits
Great. I'll have to give it a try the next time I'm in Yokosuka on business. Hope it opens according to schedule...
Posted in: Accor to operate new Mercure Hotel in Yokosuka
0
yabits
There is a phrase often used regarding U.S. military involvement since the mid-1970s: "the lesson of Vietnam." Regarding the Iraq invasion, it does not appear that the U.S. learned very much besides how to kill human beings more efficiently. Like Vietnam, Iraq was a war that the U.S. talked itself into. Some lesson.
Posted in: Vietnam War leftover ordnance has killed 42,000
0
yabits
The percentage of the ordnance in Laos and Cambodia that can be traced back to the U.S. has got to be in the high-90s.
Go back, look at the numbers in the article: 15 million tons of bombs dropped by U.S. forces alone.
Posted in: Vietnam War leftover ordnance has killed 42,000
0
yabits
That the Soviets could put a leader like Gorbachev in charge certainly was beyond his imagination. Not unless you believe in visionary hindsight.
Posted in: Vietnam War leftover ordnance has killed 42,000
0
yabits
inkjet: I feel that answers to your questions would take this discussion too far off topic, and so I don't want to invest a great deal of time in writing a lot in reply.
I have something of a unique background in being a Vietnam vet whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Poland around the time of WWI. Suffice to say that, growing up in a largely Polish neighborhood in the 50s and 60s, I was exposed to a lot of discussion about what was happening behind the Iron Curtain, and my family maintained lots of contact, including visits, with the family that remained over there.
I think I can tie that paragraph back to the topic on ordnance in Indo-China by saying that it was the force of anti-communism that caused so much of this continuing misery over there. When WWII ended and it was believed that Soviet expansion represented a new kind of threat, then aid flowed to western Europe out of dire fear and self-interest, not out of a spirit of generosity. The original plans for how to treat postwar Germany were in fact draconian. (Source: American Policy and the reconstruction of West Germany, 1945-1955, by Diefendorf, et. al.)
It is this great American tradition of self-delusion that what we initially did out of dire fear of communist expansion and influence in western Europe gets somehow converted into us being so gosh-darned generous. It doesn't help matters that most of this "aid" was in the form of loans that Europe had to pay back.
Another myth that Americans told themselves was that once a nation was under the grips of communism, that was it: that nation could never be free again. And so if the choice was between being red or being dead -- a false choice indeed -- that death was better. This is the Big Lie, American version, and U.S. policy was such that the United States was fully prepared to launch a nuclear holocaust on the world in order to prevent an ultimate "communist victory."
This is why those Americans who do it can justify themselves that killing millions of people in Indo-China was for a noble cause. It was better for Americans that those people were dead rather than living and "red." We killed them for their own good; destroying the village in order to save it.
If you told the average American anti-communist back then that the Soviet Union could completely dismantle itself and its "empire" peacefully, without any kind of violent war, this was something beyond their imagination. It is this widespread American belief that the "other" is so evil that it is worth destroying the whole world rather than fall to it, that ultimately makes America fall prey to the much greater evil from within.
Posted in: Vietnam War leftover ordnance has killed 42,000
0
yabits
Millions of dead Indo-Chinese, and millions of displaced Iraqis (including tens upon tens of thousands of dead) both in wars that were of complete choice and had nothing to do with the defense of the United States make "detailed accounts" very difficult to get into. (There are just too many of them.) A nation would have to do an awful lot of selfless good to come anywhere near a balancing point. As well as deceiving itself into believing that black is actually white -- and that all this leftover ordnance, for example, actually brings about positive benefits.
Your one-track mind compels you to come to absurd conclusions like this. It's like saying that all that was needed to reach a conclusion that Enron was a viable company in 2001 was to put two experts in a room, one of whom thought the company was in trouble, and other who thought that everything was super-great.
Regarding the balance sheet of destruction-caused vs. aid-given, those who advocate reaching some happy, mythical medium by clouding things up are essentially expressing their support for cooking the books.
Posted in: Vietnam War leftover ordnance has killed 42,000
0
yabits
No. It was the conservatives crying like stuck pigs that Gore was trying to steal the election. Conservatives banging on doors and screaming to stop counting legally-cast ballots.
In Minnesota, since the Republican was behind, we liberals waited and waited patiently for the democratic process to work itself out. Conservatives are the only ones who believe that people can't be trusted to tally legally-cast ballots. Conservatives are the ones who would try to claim that on a ballot with the name "Al Gore" handwritten on it and no hole punched that the intent of the voter can not be determined.
Posted in: Minnesota court rules for Franken in Senate fight
0
yabits
LOL!! Go back to 1929 and 2008 and look at what Republican control of the White House and Congress did for the nation: Navigated it into the two of the greatest economic calamities in human history.
I just bet you Republicans are itching to grind the country down again!
Posted in: Minnesota court rules for Franken in Senate fight
0
yabits
It may be a matter of how a person's moral compass and scale are calibrated.
Being nice to people and being somewhat generous are normal and therefore the midpoint of the scale, not tipping it either way in my estimation. Some people, apparently, want to see basic, decent normal behavior as actually a tilt to the positive. Midpoint for them might be described as "we didn't do anything to hurt or help you today."
What tips the scale to the good is something like being generous until it actually hurts. Self-sacrifice and all that. The reason Indo-China is still dealing with as much leftover ordnance over 30 years later is because of a distinct lack of goodness on the part of the very country that was most responsible for dropping it.
If this ordnance was on American soil and killing U.S. kids, Americans wouldn't be so worried about the billions it would take to clean it up. It's only because it's happening to someone else's kids that Americans can hem and haw about the costs. Or, better yet, put it out of their minds.
Posted in: Vietnam War leftover ordnance has killed 42,000
0
yabits
The reason you have to resort to "guessing" is because, unlike some people, you have never devoted any actual time and effort to determining what the balance sheet is in reality. I don't have to guess that anyone presenting the hard and cold facts would be set upon by you and your unfounded guesswork. Such awesomely blind ignorance evokes pity, not anger.
Telling someone they need their guilt over something very wrong done in their name -- such as the massive bombing of civilian population areas in Indo-China -- is like telling them they need to be normal. I think it is a sign of evil or insanity for a person not to feel guilty in light of horrendous wrongdoing done by their country.
Posted in: Vietnam War leftover ordnance has killed 42,000
0
yabits
Saddam did most of his murdering while he was the good buddy of Reagan and Daddy Bush. Saddam dealt with insurgents to his regime the same way that America deals with insurgents over there. Like two peas in a pod.
Now, there's a good reason to require thousands of Americans to sacrifice their lives. Right.
Posted in: Iraqis celebrate US pullback but bombing kills 27
0
yabits
A good preacher doesn't divide the world into a clique that can do no wrong, and everyone else, as does the person who Al Franken has called "a big, fat idiot".
To the best of my knowledge, the church removed or retired the preacher in question. If enough people had sufficient decency and love of truth, they would turn away from the person who is the theme of Senator Franken's first book.
Posted in: Minnesota court rules for Franken in Senate fight
0
yabits
Tens of thousands of Iraqis would be alive, along with tens thousands of Americans who wouldn't have come back to their families in pieces, mentally and/or physically. Billions upon billions of dollars down a rathole. What a waste.
If we could only turn back the clock. If an authoritative voice from on high could have proclaimed with absolute certitude the Truth that "Iraq has no WMD," would the US still have attacked? The answer is "No," and Saddam would still be in charge. So what.
Only someone who hates what is really good about America would believe that a totally contained Saddam with no WMD is a worse situation than the deaths of thousands of Americans it took to create the current mess.
Posted in: Iraqis celebrate US pullback but bombing kills 27
0
yabits
I am not sure what this has to do with Senator Franken, but the tradition of "preachers" warning nations about their sins and evils goes back to the prophets of the Old Testament. (I suggest looking at the one who shares Wright's surname.) Unlike Limbaugh, a preacher does not exclude his own congregation from the wrongness of its ways.
Liberals like Franken and preachers like Wright deeply want what is best for ALL people. Limbaugh only wants whats best for his conservative clique, and everyone else be damned.
Posted in: Minnesota court rules for Franken in Senate fight
0
yabits
Every situation? That is an absolute lie -- yet another in a continuing string.
This "situation" relates to the unexploded bombs dropped on Southeast Asia by the United States that have killed so many innocent people and continue to do so. If you can find something from the positive side of the prospect that people over there will be facing this danger for the next century, I'm all ears.
No country on earth has devoted more of its own GDP to producing ever more efficient methods and means of killing other human beings as the USA has. The amount dwarfs by comparison the crumbs brushed off the American table as humanitarian assistance. You want to accentuate the positive on that, go right ahead. The book I read tells me that the nation that exalts itself shall be humbled, and that "pride goeth before a fall."
Posted in: Vietnam War leftover ordnance has killed 42,000