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Adjutant
 
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Post 28 Apr 2020, 12:38 pm

You keep making the absurd argument that the French and British could have won without American help. I point out that the French would not have recovered their morale to go on the attack without the assistance of Americsn troops and knowledge that ever more will coming. It doesnt matter that the Americans were the tip of the proverbial spear--that was what counted. And there may have been only 500,000 combat troops used in the Meuse-Argonne offensive--that doesnt mean there were not American troops elsewhere on the line or being used in reserve or combat troops used before. Obviously, the US did not have 320,000 combat casualties if only 500,000 were ever in combat. "The AEF’s 320,000 casualties included 16 percent killed, 20 percent gassed, and 64 percent wounded by a gunshot, including shrapnel rifle and machine gun fire."

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.n ... losses_usa

Obviously, you ignore the argument that the French were psychologically bolstered by the ever-increasing number of Americsn troops...because it cant be answered. I'm not going to argue this anymore because there is no point. Your arguments are not convincing.

As for Central and South America unfortunately democracies do not develop in very poor countries with an oligarchial landed elite. The choice is a dictatorship representing the wealthy of the country or communism. That is just reality. Whatever supposed 'elections' occur. How is Chile looking nowadays? I think the situation in Central and South America is a lot better than it was 50 years ago, though.
Last edited by freeman3 on 29 Apr 2020, 6:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post 29 Apr 2020, 5:15 am

Freeman:
Do you not really read what other people write?


He doesn't. He intentionally misinterprets the points that other people make. We are wasting our time.
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Post 29 Apr 2020, 6:48 am

American losses in World War I were modest compared to those of other belligerents, with 116,516 deaths and approximately 320,000 sick and wounded of the 4.7 million men who served.

The USA lost more personnel to disease (63,114) than to combat (53,402), largely due to the influenza epidemic of 1918
The United States was also unique in that - due largely to the epidemic - almost half of the losses occurred in training camps in the homeland rather than on the battlefields of Europe.


https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.n ... losses_usa

Hey.Same source! And the same numbers I quoted to you before!

4.7 million served. But only 2 million got to France. And only 1,000,000 got out of training and quarantine camps. And only 500,000 to the front lines, and that number only achieved in September 18.

Oh, and also from your source:
the German military leader Erich von Ludendorff (1865-1937) reportedly realized on 9 August 1918 that Germany would lose the war,
Last edited by rickyp on 29 Apr 2020, 7:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post 29 Apr 2020, 6:53 am

freeman3
As for Central and South America unfortunately democracies do not develop in very poor countries with an oligarchial landed elite


Not when foreign powers intervene and help destroy democratically elected governments... Example?

The Guatemalan Revolution was the period in Guatemalan history between the popular uprising that overthrew dictator Jorge Ubico in 1944 and the United States orchestrated coup d'état in 1954 that removed President Jacobo Árbenz from power. Also known as the Ten Years of Spring, that decade represented the only years of representative democracy in Guatemala from 1930 until the end of the Guatemalan civil war in 1996, and included a program of agrarian reform that was enormously influential across Latin America

https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_Revolution

The strategy seems to have been "We have to make the world safe for democracy by destroying democracies..."
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Post 03 May 2020, 11:23 am

The real reason for the Conspiracy theories..

https://crooksandliars.com/2020/04/pete ... hite-house
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Post 03 May 2020, 12:35 pm

It was an overreaction to supposed communist influence on Arbenz, but the question is what would central and south america look like if we had let communism spread there unabated and supported by Russia without trying to check it? I think it would look a heck of a lot worse.

It's really not fair to pick out these mistakes the US made without considering the enormous benefits conferred on the world by the US in being the primary country in stopping Russia/communism. Without the Marshall Plan, NATO, NSC-68, SEATO, OAS...how would the world look now?
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Post 03 May 2020, 12:44 pm

As for the supposed answer as to why there are supposed conspiracy theories, that's just an attempt not to respond to fact-based arguments. You should not have not to label other people's arguments or point to one expert's conclusionary and probably biased arguments. Rather, you should be able to lay out the facts and make arguments based on the facts (experts are of course importsnt contributors as to what the facts are here). It's not that hard...
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Post 04 May 2020, 7:22 am

freeman3
You should not have not to label other people's arguments or point to one expert's conclusionary and probably biased arguments. Rather, you should be able to lay out the facts and make arguments based on the facts (experts are of course important contributors as to what the facts are here). It's not that hard...


In cases where an understanding of the evidence is only possible with expert knowledge, I'll rely on the experts. Especially those with first hand information.
Those experts have said that
1) the virus was not engineered by humans
2) it is improbable that the virus escaped from the laboratory in Wuhan
3) the origin of the virus was probably bats, but may have come through another animal.
4) There are dozens of possible ways the virus made it into Wuhan, none of them nefarious.

"All available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else," WHO spokesperson Fadela Chaib told a Geneva news briefing. "It is probable, likely, that the virus is of animal origin."

It was not clear, Chaib added, how the virus had jumped the species barrier to humans but there had "certainly" been an intermediate animal host. "It most likely has its ecological reservoir in bats but how the virus came from bats to humans is still to be seen and discovered."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/who-coron ... -1.5539401

“The idea that this virus escaped from a lab is just pure baloney,” says Peter Daszak, disease ecologist and the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that works globally to identify and study our vulnerabilities to emerging infectious disease. “These pandemic viruses that emerge originate in wildlife.”

And like you say, it’s really a politicization of the origins of a pandemic, and it’s really unfortunate. The stories, as President Trump said he’s been hearing, have been around since day one of the outbreak, and they’re around in every outbreak. Every single outbreak of a novel virus, somebody somewhere says, “Well, this has been manufactured in a lab.” In fact, a few weeks ago, when this started circulating, I googled ”HIV is man-made.” Do it yourself and see. There are people out there who still believe this is a bioengineered virus that spread around the world. It’s just really unfortunate. And I don’t really know why these conspiracy theories get such traction. I think the people just have trouble understanding what’s going on on the planet.

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/16/ ... oronavirus

https://fas.org/ncov/#1582123671460-149570fc-d24c

This link is to the federation of American Scientists . I'd trust this source over most others. It also debunks the conspiracy theories around Covid 19.

There is a concerted effort in social media to create disinformation .

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nobel ... njo-covid/

There is a concerted effort by the current US administration to create a false narrative in order to avoid responsibility for its incompetent response.

US media and citizens are particularly rich receptors of the argument that any evidence is equal and any opinion has value. The anti-science attitude places the expert opinion of people with the knowledge to properly judge what evidence has value on a par with known liars like Mike Pompeo and Peter Navarro and the prevaricator in chief.
And you seem to have that predilection.
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Post 04 May 2020, 11:27 am

Again, you list experts making conclusions...without providing factual support for their conclusions. That's just blind reliance on an expert's opinion. When you have an expert that can provide a convincing explanation for why it could not have come from a lab, then it will be persuasive. Right now, no one has a clue where this virus came from. The wet market theory does not hold water. Bats are not sold at the market. Bats do not live in cities. That biolab has bats. That lab had been criticized for safety issues. That chinese research listed examples of lab researchers being contaminated by bats. That's actually quite a bit of circumstantial evidence linking the lab to the outbreak, though certainly not enough to support an opinion that the lab is responsible. More direct proof is needed.

So researchers face a tough task here to exclude thst the lab is responsible in some way. The only possible way for researchers to say that it did not come from a lab is to show that COVID-19 has human specific mutations that could not have occurred in a short period of time. The problem is that even if that were true the lab could have been the source of whatever COVID-19 precursor virus was running around Wuhan before it became COVID-19; it's just that it happened several months earlier. I havent even heard a really good explanation of why the virus could not have been bioengineered other than, well, only Nature could have come up with it. Even if that's true and scientists cant really explain why it's just as an intuitive feeling from scientists who have worked a long time with viruses that doesnt exclude a non-bio-engineered virus originating from the lab. To me, researchers have an impossible task in trying to exclude the lab.
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Post 04 May 2020, 11:47 am

Pompeo seems credible to me … I think he knows something, but doesn't want to divulge his sources, which may compromise someone or divulge a capability that the US has that China does not.
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Post 04 May 2020, 12:55 pm

Agreed. I dont think he would go out on a limb like that unless he had something substantive.
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Post 05 May 2020, 12:08 pm

freeman3
Again, you list experts making conclusions...without providing factual support for their conclusions. That's just blind reliance on an expert's opinion. When you have an expert that can provide a convincing explanation for why it could not have come from a lab, then it will be persuasive
.

Anthony Fauci said yesterday "If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what's out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated ... Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species."
Tell me, if Anthony Fauci is convinced by the evidence - why aren't you?

The reason I'm quoting experts, is because they understand the evidence on offer. You don't.
Its the same reason if I'm considering a treatment for a medical condition, I might seek the advice of another doctor or two... but I won't balance that with the opinion of my landscaper.
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Post 05 May 2020, 12:27 pm

rayjay
Pompeo seems credible to me … I think he knows something, but doesn't want to divulge his sources, which may compromise someone or divulge a capability that the US has that China does not.


Bull.
On Sunday this was an exchange between MArtha Radetxz and Pompeo on ABC...
RADDATZ: Do you believe it was manmade or genetically modified?
POMPEO: Look, the best experts so far seem to think it was manmade. I have no reason to disbelieve that at this point.
RADDATZ: Your -- your Office of the DNI says the consensus, the scientific consensus was not manmade or genetically modified.
POMPEO: That's right. I -- I -- I agree with that. Yes. I've -- I've seen their analysis. I've seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly. I have no reason to doubt that that is accurate at this point.
RADDATZ: OK, so just to be clear, you do not think it was manmade or genetically modified?
POMPEO: I've seen what the intelligence community has said. I have no reason to believe that they've got it wrong.

So, the "best experts" say it was manmade. Except that the DNI says it wasn't. And Pompeo agrees with the intelligence community. I mean, what?

More:
Like the intelligence community, which in a statement last week via the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said this: "The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified."
And like our intelligence partners in the Five Eyes (the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). "We think it's highly unlikely it was an accident," a Western diplomatic official with knowledge of the intelligence told CNN Monday. "It is highly likely it was naturally occurring and that the human infection was from natural human and animal interaction."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics ... index.html


We may never find the initial viral infection in humans. France has now apparently found an infection in someone from last December . Whats pretty clear is that the first hot spot in the world was the wet market in Wuhan. That could have been from zootropic transfer OR person to person.
Whats clear is that the market was shut down January 2 in response to the apparent but unidentified outbreak.
On January 9, 2020, the Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the discovery of a novel coronavirus, known as 2019-nCoV, which was confirmed as the agent responsible for the pneumonia cases.

Over the weekend of January 11-12, the Chinese authorities shared the full sequence of the coronavirus genome, as detected in samples taken from the first patients.

What governments did with that information , and with the wide scale lock down on January 23 in Wuhan province,... is on the governments.. Some acted more responsibly and effectively than others.

So Trump says he has seen evidence that this is from a Chinese lab. The same guy who said he had detectives in Hawaii who had information that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii.
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Post 05 May 2020, 3:34 pm

All your post does is focus on whether the virus was bioengineered or not; it does not focus on whether there was accidental contamination. As for this repush that it came from the market, there have been no additional facts adduced that would counter-act the evidence that the first case was not linked to the market and there were other early cases that were not linked to it as well. And there was the common-sense fact that bats were not sold at the market.

One of the problems has been that Western reporters were kicked out of China so they cannot really investigate the facts (this according to a very respected Washington Post reporter Robert Costa who appears regularly on MSNBC).Two Chinese researchers who did investigate the facts came to the conclusion that it came from the lab! So instead of investigating the facts of what happened we get these opinions from researchers that do not bother to try and explain the facts but just give their conclusions. (By the way, you can tell by the way Fauci gave his answer he has not carefully looked at this issue, but is just relaying opinions from other researchers.)

Investigate the facts, don't exclude possible theories without a sufficient basis to do so. I understand the Trump Administration has motive to blame China but that does not mean China gets a free pass. It is really very important to know how this started and it is not helpful in an attempt to spare Chinese feelings to rule out hypotheses unless there is a compelling reason to do so. And no one has given such a compelling explanation ruling out the lab. That I can tell you...
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Post 05 May 2020, 5:25 pm

My understanding of the experiments in the Wuhan lab is that they give viruses to Ferrets, who seem to have some similarities to humans. They then allow the virus to mutate in the Ferret, and pass it along to the next Ferret. In this way, the virus isn't "man-made", but it does come from the lab.