trucking

On 8/8/2020 at 2:02 AM, welovesundaysatspace said:

 

France is not the Soviet Union. People are free to leave whenever they want. 

 

 

Do the French people know this ?  Be hell to pay if they find out.

 

On 8/7/2020 at 12:38 AM, webfact said:

He said in the post-Covid era, the Foreign Ministry should also focus on investment promotion and woo foreign investors. 

 

14 hours ago, Metropolitian said:

Looking a this picture I got another title in my mind

'Immigration officer enforcing lady to welcome Thais while holding her on a red leash'

 

This street ain't Walking anymore, it will become Jamming Street.

 

No , Gawking Street more like.

15 hours ago, rooster59 said:

Premrudee Saekhow who fronts an association of north easterners said they would be putting on some special food and drinks parties for Loy Krathong

 

Som Dtam and Lao Khao .................yeeeeeee ha.

14 hours ago, fredob43 said:

You must have a small house. It has taken 2 men working all day 11 days to paint my place. Not including the paint sealer it cost me 11,000bht including tip. Sorry but if you think I'm going to work in this heat for a almost a month doing it myself to save a few pence you very much mistaken.

 

Big house obviously. Ours is only a 2 bedroom bungalow.....easy peasy. I have used Thai painters before but some of the cheaper ' professionals ' were not too bothered about drips when outside painting unless I kept a close watch on them.

Do our house inside and out myself. No big deal. Just take your time a wall at a time...soon gets done at a fraction of the cost.

15 hours ago, Logosone said:

On July 30, Ambassador Satō wrote that Stalin was probably talking to Roosevelt and Churchill about his dealings with Japan, and he wrote: "There is no alternative but immediate unconditional surrender if we are to prevent Russia's participation in the war." 

 

The Japanese indeed wanted to surrender , but on negotiated terms. The terms laid out by the Potsdam Declaration were totally unacceptable to the Japanese cabinet . The final sentence of the Potsdam declaration :

 

"We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."^[

 

^{The Russians had already agreed with the other allies to open another front agains Japan by invading Manchuria.}

 

 

Attempts to deal with the Soviet Union

On June 30, Tōgō told Naotake Satō, Japan's ambassador in Moscow, to try to establish "firm and lasting relations of friendship." Satō was to discuss the status of Manchuria and "any matter the Russians would like to bring up."^[45] Well aware of the overall situation and cognizant of their promises to the Allies, the Soviets responded with delaying tactics to encourage the Japanese without promising anything. Satō finally met with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov on July 11, but without result. On July 12, Tōgō directed Satō to tell the Soviets that:

His Majesty the Emperor, mindful of the fact that the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifice upon the peoples of all the belligerent powers, desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated. But so long as England and the United States insist upon unconditional surrender, the Japanese Empire has no alternative but to fight on with all its strength for the honor and existence of the Motherland.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan

 

Soviet intentions

 

To this end, Stalin and Molotov strung out the negotiations with the Japanese, giving them false hope of a Soviet-mediated peace.^[56] At the same time, in their dealings with the United States and Britain, the Soviets insisted on strict adherence to the Cairo Declaration, re-affirmed at the Yalta Conference, that the Allies would not accept separate or conditional peace with Japan. The Japanese would have to surrender unconditionally to all the Allies. To prolong the war, the Soviets opposed any attempt to weaken this requirement.^[56] 

 

From the above it is clear that although the Japanese wanted to surrender on terms , the so called peace negotiations were doomed by both sides intransigence on the issue of ' unconditional surrender. The Soviets knew this but were just playing the Japanese along to buy time for their troop deployments. In any event, the negotiations came to nothing as Japan would not agree to the terms.

 

So the Russians invaded and the bombs were dropped. What happened after this three hammer blows to Japan :

 

even after the triple shock of the Soviet intervention and two atomic bombs, the Japanese cabinet was still deadlocked, incapable of deciding upon a course of action due to the power of the Army and Navy factions in cabinet, and of their unwillingness to even consider surrender. Following the personal intervention of the emperor to break the deadlock in favour of surrender, there were no less than three separate coup attempts by senior Japanese officers to try to prevent the surrender and take the Emperor into 'protective custody'. Once these coup attempts had failed, senior leaders of the air force and Navy ordered bombing and kamikaze raids on the U.S. fleet (in which some Japanese generals personally participated) to try to derail any possibility of peace. It is clear from these accounts that while many in the civilian government knew the war could not be won, the power of the military in the Japanese government kept surrender from even being considered as a real option prior to the two atomic bombs.

 

 

So ...................... history is quite clear on this. The dropping of the two bombs were the straws that broke the camels back. Had they not been dropped , the Japanese cabinet , in the stranglehold of the military hardliners would have forced through the continuation of the war with catastrophic results for all sides.

 

The victims themselves have this to say about the dropping of the bomb :

 

On 30 June 2007, Japan's defense minister Fumio Kyūma said the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the United States during World War II was an inevitable way to end the war. Kyūma said: "I now have come to accept in my mind that in order to end the war, it could not be helped (shikata ga nai) that an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and that countless numbers of people suffered great tragedy."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

 

In 1959, Mitsuo Fuchida, the pilot who led the first wave in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, met with General Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and told him that:

You did the right thing. You know the Japanese attitude at that time, how fanatic they were, they'd die for the Emperor ... Every man, woman, and child would have resisted that invasion with sticks and stones if necessary ... Can you imagine what a slaughter it would be to invade Japan? It would have been terrible. The Japanese people know more about that than the American public will ever know.^[59]

 

Logosone , I agree with you that the dropping of the bombs was a horrific thing to have happened to the Japanese victims. But there can be no doubt that this tragic event saved more innocent lives than it took.

 

Speedy end of war saved livesEdit

Supporters of the bombings argue waiting for the Japanese to surrender would also have cost lives. "For China alone, depending upon what number one chooses for overall Chinese casualties, in each of the ninety-seven months between July 1937 and August 1945, somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 persons perished, the vast majority of them noncombatants. For the other Asian states alone, the average probably ranged in the tens of thousands per month, but the actual numbers were almost certainly greater in 1945, notably due to the mass death in a famine in Vietnam. Westerners.'"^[30]

The end of the war limited the expansion of the Japanese controlled Vietnamese famine of 1945, stopping it at 1–2 million deaths and also liberated millions of Allied prisoners of war and civilian laborers working in harsh conditions under a forced mobilization. In the Dutch East Indies, there was a "forced mobilization of some 4 million—although some estimates are as high as 10 million—romusha (manual labourers) ... About 270,000 romusha were sent to the Outer Islands and Japanese-held territories in Southeast Asia, where they joined other Asians in performing wartime construction projects. At the end of the war, only 52,000 were repatriated to Java."

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

 

In life, hard , unpleasant things sometimes have to be faced up to. Not dropping the bombs would have saved the bomb victims from an awful death. 

 

But had the bombs not been dropped, the Japanese cabinet would have fought on and even more innocent lives would have been lost.

 

This is history , warts and all. War is mankinds ultimate folly an ever will remain so, unfortunately for humanity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whats Petchabun immigration like ? Any recent reports ?

Imagine taking part in that marathon and then afterwards half a dozen people test positive for covid. Panic stations.

 

Inadvertently doing us a favor . Won't be blaming us afterwards.

30 minutes ago, Logosone said:

The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace.

 

Ok. And who were they discussing this with and what were the Japanese proposals.

14 hours ago, stevenl said:

 

Glad to see we have 2 eminent historians on board here, who will settle this hotly discussed topic once and for all 

 

It will never be settled because that is the way humans are. If it hasn't been settled by now it never will be.

 

The use of atomic bombs is of course horrific and terrifying ( like war in general ). But in this singular instance their use can be justified. After 5 years of horrific war and millions of dead no end could come quick enough. Every day that passed people were dying. 

 

Of course, everyone knows that Japan would eventually have surrendered without the use of the bombs. No historian is denying that. It was inevitable. But every delay was costing thousands of lives and if you read the above links about what was happening in the Japanese cabinet it is quiet clear, coming directly from their own mouths , that the bombs were the clincher that finally broke the power of the military faction who would never have surrendered and the horror that would have followed .

 

Believe it or not, I am and always have been a pacifist. I hate war and all things military. But I can overcome my prejudices in this particular instance because of the countless books I have read on the war in the far east and how it was brought to its conclusion. In my teens i held the views being put forth by logosone but after many years , much travel and a lot of reading  I learnt that sometimes idealism and reality don't dovetail.

15 hours ago, Logosone said:

You are talking rubbish of course. Dropping the nuclear bombs on innocent civilians in no way stopped "an awful crime", on the contrary, it was itself an awful war crime.

 

And the only one who is denying a holocaust is of course you, in that you cheer lead the horrific burning alive of 120,000 Japanese women and children.

 

Of course, you are talking total garbage.. Read some history books and get off your PC horse. 

 

You are outraged at the death of Japanese civilians but don't take into consideration the hundreds and thousands that died at the hands of their Japanese tormentors, and the many that would have died had the war not been brought to a swift end.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

 

Even after the triple shock of the Soviet intervention and two atomic bombs, the Japanese cabinet was still deadlocked, incapable of deciding upon a course of action due to the power of the Army and Navy factions in cabinet, and of their unwillingness to even consider surrender. Following the personal intervention of the emperor to break the deadlock in favour of surrender, there were no less than three separate coup attempts by senior Japanese officers to try to prevent the surrender and take the Emperor into 'protective custody'. Once these coup attempts had failed, senior leaders of the air force and Navy ordered bombing and kamikaze raids on the U.S. fleet (in which some Japanese generals personally participated) to try to derail any possibility of peace. It is clear from these accounts that while many in the civilian government knew the war could not be won, the power of the military in the Japanese government kept surrender from even being considered as a real option prior to the two atomic bombs.

 

Again.....from the Japanese themselves :

 

The "one condition" faction, led by Togo, seized on the bombing as decisive justification of surrender. Kōichi Kido, one of Emperor Hirohito's closest advisers, stated, "We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war." Hisatsune Sakomizu, the chief Cabinet secretary in 1945, called the bombing "a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war".

 

 

You seem to have the erroneous opinion that the weapon was used to punish the Japanese people and that people were rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of yet more innocent people being killed.  How on earth you have arrived at this opinion is a mystery.

It does not seem to bother you that more innocent people would have died without the use of the bombs , than by using them. You don't seem to be bothered by the 100,000 Japanese killed in Tokyo by ' conventional ' firebombing and the 1,000,000 made homeless.  You don't of course know anything about that. You just have this politically correct and trendy notion that it was wrong to use the bombs and to hell with all the victims there would have been had they not been used.

 

Study history....a lot....stop having tunnel vision and look at the big picture.

14 hours ago, ChipButty said:

D-MAX the best truck in Thailand

 

Nope. It was the amulets of Pra Napalot that saved them.

14 hours ago, rabas said:

75 years on and still learning of new atrocities.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_massacre

 

The month-long battle, which resulted in the death of over 100,000 civilians and the complete devastation of the city, was the scene of the worst urban fighting in the Pacific theater. Japanese forces committed mass murder against Filipino civilians during the battle. Along with massive loss of life, the battle also destroyed architectural and cultural heritage dating back to the city's founding, and Manila became one of the most devastated capital cities during the entire war,

 

What did the Filipinos ever do the the Japanese?

 

 

Ah....but Stevenl say we are only listening to one side of the story ?  

 

How so ? The Jewel Voice Broadcast gives the other.

 

https://www.atomicheritage.org/key-documents/jewel-voice-broadcast

 

That is the other side of the story coming from the very top.

15 hours ago, Oliver Holzerfilled said:

More civilians died in the battle of Manila than died in Nagasaki.  

 Absolutely. And Manila is just a single example of Japanese atrocity.

 

And yet if you read the entire text of the Jewel Voice broadcast the Emperor comes across as feeling pretty hard done by by the course of events that they themselves instigated.

14 hours ago, stevenl said:

With the topic of 'did dropping the bombs save lives' a girly discussed topic amongst historians, your last sentence is way over the top and not done.

 

Not at all. Despite mountains of evidence there are still people out there that state and try to prove that this is the case. Exactly the same as denying that had the war continued another month, countless more lives would have been lost. 

 

Here is a telling extract from Emperor Hirohitos  Jewel Voice Broadcast.

 

Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.

Such being the case, how are we to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors? This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers.

 

When the innocent lives at stake were Japanese it gave them pause for thought. 

 

A pity they had not felt the same high regard for the innocent Chinese civilians at Nanking and other places under their thumb.

 

And that extract is from the horses mouth. Nothing about the Russian threat or the imminent starvation the Japanese would have faced on account of the American submarines stranglehold on the country where nothing bigger than a fishing boat went unnoticed.

9 hours ago, Logosone said:

Total lie, anyone who claims that should read some history.

 

The Japanese were already suing for peace.

 

The dropping of the atomic bomb which burned alive women and children was a horrible war crime.

 

Despicable.

 

I refer you to the last sentence of my post.

 

You need to read history not dabble in it.

 

Whatever the feelings of the ordinary Japanese their government was no more inclined to surrender than were the Nazis. They understood they had blood on their hands and would be called to account for it so they would have fought on fanatically.

 

Read up on what happened in Manila. Even when ordered to evacuate the city the local commander refused to do so. He and the troops under him fought on until cornered. Then seeing that they were about to die they went on an orgy of rape and murder of the Filipino civilians still under their control.

 

War is an awful crime. Murder on an individual or massive scale is an awful crime. Those who instigate it must be stopped at the earliest opportunity , whatever it takes.

 

To say that the dropping of the bombs saved lives is a lie is the same as saying the holocaust is a fabrication.

I accidentally saw the MIL in the nude once. Fortunately from the rear. Seemed pretty paranormal at the time. Wife showed her how to lock the bathroom door and never saw the terrifying visage again.

17 hours ago, Boomer6969 said:

so why do you stay here?

 

 

Thai Watsadu usually have small ones for a few thousand baht. We had one when we lived in Bangkok during the flooding. Useful but very hot to sit in for any length of time. Make sure you have a heavy duty umbrella to go with it with silver on the underside or you will fry !  Also, if you can get a very small engine...much better or you will sweat a lot paddling. Will have greater range too.

 

I always fancied the old wooden ones they sell noodles from but heavy and don't come cheap.