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Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

rarehistoricalphotos.com

171–180 of 624 posts

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe their soceity would have been more successful if it wasn't bombed to hell and back by the Americans then made a soft client state of the USSR and then boycotted by the West. If left to develop its communist government by itself, it could be like China today - a superpower that's going to overtake the USA by important measures. Lets stop pretending that years of war against a superpower didn't come at a cost for…

Are the Vietnamese people winning in this scenario? Are the Vietnamese people winning right now?

Are you asking if the vietnamese people are winning in the crazy scenario drzaiusapelord suggested where viet nam is a super power - i think the answer is an obvious yes. But that's an unrealistic scenario.

Would they have been better off if france agreed to decolonize instead of trying to hold on to their failing colonial empire with force (leading to everything that came to follow)? Maybe we'll never know.

But i don't think there's any particular reason to assume that if the south won they would be any better off. South Vietnam hardly seems like it was the most stable/well run of governments - they were into fixing elections and persacuting buddhists, etc. Hardly what i would call an ideal state.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#172
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I haven't been to Vietnam specifically, but I've been to other countries. Also, you don't need to visit a country to learn what it's GDP per capita compared to other countries in the region. And you don't need to visit the country to learn that it's citizen are used as a source of cheap unskilled labour, in the country and abroad. Vietnam is not doing too bad though, they are gradually switching to proper market e…

Somehow I just knew if I looked back in your comment history, I would find some racism, and an impressive amount of dead/flagged comments. Take the hint dude, a lot of people think you're wrong, a lot. This doesn't mean you're being persecuted, by the way. It can just mean you're wrong. It's ok. I'm wrong a lot too. Maybe reflect on your opinions a bit and reconsider a few of them?

> Take the hint dude, a lot of people think you're wrong, a lot.

The orange website is quite left-leaning, and there's nothing racist in my comments. Your opinion is understandable, but it doesn't mean I'm "wrong".

And no, I'm not going to bend to groupthink. Freedom of speech and freedom of conscience is a greatest achievement of western civilization, and I'm going to use it despite of increasing number of attempts of left-leaning activists to shut it down.

> Maybe reflect on your opinions a bit and reconsider a few of them?

Believe me, I do it, when I learn something new. But only then, but not when I'm downvoted/flagged or told I'm wrong or racist.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%E1%BB%B9_Lai_massacre That's just one of them that we have evidence of. We know this was not a one off event. Anyone who pulls the line of "Domino Theory" and "America was just fighting communism" must note all the war crimes that the US committed and was never held responsible for.

That part is true, but communists killed millions more. There is no perfect history to love, sad ?

The justification of America's involvement and the lionization of it does not rest upon "but communists killed millions more."

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe their soceity would have been more successful if it wasn't bombed to hell and back by the Americans then made a soft client state of the USSR and then boycotted by the West. If left to develop its communist government by itself, it could be like China today - a superpower that's going to overtake the USA by important measures. Lets stop pretending that years of war against a superpower didn't come at a cost for…

Various countries which were "bombed to hell and back" are doing well now. Various Europe countries, Korea, Japan, etc

Helps that it was in usa's geopolitical interest for these countries to be strong to counter communism (Marshall plan)

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that Vietnam has only lost 50 people?

Let's just say the government is super evil and they covered up 99 deaths every 100 deaths for some reason, although we have no evidence that they did. They lost 50,000 people. The US lost half a million. Are you happy now?

Let me ask you something.

Do you think a south-east asian country with ~100,000,000 people only had 50 people die from the COVID-19 virus?

Answer honestly

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#176
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this.

I can understand the concern. It can mislead people about what the past really looked like. An example: this same model colorized the Golden Gate white: https://camo.githubusercontent.com/3487a03626fd86d4f8c814636... In my case I wasn't too concerned, since I was sharing the photos with my family, who understood they were artificially colorized. My father even asked me if it was possible to choose specific colours in…

There was this incident from last month: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/11/cambodia-condemns-v...

Cambodia has called on US media group Vice to withdraw an article that featured newly-colourised photographs of victims of the Khmer Rouge, saying the images are an insult to the dead because some had been altered to add smiles.

“We urge researchers, artists and the public not to manipulate any historical source to respect the victims,” [Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture] said.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#177

There's a lot of people in the comments saying that Vietnam didn't really "win" the war. Their political and military objectives were ultimately successful, those of the US/South Vietnam were not. That's what a victory is. The cost of victory was very high, but it was a pretty unambiguous success for the Vietnamese.

I think if you're talking about the acute win/loss of the Vietnam war, then absolutely the North Vietnamese won. If the USA really wanted to win the war then they could have done it outright in 1967. But that would have been very ugly. Not an option. Did the Vietnamese people win the war? No. They've been living in poverty for 50 years and most of them still are in 2021, 50 years later.

10% of USA people live in poverty.

50 years on, still in poverty.

Win or loose, live in poverty.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#178
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? I've also colorized pictures and video frames using these same sorts of processes. It's reasonably quick and works pretty well

It’s fake, and pretty soon people will not even want to entertain the idea of looking at photos or videos that are not in color.

I actually think b&w photos are too deceptive. I mean too many people literally picture the world at the time to be black and white. Recall that look is just an artificial limit imposed by immature chemical technology. It’s not like people wanted their pictures looking like that.

It’s even a common trope in modern films to use black and white when showing flashbacks to time periods around the beginning of the 20th century. But that’s not how the world looked! It’s a cheep and deceptive tool imho.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#179

There's a lot of people in the comments saying that Vietnam didn't really "win" the war. Their political and military objectives were ultimately successful, those of the US/South Vietnam were not. That's what a victory is. The cost of victory was very high, but it was a pretty unambiguous success for the Vietnamese.

[deleted]

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea started growing rapidly by the beginning of the 1960's and its economic growth has been consistent regardless of the political regime [^1]. What has been consistent was a significantly different economic system than the North, which would certainly not have survived unification after a North Korean victory. Military spending can't explain the disparity between the North and South as China had similar econ…

South Korea was fortunate in that its second dictator, despite being an utterly despicable human shitbag, had a knack for economic development (or maybe he had good economic aides - I don't know). However, its 60s economic system was about as capitalist as 90s China - it was built upon massive government projects to boost export, allocated to large corporations, and the government repressed wages and crushed labor un…

There has been a lot of studies into the economic performance of south korea and the other asian tigers compared to latin american countries that had similar levels of economic development after WWII and one commonality is the inability of government subsidies to influence export success. A product exported on the global market by a country desperate for foreign investment probably doesn't have the means to gain a competitive advantage through direct capital investment or subsidies.

Of course, a country can always be competitive by keeping wages low (probably artificially low in south korea) but I think south korea and the other asian tigers got a lot of things right that aren't comparable to how mainland china approached economic reform.

Besides being of a duration of five years there isn't a lot in common the economic planning of the soviet union and south korea in the aftermath of the Korean war. The soviet union's plans controlled the allocation of almost every resource and good in the economy and its ultimate price. South Korea's planning was mostly limited to guiding government investment and lacked the policy levers available to Gosplan.

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