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Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

rarehistoricalphotos.com

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Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#221
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…

Was the Golden Gate bridge painted at that point? [1] says "some" of the steel came with red primer.

https://www.npr.org/2011/04/26/135150942/the-golden-gate-bri...

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#222
post #100

I wrote a quick script the other day to colorize directories of family photos. I realized it would be cool to colorize these photos, too. Here's the album: https://imgur.com/a/aJbpMjf The script uses the Image Colorization API from DeepAi. Here's the repo for the colorizing model itself: https://github.com/jantic/DeOldify I don't think the DeepAi API allows you to adjust the model parameters, but you definitely can i…

This is really great. Even if the colours might be off from actual reality, it brings it to life nonetheless.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was always a war of independence, first from France and then from the US. It would have been over by the mid-1950s, otherwise. 20 years of fighting primarily western troops with a fig leaf of local rule.

> It was always a war of independence, first from France and then from the US. The Vietnam War is largely considered to be 1955-1975. The French were out by 1954, and American troops in any number were there from 1965 to 1973. > 20 years of fighting primarily western troops with a fig leaf of local rule. 5x to 7x as many South Vietnamese troops died compared to Americans, who had combat troops there for less than hal…

Dienbienphu was in 1954, just for starters.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China fought in the Vietnam war too, just not as directly as the U.S. Without the U.S. supporting the south, the north will easily win with the full resource support from China. People who don't understand the historical context like to say the U.S. did not need to involve in the Vietnam civil war. This is simply wrong. If the U.S. did no get involved, the Chinese Communist government will support communists throw ov…

China was not on friendly terms with the north. They invaded Vietnam shortly after the Americans left, in response to Vietnam's actions in Cambodia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_W...

This is some propaganda for sure. ho chi mihn was a political prisoner and figurehead of the CCP state, similar to kim il-sung.

The vietmanese state has been an extension of the CCP since the 70s. This isn't up for debate, it's objective fact.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#225
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I don't think it was just the colorizing that was the problem. He was changing their expressions into smiles!

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#226
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ce…

>I actually think b&w photos are too deceptive.

This makes my eyes roll like I'm a professional golfer. I love B&W, and even without using B&W film, I will still turn certain color images I take into B&W. There are lots of artistic reasons, but most of the time it just feels right. Sometimes, it's just an aesthetic reason of matching the decor of where the print is going to hang.

>I mean too many people literally picture the world at the time to be black and white.

So what? There are also people that believe the world is flat. There are plenty of museums full of paintings from well before photography was invented that clearly show color. Anyone that believes that the world was in B&W before color film just need to be walked away from as there's nothing but frustration there.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#227
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many wars did the US win (as in "achieved the political goals") since WWII? Korean war: half won, half lost. Vietnam war: lost. Grenada invasion: sort of won. Gulf war 1991: I'd say won, despite Saddam staying in power. Gulf war II: I'd say lost, despite Saddam deposition. Afghanistan: lost, despite the killing of bin Laden. Syria: can't tell yet. It's a pretty depressing tally. With that, I'd say that the US was…

The goal of the US in Afghanistan was to deny Al-Qaeda the use of one third of a country to plan their operations. That required taking control of that territory from the Taliban, who were allowing Al-Qaeda to operate without restriction. The US did that. They harassed the Taliban and denied them complete control of territory for 20 years. Not sure how this could be viewed as a strategic defeat in any way

My recollection of how the conflict was presented was "We need to go to Afghanistan to defeat Al-Qaeda" 20 years later we're still fighting that same war, which is how many people look at the situation and say that the US hasn't achieved it's goals (i.e., has been defeated)

I suppose one could say that the US hasn't lost yet, but it's pretty tough to say that the US has won.

Honestly, at this point it feels like any discussion of the US staying in Afghanistan seems like it should devolve into a discussion of the halting problem. (/s, but only slightly)

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#228
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many wars did the US win (as in "achieved the political goals") since WWII? Korean war: half won, half lost. Vietnam war: lost. Grenada invasion: sort of won. Gulf war 1991: I'd say won, despite Saddam staying in power. Gulf war II: I'd say lost, despite Saddam deposition. Afghanistan: lost, despite the killing of bin Laden. Syria: can't tell yet. It's a pretty depressing tally. With that, I'd say that the US was…

I'd say we won Gulf war II, we've definitely lost Syria by now, Afghanistan probably lost. That said, many of the well-known, long haul conflicts that the US are involved in are the ones they are most likely to lose. The ones they win they usually win quickly and are less well known. There are plenty of interventions post-WWII that have been quick successes for the US, esp. in Latin America.

Yeah Syria is interesting

The problem with all these conflicts is winning is so poorly defined or multi-goal.

What's winning in Syria? Getting rid of assad and then leaving? We could probably do that in a week or less and utterly demolish the country if we wanted. The consequences of 'winning' that war under that definition would probably be pretty horrible.

But that doesn't seem to be the goal right now?

There's the wider goal of not wanting to poke the Russia bear too much while simultaneously not letting Russia run too wild (arguably they are..).

Though Afghanistan is pretty simple imho. there aren't nearly as many global power stakes... The taliban explicitly does not want Democracy so if that is 'winning' it's doomed to a loss by default.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#229

I saw a French movie about a French soldier in Vietnam set in 1945 I was also in France at the time when viewing the movie, it was very surreal in so many ways to be empathizing for a protagonist on one of the enemy sides - from an American perspective as I am an American. But I had never seen anything depicted about that war decades before the US got involved. I had never seen a war movie produced outside of Hollywo…

> I had never seen a war movie produced outside of Hollywood. Or a director with primarily french influences producing a war movie.

Not sure if the stipulation is a war movie about Vietnam, or just plain a war movie. But certainly here's a list of some non-U.S. 20th century war movies, very vivid, biased towards France:

The Battle of Algiers (French, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

Come and See (Russian, Elem Klimov, 1985)

Ivan's Childhood (Russian, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962)

Beau Travail (French, Claire Denis, 1999) -- OK, soldiers but not war

Army of Shadows (French, Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)

A Man Escaped (French, Robert Bresson, 1956) -- POW, not front lines

Little Dieter Needs To Fly (British/French/German?, Werner Herzog, 1997) -- actually relates to the war in Vietnam

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was always a war of independence, first from France and then from the US. The Vietnam War is largely considered to be 1955-1975. The French were out by 1954, and American troops in any number were there from 1965 to 1973. > 20 years of fighting primarily western troops with a fig leaf of local rule. 5x to 7x as many South Vietnamese troops died compared to Americans, who had combat troops there for less than hal…

Dienbienphu was in 1954, just for starters.

> Dienbienphu was in 1954, just for starters.

Yes, that's the reason the French were out in 1954.

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